“It’s going to take more time.”
“Sister, we don’t have more time. Tomorrow night is the night.”
“And if he won’t tell me?”
“Then he’ll have to tell me, which will not be as pleasant.” He turned, putting his back to the railing, and looked through the parlor windows.
Lucinda saw his expression change and she turned as well to face the house. May stood in the parlor looking outward, her lips parted expectantly, her eyes fixed on Bill.
“I think May should come with us.” His smile broadened.
An alarm like the ringing of the fire bell coursed through her and she turned to face the field again. “Why?”
“I think she may be of use.”
She drew a breath, and then another. “That was not the plan.”
“Plans change.”
Carefully, keeping her face turned from the windows, she walked stiffly down the stairs, her bones as brittle as a bird’s, and moved away from the house and into the fields fronting Red Bluff Road. All of the black and perilous spaces that had ever been visited upon her—the abandonment in a madhouse, the years of sinking into uncontrollable fits, the wasteland of half-remembered and loathsome couplings—stretched out before and behind and above her, like a great dark canopy.
Of course there had been other women. There would always be women, bodies used for convenience when she wasn’t around. But Bill had chosen her as a partner for her intelligence, for her ability to mold herself capably to any situation, and for her seeming lack of remorse. He had also chosen her because she fed his need to gaze into a person’s eyes and see, from a safe remove, Death knocking on the other side. He had promised that he would never leave her, would never desert her.
But now there was a threat she had not anticipated. May was also dissatisfied, restless, and physically without peer. And—Lucinda knew this with a deep, instinctive certainty—May would not hesitate to leave her former teacher behind if it served her own interests.
She felt Bill walking up behind her, and heard the striking of a match to light another cigar. She told him, “She can’t come with us.”
“Can’t? Lucy, don’t be tiresome. By tomorrow morning, if the old man hasn’t told you exactly where the gold is, you are to leave with the girl for Galveston. Once I tell him you have his daughter, he’ll be willing.”
“What makes you think she’ll come with me?”
“Because you’re going to tell her I want her to.”
“And Jane?”
“Who?”
“The other sister.”
“I’m sure she’ll be useful as well.”
She turned to look at him. “She’ll fight you if her father’s threatened.”
He ran a finger down the side of her face. “I certainly hope so.”
She followed him back to the house and into the parlor, where Jane was at the piano playing “Oh, What a Comfort Is My Home.” Lucinda went to stand next to Bedford, a strained smile on her face, accepting congratulations from the neighbors as they began spilling from the house and onto the road for home. When May left, she threw a dazzling smile at Bill, and Lucinda felt panic filling her chest.
After dark, she met Bedford at the greenhouse and led him inside. She turned her face up to his to be kissed, closing her eyes tightly to his avid, straining expression, breathing shallowly against his exhalations of whiskey vapors.
After a time, she took his hand and, after kissing each finger, placed it over one breast, whispering into his ear, “Bedford, please confide in me. Tell me where the coins are hidden. If something were to happen to you, how can I take care of your family?”
He buried his face in her neck. “I can’t,” he mumbled.
She pulled away. “I’ve told you everything about myself. My life is an open book to you. But if you would hide this discovery from me…How can I trust you with the day-to-day, if you won’t reveal to me the more important things?”
He hung his head, looking wretched and guilt-stricken. “Lucinda, I wish to tell you…I want to tell you that…”
He stammered to silence and she kissed him again until he forgot his misery and resumed running his hands over the folds of her skirt. But to every question about the coins, he remained unresponsive. Another man driven to such frenzy would simply have forced her legs open and taken her. But he stopped his groping as soon as she pushed him away.
She leaned against a wall, closing her eyes, and she realized that Bedford was not going to give her the information she sought.
He sank down to a sitting position, his head in his hands. “You don’t understand,” he said.
She straightened her hair and clothing and brushed at her skirt. “You must trust me if I am to marry you. I’ll not ask you again.”
“I can’t tell you,” he said and looked at her pleadingly, but she walked from the greenhouse without saying good-bye and returned to her room at the Wallers’.
