A Shelter of Hope (31 page)

Maintaining his place behind the pillar, Louis waited as Matthews made his way across the terminal. Then following at a steady pace, Louis found himself alongside a passenger train. He watched the old flower woman approach Matthews and barely heard the exchange between them. But it was enough.

“I’m going to Topeka to meet a pretty lady,” Matthews told the old woman.

Louis, upon hearing Matthews’ comment, determined he had to be going in search of Simone. He just had to be!

“All ’board!”

The call rang out, shattering Louis’s thoughts. Making a mad dash back to the ticket agent, Louis barely was able to pant out the word, “Topeka!”

“Next train leaves in the morning,” the agent said in a slow, steady tone.

“No! I want the train that’s leaving right now.”

The agent looked at him blankly. “I’m sorry, sir, you’re too late,” the agent replied. He paused, looked around the ticket area as if trying to decide whether he could share the next bit of information with Louis. Finally he spoke. “I can book you on the morning train.”

Louis growled in disgust and slapped his money down on the counter. In the distance he heard the mournful cry of steam whistles and growled again. “The morning train, then,” he answered sharply. Surely Simone and Matthews would keep that long.

TWENTY-FOUR

SIMONE KNEW SHE SHOULD be polishing the silver downstairs, but instead she paced the small confines of her room and tried to think what was to be done. It was clear that if the Wanted posters had reached Chicago and Jeffery, it would only be a matter of time until Rachel’s mother and her friend Grace recognized the sketches and went to the law. And if they did that, then Simone was doomed.

On the other hand
, Simone thought, sitting down hard on her bed,
I’m already doomed. I’m a murderess, and I deserve whatever punishment is meted out to me. It won’t matter to the authorities in Wyoming that I didn’t mean for Garvey Davis to die. It will only matter that by my hand a man is dead
. She shuddered and put her hand to her throat.

“They’ll probably hang me,” she whispered.

The sudden knock at her door nearly undid Simone’s fragile state of mind. “Come in.”

Rachel appeared, her expression one of extreme sympathy and kindness. “Are you ill? I saw you rush up here and worried that perhaps you had overdone it today.”

“No, it isn’t that,” Simone said, shaking her head.

Rachel smiled and closed the door behind her. “Then what is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

Rachel bit her lower lip and took a step forward. “Simone, there’s something I want to tell you. Something that you might not care to hear, but …” She fell silent for a moment, and to Simone it seemed that she wrestled mentally with the words she was about to say.

Rachel pulled up a chair and positioned it very close to where Simone sat on the bed. She took her seat, chewing thoughtfully on her lip. In Simone’s eyes, Rachel looked as if she’d suddenly aged several years.

“Say what you will, Rachel,” Simone finally offered. It was killing her to await what might or might not come. Did Rachel already know the truth? Had Jeffery told her? Had she guessed?

Rachel surprised her by reaching out to take hold of her hands. “Simone, I want very much to be a friend to you. I feel a kinship with you that I’ve not felt with any of the other girls. Oh, I’ve liked them well enough,” she said, pausing with a smile. “But you are different. I knew it from the very start.”

As Rachel held her hand, it was easy for Simone to remember Winifred Dumas’s gentle voice and touch. But as Simone struggled against the memory, a bigger discomfort grew in its place.

“I know you believe yourself responsible for something quite heinous. You spoke of it when you were delirious,” Rachel said matter-of-factly. “You spoke of not meaning to kill him.”

Simone felt completely backed into a corner. Not only did Jeffery know her deeds, but now she would have to confess them to Rachel. She shook her head and sighed. If Elvira Taylor saw the Wanted posters, there would be little wasted time in letting her daughter know all about Simone’s shaded past.

“I didn’t want to say anything,” Rachel told her softly. “I had hoped you would trust and confide in me.”

Simone looked up and saw a reflection of sincerity in Rachel’s green eyes. “I’ve never had a friend, Rachel. I know nothing of trusting people because people have never availed themselves to me in that manner. I’ve only known brutality and betrayal … and neither leave much room for confidences.”

“I’m sure that what you say is true, but I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be the first. I sensed from your first day that you were very reserved, desiring nothing but to be shut off from the rest of the world. But that’s not good for any person.”

“Someone else once told me that,” Simone remembered. “I knew this old woman, a half-breed Indian named Naniko. After my mother left me, Naniko became the closest thing to a friend I’ve ever known. She told me it wasn’t good to be alone. I guess because she saw me that way so much of the time.”

“Why were you left alone?” Rachel gently asked.

Simone shrugged. “I don’t suppose I know for sure. My father was a trapper, and he was gone a good part of the time checking his traps and searching for better hunting grounds. When he was home he beat us and railed at us until he fell into a drunken sleep, only to get up and repeat the procedure the next day. My mother decided to leave when I was about ten years old. He had beaten her so badly her arm was broken.” Simone remembered the scene as if it were yesterday. “She took my baby brother, and I never saw her again.”

“She left you there!” Rachel gasped. “How could she leave you behind?”

“I asked her the same thing,” Simone replied, the tightness in her chest threatening to cut off her air supply. “I had just recovered from the measles, but I was still too weak to travel. It was cold and my mother feared for all of us. She said she could go faster and easier if I remained behind.”

