Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Julia was still frowning when he did answer her. Daniel couldn't tell her all the truth, but he thought what he was going to say would satisfy Julia. He also used the same name he'd used in Granby.

"My name is Isaac Johnson and I was a farming the farm my father had in Missouri. It wasn't a very big farm and didn't produce much. It gave us enough to live on, but that was about all it did. After Mother and Father passed away, I decided I wanted more land to farm. I'd heard that the government was going to open up Oklahoma Territory to settlers and give them free land. I came to Granby to find work until that happened.

"I was raised that a man and a woman didn't live together until they were married. That's why I said I wouldn't have a whore living with me. Now, I guess I believe you weren't one."

Julia smiled a little.

"So, now you think I'm not a whore and I can come with you?"

Again, Daniel paused before saying anything.

"I don't know. It still wouldn't be right, would it? I mean, we're not married and people would think the worst."

"How would anybody know unless one of us told them? I wouldn't say anything to anybody one way or the other. Why would you? Besides, all the people coming to claim land will be worrying about that and not if one man and one woman traveling together are married or not. They'll just figure they are."

Daniel shook his head.

"It still would be wrong. The problem is I don't know what to do with you. I can't send you back to Missouri because you're a woman and you'd never make it by yourself. If I turn around and take you back, I won't get to where they're giving away land soon enough to pick out the place I want."

Julia grinned.

"That rock and that hard place you told me about last night seems to be about you instead of me. I'll be happy to go with you and cook and do anything else to help you get there. It's just you who has a problem. Couldn't you just tell yourself you're helping out a woman who needed help?"

Daniel thought about that, and realized what Julia proposed was really the only choice he could make.

"All right, you can travel with me, but as soon as we get to a town, you have to leave."

Julia grinned.

"That's what I wanted to hear. Now, shouldn't we be going?"

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Over the next two days, Daniel decided having Julia along wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. While he caught and harnessed Jake and Bob, Julia fixed breakfast. While she cleaned up after breakfast, he hooked Jake and Bob to the wagon and tied Bill in the back. In less than an hour, they were ready to start traveling.

He'd also forgotten how it was to have somebody to talk to. After his mother and father had died, Daniel had been busy on the farm every day except Sunday, so he hadn't had much of an opportunity to talk to anyone. After he joined the Bald Knobbers, he did talk to the men at the meetings, but those conversations were only about politics and morals in the community.

After that night he'd left his farm and everything else behind, he hadn't talked to anyone except for rare conversations with the owner of the livery stable. The owner took care of all the business of the stable, so Daniel never talked to customers. When he drove the freight wagon, the men who loaded and unloaded him weren't interested in talking. They just wanted to get the job done as fast as possible.

Having Julia along was a lot different. She didn't talk about politics or morals and her language wasn't the coarse talk he often heard from men who came to the livery stable and the dockworkers. Her voice was soft and she wanted to talk about what he wanted to do once he got his land.

She didn't seem to be very interested in telling him any more about herself. If he asked her a question about that, she'd just say she was just a woman from St. Louis who came to Granby for a better life. She never said what she thought that better life was going to be. Instead, she'd smile and ask Daniel what he thought was in his future.

She did ask him something else after they'd stopped for the night on the second day. Daniel thought Julia would start making supper so he cut some dead wood out of a fallen oak and started a fire. He was just adding thicker branches when Julia asked him to if they could stop at noon the next day.

"Daniel, tomorrow, could we stop at noon by a creek? I feel dirty and you smell worse than that first night. Your trousers are filthy and that shirt isn't much better. This dress is the only thing I have to wear and it's filthy too. It won't take me long to wash them and they can dry by the fire while we both take a bath in the creek. Your mother did teach you to take a bath once in a while, didn't she?"

Daniel wasn't sure what Julia meant when she said they could both take a bath in the creek, but he wasn't about to let her see him without any clothes on.

"I'm not going to take off my clothes where you can see me, and I don't want to see you without any clothes either."

Julia frowned.

