Yankton

Chapter 32

Chapter 32 Better Times than These

We sat around eating a leisurely breakfast, as Craig peppered everyone with dumb questions, especially Melonie and Montana causing them to become irritated, and Montana snapping back at him.

"I see that time hasn't erased the unintelligent, I find it hard to believe that you are a friend of Brian and Mark. A word of advice though, the boorish behavior you are exhibiting will in all likelihood earn you a quick death, as there are many who would take exception to your incessant questions."

"She's right, Craig," I added, "Just keep your mouth shut and observe, I've got a specific job for you which I think you'll do well at so just calm down and roll with it."

This put him in a nervous temperament as the women continued to glare at him, and my sister called him a jerk. I thought that he might "bail" on us at the last minute, but he quietly apologized to everyone for his behavior, and said no more. Just before we departed, I went over everything I needed done with Melinda, who assured me she would stay on top of things. She hugged both women and wished them well, the trip was uneventful, which is the way I always wanted it to be. Once Craig realized that he "wasn't in Kansas anymore," he got strangely quiet, and on the wagon trip up to Purgatory acted like a new replacement who has just been put on the front line. Mark observed,

"Man this guy is really freaked, I didn't think it was a good idea to bring him, but I never thought he'd be like this, hell, I don't recall him being spooked like this in the "Stan."

"Neither do I," I replied, "Look, I would have never brought him if we didn't really need him, I just can't have those guys we hired as carpenters catching on to what we're doing here, and all these power tools we've got. Look… I'll keep an eye on him and see how it goes, right now he's just arrived "in country," I don't think he's read much history." On a couple of occasions we had people stop us and ask for directions, one time a small group of miners asked if we were bringing in some new whores, those men didn't know how close they came to dying. Upon arrival at Purgatory, I got Craig situated in our tent cabin. Since Mark and I were now sleeping with our ladies most of the time, the cabin was usually empty, he still wasn't saying much, but I could certainly tell he was wound up. This brought an idea to my mind, as I introduced him to the others; I pulled Kitty and Maggie aside producing two twenty dollar gold pieces.

"Ladies, we have a problem, my friend Craig there, is wound tighter than a watch spring, he's scared, and needs to mellow out, these gold pieces are yours if you can get him to unwind." Both women giggled as they each took a coin,

"Don't worry Mr. Yankton," said Maggie, "We'll take care of him." Before he knew it, Craig had two admiring ladies fawning over him, and not long after that, I saw them escorting him upstairs. Montana was skeptical, but I assured her it was the only way I could think of to snap him out of his funk.

Montana became concerned that both of her girls were occupied with one man, I admitted that it was a rather drastic measure but I was concerned about Craig. As I turned out, we needn't have worried, because whatever those two women did, Craig was a changed man.

Surprisingly, none of them would talk about the night they spent together, some of their regular customers became rather upset at the unavailability of their favorite "girl," but I kept insisting to them this was an unusual case, and to come back tomorrow as Kitty and Maggie would be available once more. All we knew for sure was that whatever happened up in that room became somewhat of a regular thing between the three. Craig didn't seem to mind that other men were screwing "his girls," but he became very protective of them even to the point of warning everyone who went upstairs with Kitty or Maggie that if they dared hurt either one the man would never leave Purgatory alive.

Over time, another strange occurrence took place as Craig developed a rather unusual relationship with the girl's regular customers. Often times I would see Craig sitting at one of our larger tables playing cards with the men as Maggie and Kitty sat in. Montana asked me,

"Is this one of your modern social conventions? They seem to have formed their own social circle."

"Not that I'm aware of," I replied, "If they were all married, I'd suspect them of wife swapping, but that's not it."

"Wife swapping!" gasped Montana, "What kind of debauchery is that?"

"Never mind," I quickly blurted, "I'll explain later."

After all that, Craig was a changed man, a one point, I took one of Kitty's regular's aside and asked him what was going on, I received a very rude reply.

"Mister, you just mind your own business. Greg is a fine and upstanding gentleman, leave him alone!"

Slowly Craig adjusted, Mark and I kept asking him if he wanted to return home, but he kept deferring our question, so in the end we stopped asking,

"I'll let you know when I'm ready. He did fulfill the task I had for him, as we accumulated more money, we were able to purchase more lumber, whereby Craig did his "thing." The first projects consisted on another tent cabin, and finishing the "convenience" store. The hardest thing for him to adjust to was the ban on any sort of modern power equipment. Mark and I used power nailers, but at the time, we didn't have a lot of people coming around. Now, however all sorts of characters and passer-by could be found on the premises. Although he used a hand saw, Greg took to marking up his boards loading everything in the wagon, and hauling everything out to a far corner of our property behind a small stand of trees where he had saw horses set up along with a small generator I had brought back. There, he would cut up whatever he had brought then haul everything back. Mark observed that for all the trouble he went through, it was probably just as easy to simply cut everything by hand; Craig insisted that he was right and wouldn't change.

Slowly spring arrived along with flooding and the problems it brought, namely flooded out miners, near drowning, and the usual gun and knife wounds keeping Mark and Melonie rather busy. When I asked him about it, Mark complained of treating more axe and slipping knife injuries,

"I thought everyone back here in 1877 knew how to properly use an axe," he stated as Melonie was sewing up a particularly bad leg wound on a sorry looking individual. The man admitted he'd been using an axe all his life, but he'd had a little too much to drink before deciding to chop down a tree.

