Trail of Golden Dreams

by Coverstone, Stacey

  “Look out!” Grey shouted.

  The Chinese man rolled, and the American slammed his head into the concrete doorstep and passed out. When the second man dove and plowed a fist into Grey’s gut, he doubled over and heard Josie scream. “Take that!” the man said, chopping the back of his neck.

  “Stop it!” Josie shrieked.

  Grey managed to knee him in the groin, but it didn’t seem to faze the man. He hitched up his pants and laughed.

  What the hell…? Grey pounced and boxed him in the ear just as he heard a clanging sound. The man wilted to the ground, thumped unconscious. Standing there was a young Chinese woman in a torn dress holding a frying pan in her hand. Grey thought she was the same girl who’d been screaming when they arrived on the scene.

  “Thank ya, ma’am,” he panted, as Josie ran to his side. “I’m okay, honey,” he told her, while reaching down to help the small Chinaman up from the sidewalk. “Are you alright, mister?” he asked.

  The young man was bleeding, and his shirt was ripped, but he smiled and replied in good English, “You cowboy from Colorado?”

  “What?” Grey wiped blood from a cut on his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he reopened them, he leaned against Josie so he wouldn’t fall down. “No, I ain’t no cowboy from Colorado. Who are you, mister?”

  “I’m He-ping. She’s Bao Yu.” The Chinaman pointed to the young woman holding the frying pan. She was rail-thin and tall with long black hair. “Thank you for helping fight.”

  Grey nodded. “Why were these men beating you?”

  He-ping frowned and hitched a thumb toward Bao Yu. “She sister. Pigs try to have sex with her. She no want sex. She no whore!” The fella was small but wiry, and certainly no match for the two big Americans, but Grey had to respect him for trying to protect his kin.

  He and Josie exchanged glances. He saw her blush. “Are you okay, ma’am?” he asked the woman. She nodded, so he assumed she spoke English as well as her brother.

  He-ping picked Grey’s black Stetson up from the ground, where it had flown during the fight. After dusting it off, he reverently handed it to him. “You sure you’re not cowboy from Colorado?” he repeated.

  Grey noticed the man walked with a limp. “No, dammit. I told you I’m not from Colorado. We’re from New Mexico. This is my wife, Josie, and my name’s Paladin.”

  “Hello, Paladin,” He-ping said, reaching out to shake hands with both of them.

  “You’d better get those wounds taken care of, friend,” Grey told him. “You’re bleeding from a few different holes.”

  He-ping waved him off. “I survive. Come inside. Bao Yu will fix tea. Or coffee. You like coffee, cowboy?”

  Grey chuckled. “Of course I like coffee. Who doesn’t like coffee?”

  He-ping spoke to his sister in Chinese, and she stepped inside the door. “Come, come,” the man said. “We visit.”

  “What do you think?” Grey whispered to Josie. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “They seem nice enough. The fella can speak good English. I wonder why he likes Colorado so much. I’m curious about him.”

  “I’ll admit, I am, too.”

  She smiled up at him. “Looks like we’ve found ourselves in the middle of another adventure.”

  “Looks that way.” They accepted He-ping’s offer to visit, but before going inside, Grey glared at the unconscious men. “What should we do about these two?”

  “Police will take them,” He-ping answered. “No worry. Come, Paladin.”

  Grey and Josie found themselves in a cramped, but clean room. He-ping’s sister served them coffee in real china cups.

  “Thank you. These cups are lovely,” Josie told Bao Yu before taking a sip. She appeared fascinated by the Chinese woman. Grey guessed them to be about the same age and guessed his wife had never seen an Oriental before. His Stetson hung over his knee, and he noticed their host kept staring at it. “He-ping, do you like my hat?”

  The man grinned, showing several empty spaces where teeth should have been. “My friend Tucker has hat like it.”

  “Who’s Tucker?” Grey asked. “Someone from Colorado?” He figured that was the case and wanted to learn more.

  “Yes. We work together on railroad, before I get hurt.” He-ping shoved his pants leg up, and they saw his leg was crippled. “I save money. Someday Bao Yu and I go to Colorado. Bao Yu will be wife of Tucker.”

  Grey and Josie both glanced at Bao Yu, who sat demurely with her hands folded. Her eyelashes fluttered as she sipped from her cup. She didn’t seem like the same girl who’d slammed a pan into that man’s head earlier. He-ping continued. “Tucker says much land in Colorado. Cheap land. We all make homestead.”

  That caught Grey’s attention. “Homestead? How much is this cheap land your friend Tucker told you about?”

  “Tucker say one dollar fifty for acre. Good land. Mountains. Rivers. Deer.”

  Grey leaned forward. “Where in Colorado?” He took a quick look at Josie and saw her eyes had widened.

  He-ping’s eyes were enlarged, too. Animation filled his face and his voice. “Northwest territories.” He jumped up and limped to a table in the corner and returned holding some documents. He shoved them at Grey to read. “Map show where land is.”

  After he skimmed the information and studied the map, Grey felt a quickening in his chest. He told Josie, “These documents appear legitimate and all in order. It says here the government is opening the Northwestern territories to homesteaders. Pioneers can buy at least one hundred sixty acres for one dollar fifty an acre.”

  She covered his hand with hers, and he could feel the pulse throbbing in it. “Do you have a good feeling or a bad feeling?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Very good.”

  She smiled from ear to ear.

  “He-ping, do you have some paper? I’d like to copy down the coordinates of this map and the particulars regarding the homesteading act.” He-ping slid his eyes to his sister, and Bao Yu stood up and pulled some paper from a drawer. She bowed politely when she handed it to Grey. After he’d scribbled everything down, he stuck the paper in his jacket pocket and told Josie they should be going. He was eager to talk to her in private.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” Josie told Bao Yu. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “You go to Colorado, Paladin?” He-ping asked as he escorted them to the door.

