Orphan Moon (The Orphan Moon Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

“I own him. I’m not pleased that I had to kill the poor animal, but allowing him to trample and gore a crowd of shoppers didn’t seem like the neighborly thing to do.”
 

Leighselle stirred, eyes fluttering, moaning. “What happened? What are you doing? Who are you?”

“You ask a lot of questions for an injured woman,” said Henry Flanders, his bright blue eyes flashing a mixture of amusement and concern. “You near came to be trampled by a bull. I’m carrying you to a doctor to see about your injuries. My name’s Henry and today’s my first day in America. So far, I’d say it’s been an exciting one. There you have it, and there it is.”

*****

Leighselle coughed into her handkerchief, patting away the droplets of blood. “That was the moment I fell in love with Henry Flanders.” She would always love him—would take that love to her grave.
 

Hughes poured coffee, sipping his steaming and black. “I don’t mean to sound obtuse, but how in the hell did you fall in love with the son of a monster?”

“I didn’t know Henry was Seamus’s son.” If she had learned the truth, would it have made a difference? She’d asked herself that question many times. “I didn’t learn Seamus’s name until later, so I didn’t connect the two of them.”

“I see. Why was Henry in New Orleans?”

“Henry decided to immigrate here, too, to follow his father who’d come to Texas many years earlier. His father had him go to England first to select a bull to bring with him, since his original source, my father, had been long out of business.”
 

“After the incident on the wharf,” asked Hughes, refilling his cup, “what happened?”
 

“For three months, we were together while Henry arranged the shipping and receiving of a replacement bull. We were never apart a single moment. I became pregnant, and we married right away.”

Hughes leaned forward and poured Leighselle another cup of coffee. “And this is the daughter that you want me to find?”

“Yes.” Leighselle nodded.

“What happened to Henry?”
 

“There was a delay in the receiving of the replacement bull, a problem with the paperwork. Henry received a telegraph from his father stating that Henry was to travel to England and get the problem straightened out. I begged him not to go, or to take me with him. Henry was certain that everything would be fine, that he would return before our child was born.” Leighselle shook her head at the memory, a cough rattling her frail body.

“But?” Hughes asked, gesturing with his palms face up.

“But things weren’t fine.” Leighselle looked across the table at her dear friend and wondered why she’d never spoken of her past with Hughes—he was so easy to talk to— and the more she talked about it, the less it seemed so horrible. So staining. “Things weren’t fine at all. Seamus made good on his threat. He came back—just like he said he would.”

*****

Early afternoon was siesta time in San Antonio, and Leighselle was exhausted. Hughes escorted her to his room on the second floor of the Menger, where she settled in for an afternoon nap. Then, he hurried downstairs to meet with Doctor Schmidt in the Colonial Room, making arrangements for her care.
 

He would have just enough time before meeting with Jameson to make it to the telegraph office. There, he would send word to his federal contacts in Washington that they could expect him in Saint Joseph, Missouri, by the end of October.
 

Saint Joseph, the first home station of the Pony Express, was rife with suspicious activity. Important people in Washington were unhappy that their letters urging the thirty-first state to remain loyal to the Union were not being delivered to their equally important recipients in California—recipients whose deep pockets were lined with shiny gold nuggets.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

O
CTOBER
20, 1860

Thursday passed without Barleigh crossing paths with another soul. On Friday, she met three going in the opposite direction. Three young men heading to Dallas to join the Texas Militia. They reminded her of Aunt Winnie’s sons, all eager to go to war. “It’s coming,” they shouted, pumping their fists in the air with excitement. “War is on the horizon. Turn around and join us.”

They spoke of “war” as if it were a destination, a happy ending to a pleasant journey. Their exuberance to kill or to be killed revealed the sweet naiveté of one who has never been exposed to the reality of death, especially to the kind of gruesome death that war would reveal to their innocent eyes.
 

Time does not heal. The clock can never be dialed back. Permanent scars will remain, Barleigh wanted to tell them. Instead, she tipped her hat and kept riding.

