A Place Called Harmony (8 page)

She nodded.

He watched her in the dying light as she struggled to take off her saddle and care for her horse. No matter how grown she thought she was, Jessie was small, about the same size he’d been when he’d found himself alone. He couldn’t help but think that for a boy it was hard, but for a little girl alone in this country it would be impossible.

Whether Jessie liked it or not, he’d find a way to help her.

The next morning she shared the bread she’d stolen from the mission with him and they were in the saddle by full light. As the days passed he learned more about her. She didn’t like to talk and hated answering questions. She didn’t know how old she was. She never remembered having a real family, just a mom for a while.

Gillian liked having someone to talk to, even if he was carrying most of the conversation. He also knew how she felt, all alone and homeless, so he gave her the only gift he could. He taught her every survival skill he knew, including how to fire a gun. She’d need them all if she planned to make it to adulthood in this country.

The morning they finally crossed the wagon tracks that served as the only road for a hundred miles, Gillian began to have the feeling that someone was watching him. Jessie must have felt it too, because she pulled her mare closer to him.

He looked back once and thought he saw a thin line of dust that one horse traveling fast might have kicked up. But nothing else. Not a sound. They were moving into open land with few hills or valleys. By tomorrow he’d see trouble coming from miles away. By tomorrow they’d be safe. If they had to, they’d leave the road and circle down, then come into the trading post from the south. Gillian didn’t like the idea that he might be leading trouble right to the place where his wife was meeting him.

The sky clouded over before dusk, and a slow rain began to fall. Jessie pointed out a place where rocks formed a rise in the earth big enough for them and their horses to take shelter. A cliff protected them from the rain, but not the wind. Without fire or anything to eat, Jessie settled in among the saddles and went to sleep.

Gillian stood guard even though he couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond the rain. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was tracking him, and he’d made enough enemies to know that if he wasn’t careful he’d be dead by dawn.

Finally, when a watery light spread across the horizon, Gillian closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall of rocks. The rain had stopped and the earth seemed newborn and silent. He was thinking of Daisy and how she wrote all her thoughts in a book every night before they went to bed. She’d had schooling, all the way to the tenth grade, and she’d said someday she wanted to teach.

The click of a gun being cocked brought him full awake. He reached for the Colt he’d left beside him.

The gun was gone.

Slowly he opened his eyes. Nate, the youngest of the Osbornes, who’d gotten away over a week ago, now stood five feet from him, a rifle pointed toward Gillian’s heart.

“You’re a hard one to track, Captain Matheson.” The outlaw grinned with teeth yellowed and broken. Nate Osborne couldn’t be out of his twenties, but he’d grown up in a rough family.

“You could have gotten away, Nate.” Gillian kept his voice low and level. “I had my hands full with the others. You could be holed up somewhere safe. Why track me?”

“Yeah, I thought I might keep going. You never would have tracked me down. But you had something of mine.” He tilted his head toward where Jessie was still sleeping between the saddles. “She ain’t much, but she was promised to me when she finished growing. I wouldn’t let any of the others touch her. Never had me a virgin before. I’d been chasing her around the past few months so she could get used to the idea of me bedding her regular when she fills out. I’m thinking once I have her, I’ll use her every night till she wears out, then I’ll trade her off. She’s small, but I guess she’s pretty enough and she’s quiet. Never could stand it when a woman screams while she’s being used. The last woman I climbed on was a screamer. I made her sorry she made so much noise. I want to see if the next one I try will be, but women in these parts are hard to find unattended.”

Gillian sat up. “And you’re telling me this because?”

“Because I want Jessie to tell me if you bothered her. ’Cause if you did, I’ll gut-shoot you and let you die slow.” Nate turned his head slightly, but his rifle remained pointed directly at Gillian. “Girl! Get up and come over here. I got a question for you.”

When Jessie didn’t move, he yelled, “Girl! Unless you want a few blows in your middle, get over here.”

Nate smiled at Gillian. “I don’t never hit her in the face.” He said it like he was bragging about how considerate he was of the kid.

Jessie stood, showing no sign that she’d been asleep. She took a few steps toward Nate without looking at Gillian.

