Wherever Will was, he lay on his back and everything around him shook.
“Aye, that I be trying, Collin. But it’s steep along here, to be sure.”
The answer to Sullivan’s order came from above where Will lay. Opening his eyes and rolling them as far back in his head as he could, he saw the back of a man sitting on the seat of a wagon. He heard the slapping of reins and the stomping and snorting of horses. Will now realized he lay in the bed of a wagon.
“Easy, boys, easy,” the driver said. “Sure, and I don’t want to wind up in the river.”
The wagon abruptly titled sharply to Will’s right. Something bumped hard against his side, and he glanced left. A canvas-covered lump rolled against him as the wagon slid sideways.
“No, boys! No!” the driver shouted. “Pull!”
Wheels grated across rocks. The wooden bed of the wagon heaved up beneath Will.
“Jump, Higgins! Jump! She be going over!” Sullivan’s warning sounded far away.
Will looked up in time to see the driver drop the reins and bail off the seat to the uphill side of the tilting wagon. The horses neighed in loud screams. The wagon flipped on its side and crashed down the slope.
The body of the Irish corpse slammed into Will, pinning him against the sideboard.
The wagon flipped upside down. Will’s back slammed onto cold, hard ground beneath the overturned wagon, a heavy weight on his chest. The clouds parted, and moonlight filtered through cracks in the wagon’s wooden bed. The wide-open eyes of the cadaver stared into his.
CHAPTER 5
The long, wailing locomotive whistle announced the arrival of Union Pacific’s train from the east. Jenny lifted her eyes from the iron pot of stew she stirred and looked to where her father and Duncan sat at the long, wooden table that ran down the center of the Wells Fargo station. “They’re finally here, Papa,” she said.
“They’re running late all the time, it seems. The shoddy condition of the tracks up toward the head of Echo Canyon is making the engineers proceed with extra caution. Not to mention the snowstorm that’s blowing through here tonight.” Jenny’s father swung his legs back over the bench seat and used the stump of his left elbow to push himself up from the dining table.
“I was about ready to add more water to this stew,” Jenny said. “It’s been simmering so long the broth’s almost boiled away.”
“The passengers will be so hungry after their long journey today, they’ll eat anything you throw at them. They will love your cooking, Jenny. I know that.” Her father wrestled his coat on with his one good arm and slapped his old, gray Confederate officer’s hat onto his head. “Come on, Duncan. Let’s go help our next stagecoach passengers transfer their luggage from the depot.”
Jenny’s ten-year-old brother joined their father, buttoned his heavy coat up around his neck, and pulled his own hat down over his unruly hair. When Duncan opened the front door, a blast of cold air and flurries of snowflakes rushed into the station. “Hurry up, Pa. It upsets Jenny when her floor gets all wet and dirty.”
After her father and brother closed the door, Jenny picked up a mop and swabbed the entry. She didn’t know why she bothered in such bad weather. But, at least the arriving passengers would have a fresh floor to track up when they straggled in out of the storm. She supposed she had learned the habit of cleanliness from her mother, God rest her soul. Jenny shook her head as she recalled the futile efforts of her mother trying to keep the entrance to their Virginia plantation home clean when the Confederate Army had commandeered it for use as a field hospital. Then, it was blood, not snow, that soiled the floor.
Jenny sighed, returned the mop to a peg on the rear wall, and gathered a stack of plates from a shelf to set the table. The telegraph message Duncan had received from the Union Pacific earlier in the day provided the information that twelve passengers arriving on the train desired tickets for the journey over the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City. The Concord stagecoach, scheduled to depart in the morning, could accommodate nine inside the cramped cabin. Three passengers would have to be brave enough to ride outside on top of this coach or lay over a day for the next one.
