The Texan and the Lady Read Free

bag. “If I were you, lady, I’d stretch my legs while I had the chance.”
    “I’m perfectly comfortable,” Jennie lied. She hadn’t forgotten the child beneath her seat and had no intention of leaving and taking the chance that someone else might discover the stowaway.
    The marshal crammed his hat low over his forehead and nodded. “Suit yourself.”
    Jennie watched him disappear before holding half her sandwich beneath the seat. “Would you like some?” she whispered.
    A thin, dirty hand hesitantly reached forward and took the sandwich.
    Jennie put the lunch bag at her feet and looked around to make sure the car was empty. Only the tiny woman in the wine-red coat remained. The dark wool almost covered her nearly colorless hair and face. She looked sound asleep on the last bench. Jennie could see a few people from her window picnicking beneath leafless trees several yards away. The cool fresh air looked inviting, but she couldn’t leave the child alone.
    She looked in both directions then leaned down until she could see the child’s face. “What’s your name?”
    “My momma called me True,” the stowaway mumbled between mouthfuls.
    “And your father? What did he call you?”
    “Never had no father. Momma died last year. Ain’t never had no name but True.”
    The muscles around Jennie’s heart tightened. “True is a nice name.” She offered the child the other half of her sandwich. “In fact, I think it may be about the best name I’ve ever heard.”
    The child became silent for several minutes then finally whispered back, “Why didn’t you turn me in, lady? All you’d’ve had to do was tell the conductor.”
    The question was so honest it had to be answered directly. “Maybe because I’m running also.” Jennie looked out the window at all the people talking and laughing. All the world seemed to come in groups, except her. Somehow she’d been left out. If life were a dance, she not only didn’t have a partner, she hadn’t even been invited. “Maybe,” Jennie whispered more to herself than to the boy, “I, too, have no place to go except away.”
    A thin hand reached from beneath the seat and touched Jennie’s gloved fingers. “Thanks,” True whispered before pulling back into safety. “I owe you, lady.”
    Jennie stared at the dirt on her always spotless glove. For once, the stain didn’t matter. The child had touched her as no one else ever had. She hadn’t been just convenient to lean on; she’d been genuinely needed.
    “True,” Jennie whispered. “You can trust me.”
    Jennie thought she heard a sniffle from beneath the seat and tried not to think of how the child was probably wiping a dirty nose with an even dirtier sleeve cuff.
    “I have to, lady,” the child answered. “You’re all I got right about now.”
     

Chapter 2
    M ind if I sit with you for the next leg of this trip?” A woman’s voice forced Delta Criswell to raise her head from the warm wool. She pulled her wine-colored coat close around her aching shoulder as the woman continued, “I was sitting up front before we stopped for lunch, but I thought it might be a little less smoky toward the back.”
    Delta forced the pain from her mind and tried to bring the woman before her into focus. She was tall, six feet or more, and her long, rust-colored braid of hair was as thick as a man’s forearm. The word pretty would never be joined to her name, but she had a beauty about her that was ageless.
    “I guess you’re like all of us in this car. You’re heading to Florence to work at the Harvey House.”
    The woman moved into the seat beside Delta, seeming to pay little notice to Delta’s silence.
    “I’m Audrey Gates from Flatwater, Missouri. Had to travel all night to hook up with this train.”
    The stranger paused as if waiting for Delta to comment, then continued, “Flatwater’s not much of a town really. Just a little place along the river. In fact, from time to time most of the place is under the Big