Four near drowning cases were treated, allowing Mark to demonstrate to Melonie the proper way to give mouth-to-mouth. To Mark's surprise, she was very uncomfortable with this with Mark having to administer it to all four causalities. She became quite upset, and apologized profusely, but simply refused to do it. In the end, he showed her the old way of placing the person on their stomach pressing down on their back, and manipulating their arms. She was more comfortable with this method which Mark felt wasn't as effective, but the man he used it on recovered. In the near drowning cases, Mark and Melonie had to jump in the buckboard and follow whoever was pleading for their help. There was one case though that really shook them up, especially Melonie.

Early one morning, a man came racing up in his wagon screaming for help. His shouting woke everyone in the place, and by the time I got out the front door, Mark was already helping the man carry his wife and little daughter into the clinic. The poor man was just beside himself with grief. It seems that during the night, the Whitewood Creek suffered a flash flood that destroyed their cabin.

"I jes barely made it out ma self," cried the man who identified himself as Treeme Underwood, his wife Lily, and young daughter Mary.

"The water took my wife and daughter but I was able to jump in and pull them out."

His poor wife was dead, Mark worked like a fiend to try and save the little girl, even Melonie spelled him at mouth-to-mouth the only time she ever performed it on another person, but to no avail. The child rallied; with Mark thinking they were over the hump but soon little Mary started coughing up blood choking to death before Mark could do anything. At this, Mr. Underwood simply collapsed. Melonie completely went to pieces, something about those two deaths deeply affected us all, none more than Melonie, I have never seen a woman cry harder than her. While I got Mr. Underwood into a bed, Mark did everything he could to try and comfort Melonie.

I don't know, people might argue with me, but in all the funerals I've attended in modern times, I never say any death taken harder than what I saw in that clinic, it was something I was to think about for a long time to come. Mark finally had to give Melonie a sedative to get her to sleep; something about these two deaths along with the husband's reaction to them affected him more than any death in Afghanistan. I was at a complete loss as to what to say, I felt so helpless and lost. My reaction even upset Montana, who tried to comfort Melonie once she had woken, again, without success. Later on, during one of their excursions to 2014, we all sat down and watched Gone with the Wind. I hadn't seen the film in a long time so had forgotten the part where the Butler's daughter died in the riding accident. By the time I remembered it, it was too late, Mr. Underwood's reaction wasn't any less emotional than Clark Gable's, only his was real. Melonie broke down, but rejected my offer to turn the DVD player off. She worked through it harkening to the saying,

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," If I didn't learn anything in my visits to the old west, I certainly learned about death and how to deal with it. Guys were cracking up left and right in Afghanistan and Iraq over seeing their buddies die, without exception, I saw people stand like a rock in the face of tragedy.

It was close to three weeks before Melonie finally got over her sorrow, expressing to Mark her desire to give up learning medicine. It took the combined efforts of Mark, Montana, Kitty and Maggie to talk her out of it.

As for Mr. Underwood, he simply fell to pieces, his whole word was gone, he had lost everything, Mark enlisted Colin's help, together, maintaining a sort of "suicide watch" on the man. We put him up in a tent cabin Craig had just finished. We buried his wife and daughter nearby on a small hill, Mr. Underwood insisting they not be laid to rest anywhere that might flood. As expected, he completely broke down, being joined by Melonie. We were lucky to snag a traveling preacher, who was greatly moved by the grief exhibited before him.

For days afterward, Mr. Underwood would just sit in his cabin breaking into sobbing spells every so often. Mark and I were simply at our wit's end over what to do. Melonie eventually apologized to both of us for her behavior, and as Mark held her tightly, attempting to dismiss her apology,

"You don't have to apologize Mel, I've seen grown men break down worse than you, everyone has a breaking point, the Underwood tragedy was simply yours." Melonie started sobbing again trying to explain.

"When I was seven years old, one of my best friends had fallen into the river, and couldn't swim, her mother rushed in and drowned as well. When Mr. Underwood brought his wife and daughter in, it all came back to me, my friends name was also Mary, I-I don't know what happened to me, I don't recall ever thinking about that incident since that time, but for some reason, it just all came rushing back on me."

Mark gently soothed her, offering an explanation.

"Back when you were little, and even now, the human mind was, and is, not generally understood, Sigmund Froid is still years into the future. Many times when faced with events that they simply cannot understand or explain, people just block it from their minds as a way to deal with the horror. Harboring these thoughts inside of them often times damage the mind leading to alcoholism, and drug abuse, to name a couple, as a way to deal with the tragedy. Something about this particular event brought everything back Mel, there's no shame, or blame, it simply is. I think you've made a good start at healing, and I'm proud of you, you're tough, certainly a whole lot tougher than most women of my time." They began to kiss, so I discreetly excused myself, and returned to the saloon.

Sometime later, Mark, Melonie, myself, and Craig were trying to figure out what to do about Mr. Underwood when Craig came up with an idea.

"Remember that guy named Connor?" he offered,

"Yeah," replied Mark, "Wasn't he the guy who always hung around with Ed Beauchamp after he found out they were from the same town?"

"Yeah, that's him," replied Craig, "Well you know that after Ed got shot and they sent him to the hospital in Germany Connor just freaked out, they were gonna discharge his ass, but me and Jake stepped in and found all sorts of stuff for him to do, kinda kept his mind off Ed. How 'bout I try and get him interested in helping me?" Both Mark and I shrugged,

"Couldn't hurt," I said, "we've gotta do something for the poor guy, he's just sitting back there in that cabin dying a little bit every day, I'm surprised he hasn't started hitting the bottle yet."

It took a lot of effort on Craig's part, almost coming to blows at one point, but slowly, Craig drew Mr. Underwood out of his self-made "prison" starting with the building of a pretty picket fence around the two graves, and beautifully carved headboards. Eventually Mr. Underwood left us, but was apparently sticking around the Black Hills area, as he would stop by every now and then to visit his wife and daughter, and to say "Hello."