Travis (3 page)

The train whistled again and Slade took the carpetbags and swung up on the coach. “Come on, Boss.”

Duke grinned and winked at her. “Now you make me some money while I’m gone, honey, and I’ll bring you something pretty from the big city.”

“That’ll be nice,” she said without enthusiasm. A plan began to form in her mind. Maybe with Duke and his gunfighter gone, she might figure out how to get away, maybe escape to a new life somewhere. She’d dreamed of it a hundred times. But how? Duke made sure she never had more than a few dollars in her purse. “Bye, Duke.”

“See you in a week.” The gambler swung up on the coach as the train began to move. Violet waved as the train pulled out and she stood there a long moment, watching it leave the station. She should get back to the Diamond Horseshoe. The evening crowd would be coming in and it was her job to get them to gamble and buy her expensive, watered-down drinks.

She turned and walked down the length of the platform, thinking wistfully of the big Texas lawman. Now there was a man who looked like he would love and protect his woman. He probably had one waiting for him back in the Lone Star state.

She rounded a corner and stopped. Sitting on a bench on the now deserted platform were four forlorn children sharing a small bag of crackers. They looked up at her as she paused.

“Lady, do you want to adopt us?” The oldest, a boy of about eleven, asked. He was bone-thin and held a crutch.

She shook her head and saw the gloom descend over the four little faces. There was a Chinese boy who might be ten, a red-haired little girl of maybe seven or eight who was chewing her nails, and a small blond girl hardly more than a baby. The blond one began to cry.

“I’m sorry.” Violet knelt down in front of the quartet. “But I don’t have a home or I’d take you all.”

The red-haired girl sighed. She had freckles and buck teeth. “Everyone’s got an excuse. No one wants us, we’re all rejects.” She began to chew her nails.

Violet’s heart melted. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

The Chinese boy said, “Yes, it is. They’re sending us back to the orphanage.”

The little blond baby began to cry again.

“Hush, Boo Hoo,” the oldest boy said. “Crying won’t do any good.”

“You’re going to an orphanage?” Violet asked.

“Nobody wants us,” said the red-haired girl.

“I do,” Violet said before she thought and all the children stopped eating crackers and looked up at her with hope in their eyes. Now what? She had no plan and no money to speak of, and was trying to get away herself, yet she couldn’t let these pitiful children be sent to an orphanage. What on earth could she do?

Violet’s mind was busy as she knelt by the children’s bench in her red satin dress. The bright feathers in her hair touched the littlest one’s nose and the child stopped crying and laughed. “Feathers,” she said.

“No, my name is Violet,” she corrected. “How did you four get here?”

“Well,” said the little red-haired girl with the buck teeth, “we’re part of an orphan train.”

“An orphan train?”

“Yes.” The thin, oldest boy nodded and for the first time, Violet noted one of his legs was shorter than the other. “We got no parents. They gathered us up and put us in an orphanage in New York, and then they put us on a train and brought us west.”

“Where are your parents?” Violet asked kindly.

“We don’t know.” The Chinese boy shrugged. “We’re lost or maybe they’re dead. The train stops at each town and they parade the children and people pick one or two.”

“But nobody picked us,” said the red-haired girl, “and you can see why.”

“Nonsense!” Violet said. “You look like great kids to me.”

“I’m crippled so they call me Limpy,” said the oldest boy, leaning on his crutch. “I wouldn’t be much help on a farm.”

“I’m Harold,” said the Chinese boy.

“Harold?”

“I picked it myself,” he answered proudly. “Nobody wants an Oriental kid. That one there is Kessie.” He pointed to the redhead. “She’s not pretty and she wants to be a suffragist, so nobody wants her.”

The baby was crying again.

“Why does she cry?” Violet asked.

“Nobody knows. Boo Hoo cries all the time,” Limpy put in. “She wets her drawers, too.”

Violet looked at the little sack of crackers. “Who’s looking after you?”

“The orphanage people,” Kessie said. “They’ve gone to have a fancy dinner with the town’s mayor. They said they’d be back in time for the late evening train.”

“Then,” sighed Limpy, “we’ll be headed back east to the orphanage.”

“Not if I can do anything about it,” Violet said with determination and stood up.

The three older children looked hopeful and the toddler waved her pudgy hand toward Violet’s head again and stopped crying. “Feathers.”

What to do? She’d just made a promise she had no idea how to keep, but these four were looking up at her with such hope in their thin, sad faces.

“Come along with me.” She motioned to them.

“The orphanage lady told us to sit right here until she came back,” Harold informed her.

“Well, no, you’re going with me,” Violet said with more determination than she felt.

“Are you adopting us?” Kessie asked.

“Well, sort of. Now come along.”

