Part 23 (2/2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Westering.

We aimed to travel by rail, as that was the quickest way to cross such a distance.

So on top of making arrangements for the house, Sarah figured she had no choice but to sell off the horses. She knew that her attorney, Mr. Cunningham, might be interested in them, so we went to his office together.

He was a heavy, cheerful fellow who put me in mind of old Daws, the cabman. That made me a bit lonesome for home, but the glooms couldn't stand up against all the excitement I had inside me.

After making up our minds that we'd hunt down Whittle together, Sarah and I had both found ourselves caught up in the thrill of it all. We knew it was a grim mission full of hazards, but that didn't seem to matter near as much as knowing we were about to set off on an adventure together.

Well, she explained to Mr. Cunningham that she intended to escort me to Arizona Territory so I could join up with my father, a cavalry major stationed at Fort Huachuca, which wasn't too far from Tombstone. She could've made him a general, but I reckon she didn't want to lay it on too thick. She told him that she aimed to shut down the house and hire a caretaker. Then she asked if he might like to purchase the three horses.

Well, the upshot was that he offered to look after the horses instead of buying them. That way, they'd still be Sarah's when she got back from the trip. He also said he knew just the fellow to take care of the house, and would gladly handle the matter of hiring him.

Next, we went to the post office. There, Sarah arranged to have her mail forwarded to General Delivery in Tombstone. I mailed a letter to Mother, in which I told her about making a trip west and said she could write to me in Tombstone. I didn't mention that Sarah'd be with me. Nor did I say a thing about going in pursuit of Whittle, figuring she'd only fret if she knew the truth.

Done at the post office, we headed for the bank. Sarah loaded up on money.

That finished our town business. For the next couple of days, we set the house in order. Mostly, we cleaned and covered the furniture and got rid of perishables and such. When that was pretty much taken care of, we packed for the trip.

We wanted to travel light, so we didn't use trunks. I fit all my duds into just one valise. It took a couple more to hold Sarah's outfits. We figured to leave behind everything but our clothes and toilet articles. And weapons. Sarah slipped the single-shot pistol and some extra ammunition into her handbag. I threw the General's army revolver, holster, and a pa.s.sel of spare bullets into my valise. We chose to leave the rifle behind. It wouldn't fit in our luggage. Sarah allowed we wouldn't want to be lugging it about, but I suspect she didn't want it around because of her Grandpa using it to shoot himself.

Mr. Cunningham had hired a fellow name of Jim Henderson to look after the house. Henderson had dropped by a few times to talk with Sarah, and she'd arranged for him to ride us to the railroad depot in town.

It was the first day of May, sunny and warm and breezy, that we set out. At the station, we bid farewell to Henderson. Then we went to a ticket window and Sarah paid our fares to Manhattan. The train hadn't arrived yet, so we waited out on the platform with some other folks. Most of them didn't have any luggage at all. Others had little more than what they might need for an overnight stay. I don't suppose any of them were about to start on a journey as great as ours. I was so excited I could hardly sit still.

By and by, along came the howl of a whistle. I rushed over close to the tracks, and saw our train. It chugged around a bend in the rails, smoke belching from its chimney, just monstrous and wonderful. As it roared closer, I could feel the floorboards shaking under my boots. The engineer waved down at me from his high window, just as such chaps used to do when I was back in England standing by the tracks to enjoy the thrill of a pa.s.sing train. I waved back to him. A moment later, the locomotive rolled by, clanking and hissing steam, followed by the coal car and a string of pa.s.senger carriages.

After they groaned and squealed to a stop, I went back to Sarah. A porter took our baggage, and we climbed aboard. Sarah let me have the window seat. Though I'd ridden many times on the underground and even gone by rail on holidays with Mother, I'd never felt near the thrill that coursed through me when this train commenced to chug along and leave the station behind.

I met Sarah's eyes. With a smile, she gave my hand a squeeze.

”Here we go,” she said.

After that, I kept my face pretty much mashed to the window.

It was glorious: the country, the bridge over the East River, the towers of New York City. But my aim here isn't to run along about all that; it's to tell you the story of my adventures.

The way I see it, an adventure is someone else's mishap.

Nothing much happened in the way of adventures for a spell, so I'll scoot along with my narrative and get to it rather quick.

What we did was change trains at Grand Central Terminal, then ride west toward Chicago in a Pullman car. The trip was bully. We spent plenty of time talking, meeting friendly people and such. We ate fine meals in the dining car, and slept at night in berths with hanging curtains. Whenever I could, I watched out the windows.

We sped along through towns and forests and mountains, crossed bridges over deep canyons and river gorges that gave me the sweats with notions of derailing, and raced across valleys where we zipped past farms and villages.

The nights were glorious. I spent many an hour in my berth, hidden away in darkness behind the heavy curtain, peering out at the moonlit land, wondering about the lives of all the strangers out of sight beyond the lighted windows of farmhouses and homes along the tracks. I'd just lay there, watching everything slip by while the train rocked me gently, wheels clickity-clacking over the rails, whistle sometimes letting out long, mournful hoots.

It was awfully peaceful, but it often gave me a peculiar empty feeling. A longing for I didn't know what.

