The Marshal's Ready-Made Family by Sherri Shackelford

could talk with other than Beatrice. “You’re a man of many talents.”
    He shrugged. “It’s a good tool if you’re in a pinch. I’ve heard of men signaling each other at night.”
    “How do they do that?” Cora asked.
    “They use a lamp.”
    Jo tapped her pencil. “I’ve heard of blasting crews sending signals down the mountain with mirrors reflecting the sunlight. Doesn’t seem too efficient to me.”
    “I guess you learn ‘take cover’ pretty well.”
    Jo giggled. She pinched the worn and ink-stained edges and slid her alphabet cipher sheet across the table. Cora and Marshal Cain flanked her, and Jo’s heart did a curious ripple. She cleared her throat and scooted her chair tighter toward the desk, then pointed at the sheet, surprised by the tremble in her finger.
    She fisted her hand a few times and pointed again. “Each letter has a corresponding set of dots and dashes. You put the dots and dashes together to form letters. For example, the letter s is three dots.” Jo quickly tapped her finger three times on the desk. “And for an o, it’s three dashes.” She tapped her finger slower.
    The telegraph machine whirred, and the twitter of an incoming message filled the room. “Here comes one now.”
    “Yeah!” Cora leaped off her chair and dashed across the room.
    Using her heels, Jo twisted her chair and scooted across the floor. She needed distance between her and Marshal Cain. Talking with him left her as breathless as though she’d run the length of a field.
    After setting out a pencil and paper, Jo acknowledged her station by typing in her call numbers. The telegraph operator on the other end of the line began transferring his message. Jo quickly jotted down the letters, transcribing a rapid-fire series of dots and dashes into words on a neat square of paper.
    Cora danced around the table. “What does it say? What does it say?”
    “I have a strict rule against gossip.” Jo folded the paper with the words facing inside. “Luckily, I have a terrible memory. I couldn’t tell you most of what came through yesterday, let alone last week.”
    Marshal Cain and Cora tipped their heads, their expressions twin mirrors of confusion.
    “It’s hard to explain... ah ...” Jo stalled. “But I try to write things down without paying much attention. It’s easier that way.”
    After only a short time on the job, Jo had trained herself until the Morse code she translated into words bypassed the part of her brain that remembered details. If she didn’t, the tales rumbled through her memory and interrupted her sleep with dots and dashes clicking in her dreams. People sometimes forgot their words were read by others, and they wrote of deeply personal tribulations. Deaths and births, marriages and broken hearts, a deluge of human emotions filtered down into an economy of words.
    Marshal Cain rubbed his chin. “That’s amazing. I know a little bit of Morse code, but I only translated about three of those words. You’re really good. And you just do that automatically?”
    “Yep. I hear the dots and dashes like they’re words. I remember when the rail line came through town, listening to the Chinese workers talking together, then switching back to English with the foremen. It’s like that. It’s like learning a foreign language.”
    “Except not many people have the gumption to learn another language,” the marshal said, his voice flush with admiration.
    Jo’s chest expanded. Most folks took her skill for granted. Certainly no one had ever once asked if learning the process had been difficult.
    The marshal glanced around the sparse office. “How did you learn?”
    “I left the farm a couple of years ago.”
    Jo twisted her lips. Her ma had wanted her to take over the midwife duties, and Jo’s refusal had driven a wedge between them.
    Her ma saw every birth as a marvel of life while all Jo could think about were the potential dangers. The calls they made on laboring mothers filled her ma with