by Linda Ellen
The two chuckled in unholy camaraderie as they paused a few feet away from Pauline’s hiding place. Through the leaves of the plant, she saw both of the men look to the right and left to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “How many more pigeons you think you’ll be able to pluck before you fly this coup?” the other man asked. “And what about that skirt you’ve been chasing?”
“I have a few more birds on the string that’ll give up their feathers. The Simmons Mansion sustained quite a bit of damage in the flood and old man Simmons is taking estimates. I conned the skirt into putting in a good word for my company. Word is the old man’s got his fingers in at least three different pies—railroads, shipping and even a coal mine, so you know his coffers are full. If I can hook that one, it’ll be a good chunk of change.” Continuing on toward the hall, he added, “And the skirt, well, I’ve just about got her—” he stopped as he and his compadre came level with Pauline’s hideout.
As her gaze met Barrow’s, a cold chill ran down her spine. The expression in those black obsidian eyes of his told her he instantly realized she had more than certainly heard the last part of the conversation.
Recovering quickly, however, he simpered, “Why Pauline, my dear...fancy finding you here. Come to collect your sister I presume? I think I saw her over at the check-in desk chatting with the clerk.”
Pauline’s heart was thumping so hard she was sure he could hear it. Her mouth had gone completely dry and she tried to moisten her lips in an attempt to swallow. What could she say? What reason could she give for her obvious concealment? She’d never been talented at deception. She wasn’t even good at keeping a secret for someone’s birthday.
The other man bid them a hasty adieu and disappeared back the way he and Barrow had come, leaving her alone at the entrance to an empty hall with a man that she now knew to be at the very least a swindler and at the worst, a dangerous foe.
She raised a hand to her throat as he took a step closer…
Chapter 2
Brownville, Nebraska
T obias “Toby” Keller, squinted through the passenger train’s dusty window to his right at the landscape he’d known all his life. His heart beat a bit faster, seemingly in cadence with the wheels, as the train came around the last bend before Brownville’s red brick depot. Moments later, the engine’s wheels screeched and the boiler released a cacophony of loud, voluminous steam as the train slowed to a stop.
It was nine o’clock on a cool spring morning as the two passenger cars quickly emptied and the travelers hurried on to their destinations.
Since he was traveling alone, Toby politely waited and allowed the ladies, couples, and families with children to exit the train first. He didn’t recognize any of them and he was a bit puzzled at that as he acknowledged the mumbled thanks of the last person to pass.
Placing his black Stetson firmly on his head, he dropped his hand down to smooth his neatly trimmed beard and mustache, an unconscious habit, before grasping his carpetbag and rising from his seat to walk to the end of the car.
Stepping down on solid ground, he moved a few paces, only to stop and glance around, marveling at the vast changes before him since the last time he had stood on the wooden platform. From there he could see new streets that stretched out and up the hill from the river, branching off in two directions where homes and businesses lined the brick surfaces of the thoroughfare.
A sign on the side of the depot proudly proclaimed Welcome to Brownville! Population 1,246 and growing! Toby shook his head as he pondered that. The last time he’d seen that sign was when he had stood on the back of the caboose of his departing train as it took him away to Nebraska City. Then it had read 853. A lot had apparently happened to his home town in eight years.
At the conductor’s “All aboard!”, the fares that had been waiting for the train’s timely arrival began to make their way out of the warm depot toward the shiny black and bright red conveyance that would take them along the thirty-mile spur to Nebraska City and onward on their respective journeys.
“Can I help you, mister?” a voice asked from off to his right.
He turned and met the blue gaze of the first familiar person he’d encountered. Good old Charlie Cooper, Brownville’s telegraph operator and ticket agent. Toby wondered abstractly if the man ever aged. He’ll probably be welcoming trains to Brownville when he turns 100. The man’s expression slowly changed from merely polite to a grin that took over his face as recognition dawned.
