“He’s still here,” she said under her breath as she pulled the lap blanket away.
“I know. Don’t pay any attention to him.” Cyrus bent over the wheelchair and saw Loretta’s hazel eyes staring back at him. “Just put your arm around my neck, Miss Retta, and I’ll carry you on board. I’ll try not to hurt you.”
Loretta did as she was told and felt Cyrus’ arms slip under her knees and around her back. Looking at Hettie, he said, “When I lift her, stand between me and Jack as you fold the chair so he won’t be able to see anything.”
Hettie nodded and stood behind the chair. Loretta was a small woman, no more than five-foot-three inches and barely weighed over a hundred pounds.
He lifted her easily from the chair, waiting as Hettie folded and lifted the chair behind him. Cyrus took the three steps onto the train, turning quickly into the passenger car while the conductor took the folded wheelchair from Hettie and stored it in a passageway compartment.
Halfway down the car, Hettie stepped into a seat next to a window and Cyrus placed the woman in black on the seat next to her before taking his own seat across from them. While they waited for the train to pull away from the station, Hettie shook out the lap cover and placed it over the woman’s legs as the train finally began to move.
They sat quietly until Cyrus let out a sigh of relief and smiled broadly. “I can’t see the depot any longer.
We did it!”
With a sweep of her hand Loretta pulled the veiled hat from her head and let her long dark blonde hair fall over her shoulders. Jerking the cover from her lap, she pushed her body up. Reflexively her arm went around her damaged ribs and she bit back the pain. “We have to get Amelia out of that trunk before she dies from the heat. And I have to get out of these God-awful clothes before I faint.”
Cyrus stepped into the aisle and escorted Hettie and Loretta toward the baggage car. As they walked between cars, Loretta took as deep a breath of fresh air as her ribs would allow. She hadn’t breathed air as fresh since she’d fled Ohio home nearly five years earlier. She was free of Jack Coulter at last, and so was Amelia. She smiled, enjoying the scent of freedom.
The baggage compartment attendant tried to explain to Cyrus that the baggage compartment was off limits to passengers. Aside from the passengers’
baggage, the compartment also held mail being transported west. The clerk stared suspiciously at the women standing impatiently beside Cyrus. His eyes were drawn to the diminutive blonde in particular.
She was a pretty young thing, but looked tired.
“Let me out of here!” a girl’s muffled voice yelled.
“Goddammit!”
His eyes wide, the clerk slowly approached the trunk at the back of the car. He glanced over his shoulder at Cyrus’ concerned face. Finally, he leaned down to the trunk and pressed his ear against it.
Amelia chose that moment to kick the top of the trunk with as much strength as she could muster. When Cyrus saw the clerk’s reaction he pounded on the door into the car. The clerk stumbled back to the door and opened it, allowing Hettie and Loretta to rush past him, leaving Cyrus to explain.
Hettie unlocked the clasp on the trunk and flipped the top open. “Are you all right, Amelia?”
“Yes, but I gotta pee somethin’ fierce!” the teenager exclaimed as she clamored from the cramped space.
“Hey! You can’t bring a person on board in a trunk,” the clerk said forcefully. “I’ll have to get the conductor.”
“Wait!” Hettie said, digging in her purse. “I have a ticket for her.”
“If you got a ticket, then why the devil is she in there?”
“She’s trying to get away from a jealous boyfriend,” Loretta said calmly, smiling flirtatiously at the middle-aged clerk. “I’m sure you can understand something like that, being such a fine upstanding gentleman yourself.”
Although it took her a few minutes, Hettie triumphantly pulled four tickets from her purse.
“There,” she said, thrusting the tickets at the clerk.
“Here are our tickets.”
“Still seems like a mighty strange way to travel,”
the clerk said as he examined the tickets closely.
Cyrus cleared his throat and said, “I’m sure you can understand, sir. It was either this sort of subterfuge or force this young woman to continue to fight off the unwanted advances of a man who simply refuses to take no as an answer. What would you do if she were your daughter?”