By the time Jenny set the table and changed into a fresh apron, the door opened and a rush of people descended on the dining table. Eleven men of various ages and demeanor crowded into the room and removed their coats and hats, which they hung on pegs that lined the front wall. They quickly occupied the two bench seats extending along opposite sides of the table. One woman stood alone by the door collapsing an umbrella and brushing snow from her traveling coat. Jenny decided the woman was not attached to any of the men because none of them offered to help her find a seat.
“Ma’am,” Jenny said. “Please sit over here.” She pointed to an old wicker rocking chair sitting beside a potbellied stove in a corner of the room. “It will be more comfortable than the benches.”
“Merci, mademoiselle.”
A French lady. Jenny glanced at her from time to time out of the corner of her eye while ladling the stew from the pot onto the plates in front of the men. The lady, who appeared to be approaching middle age, removed her woolen coat, the color of which matched her dress, and hung it on a peg near the stove. She propped her umbrella against the wall. Extracting a long hatpin from the back of her hair, she lifted a wide-brimmed hat, also of a color matching her dress, and hung it above her coat. With a sigh she eased herself into the rocker.
Jenny set two platters of biscuits in the center of the table beside crocks of butter she’d placed there earlier. She handed pitchers of buttermilk to the men who occupied the positions on one end of each bench. After filling his own glass, each man passed the pitcher to the next man on his bench.
“Madame, voulez-vous quelque chose à manger?” Jenny asked the seated lady. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Vous parlez français,” the lady replied. “You speak French.”
“Un peu. A little. I learned basic French at the academy in Virginia . . . when I was young.”
“When you were young.” The lady smiled. “You are still young, child.”
Jenny felt her face flush. “Perhaps. But, I am almost fifteen, madame.”
“You may call me Madame Baudelaire . . . Madame Angelique Baudelaire.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, Madame Baudelaire. My name is Jenny . . . Jennifer McNabb. My father manages the Wells Fargo station here.”
“Mais, oui. He greeted us at the train station.”
“Ragoût est acceptable?” Jenny asked. “Is stew acceptable? I
made it myself.”
“Certainement.”
Jenny filled a plate with a portion of stew, and placed a buttered biscuit on the edge. “Madame.” She handed the plate to the lady, then returned to the main table and offered seconds to the men. As each man finished his meal he placed the standard fare of a dollar and a half beside his plate. Two of the men were gracious enough to add a dime to that amount.
Gathering up her mop again, Jenny cleaned the entrance floor and beneath the benches. After which, she cleared the plates and utensils from the table.
Jenny’s father and brother entered the station. She shook her head as they once more tracked up the entryway.
“Gentlemen, and lady,” her father said. “Your luggage has been loaded aboard the coach. However, because of this storm, we will not dispatch the coach to Salt Lake City until morning. The mountain pass is difficult enough in daylight when the road is covered in snow. I wouldn’t want the coach sliding off the road because the driver cannot see the way. Until then, make yourselves comfortable. There is a hotel, if you can call it that, down the street a bit. You may apply there for a room, or you may make yourself comfortable wherever you can here in the station.”
Four of the men put on their coats and hats and headed out the door, obviously deciding to try the hotel. Four men claimed spots on the benches, and the remaining three spread out on the table. All of them left their boots on. Jenny would have a mess to clean in the morn
ing.
Jenny washed the dirty dishes and stacked them away quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping passengers. When she’d finished, she returned to Madame Baudelaire. “I’m sorry we have no beds here. I can escort you over to the hotel if you like.”
“Mais, non. If I may, I can sleep in this chair.”
“You are welcome to it, Madame Baudelaire. My mother, God rest her soul, used to sleep in a chair just like that.”
“Votre mère est morte? She is dead?”
“Yes, almost two years ago.”
“Why do you live out here on the frontier, instead of in Virginia?”
Jenny told the French lady about the McNabb’s journey along the Overland Trail until her mother died two years ago and they had buried her at Virginia Dale Station in Colorado. Jenny attempted to describe the ordeal in French but soon gave up when the conversation demanded more complex vocabulary than she recalled.