The children dutifully got up off the bench and followed along behind Violet as she started off the train platform and out into the bustling street. They must make a strange sight, Violet thought as she walked—a saloon girl in bright red satin with scarlet feathers in her hair and four thin, ragged children trailing along behind her.

People turned to stare, but no one said anything or tried to question her. At any moment, she expected to hear the sheriff yelling, “Stop! You’re kidnapping those children!”

Or worse yet, the orphanage lady running after them, having her thrown in jail for kidnapping and putting the children on a train back to New York City.

What the hell had she been thinking? They’d be expecting her back at the Diamond Horseshoe by dark, but as busy as they were tonight with all those people crowding in for the run, maybe they wouldn’t miss her for hours.

“Slow down,” Kessie called. “Boo Hoo can’t walk fast.”

Violet paused and turned to look. All the children were puffing and the little blond baby was crying again. Limpy had fallen way behind but was trying manfully to catch up, walking with his crutch.

Harold looked up at her with his big almond eyes. “I’m hungry. Have you got any food?”

She tried to remember what she had heard about Oriental people. “You want rice, right?”

He made a face. “I hate rice. I’d go for some fried potatoes.”

“I don’t have anything right now.” Violet tried to think. She couldn’t take them back to the saloon to feed because Frenchie, the bartender, would toss them out in the street. She opened her tiny reticule and searched through it; just what she’d thought, not more than a dollar, so she couldn’t take them into a café. Besides, they’d attract too much attention in a restaurant and someone might call the sheriff. How could she have gotten herself into such a mess? She’d been making plans to get away while Duke and Slade were gone, but she had no chance with no money and all these extra mouths to feed. Why had she taken them on? Then she looked down into four sad faces and knew. Three large, lurching wagons passed, stirring up dust, all headed for the south edge of town to wait for Monday’s land run. Then she had a thought: was it possible she could beg a ride into the Indian Territory for herself and four little urchins? Right now, she didn’t have a better idea.

People didn’t seem to be staring at the children as much as they were at her. After all, there were a lot of children with the settlers, but one seldom saw a saloon girl in red satin walking down the street leading such a bedraggled parade. She had to blend in. How?

“Kids, I’ll figure out something.”

Limpy smiled up at her. “You’re pretty. How come you aren’t married?”

“I’d like to be,” she blurted before she thought. Who would marry a saloon girl? Maybe if she got to a new town where they didn’t know her, she could start all over again.

They began walking again and passed a wagon parked out in front of the general store. A pretty young girl stuck her head out the back. “That’s an awfully pretty dress, miss.”

Violet paused and looked up at the country girl, thinking she was being sarcastic, but the girl looked friendly. “Would you like to own it?”

“Sure,” said the girl, “but I reckon it cost a lot. I don’t have any money.”

Violet thought fast. The girl in the covered wagon was about her size and wore a plain blue gingham dress. “I’ll trade you even up,” Violet said. “Your dress for mine.”

“You must be joking,” the girl said. “Your dress is so fancy.”

“I’m not joking,” Violet answered. “I’ll climb up there and we’ll just switch clothes.”

The girl hesitated. “I don’t know what Pa will say when he comes out of the store.”

“Well, put on something else and hide it from him,” Violet said. “Just think, when you get to your new town, how pretty you’ll be in this dress.”

The girl giggled. “I’ll do it!” She reached down, took Violet’s hand and lifted her into the wagon.

In minutes, Violet clambered down to the street wearing the blue gingham and plain black shoes, looking like any country girl.

Boo Hoo looked up at her. “Feathers.” She smiled.

“Oh, those.” Violet reached up to yank the scarlet plumes out of her brown hair and handed them to the girl in the wagon.

Boo Hoo started crying. Violet picked her up. Her bloomers were wet. “Feathers,” Boo Hoo wept.

“My name is Violet, like the flowers,” she corrected. “Folks say my eyes are just that color. Now come along, before her pa comes out of that store.”

They walked a little farther. It was late afternoon now and would soon be dusk.

“Gosh,” said Kessie, “you look almost like a kid yourself in that dress, Violet.”

“Yes, I know. Men always said I could pass for a kid if I needed to.” She stopped dead, an idea beginning to form in her mind. She set Boo Hoo down on the edge of the wooden sidewalk and the child promptly began to cry.

“Please stop,” Violet begged.

Limpy leaned on his crutch. “You’re wasting your breath, ma’am. She cries all the time; that’s why no one wanted to adopt her even if she is pretty.”

“And she wets her drawers,” Harold added.

“Oh, Lord.” She had half a mind to take them all back to the train station and leave them. She might manage an escape by herself, but dragging along four orphans made it nearly impossible.

Kessie looked at her intently, still chewing her nails. “You taking us back to the train?”

That one was too smart.