"That's not what I meant. What I meant is if you have another set of trousers and a shirt, you change into them. If you don't, wrap up in a blanket. I'll need a blanket to wear since I don't have another other clothes to put on, but I brought one with me. You give me your dirty clothes and I'll take them to the creek and wash them and take my bath. When I come back, you go to the creek, take your bath, and then put your clean clothes back on. Once my dress dries out, I'll change into it in the wagon so you won't have to look at me. Then I'll fix our supper."

Daniel would have refused Julia's plan if it hadn't reminded him of his mother's Saturday afternoon bath times. She was fond of saying that the Lord wouldn't look down on a dirty man, but everybody in church would be a lot happier if that man was clean.

To that end, after their noon meal, Daniel's mother would heat two tinplate buckets of water on the cookstove. When they were hot enough to almost boil, she'd take the washtub she used for washing clothes out to the little smokehouse, pour in the hot water and then add another bucket or two of unheated water. The result was water warm enough to not chill a person to death in winter and hot enough to make that person sweat in summer.

Daniel's mother always went first. She'd take a bar of homemade soap, a cotton towel made from a flour sack, and a clean dress, and tell them to stay in the house until she came back inside. When she came back, it was Daniel's father's turn. He'd take his spare trousers and shirt to the smoke house along with another towel made from a flour sack. About ten minutes later it would be Daniel's turn. She'd have another two buckets of water heated by then, and would go to the smokehouse and wash the clothes they'd left there and hang them on her clothesline to dry.

Once his mother had passed, Daniel and his father had sort of gotten out of the habit. Now, Julia was telling him almost the same thing his mother had.

He looked up at Julia then.

"I don't have any soap, so how are you going to wash clothes and how are we going to take a bath?"

She smiled.

"I brought a few things with me when I climbed into that blanket chest. One of those things is two bars of soap and two towels."

"You brought two bars of soap and two towels, but you didn't bring another dress?"

Julia looked down.

"Well, I did bring another dress, but it's a special dress. Now, can we stop early tomorrow or do I have to smell you for the next week?"

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They did stop early the next day, though it was late afternoon before Daniel found a stream he considered big enough that also had a thick stand of willows growing on the bank that would be their privacy screen. After Julia fixed their meal, she went back to the wagon. When she came back she handed Daniel a bar of homemade soap and a cotton towel. Both looked like what his mother had made.

"You take my soap and this towel, get your other clothes, and go take a bath. Leave your dirty clothes hanging on a branch where I can find them. Then, you stay here and keep the fire going while I take my bath and wash our clothes. While I'm gone, you find some way we can hang the clothes close to the fire. Once they start to dry, I'll fix our supper."

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The creek wasn't really deep enough that Daniel could get all of his body under the water, but he was used to that. He hadn't been able to do that in his mother's washtub either. The soap was pretty familiar. His mother had sometimes cut the blossoms from wild lilacs and put them in the soap she used, but the soap she made for washing clothes just smelled like soap. That's what this soap smelled like to Daniel.

He washed quickly and then rinsed and dried himself off as best he could, then put on his clean clothes and walked back to the wagon. Julia was standing there with a blanket under one arm and a small cloth bag in her other hand.

"Did you leave your clothes where I can find them" she asked. Daniel nodded. Julia said, "I'll be gone for a while. Be sure to find something to dry our clothes on and to keep the fire going."

With that, she walked off toward the stand of willows.

Daniel expected she'd be gone for just a few minutes, but he'd stretched a length of rope between two trees and was feeding more thick branches into the fire before she did. He heard her humming to herself before he saw her, and when he turned toward the sound, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

When Julia said she'd need a blanket to cover herself while her dress dried, Daniel thought she'd just wrap the blanket around her like he did sometimes when he was cold. Julia hadn't done that. What she'd done was cut a slit in the middle of the blanket so her head would go through. That let the blanket drape over her body in front and in back, but it wasn't long enough to reach much lower than her knees.

Daniel had never seen a woman's bare legs before and Julia's were causing him to have thoughts he shouldn't have been having. He felt guilty about that because he couldn't stop looking at her.

