Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron by Patricia Watters

the
voters he needed to help him get elected as mayor. And although
Adam might think she was pretty, his mother would be a constant
reminder of how the world really saw her.
    ***
    The following week, to a great burst of
cheers from Priscilla, Trudy, Alice and the four women, Jim Jackson
pulled the first edition of The Town Tattler off the press
and laid it on the copy table. As Priscilla stared at the
five-column folio, she was so excited she had to remind herself to
breathe. A banner headline set in large flourishing foundry type,
and occupying the width of the page, heralded the establishment of The Town Tattler , and on the top of the page, an ornate
nameplate embellished with attractive calligraphy, stated: Volume 1, Number 1, July 31, 1885, Serving Cheyenne, Wyoming
Territory . The editorial below the banner headline invited
women writers to visit the office of The Town Tattler and
chat with Miss Priscilla Phipps about submitting poems, short
stories, viewpoints and opinion pieces for possible publication.
Readers were encouraged to write to Miss Manners with
questions about proper etiquette , and to Miss Valentine for
advice for the lovelorn. As a bonus, all new subscribers would
receive a lovely engraving suitable for framing.
    Priscilla looked at the small decorative wood
engravings set above each editorial column, pleased with what she
saw. The cut for Miss Manners showed children gathered
around a table, the one for Miss Valentine displayed a
couple sitting on a loveseat, and the one for her Women's Suffrage
column, was of Esther Hobart Morris, a suffragist whose efforts
were instrumental in passing the equality laws that governor
Campbell signed into law in 1869, granting the women of Wyoming
Territory the right to vote, along with the right to hold public
office, own land, and retain property from their dead husbands,
making Wyoming's government the first to do so. Priscilla had been
twenty-two at the time, but it stirred a longing back then to move
to the place where she could hold property in her own name.
    Her eyes returned to the woodcut of the
romantic couple and the fact that Miss Valentine was a
middle-aged maiden lady who had never been in love. Although now,
she did know what it was like to be infatuated. Oddly, she felt
qualified to give advice to the lovelorn because it would not be
muddled up with senseless female emotions.
    Edith, who had not read the Miss
Valentine column until now, peered over Priscilla's shoulder,
and commented, "I can't imagine ARJ, whoever she is, even asking if
she should allow a man to court her who left her sitting alone at
the Picnic Social to go off with some other woman. But you set her
straight. Do you know who she is?"
    Priscilla realized Edith had been off with
young Frank Gifford during the time when she'd told the women that
the questions and answers for Miss Valentine would be
fabricated until readers began to write in. "ARJ and the others are
made up for this issue," she said. "After the women start sending
in questions, I won't have to do that."
    Edith's smooth brow gathered with a frown.
"But... was the incident based on something that really happened
to... someone?"
    On the way home from the picnic social, when
the women asked about her time with Lord Whittington, Priscilla had
been vague about what happened after Adam bought her basket. She
hadn't wanted to explain where they'd gone, or what they'd been up
to. Now, she suspected Edith thought she was ARJ, and Adam
had left her to go off with another woman. Perhaps it was best left
at that, because the truth made her blush, and it would later be an
embarrassment, when Adam lost interest. If, in fact he was actually
interested in her. He gave every indication he was, unlikely as it
seemed. Answering Edith, she said, "No, it was just something I
came up with."
    Edith said nothing, but Priscilla knew she
was not convinced. It would be perfectly reasonable to think that
the freckle-faced, red-headed unattractive