“I’d shoot the sonuvabitch.”
“Language, sir. Amelia is a young girl and still a virgin. She was in fear of losing her innocence to the unwanted advances of an impetuous and inpatient young man.”
Loretta stifled a laugh, while Amelia simply stood wide-eyed, staring at Cyrus. “I have got to get out of these widow’s clothes,” Loretta said.
“I still got to pee,” Amelia said, clamping one leg in front of the other.
“Loretta, take a dress from the other trunk and I will go with you and Amelia so you can change and…relieve yourselves,” Hettie directed. “Cyrus, is this gentleman satisfied with our tickets? We’re all tired and should return to our seats before the conductor comes by to collect them.”
Cyrus cocked a questioning eye at the clerk as Hettie closed and relocked the trunk. The confused clerk stared at the three women and shrugged as he handed the tickets to Cyrus.
“Thank you, sir. You are indeed a fine Christian gentleman. You will be remembered in our prayers for your assistance with this delicate matter,” Cyrus intoned.
“I don’t recommend it for your future travels.”
“I assure you it shall never happen again,” Cyrus said as he backed out of the baggage car behind the women.
As the door of the car closed, Amelia whispered,
“You told that man a lie, Reverend. You know I’m not a…”
“I’m sure God will forgive me, Amelia. It seemed the only prudent thing to do at the moment.”
While Cyrus returned to their seats, Hettie accompanied Amelia and Loretta to a restroom.
Loretta couldn’t wait to strip out of the heavy black clothing and into something lighter. Hettie carefully helped her lift the dress over her head and checked the wrappings around her ribs.
“Are they too tight and uncomfortable?” Hettie asked.
“They’ll be all right in a few days. I just need to rest and let them heal. Believe it or not, I have been hurt worse,” Loretta replied.
“God, I feel five pounds lighter!” Amelia said as she rejoined them. “I shouldn’t have drank all that water I had in the trunk, but it was damned hot in there!”
“Amelia!” Hettie said. “That’s no way for a young lady to speak.”
“Sorry, Miss Hettie. I used to have better manners.”
“And you will again now that you and Loretta are starting a new life and can forget the awful things that happened in St. Joe.”
Loretta washed her face and managed to make her hair more presentable as she listened to Hettie talk with Amelia. A new life, she thought, wondering if she would ever be able to forget her past or out-run it.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had been happy and looked forward to the next day. She couldn’t begin to imagine what a new life might bring. Whatever it was would have to be better than what she had left behind. But she had been disappointed before. She thought she would find a better life when she escaped from her lecherous stepfather only to find Jack Coulter. Now that she had escaped from Jack, was the train taking her to something better, or something worse?
Chapter Six
Outside Trinidad, Colorado Territory, Early May 1876
CLARE MCILHENNEY REINED her horse to a stop behind half a dozen steers she was herding toward a mountain pasture higher in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near the Spanish Peaks. The sound of gunfire drew her attention toward the north. She turned quickly away from the cattle she was trailing and urged her horse in the direction of the sound.
She topped a hill half a mile away and spotted three of her hands caught in a crossfire by two small groups of riders. She pulled her rifle from its case behind her saddle and chambered a round as she dug her boot heels firmly into her horse’s sides. She raced toward the rear of one of the groups pinning her men down and began firing when she was barely within range, drawing the men’s attention to the new threat.
Clare was pissed off. This was the fourth time in as many weeks her men had been attacked as the dispute over the property boundary between her ranch and that of her neighbor, Thaddeus Garner, continued to escalate. A few feet of dirt hardly seemed like something worth dying over, but if she allowed Garner to continue encroaching onto land that was clearly hers she could eventually lose the whole thing. Tired of the fighting, she disregarded her own safety and plowed straight ahead into the faces of the men ahead of her, firing rapidly. Instead of stopping to join her men she galloped toward the second line of attackers. Two of the men ahead of her fell, wounded, as she flew through their line.
