'I said, we don't allow no women in here,' the old-timer snapped as Everett hauled Callie into the saloon.
'Come on Willie, this lady has travelled all the way from California. Least we can do a show her a little cowboy country hospitality.'
'Rules is rules, Everett,' said Willie, spitting on a rag to polish some glasses. 'Start letting fillies in here and no telling where it ends up. They vote now, they drive cars — what in the hell a man does they don't want also?'
'I have no desire to relieve myself standing up,' Callie supplied.
'She can't sleep out in the street,' Everett protested. 'And it wouldn't be proper to bring her to my home. I'll pay good money.'
'Oh, you will?'
'Everett, no, thank you, but — I'm quite capable of paying my own —'
'Sure, whatever amount you say,' Everett insisted, staring Willie down.
'Seventeen dollars,' Willie spat. A few grizzled men gathered at the bar sniggered.
Callie stared. Seventeen dollars was a tremendous amount. Seventeen dollars would get you several nights at the Ambassador where Lillian lived, or perhaps an even fancier hotel in New York.
'Sure,' said Everett, reaching into his jeans for his billfold.
'No — no,' said Callie. 'Stop this right away.'
He couldn't possibly pay that amount. It was absurd. Everett carefully peeled seventeen grubby dollars from a thick wad of cash. Willie stared in astonishment.
There was a moment of silence as both men stared at the bills sitting primly on the dusty bar.
'Everett, I said no,’ Callie insisted. ‘Sir, I won't pay seventeen dollars, but whatever your usual rate —'
'Well okay,' shrugged Willie, pocketing the money. 'Here's the key to the room.'
'Much obliged, Willie.'
Callie sighed in frustration. The long journey, compounded by worry and disappointment to have come all this way only to have thus far achieved precisely nil was weighing her down. She couldn’t allow this to happen, but she didn’t quite have it in her to object further at the present time. She would rest for the night, then she would have a sensible conversation with Willie in the morning, she decided.
'She can't come across the bar,' Willie barked. 'I said, didn't I? Rules is rules.'
'The stairs to the room are over there,' Everett protested. 'How's she supposed to —'
'Ain't my problem.'
'Willie —'
Everett advanced and Willie squared up, and Callie lost her last shred of patience. She grabbed her knapsack and marched outside. Aware the men's eyes on her, she flung the knapsack onto the building’s overleaf and nimbly hopped onto the railing where the horses were tethered.
The bay looked up, his ears twitching curiously, but the piebald ignored her. She reached for the drain above, and, saying a silent prayer it would hold her weight, swung her legs up and hauled herself onto the overhanging roof. The exertion nearly knocked the stuffing out of her, but she scrabbled across the hot tiles to the window, raised it and tumbled thankfully into the room.
Callie lay on the narrow, lumpy straw mattress that served as a bed and stared into the darkness. She hadn’t expected to find any modern conveniences such as electricity in the room, but was disappointed that her efforts to locate a gas lamp before full darkness fell also proved fruitless. She had found a candle, but no matches, and at that point had given up and lain down on the bed, hoping that exhaustion would override the early hour and the fact that she had had no dinner.
She had almost drifted off when a tuneless clanging on a piano was struck up from downstairs, accompanied by a few raucous voices singing, then several more yelling at the singers to cut it out. Sometime a little later a fight broke out, according to the grunts and thuds, and a crash so almighty the entire building seemed to shake. Things had gone blissfully quiet for a few moments after the brawlers were ejected into the night, then the normal level of chatter and laughter and shouts had started back up again. Callie's eyes were gritty with the need to sleep, her back ached from the torturous mattress, feet throbbed and her stomach alternately rumbled and twisted with worry.
Her train ticket had put a reasonable sized dent in her remaining savings. She had managed to find a farmer who'd offered her a ride from the train station in Butte as he was going that way anyway, but she would need to pay somebody to take her back. The studio she sold Montana Dreams to would pay the bulk of the option fee to the author, but she would have to pay him something upfront to secure the rights.
She had no way of knowing how many copies of the postcard were in existence, and couldn't count on being the only person in the entire industry to know of the rock forever. She closed her eyes, imagining hoards of story editors beating their way across the prairies towards Chastity this very minute.
Finally, she heard calls of ‘g’night’ echoing in the still air, horses’ hooves beating a steady rhythm into the distance, and a few thumps and scrapes from downstairs as the old timer closed up the bar for the night.
A small animal screeched. Blissful silence fell. Callie lay wide awake.
The first family who took Callie and her brothers in, second cousins on their mother’s side, had put up with the seven, dazed and troublesome extra mouths to feed for quite a stretch on account of the tragedy being so new. Eventually their patience had worn thin and the orphans were sent on to a young uncle of their father’s, just over the state line in Missouri.
Callie’s mother had always let her work alongside the boys where she was happiest, promising there was plenty of time for her to learn all the necessary female skills long before she ran her own household. The fire took that time away. Callie hurtled towards womanhood without the first clue of how to knit or sew or bake or cook or tend to wounds or persuade babies to quit hollering, or any number of skills generally deemed crucial to exist while female.
Over the next five years and umpteen homes, until Callie turned sixteen and sold a story to a local newspaper which funded her journey to California, she became adept at play-acting with a sewing needle or punching dough as she had seen others do with no idea why or what one would theoretically do with the dough next.
One particular morning, she sat uselessly stabbing with an unthreaded needle at a quilt she had been tasked with darning. The lady of the house impatiently told her to go for a walk to clear her head.
Callie walked and walked and eventually found herself outside a picture house — in those days nothing more than a barn with a sheet strung across one wall onto which the film was projected. She found 5 cents in her apron pocket, and was admitted into the cool darkness within. She sat on a rough wooden bench and waited for something to happen. After a few moments, the projector flickered to life, and Callie jumped in fear when the image of a country road appeared on the sheet.
As Callie watched in wonder, a family — a top-hatted father, sweet looking mother in a white dress, and little girl in ringlets holding both of their hands — emerged from a house and walked down the road, laughing and chatting amongst themselves. The parents swung the little girl between them and for just a moment Callie remembered being that little girl. She could feel the sun on her face, her tiny hands held securely by her own parents’, and was astonished to feel herself smiling as she was swept up into the family’s picnic. The violinist hired to play the accompaniment to the movie didn't appear to pay any attention to the action whatsoever and simply played whatever took his fancy, but Callie barely noticed as she lost herself in the story.
Callie didn't know it then, but the picture starred Florence Lawrence, who had been the first actor to have her name released to the public. She was popularly considered to be the very first movie star, though that wasn’t a thing one said very loudly in the hearing of Mary Pickford. When the picture business dried up in New York, Miss Lawrence had retired to focus on her first love of motor racing, and, according to Hildy, was sitting pretty, a millionairess many times over since inventing the turn signal that was now installed on almost every motor car produced.
When the show ended the audience shuffled out, but Callie stayed to watch the next showing. And again, and again, all the way until midnight when the manager finally stopped the projector. He had recognised her by that time, and sent a message to her uncle to ride out to pick her up.
As soon as she could the following day, Callie went back to the picture house and the next day after that. After a week, a new picture came to town, this one starring the madcap Keystone Cops. Little did Callie know then, that the larger than life characters she was watching were being served lemonade between takes by her entrepreneurial future best friend. During her seventh viewing, Callie heard a strange noise echoing around the barn.
It was late at night, and the violinist had long gone home. She was watching the picture in complete silence except for the strange noise. Then she realised it was her. Laughing.
She had thought she had forgotten how