Trail of Golden Dreams (31 page)

He-ping spoke to
his sister in Chinese, and she stepped inside the door.  “Come, come,” the
man said.  “We visit.”

“What do you
think?” Grey whispered to Josie.  “Do you think it’s safe?”

“They seem nice
enough.  The fella can speak good English.  I wonder why he likes
Colorado so much.  I’m curious about him.”

“I’ll admit, I am,
too.”

She smiled up at
him.  “Looks like we’ve found ourselves in the middle of another
adventure.”

“Looks that way.”
They accepted He-ping’s offer to visit, but before going inside, Grey glared at
the unconscious men.  “What should we do about these two?”

“Police will take
them,” He-ping answered.  “No worry.  Come, Paladin.”

Grey and Josie
found themselves in a cramped, but clean room.  He-ping’s sister served
them coffee in real china cups.

“Thank you. 
These cups are lovely,” Josie told Bao Yu before taking a sip.  She
appeared fascinated by the Chinese woman.  Grey guessed them to be about
the same age and guessed his wife had never seen an Oriental before.  His
Stetson hung over his knee, and he noticed their host kept staring at it. 
“He-ping, do you like my hat?”

The man grinned,
showing several empty spaces where teeth should have been.  “My friend
Tucker has hat like it.”

“Who’s Tucker?”
Grey asked.  “Someone from Colorado?”  He figured that was the case
and wanted to learn more.

“Yes. We work
together on railroad, before I get hurt.”  He-ping shoved his pants leg
up, and they saw his leg was crippled.  “I save money.  Someday Bao
Yu and I go to Colorado.  Bao Yu will be wife of Tucker.”

Grey and Josie
both glanced at Bao Yu, who sat demurely with her hands folded.  Her
eyelashes fluttered as she sipped from her cup.  She didn’t seem like the
same girl who’d slammed a pan into that man’s head earlier.  He-ping
continued.  “Tucker says much land in Colorado.  Cheap land.  We
all make homestead.”

That caught Grey’s
attention.  “Homestead?  How much is this cheap land your friend
Tucker told you about?”

“Tucker say one
dollar fifty for acre. Good land.  Mountains.  Rivers.  Deer.”

Grey leaned
forward.  “Where in Colorado?”  He took a quick look at Josie and saw
her eyes had widened.

He-ping’s eyes
were enlarged, too.  Animation filled his face and his voice. 
“Northwest territories.”  He jumped up and limped to a table in the corner
and returned holding some documents.  He shoved them at Grey to
read.  “Map show where land is.”

After he skimmed
the information and studied the map, Grey felt a quickening in his chest. 
He told Josie, “These documents appear legitimate and all in order.  It
says here the government is opening the Northwestern territories to
homesteaders.  Pioneers can buy at least one hundred sixty acres for one
dollar fifty an acre.”

 She covered
his hand with hers, and he could feel the pulse throbbing in it.  “Do you
have a good feeling or a bad feeling?” she asked.

He grinned. 
“Very good.”

She smiled from
ear to ear.

“He-ping, do you
have some paper?  I’d like to copy down the coordinates of this map and
the particulars regarding the homesteading act.”  He-ping slid his eyes to
his sister, and Bao Yu stood up and pulled some paper from a drawer.  She
bowed politely when she handed it to Grey.  After he’d scribbled
everything down, he stuck the paper in his jacket pocket and told Josie they
should be going.  He was eager to talk to her in private.

“Thank you for the
coffee,” Josie told Bao Yu.  “It was nice to meet you.”

“You go to
Colorado, Paladin?” He-ping asked as he escorted them to the door.

“There’s a mighty
good chance. I appreciate your sharing this information with me.  My wife
and I need a place to settle.  This seems like an opportunity we can’t
pass up.”

“It’s good place,
Colorado.” He-ping grinned.  “Tucker say so.”

Grey reached out
his hand. “You and your sister, and Tucker, whoever he is, look us up if you
ever get there.”

“Okay,
cowboy!”  He-ping pumped Grey’s hand up and down.  “See?” he said,
pointing to the sidewalk.  “Pigs gone.”

Sure enough, they
were.  “Take care of yourself, He-ping,” Grey said.  “You, too,” he
told the sister.

“Bye.”  Josie
leaned forward and hugged Bao Yu, even though she had no idea whether hugging
was customary in their culture.  She told Grey later she’d felt the girl
needed a friendly embrace. 

He-ping told them
where to catch a trolley bus, and they were able to find their way back to the
hotel before the fog completely shrouded the city in darkness.

Later that night,
Grey found it hard to sleep.  Josie, lying in his arms in the big bed, was
just as wakeful.   

“Are you thinking
we should set out for Colorado?” she asked, stroking his thigh with her
fingernails.  He kissed the top of her head.  The woman could read
his mind.  It was all he’d been thinking about since they left the
Chinaman’s house.

