Dawn Comes Early (44 page)
He might never get the hang of what his aunt called the language of love. He could barely manage the English language. But one thing he knew for sure: he now had the key to Kate's heart. All he had to do was find her.
The placard announced a $500 reward for the capture and delivery of the itinerant woman. She was to be delivered unharmed to the undersignedâa man so desperate to find her he would gladly sail the seven seas.
K
ate stepped out of the mercantile, a book on the life and times of Jesse James tucked beneath her arm. Perhaps the newly purchased tome would help her understand Cactus Joe's obsession with the outlaw. Maybe then she could finish the last chapter of her book in time to meet her deadline.
It had snowed again the night before and the skies were steely gray, the streets wet and slippery. As much as she hated Boston winters, snow did tend to blur the line between rich and poor. A pure white blanket of snow covered the rooftops of South Slope Beacon Hill mansions and west-end immigrant flophouses alike, showing no favoritism.
Kate shivered, her breath escaping in a long white plume. She had given her winter clothes away to a charity when she left for Arizona and she could not afford to replace them. She did, however, splurge on a muff and she gratefully sank her hands into the hand warmer's furry depths. Anxious to get back to her apartment before it started to snow again, she picked up speed, taking care to avoid the patches of ice that dotted the sidewalk.
A handbill on the post office door near city hall caught her eye but she ignored it. Not until she noticed the outside of buildings and doors fairly plastered with them did curiosity get the best of her. She stopped and flattened the curled edges of a handbill with her hand.
Someone had written “I ain't going nowear now or ever” in big, bold letters. It was signed simply “Luke.” Below the signature was a drawing of a horseshoe. Her heart skipped a beat.
Stunned, she dropped her package. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Had her overactive imagination finally gone too far? Was it a mirage? She shook her head. This wasn't Arizona, it was Boston and there no mistaking the big, bold print. Was this
her
Luke?
Shaken, she reread the sign and traced her finger over the carefully drawn horseshoe, which was identical to the sign over Luke's shop. That sign promised quality. Was this a promise too?
“I ain't going nowear now or ever.
”
The letters were so straight and perfectly spaced that at first she thought the signs had been professionally printed. Upon closer examination she realized they were handwritten. The writer had obviously taken great pains to write them.
She recalled the care with which Luke checked a horse's hooves and the detailed construction of the miniature windmill. It wasn't hard to imagine Luke bent over a handbill, forming each letter just so.
A pedestrian bumped into her. Jolted to her senses, she retrieved her package, brushed off the snow, and continued along the sidewalk, slowly at first. Fate had played a cruel trick on her. Nothing more.
She crossed Washington Street on the way to her apartment, but the handbill continued to haunt her. Was she losing her mind? Had she lost the ability to know fact from fiction?
“I ain't going nowear now or ever.”
She was still questioning her sanity when she spotted another handbill, this one on a gaslight post. Farther up the street an identical sign was posted on the outside of a church bookstore. Another was hung in front of the antiquarian bookstore and still another on the door of a Methodist reading room.
No, no, it couldn't be. Still, Bostonians didn't talk that way.
“I ain't going nowear now or ever
.” This time the voice was so loud and clear it was as if the speaker stood right behind her. She spun around only to find herself surrounded by strangers. She shook her head. She was losing her mind. Or was she?
Hand shaking, she ripped off the next flyer she found and glanced up and down the sidewalk. Luke was here? In Boston? Was that even possible? No, no, it wasn't. He would never travel all the way from Cactus Patch. Would he? The very thought made her heart thump, her pulse race, and her mouth go dry.
She spotted another flyer a short distance away, this one tacked to a gate. Farther ahead one hung from a watchmaker's sign. Faster, faster she ran, slipping and sliding at times on icy patches. She pulled down handbills left and right posted all along Washington Street. Ten, twenty, thirty . . . she stopped counting at a hundred.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Luke!” He'd told her he loved her, but she hadn't wanted to hear itâwas afraid to hear it. His promise to stay changed everythingâor could if she let it. Loving Luke was the easy part; trusting him was a whole different story. It meant embracing life with the grace of a woman instead of the grief of a child. It meant letting go of the past and grabbing hold of the future. It meant facing the wind head-on. She knew what she wanted to do. What she didn't know was if she could.
She turned a full circle, shouting his name. Where was he? She called to a store clerk sweeping the step of his shoemaker shop. “Did you see the man who posted this handbill?”