Sarah wasn't the cause of it, I know that. She had the lower berth, directly under me. At night, I'd wait a while and then poke my head out the curtain. When the coast was clear, I'd climb down and join her. We had some smas.h.i.+ng times, but we had to be quiet about if for we had let on to the other pa.s.sengers that I was her servant. They would've been mighty shocked to see me sneaking down to her bed.

We never got caught, though. By and by, I'd kiss her goodnight and climb back up to my own berth, where I'd lay awake and gaze out the windows and feel strange all over again.

Before you know it, we arrived in Chicago. We spent the night in a fine hotel on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, returned to the depot the next morning and boarded a train that would take us south to St. Louis.

After leaving Chicago behind, we went through just the flattest land you'd ever hope to see. Except for a pa.s.sel of small towns with more grain elevators than you could imagine, there was nothing to look at but miles and miles of fields as far as the eye could see. Once in a while, there'd be a farm house and barn and silo off in the distance, but that was about it.

Finally we came to the Mississippi River. It took the breath right out of me. Here was the Mississippi Mississippi! Mark Twain's river! We got closer and closer to it, and then we were above it on a bridge. I'd never seen the beat of it. I couldn't believe I was here, gazing down at the very same river where Mark Twain had been a steamboat pilot, where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Jim had gone swimming and rafting. I couldn't see a paddlewheel, but there were s.h.i.+ps aplenty, and I even spotted a couple of kids fis.h.i.+ng off a canoe. I just hankered something awful to be down there with them.

Maybe I'll come back someday, I told myself.

And that's when it struck me why I'd been having those strange spells of longing. Because I was only just speeding along on the rails, glimpsing so many new places I'd like to explore, so many strangers I was never likely to meet. Glimpsing them and pa.s.sing by, leaving them all behind.

There wasn't any way around it, though. Not if I wanted to reach Tombstone and track down Whittle.

Well, we stayed one night in St. Louis, so Sarah took me to a restaurant on the sh.o.r.e of the Mississippi. Before returning to our hotel, we roamed along the river bank for a while. We watched boats drift by, all lit up in the distance, the sounds of voices and laughter floating soft across the water, sometimes the wail of steam whistles. It was just grand. I wanted to stay forever, but the wind stiffened and pretty soon a storm came along, chopping up the river and pouring rain down on us as lightning bolts split the sky and crashed all around. Drenched, we hotfooted it back to the hotel.

The next morning, the sky was clear again. We boarded a train that would take us across Missouri and Kansas to Denver, Colorado.

For days and nights, we headed west across the vast plains. Beyond the windows, I saw herds of cattle. And cowboys. cowboys. When I saw my first cowboy riding his horse along a dusty trail near the tracks, I knew we'd reached the Wild West. The notion excited me something awful. But it scared me a bit, too, for it came as a reminder that we were traveling closer each minute to Whittle. When I saw my first cowboy riding his horse along a dusty trail near the tracks, I knew we'd reached the Wild West. The notion excited me something awful. But it scared me a bit, too, for it came as a reminder that we were traveling closer each minute to Whittle.

We were still a long way from Tombstone, though. We hadn't even reached Denver yet, and from there we'd have another few days riding south to El Paso. That would only take us into Texas, and we'd still still need to travel farther west before getting into the Arizona Territory and finding our way to Tombstone. need to travel farther west before getting into the Arizona Territory and finding our way to Tombstone.

Even if Whittle was still there, which I greatly doubted, we wouldn't be arriving for near a week after leaving Denver. So I tried to calm down and not think about him, and just fill myself with the wonders of rolling through the American West.

I saw cowboys aplenty. I kept a sharp lookout for them, and never got tired of seeing more. Now and then, I found myself hoping the train might get stopped and robbed by the likes of Jesse James. He'd gotten himself back-shot by a scoundrel name of Bob Ford six or seven years ago, so I knew we didn't stand much chance of enjoying a run-in with the James Gang. But I reckoned there were other outlaws available to have a go at us, and rather fancied myself plucking the General's revolver from my valise and engaging in some gunplay with them.

While I was on the lookout for cowboys and hoping for a holdup, I caught sight of my first Indian. He sat astride a pony at a crossing, and looked just fearsome, feathers in his headband, face painted red, wearing a blue army jacket and leather leggings. What with all I'd read about the savages, and what I'd heard from the General and Sarah, my insides just squeezed up with fright. I was all set to make a grab for the revolver. But he didn't have a weapon that I could see. And the train was moving along so fast that he was out of sight in just a second or two.

I saw quite a number of Indians as we went along. None scared me like the first one, though. Some were mighty old, and some were squaws, and some were kids. Mostly, they looked rather poor and pitiful. It was hard to picture such creatures on the warpath, ma.s.sacring settlers, taking scalps and torturing their captives.

Well, the Indian wars were over. They'd been beaten. At least that's what the General had led me to believe. He hadn't been quite correct on that score, as I was to find out later on, but that's a matter I don't aim to get into, not here.

By the time we pulled into Denver, I'd gotten fairly used to seeing both cowboys and Indians. They didn't thrill me quite as much as they'd done at the start, but I was still awfully excited about finding myself in the West.

We spent the night at a hotel near the depot. Early the next morning, we boarded the train that was to carry us south to El Paso, Texas.

Whenever we changed trains, we always found ourselves mixed in with a whole new bunch of pa.s.sengers. We'd chat a bit with some of them, Sarah explaining that I was her servant. By and large, they seemed like decent folk.

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