Nate laughed. “I come to save you, girl.”

She faced him. “I’m not going with you. I know what you got planned for me and I ain’t going.”

Nate frowned as if surprised she’d dared to talk to him. “You belong to me. You can’t just decide to go off with this captain. I traded a horse for you, so you’re going with me. It’s about time you learned a few more ways to be useful.”

“I ain’t with him.” She pointed to Gillian. “We’re just riding together. He’s nothing to me. He didn’t touch me. There is no need to shoot him.”

Nate raised the rifle. “Oh, but it’s his time to die and I ain’t bargaining with you. He was a dead man the moment he rode into our camp. He just didn’t know it yet.”

The next few seconds of Gillian’s life passed in slow motion.

He saw the barrel leveled toward his head.

Jessie moved sideways, swinging her arm in front of her. The morning sun flashed on his Colt in her hand. In the space between heartbeats, she fired at the same time Nate pulled the trigger on the rifle.

Gillian felt like a horse kicked him in the head. He tumbled backward from the force. The last thing he saw before all went black was Nate crumbling as if boneless.

For a moment, as the shots echoed off heaven, Gillian searched the darkness for Daisy. If he died here, now, she’d never know how much he’d loved her. She hadn’t been just a part-time wife; she’d been his only wife. He might not have known how to be a husband, but he’d been true to her and kept her in his heart.

He’d always planned to someday go back to her.

He fought through the pain and concentrated on her green eyes. If he died here today, he wanted Daisy to be the last thing he saw in this world.

T
RADING
P
OST

Daisy Matheson tried to talk her family into letting her go alone to join her husband, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Finally, she simply started packing, leaving them no say in the matter.

All her brothers, and every one of her nephews over fifteen, volunteered to go with her to Texas. If she was moving to Texas, they planned to make sure she got there safely.

She loved the company, but they were bound to find out that she’d lied if they met up with her husband, so she had them deliver her earlier than she’d told Gillian to meet her.

The family didn’t need to know that Captain Gillian Matheson hadn’t quit the army and wasn’t planning on joining her. In fact, he didn’t even know his wife had forged his signature on an agreement to work for Harmon Ely. She’d been writing the trading post owner for four months, and all her letters were signed with her husband’s name.

She’d been the one who’d applied for and accepted the job to help build a town. The dream of joining her husband in a newborn town had been just too good not to gamble on.

So, she loaded her four little boys, with black hair and blue eyes like Gillian, and all her household goods in two wagons. The trip took a month, but with her two older brothers driving the wagons and four of her teenage nephews riding along to scout and hunt, the journey was an easy one. Her parents insisted she take two milk cows and a crate of chickens. The men also brought extra horses, planning to leave some with Gillian and ride the others back home. They’d get her to Texas and settled, then ride back to the farm in time to help with the spring planting.

Daisy, who’d never been more than a few miles from home, was both excited and terrified. The last time Gillian came home he hadn’t begged her to go with him, but she hadn’t been brave enough to leave. Her mother had told her if she held out, eventually Gillian would stay on her family’s farm. Only he didn’t, and each time he rode away, more of her wanted to go with him. When he hadn’t made it home for Christmas, she knew she was losing the little piece of him she thought she had.

She had to change. She had to go to him. Standing up to her family had been far harder than the monthlong journey. They’d all taken their turn listing all the reasons she should stay, but Daisy kept packing.

In the end, they’d all stood and watched her go. She’d silently cried every night for the first week, and then slowly an excitement built inside her. She’d never been brave, but she was now doing one brave thing.

During the journey, the weather was cold and the days boring, but she’d made it to Harmon Ely’s trading post by the first of March. Like her family, Harmon believed her husband would join her within two weeks. He put her and the boys up in his own room beside the kitchen and left her wagons packed in the barn. The owner of the trading post took one of the small rooms upstairs that he’d added on for his children. He said his family would come as soon as the town was built.

Daisy settled in and waited. Her handsome captain would come. He would stay with her and they would start a new life together, she kept telling herself, but deep down she feared he might not join her. If he didn’t, she’d go back home and call herself a widow for the rest of her life.

