These Golden Pleasures Page 6

  As Julie outfitted her carefully, Roxanne for a stabbing moment thought, You’d think I were the bride. . . .

  But then, carrying a little hand satchel packed with her yellow calico dress and a few things Julie had provided, Roxanne climbed into the buckboard and let Buck and Julie drive her to the railway station in Wichita.

  On the way there, Roxanne looked at the Arkansas River that flowed down from the Continental Divide in Colorado past Cimarron and Dodge City before it reached Wichita. All the glamor of the storied West was in that river, she thought idly. The land-rushers and the Indians following the buffalo herds and the long-haired gunmen of the plains . . . and their women. She looked at the river flowing by and thought about those women. Had they been like her, dreaming dreams that might never come true? or like Aunt Ada, hard and practical with their eyes on the main chance?

  Buck bought her a ticket on the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad as far as Augusta, Kansas. Julie pressed a little gray purse with money into her hand. “It’s best you buy another ticket when you get to Augusta for wherever you want to go. It’s best Buck and I don’t know where you’re going. Then it can’t be surprised out of us.” She cut off Roxanne’s stammered thanks with, “Hush, now. You’d do the same for me.”

  I wonder, thought Roxanne. I wonder, in your place, what I would have done. She looked into those brave gray eyes. Hadn’t someone said strength was fleeting but love endured?

  “Tell Aunt Ada I’ve gone back to Savannah,” she told Julie. “Then she’ll look for me in the wrong place.”

  Julie nodded gravely. “Don’t tell me where you’re really going,” she cautioned. “But . . . write me once in a while. So I’ll know you’re all right.”

  “No,” said Roxanne quietly. “Letters have postmarks. I’m never coming back to Kansas. Not ever. Good-bye, Julie.”

  Julie’s tear-frosted eyes were grateful. She was being given her chance at happiness.

  Roxanne gave Julie a quick, silent hug and turned to Buck. His face was impassive, but his eyes gave him away. They were desperate with wanting her. For a wild moment the storm-wind roared in her ears again, the world crashed around her, and she and Buck were entwined in each other’s arms beneath a whirling black holocaust, every nerve raw with feeling, primitive emotions unleashed.

  The moment passed.

  Roxanne extended her hand. “Good-bye, Buck.”

  He took that hand, held it briefly. “Good-bye, Roxanne.”

  Valise and purse clasped in her hands, she got on the train, and amid hissing steam and a great grinding of wheels, it got under way.

  Roxanne watched Julie and Buck from the window until their figures grew tiny on the station platform. As the train picked up speed and thundered away, tears glittering on her lashes. This was the last she’d ever see of Kansas . . . the last she’d ever see of her friend and Buck. Whatever part of her heart she had left on these ageless prairies was irretrievably lost.

  And yet . . . out of the pain and terror and heartache and wild joy she had become a woman. And it was with a woman’s eyes that she looked back across the Kansas prairies and listened to the lonely whistle of the train that was hurtling her through the night.

  Then she lifted her head with a new determination and resolutely turned her face to the east where the morning sun would rise to herald a new day.

  Chapter 4

  At Augusta, Roxanne changed trains, taking one that went south on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. So, if anyone were to try to trace her, it would look as if she were blundering vaguely toward Savannah. For she had no doubt that if Aunt Ada caught up with her, she would be forced to marry Mr. Witherspoon ... if her aunt had to break both her arms to make her do it. Riding stiffly, sitting up in a day coach, for she could not afford the comfortable parlor cars or Pullman sleepers, she changed trains several times for short runs, making herself as inconspicuous as possible.