“So your sister did not stay with the rest of the family, then?” Madame Baudelaire spoke excellent, although heavily accented, English.
“No, she went on to Sacramento.”
“Ah, but that is my destination. I go there to open a millinery shop.”
“Oh, my,” Jenny said, “that’s what my sister did. She has a millinery shop there.”
Madame Baudelaire drew back her head and frowned. “A Virginia girl has a millinery shop? How can a girl from Virginia know anything about the fine art of the millinery?”
Jenny bristled at the challenge. “My sister is quite artistic, I’ll have you know. She is very talented.”
“Humph!”
How dare this prissy French lady accuse Elspeth of not knowing enough to design ladies’ hats! Jenny hadn’t seen her sister’s shop, but she was sure it would be a nice one. Her sister was ambitious, and she had been clever enough last year to impress a German count with her evident talent. The count had even financed Elspeth’s new store in Sacramento.
“Good night, Madame,” Jenny said. She brushed in front of the lady and entered the side door into the private portion of the station where she and her father and brother shared the bedroom. She hoped the French wench didn’t sleep a wink!
The next morning the stagecoach departed at first light, taking the passengers on their journey to Salt Lake City. They would then travel onward by another stage to connect with the Central Pacific’s trains somewhere out in Nevada at its end of track. Wells Fargo would soon cease operating its east-west stagecoach line.
Jenny’s father and brother were out back tending to the horses while she tidied up the station. She took a last swipe with the mop to clear away the remnants of mud and snow. She was in the process of hanging the mop back on its peg when the front door flew open.
A gust of wind drove another pile of snow across the threshold. A disheveled figure staggered into the doorway and collapsed on the floor. Jenny’s mouth dropped open. Will Braddock looked up at her.
CHAPTER 6
“Will!” Jenny shoved the door closed, knelt beside him, and removed his slouch hat, tossing it aside. She slid an arm under his shoulders and lifted him to a sitting position. “What happened to you?”
“Got whacked on the head.” He reached up and felt behind his left ear.
Jenny pushed on Will’s chin to turn his head away from her and ran her fingers through his matted, brown hair. When her exploration encountered a large lump on the back of his skull, he winced.
She separated the locks of his wavy hair so she could examine the spot. “No blood. A good-sized goose egg, though.”
Will sighed and pushed himself to his feet. Muddy water dripped from his clothes onto the floor. He looked down at the puddle expanding around his boots. “Sorry for the mess.”
Jenny waved a hand in the air. “Oh, don’t worry about the floor. I can always mop it . . . again.”
She grinned at him and was pleased when she noticed the blush spread across his cheeks. She grasped his elbow and guided him to the closest bench. “Remove those wet clothes. They’re filthy. I’ll wash them out for you. Take them off.”
“Undress? Here? Why don’t I go into the back room?”
“You don’t think I’m going to let you track up the rest of my floor because you’re modest. Remember, I’ve seen you in your underwear before. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to clean you up after one of your escapades.”
Will shrugged out of his buckskin coat and handed it to her.
“Pants, too,” she said.
He sat on the bench and tugged off his boots, then stood and dropped his wool trousers. He lifted them upward with a foot, grasped them, and held them out. “Satisfied?” he asked.
She shook her head. “You’re going to have to take off those wet underclothes, too. Come along into the bedroom now, and I’ll give you a pair of Papa’s underdrawers to wear while I clean your things.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to go into the bedroom.”
“You’ve taken the muddy stuff off. What’s left is only wet. Move!”
Jenny pushed him into the family’s bedroom. The shared sleeping quarters provided little privacy. A blanket, draped over a line, divided one corner from the rest of the room. That small space served as her bedroom. The larger portion held the two beds her father and brother used.
She lifted the lid of a battered trunk, took out a pair of folded woolen underdrawers, and handed them to Will. “Here, put these on, then bring the rest of your clothes out to me. Take a blanket off Duncan’s bed there. You can wrap it around your shoulders to keep warm.”