Harmon Ely was a grumpy old man in a fifty-year-old body. His hair seemed to have slipped off the back of his head. The few remaining strands hung tightly to the last of his scalp in long, fussy, gray ringlets. After eating his cooking for two days, Daisy offered to take over the kitchen as part of her board. Though Mr. Ely lived alone, he had a habit of inviting anyone riding by to stay for supper, and with Daisy cooking, he did so proudly.

As soon as the settlers passing by tasted Daisy’s food, they began to shop later and stay for another meal. In exchange they brought apples, peaches, and butter. So apple pie quickly became a standard at the trading post table.

Daisy didn’t mind the extra people at the table. She was used to cooking for a dozen or more. Only a few of the men smelled so bad she made them take their supper on the porch.

On warm days she roped off the back porch and let the boys play while she baked bread and did laundry. Mr. Ely claimed just the smell of her bread doubled his sales. More often than not, when he wasn’t busy with a customer, the old man was playing out back on the porch with her sons. He was a man who loved children and talked about how his were growing up without him.

“As soon as I get this town built, my family is coming,” he’d say over and over.

In the evening, after the dishes were done and the boys were asleep in their bed, Daisy always went to the rocker on the front porch. Mr. Ely had tried his best to make the rebuilt trading post look like a respectable mercantile. He told her he’d always seen the store as the first of a dozen along a street welcoming everyone to the little town.

This place might be in the middle of nowhere with mostly hunters, teamsters, and dirt-poor farmers as customers, but she loved the sunsets. It was like God was making up for all the plainness of the land by putting on a grand show every night.

On the third night she was there, Harmon Ely stepped onto the porch with a can of paint. Without a word he painted over the “1” on the population sign and replaced it with the number “6.”

Daisy giggled. She and her boys had just been added as residents.

She waited for Captain Gillian Matheson. Staring to the north every evening until it was full dark. Hoping. Willing him to come. Longing to change the sign to read “7.”

M
ARCH

Clint Truman, dressed in the same black suit he’d been married in, sat beside his wife on a train heading north. She’d held the baby the first few hours, and then she’d lowered him into the basket lined with a blanket. He slept as the train rocked him.

Clint watched her, not missing how she cared so gently for a child she hadn’t named. When he moved closer to the window, she set the basket between them. He wished he’d been close enough to offer his shoulder for her to sleep on, but he doubted she’d use it. Karrisa, so prison pale, held herself so stiff he almost expected her to snap.

He decided she’d once been pretty before prison thinned her so and life hardened her to stone. She rarely made any effort to speak. They could have been total strangers riding the train and not man and wife.

At noon the train stopped long enough for folks to go into the train station to eat lunch away from all the smoke. Once they settled on a back bench, he opened the meal and offered her half.

She hesitated. “It’s too much. I only need a little.”

“You’ll eat, Karrisa, for the baby’s sake. If you don’t take in enough food you won’t make enough milk to feed the baby.” He wished he could think of something to say besides an order, but nothing about her manner seemed to welcome conversation.

She must have understood his reasoning, for she took what he offered. When she finished, she surprised him by leaving the sleeping child with him while she made a trip to the washroom.

He caught himself smiling at the baby when no one was looking. The little fellow had a spot of dark hair on top of his head and blue eyes that hadn’t learned to focus.

“Your first?” asked the woman sitting down on a bench facing him.

Clint could do no more than nod. If he lied and said yes, it would be as if he were forgetting his daughters, and if he said no, he’d be saying the baby wasn’t his and he’d promised to all they met that he’d claim the boy as his.

The memory of his girls flashed in his mind, blinding him to all around him. They’d been four and five with hair so light it was almost white. It didn’t matter if he’d been gone a day or an hour, they’d always run to him and he’d swing them up into a hug.

The last memory stomped through his brain. They’d both been crying, begging him not to leave when he’d hurried out to get the doctor. Only a few miles from town. Only a short wait for the doctor. Only a few miles back to his farm. But it had been too late.

He hadn’t hugged them that last time. He’d been too worried. He’d been in too much of a hurry.