  But her pretty face had cost her something. A hardeyed, rat-faced individual, with a derby hat and an eye for women, noticed the pretty girl alight at Cherryvale, and realized he had seen her the day before going in the opposite direction. He was waiting on the platform to board the train for Kansas City, and when she got on board, he took a seat in the same car and watched her. Crossing his agile legs and smoking a long Cheroot, occasionally looking at a big gold watch with a fake ruby fob, he observed her nervous manner. When they alighted at Kansas City, he saw Roxanne look around furtively and then move to the ticket window. He fell in behind her and watched as she bought a Pullman ticket on the eastbound Union Pacific, then he bought one too. Unaware of this interested surveillance, Roxanne congratulated herself that she had now eluded pursuit. She felt she had made only one grievous error: By mistake she had bought a Pullman ticket, which sadly depleted her funds. Afraid to call attention to herself by changing the ticket—in the innocence of youth she felt Aunt Ada’s spies were everywhere—she entered the plush Pullman car and found a seat beside a very stout elderly woman dressed in the drab tailored garb that marked her position as an upper servant.

  Unnoticed, the rat-faced man slipped into the seat behind Roxanne.

  The elderly woman asked Roxanne her destination. Roxanne said “Philadelphia,” and added that she hoped to find employment in some household. Behind her, a derby hat inclined forward as its rat-faced owner strained to listen.

  “Ah, there you’ll be making a mistake, child,” said the older woman. “For since the potato famine in Ireland, so many Irish have come to these shores and raised families that on the East Coast I fear you’ll find all the jobs are taken. And with so many other foreigners pouring in at all the ports, too. Regular melting pot we’ve become!” She clucked her tongue.

  Roxanne found this news disquieting. Only this morning she had looked in her purse and found she had barely enough fare to go as far as Philadelphia. Buck and Julie had generously given her what money they had, but they had not dared take either of their families into their confidence. So Roxanne, after her wild perorations about the Kansas railways, now found herself short of ready cash.

  She learned that the stout elderly woman next to her, named Mary Willis, had been in service for many years as housekeeper and companion to a genteel old lady in San Francisco. Her employer, Mrs. Hattie Anderton, was the widow of a captain in the Union Army who had died at Gettysburg. Mary Willis, a garrulous sort, told Roxanne all about the big house high on Russian Hill they had occupied until Miss Hattie’s death last month. Miss Hattie, knowing she was going to die, had generously written to her brother in Baltimore, asking him to make a place for Mary Willis in his household. The brother, a Mr. Joab Coulter, had written assenting to her request, but the letter had arrived after Miss Hattie’s death. And now Mary was aboard this “steaming devil,” as she called the train, headed toward an East she’d never liked. and hadn’t seen in more than thirty years.

  “But why should you go east if you don’t want to?” asked Roxanne, bewildered. “Why didn’t Mrs. Anderton provide for you in her will?”

  Mary Willis shook her head. “Miss Hattie, she didn’t have any money of her own, child. All she had was a life interest in that big house on Russian Hill. Her brother, Joab Coulter, had to send her money to keep her going, and now the house will go to him, most likely.”

  At that moment, the porter came through the car announcing lunchtime. Mary Willis looked astonished when Roxanne refused to accompany her to the dining car for lunch. “Are you sick, child?” she asked.

  Roxanne shook her head, unwilling to admit that with her short funds she planned to limit her food to one meal a day. To say so would arouse pity, and Mary Willis might try to buy her lunch. The thought of taking charity from a stranger galled Roxanne. “Just not hungry,” she said with a shrug.

  The older woman’s face cleared. She stood up briskly, remarking that she hoped the Coulters set a good table. She and Miss Hattie had eaten well in San Francisco. Roxanne, observing that Mary could hardly waddle down the aisle to the d
ining car, could well believe it.

  To quiet the pangs of hunger, Roxanne got up after Mary left and restlessly began to explore the train. She was moving between the cars when a man’s figure blocked her path. She looked up into a sly, smiling, ratlike face beneath a dark derby hat.

  “What’s yer hurry, little lady?” he asked.

  Roxanne frowned and started to brush past without replying, but he caught her arm familiarly and chucked her under the chin. “You can’t seem to make up yer mind where yer heading, can you?” he said slyly.

  In the act of drawing back her arm to strike this masher, Roxanne stiffened and stared up into his face.

  He laughed. “Didn’t know anybody saw you changing trains like that, did you?”

  “Go away,” said Roxanne in an unsteady voice. “Or I will call the conductor.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said confidently. “You won’t call nobody. Your face is white and scared. What did you do, run away from home? Bet they’re lookin’ for a pretty thing like you!”