In the morning, she rose early and crept her way quietly to the barn, where she hid her tapestry bag packed with all of her things, as well as some food and water, in the buggy.
When everyone was seated at the table for breakfast, she asked Euphrastus if she could use the buggy for the day, knowing that he wouldn’t refuse her in front of his wife.
“I need it to go to Morgan’s Point,” she explained. She looked to Sephronia and smiled. “I’m meeting the ferry bringing my wedding dress from Houston.”
Lavada laughed, delighted. “I can come with you, Miss Carter.”
Lucinda ducked her head as though embarrassed. “Lavada, dear, I would be happy to take you. But Bedford will be accompanying me.”
Euphrastus looked at her suspiciously. “I didn’t know the ferry made passage on a Sunday.”
“Commerce never sleeps, Mr. Waller.” Lucinda smiled at each of them in turn, relieved she would never see any of them again. “I can harness the horse myself.”
She drove the buggy to the Grants’ house and waited for Bill to come out into the yard. When he looked at her questioningly, she shook her head.
“The old man’s still sleeping off his drink,” he said, frowning.
She nodded but kept her eyes averted, afraid of seeing the displeasure on his face. He rested one arm casually across the rear wheel and leaned under the canopy. “I can’t wait any longer, Lucy. May’s inside. Go talk to her.”
After a moment’s pause, she stepped from the buggy and walked across the yard and into the house. She called out May’s name, and Jane appeared in the hallway, her eyes swollen from crying. But seeing Lucinda, she turned angrily away and walked back into the kitchen. May appeared at the top of the stairs and Lucinda motioned her down. She took May by the hand and led her outside so the girl could see Bill waiting by the buggy.
She took hold of both of May’s hands, gave them a reassuring squeeze. “You do know that I care for you like a sister, don’t you?” The girl nodded, her eyes slipping past Lucinda’s shoulders to where Bill stood. “And Bill’s happiness means everything to me.” Lucinda’s back was to Bill but she could imagine the familiar expression of seduction on his face in that moment as he stared at May: the slow burn of his eyes, the contagion of a creeping smile. “May, look at me. Do you love my brother?”
May returned her gaze and said, “Yes.”
“Would you then travel somewhere to marry him, if he asked you to?”
May peered over Lucinda’s shoulder once more, her eyes exultant, her breath coming faster. “Yes.”
Lucinda ducked her chin, a sorrowful anger narrowing her mouth to an ugly gash, and she reflexively tightened her hold on May’s hands.
At that moment Jane came to stand in the doorway, enraged now beyond tears. She stared hatefully at Lucinda, her arms crossed, her mouth moving as though practicing for an argument.
Ignoring her, Lucinda composed herself and said, “You know that Jane and your father would not allow it if they knew. They think you’re still a child. But I know better. Bil
l wants this to happen and can think of little else. But if you want to be with him, you must leave with me today.”
“Where will we go?”
“I’ll tell you everything once we’ve left. If Jane asks, we’re simply going for a drive.”
“Is Bill coming with us?”
“He’ll follow after us tomorrow.” Lucinda let go of May’s hands. She reached out and stroked a loose curl from the girl’s forehead. “Hurry now, while your father sleeps. You’ll be back to your family soon, and all will be forgiven once you’re married.”
May looked at her, incredulous. “Why would I ever return to this place?” She turned and ran into the house, brushing wordlessly past Jane, to gather her things, and Lucinda climbed into the buggy to wait.
Bill leaned in and circled his fingers around her ankle with one hand, stroked the calf of her leg with the other. He told her where to meet him in Galveston once they had made the ferry passage from Morgan’s Point. They would stay for only a day in Galveston and then go on to New Orleans. The grip on her ankle tightened painfully and he said, “I’m counting on you, Lucy.”
When May climbed into the buggy next to Lucinda, she was carrying a small bag, which she quickly threw to the floor. She turned to Bill, offering her mouth to be kissed, but Lucinda struck at the horse with the whip, and the buggy lurched up the road.
