Fleurette pushed aside a dress-maker’s dummy that blocked her view of the mirror. She kept it angled a bit in its stand, which had the effect of making her appear taller.
“Oh, I haven’t persuaded them, exactly,” she said, and turned around to admire her backside. “I told them I’m only auditioning because you are.”
Her reverie was interrupted by the rattle of an engine in the drive. She smoothed her skirts and whirled around to Helen. “Hand me that jacket,” she said, waving at a pile of gray wool behind her friend’s stool. “You can help me with the fitting.” Helen took up the garment and they burst out of the room and into the foyer, where Constance was just hanging up her coat.
“Who brought you home?” Fleurette asked.
“Deputy Morris.”
“Oh, and he’s gone already?” Fleurette ran to look out the window. Deputy Morris and his wife lived in Paterson near Mrs. Hansen’s Academy and had taken on the role of adopted grandparents to Helen and Fleurette. After their lessons, they could often be found at Mrs. Morris’s kitchen table or at her sewing machine, making last-minute changes to costumes.
When she turned back to Constance, she spotted the badge.
“Isn’t there to be a ceremony?” she cried, slipping the badge off Constance’s coat and holding it up to the light. “I thought we’d all be going down to the courthouse to watch you make a vow.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” Constance said. “I’ve been doing the job in some capacity or another since July. The badge is only the final formality.”
“But I like formalities. We never have any sort of occasion around here.”
Constance hardly had a chance to reply before Fleurette snatched the jacket away from Helen and held it up with a flourish.
“And look at what we have for you to pin it on! Helen helped me with the epaulettes.”
Constance took it from her gingerly and turned it around. It was a smart new Norfolk jacket, styled like a man’s, but with just enough darts where it counted. There were deep pockets in the front, a wide belt, commanding epaulettes on the shoulders, and a heavy silk lining inside.
The sheriff’s department had no provision for a woman’s uniform. After the newspapers photographed her in a hastily assembled ensemble of borrowed clothes the previous year, Fleurette insisted on outfitting Constance with a proper uniform. The jacket was the final piece.
Constance slipped it on and immediately felt more authoritative. Fleurette had been making her clothes since she was old enough to work a sewing machine, it being nearly impossible to find anything in Constance’s size from the catalogs and shops. Fleurette hadn’t taken a measurement in years and seemed to know innately where to place a button or a dart so that no seam was ever stretched, no collar too tight, and no sleeve too short. Her clothing was solid and wonderfully made.
“You should always wear a jacket,” Helen said, going in a circle around her and tugging at the sleeves. “You look so smart.”
“I do feel smarter, and I feel about six inches taller,” Constance said.
Fleurette reached up to brush a thread away from her collar. “Well. We don’t need you any taller. There’s a pocket inside for your revolver, and one for your handcuffs.”
Constance slid her hand inside and found them stitched into the lining at exactly the spot she might naturally reach for them. “It’s just perfect.”
“Only I might have run up the account at Schoonmaker’s,” Fleurette said lightly, as she checked the buttons and clasps.
“Don’t worry about it,” Constance said. Before she could add another word, Norma came in from her pigeon loft and all talk of paying on accounts ceased.
Norma wore a grubby barn coat adorned here and there with gray and white feathers, a leather bill-cap with flaps on the side, and a split skirt that Fleurette had cobbled together from a pair of old tweed suits on the condition that Norma would never wear it farther than the barn.
The three of them stood staring at her. Fleurette tried very hard not to laugh. Norma looked like a tramp in those old clothes, but it must be admitted that the sort of outdoor work an old farmhouse required had to be met with suitably sturdy clothing. As neither Constance nor Fleurette volunteered to do the more difficult chores, it seemed only fair that Norma should outfit herself as she pleased.
“You’ve had another letter,” Norma said as she peeled off the most disagreeable of her outer garments.
“I wish they didn’t know where we lived,” Constance said.
“They don’t. They write nothing on the envelope but ‘Girl Sheriff, Hackensack,’ and it makes its way to us.”
“Do they really propose marriage?” Helen asked.
“Always,” Fleurette said. “They don’t know what to do with her other than to marry her.” It irked Fleurette that her sister—she of the pontoon-sized feet and the figure of a telephone booth—enjoyed the romantic attentions of men she’d never met. The men who laid their hearts down in front of Constance got nothing but a curt reply from Norma, which seemed to Fleurette like a wasted opportunity.
This was why Fleurette was so eager for her tour on the stage, and her own notices in the paper. Then the letters would come to her. She would never reject them out of hand: she would invite her suitors to audition for her affections, and she’d let them bring her gifts.
Norma went over to the writing desk and sliced open the envelope.
“Oh, you’ll like this. A fellow wants you to run his ranch in Wyoming.” She made a surprisingly convincing imitation of a bachelor rancher as she read his letter aloud.
Dear Miss Constance,
I can’t offer much to a lady who likes her hair washed at a parlor and gets bothered over a little dirt under her fingernails, but an energetic woman who is accustomed to hard work and quick with a rifle can make a success of herself in Wyoming. I am unmarried, as are most of the other men around this place. It is an uncommon woman who can put her shoulder to the wheel alongside one of us. Out here a rancher’s wife knows how to stretch a potato and butcher a hog, and doesn’t mind sleeping for a night in the barn alongside the cows when they’re calving.
Strong as a horse and pretty as one, that’s all I ask. If I don’t suit you, there are a dozen other fellows who will. You might as well come out and have a look at us. Write to me with your answer and I will send a train ticket, but don’t wait too long. There’s fields to plow in March.
Expectantly,
Old Jack Dobbs
“Old Jack!” Fleurette shrieked. “Did he really write that?”
“He’s been called it so long that he’s forgotten it wasn’t his given name,” Norma said.
“We haven’t seen him yet,” Fleurette said. “His mother could have named him Old Jack when she first laid eyes on him.”
“What do you intend to tell him?” Constance asked.
Norma looked over the letter again and pushed at the spectacles slipping off her nose. “I’ll say that it pains me to admit that you look nothing like a horse, and that you do like your hair washed on Saturday, which renders you unfit for service.”