Dawn Comes Early

by Margaret Brownley

  The shopkeeper made a face. “Lots of books have been banned. The Watch and Ward Society hasn’t the slightest idea what it’s doing. If it was left up to that stuffy group, the Bible would be banned.” Obviously it was a sore subject with the store owner.

  Frustrated, Luke thanked the man and started for the door. He stopped. “Where would a college-educated woman spend her time?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  With open curiosity the proprietor’s gaze traveled down the length of him, lingering on his wrinkled trousers and well-worn boots. No doubt the bookstore owner wondered what a man like Luke wanted with a woman clearly out of his realm.

  “Libraries, maybe. You might try the circulation library on Washington. There’s also one at Cornhill Square and another on Hanover.” He reeled off several more.

  “How . . . how many libraries does Boston have?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty—a hundred. That’s counting libraries in insane asylums, hospitals, and prisons. Your friend is probably not in any of those.”

  “I don’t reckon so.”

  The shopkeeper continued, “There’s the Athenaeum, of course, but I doubt she’s there. It used to charge an annual membership fee of ten dollars, but then it sold shares and now only proprietors can use it. Is your friend a proprietor?”

  Luke frowned. “I have no idea.” He didn’t even know what a library proprietor was.

  “Then there are church libraries, reading rooms, universities. She won’t be allowed in the Masonic reading room, but you might try the YWCA library. It’s for women only so they probably won’t let you in, but you can inquire at the front desk.”

  By the time the bookstore owner got through listing every possible literary establishment, Luke’s head was spinning. How did people have so much time to read?

  He thanked the proprietor for a second time and left. He stood on the sidewalk outside, shivering against the cold, and glanced up and down the busy street. He checked his map and started toward Cornhill Square.

  What if by some chance he found her? What then? What could he say that he hadn’t already said? How could he convince her to go back to Cactus Patch with him? How could he prove his love for Kate?

  Three days later he still hadn’t found her. He’d inquired at libraries, reading rooms, and bookstores to no avail. Feeling helpless as a cow in quicksand, he prayed, God, I can use some help here. How about a little push in the right direction? If that don’t do it, feel free to lay me on an anvil and give me a good hammering.

  The proprietor of the last bookstore he’d inquired at directed him to the reading room of a Presbyterian church. Spotting the old brick church on the opposite side of the street, he crossed over, dodging traffic and causing one carriage driver to curse him out. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk than the church sign over the wood-paneled doors caught his eye.

  The sign read, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

  He recalled Kate telling him about her pa. He thought back to his own childhood and the confusing months following his parents’ deaths. A parent dying wasn’t the same as being deserted by one, but to an eleven-year-old it still felt like abandonment, foolish as it seemed. Kate’s pa didn’t die—he walked out on her. That was a whole lot worse.

  “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

  What was it that his aunt had once said? Something about God giving love a language of its own.

  “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

  A feeling of triumph flooded through him. It was as if an iron bar had been lifted from his shoulders and the very heavens had opened up to smile on him. It was as if the earth itself had stopped spinning. At long last he had his answer. He knew what to do.

  He might never get the hang of what his aunt called the language of love. He could barely manage the English language. But one thing he knew for sure: he now had the key to Kate’s heart. All he had to do was find her.

  Chapter 37

  The placard announced a $500 reward for the capture and delivery of the itinerant woman. She was to be delivered unharmed to the undersigned—a man so desperate to find her he would gladly sail the seven seas.

  Kate stepped out of the mercantile, a book on the life and times of Jesse James tucked beneath her arm. Perhaps the newly purchased tome would help her understand Cactus Joe’s obsession with the outlaw. Maybe then she could finish the last chapter of her book in time to meet her deadline.

  It had snowed again the night before and the skies were steely gray, the streets wet and slippery. As much as she hated Boston winters, snow did tend to blur the line between rich and poor. A pure white blanket of snow covered the rooftops of South Slope Beacon Hill mansions and west-end immigrant flophouses alike, showing no favoritism.

  Kate shivered, her breath escaping in a long white plume. She had given her winter clothes away to a charity when she left for Arizona and she could not afford to replace them. She did, however, splurge on a muff and she gratefully sank her hands into the hand warmer’s furry depths. Anxious to get back to her apartment before it started to snow again, she picked up speed, taking care to avoid the patches of ice that dotted the sidewalk.

  A handbill on the post office door near city hall caught her eye but she ignored it. Not until she noticed the outside of buildings and doors fairly plastered with them did curiosity get the best of her. She stopped and flattened the curled edges of a handbill with her hand.

  Someone had written “I ain’t going nowear now or ever” in big, bold letters. It was signed simply “Luke.” Below the signature was a drawing of a horseshoe. Her heart skipped a beat.

  Stunned, she dropped her package. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Had her overactive imagination finally gone too far? Was it a mirage? She shook her head. This wasn’t Arizona, it was Boston and there no mistaking the big, bold print. Was this her Luke?