The man shook his head and quickly disappeared inside.
She traveled the length of Washington from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross all the way to the Grand Opera House, then doubled back. Several times she thought she saw Luke, but each time it turned out to be a stranger who looked nothing like him.
Using money she could ill afford, she stepped on a horse-drawn street car that carried her to hotels and boardinghouses on the outer edges of town. She even stopped to inquire at the elegant Vendome that charged an outrageous four-fifty a night for a room, but Luke was nowhere to be found.
By the end of the day, all she had to show for her efforts was a stack of handbills tacked to the walls of her apartment.
Anguish welled up inside and tears rolled down her cheeks. Falling to her knees on the threadbare carpet, she hugged herself, rocking back and forth, sobs rising from the bottom of the deepest, darkest corner of her soul. She cried for the little girl who watched her father walk out the door, never to return. She cried for the disgusted grandfather who, upon turning his back on his daughter, turned his back on her. She cried for a mother who'd been absent in spirit, if not in body.
But mostly she cried for Luke. Of all the things he could have said, telling her he would never leave was the one thing she could not ignore.
By the time her tears were spent, she was too exhausted to pick herself off the floor.
God
,
tell me what to do. Lead my feet in the direction you wish me to go. Take my hand and show me. Send rain .
. .
Eleanor stood staring at the tiny cross at her feet. She found herself at the grave a lot lately, but she refused to admit it had anything to do with Kate and the need to bury that which might have been.
Robert found her in that uncanny way he had of finding her at such times. Grateful for the company, she nonetheless greeted him with a frown.
“It's not the first of the month already, is it?”
He chuckled. “As it turns out, it is, or will be tomorrow.” When she made no reply, he added, “It's almost January. Can you believe it? Eighteen ninety-six.”
“No, I can't.” Another year gone. Economically speaking, '95 was a good year. Despite little rain, her cattle were fat and healthy, and she'd been able to get a fair amount for them at market. Not as much as she'd hoped, of course, but enough.
“She's been gone for five months,” he said.
Eleanor blinked. “Who's been gone?”
He arched a brow. “Why, Miss Tenney, of course.”
“Oh, really? I hadn't noticed.”
For several moments they stood staring down at the little grave without speaking. Finally, Robert broke the silence.
“What do you plan to do about the ranch?”
“Didn't I tell you? I may have found my heiress. I haven't written back to her yet, but her letter looks promising. She's from Kansas.”
“Ah. At least that's closer to cattle country than Boston.”
She smiled. “Yes, indeed. I think that's a good sign, don't you?”
“You just never know about these things, do you?”
Good old Robert. No matter how much they might disagree, in the end he was always there for her. “Why don't you stay for supper and I'll read you her letter.”
He bowed. “I accept your invitation. That will give me a chance to show you some literature I picked up on Paris.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Robert, will you ever give up? I've never met anyone so mule-headed in my life.”
“I guess that makes us two of a kind.” Grinning, he offered her his bent elbow. “Shall we?”
Kate walked between the gravestones, frozen brown grass crunching beneath her feet.
The cemetery looked especially bleak this time of year. It was the end of February and the ground was still covered with snow. The branches of bare trees, dark against the steel gray skies, showed no signs of spring.
Her woolen cloak offered little protection against the stiff wind that nipped at her nose and made her teeth chatter.
Her mother's resting place was on a hill behind a gray-stone church overlooking the bay. “Elizabeth Anne Tenney” was carved into the headstone in block letters. Her mother died of consumption at the age of thirty-nine. She died a bitter woman, old and worn-out long before her time.
Things weren't what they seemed and Ruckus called that a blessing.
“It makes us give the worldâand each otherâa closer look-see
.”
She wasn't sure how much of a blessing it was, but she now saw her mother for perhaps the first time. Children protected their parents even if it meant living in denial, and Kate had spent a lifetime making excuses for hers. At times she blamed herself for her father leaving and even the circumstances of her mother's wretched existence.
Her mother had been given to rants of temper and drunken stupors. Even cattle knew to protect their young. Even Homer. But not Elizabeth Tenney.
“Nothing good ever happens to our kind
.” Her mother repeated those words as often as others might sing a lullaby and Kate believed them. Why wouldn't she? All she had to do was look and see that God favored the rich. But that was before she left for Arizona, before a whole town rallied around her following her kidnapping, before she met an old lady willing to turn over her ranch to a near stranger. Before she met Luke.