After a monotonous morning, the day was changed by a pleasant happenstance when her path crossed that of another lone rider, a gray-haired, gray-bearded gentleman on an elderly horse that was just as gray as its rider. They made quite the striking pair.

He introduced himself as Mr. Templeton and said that he was headed south for the winter. Like a Canadian goose, he wasn’t stopping till he came to a large, warm body of water, specifically the Gulf of Mexico. When Barleigh mentioned that she used to live in Corpus Christi right on the Gulf coast, he offered to share his lunch if she’d share her stories of Corpus.

She tried to edit her thoughts to alter her stories, making them suit that of a boy’s history. A few times she slipped up. Mr. Templeton was sharp. She could see the suspicion growing in his eyes—and in his expression, the confusion of following such a tale as she was weaving.

“I understand needing to be believed that you’re a boy, what with traveling alone,” he said, “but your secret is safe with me. I sense there’s more to your story. You can tell me, if you wish, why the disguise.”

So, she did. She poured out everything. They talked for hours. It was a needed break from the hard riding, the hiding, and the pretending, and she was prepared to make up the time somewhere down the road.

Before they parted, he offered this advice. “From now on, don’t offer folks a glimpse into your past, even if asked, though I’m honored you told me. But for others, tell them you don’t have a past. That way, you won’t run the risk of revealing yourself. Keep the truth hidden in a shroud of sadness. Most folks don’t want to rub up against sadness for fear it’s contagious.”

He’s right, she thought, as she guided King onto the trail. It’s difficult to speak of the past without getting emotional. Better to keep all of that buried. Sharing stories with Mr. Templeton, the hurt had become real and raw again. She would become the sad, mysterious Bar Flanders whose unspeakable past caused too much pain to share with others.
 

And wasn’t that really the truth?

Mr. Templeton had given her a parting gift of a bag of roasted coffee. She decided to make a toast to him each morning and to think of him and to remember his kindness. She felt certain that Mr. Templeton was more how grandfathers were supposed to be than the one she had known.
 

The Texas-Arkansas border was where Barleigh pitched camp for the night. Feeling more tired than she’d ever been; however, her spirits were high. In this border town called Texarkana, she learned of a well-traveled cattle route that headed due north into Fort Smith, Arkansas, where she could pick up the stagecoach into Saint Joseph, Missouri. By not having to travel to Little Rock, she could save two days or better of riding.

Looking forward to a good night’s rest and to roasted coffee in the morning, Barleigh jotted a few notes in her journal. Perhaps her dream wolf would appear in her sleep tonight, she wrote, sketching the four-legged creature in the margins of her book. His company would not be unwelcome.

*****

She wanted a bath. Oral hygiene was easily adapted to life on the trail, but she wondered how much longer she could go with simple, discrete sponge baths of certain body parts. At least it wasn’t her time of the month, she thought. That issue would take some clever planning on how to cope with and conceal after taking on life as a Pony Express rider.

Oh, the things I didn’t consider
. . . .

One-third of the way to Fort Smith, she found herself behind a herd of Mexican cattle headed to market in Kansas. She followed along for a while before the dust and the flies became a nuisance. Pulling off the trail, she took an afternoon nap, something of a guilty pleasure, but an hour’s rest gave her and her horse an extra boost of energy, so they traveled well into the night.

Far past midnight, judging from the moon’s heavenly path, and feeling lonely, she made camp. Homesick. Thinking of Aunt Winnie and Uncle Jack and their three boys. Missing Starling. Papa and Birdie. A long, monotonous day in the saddle left her mind numb with too much time to dwell on those she loved and those she longed for.
 

Removing her bedroll from the saddle, she was reminded of Papa’s friend, Charlie Goodnight, who visited the summer before Starling was born. He’d presented her papa the Navaho blanket as a gift. There had been many Indian uprisings that year, brutal attacks on settlers, even more brutal retaliations at the hands of white men. White outlaws were performing all kinds of unspeakable atrocities against white settlers and blaming it on the Indians. It had been a bloody summer.

