one thing, her fancy new jab-toed shoes, ordered from Bloomingdale’s, pinched her feet. And for another, all at once she felt as if her bottom half was glued to the seat; every bone in her body resisted moving a single step toward the momentous event that awaited her. She could scarcely breathe she was so frightened.
The coach emptied, and still Lolly sat stiff as chicken wire on the hard leather seat until a head poked into the far end of the car.
“Miz Mayfield?”
She sucked a gulp of smoky air into her lungs. “Yes?”
“Better hurry up, ma’am. Train’s about to pull out.”
As the boy spoke, the railcar jerked and began to glide forward.
Good gracious! Which was worse, being inadvertently kidnapped by a train, or facing a town full of hungry lions? Well, maybe not lions, exactly. But she knew exactly how the Christian martyrs in Roman arenas must have felt. Trapped.
Lolly stood up, grasped her leather satchel and made her way unsteadily up the aisle, clinging to the backs of the seats until she reached the iron debarking step.
The train engine tooted twice and began to accelerate.
“Jump, ma’am! Hurry, it’s rollin’.”
Jump? Was he crazy? She’d break both her ankles in these shoes.
She heaved the satchel into the young man’s arms and hurriedly unsnapped one French kid boot, then the other, tossing them out the train door just as the coach began to pick up speed. Wrapping her knitted wool shawl about her head, she folded her arms over her chest, whispered a quick prayer and stepped off the platform.
She toppled into the youth clasping her satchel, knocking him flat onto the wood platform. His wide-brimmed hat rolled away under the spinning train wheels.
“Godalmighty, ma’am, whadja do that for?”
Lolly sat up, straightened her black straw bonnet and scooted her knees off the young man’s chest. “To get off the train, of course. You said to jump.”
“Sufferin’ scorpions, ma’am, I didn’t mean on top of me!”
Lolly rose to a standing position, her legs shaking like twin columns of jelly. Her stocking-covered toes curled against the uneven boards beneath her feet, telling her where every splinter lurked in the rough wood. What a way to begin her new life, making a spectacle of herself in public.
She scanned the onlookers. Was he here? Watching her stumble about like a tipsy Presbyterian? Would he change his mind when he saw her?
She bent over the boy. “I am extremely sorry. Are you hurt?”
“Heck, no, I ain’t hurt.” He assessed her generous figure. “I guess I’ve been hit by hay bales bigger’n—” His voice trailed off.
“Beg pardon, Miz Mayfield. You ain’t shaped like no bale of hay, no matter how—” His thin face flushed the color of cooked beets.
Lolly took pity on him. “Have you a name, young man?”
“Huh? Oh, sure. But at the moment I can’t exactly recall— Oh yeah, it’s Henry Morehouse, ma’am. At your service.”
Lolly suppressed a burst of laughter. “Well, Henry Morehouse, I am Leora Mayfield.” She extended her hand. “I have been in correspondence with the ladies here in town, and I have come out from Kansas to marry—”
“Oh, we know all about that, Miz Mayfield.” He hoisted her travel satchel in one hand and offered his arm. “I’ll escort you over to the schoolhouse to get registered.”
“Schoolhouse? Isn’t there a hotel?”
“Why, sure, ma’am. We’ll get you registered there, too.”
She peered at him. He was a nice-looking, lanky boy of about fifteen, she guessed. Clear-blue eyes and floppy wheat-colored hair.
“Why must I register at the schoolhouse?”
As her question sank in, his cheeks colored. “Well, you see, ma’am, the colonel, he figured…well, he figured—”
“Colonel! Mr. Macready is a colonel? In what army, may I ask?”
“He was a Reb, ma’am. But not anymore. War’s been over some years now.”
“I am aware of that.” She brushed off her skirt, keeping her head down so her black straw bonnet shielded her face. So, Mr. Macready had been a Confederate soldier. Papa had fought on the Union side. Her saucepan was boiling over.
“What,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage, “precisely has the colonel ‘figured’?”
“That you all could sign up at the schoolhouse first. That way, we’ll know how many.”
She tried hard not to frown, she really did. Frowning just added wrinkles to her already sundried face. Not that anyone knew how parched her skin was; no one but herself ever touched her cheek or her nose, or any other part of her. Which was the reason why she was braving the wilds of Oregon instead of withering into an old maid in Kansas.
“That way you’ll know how many what?”
Henry Morehouse studied his dusty brown button-top shoes. “I’d rather not say, Miz Mayfield. Best we just go along and do it. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Henry?” Back in Kansas, grown men had quaked at that tone. She used it now because she was exasperated.
The boy shuffled two steps backward. “Don’t usually answer to Henry,” he mumbled. “My friends call me Hank.”
Lolly stepped toward him. In her stocking feet they were exactly the same height. “Hank, then. Best we just ‘go along and do’ what?”
“S-sign up, ma’am. Like I told ya.”
“Sign up for what?” She narrowed her eyes in her best Pin the Polecat look and watched the Morehouse boy bite his lower lip.
“For, uh…for what the colonel figured, ma’am. That’s all I can tell ya, till we get to the schoolhouse.”
Lolly spun on her heel, then wished she hadn’t. Ignoring the bite of wood splinters through her stocking, she collected her shoes from the platform, rescued Hank’s mashed hat from the railroad tracks and returned to the motionless boy.
“March,” she ordered.
“Oh, yes, ma’am.” He started to salute, then realized his error and grinned sheepishly at her. “Just follow me.”
The schoolhouse sat smack in the center of a field of blue lupine and scarlet Indian paintbrush. A wandery path snaked its way through the ankle-deep blooms to a run-down building that looked more dilapidated than any farmer’s neglected barn in Kansas. Why, the gaps between the split logs weren’t even chinked! She could tell they had been at one time, but the mud-and-straw daubing had dissolved to dust. The wind, or the snow, could whistle through at will. No doubt the students
