Chapter 3

The morning sky was steel grey and millions of tiny flakes of snow drifted down from the heavens obscuring the horizon and covering the ground with a thin layer of white. For the first time since the wreck you got a good night sleep and wake feeling refreshed. The smell of fresh cooking wafts up through the floorboards and into your rooms

After cleaning up in a wash basin filled with cold water and getting dressed you head downstairs. Buford and Helen are in the dining room eating breakfast, Mariette and Ruby are in the sitting room taking advantage of the more comfortable chairs. Mariette winces as she slowly turns to look at you, Ruby smiles and gets to her feet.

Buford nods pointing at the two hard wooden chairs at the table, his hair is neat and his beard is trimmed and untangled for the first time since you've met him, he looks civilized, less like an angry bear. Helen smiles and waves at you.

Miss Bessy comes over with a pair of plates of food, bacon, eggs, sausages, pan fried potatoes and biscuits handing one plate to each of you.

"Figure we'll head down to the station after breakfast, see what the train schedule looks like and send out that telegram," Buford rumbles before taking a sip of his coffee.

"Ruby wants to go to the general store and I think a quick shopping trip might be in order," Helen says kicking the carpet bag full of money. "I only have the one set of clothes and anything else would be an improvement I think plus we have no supplies at all."

"Or spare ammunition and these Colt's while they are fine pistols they do not do well in the rain."

The meal doesn’t take that long and you all trudge off towards the centre of town, there’s a good inch of fresh powder on the ground and a northern wind blows it into swirling eddies as it rounds the corners of buildings.

Helen and Buford head into the General Store.

Inside the telegraph office the same girl from the night before is in her bright red hair is in braided pigtails and she’s wearing a telegraph office uniform, blue with brass buttons.

"Morning!" She says with a chipper smile on her face. She glances at Nathaniel and then at Napoleon. "I received a couple messages over night for you sir." She reaches into her desk and produces two yellow slips of paper with blue text.

"How may I be of service to you this morning?" She asks Nathaniel.

A large man with a bushy mustache in a railway uniform comes in from the platform and tosses another lump of coal into the pot belly stove in the corner.

The girl behind the counter takes the message reads it then nods at Nathaniel, "Right away sir."

She sits behind her desk and quickly taps out the message on the her telegraph machine, waits a few moments and there line buzzes indicating message received.

"All done sir," she hands the piece of paper with the note back to Nathaniel, "Ought to be delivered within the hour."

Napoleon looks at his Telegrams.

Napoleon isn't certain of the date, not without looking things up in a paper, but he recalls that at around this time there were a series of bombings targeting the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of the princesses and a handful of her inner circle were killed and the crown prince was maimed horribly in an attack that brought down a large piece of an Imperial Palace in Prague.

"Train to San Francisco?" The man with the bushy mustache in the railway uniform at the far end of the building perks up. "Told them this last night we had mail but no passengers for them. Bosses will be happy to know they won't be dead heading out to Kingman and back for a handful of letters."

"Schedule's a little messed up," the girl at the telegraph office adds, "train's going to show at 10 but it won't depart back the way it came till 6pm."

"Schedule, ain't messed up Ellie," the man says, "the fact that we're the end of the line for the next couple weeks is what's messed up."

"Sadly," the Telegraph operator says with a grin, "there is not."

Outside it’s beginning to warm up, the snow on the ground is turning into a slushy mud. It’s still slowing and the flakes are now enormous but you figure it’s only a matter of time before it turns to rain.

Across from the train station you can see in through the window of the General Store, Buford and Miss Kolvalsic are in there with Ruby talking to the shop keep.

While the general store has a fair amount of fabric they don't have a great many articles of clothing to chose from. Helen Kovalsic emerges from the back dressed in a pair of denim pants and a very unflattering man's jacket, she judges herself in the mirror for a moment and frowns.

"I recall somebody saying something about beggars and choosers Helen," Buford says with a smile, "cut your hair and you just might pass as a real cow hand."

"While it is undeniably more comfortable than 4 layers of petticoats and a corset it is not what I expected to walk out of here wearing."

Ruby smiles, "I can bring in the waist and adjust the fit if you'd like."

"The buttons are backwards," Helen frowns.

"That I can not fix."

Napoleon and Nathaniel notice that Ruby has a small basket of supplies, bits of cloth, a sewing kit, some biscuits and canned food.