Julia looked up then, saw him looking at her, and frowned.

"I thought you didn't want to see me without a dress. Well, this is the best I could do so you'll just have to put up with me until my dress dries. Did you find a place to hang our clothes?"

Daniel started to say he'd stretched a rope between two trees and pointed to it, but the words wouldn't come out. That was because Julia had turned to see where he'd pointed and Daniel saw that she'd tried to use a length of his rope to make a belt around her waist. The rope was keeping her waist covered, but the side of her thigh stuck out from between the front and back of the blanket.

As if that wasn't enough, Julia moved the arm on that side. Though the blanket covered her arms down to the elbows, it gaped open a little and he saw a little bit of her side. He quickly turned away, took a deep breath, and said, "Over there, the rope between the trees."

Julia walked over to the rope, hung his trousers and shirt and her dress over the rope and then went to the wagon. Daniel didn't watch her. He knew what he'd probably see when she climbed inside the wagon and that would have been a sin.

Daniel tried to not look a Julia while she fried three slices of ham and made corn cakes. She didn't seem to notice, or at least she didn't say anything until she forked two slices of ham and two corncakes onto his plate, stood up, and walked to where Daniel sat.

"Here's your supper if you can stand to look at me long enough to take your plate."

Daniel did look long enough to take the plate and fork from Julia. She was smiling and when he turned quickly back to look at the fire, she chuckled.

"If you're this bashful around your wife, she'll think you think she's ugly. Do you think I'm ugly?"

Daniel chewed a bite of corn cake, then swallowed and said, "No, but you're almost naked and it's not right for a man to see a woman like you are before they're married."

Julia didn't say anything more. When they finished, Daniel sat his plate beside him, so she picked it up along with the skillet and walked back to the creek to wash them. When she came back, she checked their clothes and then turned to Daniel.

"They're still pretty damp so they probably won't dry out until tomorrow morning. I'll go sit in the wagon so you don't have to keep looking away from me."

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As Julia climbed up into the wagon, she looked back to see if he was watching her. He was still turned away toward the fire and that made her smile. He was the man she'd thought he was, and that pleased her. Her husband had been much the same way. She wondered if he'd be the same if she told him her real name and the truth of why she was there. She hoped he'd understand.

If he didn't, well, she wouldn't be any worse off than before. She'd heard in Granby that some of the land in Oklahoma Territory was being reserved for towns, and towns meant jobs for women. She knew there were families planning to claim land once Oklahoma Territory was opened up to settlers, and families meant wives and daughters. General stores would sell the things women needed to those wives and daughters and they'd want another woman to wait on them. A general store with a woman clerk would do better business than one with only a man for a clerk.

If she couldn't find work in a general store, there would be work as a cook or as a maid in a hotel. If all else failed there would probably be a saloon or two, but there was no way she'd ever become a whore. She hadn't lied to him about that. She'd die before becoming a whore.

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Daniel was really confused when he pulled the blanket up over himself and tried to fall asleep. Women weren't supposed to show themselves to anyone but their husbands. Men weren't supposed to look at a woman and think of coupling with her. In spite of what he'd been taught, both had happened that day.

Did that mean that Julia was a sinner? Did it mean that he was a sinner? Was there a way to redeem himself? He tried to remember what his father had told him about men and women, but he couldn't remember his father ever even hinting about women who showed themselves to men and men who looked at women and wondered how it would be.

The other thing that bothered him was why had Julia insisted they take a bath and wash their clothes? She had to have known that she didn't have another dress to put on and that the blanket would reveal part of her a man wasn't supposed to see.

Maybe Julia had been lying and she really was a whore. A whore would do that, wouldn't she? She'd show herself to a man in hopes of enticing him to her bed for money.

Daniel shook his head then. There was no reason for Julia to do what she'd done even if she was a whore. From what he'd heard, whores had some protection against a man who wanted them but didn't want to pay. Out here in the middle of Oklahoma Territory, there was only Julia and him. There was nobody to protect her if he'd acted like he felt. She'd had a way to defend herself when she took his shotgun, but she'd given it back to him.

