NOTE: This is kind of R-ish...and a lesson follows at the end of the tale.
It was late, very late when Michelle opened the door to her room. She unbuttoned her high neck gown all the way down to her collarbones. It was a warm evening. She opened the window to her room and lit the kerosene lamp.
How dare the Marshall flaunt a woman in front of her like that? The Marshall's mail-order bride was such a pretty woman too with such different features from herself. Abby was taller and had dark hair and a very pale complexion. Her eyes were doe like and her lashes they were about a million miles long. Abby had told her quite plainly that she and the Marshall were betrothed and that arrangements had been in place for months.
Why then did the Marshall make such a point of wooing her when he knew his bride was on the way? "Heathen," she spoke into the night. Suddenly, her window curtain panels' rustled and the devil himself was in her room.
"Ma'am he said and took off his hat. I just wanted to clear a few things up with you."
"Marshall is it too much to ask for you to knock on my door when you come calling?"
"I would have if I thought for a moment that you would answer the door. You need to know something and it is important."
"Oh I think I already know Marshall, thank you very much, I saw your betrothed and heard all about how this was the plan for months. You really are not welcome here, please leave now."
"I'm not betrothed and Abigail is not my bride-to-be, she is your brother's. Eleni, Blake and Holly are going to tell her that later this evening. Colonel Dax's wife told me that you both misunderstood. Now I know why you were dancing so with the Fort Dodge regiment officers, or at least I hope that is why you were dancing with them? I am not getting married to Abigail or anyone right now. Do you understand?"
Michelle stared up at him her eyes searching his to discern if she could trust what he was saying, she hoped he was speaking the truth. "So Abigail is my brother's intended, the one the townsfolk sent away for. And you were escorting her to meet my brother and then everything got sort of mixed up when she had that adverse reaction to Rick?"
"Yes," he exhaled noisily, "and then I got called away to the Towers and had to lock up Alan Spaulding for singing in public." He watched her sit on the bed; he stared at the open expanse of skin from her chin to her collarbone.
He noticed the high neck ice blue dress and how lovely she looked in it too but mostly he noticed her iridescent skin, it was just two or three inches of exposure but it left a lot to his imagination. Then Santos noticed her well-defined collarbones. Danny stepped forward and knelt down beside her.
"Are you sure you understand?"
She nodded yes; he took her hand, kissing her palm repeatedly. Then he looked at her and saw her close her eyes. He leaned towards her for a kiss. She immediately opened her mouth as their lips met. The kiss became powerful and she moaned into his mouth. His lips left hers and started to trail down her neck. He reached up and pulled the clip from her hair releasing it so that it flowed down her back in tangled ringlets. Danny put one hand through her hair and pulled her closer to him. His other hand encircled her waist and she was close to him, so close.
He kissed his way down her neck weaving slow methodic kisses and trailing each kiss with a bit of a whisper. His right hand came up and started to slowly unbutton more buttons on her frock. With each unbuttoned notch, he kissed the exposed area of skin. Michelle leaned back pulling Danny's head and body with her. He lay beside her; his left hand on her hip; the other at her bodice slowly unbuttoning her dress and his lips followed his hand's path. She moved her body up in response to both his hot breath and his kisses. Danny was moving very slowly she thought, too slowly. She reached up and quickly undid the remaining buttons to open the shirtwaist panel of her gown and expose her corset and camisole to him.
The Marshall laughed happily, greedily as he started to circle the tops of her breasts with his tongue. The corset pushed the top half of her breasts up exposing these parts of her breasts to him now. He kissed each breast, yearning to take them from their container yet hesitant to move too quickly, he did not want to scare her. She arched against him and rolled on her side pressing her hips against him. She pulled her head back as her hip touched something hard, probably his gun she thought. However, he was kissing her neck again and her chest and she did not much care about anything else in the world. She moaned deeply then and he cupped her left breast with his hand, pushing it up and out of its corseted support.
Michelle had beautiful full breasts and her left nipple was the perfect shade of pale pink. Would the other one match? Oh, Lord have mercy he said, he took her into his mouth, and she instinctively pulled his head to her breast as if he was suckling. She held his head there while moving her pelvis against him; oh, there was that gun again. Next time she would ask him to remove it.
