“What’s your name?” one of the men in the crowd asked.
“My name is Belle.”
“Well, Miss Belle, once you meet up with Sherazade, how soon do you think it will be before you start . . . uh . . . doin’ business?”
“Oh, I plan to start working right away,” Belle replied enthusiastically. “I see no reason to delay, do you?”
“No, none a-tall.” The one who’d asked her was already rubbing himself in anticipation.
The Garrison farm
It took Matt, Jennie, and Ethan the rest of the day to get the wagon unloaded and the house ready to move in to.
“I’m glad he left the stove here,” Jennie said.
“I checked the pump. It’s pumpin’ water just fine,” Matt said.
Jennie crossed her arms across her chest and looked around. “Oh, Matt, I’m sorry I was ever against this. Why, it’s really nice. All it will take are some curtains and maybe a little paint here and there.”
“And fixin’ those two boards that’s missin’ on the front porch,” Matt said. “I can get them put back in no time.”
“Our own house,” Jennie said, her eyes blazing in excitement.
“More ’n our own house. This here is our own land. Why, by this time next year, we’ll have made a fine crop of cotton—”
“And don’t forget the garden,” Jennie said. “You can’t eat cotton.”
Ethan laughed. “Mama, I don’t think Papa meant we was goin’ to eat cotton.”
Jennie ran her hand through her son’s hair and laughed. “I know that. That’s why we’re going to put in a garden. The finest garden you’ve ever seen. We’ll have potatoes and corn, beans and peas, carrots, lettuce, celery, beets, tomatoes and cucumbers, bell peppers.”
“And maybe some watermelon?” Ethan asked.
“You want watermelon?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Then we’ll have watermelon.”
“First thing we’re goin’ to have to do is get us a milk cow and some chickens,” Matt suggested.
“Oh, Matt, you mean we’ll have to go into that awful town?”
“No, I told you about White’s Mine, remember? It’s a mite farther away than Shumla, but I think I’d just as soon stay away from Shumla as much as is possible.”
“Yes,” Jennie said. “I agree.”
Eagle Pass
Jason, Melissa, and Timmy had come to the depot to see Duff, Megan, and Elmer off for their return trip to Wyoming.
Elmer and Timmy were on the opposite side of the waiting room. Timmy was playing with the intricate ball in a hoop toy Elmer had carved for him.
“Elmer and Timmy seem to have hit it off quite well,” Jason said.
“Aye, so it would appear,” Duff said.
“You wouldn’t think so, would you? I mean, a man like Elmer, you wouldn’t think he would have much interest in spending any time with a young boy.”
Duff looked at him. “Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that Elmer seems a rather odd sort.”
“He seems sad,” Melissa said. “As if he has some great tragedy in his past.”
“I’ve no doubt but that he has,” Duff said. “I’ll say this, he has the most storied past of anyone I know or have ever known.”
A whistle announced the approach of the northbound train.
“Well, this is it,” Duff said. “I thank you for being such gracious hosts.”
Duff and Jason shook hands as Megan and Melissa embraced. Then Melissa and Duff embraced as did Megan and Jason. Wang, who had been silent for the entire length of time, stood off to one side, the expression on his face as inscrutable as always.
As they started to board the train, the conductor stopped them. “This is a first-class car. No Chinamen allowed on this car. He’ll have to ride in the immigrant car.”
“I have paid for a first-class ticket for him,” Duff said.
“You can write to the railroad, and I’m sure they will refund you the price of your ticket. But that Chinaman will not be allowed in a first-class car.”
“Look here, I’m Sheriff Bowles, and these people are friends of mine,” Jason said in protest. “All of them are, including Mr. Wang.”
“Sheriff, I don’t care if you are the governor,” the conductor said. “This is the rule of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Duff turned to his friend. “Jason, would you be for doing me a favor, lad? Would you send a telegram ahead to San Antonio and arrange for a private car? I’ll not be for having my friend treated so.”
“I’ll be glad to.”
“Until then, I’ll be riding in the immigrant car.”
“So will I,” Elmer said.
“Megan, there’s no need for you to give up your first-class ticket,”
Megan smiled. “Duff MacCallister, you just try and keep me from that car.”
“But I don’t understand,” the conductor said as the four of them started toward the back of the train.
“I don’t expect you would understand,” Melissa said, beaming. “But I’ve never been more proud of my sister.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Unlike the cushioned seats of the regular cars and the even more plush seating in the first-class cars, the immigrant car had benches made of wooden slats. The seats were crowded close together so that there was very little legroom.
More than two languages were spoken, and the car smelled of unwashed bodies and exotic, odiferous foods.
“Mr. MacCallister, you should not ride here,” Wang said. “I am all right here, but you are a zhòngyìyuán, a gentleman, and Miss Parker is guìfùrén, a gentlewoman. This is no place for you.”
Elmer nodded. “Wang is right, Duff. You and Miss Parker go on back up to the first-class car. I’ll stay back here with Wang.”
“We’ll all stay here,” Duff said pointedly.
