“Emily!” The voice was stern and female. “What are you doing bothering that man?”
“I’m not botherin’ him, Mama. I’m talkin’ to him.”
“Haven’t I told you never to talk to strangers? Come away from there, honey. I’ve brought you a sandwich.”
“It isn’t chicken, is it?” the small voice inquired.
“I beg your pardon? Emily, what’s wrong with chicken?”
Something swished past him. Something that smelled good, like soap. Maybe honeysuckle, too. “She doesn’t like chicken,” Gray said. He thumbed his hat back and opened his eyes. And then he sat up straight so fast his jeans rubbed the wrong way on the velvet upholstery. Holy—! The prettiest woman he’d ever seen in his life sat opposite him, a brown paper sack in her lap. She wore a stiff dark blue traveling dress and a silly-looking hat with lots of feathers on top. Partridge feathers.
She looked up and smiled. “Oh, good morning, sir. I trust Emily was not bothering you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Would you like a sandwich? I wasn’t sure how long it would be before the train made its next stop, so I purchased an extra one.”
He shot a glance at Emily. “Is it chicken?”
“Well, yes, it is. You do not like chicken?”
“Nope.” He winked at the girl who was sprawled on the seat next to her mother. “A chicken pecked me once.”
Emily giggled.
“Oh. I also have, let’s see...roast beef and egg salad. I trust a cow has not pecked you in the past?”
Gray laughed. “Not hardly, ma’am. Fact is, I’ve seen enough cows in the past month to last me a good while, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take the chicken after all. And thanks.”
“You are quite welcome,” she said primly. “I suspect my daughter has interrupted your rest.” She looked straight at him with eyes so green they looked like new willow leaves and handed him something wrapped up in butcher paper. “Emily is quite skilled at interrupting.”
Emily unwrapped her sandwich. “Mister sleeps under his hat!”
“I do hope you didn’t wake—”
“Yes, I did!” Emily crowed. “And he talked to me and everything.” The girl’s bright blue eyes snapped with intelligence. He’d bet she was a real handful. He didn’t envy her mother one bit.
Suddenly he remembered what manners he’d managed to pick up over the past thirty-one years. “Name’s Graydon Harris, ma’am.”
“How do you do? I am Clarissa Seaforth, traveling from Boston. And this is Emily, my daughter.”
He tipped his Stetson. “Emily and I met earlier, Mrs. Seaforth.”
“It’s Miss Seaforth.”
That stopped him midbite. “Miss? As in not married?”
“That is correct. Emily is adopted.”
“Yes, and I’m real special!” the girl sang. “Mama said she really, really wanted me.”
Gray watched Clarissa Seaforth’s face turn white as an overcooked dumpling and then pink and then white again. Whoa, Nelly! Something about Miss Clarissa Seaforth didn’t exactly add up. He clamped his jaw shut and resolved not to ask. Not his business, anyway. He had enough on his mind getting back to the ranch after the drive to Abilene, paying Shorty and Ramon the salary he owed them, eating something besides beans and bacon, and finally getting a good night’s sleep.
“Are you a cowboy, mister?”
“Emily,” her mother admonished. “Eat your sandwich and don’t bother the gentleman.”
Jehoshaphat, nobody’d called him a gentleman since he was ten years old and helped old Mrs. DiBenedetti corral her runaway rooster. The train gave a noisy jerk and began to glide forward.
“Yeah, I’m sort of a cowboy. I just drove three hundred cows to the railhead in Kansas. Guess that makes me a cowboy.”
“What’s a railhead?”
“Emily...” the cool voice cautioned.
Gray bit into his chicken sandwich. “A railhead? Well, that’s where a train stops to pick up cattle cars.”
“You mean a train like this one? I’ve never been on a train before. It’s kinda rumbly.”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Rumbly is a good way to describe it.”
“Doesn’t it bother the cows?”
“This is a passenger train, honey. Cows ride on different trains.”
Her red curls bobbed. “Where do they go?”
“Uh, well, they go...well, my cows are goin’ to Chicago.”
“What do they do when they get there?”
“Emily...” the woman warned. “Eat your sandwich.”
Whew. He didn’t relish explaining a slaughterhouse to little Emily. Or her mother. He devoured another mouthful of chicken sandwich.
* * *
Clarissa swallowed a morsel of roast beef down a throat so dry it felt like sandpaper. How her brother would have laughed about her discomfort. What, sis? You riding the train all the way across the country? You won’t last a single day.
He was wrong. I have lasted all the way from Boston, and I’m not finished yet!
But she was most definitely exhausted. She settled back in her seat and let her eyelids drift shut. Emily was a handful, irrepressible, full of four-year-old curiosity and questions and... Oh, she did hope her niece, now her adopted daughter, wasn’t making a pest of herself. In one ear she could hear her daughter’s high, piping queries and in the other the deeper, grumbly responses of the cowboy in the seat facing them.
“Mama?” Emily jostled her arm. “When are we gonna get there? Can I have a horse?”
“I do not know, and no, you cannot have a horse. Life is dangerous enough as it is.”
The cowboy crossed his long, jean-clad legs. “How far are you goin’, Miss Seaforth?”
“All the way to Oregon. Smoke River.”
“That’s about ten more hours,” he said from under his hat.
She blinked. “Now, how would you know that, sir?”
He sat up. “Cuz I’ve traveled this route before. That’s where I live.”
“Oh?”