  Roxanne tried to wrench away, but he held her fast in a clawlike grip. “You don’t have to tell me now, little lady. But when you get where you’re goin’, we’re going to get off the train together and have a long, long talk about it!” Suddenly he bent down and planted a hard wet kiss on her mouth.

  With a sob of revulsion she tore free and plunged back into the car she had just left. The man’s nasty laugh followed her.

  Heart pounding, she hurried back to her seat. Her train hopping, which she had thought such a clever ruse, had trapped her. It had made this stranger in the derby hat suspicious. If only she could leap off the train at the first station and take another train for somewhere else! She could lose him that way, but her money was almost gone. So flight was out of the question.

  And he was right—she dared not call the conductor. She was sure that would bring Aunt Ada upon her In full cry. Biting her lips, she jumped when Mary Willis came back saying, “You missed a good lunch. The leg of lamb was delicious.”

  Roxanne gave her a thin smile and listened absently as Mary again regaled her with tales of life in San Francisco. A life which had been far from gay, Roxanne discerned, shut up behind heavy drawn portieres, two old women spending their entire time deciding what they would have for dinner.

  She stiffened. The rat-faced man in the derby hat was swaggering up the aisle toward her. As he approached, he gave her a nasty knowing smile and winked. She turned hastily to Mary Willis. “Was Miss Hattie very heavy?” she asked. Let that man believe she wasn’t traveling alone, that she was with Mary.

  Complacent, Mary Willis did not notice the man’s interest.

  “No, Miss Hattie was thin. All the Coulters are thin, I gather. Tall elegant people. Real aristocrats. They’re a rich shipping family in Baltimore.”

  Pleased that she had Roxanne’s attention, Mary drew from her purse a letter signed “Joab Coulter,” which promised to take Mary into his household and demanded somewhat irascibly, “What age is this woman? Is she young or old? You tell me nothing of her.”

  Mary laughed. “Can you imagine him thinking I might be young? And me a companion to Miss Hattie, who was all of ninety?” She pushed the letter back into her purse along with her ticket to Baltimore and a small roll of bills which Roxanne guessed constituted her life savings. They chatted a little more and Mary’s voice began to sound a bit drowsy. Finally her voice drifted off. She was asleep, her head lolling against the seat.

  Roxanne looked out the window at the scenery rushing by. She saw no easy way out of her dilemma.

  By dinner time Mary had roused herself and was among the first to hurry to the dining car. Famished, Roxanne rose to accompany her. As she did so, she saw the rat-faced man sitting in the seat behind her and paled. It would be hard to escape him if he stayed so close. She could still feel the impress of that disgusting kiss, and she flushed as his insolent glance passed over her trim figure. Lifting her chin haughtily, she followed Mary’s determined progress down the aisle.

  The dining car was a revelation. Venison, elk, mutton chops, beefsteak and grouse were all on the menu. Roxanne selected the cheapest thing she could find and enjoyed eating in the luxuriously appointed car with its snowy linens and silver finger bowls.

  As they finished, her stout companion said, with an almost impish smile, “Do you know, I think I’ll just order another meal? I didn’t try the grouse, and it looked so good when they had it at the next table.” Remaining to keep her company, Roxanne sat by in astonishment as Mary Willis downed another complete dinner.

  The rat-faced man was absent when they returned to their seats, and Roxanne breathed a sigh of relief, even though she realized he was probably lurking in the dining car and she had overlooked him there.

  It couldn’t have been more than an hour later that Mary Willis got up to get a drink of water, started uncertainly down the aisle, suddenly faltered and pitched backward onto the floor. She fell heavily, her purse skittering under Roxanne’s feet. A woman screamed, and two or three male passengers leaped up to help Mary to her feet. They bent over her prostrate form and then looked at each other, aghast. A doctor from one of the cars up ahead was hastily summoned. He was too late. When he rose from his swift examination, he pronounced Mary Willis dead. A stroke, he said gravely, and when Roxanne told him how Mary had just consumed two large consecutive meals, he shook his head.