Within half a mile, they saw a man riding towards them leading two mules. He nodded in their direction as he passed and Lucinda recognized the hostile, close-set eyes of Jacob Purdy, Bill’s “surveying” partner. Where Innis Crenshaw was, she didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. After a few miles of traveling southeast, towards Morgan’s Point, she made several switchbacks along the paths running through the sprawling Allen cattle ranch, eventually heading the buggy in a northwesterly direction, towards Houston.
Lucinda had expected May to talk on and on about her excitement over her marriage to Bill, and she’d prepared herself for hours of girlish silliness. But surprisingly, May was mostly silent, her mouth curling in secretive smiles.
When Lucinda stopped the buggy briefly to allow May to get out and stretch her legs, she was tempted to whip the horse and drive off, leaving the girl to make her own way back to Middle Bayou. But Lucinda had formulated a different plan for May as she lay sleepless in her bed during the early-morning hours.
She shared some water and biscuits taken from the Wallers’ home and carefully began to lay out the journey they were about to make.
“We’re going to Houston,” Lucinda explained. “There you’ll board a train, and then in Hearne you’ll take the stagecoach to Fort Worth.”
“By myself?” May asked, her eyes widening in fright. “But I’ve never traveled alone. I’ve always been with Father. I wouldn’t know what to do—”
Lucinda reached out and squeezed one of May’s hands to silence her. “Listen and I’ll tell you all you need to know. I traveled by myself when I was younger than you and it was the greatest adventure of my life.”
May was quiet, but her mouth was downturned, her brows knit together. Her eyes worriedly scanned the prairie, and Lucinda knew that her shortsightedness rendered the surrounding grasslands watery and indistinct, making her all the more vulnerable in unfamiliar territory.
“Have you ever been on a train?” Lucinda asked, tamping down her sympathy for the girl, tearing her eyes away from the frightened face at her shoulder. May shook her head and Lucinda smiled. “It’s like flying. The passengers who travel on the rails are the most refined of people. And the view from the windows, May. It’s as if you’re watching a never-ending tapestry unspooling before you: fields and towns and people working on their farms, tiny from a distance, like dolls. All viewed from your comfortable coach.”
She glanced over and saw that the girl’s expression had changed from fear to rapt attention. Lucinda then described to her the wonders of rail travel, the excitement of arriving by coach to a city filled with theaters, shops, grand hotels, and beautifully dressed men and women. She was indiscriminate about weaving in descriptions of buildings or events she had seen in various cities and towns. May could not know that the picture Lucinda was painting was more than a little untrue.
“You’ll have a first-class ticket with money for food and drink, which you can buy on the train from the most cunning little tea cart. In Hearne, you’ll board the stagecoach to Dallas and then go on to Fort Worth.”
May’s face fell again at the mention of the stagecoach.
Lucinda exhaled sharply, her face disapproving. “Frankly, May, I’m disappointed in you. Bill and I will be only a day behind.” She paused for a moment, as though hesitant to reveal more. “He wanted to surprise you by arriving with a trousseau, and he needs my help to do that. He’ll be very pained. He thought you were an adventurous girl.”
May linked her arm with Lucinda’s. “I’ll go,” she said, uncertainty in her voice. “I’ll go.”
They arrived in Houston at midday and Lucinda purchased a first-class ticket at the station. She also bought a suitable traveling dress for May and dinner at a hotel, where she wrote down meticulous directions for the exchange to the coach in Hearne. She gave the girl money from the dwindling supply of stolen coins in the tapestry bag.
When the train was ready to depart, Lucinda embraced her former student and helped her as she stepped onto the railcar.
May turned and said, “Soon we’ll be sisters.”