Out of the line of fire, she stopped, breathing heavily and reloading her Henry repeating rifle. It was old, but had served her father well, until that tragic day nearly twenty years before. The sight of her father and mother lying on the ground, dying, filled Clare with rage again and she spurred her horse forward. As a single unmarried woman, the law did not support her claim to her father’s land, but she would never give it up without a fight. By the time she approached the group attacking her men from the west again, she could see they were beginning to retreat. She kept up a withering fire in their direction, barely allowing them to mount their horses unscathed and ride away.
Clare watched the dust rise beneath the horses’
hooves and stared after them while her own horse pranced and circled around beneath her.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” a Spanish-accented voiced yelled.
Clare turned her head to see her friend and ranch foreman Ino Valdez hurrying toward her. He ran up to her and began checking her horse.
“He’s fine,” Clare said, still looking in the direction the men had fled. “Garner’s men, right?”
“Who else? We caught them driving a few head over the boundary and they disagreed where the line was,” Ino shrugged. He pointed toward the property line where a fire smoldered.
Clare pulled her horse’s reins to the side and rode him across the cut barrier between her property and Garner’s. She stopped next to the remnants of the small fire, leaned off her saddle, and wrapped her gloved hand around a branding iron. It sizzled slightly when she spit on the metal. “Still hot,” she muttered.
She returned to her side of the fence line, the Garner brand in her hand. “It’s about time Thad Garner and I had another chat,” Clare said. “Then we need to go into town. I ordered enough barbed wire to fence this whole damn place if necessary.”
Ino looked worried. “That’s not going to make you a popular woman around here. Never been any barbed wire out here. Once an animal gets tangled up it’s nasty.”
“It’s Garner’s fault,” Clare snapped. “Ever since he moved in here he hasn’t been satisfied with his own damn spread and thinks he can steal mine!
It…will….never…happen,” she said with emphasis on each word. She turned to the other hands. “I left a few head halfway to the upper meadow. Get them up there. Ino come with me. You might need to stop me from killing someone.”
CLARE REINED HER horse to a halt in front of the main entrance to Thaddeus Garner’s house and swung off the saddle. She took the steps onto the front porch two at a time and pounded on the heavy wooden door. A petite, fragile-looking woman in her forties opened the front door. Virginia Garner reminded Clare of an out-of-place southern belle.
“Thaddeus home?” Clare blurted, gripping her rifle tightly in one hand.
“Why, no. He and a few of the men went into town. I don’t expect him home for a day or two. Is there something I can help you with?”
“No, ma’am. I’ll find him. We need to talk,” Clare said. She nodded at the woman and turned to rejoin Ino.She bounced up into the saddle and squirmed a little to sit comfortably. “Son of a bitch is in Trinidad.
Probably setting up an alibi,” she mumbled.
“If he was here, he’d of already shot you off that horse,” Ino said.
“First thing tomorrow morning we’ll take the last of the stragglers to the upper meadow. I want the Burress boys to spend the rest of the day riding the boundary between our place and Garner’s while we go into town to pick up the wire. After the herd is settled in I want everyone to make that fence their numero uno job.”
“Garner’s just gonna tear it down,” Ino said, shaking his shaggy head.
“Then I want anyone who touches it shot! We’ve worked too goddamn hard to get this ranch to the brink of paying for itself without having some Johnny-come-lately think he can take it away without a fight. I won’t let an asshole like Garner stop us now.” Her eyes hardened with determination. She was no longer the woman she had been when she first came to the Colorado Territory twenty years earlier.
EARLY THE FOLLOWING morning Clare waited patiently astride her horse as Ino gripped his saddle horn and swung his thin, but well-muscled body easily onto his horse’s broad back. Nearly fifty, Ino Valdez was a Mexican vaquero who had accidentally wandered into Clare’s life. Then, like a stray cat, he simply decided to stay. He worked hard and rarely complained. She glanced over her shoulder at Caleb and Zeke Ramsey. They were young, but had stayed through the last winter and proved they, too, were willing to work hard, and endure her cooking. She had already sent the Burress cousins, Hall and Dewey, to ride the fence line between her property and the Garner spread, looking for breaks. Seldom did a day pass without at least two or three breaks in her fence line. She was certain the Garners were responsible, but had never actually caught them cutting the wire. Clare moved the reins on her horse to lead the small group away from the compacted dirt that served as the ranch house front yard.
