The Texan and the Lady (2 page)

He studied her through the haze for a long minute before slowly lowering the cigar to the floor and crushing it with his boot. “Certainly, ma’am.”

“It’s
miss
. Miss Jennie Munday,” Jennie answered, raising her chin slightly. “And thank you. I realize this is going to be a long journey, but I think you’d be wise to smoke on the platform between the cars and not in this crowded compartment.”

She turned slightly to see if her lecture had made him aware he was in the presence of a lady and not the type of woman he was probably accustomed to in Texas. But, to her amazement, his eyes had closed in sleep.

Jennie fought the urge to elbow him hard. How dare he sleep when she was in the middle of setting him in his place? To add to her insult, he folded his arms over his chest and slumped farther into the seat.

She sat up straighter, afraid if she moved even an inch she’d touch this rude stranger. She tried to appreciate the country passing by, or consider the child hiding beneath her, but all she could think about was the man’s slow rhythmic breathing. When he awakened, she’d give him another lecture about politeness.

“Ticket, miss.”

Jennie jumped at the conductor’s words, then quickly handed the man her employee pass. “Aren’t you going to wake him?” She pointed a slender finger at the sleeping man at her side.

“No, miss.” The conductor shook his head. “That’s Austin McCormick. I wouldn’t want to startle him. Value my life more than that. I’ll check his ticket later, when it’s safer.”

Jennie tried not to look disappointed that the inconsiderate man wouldn’t be disturbed. But now at least she knew the marshal’s name.
Austin McCormick
. He might frighten the conductor, but no one would ever bully her into a corner again.

Trying to relax, she let the morning slide by with the countryside. By noon, her body ached from holding herself upright and trying not to accidentally brush Mr. McCormick. When the train finally pulled to a stop, he moved, coming awake like a wild animal, all at once and with every muscle alert.

“Twenty-minute stop!” someone yelled from the back of the train. “Food shack to your right, saloon to your left.”

Everyone hurried to disembark. The marshal stood and stretched long powerful muscles. He glanced at her as she pulled her lunch from her bag. “If I were you, lady, I’d stretch my legs while I had the chance.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable,” Jennie lied. She hadn’t forgotten the child beneath her seat and had no intention of leaving and taking the chance that someone else might discover the stowaway.

The marshal crammed his hat low over his forehead and nodded. “Suit yourself.”

Jennie watched him disappear before holding half her sandwich beneath the seat. “Would you like some?” she whispered.

A thin, dirty hand hesitantly reached forward and took the sandwich.

Jennie put the lunch bag at her feet and looked around to make sure the car was empty. Only the tiny woman in the wine-red coat remained. The dark wool almost covered her nearly colorless hair and face. She looked sound asleep on the last bench. Jennie could see a few people from her window picnicking beneath leafless trees several yards away. The cool fresh air looked inviting, but she couldn’t leave the child alone.

She looked in both directions then leaned down until she could see the child’s face. “What’s your name?”

“My momma called me True,” the stowaway mumbled between mouthfuls.

“And your father? What did he call you?”

“Never had no father. Momma died last year. Ain’t never had no name but True.”

The muscles around Jennie’s heart tightened. “True is a nice name.” She offered the child the other half of her sandwich. “In fact, I think it may be about the best name I’ve ever heard.”

The child became silent for several minutes then finally whispered back, “Why didn’t you turn me in, lady? All you’d’ve had to do was tell the conductor.”

The question was so honest it had to be answered directly. “Maybe because I’m running also.” Jennie looked out the window at all the people talking and laughing. All the world seemed to come in groups, except her. Somehow she’d been left out. If life were a dance, she not only didn’t have a partner, she hadn’t even been invited. “Maybe,” Jennie whispered more to herself than to the boy, “I, too, have no place to go except away.”

A thin hand reached from beneath the seat and touched Jennie’s gloved fingers. “Thanks,” True whispered before pulling back into safety. “I owe you, lady.”

Jennie stared at the dirt on her always spotless glove. For once, the stain didn’t matter. The child had touched her as no one else ever had. She hadn’t been just convenient to lean on; she’d been genuinely needed.

“True,” Jennie whispered. “You can trust me.”