  Her people must be notified, he said briskly. They must decide where the body was to be sent. Roxanne interposed that Mary Willis had told her she had no family, but added eagerly that she’d had some money, and bent down to the floor to pick up the purse which had landed almost under her long skirt. As she picked it up, it fell open and everything spilled out: the ticket, the money, the letter, a few trinkets.

  Roxanne stared down at them. The ticket and the letter! Her body shielded them from the doctor’s view, and her brain was working feverishly. Joab Coulter had never laid eyes on Mary Willis, had indeed written to ask her age! She could assume the woman’s identity, she could take that job in Baltimore until she could find another position!

  With only an instant’s hesitation, Roxanne kicked the ticket and the letter underneath the hem of her long dress, replaced the money and the trinkets in the purse and, smiling apologetically, handed them to the doctor.

  “I don’t know where she was going,” she said gravely. “But she said she’d lost her ticket and was going to look for it in the dining car when she fell.”

  The lie had been uttered. She was committed to her course of action.

  “Well,” said the doctor, counting out the money, “there’s enough here to bury her. I’ll see the conductor about putting her off the train where I get off. If anyone wants to claim the body, they can do it there.”

  A search was made of the dining car, but of course no ticket was found, and Mary Willis, victim of her own ravenous appetite, was carried from the train at the doctor’s stop.

  Before that, however, Roxanne had edged the woman’s ticket and letter forward with her foot. Then she awkwardly dropped her own purse and made a great show of stooping down to retrieve the contents which, when she rose, included the ticket and the letter.

  Now she knew her destination.

  She was going to Baltimore.

  But she had reckoned without Ratface.

  He caught up with her, in the space between the cars, as she made her way back from watching Mary Willis’s body being taken off the train. No one was present; they were protected from view by closed doors. Briskly he stepped in front of her and blocked her way.

  “I seen you do it,” he crowed. “I seen you pick that dead lady’s purse. How much you get?”

  In the close quarters between the cars, Roxanne was revolted by his breath, his expression, his whole being. “I took nothing,” she said sullenly.

  He gripped her wrist. “I seen you grab something and stick it in your purse,” he said in a threatening voice. “Now tell me, what was it?”

&n
bsp; Roxanne stiffened. In her new desperation she had become wily. Now she glared back at him venomously. “If you don’t let me alone,” she cried, “I’ll say you killed her—that you’ve been following us and you poisoned her.”

  His jaw dropped open. He was taken aback at the controlled violence of her tone, and his other hand—which had been about to caress her soft white throat—drew back as if the touch might bum him. “The old lady died of a stroke! You heard the doctor!”

  Roxanne’s eyes narrowed as she played her trump card. “Perhaps. But if I accuse you, the police will certainly hold us both. The worst that will happen to me is I’ll go back where I came from. But you—do you want the police checking into your background?”

  She saw from his expression that she had guessed correctly.

  “You she-devil!” he breathed. “I believe you’d do it!”

  “You can count on it,” said Roxanne in a hard voice. “And if the police looked at me and then at you, whom do you think they’d believe?”

  His face contorted at that. “I’ll get you for that,” he muttered.

  “But not today,” said Roxanne, her eyes blue ice. “And not for this.”

  They were both jolted as the train drew to a halt at a little crossroads station. In rage, he drew back his arm to strike her, but passengers coming through on their way from the dining car intervened, moving between them. His eyes, which earlier had been so lascivious, were sick with rage as an agony of emotions played over his venal face.

  Suddenly his eyes dilated. “You really done it!” he gasped. “For something that was in that purse! You really killed that old lady. You had the chance to slip something into her drink in the dining car—I don’t want to be involved in no murder!” With an oath he flung past her, and she saw him disembark onto the empty station platform. Farther down, a driver was turning his horse and buggy in preparation to driving off. The rat-faced man hailed him on the run, hanging onto his derby hat against the wind. As the train began to chug away, Ratface turned and shook his fist, and Roxanne saw that his face was contorted. She smiled grimly, her heart beating a trip-hammer tune.