the country. Alone, yet financially able to support herself until she decided in which direction to turn, she’d followed her instincts.
“I’ll make a place for myself, and then send for you, sis,” Wilson had told her earnestly. “If you leave here, be sure to let me know where you’re going.” And she had, sending a letter in care of the postmaster in Cheyenne, Wyoming, before she left New York City.
If Wilson could seek a new life in the West, so could she. And Texas promised to be more cosmopolitan than Wyoming or Colorado, she decided. With cities like Dallas and Houston developing into social communities that commanded respect, she’d headed in that direction.
How she’d ended up in Collins Creek was another story, one she refused to think about today. Her head high, her steps swift, she passed the bank, then the general store, waved at the minister who stood before the hotel’s double doors, and smiled nicely at the barber, who nodded his greetings.
“Good morning, Miss McBride,” came a salutation from her right.
“Good to see you out and about, Mrs. Pemberton,” she said properly. “I hope you’re feeling better.” And then she went on her way, aware that the white-haired widow would more than welcome a chance to describe the details of her latest illness. Not today, Augusta thought. Not now.
She marched past the schoolhouse, the church and the cemetery, crossed the street and headed toward the row of simple two-story houses that made up the second street of Collins Creek. Five of them, there were. Two turned into boardinghouses for men without families, two owned by families who scrabbled to keep body and soul together, and the fifth, set a little apart due to a fence and a row of trees with low-hanging branches, designated as the shelter.
Without a proper name, and with no desire to advertise it should they come up with one, the ladies who ran the establishment merely considered it their good deed. Not for a day, or year even, but a project into which they’d vowed to devote their time for the foreseeable future.
It stood now, its majesty faded by wind and rain, and as it came into sight Augusta viewed it anew, moving through the gap in the front picket fence, where a gate hung with but a single hinge, leaning against the ground, awaiting repair. As were several other items that caught her eye. A porch step lacked a board and she carefully maneuvered over it, mentally adding it to her list of things she would get to this very afternoon.
Inside, the parlor was almost empty of furniture, a sofa against one wall, and, before the window, a library table upon which a lamp, complete with fringed shade, stood in graceful splendor. Two chairs sat on either side of the fireplace, mismatched but sturdy. Augusta’s footsteps clicked against the bare floor as she walked on down the hallway and into the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Miss McBride.” Pearl offered a greeting as she looked up from the bread she was kneading. Flour decorated her cheek, almost concealing the remnants of a black eye, now faded to a dull yellow hue, and the presence of two stitches next to the bottom lid. “I’m almost done with this, and Bertha said I should make the loaves next.”
“Don’t forget to grease the pans,” Augusta reminded her, aware that learning basic household chores was important to these women. “Who’s cooking supper tonight?”
“I hope it’s gonna be Bertha,” Pearl said glumly. “It’s Janine’s turn, but she’s not real handy with pots and pans, yet.”
“She can sew well, though,” Augusta reminded her. “And she’ll learn to cook. We just have to be patient.”
“Yeah, but in the meantime, we could get awful hungry.”
A second glance at Pearl’s voluptuous form made that prospect doubtful, Augusta thought, and then she walked past the big table toward the back door. “Is Honey working in the garden?” she asked, peering out the screened door to where a patch of vegetables struggled to survive beneath the hot Texas sun.
“Said she was gonna water stuff and pull weeds,” Pearl told her. “She’s probably daydreamin’ about goin’ home to Oklahoma, if I know Honey. She was cryin’ in her tea at noontime.”
“I’ll find her,” Augusta said, stepping out onto the small porch and searching in all directions for the golden-brown hair of the girl she’d brought here only three days since.
“Honey?” she called, stepping from the porch and walking around the corner to where a slender young woman sat, slumped against the side of the house in the shade.
“Ma’am?” Honey looked up, wiping at her eyes, attempting to smile as she got to her feet. The fullness around her waist was proof of her condition, and again Augusta was smitten with pity for the child. For Honey was, indeed, too young to be so far from home, with a baby on its way and no one to care whether she lived or died.
“I pulled the weeds and carried water from the pump, ma’am,” she said quickly. “The lettuce is big enough to eat for supper, I figured, and the first of the peas are pretty near full in the pod.”
“Well, why don’t you go ahead and pick the peas and lettuce, then,” Augusta told her. “Do you have a pan out here?”
Honey shook her head. “No, but I’ll get one, right quick.”
She rounded the corner and disappeared from sight, the sound of the screened door opening and closing giving away her location. Augusta sighed. If only she could find a farmer who would be willing to take on the girl, and more than that, be willing to accept her child. That particular item had been on her list for two days now, ever since she’d brought Honey here from the Pink Palace, once Lula Belle had confirmed the fact of her pregnancy and decreed her unfit for her trade.
Mentally she made a note of Honey’s situation again, listing it just beneath the broken step before the front porch, and then sighed again as she considered the growing length of things to be concerned with. Beth Ann must be lying down upstairs. Slender to the point of skinny, she’d wandered down the road three weeks ago, the second day they’d occupied this house, and announced that if she never had anything to do with a man again, it would be too soon. Lula Belle had pronounced her not pretty enough for her crew of ladies, too skinny for a discriminating gentleman to pay for, and without the proper manners necessary for a resident of her establishment.
All true, Augusta agreed. But Beth Ann was willing, and once they had fed her properly and taught her some basic elegance, she’d make a fine wife for some discriminating man, whether Lula Belle agreed with their theory or not.
And then there was Janine, who was content to sit and sew a fine seam, a talent that had come in handy, but certainly wasn’t enough to find her a husband. Although Janine had quietly and firmly denounced that idea anyway.
They weren’t cooperating the way Augusta had foreseen. Certainly, women misused as they had been should be eternally grateful for the chance to remake their lives into productive channels. She bent to pull a stray weed, left behind during Honey’s travels through the garden.
“I’ve got a pan,” Honey announced, standing beyond the pea patch.
“Well, pick the stuff that’s ready,” Augusta told her, “and then I’ll show you how to shell the peas for supper.”
And that should give her just about enough time to fix the front step, she decided, turning toward the woodshed, where their pitiful collection of tools hung on one wall, and where she might find a board fit to be used. In a few minutes, she’d managed to come up with