Jenny returned to the main room of the station. The potbellied stove held coals from the breakfast meal she had prepared for the passengers before they’d departed on the morning stage. She opened the stove door and fed a handful of kindling in on top of the glowing coals. She waved a pie pan in front of the open door to create more draft to rekindle the fire. Once the kindling flared up, she laid two small logs on top of the kindling and closed the door. Filling a wash basin with water from a bucket, she placed the basin on top of the stove.
The door to the bedroom opened. Jenny turned as Will entered the main room holding his underwear and socks with one hand while he clasped Duncan’s blanket around his shoulders with the other.
“Sit over here by the fire.” She pointed to the bench on the side of the table nearest the stove and handed him a rag. “You can clean your boots while you tell me what happened.”
While Will worked on his boots, he told her about Paddy O’Hannigan shooting his Uncle Sean. He described pursuing the thug and being waylaid by the Irishman’s pals.
“And how is it that you’re so wet?” she asked.
He told her about the wagon accident and the tumble with the corpse. Will visibly shivered while describing the wide-open eyes staring back at him.
Jenny laughed at the face he made. “You become involved in some of the most comical situations.”
“Humph! I didn’t think it was funny.”
“Sorry,” she said. “You have to admit it was weird.”
Will shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
Jenny turned back to the stove and continued stirring his clothes in the basin with a long-handled wooden spoon. “What do you plan to do now?”
“I have to go see about Uncle Sean. I hope he’s all right. Homer was to take him to the railroad’s doctor. Didn’t you hear the shooting last night?”
“Of course, I heard it. But there’s gunfire going on all day and night around here.” She swung around and wagged the spoon at him. “Why would I take special notice of one shooting over another?”
He shrugged, and because he still held a boot and the rag in his hands, the blanket slipped off his shoulders.
“Will, there are more holes in you than in your socks.”
Her eyes surveyed his upper torso, taking inventory of the wounds he’d sustained since he’d come west. She’d been involved in patching most of them. Where the arrow had passed through his left bicep, he still bore
ugly scars at both the entrance and exit wounds. On his left shoulder, the slashing scar was evident from the time Paddy had tried to stab Will when he’d stepped in to keep the Irishman from killing her. Stretching around his left side from high on his rib cage to his waistline were five wicked, parallel scars left from his encounter with the grizzly last year, when Will had shielded the German count from attack by the bear.
Will set the boot on the floor and gathered the blanket back around his shoulders.
Jenny returned her attention to the stove, fished each article of clothing out of the basin, and wrung the excess water out over it, then she hung the items on a line stretching along the wall behind the stove.
“How long until those things are dry enough to wear?” he asked. “I want to go check on Uncle Sean.”
“An hour or so. While you wait, you can eat some of the passengers’ leftover breakfast.”
“Thanks. I am hungry. Paddy attacked us before I could finish supper.”
The front door banged open. Jenny swung around from the stove to see her father and brother enter the station.
Her father stopped, shifting his gaze from Jenny to Will, who had turned to look over his shoulder toward the front door.
“What’s this all about?” her father asked.
CHAPTER 7
“I can explain, Mr. McNabb.” Will gathered the blanket more closely about his shoulders as he stared at Jenny’s father, who removed his hat, shook the snow from it, and hung it by the door.
“I hope so.” McNabb unbuttoned his coat and added it to the peg beneath his hat.
Duncan stood in the doorway, his mouth open. He looked from his sister and Will back to his father.
“Close the door, Duncan,” Jenny said. “We’re losing what little heat we have in here.”
“Oh . . . sure.” Duncan closed the door, removed his own hat and coat, and hung them on a wall peg beside the one his father had used.
“Would you like some coffee, Papa?” Jenny smiled. “I’m sure you’re cold, and it will help warm you up.” She poured the black liquid from a pot on the stove into a tin cup and handed it to her father.
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