“We’re not staying in this dusty cow town,” Mary insisted yet again.
“Well I want to enjoy it while I can,” Maggie spouted back. “Nothing is wrong with a little pampering.”
“Pampering!” For being twins there were times they were as different as night and day. “We need to find jobs and I need to find a place to make more tonic.”
Maggie raised her chin as if she was some high and mighty princess. “The tonic needs another week before it’s ready to bottle. What does it matter whether we are comfortable at the hotel?”
“It matters. We’ve got to show them right from the start we aren’t going to marry anyone and they can’t force us.” Mary had to draw a breath to calm her ire. “You know how it is...how it’s always been with our business. We need to be ready to leave town if necessary. That’s why you need to come with me. We have to stay together.”
“We won’t make it. That conductor has eyes like an eagle. Besides, I heard the sheriff talk to him in Bridgeport. They won’t give us a permit to sell it here anymore than they would in Ohio.”
“Then we will just have to be more careful. Anyone who tries the tonic is happy enough with the results. It will only be for a few weeks. By the time the authorities find anything out, we will be gone.”
“Where will we go after this town?”
“I don’t know,” Mary admitted. “Maybe Denver. Somewhere big enough to make a good profit. Somewhere far enough west that selling permits aren’t a problem.”
“We can talk about it at the hotel,” Maggie said before she crossed her arms and spun around.
Mary may have been angry before, now she was furious. Her entire being shook. Ever since they’d boarded the train Maggie had been too busy making friends to care about anything else. Well, maybe it was time for her to discover friends weren’t the same as sisters. It would be a rude awakening for her, but if that was what it took, so be it.
As the wheels screeched to a halt and the others, including Maggie, rushed to stare out the windows, where the music played and people shouted, Mary slid into the small latrine. Her anger continued to fester. If Maggie had kept quiet, they could have snuck out without catching the conductor’s attention more than once.
Cracking the latrine door open, Mary peered out, waiting for the chance she wouldn’t let slip by.
As a portly man stepped aboard, commanding everyone’s attention, Mary slipped out of the latrine and out the door before anyone noticed. Taking a deep breath, which caught in her throat because the air was full of smoke from the puffing smoke stack, she grabbed the railing and hoisted herself over the edge and then down the ground. Everyone else was on the other side of the train, and that was just fine with her. She traveled past another car holding animals of some sorts, and then to the one carrying their baggage. It wasn’t as if they’d brought a lot with them from Ohio—the sheriff had limited them to a bag and trunk each.
“Pampering,” she muttered. “Fairy dust.” Mary slid the door open and easily spotted her and Maggie’s things. The ruckus on the other side of the train made it so she didn’t need to be too quiet, therefore she wasn’t. “She’s been pampered most of her life, that’s what the problem is,” Mary muttered as she climbed into the car. Tossing aside various bags and bundles, she collected her tapestry bag and tossed it out the open doorway and then pushed aside other trunks until she could grasp both of the handles on the sides of hers.
They had packed carefully back in Ohio, choosing what they would bring, and she regretted that now. Her tapestry bag only held an additional change of clothing and a few other basic necessities. Everything else was in Maggie’s trunk—the one she’d leave behind after she slipped a note inside it for her sister. Her trunk held what she needed to make some money. Fast money that would get her out of town. It held several full bottles, but more important, a brewing batch of McCary’s Finest Recipe Tonic. All she required now was a place it could brew for a bit longer and then she could bottle it up.
The trunk was heavy, and the only way to maneuver it to the opening of the rail car was to walk backwards, pulling it across the rough floor. As she gave the trunk a solid tug with each step, Mary’s irritation at Maggie continued. Talking about finding a job had been useless. Maggie hadn’t worked a day in her life. She’d always had something more important to do than washing or cooking or—
Her step had found nothing but air.
Startled, she let go of the trunk handle and grabbed for it again, but it was too late.
Her fall ended almost as quickly as it started, but her moment of gratitude disappeared almost as soon as it started. She had fallen out of the train car, but hadn’t landed on the ground. It had been years since she’d sat on Da’s lap, but would never forget what it felt like.
Scrambling and with her heart racing, she tried to get off whoever’s lap she was on.
“Hold still.”
The unfamiliar male voice had her struggling harder. “Let go of me!”
“I will. Just let me back my horse up otherwise you’ll break the neck I just saved you from breaking.”
His actions were as quick as her fall had been. Almost before she could blink, he’d backed the horse up, lowered her to the ground, and jumped off himself. Leaving her to look up into a set of eyes so dark brown they could have been black if not for the specks of gold. Horse feathers. If all the men in Kansas looked like this one, she could almost understand why the girls on the train had been so giddy.
“What were you doing?” he asked. “The depot agent will see the baggage car is unloaded.”
Snapped out of her stupor, Mary said, “I—I don’t want anyone touching my things.” Or her person. Sitting on his lap had caused nerve endings to tingle in places she didn’t know she had nerve endings.
“You one of the brides?”
“Me? Not on your life.” Praying for some kind of believable reason to be unloading her belongings, she glanced at the baggage car. “I—I’m heading west as soon as the train is unloaded. To Denver, and I don’t want my belongings mixed up with the ones that will be unloaded here.”
His expression—a dark scowl—didn’t change. Flustered by the way her heart wouldn’t stop trying to beat its way out of her chest, she said, “I’m meeting my husband in Denver and don’t want my china broken before I get there.” Pointing toward her trunk, she asked, “Would you mind?”
His gaze wandered left and right and then over her from head to toe before he swung around and lifted her trunk out of the car.
“Right there is fine,” she said. “I’ll wait with it until everything else is unloaded. Thank you for your assistance.”
Her heart was still pounding, perhaps because of her lies, but more likely because of him. He was tall and muscular, and could very easily thwart her plan before she ever put it in place. “Good day, sir.”
His dark glare once again went from her head to her toes, leaving her quivering, but then he grasped the saddle horn, swung onto his big gray horse with one easy movement, and touched the brim of his black hat with one hand as he turned the horse about.