Every spring a few head of cattle had to be driven into the upper meadow to join the main herd. Clare and her hands spent most of the winter riding to the meadows in the higher elevations to bring strays back down the mountain to the lower meadows. Not being the brightest animals on God’s green earth, they would die if caught in a sudden snowfall. They would stand in a field of snow covered grass and never use their heads to uncover the grass beneath the way buffalo did and had no clue the snow itself could save them from dying of dehydration. In the spring, when calving began in earnest, the higher elevations would come alive with wildlife. Rising temperatures and the appearance of still wobbly calves usually meant Clare would lose a few of her herd to wolves or mountain lions looking for an easy kill. The busiest months were just beginning.
In the hazy gray-blue early dawn, the four riders slowly made their way into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos in search of wayward animals. The cowboys settled into a familiar and easy conversation as they rode toward the meadows overlooking the ranch. Clare rode silently, as she always did. There was work to be done and it never seemed to lessen.
Even though her men worked hard for their meager pay, she knew it was nothing more than a paycheck to most of them. The ranch was her life and she protected it as fiercely as a parent would a child.
Clare spotted two small clusters of cattle. She stood up in her stirrups and looked over her shoulder.
She noticed Ino slumping forward slightly in his saddle.
“Ino! Quit day dreamin’! You and Zeke get that steer over there!” she ordered. “Caleb, with me.”
Ino and Zeke reined their horses to the right and trotted toward the wayward animal while grabbing the ropes from their saddles. The steer was a big animal and ignored the two men as they approached.
Ino slapped his rope against his leg and leaned down near the steer, making a clicking sound with his tongue to get him moving. The steer wasn’t impressed and resumed its slow grazi
ng. Zeke laughed as he let a portion of his lariat out and swung it around, striking the steer’s hind quarters with a snap.
Clare and Caleb encircled three heifers they’d located on the far side of the hill and encouraged them back on course by slapping their ropes against the chaps covering their legs. Clare smiled and pointed toward Ino and Zeke. “Looks like they have a problem,” she said.
Clare heard Ino’s voice as he prodded the stubborn animal to finally move. She watched the steer turn away again as the heifers approached. “You want me to get him for you?” Clare called out with a laugh.
Ino waved his hand at her dismissively as he opened the loop at one end of his rope. Clare watched as the vaquero swung his rope and released it, letting it fall over the steer’s head. Zeke draped a second rope around its neck. They pulled the slack from the ropes and began up the hill, dragging the reluctant steer behind them. Clare turned in her saddle in time to see the steer jerk against the ropes attempting to escape, nearly pulling Ino from his saddle in the process.
“Ino! Let’s go!” Clare yelled back at him. She was about a hundred yards ahead of him and his stubborn friend.
“Yeah, yeah!” he called back with a smile.
“Ino!” Zeke yelled suddenly as he began backing his horse up.
Clare’s eyes widened as she saw the rope in Ino’s gloved hand go slack. Before he was able to react, the animal lowered its head and charged into the side of his mount. The horse managed to stay on its feet, but reared, tossing Ino from the saddle. He hit the ground hard, momentarily stunned. Zeke tried valiantly to keep the steer under control and avoid another charge as Ino scrambled to get to his feet. In a limping run, Ino reached his horse, but couldn’t bring his leg up far enough to remount or release the rope. It was all he could do to avoid being trampled by his own horse’s hooves or hit by the angry steer. He managed to pull his rifle from its case near the saddle and chambered a round.
“Ino! No!” Clare hollered as she raced back toward him. Her rope was already in motion and Ino lowered his rifle. The steer pawed the ground and lowered its head once again. As the big steer leaped toward Ino, Zeke was nearly jerked from his saddle.
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