  Shaken, she reread the sign and traced her finger over the carefully drawn horseshoe, which was identical to the sign over Luke’s shop. That sign promised quality. Was this a promise too? “I ain’t going nowear now or ever.”

  The letters were so straight and perfectly spaced that at first she thought the signs had been professionally printed. Upon closer examination she realized they were handwritten. The writer had obviously taken great pains to write them.

  She recalled the care with which Luke checked a horse’s hooves and the detailed construction of the miniature windmill. It wasn’t hard to imagine Luke bent over a handbill, forming each letter just so.

  A pedestrian bumped into her. Jolted to her senses, she retrieved her package, brushed off the snow, and continued along the sidewalk, slowly at first. Fate had played a cruel trick on her. Nothing more.

  She crossed Washington Street on the way to her apartment, but the handbill continued to haunt her. Was she losing her mind? Had she lost the ability to know fact from fiction?

  “I ain’t going nowear now or ever.”

  She was still questioning her sanity when she spotted another handbill, this one on a gaslight post. Farther up the street an identical sign was posted on the outside of a church bookstore. Another was hung in front of the antiquarian bookstore and still another on the door of a Methodist reading room.

  No, no, it couldn’t be. Still, Bostonians didn’t talk that way. “I ain’t going nowear now or ever.” This time the voice was so loud and clear it was as if the speaker stood right behind her. She spun around only to find herself surrounded by strangers. She shook her head. She was losing her mind. Or was she?

  Hand shaking, she ripped off the next flyer she found and glanced up and down the sidewalk. Luke was here? In Boston? Was that even possible? No, no, it wasn’t. He would never travel all the way from Cactus Patch. Would he? The very thought made her heart thump, her pulse race, and her mouth go dry.

  She spotted another flyer a short distance away, this one tacked to a gate. Farther ahead one hung from a watchmaker’s sign. Faster, faster she ran, slipping and sliding at times on ic
y patches. She pulled down handbills left and right posted all along Washington Street. Ten, twenty, thirty . . . she stopped counting at a hundred.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Luke!” He’d told her he loved her, but she hadn’t wanted to hear it—was afraid to hear it. His promise to stay changed everything—or could if she let it. Loving Luke was the easy part; trusting him was a whole different story. It meant embracing life with the grace of a woman instead of the grief of a child. It meant letting go of the past and grabbing hold of the future. It meant facing the wind head-on. She knew what she wanted to do. What she didn’t know was if she could.

  She turned a full circle, shouting his name. Where was he? She called to a store clerk sweeping the step of his shoemaker shop. “Did you see the man who posted this handbill?”

  The man shook his head and quickly disappeared inside.

  She traveled the length of Washington from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross all the way to the Grand Opera House, then doubled back. Several times she thought she saw Luke, but each time it turned out to be a stranger who looked nothing like him.

  Using money she could ill afford, she stepped on a horse-drawn street car that carried her to hotels and boardinghouses on the outer edges of town. She even stopped to inquire at the elegant Vendome that charged an outrageous four-fifty a night for a room, but Luke was nowhere to be found.

  By the end of the day, all she had to show for her efforts was a stack of handbills tacked to the walls of her apartment.

  Anguish welled up inside and tears rolled down her cheeks. Falling to her knees on the threadbare carpet, she hugged herself, rocking back and forth, sobs rising from the bottom of the deepest, darkest corner of her soul. She cried for the little girl who watched her father walk out the door, never to return. She cried for the disgusted grandfather who, upon turning his back on his daughter, turned his back on her. She cried for a mother who’d been absent in spirit, if not in body.

  But mostly she cried for Luke. Of all the things he could have said, telling her he would never leave was the one thing she could not ignore.

  By the time her tears were spent, she was too exhausted to pick herself off the floor.

  God, tell me what to do. Lead my feet in the direction you wish me to go. Take my hand and show me. Send rain . . .

  Eleanor stood staring at the tiny cross at her feet. She found herself at the grave a lot lately, but she refused to admit it had anything to do with Kate and the need to bury that which might have been.

  Robert found her in that uncanny way he had of finding her at such times. Grateful for the company, she nonetheless greeted him with a frown.

  “It’s not the first of the month already, is it?”

  He chuckled. “As it turns out, it is, or will be tomorrow.” When she made no reply, he added, “It’s almost January. Can you believe it? Eighteen ninety-six.”

  “No, I can’t.” Another year gone. Economically speaking, ’95 was a good year. Despite little rain, her cattle were fat and healthy, and she’d been able to get a fair amount for them at market. Not as much as she’d hoped, of course, but enough.

  “She’s been gone for five months,” he said.

  Eleanor blinked. “Who’s been gone?”

  He arched a brow. “Why, Miss Tenney, of course.”

  “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  For several moments they stood staring down at the little grave without speaking. Finally, Robert broke the silence.

  “What do you plan to do about the ranch?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I may have found my heiress. I haven’t written back to her yet, but her letter looks promising. She’s from Kansas.”

  “Ah. At least that’s closer to cattle country than Boston.”

  She smiled. “Yes, indeed. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”

  “You just never know about these things, do you?”

