He looked around the shed, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. He cautiously walked over to Dancer, hanging the lamp nearby and setting his rifle and saddlebags aside. He stroked the horse a moment to keep him calm, then turned and took his saddle blanket from a hook and slung it over the animal’s back. He lifted his saddle from where it was perched on the stall gate and set it on Dancer, reaching under the horse’s belly to grab the cinch.
It was then he saw movement under a small stack of hay in the opposite corner of Dancer’s stall. Colt hesitated, slowly reaching for his revolver. Quietly, he moved around the other side of Dancer, then aimed the revolver at the stack of hay. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
The only answer was a strange whimpering sound, certainly not what he would expect to hear from a horse thief, unless the thief were a child. He stepped a little closer, suddenly thinking about how the crates had been stacked by the window. Maybe whoever was under the hay had simply come in here to hide. He could still hear shouting farther up the street. “Damn,” he whispered. “Elam? That you?”
There came another whimper. Colt had seen a few Negro slaves when he was younger, down in Texas, and he had always felt sorry for them. Since coming into the Plains country, he had seen almost no Negroes, slave or free. Kansas and Nebraska tried to keep them out to avoid trouble over the slavery issue. If there was a Negro under that hay, it had to be the one called Elam.
“I won’t hurt you, and I won’t turn you in,” he tried to explain. “My name is Colt Travis, and right now I’ve got no particular plans but to get the hell out of Omaha. You want to come along?” He put his gun back in its holster. “Let me help you, Elam. I’m riding out of here tonight. I can take you into country where those boys up the street would never find you.”
He finally saw movement again. Some of the hay tumbled away, and a slender boy who looked to Colt more like fourteen than eighteen scrambled from under the straw. He was quite handsome, with a face that could almost be called pretty. He stared at Colt wide-eyed and shivering, reminding Colt of a scared deer.
“You are Elam, aren’t you?” Colt asked.
The boy swallowed and nodded. “Please, please don’t turn me in, mister! Mr. Tibbs, he’ll hurt me good.”
Colt looked him over. He wore a tight-fitting suit with a ruffled shirt, and his hair hung in curls to his shoulders. “How come your owner dresses you fancy like that? That suit looks like silk.” He squinted. “You really a boy?”
“Yes, sir, I’m a boy. Mr. Tibbs, he makes me wear my hair long and makes me wear these clothes. He likes to dress his servants good, pretend he treats them just fine. But he don’t. Not really. Don’t make me go back to him, please!”
“Where is this Tibbs from, and what’s he doing in Omaha?”
“He’s from Kentuck, sir,” Elam answered, his voice still that of a younger boy. “He come out here to maybe buy some land, have him a big ranch on account of that Homestead Act. He brung me with ’cause I’m his favorite.” The boy sniffed and shivered. “I was waiting till we got far enough north that maybe I could get away. You know a place called Canada?”
“I’ve never been there, but I know how to find it.”
“Take me there! Please, mister! I be free there! You done said you could take me into country where those men wouldn’t come looking for me. You said it. You said you was riding out of Omaha tonight!”
Colt scowled slightly. “You didn’t do something wrong, did you, like steal something? Kill somebody?”
“No! No, sir! I just gotta get away from Mr. Tibbs, that’s all. It ain’t right, what he makes me do. I ain’t no woman, you know? I gotta do what he say, you know? Or else he hurts me bad. I don’t mind doing housework, working in fields, none of that. But I ain’t no woman, and it makes me throw up sometimes. And when he gets tired of me, or when I start looking like the man I’m gonna be, he’ll have his men shoot me. I’ve seen him do it to others. I’m just his newest, you know? Pretty soon he’ll be done with me and he’ll kill me! I gotta get away, get to Canada!”
Colt thought about the remark the man who had come upstairs with the gun had made about this young man being the boss’s “favorite.”
“What do you mean, you’re no woman?”
Elam looked down at the floor. “You know, don’t you? I’m Mr. Tibbs’s favorite. He don’t like real women, jus’ boys.”
Colt stared at him, dumbfounded, feeling like a fool for not immediately grasping what the poor kid was trying to tell him. “Jesus Christ,” he swore, finding it hard to believe there really were men like that. “Stay put.” He walked back around and finished cinching his saddle. He tied on his bedroll and saddlebags, then shoved his rifle into its boot. “Come on over here,” he told Elam.
The young man obeyed, still looking fearful. He swallowed when he looked up at Colt. “You an Indian? I ain’t never seen one, but you look like how I’d picture one.”
“Half Indian. Cherokee. You ever ride a horse?”
“No, sir.”
“Come over here and put your foot in this stirrup and climb up.”
The young man just gawked at him a moment. “You won’t…you ain’t like Mr. Tibbs, are you? I’d just as soon you shot me.”
Colt let out a sigh of disgust. “No, I’m not like Mr. Tibbs. Look, I’m a wandering man with no job at the moment and no particular plans except a sudden urge to get the hell out of Omaha.”