Lucinda’s smile faltered. She looked at the girl in the ill-fitting, hastily bought dress and for an instant fought a powerful desire to pull the girl from the train, tell her that a mistake had been made, that they were leaving instead for Galveston. But she remembered the blushing, triumphant smiles on May’s face that morning. She steeled herself by replaying the memories of May and Bill standing together, the girl’s eager eyes filled with adoration, Bill’s gaze flooded with simple lust. She willed herself away from tender thoughts by imagining herself supplanted by May, deserted and left behind. May was resourceful, young, and beautiful. She would survive.
Lucinda smiled encouragingly. “You must now call me by my Christian name.”
May peered nervously from the window, calling out, “Good-bye, Lucinda, good-bye,” and they waved at each other until the train had pulled away.
Lucinda stood on the platform for a while, pondering how best to get rid of the horse and buggy, finally deciding to sell them at the stable. The train to Galveston would not leave until the next morning, and she could use the money. None of it would matter, though, once Bill met up with her carrying bags of gold coins. He would be disappointed, and perhaps angry, that May had slipped away from him; however, she knew he’d get over it, and soon.
She took a room in a hotel for the night and dosed herself heavily with laudanum. But it was hours before she could sleep, her eyes open and filled with images of May stepping off the coach in Fort Worth in a few days’ time, being stared at and scrutinized by men who would be astonished that such a beauty, barely more than a child, would be making her way through town unescorted; seeking out the boardinghouse that Lucinda had assured her was respectable; presenting herself finally to the boardinghouse mistress, a woman by the name of Mrs. Landry.
Lucinda’s last troubled thought before the laudanum did its work was of May handing Mrs. Landry a sealed letter of introduction that read, simply, Call us even. Lucinda.
Chapter 18
Whatever was in the open wagon sitting at a distance on a path off the main road had brought a small group of men and women crowding around it. It was still early morning but the sky was a clear, unhindered blue, and the clustered figures were lit by the strengthening daylight.
Nate perched on the lower branches of a tree, the only place that offered him an elevated view across the expanse of dried prairie fields, and watched them through the field glasses. Dr. Tom had not wanted to ride into Middle Bayou so exposed, risking being shot by McGill or his men from some homesteader’s attic.
Dr.
Tom stood below, peering up at him through the branches. “Well?” he asked.
“There’re some settlers gathered around a wagon looking at something.”
“A dead something or a live something?”
Nate looked for a few moments longer, taking note of the large turkey buzzards perched on the roof of the nearest house. “Can’t tell for sure, but I would guess dead.”
Dr. Tom motioned him down and stood for a while with his back braced against the tree, his breathing labored. When Nate had lowered himself to the ground, Dr. Tom told him, “I believe I’m going to let you take the lead on this one. I’m feeling a bit hollow.”
Nate took in the pallor of the ranger’s face, the pouches beneath his eyes swollen like bruises from a fight, and knew it was more than just the laudanum.
Soon after Crenshaw’s torture and hanging, Dr. Tom had slipped off his horse onto his knees, violently heaving the contents of his stomach onto the ground. He had then climbed back on his horse, wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth, and said, “George used to marvel that I could doctor with a cool head and a steady hand, even with blood up to my ankles, and yet still get weak-kneed after hanging a man who deserved it. But I always sensed that when you willfully kill a man, even for righteousness’ sake, and start feeling all right about that, it’s time to find different work.”
Nate lifted his chin in the direction of the wagon. “Why don’t you stay here and let me go talk to them.”
In response, Dr. Tom mounted his horse and told Nate, “It’s hard to ask questions and keep a vigil at the same time.” Leading Crenshaw’s mare, he followed after Nate at a gallop across the fields towards the settlers, who scattered briefly at their approach. Some of the men had rifles, which they raised defensively. Nate thought that as a whole they looked astounded, and a few near terrified.
Nate stopped at a distance and shouted, “Texas law here. Don’t go poppin’ off.” He announced their names and purpose and waved at the men to lower their guns.
They rode closer and saw two men, one young, one older, lying faceup in the wagon, both dead, both bloodied and covered by a quilt pulled up to their necks. Two women, a mother and daughter, Nate guessed, were wailing in grief, grappling to hold on to the young man’s hand that had slipped over the edge of the wagon.