Wang put his hands together, prayer-like, and dipped his head. “You are not only my boss, you are my honored friend.”
The four took their seats, though they were unable to get them all together. Elmer had to sit a few rows separated from the others. Looking out the windows, they saw that Jason, Melissa, and Timmy had moved down on the platform to better able to wave good-bye to them.
The waves between Elmer and Timmy were particularly enthusiastic.
Elmer was napping, his head bobbing with the movement of the train.
Megan chuckled as she pointed to him. “How can he possibly sleep on seats like this? Do you think Timmy wore him out?”
“He may have. Timmy is a young man who is brimming with energy, and Elmer is a man who is, as they say, coming into the ripeness of his years.”
Megan laughed. “What a quaint way to say that he is getting old. But you had better not let him hear you say such a thing.”
Even as they were talking about him, Elmer Gleason was lost in a dream.
He was walking behind a mule, watching the dirt fold away from the plowshare as it opened a deep, new farrow. His nine-year-old brother was walking a few yards in front of him, picking up rocks that might be hit by the plow and tossing them aside. Half the field had already been tilled, and the coal-black dirt glistened with the nutrients that made the soil so fertile.
Elmer looked toward the two-story white house where they all lived and at the barn, granary, and machine shed that made up the Gleason farm in Jackson County, Missouri. The windows in the house were shining brightly in the sunlight; first silver, then gold, then red. The color spread from the windows to the side of the house, then to the roof, and then to the other buildings. But as the color intensified, Elmer realized that he wasn’t seeing reflected sunlight . . . what he was seeing was flames. The house, barn, and all the outbuildings were engulfed in a blazing inferno!
Elmer looked away from the burning buildings and saw his brother lying in a pool of blood. The Kansas Redlegs, firing pistols and rifles into the air, were shoutin
g and laughing. On the ground were the bloody bodies of his brother, mother, and father.
“No!” Elmer shouted.
“Elmer, are you all right?” Duff’s calm voice asked.
Elmer awakened with a start and saw that Duff had come to his seat and was looking down at him. Outside sounds were intruding . . . the rattle and squeak of a train in motion, the rhythmic clicking of wheels over track joints, the conversations of other passengers. Time and place returned and he realized that it wasn’t pre-war Missouri . . . it was post-war Texas.
“Are you all right?” Duff asked again.
Elmer ran his hand across his face as if wiping the sleep away. “Yeah.” He sat up straight in the seat. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
Duff chuckled. “I think you might have been dreaming.”
“Yeah,” Elmer agreed. He thought, but didn’t say aloud, that it was the boy who had brought on the dreams. Timmy was about the same age as his brother Wes had been when the Jayhawkers killed him and his parents and burned the farm.
“You want to come back and join Megan and me? I’m sure we can convince the gentleman across the aisle from us to change seats with you, if I make it worth his while.”
“Nah. I don’t want to be intrudin’ on the talk between young folks.” Elmer smiled. “Especially, you two. Why, you might be talkin’ ’bout gettin’ married ’n all, ’n I sure wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.”
Duff laughed again and put his hand on Elmer’s shoulder. “Well, if your dreams get too bad, you can always come visit with us.”
Elmer nodded as Duff returned to his seat.
“Is everything all right with Elmer?” Megan asked.
“Aye. ’Twas a bad dream, I think, and nothing more.”
“A bad dream? I wonder what it was about.”
“I’m not sure you would want to know,” Duff said. “I’m not sure I would want to know. There is no telling what devils one might find in his past. For them to still torment a man like Elmer, they must be bad indeed.
After Duff walked away, Elmer looked out the window and remembered.
He was with Bloody Bill Anderson, and they were pillaging a small town in Missouri. Pistols, rifles, and carbines roared as gun smoke roiled up over the town in an acrid smelling, blue-gray cloud.
By noon the small town resembled a smoking funeral pyre with a large portion of the town’s business and residential districts burned or still burning.
They had been pursued into the town by one hundred Union soldiers, but once the Yankees realized the tide had turned, many of them tried to run. For the most part, running did nothing to save them, but merely provided additional entertainment for Anderson’s Raiders. His men on horseback chased them down, then killed them without compunction.
Elmer had been shooting as well, but he killed only two and he justified the shootings by the fact that they were armed and were shooting at him. Unable to watch the unmitigated carnage going on around him, he rode between two houses in order to get off the main street.
In the back of one of the houses, he saw a woman with her skirt spread out backed up against the house by a man that he presumed to be her husband. He looked directly at her, and the woman stared defiantly back at him.
“Anything back there, Gleason?” one of the Bushwhackers called out, shouting from the street.
Elmer stared at the woman’s face for a moment longer, admiring her courage and appreciating her beauty. Neither of them said a word.
“Gleason?” the Bushwhacker called again.
“Nothing back here, Cyr,” Elmer replied. “Not a thing.” To the woman he said, “Just stay back here. And keep quiet.”
“Thank you. God bless you,” the woman said, crossing herself.
