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Land of Dreams
Cheryl St.John
Copyright 1995, 2013 by Cheryl Ludwigs
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
License Notes.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover and eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com
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Dedicated to all the orphans who came west on the rails,
to those whose dreams of family came true,
but especially to those whose hopes perished on the prairie.
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bookmark:Prologue
Prologue
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It would be a safe bet that the iron fence was as tall as his own well-over-six-foot frame. From his vantage point across the street, Booker Hayes contemplated the pale faces peering through the black picket "hedge" enclosing the New York Children's Foundling Home's crowded side yard. Heedless of the other children in the yard, the waifs studied the street, observed puffy white clouds against the blue sky and watched an occasional passerby with undivided interest.
A well-dressed couple strolled past. The woman drew something from the bag she carried and offered it to one of the children. A lightning-fast hand snatched the banana, and the small gray-clad figure spun and ran.
He didn't make it far. The others descended, and the brief skirmish ended with the biggest and strongest boy breaking from the pack, peeling the fruit and sharing it with a smaller boy who had never moved away from the fence.
The woman covered her mouth with a lace hankie, and her escort led her to the far side of the street.
Booker shoved away from the brick building he'd leaned against and crossed the street where a dozen pair of dispassionate eyes examined his approach. His head straight forward, he advanced on the wooden door flanked by two whitewashed pillars.
Raising the knocker and letting it fall, he stared at the brass numbers affixed to the door, attuned to the relative silence of the penned-in youngsters on his right. There were at least sixty of them, he'd guess, and they made less noise than the ten or twelve children he'd seen playing the day he'd been discharged from Fort Scott back in Kansas.
That had been more than a month ago, and it'd taken him this long to track down what remained of his family. His family. He shoved the thought away and thrust out his chin.
The door opened, and a pock-faced woman greeted him.
"Ma'am." Booker doffed his flat-crowned felt hat and nodded. "Booker Hayes. I'm looking for my niece. The hospital told me she'd been sent here."
The reed-thin woman ushered him in. "This way."
He followed her past several sets of closed doors, his boots echoing down the cavernous hallway. He resisted wrinkling his nose at the smell of disinfectant. After they reached an enormous set of stairs, she led him to the left and gestured to a long wooden bench that sat against the stairway and faced another pair of doors.
"Have a seat."
Booker folded his length onto the low bench and hung his hat on his knee.
The woman entered the room opposite him and closed the door behind her. A moment later the door opened and she reappeared. "Mrs. Jennings will be right with you."
He nodded.
Her footsteps echoed away in the silence of the building. The shell of a home didn't sound or smell like children. No laughter or high-pitched voices floated down its austere hallways. No fresh-from-the-oven aromas tempted his nostrils. No wagons or dolls littered the highly varnished floors. Booker stared at the gray wall. Not even a small handprint marred its tediousness.
He hated thinking of his niece living under these conditions these past months. He would take her away with him now. He would make it up to her.
Only an occasional distant echo broke the silence. After a good quarter of an hour, lassitude enveloped him. He closed his eyes. If only he'd come to New York sooner. If only Julia had written when she'd first become ill. Perhaps he could have... what?
Fresh grief muscled itself into his chest, and he resisted the encroachment on his well-guarded emotions. With his eyes closed and no distractions, his sister's face barged into his memory: winged brows over steady gem blue eyes, a narrow nose and full smiling mouth like their mother's, hair as fair as his was dark. It'd been five years, but he remembered her face as if he'd left her that morning.
They'd parted in Illinois. With her share of the money their mother left them, Julia and her ambitious husband, Robert, had started an accounting firm in New York. She'd written faithfully for years, even though Booker's appointments made mail delivery difficult to nonexistent. Upon return to his current station, he'd always read her letters with an unfaltering sense of loss. Reading the delicately scripted missives, he'd empathized with their fledgling business, rallied with Julia's unflagging determination and spirit and experienced his niece's growth from infancy through toddlerhood, all the while reliving memories of Julia as a girl.
Booker had only seen Zoe that one time in Chicago before Julia and Robert had headed east. While the rest of the country swarmed westward, the little family had bucked the current and moved to New York.
Above his head, a metallic scrape attracted Booker's attention. Turning, he discovered a bucket resting beside a pair of run-down brown shoes, and snagged black stockings drooping around a pair of bony ankles. Above them hung a faded blue hem that had been let down several times. Booker twisted on the bench and glanced up.
A girl stood on the stairs, one hand on the banister, the other twisting a hank of hair at her ear. Running her palm down the smooth wood, she descended the steps and hung on the post at the bottom. He guessed her to be about thirteen or fourteen. Her limp brown hair hung blunt-cut at chin level. A wide forehead, brown eyes and straight brows dominated her features.
