“Rabbit and me can carry just about anything.”
“I’m sure, but then so can I.” He slipped his hands over Finn’s shoulders to his upper arms, squeezed just hard enough to get a firm grip, and lifted the boy off the floor. He set him aside as easily as a saltshaker. “Now, about that train…”
Morgan figured he’d be followed. Mr. Collins and the boys would take delivery of the mail and whatever parcels and crates the train was carrying to Bitter Springs. They probably would want to greet Buster Johnson, too. What he hoped was that those bits of business and the niceties of conversation would occupy them long enough to give him a measure of peace. Even a brief respite would be welcome.
When Morgan stepped onto the platform, the train was still half a mile away. He heard the whistle, the warning, and sensed the engine slowing as the brakes were applied. Beneath his feet, the platform shook. He felt the vibration roll up his spine. Something else accounted for the tension that pulled his shoulders taut.
Morgan moved away from the door to keep the path clear for Mr. Collins and the boys. They filed out just as the train was pulling in. Morgan noted that only Finn had a sideways glance for him. Mr. Collins and Rabbit were all about the business of the train.
Even after No.486 came to a full stop, Morgan hung back. A minute passed before porters appeared and placed steps on the platform so passengers could disembark. He watched Abigail Johnson rise anxiously on her tiptoes to glimpse the travelers through the windows. Her husband’s head moved back and forth between the coaches as he tried to anticipate the appearance of his son.
Morgan guessed the first flurry of passengers to leave the train were probably among the hungriest. Their visit to Bitter Springs would last approximately twenty minutes, about as long as it took to fill the tender with wood and the tanks with water. Sure enough, he watched them hurry toward the eatery adjacent to the rail station where something close to a hot meal awaited them if the biscuit shooters delivered it in a timely fashion. He surmised the experienced travelers were the ones carrying small baskets on their arms or large handkerchiefs in their pockets to take their food back to the coaches.
There was a lull after the first wave of passengers emerged. The mail car door slid open and Finn, Rabbit, and Mr. Collins veered toward it. Morgan’s gaze followed them until he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned. There was no wave of passengers this time. It was a trickle.
Morgan recognized Ted Rush emerge. Ted was the owner of the hardware store, and Morgan had had enough dealings with the man to know that he did not want to run into him now. Ted was a fair and honest tradesman, by all accounts a decent man, but he was an inveterate storyteller and every encounter began and ended with one. Morgan thought it was his good fortune that Ted spied George and Abigail first. Ted sidled up to them and began an animated conversation that only the arrival of Buster Johnson could have interrupted.
Morgan observed the tearful, happy reunion as Buster, lean and green as a string bean, was swallowed in his mother’s arms and clapped soundly on the back by his father. Ted managed to find a hand to shake and pumped it gleefully. Buster disengaged himself long enough to be sick at the edge of the platform. Apparently the college graduate did not travel well.
Sympathetic and a little amused, Morgan set his shoulder against the station’s wall and folded his arms across his chest. He shifted his attention to another of the passenger coaches. A man appeared carrying a large valise. He passed the bag to a porter. Once he stepped down, he took it up again. He was a stranger to Morgan, but then Morgan acknowledged that he was a stranger to most people in Bitter Springs. The man wore a black bowler, black wool trousers, and in deference to the chill permeating the dry air, a black scarf and heavy black coat. Morgan expected the man to move on, but after taking possession of his valise, he turned and held out his free hand toward the coach. Morgan watched as a woman emerged from the train and came to stand on the lip of the step. Bright red poppies trimmed her stylish black velvet hat. She wore a red scarf that matched the poppies exactly, arranged to wrap around her throat just once. The tails were so long the fringed ends brushed her fingertips.
Morgan thought he saw the briefest hesitation before she accepted the proffered hand, but he could only guess at the reason for it. She might be reluctant to accept help; she might be reluctant to leave the train. He would like to believe she paused because she had some slight aversion to the gentleman who offered his aid, but he doubted that was the case. This man was cut from the kind of cloth that women always admired, the kind that slipped like liquid over their skin and between their fingers and lay coolly against their cheeks.
“Hey, mister. Can I help you with that bag?”
Morgan’s musings were interrupted by Finn’s boisterous cry for attention. He watched the boy abandon his post at the mail car and hurry toward the gentleman in black, calling out a greeting to Buster as he sprinted past the Johnson family and Ted Rush. When Finn came to a stop, he held out both hands for the man’s valise. “That’s my wagon at the end of the platform. I can take you and your wife straightaway to the Pennyroyal.” He bobbed his head in the direction of the woman, and asked, “That’s where you’ll be staying, isn’t it? It’s the best hotel in Bitter Springs.”
Morgan noticed that Finn did not explain it was the only hotel. There was a boardinghouse run by the Sedgwicks, and the Taylors had rooms to let at their laundry and bathhouse, but the Pennyroyal Saloon and Hotel remained the place to stay if one cared about amenities, and Morgan had already formed the opinion that this man enjoyed his amenities. He hoped the same was not true of the woman.
Finn dropped his arms to his sides. “Maybe your missus has bags you want me to carry.” He ducked past the porter and bent to hold the wooden steps steady. He looked up when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“I have this, Finn,” Morgan said. “She doesn’t need these.” He nudged the steps aside with the toe of his boot, released Finn, and inserted himself between the gentleman and the woman. He used his shoulder to disengage their handclasp. He did not reach for the woman immediately. Instead, he raised his face so she could see past the shadowing brim of his hat. “Do you know me?”
There was no hesitation. She nodded. “You are very like your photograph.”
“You’re not, but you can explain that later.” He glanced pointedly at the red poppies adorning her hat. The flowers, not her features, were how he had identified her. In her last correspondence, she had described her new hat in great detail and wrote that she would be wearing it when she greeted him. It had been of a purpose, he supposed. He would not have known her otherwise.
Without asking permission, Morgan placed his hands at her waist and tried not to think about how insubstantial, even fragile, she felt between his callused palms. Her smile was tentative, fleeting, but she placed her gloved hands on his shoulders as he lifted her. It seemed to him that she did not weigh much more than Finn. When he set her down, he noticed that after making allowance for the height of her hat, the crown of her head was level with his mouth. He was tall, but then so was she. He held onto that fact as perhaps the one thing she had not misrepresented about herself.
Finn straightened. Somehow he managed to convey surprise and skepticism, blue eyes wide as quarters beneath a deeply furrowed brow. “You know her?”
Morgan nodded, although it occurred to him that he knew her better before he met her. “I do.”
“She’s what you come to town for?” He did not wait for an answer. “Well, don’t that beat all. Why didn’t you say so?” Finn pointed to the gentleman still clutching his valise. “I thought she was with him.”
“She is with me,” said Morgan.
“I see that now. I surely do. But who is she?”
Morgan Longstreet had not planned on declaring himself on the platform of the Bitter Springs depot, and certainly not in front of Finn Collins, a gentleman whose name he did not know, and a porter employed by the Union Pacific. Still, the moment was upon him and…
The woman in his arms seized it. She removed her gloved hands from his shoulders and set them on his wrists. Using only modest pressure, she reminded him that he was still holding her by the waist. His fingers splayed, his hands fell away, and she took a step backward. It was not precisely a retreat, but it did reestablish a boundary.
“I am Miss Middlebourne,” she said, holding out her hand to Finn. “And you are?”
“Carpenter Addison Collins,” Finn said. He took her hand and pumped it once. “But everyone calls me Finn. I picked it for myself on account of I didn’t cotton to the idea of being called Carp.”
“A sensible notion.”
