Thunder on the Plains (62 page)

“Things have never felt more right,” she said quietly, “in spite of the awful hell we've just been through. I guess we've had a wedding night we'll remember the rest of our lives.”

They were back in Sunny's private car, and the train was pulled to a railroad siding for the night, everyone still too jittery to travel after dark.

Colt kissed her hair. “I've been thinking, Sunny. How about if we go find you a horse before we leave Salt Lake City in the morning? We can board it in the boxcar with Dancer. I thought it might be nice to ride back from Promontory, at least to Cheyenne. We could catch a train there to Omaha, or just keep riding if we want. The rest of the family can go on to California like they planned. I'd like to forget that part and just you and me and Bo have some time alone. We haven't been riding together since you came out to me two years ago.”

She lay there quietly for a moment, thinking about the joy she had found those two beautiful days, the pain of having to give it all up and marry Blaine. “Yes,” she answered softly. “I'd like that.” She moved to look into his eyes. “Just you and me and Bo, riding free. I don't want to think about work and decisions and stocks and bonds and all those things for a while.”

He frowned. “By the way, if I'm going to have a hand in all that, I say there should be no more bribing and underhanded stock deals and illegal bogus companies that double the money in our pockets at the government's expense.”

“Oh, Colt, that's how business survives,” she teased.

“Well, I say we try a new tactic—like honesty and integrity. You're the one who told me you admired those traits, wanted to teach them to Bo. You don't want him growing up knowing what a scheming trickster his mother is, do you?”

She laughed lightly. “All right. But you'll have a fine time persuading Vince to deal honestly and fairly with people. Here he is finally ready to teach you a few things, and you're going to hit him with things like integrity and above-the-table dealings? That should get the two of you off to a good start.”

He tangled his hands in her hair. “Well, maybe
I'll
be the one to teach
him
a thing or two. Vince and I are going to get along just fine.”

She grinned. “I'll have fun watching that one.”

“You'll see.” He kissed her eyes. “Right now I'm just glad to be alive, and so is he.”

She sighed, studying him lovingly. “I think you've really won him over.” She traced her fingers over his eyebrows. “You'll be taking me and Bo riding. I'd like to do something exciting for you too. I was thinking you would enjoy sailing on my yacht out on Lake Michigan. You should try it, Colt. I'll bet you'd love to learn how to sail, and I know you'd love it out on the lake. It kind of reminds me of the West—big and wide and endless. Father used to take me a lot when I was younger, but I haven't been sailing in years. Now I'm going to make more time, for
everything
, especially for my husband and son.”

“Good,” he said, kissing her lightly. “I don't know about me and that big lake. I've never been out on that much water. I'm more used to prairie grass under my feet—solid ground.”

She grinned. “Well, we'll do a little of both.” She found his lips and pressed against him, but Colt winced and pulled away a little. Sunny noticed the deep purple bruise on his upper right arm where Vince had grasped him so tightly. She kissed it. “Thank God,” she whispered.

***

Colt stood beside Sunny as the speeches were made. She had been asked to speak herself, but this day was so emotional for her that she declined. Just being present for this historic moment, Colt standing beside her as her husband, was enough.

The golden spike was driven into place, and the message was telegraphed across the country with the simple word “Done.” Unbeknownst to Sunny and the others, guns were fired into the air in many cities, bands played, people cheered and danced in the streets. The transcontinental railroad was completed, joined in the midst of the rugged Promontory Mountains, in the dry, barren area north of the Great Salt Lake.

Here at the actual site, Sunny could almost see Bo Landers standing on the U.P.'s huge locomotive
Engine
119
, as it steamed slowly ahead to touch cowcatchers with the Central Pacific's
Jupiter
. Men cheered, hats were thrown into the air, wine and whiskey were broken out. Sunny wept, thinking about all she had been through to come to this, and how right it was that Colt Travis should be there with her. Her joy of the moment had only been enhanced when before the ceremony several men congratulated Colt on his rescue of the Landers family, which, to Sunny's surprise, most people at the site knew about. She had no idea how much the news had spread and what a thrilling story the newspapers had made of it. Even Tom Canary had shaken Colt's hand.

She wiped her eyes, looking up at Colt. “You were my best friend through it all,” she told him tearfully. Colt embraced her, realizing how meaningful this moment was for her, how she had fought for it, so much alone in keeping the dream for her father. He looked past her to see Vince approaching. Colt pulled away from Sunny, and she turned when Vince said her name. To her surprise, the man embraced her.

“You did it, Sunny. I have to hand it to you,” he told her.

Sunny broke into bitter sobbing and hugged him tighter. “This is more important,” she managed to tell him. Brother and sister stood embracing, and Vi stood nearby, weeping at a sight she never thought possible. Stuart, his broken arm in a sling, wiped quietly at his eyes.

Colt left to get Dancer and a palomino mare he had purchased in Salt Lake City for Sunny to ride. Both horses were already packed with necessary supplies for their ride back east, and he and Sunny had both already dressed for their journey. In spite of the formal ceremony that had just taken place, Sunny had worn a simple brown suede riding habit, and Colt wore denims and a calico shirt.

He strapped on his gun, wanting to be ready to protect his wife and son on their journey back through rugged country. Stuart had worried at first about their traveling alone, but that was what they wanted. Colt smiled with remembered embarrassment when he thought of how Sunny had reminded Stuart it was Colt Travis she would be with. “I'll have the best scout and guide a person can hire right with me,” she had boasted.