"Hey, mister."
"Hello," he replied.
She swung back and forth. "You looking for a kid?"
He glanced back up at the bucket she'd left on the stairs. Beside it, a rag dripped gray water into the wood. "Yes."
"A girl?"
He nodded.
"Take me home with you. I'll be a good little girl." The coaxing tone that entered her voice, the provocative expression that stole across her high-cheekboned features, would have been seductive had she been a strumpet. Coming from this girl-child with barely budding breasts beneath her limp apron, the lewd implication twisted something in Booker's gut.
She couldn't have insinuated what he'd imagined. He had to be sick for the obscene thought even to cross his mind! He must have misinterpreted her meaning.
But she rubbed herself against the banister and met his gaze with eloquent invitation. "What do ya say, mister? I'll be your little girl."
He jerked his gaze away. Embarrassed warmth flooded Booker's neck and chee
ks, a wave of disgust on the crest. He still didn't want to believe what he knew had just taken place. Dumbly, he shook his head.
Behind him the door opened, and he jumped, guiltily.
A well-dressed gentleman emerged from the office, settled a bowler on his steel gray hair and nodded to the woman behind him before escorting himself down the hallway toward the front door.
The girl scampered up to retrieve her bucket.
"Claudia! What are you doing down here? You have work to do." The woman's tone and the disdainful expression on her straight-featured face told Booker she had a pretty good idea of Claudia's unchildlike approach. "I'm Mrs. Jennings. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. Won't you come in?"
Above them, Claudia's footsteps sounded on the stairs.
The square-shouldered matron ushered him into an unimaginative office and closed the solid door behind them.
Uncomfortably warm, Booker resisted the urge to insert a finger inside his stiff collar. He sat across from her and waited while she composed herself behind a desk that held a ledger, an oil lamp and a pen set.
He cleared his throat and began, "Mrs. Jennings, I came to New York to visit my sister and her family. I found that both my sister and her husband died of influenza and their daughter was placed in your orphanage."
She scrutinized his face, her attention then flickering over his well-tailored white shirt and dark coat. "You've come for her?"
Booker met her level gray gaze. "I'm her family."
"What is her name and age?"
"Zoe Galloway. She was born February 2,1869."
Mrs. Jennings stepped to a wooden cabinet and opened a drawer. Her thumbnail flicked across the files. She closed the drawer and opened another.
Booker watched with growing apprehension.
Withdrawing a folder, she returned to the desk.
He waited.
She opened the file and scanned it. "Your niece isn't here."
The meaning of her words didn't register for a full minute. Zoe wasn't here? "Where is she?"
Mrs. Jennings laced her large-knuckled fingers on the open folder and regarded him squarely. "Mr. Hayes. The Foundling Home is overcrowded and lacks funds to care for so many. We try our best to find homes for eligible children before they're—"
"I understand your job is to place children. Where is Zoe?"
At last compassion touched her steely gaze. "You're in the army, aren't you?"
Booker raised a reflective brow. "I've just quit the army. I bought some land a few years back." He stood and walked to the solitary long window with a view of the park across the street. Only a corner of the black iron child enclosure was visible. "I came to the city to visit my sister before I settled in. But now... now I'll take Zoe with me." He turned back to her, his hat dangling from his fingers. "Where is my niece?"
"I'm not sure."
He strode back. "What do you mean you're not sure? You lost her?"
"Of course not. I'll be able to find her. We keep excellent records."
Booker leaned over her desk. "What the hell are you talking about? Was she adopted?"
"I'm not certain." She unlaced her fingers and spread them on the ledger. "The New York area has been exhausted, Mr. Hayes. It's too crowded here—that's why we have all these children. We have to send them west to find families."
He narrowed his gaze. "You sent her away?"
"Yes."
"How? When?"
"The Pacific Railroad provides cars. Agent Vaughn left for Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska in May with eighteen children, including your niece."
Booker's mind reeled. Orphaned in the streets of New York. Abandoned in this god-awful place. Zoe shipped out on a train like livestock. Zoe with strangers. He glanced down and realized he'd crushed his hat brim. Zoe in a world that turned innocent little girls into Claudias.
"Mrs. Vaughn is one of our best placement agents." She glanced down at the file. "I made a note of a telegraph message. Mrs. Vaughn still had Zoe with her when she reached Nebraska." Mrs. Jennings sighed, and a genuine look of sympathy crossed her horsey features. "You know, Zoe wouldn't have been that easy to place. There's every possibility your niece will return with Mrs. Vaughn."
Her tone raised his eyes, uneasiness creeping into his belly. "What do you mean?"
She made a straight line of her lips. "The healthy, capable children are always taken first."
