It was only a drawing, a child's picture of a log house, a starry night sky overhead. Yet there was a magic about the images of the people outlined in the glow of a fire in front of the structure.
A woman, laughing, dancing, her hands clasping those of a sweet-faced little girl. A man, his features unyielding as granite, leaning against the cabin wall. And Kennisaw—yes, a younger, vital Kennisaw, with a fiddle tucked under his bearded chin, the bow rollicking over the instrument's strings.
It was as if the child artist had plucked a single moment out of eternity, captured it forever with his small hand.
Ashleen knew who had drawn the picture even before she looked down at the note scribed carefully in the bottom corner.
To Kennisaw from Garret.
Ash forced her gaze away from the picture, feeling as if she had somehow intruded on something too precious and private to share. It was as if Jones had tried to save Garret some scrap of the life he had known, drag from the ashes of Garret MacQuade's childhood one tiny ember of hope.
"You'll give it to him." Kennisaw's voice drifted to her.
"I will."
"Tell him... about the Garveys. Tell him... I'm sorry."
Tears rolled freely down Ashleen's cheeks as she promised. Kennisaw's lips twisted into a hint of a smile. "Angel... be his... angel," Kennisaw whispered.
And then he was gone.
* * *
Night blanketed West Port,the air thick with the threat of a coming storm. Ashleen peered down the dirt road, the grimy windows that lined the narrow streets filtering bits of gold light out into the darkness. But even those snippets of light seemed to mock her with the knowledge that somewhere, hidden in this maze of shadowy buildings, Garret MacQuade was waiting, not knowing that she was about to break his heart.
She braced one hand on the top of a hitching post and tugged at the woolen stocking that had bunched up in the heel of her high-button shoe. An hour ago she had felt a blister forming. Now, as she pulled the stocking into its proper place, the damp spot on the wool told her the bubble had long since popped, leaving a raw, red sore.
It seemed she had been walking an eternity, knocking on the doors of any who would listen to her. She had gone to all the places she had imagined a serious-minded man like Garret MacQuade might be. The church. The mercantile. The feed store. Though the establishments were closed, she had gone to the back doors, pounded on them until she had roused the proprietors.
She had even trundled off to the doorstep of a Mrs. Magillicuddy, where someone had informed her there was a literary society meeting at her home that evening. The sour-faced matron had been most distressed at having to interrupt her dramatic reading of Longfellow and had all but run Ashleen off of her property with a broomstick.
And yet at least she had gotten some response from the witch of a woman. Most of the people she had talked to had scarcely looked at her, let alone given her aid.
Ash caught a glimpse of her reflection in a barbershop's window and grimaced. Little wonder people had been looking at her so strangely. She had changed out of the bloodstained dress in which she had tended Kennisaw, not wanting the sensitive Garret to have to endure such tangible proof of the old man's sufferings. But the gown she now had on—the only other one she owned—was questionable at best, embarrassing at worst. Still Ash had had no time to be choosy when she had made her wild dash to the Irish coast. She had bought a few lengths of fabric after she had reached America, but first there had been petticoats to stitch for Meggie, shirts for Liam, pants to cover Renny's long legs. For the time being this secondhand gown had been the best she could do for herself.
Ash grimaced. At least she had been the same height as the first owner of the dress, but her figure was distressingly more curved than the other woman's. Ash's breasts strained so at the tiny silver buttons that she had taken up her needle at the first opportunity, tightening the fastenings until her fingers had ached.
The bodice's neckline had been cut just high enough to dance upon the edge of respectability, just low enough to give tantalizing peeks of the soft, pale swells of the tops of Ashleen's breasts.
She had nearly died of shame the first time she had donned the gown. Now she could not even muster a blush. She was too exhausted, too drained, too weighed down with grief to care.
"It hardly matters anyway," she said to herself, giving her reflection a hopeless glare, "with your hair tumbled all about your face."
Her crop of sun-gold tresses had shed its confining pins days ago, the strands straggling about her bared throat, clinging to her cheeks. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the delicate skin beneath her left eye was still shadowed a light purple, courtesy of Garvey's angry fist.
Discouraged, Ash leaned her face against the pane of glass, letting the coolness seep through her. She should just turn around and walk back to the campsite she had made for the wagon on the outskirts of town, she thought. Renny had been as exhausted as she was, and the little ones had been subdued by their first taste of the swift brutality to be found on the open trail.
They would need her. And yet she couldn't forget the desperation that had been on Kennisaw's face as he had pleaded with her to warn Garret that the Garveys were out to kill him.
If she could only gather up the whole blasted town, demand the information she sought one time, and be done with it. Surely someone must have seen Garret MacQuade and knew where he was.
The throbbing of a headache made Ashleen raise her fingertips to her temples, the night sounds of the raw, rowdy frontier town making her want to cover her ears.
Crude shouts from a group of men at the livery mingled with the racketing clank of a badly tuned piano. The questionable music flowed from the swinging doors of the Double Eagle Saloon with the same meandering quality as that of the drunken patrons weaving in and out, intent upon a night's revel before hitting the trail.
It seemed as if the whole of Missouri was jammed in that one building.
Ashleen stiffened, an idea striking her like a splash of icy water. But her mind had scarcely formed it before she dashed it away. Enter a saloon? It would be madness. Shameful. A lone woman—a decent woman—plunging into such a den of iniquity.