He moved his other hand up freeing the other breast and gently pushed her over onto her back, he cupped the breast he suckled and moved on to the other. His finger rubbed back and forth over the one he'd just kissed while she held his head tightly to her other breast all the while arching into him.
Then they both heard it, the bloodcurdling scream. Danny sat up, and pulled her dress closed. Michelle sat up slowly as if in daze and watched Danny get up and put on his gun, gun belt and holster, "I'm sorry, I'd better go and see what that is, " he said.
"Will you come back," she asked.
"No, this has gone too far, I'm leaving town tomorrow for a few weeks on a case. We both need to do some thinking about tonight." He pulled her close then and started kissing her mouth while at the same time he deftly buttoned up her dress. When he was done, he bent down, kissed her still hardened breast peaks, and said, "I am so sorry, you are irresistible but you need to think on this, you can do much better for yourself than to sign your life over to the United States government." Then he kissed her again quickly and left via the door this time.
Michelle heard a knock on her door in a few minutes and Eleni entered. "I am sorry about that scream a while back. You see Holly, Blake and I told Abigail that she was actually betrothed to Doc Rick, your brother and not to the Marshall. She fainted right after she screamed, do you think you could find your brother and ask him to come and check on her?"
Danny realized what occurred, Abigail figured out she was to marry Doc. He wondered if Miss Bauer realized that he just proposed to her in the only way he knew how. He could not ask her to become betrothed to him, it was too unfair, he was an officer, and he was trouble. He wanted her badly, more than he wanted anything, anybody ever in his life; this was bad news and there was no way around it. The Marshall wanted this innocent girl enough to put his and her life in jeopardy that was clear, could she want him too? He felt bewildered and unsure whether to hope that she felt something for him too or to hope that she would grow indifferent to him. Only time will tell, only time will tell.
That is the Wild West for you.
~~~~
There was a variety of periodicals available for gentlefolk during the late 1800s.
"Harper's Magazine" the forerunner of today's "Harper's Bazaar" was available in the larger cities. "Scientific American" was also available as were many men's magazines dealing with nature, medical information and exploration data. The most popular woman's magazine of the day was "Godey's Lady's Book." This publication detailed all of the latest fashions and gossip from Washington and New York City. "Graham's" was a popular circular in England and the Canadian provinces. Periodicals were scarce in the west and it is quite likely that only Mrs. Drew Kitty would subscribe and receive this expensive book.
Dime store novels were also available and provided glimpses into the popular attitudes of the late 1800s. The stories usually reflected the social issues of the day and included stories about: detective adventures, society romances and rags to riches. Pop-up books were available for children and were considered special gifts and keepsakes for generations.
Miss Bauer probably taught her students from a series of books called "The McGuffey's Readers," a series of books, the first of which was published in 1836. "Four-fifths of all American school children used these books for over 75 years. Some 120 million sets of the books were sold. No other books ever had so much influence over so many children over such a long time. The educational course begins, in the Primer, by presenting the letters of the alphabet to be memorized in sequence. Teachers used the books to teach children, systematically, to use the building blocks of their language to form and pronounce words. Each lesson began with a study of words used in the exercise.
Stories in the First and Second Readers pictured children in their relationships with family, teacher, friends, and animals. The Third Reader expands this world and so on through the sixth reader (which included instruction on articulation, inflection, accent and author selections from Tennyson, Blackstone, Poe, Byron, Jefferson, Disraeli, etc.) The educators who wrote these books operated under the commonly held belief that children's brains reacted to what was fed into them and that the children's lives would therefore be influenced greatly and irrevocably by exposure to the proper material at their young age. Therefore, the most wholesome fare available was provided to the students. Virtues such as honesty, charity, thrift, hard work, courage, etc., were taught through the readers series."
Many learned educators consider the teaching techniques of these readers to be superlative and have called for a return to such values today. More information on the McGuffey Readers including instructions on how to order these texts can be found at http://www.howtotutor/guffy1.htm
See you cowpokes in Episode 5, "The Broodmare Incident."