Unenlightened, he leaned a white-knuckled fist on the desk. "What are you saying?"
The woman's brows rose in question. "You're aware of Zoe's afflictions?"
"No."
"She's a cripple."
A crippled six-year-old on a train bound for God knows where.
"And she's mute."
Perfect.
bookmark:Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Nebraska—1875
"You're a saint to put this reception together for the children." Odessa Woodridge sliced a cinnamon-scented applesauce cake into thick wedges, wiped the knife with one pudgy finger and licked the digit appreciatively. "I always say whenever something needs done around here, our Thea's the woman for the job."
Thea Coulson resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her aunt. Instead, she removed the lid from an enormous kettle of savory-smelling beans and plunged a wooden spoon in, scraping the sides and stirring. Certainly, Omaha and the surrounding state of Nebraska considered her the woman for the job. The fact that she was one of the few unmarried women over the age of twenty within a four-day ride automatically secured her the social and civic tasks the married women were too busy for. Never mind that she ran her father's house, caring for as many or more family members as any farm wife.
"It wasn't that difficult, Aunt Odessa. The settlers always bring plenty of food to these festivities. All I did was let everyone know when and where and set up the tables. I think our neighbors were as eager as I was for spring to arrive. Any excuse would have been sufficient for a get-together." Thea wiped her hands on her cotton apron.
The plump woman surveyed the dessert table with a knowing quirk of her brow; a third of the pies and cakes were obviously Thea's. "You're too modest, my dear. The men in these parts rave about your cooking."
Thea raised a teasing brow. "I'll let you in on a secret about Western men."
Odessa moved closer and raised her face eagerly. "What?"
Her niece's eyes widened, guilelessly. "They're not very picky eaters."
Odessa swatted the air and rolled her eyes.
Thea's gaze wandered across the long row of makeshift tables spread with a hodgepodge of colorful cloths and laden with fried chicken, coleslaws and corn bread, and focused her attention on the children sitting on plank benches under one of the ancient oak trees that dotted the Coulsons' dooryard. Thea had passed the orphans each time she'd traveled to and from her kitchen, and the group had diminished to two boys and three girls, the youngest of whom perched on the end of the bench, her leg jutting out at an awkward angle.
"Things are going splendidly, Miss Coulson," said Mrs. Vaughn, the Children's Foundling Home agent, from beside her.
Turning, Thea glanced down at the slender, dark-haired woman with a fashionable felt hat cocked on her head. The New Yorker's dark eyes glowed with genuine pleasure.
"You did an excellent job of finding families before I even got here. Almost everyone has come for the children they promised to take. Oh, look! Someone's come for John and Chloris, too."
Oskar and Celle Rilke made their acquaintance with one of the older boys and a girl of about ten. The Rilkes from Florence had one child of their own, a girl of seven. As with many of the families who had spoken for the orphans, the homesteaders needed more hands to help around their farm.
From the moment Mrs. Vaughn had written the church about the plight of the New York orphans, Thea's heart had gone out to these homeless, yet faceless, youngsters. Knowing firsthand what it was like to be on the outside looking in, she'd known, too, she wou
ldn't rest until she'd helped to bring as many of them as possible to good homes and families among her neighbors.
Even the people of Irishtown, usually standoffish and not prone to socializing, had come out for the reception. Thea scanned her father's property, her gaze lighting on couples and families getting to know their new members.
"I do hope the couple from Sheeley Town—the O'Conners—show up for Lucas," Mrs. Vaughn said. "He should have been taken by now, a boy of his age, but he is a problem."
Thea studied the young man. Only three children remained, the one spoken of having moved to lean against the gnarled tree trunk with studied nonchalance. Far too thin for a boy of his height, his freshly pressed shirt and trousers hung on his lanky frame. His hair had recently been cut, but he wore it without a side part or any semblance of care. "How old is he?" she asked.
"Fifteen. He's been in orphanages since he was seven. We've placed him several times, but he always manages to get himself into trouble or runs away and the authorities bring him back."
Odessa stepped to Thea's side. "Shall I ring the dinner bell?"
Thea dragged her attention from Lucas and nodded. "The children must be hungry. They've had a long, tiring trip." She cast Mrs. Vaughn an apologetic glance. "You, too, of course. All those days and nights in that railcar. You all deserve a rest. I have a room ready for you."
Her aunt rang the bell from the back porch.
"I'm afraid I can stay only until morning," Mrs. Vaughn replied. "I must check on children I placed earlier this year in Lancaster and a few other counties."
She marveled at the woman's dedication. Thea’s father and stepmother walked toward the tables then, and Thea waved them over. "Trudy, will you find Mrs. Vaughn a seat near you and Father?"
Land of Dreams Page 1