“You takin’ me to Canada?”
“If that’s where you want to go. Soon as we get a good ride away from here, I’ll see about getting you into some clothes that aren’t so damn conspicuous.”
“How do you know them men won’t come after us?”
“Because nobody in his right mind wants to ride into Sioux country.”
“Sioux! Sioux Indians?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with them before, and I know the country. Now, which would you rather do—have those men up the street find you, or take your chances with the Sioux?”
Elam took a deep breath and managed a limp smile. “Help me up,” he answered. He put his left foot in the stirrup and Colt gave him a boost. As soon as Elam was in the saddle, his feet were no longer in the stirrups because his legs were so much shorter than Colt’s.
Colt took Dancer’s bridle from where it hung on a nail and he slipped it over the horse’s head and ears. He took hold of the reins and blew out the lamp, leading the horse to doors at the back of the shed, which were locked from inside with a simple board shoved through iron bars. He pulled the board away and cautiously pushed open the doors, leading Dancer out into the dark alley behind the livery. “Move to the back of the saddle,” he told Elam quietly.
The young Negro obeyed, and Colt mounted up. “Hang on to me,” he told Elam. “We’ll leave very quietly and stay to the shadows. Once we’re beyond hearing, I’m going to be riding hard, so be ready.”
“Yes, sir. I…I don’t know what to say…how to thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Besides, if you end up on the wrong end of some Sioux arrow, you might not be so grateful.”
“Don’t matter, sir, long as I don’t have to go back to Mr. Tibbs.”
Colt gently touched Dancer’s sides, trotting the horse through the back alley and keeping out of the light.
***
The Senate gallery was filled, mostly with reporters who were certain the Pacific Railway Act would be defeated. Sunny was certain it would not. She and Durant and others had spent far too much money bribing some of the men who sat below. For months the Pacific Railway Act had been tossed back and forth from House to Senate, studied by various committees, read, changed, reread. Congressmen and senators alike had given long speeches for and against the idea, and Thomas Durant, Sunny herself, and several other of their wealthy cohorts had presented their own arguments before Congress.
Pay she had. If she were not so sure that C. P. Huntington and other Central Pacific officials were doling out their own payoffs, she might have thought twice about what she had done; but in her world it was the rich against the richest. Bribes were as natural a part of daily business as sales and inventory. She was in this now for the long haul, and dangerous as it had been to come to Washington again, she was not about to stay away during this historic moment.
Blaine reached over and took her hand as they listened to each senator give his “yea” or “nay.” Until the last two weeks, she and Blaine had not seen each other since he left Chicago in March. It was now the end of June. Blaine had met her at the train station when she arrived in Baltimore and had ridden the train the rest of the way with her to D.C. It was a trip Sunny hoped she would not have to make again for a while. Skirmishes between North and South were taking place in and around Virginia, the Confederates trying to protect Richmond from being taken by federal troops. Every trip she made now was dangerous.
The names of senators from each state were called, more votes recorded. No one doubted that if the act was passed now by the Senate, President Lincoln would give his approval. The final wording of the act gave the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific equal opportunity and the same requirements for obtaining money. The U.P. would build westward from Omaha, the Central Pacific eastward from Sacramento, the two railroads uniting somewhere in the West. Already Sunny could feel the excitement of what was sure to be a construction race.
Blaine was making plans to go to northern California and southern Oregon to investigate the logging industry. He was sure there was an untapped source of great wealth there, and if the railroad bill was passed, it could open many new doors for lumbering.
Sunny was almost glad he was going. Since seeing him again, Blaine had inundated her with flowers and attention, and she knew that if they were together too much over the next few months, things would again come to the point where decisions would have to be made, decisions she didn’t want to think about yet. Already Blaine talked of wanting her to marry him and go with him to the South of France, where his mother and sister lived, and to Africa, where he had himself done big-game hunting. He had all kinds of wonderful plans, but none of them excited her the way the thought of being a part of the transcontinental railroad made her heart rush, and now the railroad was becoming a reality.
She decided that once this new act was approved, she would immediately go to Omaha and hire builders to begin construction on new Landers Enterprises offices there, maybe even a new home. She would move the center of her U.P. interests to Omaha and make her home there while the railroad was being built so that she could be close to what was going on.
“That’s it!” Blaine let go of her hand and jumped up, clapping his hands. Durant and the rest of his men were also standing and cheering now. Reporters began talking among themselves, some running out of the gallery, others coming over to talk to Durant. On the other side of the Senate gallery Central Pacific men were also cheering.
Sunny stayed in her seat, almost stunned. The bill had passed the Senate! She could hardly believe it, after years of fighting and talking and bribing and traveling and praying. She slowly rose, staring down at the circle of seats below, her eyes tearing. We did it, Daddy, she thought. We did it.