  Good old Robert. No matter how much they might disagree, in the end he was always there for her. “Why don’t you stay for supper and I’ll read you her letter.”

  He bowed. “I accept your invitation. That will give me a chance to show you some literature I picked up on Paris.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Robert, will you ever give up? I’ve never met anyone so mule-headed in my life.”

  “I guess that makes us two of a kind.” Grinning, he offered her his bent elbow. “Shall we?”

  Kate walked between the gravestones, frozen brown grass crunching beneath her feet.

  The cemetery looked especially bleak this time of year. It was the end of February and the ground was still covered with snow. The branches of bare trees, dark against the steel gray skies, showed no signs of spring.

  Her woolen cloak offered little protection against the stiff wind that nipped at her nose and made her teeth chatter.

  Her mother’s resting place was on a hill behind a gray-stone church overlooking the bay. “Elizabeth Anne Tenney” was carved into the headstone in block letters. Her mother died of consumption at the age of thirty-nine. She died a bitter woman, old and worn-out long before her time.

  Things weren’t what they seemed and Ruckus called that a blessing. “It makes us give the world—and each other—a closer look-see.”

  She wasn’t sure how much of a blessing it was, but she now saw her mother for perhaps the first time. Children protected their parents even if it meant living in denial, and Kate had spent a lifetime making excuses for hers. At times she blamed herself for her father leaving and even the circumstances of her mother’s wretched existence.

  Her mother had been given to rants of temper and drunken stupors. Even cattle knew to protect their young. Even Homer. But not Elizabeth Tenney.

  “Nothing good ever happens to our kind.” Her mother repeated those words as often as others might sing a lullaby and Kate believed them. Why wouldn’t she? All she had to do was look and see that God favored the rich. But that was before she left for Arizona, before a whole town rallied around her following her kidnapping, before she met an old lady willing to turn over her ranch to a near stranger. Before she met Luke.

  For the first time in her life, she knew how it felt to be protected and cared for, and it scared the life out of her. The only permanent thing she’d ever known was death and abandonment. Through the years she’d lost everyone and everything she’d ever cared about. Anything good that happened to her was discounted as only temporary.

  “I came to say good-bye, Mama.” She leaned against the wind to lay a stem of winterberries on the concrete slab. No flowers could be found at this time of year and she was lucky to find a branch covered with red berries—red for forgiveness.

  She straightened, and in so doing, she felt a heavy weight lift from her shoulders. She wasn’t ready to forgive—not yet—but if acceptance was the first step, then she was well on her way.

  “You were wrong, Mama,” she said. “Good things do happen to people like us.” And maybe, just maybe, some things did last forever, even love.

  Ruckus certainly thought so, and if he were there now, he’d probably recite scripture with words to that effect. Thoughts of Ruckus brought a smile to her face.

  She shoved her hands in her muff and gazed at a steamer sitting in the frigid waters of the distant harbor. The icy wind blew off the bay, whipping her hair around her head and snapping at her skirt. She inhaled until her lungs felt ready to explode. She then walked into the wind and followed the path down the hill—as bravely as a woman in love.

  Chapter 38

  With a grim laugh the bushwhacker wrapped his cloak around him. “No one will ever get the best of me.”

  Miss Hattie bounded forward and pulled off the man’s false beard. “This man is an imposter!” she cried.

  Eactus Paaaaaaaaaatch!”

  Kate rose from her seat and rushed down the aisle even before the train had come to a complete stop. The moment the door opened she sprang past the dark-skinned porter and raced down the steps to t
he platform. There she stopped, clutching a small package in her hand. Not only did the reality of the full desert sun hit her but also the enormity of what she was about to do.

  It had been raining when she left Boston, and after months of gloomy skies and bone-chilling temperatures, she welcomed the desert warmth. She took a deep breath, relishing the fragrance of sunbaked sand.

  Feet firmly planted upon the platform, she felt her knees tremble. It was all she could do to keep from getting back on the train. But she had come too far to turn back now.

  Had it not been for the success of her new book, she could not have afforded the trip back to Arizona. The early reviews had been glowing, and Boston’s Corner Bookstore had sold out all copies the very first day.

  The best news was that her book was recommended reading for truant boys, and she knew at least two youths who vowed to follow the straight and narrow after reading the sad but true story of Cactus Joe and his wicked ways.

  Behind her came the thud of her trunk on the platform, but she didn’t bother to retrieve it. Nothing in her trunk mattered as much as what was in her heart. Besides, there was no time to waste.

  She’d finally figured out what the circles on Cactus Joe’s calendar meant, and the closed telegraph office confirmed her suspicions.

  She picked up her skirt and ran so fast that she almost stumbled over her feet. Sweat poured down her face and still she ran.

  She stopped when she reached the outermost edge of the town. The street was deserted. Not a soul was in sight, but she wasn’t fooled.

  “Cactus Joe! I know you’re here.”

  Nothing.

  She ambled forward, cautious at first, but gradually picking up speed. She passed the barber, newspaper, and assay office. “Cactus Joe!”