*****

“These lawless acts of white men preying on settlers are being blamed on Indians. The white desperadoes responsible are making sure folks see it that way. We must keep a watchful eye on any suspicious character, be he red or white.” Captain Goodnight was thoughtful when he spoke, choosing his words carefully. He surely would have chosen more censored words had he known Barleigh hid behind the door, listening.
 

“While most reservation Indians are agreeable to learning how to farm the land which the Government has set aside for them, there are those that refuse to relocate to reservations. Tonkawa Indians, they’d rather kill and eat a farmer than to become one, while the Cherokee and Comanche would be happy murdering, mutilating, and scalping the farmer, along with the farmer’s wife, and worse.”

“Indians are different here, Charlie, than the friendly local Indians we encountered on the Gulf,” Papa said. “The Atakapa and the Karankawa ate turtles, ducks, geese, and deer. It seems your plains tribes have different appetites.”

“Not all of them, Henry, but some do. Just remember to keep a watchful eye. The kidnappings, murdering, the cattle rustling, the horse thieving are increasing. The mutilations are becoming more gruesome. Everyone must stay vigilant. Anyway, Henry, I didn’t stop by here just to scare you. I wanted to bring Barleigh this Navajo blanket from the trading post. She mentioned to me the last time she saw mine how pretty she found it. They do weave a nice pattern.”

Captain Goodnight left Barleigh with a beautiful black and red woven blanket along with a mind seared hot with images too troubling to sleep that night.

*****

After a restless night of fitful dreams, she spent another lonely day on the trail without an encounter of the human kind, though she saw plenty of rabbits, squirrels, opossum, and deer. The piney woods of east Texas and western Arkansas abounded with wildlife. The antlers on some of the white-tail stags would have set her papa’s trigger finger to twitching. She could picture him grinning from ear to ear.
 

Her mind wandered, although she remained vigilant of her surroundings. But the trail was easy to follow, with King staying on task. One more day’s ride would place her within sight of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Though she’d miss King and would hate leaving him at the livery stables, she was eager to board the stagecoach that would take her on the next leg of her journey to Saint Joseph, Missouri, and to her destiny.
 

Making excellent time, she figured they were averaging better than fifty miles a day despite a few afternoon naps and one very long lunch along the way. It was interesting that most people she encountered, Mr. Templeton being the exception, readily accepted her as a boy riding alone, no questions asked. Had she taken this journey alone as a girl, she wouldn’t have made it past Fort Worth without someone stopping or accosting her.

Storm clouds rolled in, the smell of rain thickening the air. Lightning streaked across the evening sky on the horizon. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She’d never before slept outside during a thunderstorm and was thankful for the small tent that Aunt Winnie insisted she bring along. This was the first indication of bad weather since leaving Hog Mountain and the first time she’d felt the need to pitch a tent. Making camp in a dense pine thicket just off the trail, she hoped that the trees’ thick umbrella would offer more protection against the storm.
 

Writing in her journal next to the campfire while eating a dinner of beans and cornbread (with a little rabbit cooked over the fire this evening) had become the one thing she looked forward to at the end of the day’s ride. She wrote quickly, finishing her thoughts before the thunderstorm snuffed out the light.

*****

Lightning crackled, the blackening sky bursting with bruised shades of green and purple. Thunder crashed and echoed throughout the thick piney woods. The reverberations were deafening, as if every demon that stalked the heavens shouted curses in unison, and through their fists shook thunder from the sky.

King whinnied in a shrill, high-pitched alarm, stomping and rearing. Barleigh raced to untie him from the line picket, afraid that lightning would strike the trees and him, too. Then, she made a mad dash back inside the tent. It proved to be a useless shelter against the mighty gale, the powerful winds snatching up the tent and hurling it away. All she could do was huddle under the saddle blanket until the squall passed.
 

The night woods were too dark for her to see further than the hand in front of her face. She sat until morning, dozing a little, wet, shivering, and waiting for the sun to come up. The fear that she wouldn’t find her horse caused a gloom to darken her spirit, a gloom as gray and damp as the sky.