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I demonstrated the impact of those personalities by immediately checking Gee’s driveway when I arrived, like a kid scoping out possible penalties for a rules infraction. In this case, not keeping my visits to them scrupulously even.
Empty. Which generally meant she was at work at the substation. She could have run the entire dispatch unit if she’d been willing to move to Sherman. Heck, she probably could have run the state if she’d been willing to move to Cheyenne.
Theoretically no vehicle being visible could mean it was in the garage, but she resorted to that only for major storms. Or it could mean she was shopping or doing other errands, but she almost always took along Mrs. P.
I wondered how the older woman would manage without Gee as transportation.
Then she opened her front door to me and I knew she would manage — somehow.
I caught an angled glimpse through an open doorway down the hall to the room I knew she used as an office. Two columns of file boxes rose, with one box open beside the desk chair. These must be the records Keefe had been delivering to her, then returning in far better order to Teague Ranch.
Mrs. Parens poured me hot tea without asking if I wanted any and offered store-bought shortbread cookies in the front room that combined a classroom and museum library. We sat on hard chairs in the middle of the room.
“You’ve heard about Keefer Dobey?” I asked.
On the phone I’d merely said I wanted to come talk to her about a Cottonwood County matter.
She rarely gave anything away beyond her carefully chosen words. What scraps did get by could only be picked up in person. No chance on the phone. As for texting, it was the scourge of nuance and implicit meanings. I didn’t know if Emmaline Parens texted or not and didn’t want to — I had no hope of plumbing her depths via text.
On the other hand, I’d happily texted Tom my plan to stop by the Circle B at dinnertime. He didn’t always have connection where ranch work took him and he seldom had free hands for phone or texts, so I didn’t wonder when I didn’t hear back.
“I have. Any loss of life is felt, however his death is particularly difficult to fathom because of his nature.” She blinked, recognizing in that moment, I thought, the trigger for her next words. “He preferred nature to human company and was acutely attuned to it.”
“But not acutely attuned to humans?”
“I believe it would be safe to apply that statement to a large portion of the population, while a substantial percentage of that portion would not consider that the description applied to them.”
Mrs. P tapdancing. Interesting.
“Had he been a student of yours?”
“He was not in any of the classes that I taught.”
That left plenty of room. He’d been a school-aged kid while she’d taught. She’d surely been aware of him, which meant she’d observed him, which meant she’d learned a lot about him.
All of which she’d keep locked up inside no matter how adroit my questions unless she decided I really, really needed to know.
Her bar and my bar for what I really, really needed to know dwelt in different realms. Hers would top Frans Peak, which I’d recently learned was the highest in the Absaroka Range at about fourteen thousand feet. My bar was somewhere below sea level.
I decided to take it as given that she’d known Keefer Dobey from a young age and push on.
“He was helping the museum by delivering boxes of Teague’s hoard for you to sort and put into order, wasn’t he?”
“I would not claim to put them in order. Merely to make it more possible for Clara to achieve that goal without starting from a deficit of confusion and dirt. However, in answer to your query about Keefer Dobey’s participation, he provided immeasurable help in facilitating the delivery and dispatch of boxes in an orderly manner.”
“Did he talk to you while doing this facilitating?”
“It was not achieved in absolute silence.” Her primness did not hide a hint of amusement. “In that sense, yes, we did converse.”
“About more than the boxes. Perhaps what was in some of them? I’m interested in his interest in outlaws in this area — Wyoming more generally, and Cottonwood County — in the decade either side of the turn of the century from the nineteenth to the twentieth.”
She declined her head in acknowledgment of my words, then spoke.
“The history of communication across our state, including, specifically, the history of the Pony Express Company, should be quite familiar to those affected now by the shifts and changes in technology.”
I fought back a blink.
Not of confusion. I knew exactly what she was saying. She wasn’t going to tell me.