Jennie thought she heard a sniffle from beneath the seat and tried not to think of how the child was probably wiping a dirty nose with an even dirtier sleeve cuff.

“I have to, lady,” the child answered. “You’re all I got right about now.”

Chapter 2

M
ind if I sit with you for the next leg of this trip?” A woman’s voice forced Delta Criswell to raise her head from the warm wool. She pulled her wine-colored coat close around her aching shoulder as the woman continued, “I was sitting up front before we stopped for lunch, but I thought it might be a little less smoky toward the back.”

Delta forced the pain from her mind and tried to bring the woman before her into focus. She was tall, six feet or more, and her long, rust-colored braid of hair was as thick as a man’s forearm. The word pretty would never be joined to her name, but she had a beauty about her that was ageless.

“I guess you’re like all of us in this car. You’re heading to Florence to work at the Harvey House.”

The woman moved into the seat beside Delta, seeming to pay little notice to Delta’s silence.

“I’m Audrey Gates from Flatwater, Missouri. Had to travel all night to hook up with this train.”

The stranger paused as if waiting for Delta to comment, then continued, “Flatwater’s not much of a town really. Just a little place along the river. In fact, from time to time most of the place is under the Big Muddy rather than next to it.”

As Delta looked puzzled, Audrey laughed. “I guess no one outside of Flatwater has laughed at that in years.”

When Delta didn’t make a sound, Audrey changed the subject without taking any offense. “I noticed you didn’t get off the train at the stop. Can’t say I blame you. I heard the men say all they had in the saloon was rifle whiskey.”

Tilting her head, Delta looked questioningly at the woman.

Audrey giggled. “Haven’t you ever heard of rifle whiskey? They say the bartender has to take a man’s guns away from him before serving a round, or a fellow’s likely to shoot himself when the whiskey hits his throat.”

Delta managed a smile as Audrey continued, “Course, we won’t have anything like that where we’re going. I’m so excited about this job, my nerves are full of fleas. Part of me wants to jump right out and run to Florence, but I’ve been on one train or another for so long I’m not sure my legs would work.” She glanced out the window. “You know, I think I could probably make better time than this train. Once we’re moving, it’s fine, but seems like we don’t finish gathering speed from the last stop before we start slowing for the next one.”

Attempting to keep her eyes open, Delta smiled wanly at Audrey. Delta had spent all night and most of this morning huddled in the last seat trying to keep warm and awake enough to watch in case anyone passed through the car looking for her.

“I guess I’m like everyone else.” The woman straightened her red braid as though it had only one proper place on her shoulder. “I want to go out west somewhere and find a handsome man to marry. Well, hell! I don’t care if he’s all that easy on the eyes as long as he’s big enough to lift me off the ground when he hugs me. The only eligible men in my hometown were the town drunk and my four brothers, so it was either answer the Harvey ad for a pastry cook or mark ‘old maid’ by my name in the church record.”

The woman’s constant chatter caused the pain in Delta’s head almost to rival the pain from the knife wound in her shoulder. Delta cuddled against the cool window.

“Not that I haven’t tried other occupations.” Audrey folded her arms. “My parents are firm believers that a young lady should test her wings. I tried being a schoolmarm for a year before I figured out I hated kids, then I went to nursing school. Nursing wasn’t bad except for the blood. I did get tired of that after a spell. Dear Lord, you wouldn’t believe how much folks tend to bleed! I can still smell it now.”

Audrey smiled at Delta. “Course, I didn’t tell the Harvey people I’d been a teacher. I heard they don’t like to hire teachers. Too set in their ways most of them.”

Finally, Delta could hear the woman no more. She leaned against the window and welcomed the quiet river of unconsciousness that flowed over her as Audrey’s voice faded.

The river ran swift with memories in Delta’s mind. All the sadness and loneliness washed across the years of her life in dark waves. Delta couldn’t remember ever feeling like a child. Even her first recollections were of trying to take care of her mother. There never seemed to be enough food for the table or wood for the fire, but somehow Mildred Criswell had always found the pennies needed for the dark bottles she called her medicine. Delta’s visions of her father were always gray and fuzzy. He was no more than a tired, broken man who shuffled in after working in the mines, his back permanently bent, his face always stained with coal dust. They’d finally moved back to her mother’s parents’ farm, hoping to stop his cough, but the cough continued, as did the poverty.