“What do you
think?  Would it bother you not to go back to New Mexico?” 

She didn’t
hesitate with her answer.  “Wherever you go, I go.  As long as we’re
together, we could live in a tent in Timbuktu and I wouldn’t care.”

A lump formed in
his throat, and he pulled her close.  “I’d like to see Colorado
again.  You’d love it there.  The mountains spoke to me when I
traveled through.  The wildlife is abundant, and there are plenty of
grasses.”  His voice grew soft.  “I can picture our ranch there.”

She sat up and kissed
him.  “Then I say we go.”

He couldn’t
believe how fortunate he was to have this spirited woman as his wife. The
matter was sealed with a firm nod of his head.  With the decision made, he
fell asleep wound around her body like thread on a spool. 

Sometime in the
night, they were awakened when the earth shook. Loud roaring accompanied the
windows rattling, the floor shaking, and the bed slid a couple of feet forward.

“What’s going on,
Grey?” Josie screamed, crying and clinging to him.

“Don’t know.”

The incident
lasted only ten seconds or so, but it was enough to unhinge them both.
Scrambling off the bed, they threw on clothes and stumbled into the hallway to
see other doors being flung open and terrified guests running from their rooms
in their nightclothes.

“What the hell was
that?” Grey asked a gentleman walking by.

“An earthquake,
sir.”

Josie and Grey
stared at one another, each of them taking some steadying breaths.

Some time later,
after the chaos had died down and hotel management had assured all the guests
it was safe to return to their rooms, Josie was afraid to go back to
sleep.  “Let’s leave when the sun rises,” she begged Grey.  “I don’t
want to stay in San Francisco anymore.”

“What about the
ocean?  I thought you wanted to splash around in it some more.”

She shook her
head.  “I’ve seen all I need to see of it.  It was beautiful, and I
thank you for bringing me here.  I’ll never forget the ocean.  But I
want to leave.  Can we?”  Her misty gaze pleaded with him.

He kissed her and
tucked her back into bed.  “Sure, honey.  Whatever you want. 
Try to get a few more winks of sleep, and we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

* * * *

After two days on
the train to Denver, four days on a stagecoach to Steamboat Springs, another
seventy miles in a Conestoga wagon with a pioneering family from Illinois, and
two days scouting the area, Josie and Grey had the rest of their money wired
from Santa Fe and purchased five hundred fertile acres of Northwestern Colorado
land. 

That same day, he
sent two telegrams: one to Zack Stamps, arranging for Traveler and Lightning to
be sent west, and the other to Rusty in Boston.  The travel funds were
wired to his aunt and uncle, and his brother sent a reply that he was packing
his bags and would be on the next train out of there. 

Arms linked, Josie
and Grey gazed out over their pristine parcel.  Situated in a box canyon
at the end of the beautiful, wide, rushing Rippling Fork River, their ranch
would sit at an elevation of eight thousand feet at the foot of Pyramid Peak. The
spring winds chimed through the property, which was crossed with streams,
nestled in forests of pine, spruce and aspen, and teeming with wildlife.
Antelope roamed the hillsides and trout splashed in the river.

“We can build the
cabin right down there,” Grey said, pointing to the perfect spot.  “And
we’ll put the barn and corrals over there.” His gaze ran from east to
west.  “Rusty can help me fence the whole place in, and he and I will hunt
in the mountains and fish in the river for our supper.  I can picture us
pushing our cattle between pastures. And our kids riding their ponies to the
ends of the earth.” 

Josie peered up at
him. After five long years, her husband was finally at peace with his life and
the world.  She was, too.  He pulled her into his embrace and kissed
her.  “Does our new home make you happy, darlin’?”

It was difficult
for her to find her voice.  Happiness did not begin to describe the joy
she felt in her swollen heart.  All her dreams had come true.  It had
been a long and dangerous trail, just as her pa had warned, but every moment
had been worth it.  She now had the family and home she’d always wanted.

She gazed into the
warm, loving eyes of her husband.  When she nodded with tears in her eyes,
he picked her up and swung her around.   His heart was her
home.  Now and forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stacey Coverstone
is a multi-published author of western romance, romantic suspense, Gothic
mysteries and ghost stories.  She lives in Maryland with her husband and
their dogs, cats, and a paint horse named Bill.  They have two grown
daughters and a baby granddaughter.  When Stacey’s not writing, she enjoys
traveling, photography, reading, target shooting, camping, fishing, and making
scrapbooks of her adventures.  She also likes to watch her husband and
Bill team pen cows.

Please visit her
website at:
http://www.staceycoverstone.com
and feel
free to join her Announce Only newsletter if you’d like to be notified of her
book releases.