Even as Elmer was remembering that woman in Missouri, he saw a woman on the train crossing herself. It startled him. He could almost believe that the woman sitting in the back of the train car was the same woman he was just thinking about. He knew that couldn’t be. He’d seen her over twenty years ago. The woman he had seen then would be much older than the woman he was looking at now.
He turned his attention to Duff, Megan, and Wang. Duff and Megan were talking and, upon occasion, laughing. Wang was sitting silently, the expression on his face unreadable. They were good people. He didn’t deserve to have such good people as his friends.
When they reached San Antonio, Duff saw a private car sitting off on a side track and smiled in the realization that Jason had managed to make the arrangements for him. As he and the others left the immigrant car, he saw a rather self-important-looking man, wearing the jacket and cap of a railroad official, standing by the Wagner Palace car, studying all who detrained. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand, which Duff took to be a lease agreement for the car.
He counted out one thousand dollars. “Wang, if you would, go make the arrangements for the private car,” he said, handing Wang the money and pointing to the uniformed railroad official.
Wang nodded, took the money, and approached the official.
“Whatever you want, you’re just going to hold it for a moment,” the official said. “I have some business to attend to.”
“Why do you watch that car?” Wang asked.
“I told you, Chinaman, don’t bother me now. If you got business, go into the depot and take care of it. But stay on the immigrant side.”
“Thank you,” Wang said with a nod. He left the official standing by the first-class car and went into the depot, being careful to stay in the immigrant section. He stepped up to the counter.
“Yes, can I help you?” a well-dressed man asked.
“Yes, please.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I wish to pay for the private car.”
“What?” the man asked, a surprised look on his face. “Look here, are you talking about the car on the side track?”
“I believe it is one thousand dollars?”
“That’s what it is, all right. Do you have one thousand dollars?”
“I do.”
The official behind the counter frowned. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t Arnie come in here with you?”
“I do not know Arnie.”
“He’s standing out there on the platform.” Walking over to the window, the official pointed to the man Wang had approached earlier. “There he is. You should have gone to him.”
“He would not speak with me. I think he is waiting for someone in the first-class car.”
The man laughed. “Yes, he would be. Look at the dumb idiot still standing there. Come along with me. I’ll get you all fixed up. Are you to be the only passenger?”
“No, there are three others.”
“Where are they?”
“They are waiting. They rode on the immigrant car, as I did.”
The man laughed again. “This is funnier ’n hell.”
Once they stepped out onto the platform, Arnie came toward them. “Mr. Scott, you may as well tell the engineer to go on. Whoever was supposed to pick up the private car didn’t show.” Seeing Wang, he glared at him. “What are hanging around for, Chinaman? Didn’t I tell you to take care of your business inside?”
“He did take care of it inside,” Scott said.
“Oh, Mr. Scott, I’m sorry. When I sent him inside, I had no idea he would bother you.”
“Get the private car attached, would you, Arnie?”
“What for? I told you nobody showed.”
“The car is for this gentleman,” Scott said, indicating Wang.
Duff had seen Wang dismissed, and he had followed what was going on. He laughed at the expression on the face of the man who had been watching for the first-class passenger to disembark.
Shumla
Jaco was sitting at a table in the back of the saloon, playing a game of solitaire, when Sherazade came over to talk to him.
“Jaco, we’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“It’s Peg . . .
uh, Belle, the new girl.
“What about her?”
“She’s not like my other girls. She’s a little more refined. She’s not used to being treated the way your men are treatin’ her.”
Jaco laughed. “A refined soiled dove. That’s something new.”
“Yes, well, she wasn’t always such. I guess because of that, some of you men are findin’ her ways a little strange and they’ve hit her a few times. I wish you’d tell your men not to do that.”
“If my men are hitting her, she probably brought it on herself. I don’t need to be talking to my men. You need to be talking to her. Tell her not to try and come across as somethin’ so high ’n fancy, ’n more ’n likely my men will quit hitting her.”
“I just wish you would help,” Sherazade said.
“When you women take it in mind to be soiled doves, you know what you’re lettin’ yourself in for, same as we do when we start ridin’ the outlaw trail. Now, don’t bother me with any more foolishness.” Jaco made a dismissive wave with his hand, and though Sherazade looked as if she might say something else, she held her tongue, then turned and walked away.
Jaco returned to his game of solitaire.
“I need to talk to you,” someone else said, approaching Jaco’s table. It was Rafferty, owner of the grocery store.
“Hell’s bells,” Jaco said, slapping one of the cards down on the table. “Can’t a man get a little peace around here?”
“Well, you are the mayor.”
“All right. What is it? What do you want?”
“I just thought I’d let you know that I’m goin’ to be runnin’ out of groceries soon, and you’d better do somethin’. ’Cause if this town runs out of groceries, things is goin’ to get pretty ugly.”
“How do you get your groceries?”
“Normally, they come by train to Eagle Pass, then Tucker Freight brings them to us by wagon. But there don’t nobody want to come into Shumla, now. I mean, not with us bein’ a outlaw town ’n all.”
MacCallister Kingdom Come Page 19