“Well, I’ll be a sap headed donkey. Young Toby Keller…is that you?” he asked, moving his head from side to side as if he thought he might be seeing things. “From the looks of you, I’d say you ain’t that clumsy, shy kid anymore, huh? Ain’t seen you in…how long? Seven years?”
“Eight,” Toby replied, relaxing just a bit and stepping the rest of the way toward the man with his hand extended. He shook Charlie’s hand with a good, firm grip. A man’s confident grip.
“Good to see you, Mr. Cooper…although I usually go by Tobias now,” he added as he watched Charlie’s keen eye for detail look him over.
“Hair’s a bit darker, not so carroty,” Charlie observed. “And with that scruff on your jaw and over your lip, I almost didn’t recognize you.” Toby chuckled as he lifted a hand to smooth the aforementioned scruff. He’d worn the facial hair for at least two years and had forgotten he would look quite a bit different to anyone who had known him before. That is, to anyone who would remember him as that shy, clumsy kid.
The ticket agent opened his mouth to say more, but movement caught his eye beyond Toby’s shoulder and he mumbled, “Just a sec…” before ambling toward the end of the train and tossing the heavy looking canvas sack he was carrying to the conductor who was waiting at the end of the second passenger car. Keeping his hands lifted, he then caught a similar bag from the man, and Toby could see it was stamped on the side, U.S. MAIL.
“Thanks, Bratcher,” Charlie called with a wave. “See you on the morrow.” The man returned the sentiment.
All the passengers had climbed on board, and the conductor signaled the engineer. At once, steam hissed and the train’s big wheels jerked before beginning its return trip to Nebraska City—backward.
When Charlie turned back to Toby, he offered, “Well, young man. Come on inside and sit a spell while I get this mail sorted. I’ve got a fresh pot of hot coffee if you’ve a mind.” He motioned for Toby to follow him as he made his way across the platform and inside the brick depot. The interior was pleasantly warm from the potbelly stove stationed in the corner.
Toby shut the door behind him and shucked his sheepskin jacket before moving to the coffee pot on the stove. Removing a cup from those hanging from hooks on the adjacent wall, he filled it with the hot brew.
Turning as he took a sip, he watched as Charlie made short work of sorting the incoming mail into cubbies on the wall. Toby huffed a quiet snort, remembering the many times he had watched the man do the same thing in years past—only back then there were just a few pieces of mail per week for the agent to handle.
“Back to visit your ma and your sisters and little brother?” Cooper asked. Before Toby had a chance to answer, he continued, “How’s Poppy doin’? Heard she got married not long after your grandma passed, after you two went to Champaign to help take care of her. Heard also that your grandpappy taught you the marshalling business. Nettie says he taught you to shoot, track, and hunt outlaws, that you’re fast as lightning and a crack shot. All that true?”
Toby chuckled and took off his hat, reaching up to give his head a scratch. Charlie, always with his finger on the pulse of any details to be known about a member of his town, had pretty much hit everything right square in the bull’s eye.
Picturing his tough-as-nails grandfather, Hampton Gibson, who had, in fact, taught Toby everything he knew about being a town marshal, Toby smiled fondly. The old man never aged. Big and strapping, six foot six and broad across the shoulders, he’d been the marshal of Champaign County, Illinoi
s for over two decades and showed no signs of slowing down. “Sounds like you know more about me than I know ‘bout myself, Mr. Cooper.”
Charlie chuckled as he tossed a few letters into a slot. “Aw well, you know how it is. Proud mamas like to talk about their kids to anyone who’ll listen. Your ma, Nettie, is no exception to that rule.”
Placing the last letter into its slot, Charlie folded the bag and stashed it away. “Poppy doing good?” he asked again about Toby’s sister, explaining, “She was a good girl, that Poppy. Always had a soft spot for her…kinda like the daughter I never had.”