Now the real work began. There were two thousand miles of track to be laid across a dangerous country and impossible mountains, and she was going to be a part of it! No matter what Blaine or Vince or anyone else thought of it, she was going back out to the land she loved and see this thing through to the finish. If possible, she was going to be at the joining of the rails, wherever that ended up taking place, and no matter how many years it took to get there! Nothing, and no one, would stop her now.
Chapter 13
Colt had never seen such country, huge forests of hardwood trees, every few miles another lake. He felt almost closed in sometimes by the hills and trees. All his life he had known nothing but wide-open spaces, where a man could see for miles. Coming back from Canada through Minnesota and Wisconsin had been a whole new experience, and a pleasant diversion, making the journey a little less lonely. He had seen Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, compared their vast openness to the Great Plains.
He had managed to get poor Elam to Canada, something that had turned out to be a harrowing experience. Just before reaching the Canadian border, there had been a Sioux uprising in Minnesota. He had no idea what had set it off, but he didn’t doubt it had something to do with some white man doing something insulting and stupid, or with another broken promise.
Whatever the reason, he and Elam had seen the terrible results at two different settlements. They had encountered one group of fleeing settlers who had just vacated an entire small town and were heading for Wisconsin; and he and Elam had spent the rest of their journey doing their best to stay out of sight, hiding not only from the Sioux but from whomever Elam’s master might have sent after them.
Elam was safe in Canada now, with a free Negro family who had kindly taken him in. He had learned a lot from the young Negro, and what he had heard he would not soon forget. It didn’t seem right for a Christian-minded, freedom-loving country to allow slavery. He had vague memories of his father talking against the issue years earlier, as well as memories about how it felt to be treated like something worthless himself. The banishment of his people, which they now referred to as the Trail of Tears, was something he barely remembered, but sometimes a face would come to mind, an old woman crying, a child being buried. In spite of being so young at the time, he was aware that the experience had left him terribly defensive of his heritage and his person, as well as hurt at being treated as something less than human. He could understand how it must feel to be owned by another man. No man would own him, ever.
He headed Dancer up a sandy slope along Lake Michigan. The only other place he had seen sand like this was in southern Colorado, but there had certainly been no lake to go along with it. Dancer snorted in objection to the difficult climb. “Come on, boy,” Colt prodded. “Just a little more. I saw smoke on the horizon. I expect we’re getting close.”
Horse and man finally reached the top of the sandhill, which had a much steeper descent on the other side. Colt had not realized he was already on some of the highest ground in the area. To the south, along the shoreline and west of it, the land dropped and spread out wide and flat. What it held made Colt stare in awe. He pulled Dancer’s reins. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
So, this was Sunny’s Chicago. He thought Omaha was big, but there was no comparison. The city lay sprawled in the distance, smoke coming from tall brick stacks that Colt figured were some of the factories he had read about. Six- and seven-story buildings rose skyward. A river wound through the middle of the mass of tall buildings, and several bridges connected one side to the other, both riverbanks packed with what some men would call civilization. To Colt it was ugly. He would take his mountains any day.
“No wonder Sunny daydreams about the Plains,” he said to Dancer. He remembered one article he had read in an Omaha newspaper that spoke of how Omaha would soon be connected by rail to Chicago, “the world’s busiest rail center,” it had read. Te
n major railroad lines led into Chicago, one hundred trains a day coming into or leaving the city. He had taken special note of it because he knew Sunny owned one of those railroad lines outright, and a good share of stock in some of the others. Not only that, but there was Landers Great Lakes Shipping, Landers Warehousing, a freighting and supply company—he shivered. He had not imagined anything this big. Only now did it strike him full force just how rich and powerful Sunny Landers must be.
Was he a fool to come here and try to see her before going off to war? He had to come back south anyway, and someone in Wisconsin had told him that if he wanted to join the Union forces, he should go to Chicago. As long as he was here, it seemed only logical he should pay Sunny a visit. It hardly seemed fair to either of them to be so close and not try to see her. Now he was not so sure. He had not expected this. He thought he had a pretty good idea how big Chicago would be, but he had grossly underestimated what he would find, even though he had read that the city boasted a population of over one hundred thousand people.
He took a moment to gather his courage, deciding he would rather face Indians or stampeding buffalo than to ride into that noisy, smoky mess. He had to admit some of his nervousness had nothing to do with the city. He was worried about seeing Sunny. Maybe she never expected him to show up. Maybe she would be embarrassed or too busy.
Still, he could tell by her letters that she meant every word when she had told him to come. He could see her blue eyes as she wrote those letters, see her smile. It would be almost cruel to be right here on her turf and not go to see her. He squinted, scanning the horizon more, studying a scattering of homes that lay between him and the city proper. It was his understanding that Sunny’s home was along the lake. Only about a quarter of a mile in the distance he could see one astounding mansion of a home. It made sense that was the area in which Sunny lived.
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