“Wake up, miss.” A voice floated over the river of dreams to Delta’s mind. “I can’t hold you much longer. Please, wake up.”

Delta opened her eyes and saw the redheaded woman’s face only inches from her own.

“You need a doctor, honey,” Audrey whispered. “There’s blood all over your coat sleeve.”

“No!” Delta didn’t want to draw any attention to herself. “I’ll be fine. I have some more bandages in my bag. I only need to wrap it again. Please don’t alert the conductor. He might put me off the train.”

Audrey studied her closely for a long moment, then whispered, “Can you walk?”

Delta nodded slowly, mistrusting any quick offer of help. There was goodness in the woman’s eyes, but Delta had seen goodness turn cold more than once.

“Well, let’s go freshen up.” Audrey stood and pulled her up with little more effort than a child would use to carry a doll at her side. “If it’s just bandaging, I can do that with flying colors. Now, if you had locked bowels or some such, we’d be in a heap of trouble ‘cause I skipped that lecture in school. Figured it’d be something I’d face if the time ever come. Some things it don’t do any good worrying about in advance.”

Before Delta could argue, they were moving down the aisle and out the door. Audrey was stronger than Delta figured any two men would probably be. By the time they reached their destination, she was leaning on the redhead heavily.

While the self-appointed angel of mercy helped Delta off with her coat and set to work, she never stopped talking. She washed the wound and commented, “The cut’s not deep, but we probably need to have it seen about when we stop. A slip of a girl like yourself don’t have any extra blood to lose.”

Delta looked into honest brown eyes. “I’d rather no one knew about this, Audrey.” She decided to try honesty herself. “You see, there’s someone following me, and if we reported a wound, he might find me.”

Audrey put her fists on her hips. “You’re not wanted for a crime, are you? If you are, I heard a man near the front say he was a federal marshal.”

“No.” Delta smiled, thinking if her stepfather or his son ever crossed her gunsights, she would be. “There is no need to bother the marshal.”

“Then I’ll say nothing. And don’t you worry, honey. When we get to the Harvey House, you’ll be safe as a babe in her mother’s arms. I’ll keep an eye out for trouble, and there ain’t many men who can get past me.”

“Thanks.” Delta offered her hand. “I’m Delta … ah … Smith, from nowhere in particular.”

Audrey shook her hand. “Glad to meet you, Delta … ah … Smith. But you can’t be from nowhere. That makes folks too inquisitive. I tell you what, you can be from Flatwater, Missouri, too. Now that I think of it, you grew up not a mile down the road from me. By the time we get to Florence, Kansas, I’ll tell you everything that’s happened in Flatwater for twenty years. Living there might not have been so wonderful, but it’s a nice place to be from.”

Delta cradled her arm and agreed. Somehow the nightmares of her life didn’t flow as close to her mind with Audrey by her side. She’d never been offered friendship so readily, but something about the woman was so solid and good. Delta felt as if she’d finally met the very friend she’d been looking for all her life.

As the two women stepped onto the platform between the cars, gunfire suddenly shattered the rhythmic rattle of the train. Men on horseback galloped alongside the track shouting and shooting in the air.

Audrey shoved Delta inside and pushed her low in their seat. “Hell’s bells and buttermilk!” she shouted. “We’re goin’ to be robbed!”

Then, for the first time since Delta had met her, Audrey Gates had nothing else to say.

Chapter 3

T
he clatter of the train’s wheels blended with the low rumble of horses’ hooves, rivaling the iron machine’s speed. Women screamed and ducked for cover while the few men on the train scrambled for the best defensive positions from which to fire. The whistle blew a long cry and was answered by gunfire.

Men on horseback galloped close to the windows, waving rifles as Jennie had always imagined a war party of Indians would brandish their spears just before the kill. She’d been told to stay down, but fascination ran with fear through her veins. Never in her life had she seen such excitement.

“Fire back at them!” she shouted at the marshal who shared her bench seat.