“I didn’t give it a thought,” Violet lied because all four looked so sad. She walked over and looked at her reflection in a nearby horse trough. Kessie was right, she did look much younger in the plain blue dress, except for all the face paint and eye kohl. Maybe, just maybe, her new idea might work. She leaned over and began to wash her face, shoving aside a bay mare drinking there and trying not to think of how many horses had drunk out of this trough.

Now she turned back to face the children as she dried her face on her cotton skirt. “Better?”

Harold pursed his lips. “You didn’t quite get it all.”

Back to the horse trough.

“What about now? Do you think I could pass as a kid myself?”

The children eyed her critically.

Kessie said, “You better do something about your hair. It’s too fancy up on your head. Little girls don’t do that.”

Violet knew her hair was fancy. Didn’t the Diamond Horseshoe have a black maid who kept all the whores’ hair looking good?

Violet took her hairpins out and her brown locks fell well below her small shoulders. She began to comb it with her fingers. Then as the children watched, she braided her hair into two pigtails. “Now how do I look?”

They all stared at her. “Young,” they said in unison, except Boo Hoo, who said, “Feathers.”

Violet sighed. “Okay, I am just like all of you; I came off the orphan train and I’m thirteen years old, going on fourteen.”

Kessie looked up at her. “You want us to lie?”

Oh, dear, she had gotten an orphan with scruples. She’d make a good suffragette all right. “We’ll just pretend for a while, okay? You see, there’s a bad man looking for me, too, and I need to run away just like you do. Maybe all five of us can do it.”

Limpy drew a circle in the dust with his crutch. “Now just how are we going to do that?”

“I haven’t quite figured that one out yet, but I’m working on it, okay? Now remember, I am Violet and I am thirteen years old.”

All the children nodded. Could she pull this off? And even if she could, how was she going to get all five of them out of town when she didn’t have enough money for even one train ticket? She leaned over and looked at her reflection in the horse trough. She was short and slight. Duke had always complained about how small her breasts were. Maybe, just maybe, she could convince people that she was only thirteen years old, but then what?

It was turning dusk now on the bustling street.

“What are all these people doing here?” Limpy asked.

“I’m hungry,” Kessie said.

“We’re all hungry,” Violet answered. “All these people are here for the big land run day after tomorrow. They’ll all line up and the army will fire a cannon and they’ll race into Indian Territory.”

“And then what?” Kessie asked.

Boo Hoo was crying again and Violet picked her up, wet drawers and all, and hugged her close.

“Everybody races in,” Violet said, “and the ones who get there first will win a farm or a town lot so they can start a business.”

Limpy looked wistful. “That would be nice, if we had a farm or a ranch where we could all live as a family. I always wanted to be a cowboy.”

Kessie said, “You can’t be a cowboy, you’re crippled.”

“Hush,” Violet said. “That isn’t kind. Cowboys ride horses and in the saddle—it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a bad leg.”

They started walking again.

Harold said, “Why don’t we race and get a farm?”

“That’s silly.” Violet shrugged as they walked south along Main Street. “We don’t have any horses or equipment and besides, you have to be twenty-one to stake a claim.”

Kessie asked, “Are they allowing women to race or is this another thing just for men?”

Yes, this kid would make a great suffragette.

Violet shook her head. “No, I think women can race, too, but we don’t have any horses.” Besides which, Violet thought, she was only nineteen, going on twenty, so that let her out.

“I’m hungry,” Boo Hoo sobbed against her shoulder. The blue gingham was getting sodden and the child was heavy for a slight girl like herself to carry, but Violet gritted her teeth, adjusted the weight and started walking south again. They were almost to the edge of town. In the distance, she saw the wagons lined up by the dozens, the owners camping under the trees by the creek, waiting for Monday’s race.

She was hungry, too. Violet felt like weeping with Boo Hoo, but she knew crying didn’t do any good. She had to take action, just like she had when her mother died of yellow fever back in Memphis. After that, she and her little brother begged and stole food along the docks to survive. Then in desperation, she’d started picking up men on the streets to feed herself and Tommy. Poor Tommy. She choked back a sob. After three years, he got yellow fever in the summer and she had only herself to look after. She thought she could better herself by coming west, but no one wanted to hire her except saloon owners. She’d listened to Duke’s promises of marriage, but he was like the others, only wanting to use her himself and make money off her body. Well, now was her chance to escape, but she was weighed down with four children. What to do?

“I’m hungry,” said Kessie behind her.

“So am I,” Limpy echoed.

Boo Hoo began to cry again.

“I’ll get us some food,” Violet promised, but she wasn’t sure how. “Let’s walk over to all those wagon people. Maybe someone down that line will offer to feed us.”

They started walking and had to stop once for Limpy to catch up. “I’m sorry,” he said, shame-faced. “One of my legs is shorter than the other and I just can’t keep up.”

“It’s all right.” Violet patted his thin shoulder. “We can slow down a little.”