That also was a problem for him. Most women would have been afraid of being alone with a man they didn't know pretty well. Julia wasn't. In fact, she'd almost begged him to let her come along with him. It was almost like she knew him, but Daniel couldn't remember ever meeting a woman named Julia Taylor.

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The next morning, it took Daniel a little longer to find Jake and Bob. Because they'd had more time the day before, they'd wandered a little more than usual. After he found them and led them back to the wagon, he untied Bill and led all three down to the creek to drink. When he brought them back, Julia was in her dress again and frying bacon over the coals of a fire.

Daniel hadn't built up the fire from the night before, so he knew Julia must have.

"Looks like you know how to make a fire."

Julia looked up and smiled.

"It's not much different than making a fire in a cookstove. I brought my flint and steel and some tinder with me, so it was easy. Are you ready to eat? The bacon's done and the corn cakes only need to be turned."

That set Daniel's mind to working again, and after he chewed a mouthful of corn cake, he asked Julia about what she'd brought with her.

"Seems like you were planning on staying with me if you brought soap, towels, a blanket, and a flint and steel. Why did you think I'd let you stay and why did you want to? You don't know me from Adam's off ox."

Julia chuckled.

"Well, you don't look like an ox, though you do look pretty strong. I didn't know if you'd let me stay, but I figured I'd need what I brought even if you didn't. I couldn't just start out to Oklahoma Territory with nothing, now could I?

"As for why I wanted to stay with you, I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I didn't think you'd hurt me or take advantage of me. I can't say that about most of the men I've met."

Daniel frowned.

"You haven't known me long enough to know that."

"I think I have. It doesn't take all that long. My mother always said a woman could figure out how a man was by the way he looked at her. Other than when you first saw me in my blanket, you haven't really looked at me at all, even when you found me in your blanket chest. Since you didn't stare at me with that scary look on your face like most men, I figured you were a man I could trust."

Julia smiled then.

"You don't know me either, but you seem to trust me. You haven't tied me up again, and you leave me alone when you go to bring the mules and the horse back to the wagon. You do take your shotgun with you, but I saw the rifle in the wagon. I could shoot you and take everything, but I haven't done that. It's not because I don't know how to harness and drive mules because I do. It's because you haven't tried to do anything to me. That makes me think you trust me even if it's only just a little."

Daniel had to stop and think about what Julia had just said because it was true. Over the space of just one day he'd gone from thinking she was a woman who sold her body that he could never be around to grudgingly agreeing she could travel with him. After the first couple days, he'd even liked having her along. He hadn't thought about her being able to use a rifle or to harness mules and drive a wagon, but she hadn't tried to do that.

He looked up at Julia.

"Yes, I trust you so far, and I'd never do anything to hurt a woman so you don't have to worry about that. Now, we're still about seven days from the starting line and I want at least a week to look for a place. We need to be moving."

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By traveling from dawn to almost dark, they reached the starting line six days later, but Daniel had to give up on his plan to look at several parcels to find what he wanted. There were US Cavalry soldiers guarding the perimeter of the land that was to be offered. He instead had to rely on the map posted in several places that showed each plot of land.

Daniel finally decided on three adjoined plots that looked like what he wanted. His plan was to ride to the one he considered the best, and if someone had beaten him to it, to ride to one of the other two. The night before the day of the opening, he explained to Julia what he was going to do.

"There's no sense in you trying to follow me. That wagon can't keep up with a man on horseback. You stay here while I go claim my land. Once the crowd thins out, you can go see who got what in the town sites and maybe find a job. I'll come back for my mules and wagon once I'm sure nobody is going to make the same claim. I'll register it then and take my mules and wagon back with me."

Julia shook her head.

"I'm not going to do that. Even if people claim lots in a town site, there won't be anything there for months, not even a place where I'd feel safe staying, much less some place where I could find work. You go ahead and claim your land. When things seem to have quieted down, I'll drive the wagon to your first choice. If you aren't there, I'll go to the second. If you're not at the second, I'll drive to the third.