He secured the holster with ties around his thigh. No, there would be no extra guards on this trip. For once they would be totally alone in the land they loved, not as tentative lovers who never knew how long they could be together, but as husband and wife, the way it should have been years ago.

He took the horses from the train and brought them over to where Sunny was still talking to the rest of the family, now hugging Vi. There came a barrage of handshaking and good-byes, and Colt mounted up, reaching down and taking Bo from Sunny's arms. She mounted the palomino, and amid more cheers and gunfire from the surrounding crowd they rode off together, leaving the continued noisy celebrations behind them. They headed out into beautiful mountainous country.

“Tom Canary told me that Henry Villard is talking about another railroad farther north,” Sunny told him.

“Who's Henry Villard?”

Sunny smiled. “A very rich business tycoon who doesn't know what else to do with all his money.”

“Like somebody else I know?”

Sunny laughed. “They're calling it the Great Northern, and Canary is already thinking of investing.”

“You trying to tell me something?”

“Sounds kind of exciting, don't you think? This railroad thing can get in a person's blood. What do you say, Mr. Travis? Should we invest?”

“Depends how involved you want to get. You planning on being out there at the construction sites?”

She shrugged. “You know that country better than I do. Is it really as pretty as they say up in the Dakotas and Montana?”

“Prettier than anything you can imagine.”

They rode quietly for a moment, then looked at each other. “I imagine they could use someone to oversee the surveyors and scouts, someone with a lot of experience in that field,” Sunny hinted. “If we owned enough shares, we would want to be very involved. It would certainly be exciting, wouldn't it?”

Colt grinned and shook his head. “What will we do with all the babies you're going to have?”

“Oh, where there's a will, and enough money, there is a way around any obstacle.”

“You can't wait to go out and find something else to spend your money on, can you?”

“It's just a thought. Right now it doesn't matter. Right now I'm having the most wonderful time of my life.” She left him then, kicking the palomino into a hard run and riding ahead of him, yelling like an Indian.

Colt laughed, wondering how they both could have been such fools to deny themselves all these years. He swore he would by God make up for it. He would learn what he needed to learn, but he would make sure Sunny left that world of wealth and power often for simple pleasures like this. He urged Dancer into a harder run to catch up with her, letting out a war whoop. Little Bo screamed and giggled. His father's arm was around him, and he was not afraid.

Just as the great Rocky Mountains are majestic in their reach toward the heavens, so is there a majesty to the Great Plains of the American West. They stretch for hundreds of miles of aloneness, sometimes flat, sometimes rising and falling like frozen ocean waves. There has always been a thunder on the plains…from violent spring storms that hit without warning…or in another time the pounding of buffalo hooves, or the rumbling locomotive that once snaked its way across vast stretches of grassland and wildflowers, its great steam engine dwarfed by the immensity of the land.

This story is about yet another kind of thunder, the kind that comes from two hearts beating, from a love as great and enduring as the land itself. Although the historical background for this novel is the building of the Union Pacific from Omaha, Nebraska, to Promontory Point, Utah, it is more than the story of steel rails and eight-wheeled “iron horses.” It is a love story that begins well before the railroad becomes a reality, a love story that endures through the Civil War and the assassination of a president.

Thunder
on
the
Plains
introduces the men who planned and schemed to build a railroad to reap great financial rewards; and the men who did the actual building, risking their lives against Indians, an unforgiving landscape, and the elements. It is equally the story of a woman of unusual courage and determination; a woman of great passion whose devotion to her father and her vow to finish his dream surpassed all other wants and needs; a woman of self-sacrifice whose strength and power was matched only by the great steam locomotives and the railroad empire itself.

The main characters in this novel and their personal stories are fictitious, and any resemblance to people who actually existed is purely coincidental. However, Dr. Thomas Durant and General John Casement are true characters so important to the building of the Union Pacific that I could not leave them out of this story. I like to imagine that all my other characters really lived. Certainly there were many like them during this exciting era.

I hope in reading this book you will share the human triumph as well as human tragedy, that you will feel the excitement and pride that came with the building of a railroad and with the growth of a nation. Most of all, I hope you will remember the love story that follows the rails west.

If you would like more information about me and my books, please visit my web site at
www.rosannebittner.com
or my blog at
www.rosannebittner.blogspot.com
. You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, and view my author page at
www.amazon.com
or
www.sourcebooks.com
. And feel free to email me at [email protected]. Thank you!

Rosanne Bittner

Texas Pride

by Leigh Greenwood

A Prince among Men

Carla Reece had never met anyone more infuriating in her life. The blond giant who swaggered up to her door had no right to take over half her ranch—no matter how stupid her brother had been gambling it away in a high-stakes poker game. Her new foreman claimed to be some foreign royalty who promised to leave in a year. Still, a year was way too long to spend with a man who made her madder than a wet hen and weak in the knees all at the same time.

A Hellion among Women

Ivan may have charmed everyone in town into thinking he was the perfect gentleman, but Carla knew better. There had to be a chink in his armor—a red-hot passion under that calm, cool gaze. But once she finds it, she may be in for more than she ever bargained for…

Praise for Leigh Greenwood:

“For a fast-paced story of the Wild West, Leigh Greenwood is one of the best.”
—
RT Book Reviews

For more Leigh Greenwood, visit:

www.sourcebooks.com