  “There’s a mighty good chance. I appreciate your sharing this information with me. My wife and I need a place to settle. This seems like an opportunity we can’t pass up.”

  “It’s good place, Colorado.” He-ping grinned. “Tucker say so.”

  Grey reached out his hand. “You and your sister, and Tucker, whoever he is, look us up if you ever get there.”

  “Okay, cowboy!” He-ping pumped Grey’s hand up and down. “See?” he said, pointing to the sidewalk. “Pigs gone.”

  Sure enough, they were. “Take care of yourself, He-ping,” Grey said. “You, too,” he told the sister.

  “Bye.” Josie leaned forward and hugged Bao Yu, even though she had no idea whether hugging was customary in their culture. She told Grey later she’d felt the girl needed a friendly embrace.

  He-ping told them where to catch a trolley bus, and they were able to find their way back to the hotel before the fog completely shrouded the city in darkness.

  Later that night, Grey found it hard to sleep. Josie, lying in his arms in the big bed, was just as wakeful.

  “Are you thinking we should set out for Colorado?” she asked, stroking his thigh with her fingernails. He kissed the top of her head. The woman could read his mind. It was all he’d been thinking about since they left the Chinaman’s house.

  “What do you think? Would it bother you not to go back to New Mexico?”

  She didn’t hesitate with her answer. “Wherever you go, I go. As long as we’re together, we could live in a tent in Timbuktu and I wouldn’t care.”

  A lump formed in his throat, and
he pulled her close. “I’d like to see Colorado again. You’d love it there. The mountains spoke to me when I traveled through. The wildlife is abundant, and there are plenty of grasses.” His voice grew soft. “I can picture our ranch there.”

  She sat up and kissed him. “Then I say we go.”

  He couldn’t believe how fortunate he was to have this spirited woman as his wife. The matter was sealed with a firm nod of his head. With the decision made, he fell asleep wound around her body like thread on a spool.

  Sometime in the night, they were awakened when the earth shook. Loud roaring accompanied the windows rattling, the floor shaking, and the bed slid a couple of feet forward.

  “What’s going on, Grey?” Josie screamed, crying and clinging to him.

  “Don’t know.”

  The incident lasted only ten seconds or so, but it was enough to unhinge them both. Scrambling off the bed, they threw on clothes and stumbled into the hallway to see other doors being flung open and terrified guests running from their rooms in their nightclothes.

  “What the hell was that?” Grey asked a gentleman walking by.

  “An earthquake, sir.”

  Josie and Grey stared at one another, each of them taking some steadying breaths.

  Some time later, after the chaos had died down and hotel management had assured all the guests it was safe to return to their rooms, Josie was afraid to go back to sleep. “Let’s leave when the sun rises,” she begged Grey. “I don’t want to stay in San Francisco anymore.”

  “What about the ocean? I thought you wanted to splash around in it some more.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve seen all I need to see of it. It was beautiful, and I thank you for bringing me here. I’ll never forget the ocean. But I want to leave. Can we?” Her misty gaze pleaded with him.

  He kissed her and tucked her back into bed. “Sure, honey. Whatever you want. Try to get a few more winks of sleep, and we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

  * * * *

  After two days on the train to Denver, four days on a stagecoach to Steamboat Springs, another seventy miles in a Conestoga wagon with a pioneering family from Illinois, and two days scouting the area, Josie and Grey had the rest of their money wired from Santa Fe and purchased five hundred fertile acres of Northwestern Colorado land.

  That same day, he sent two telegrams: one to Zack Stamps, arranging for Traveler and Lightning to be sent west, and the other to Rusty in Boston. The travel funds were wired to his aunt and uncle, and his brother sent a reply that he was packing his bags and would be on the next train out of there.

  Arms linked, Josie and Grey gazed out over their pristine parcel. Situated in a box canyon at the end of the beautiful, wide, rushing Rippling Fork River, their ranch would sit at an elevation of eight thousand feet at the foot of Pyramid Peak. The spring winds chimed through the property, which was crossed with streams, nestled in forests of pine, spruce and aspen, and teeming with wildlife. Antelope roamed the hillsides and trout splashed in the river.

  “We can build the cabin right down there,” Grey said, pointing to the perfect spot. “And we’ll put the barn and corrals over there.” His gaze ran from east to west. “Rusty can help me fence the whole place in, and he and I will hunt in the mountains and fish in the river for our supper. I can picture us pushing our cattle between pastures. And our kids riding their ponies to the ends of the earth.”

  Josie peered up at him. After five long years, her husband was finally at peace with his life and the world. She was, too. He pulled her into his embrace and kissed her. “Does our new home make you happy, darlin’?”

  It was difficult for her to find her voice. Happiness did not begin to describe the joy she felt in her swollen heart. All her dreams had come true. It had been a long and dangerous trail, just as her pa had warned, but every moment had been worth it. She now had the family and home she’d always wanted.

  She gazed into the warm, loving eyes of her husband. When she nodded with tears in her eyes, he picked her up and swung her around. His heart was her home. Now and forever.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stacey Coverstone is a multi-published author of western romance, romantic suspense, Gothic mysteries and ghost stories. She lives in Maryland with her husband and their dogs, cats, and a paint horse named Bill. They have two grown daughters and a baby granddaughter. When Stacey’s not writing, she enjoys traveling, photography, reading, target shooting, camping, fishing, and making scrapbooks of her adventures. She also likes to watch her husband and Bill team pen cows.

  Please visit her website at: http://www.staceycoverstone.com and feel free to join her Announce Only newsletter if you’d like to be notified of her book releases.