Perching a hip on a stool by the counter, Toby smiled with a nod as he thought about his older-by-two-years sister, Augusta “Poppy” Kent. Her nickname originated, he knew, from the fact that she had been conceived in a field of wild poppies as Nettie, their mother, and their father—her newlywed husband, Jonathan—were traveling on a wagon train to Nebraska with the second wave of homesteaders that would eventually settle in Brownville. The train had stopped for a few days of rest and his parents had stolen away for some much-needed alone time. He also knew that it was Poppy’s regular letters to their mother that had kept her supplied with the particulars of his life, as he wasn’t much of a letter writer, nor one to boast of his accomplishments.
“Yep, she’s good,” he answered. “Her husband Fred’s a good man. Takes real good care of her and their three kids.” He smiled as he pictured his two nieces and his two-year-old nephew Freddie, and what a pistol the boy was, always getting into mischief.
“Your ma’s been hopin’ you’d come to visit…” Charlie ventured, casting Toby a look as he sat down at his desk near the side window. “I know she’s sent you at least three letters…since Al died…”
Toby took in a slow deep breath as the image of Al, his stepfather, floated around in his mind like a daguerreotype on the surface of a pond. Once Toby had climbed aboard that train with his sister eight years before, he had set his face forward and refused to allow the lingering shadows of the man’s taunts and insults to affect him any longer. The problem was, he acknowledged, in the process he had emotionally and mentally cut himself off from everything and everyone back home. After all…once his mother had remarried, home had no longer been a pleasant place. It no longer felt like home.
Al Shoup had married his mother, Nettie, about six months after his father, Jonathan, had died in a wagon accident, leaving behind his beloved wife, three girls and a son, Toby.
The man had been charming, even helpful and deceptively nice after Jonathan had died. He’d come sniffing around the cabin, making up to Nettie and managed to make himself indispensable to the grieving widow.
But it had all been an act. The proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Once he’d put a ring on Nettie’s finger, he might as well have put a ring through her nose.
To say that Al had been hard to live with and treated all of the Keller children roughly would be an understatement. As Toby had been the only boy and with his close resemblance to his deceased father, Al had been exceptionally hard and insulting toward him. His derision had weighed on Toby so badly, he had suffered nightmares and his self-esteem had plummeted to practically nil. Toby hated thinking back on those days and how dumb and clumsy he had been. So many embarrassing incidents…like being the catalyst for his friend Finn Maynard’s broken leg.
The memories came flooding back and Toby ground his teeth. His stepfather had made his mother sell the cabin and their farm and move into a small clapboard house in town—situated directly behind his saloon, The Ram’s Horn. From then on, the man had verbally beat them down, while constantly complaining about everything under the sun. Mainly, the Lucky Buck, Brownville’s most patronized business. “My place is just as good as the Buck,” Al had griped more times than Toby could count. “I don’t see why I don’t have the business they do. It just ain’t fair.” Truth was, however, that Al’s place was smaller, he never cleaned the floor or the spittoons, and he watered down his whiskey. It appealed to a lower clientele.
Over the years, Toby had watched his mother change from a happy, healthy, beautiful mother and wife to her childhood sweetheart—into a nervous, skittish woman whose hair had turned prematurely gray. She lost weight and Shoup never let her buy new clothing or any of the other womanly things that other ladies in town had.
The only bright spots in her life were her children, the four she’d had with her true love and the two she had borne for Al. Toby’s half-sister Sherry Ann Shoup was now about thirteen, Toby calculated, and his only brother, Tad, was eleven. Tad’s actual name was Alfred Theodore, after his father, but his mother insisted he be called Tad. Toby knew it was because she wanted desperately for her youngest to grow up to be nothing like his father. Although Tad had only been three when Toby had left town, he remembered the happy child Tad had been. In their mother’s letters over the years, she had confided to her eldest daughter that Tad had grown into a friendly, cheerful boy, largely because Nettie did everything she could to find things for him to do away from home and away from Al’s bad influence. Thankfully, Al was far too preoccupied with trying to make the Ram’s Horn more profitable and hadn’t focused on dominating his young son.
“How old are you now, Toby…uh, Tobias?” Charlie inquired with a wink as he shuffled the papers on his desk.
Dragging his thoughts back to the present, Toby mentally shook himself free and answered, “Turned twenty-five in January, Mr. Cooper.”