Clint moved his scarred hand across the blanket, gently patting the baby with no name as he tried to push his regret into the shadows. Would a minute of hesitation have mattered? The hugs he never got to give would haunt him until the day he died. But he’d not let them break him. He’d not drink them away this time. He might never know love again, but he had a mission. A simple reason to live. He’d keep this baby and his mother safe.

He was thankful Karrisa returned before the woman could ask more. When the old woman tried to start a conversation with her, his wife shook her head and whispered something in German.

Clint did his best not to smile. Clever way to avoid conversation.

When they walked back to the train, he whispered, “German?” Hoping she’d tell him a little about herself.

“I also speak Italian and, of course, a little French and Russian.”

“So, you can
not
speak to me in three languages,” he stated simply.

For the first time he saw the hint of a smile on her pale lips.

When he offered his hand to help her onto the train, she took it even though she didn’t say a word.

At dusk he’d climbed off the train at a water stop and refilled his canteen. With each stop the car had emptied more until now they were the only two in the last car. He stood in the dark and watched her breast-feed. She was careful, very discreet, but still he watched the touching sight and remembered the wife he’d loved. She’d been his world, his happiness, and every thought of missing her was like a gaping wound he’d never be able to heal.

But he wouldn’t compare her with Karrisa. He couldn’t. It would hurt too much. This was his life now. His only life. He might have no love or joy, but at least he had a reason. Sheriff Lightstone must have known that was what he needed. Clint would help build this town in the middle of nowhere, and he’d take care of this woman who wouldn’t talk to him.

When he finally joined her as the train started up, his mood was so dark he didn’t look at her. He simply pulled his hat low and pretended to sleep until they reached the next stop along the line heading toward Dallas.

There, they had to find a hotel. In the summers people would camp out on the platform for the night, but it was too cold for that now. He carried their bags and she carried the baby as they walked across the street to the only place still open.

Clint booked them a room using only his name.

The clerk glanced down and said, “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Truman.”

Neither of them answered. Clint simply took the key and headed up the stairs. The place was so poorly built the whole staircase seemed to sway with his weight.

Their room was small, but warm and clean. He insisted she take the bed, and he pulled a chair up to the foot of her covers. Propping his feet on the bed, he leaned back in the chair so that he could see both the door and the window. He’d heard stories of thieves robbing travelers as they slept. Anyone coming in would have to step over him.

When he lowered the lamp, she whispered, “I learned to speak German and French in a factory I worked at in New Orleans. Women, mostly immigrants, were hired to run the machines and do the handwork on all kinds of clothes.”

He couldn’t see her in the dark. “Did you like working there?”

“No, but learning the languages helped pass the time. It turns out I have an ear for it. I hear a word a few times and I remember it.” Her voice came gently across the darkened room, refined and educated without the hint of an accent. A lady, he thought, only ladies don’t walk out of prisons.

He knew she was making an effort to talk to him, but he was so out of practice he didn’t know how to keep a conversation going. “That’s good,” he finally said. “We’d better get some sleep.”

Neither bothered to say good night. Near dawn, when she woke to feed the baby, he grabbed his hat and told her he’d go downstairs and order breakfast.

Half an hour later when she joined him, she had used one of her tiny combs to pull her hair back on one side, but it did little to improve her looks. If the woman were any paler, she’d glow in the dark.

He offered to hold the baby while she ate.

They didn’t talk. She ate and he patted gently on the baby’s blanket. A tiny hand swung out of the covers and clamped onto his finger.

Clint couldn’t hide the smile. “Hello, little fellow,” he said. “Nice to shake your hand. I’m your papa, so it’s about time you said hello.”

He waited to see if Karrisa would object. He’d said he’d claim the boy, and he just had. When she didn’t comment, he continued talking to the child. “We’re heading north to a town that doesn’t even have a name. The sheriff said it’s a place where two rivers cross. Soon as you’re big enough I’ll take you fishing, if your mother doesn’t mind.”