“And she promised to come back for you,” Rachel remembered from the handwritten note in the Bible.

“Yes,” Simone said, nodding. “But she never did.” She purposely avoided telling Rachel that her father had killed her mother and brother. She didn’t want to acknowledge the pain of that final loss.

They fell silent for several moments, and in that time Simone realized how much she had shared with Rachel, how good it felt to unburden her soul. Knowing that Rachel genuinely cared for her was not the encumbering grief that Simone had thought it would be. Instead, it was rather freeing. Just to know that someone else knew her woes and still remained to listen—still held her hand as though she’d not just heard the most offensive thing in the world.

Would Rachel have said how sorry she was, Simone might have ended the conversation then and there. Instead, Rachel patted her hand and nodded as if the pieces of the puzzle were suddenly falling into place.

“So you grew up under your father’s heavy hand, with him no doubt taking out his anger for your mother upon your back. He beat you because he couldn’t beat her,” Rachel said, her voice barely audible.

“He beat me because he hated me,” Simone replied frankly.

“Why? Why should he hate his own child?”

Simone shook her head. “I don’t imagine I’ll ever know that for sure. I used to think it was because I was a girl and he had wanted a son. But even that shouldn’t make a man so angry. I guess he found me wanting, and in that inadequacy he could not reconcile the situation except with violence.”

“He was the one to be found inadequate and wanting,” Rachel said, suddenly regaining strength in her own anger. “How dare he take out his grief on a helpless child! No wonder you had to defend yourself and kill him.”

Simone startled at this and laughed harshly. “I was too much the coward for that.”

“But you said—” “

Oh, I’m guilty of murder, but not of my father. The story continues,” Simone said, looking beyond Rachel to the open window of her bedroom. Would there be windows in her jail cell? Would the sun be shining when they hanged her? “My father sold our cabin and his traps in order to go to Colorado and make his fortune. In the bargain, he also sold me.”

“What?”

Simone returned her gaze to Rachel. “He sold me to a man and left me. Deserted me, just as my mother had. Only this man intended to consider me his wife, and you know what that means.” Rachel nodded somberly and Simone continued. “I told him I couldn’t be his wife and that I would clear out my things and leave. But Garvey Davis wanted no part of that. He was happy with my father’s arrangement. He pressed himself upon me, trying—” Her voice faltered, and she drew a deep breath but no air seemed to enter her lungs. “He intended to have me in his bed,” she finally managed. Pulling her hand away from Rachel’s grasp, she buried her face in her hands and moaned. “I can still see him and hear him and smell the whiskey on his breath. I can feel his hands upon me, and it’s all too unbearable.”

She felt Rachel slip onto the bed beside her. Simone sagged against her when Rachel put a supportive arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “Hush, it’s all right. You don’t have to talk about it.”

Simone’s shoulders began to quake and her whole body trembled under the weight of her memories. “I fought him. I tried to get away, but he was too fast for me. I did what I had to do. I picked up a pitcher and hit him over the head. I didn’t want to kill him, I just meant for him to leave me alone long enough to escape.”

“Of course you didn’t mean to kill him,” Rachel said, sounding stern and authoritative. “The man was clearly out of line.”

Simone shook her head and pushed away. “But he wasn’t. My father had made a bargain with him. I was to be his wife, and in the high country, if there was no preacher or justice of the peace to marry folks, they lived on that way until one came along.”

“I’m sure that there were others in that area who would have found such practices abominable.”

“Perhaps,” Simone said, looking Rachel dead in the eye. “But not those who would come to my defense. When the law catches up to me, they won’t care that Garvey Davis intended to practice his husbandly rights. They’ll only care that my hand took his life.”

“But if you ran,” Rachel said, suddenly having a thought, “perhaps he didn’t die. Maybe you just stunned him and—”

“No,” Simone interrupted. “I know he’s dead. Mr. O’Donnell just showed me the Wanted posters for myself and my father. Although why they’ve included him, I cannot say. Mr. O’Donnell found the posters in Chicago, which means if they traced me that far, it’ll only be a matter of time until they find me here.”

“Then we have to hide you,” Rachel said, jumping to her feet. “We can’t just give you over. Perhaps we could alter your appearance.”

Simone smiled sadly. “Rachel, it won’t work. Your own mother will be one of those to recognize me. No, I can’t ask you to lie for me. I’ve already told enough lies. Now I find that I’ve put you and Jeffery in jeopardy. You must either lie for me or turn me over, and neither case is fair or simple for you.”

“I won’t let them have you,” Rachel stated firmly. “They don’t know the truth like I do. And from the way you speak, perhaps they wouldn’t even care to know the truth.”

“It’s not your problem, and I won’t let you take it on for yourself. I’ll just resign my position and leave. That way no one has to be the wiser. I’ll simply get on a train and disappear.”

“That’s it!” Rachel declared. “We’ll send you away. We’ll find a place on the Santa Fe line where you can work and no one will know who you are.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Simone protested.

Rachel reached out to pull Simone to her feet. “We have to talk to Jeffery. Does he know this whole story?”

“Yes, I told him.”

“Good. He’s a fair-minded man and he cares for you. Jeffery will 210 know what to do.”