“Aw, call me Charlie. We’re friends, ain’t we?” the friendly man grinned.
Toby grinned back, thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be as difficult as he had feared, coming back to his hometown and seeing so many people who would remember him as a boy of sixteen and still wet behind the ears. “All right. Charlie.”
“Twenty-five, huh?” the ticket agent gave a nod. “You married yet? Got a girl waitin’ for you back in Champaign?”
Toby pressed his lips together and moved his head in the negative. “Nope. On both counts. Executing the duties of a deputy takes up most all of my time,” he qualified. “’Sides, never met a girl that held my attention for long.” The way Ma and Pa were with each other… Visions of his parents chasing one another, laughing and tickling, teasing, hugging and kissing, and staring wonderingly into one another’s eyes floated across his mind.
After several moments, Charlie cleared his throat and Toby met his eyes again as the older man prompted, “I imagine your ma’s anxious to see you, and wondering if you were on this morning’s train…”
A feeling of dread tried to come over Toby, but he fought it back and stood to his feet, setting his face like flint the way his grandfather had taught him. Hampton Gibson’s deep, strong voice resonated in his mind like a favorite song on a player piano. Always face the enemy as if you have no fear, Tobias. Whether that enemy is a person, an animal, or just your own feelings. Face it and beat it. Don’t let it best you.
Firmly placing his Stetson back on his head and reaching for his jacket, he shrugged back into it as he reminded himself that his hated stepfather, Al Shoup, was gone—and even if he weren’t, there would no longer have been a reason to fear him. Toby would have met him man to man if need be. The old fear he was feeling was just that—old fear. Specters of hurts and habits from the past that no longer had the power to intimidate him.
Meeting his old friend’s caring look, he fought back a grimace and went for a neutral smile.
“You’re probably right about that, since I didn’t let her know I was coming.” He smirked at the telegraph operator, knowing the man already knew he hadn’t announced his arrival in advance.
“Thanks for the coffee. It was good to see you again, Charlie.”
“Likewise, son. Don’t be a stranger.”
“I’ll be around.”
With a tip of his hat, Toby made his way outside and turned toward Water Street.
Chapter 3
O n Sunday afternoon, Pauline’s family had finished their noon meal after return
ing from church, and were now sitting around the kitchen table in their modest shotgun house on Sixth Street.
“I don’t know what you should do, but you’ve got to tell someone,” Olivia insisted for the tenth time in the two days since Pauline had practically dragged her out of their brother’s cab.
However, before precocious, twelve-year-old twins Grace and Faith’s curiosity could ignite and they demanded to know what Pauline should tell, Pearl sent them outside to the backyard with a licorice stick apiece and told them to enjoy the sunshine. The adults could see the girls weren’t happy about being banished to the yard, but this wasn’t a topic they needed to hear. Grace, the more level-headed of the two and always the first to obey her elders, grasped her sister by the sleeve and dragged her along.
“Indeed,” Pauline wholeheartedly agreed as she watched her two youngest siblings, who were wearing identical pale blue dresses with tiny yellow flowers, run out the back door. “But who?” Sharing a heartfelt look of exasperation with her mother and her brother, she added with a groan, “What a mess this has turned out to be! If I’d only listened to my conscience and not done what he asked.”
“That is all well and good, but it’s water under the bridge now,” Pearl acknowledged. “I wish you would have come to me and told me what that man wanted you to do. I would have told you emphatically not to do it. You obviously didn’t know him as well as you thought.”
“I should have gone in there and beat the tar out of him,” Dwight growled, causing their mother to reach over and pat his arm.
“Now now, son, that wouldn’t have helped. And if the man is as dangerous as Pauline fears, who knows what he would have done to retaliate. I don’t want you to get hurt,” Pearl added with the firm declaration of a mother bear.
“Nor do I,” Pauline echoed as she cast her chivalrous brother a look of tender rebuke. “Which is precisely why I didn’t tell you when Livvy and I got in the cab.”