For some reason talking to the baby was easier than talking to her. As she ate her breakfast he kept telling the newborn things about all that was going on in the north. “I’m thinking this may be my chance to start all over, and I’m going to do my best to do it right. I’m going to take care of your mother. Of course, she can speak three languages, so if I do something wrong she can cuss me out three different ways.”

When he heard the whistle blow, he looked at his wife. “Finish your meal, dear. We need to be on our way.”

For a moment he thought she might argue, but then she ate the last few bites and tucked the extra biscuit in her napkin.

“You called me
dear
,” she said as they walked toward the train.

“It seemed the proper thing to do.
Mrs. Truman
might be a little formal and the use of your first name doesn’t feel just right on my tongue yet.”

“
Dear
is fine, Truman.”

Clint smiled. Apparently his first name didn’t sit just right on her tongue either.

When they boarded, they found themselves alone in the car except for two young salesmen playing cards on their boxes of goods to sell. He rode, watching the scenery, and she laid the scraps of cotton she’d washed in the sink at the hotel out to dry on the empty backs of seats. By the time they made the first stop, all the cotton squares were dry and folded back into her bag. The baby would need them soon enough.

Several cowhands climbed on at the stop, and she used his coat to cover her when she fed the baby. Clint moved to the seat nearest the aisle and placed his legs on the seat opposite them. His body formed a barrier, protecting her.

When she put the baby back in the basket, she made a tent with the extra blanket and set the basket next to the window where the sun warmed the seat. Then she leaned her head on Clint’s shoulder and fell asleep.

For a while Clint didn’t move, and then he tucked his coat over her. She was a brave little thing, he’d give her that. The baby was barely more than a week old and she hadn’t complained once. He’d heard her moan in her sleep last night. Tiny cries as if something haunted her dreams. She’d said she worked in a factory, yet the traveling suit she wore was far too finely made to belong to a working-class girl. She’d been educated before she worked in a factory. He’d bet on it. Maybe even pampered. But now she had nothing but a few worthless squares of cotton for the baby to call her own.

They reached Dallas before dark and he thought of getting a carriage and going to a good hotel a few blocks from the station, but she looked so tired, he settled for the best room at a small place a hundred yards from the tracks.

While she rested, he checked out liveries that sold buggies or wagons. The buggy would be more comfortable for her, but the wagon would be far more useful once they got where they were going.

He settled on a wagon with a cover so she could sleep if she needed to. He bought two horses to pull the wagon and another for himself. He had no idea if Karrisa rode but guessed she wouldn’t be doing any for a while.

When he returned to the hotel, he was told that his wife was taking a bath and had asked not to be disturbed. He waited a half hour, then tapped on the door.

One of the girls he’d seen in the hotel’s café opened the door. “You’re just in time, mister. I just brought up your supper.”

He walked in and saw two plates set out by a small fireplace. Karrisa was sitting in one of the two chairs with the baby asleep in her arms. She had on her nightgown. Though the gown buttoned to her throat, he didn’t think it was quite right that he have dinner across from a woman who wasn’t dressed. Then he reminded himself she was his wife. The fact was in his brain, but the feeling hadn’t registered yet.

For once, she looked up at him and repeated his thoughts. “I know it’s not proper to have dinner in my nightgown, but I washed my traveling clothes and haven’t had time to make another dress.”

“You don’t have to explain.” His words seemed to relax her a bit, and she nodded slightly. “You’re the lady of the house, even if this is just a hotel room. You can set any rules you like.”

“I’m not sure what you like to eat, so I ordered two different plates.”

“I don’t much care as long as it’s food. During the war I ate peanut soup and bark stew. You cook and I’ll eat once we get settled. As long as it’s not peanut soup I’ll probably like it just fine.”

He washed his hands at the stand while she put the baby down to sleep in his basket.

When they sat in front of the fire, the room seemed overloaded in silence. As always, she picked at her food, testing the first few bites as if she feared it might be bad.

“Roast is good,” he offered. “You need to—”

She raised her fork and pointed it at him as if it were a weapon.

He waited, thinking this might be how she had killed someone. So far she’d left no hint of how she’d landed in prison. He’d never heard of a fork murder, but it was possible.