Beyond the Mapped Stars

by Rosalyn Eves

  Alice notices. “Are you cold?”

  “A little,” I say. Even July nights can be cool in this arid region. But our movement helps, and at least the cool air means any rattlesnakes will be sluggish.

  Most of the other walkers, men with long strides, have outpaced us. My flat-bottomed boots handle the uneven terrain just fine, but Alice’s fine boots, with their pretty little heels, struggle occasionally. Alice is game, though, and doesn’t complain.

  Some distance into our trek—perhaps an hour?—a motley collection of a carriage and a pair of wagons appears, on a narrow track scarcely visible in the dim light. Each vehicle has a lantern hanging by the driver, as yet unlit because the moon renders them unnecessary.

  I eye them as they approach. The first carriage is mostly filled already, with men in hats and sober expressions who are no doubt officials of some sort—perhaps the sheriff and his men, with a doctor along for support. The two wagons between them won’t carry all the passengers remaining on the train. I suspect it will be a long wait for some of them.

  “You comin’ from the train?” The driver of the carriage hails us.

  Will murmurs, “What train? We are but hardy souls who delight in taking a midnight pleasure stroll in the middle of nowhere.”

  I smother a grin. Will’s irrepressible humor reminds me of Samuel’s.

  “Yes, sir,” Alice calls back, sending a sideways look at her brother.

  “Very good. The sheriff may be wantin’ to speak with you after we’ve finished with the train, if you could please make yourselves available at the hotel. Rawlins is about four miles that way.” The driver gestures behind him. “Can’t miss it if you follow the tracks.”

  Four miles? The conductor said Rawlins was only an hour or two away, but four miles, in the dark, will likely take us nearly two more hours. The conductor’s measure of distances must be affected by the speed of the train. Will and Alice exchange a look.

  The men on the wagon don’t offer us a ride, which is just as well. I doubt they’d have room for us and the waiting passengers, and at their speed—only scarcely faster than ours—we’ll reach Rawlins well before they can reach the train and return.

  My optimism only lasts another quarter of an hour, at which point clouds draw across the moon, blotting out the landscape. I step on an uneven pocket of ground and stumble, dropping my carpetbag again and catching myself on my hands. They sting, but close inspection shows they’re only scratched.

  “Are you all right?” Alice asks.

  “I’m fine.” I get to my feet and brush my hands against my skirts, then pluck up my bag.

  There’s a little light, as the moon peeps intermittently through the clouds, but it’s not consistent. We’ve still another hour or two until dawn, and it’s almost impossible to see when the moon vanishes. At least we can still make out the tracks, stretching out before us, and the way is mostly clear. No dense thickets or wooded areas for us to fight through, though the sagebrush and other low-lying shrubs snag at our skirts as we pass.

  We trudge on.

  When I set out, a stroll beneath the moon had seemed preferable to remaining in a stuffy passenger car full of the memory and smell of the brief terror of the robbery. Now I’m not so sure.

  Something shuffles through nearby grasses. Something large.

  Alice freezes, grasps Will’s arm. Will fishes in his jacket and comes out with something small and gleaming. A pistol. I feel again the cool echo of the gun against my head and step away.

  “What was that?” Alice asks. “There aren’t wolves this close to the rail line, are there?”

  I don’t tell her that wolves generally know better than to make themselves known to their prey through their noise. My own heart is beating harder and faster than is comfortable.

  “We’d have heard them howling,” Will says, reassuringly, though he doesn’t put his gun back.

  Could be a bear, I think.

  The clouds break just then. A shaft of light illuminates the landscape around us, and the grasses rustle again.

  A tawny furred creature emerges from behind a bush, spindly-legged and the size of a large dog, with white spots sprinkled along its back.

  “Oh,” says Alice, laughing a little in relief. “It’s just a deer.”

  The creature blinks at us.

  “I don’t think it’s a deer,” I say. “Look at the coat—it’s just a baby.” Maybe elk? I’ve seen elk a few times, but seldom this young.

  Alice takes a step toward it.

  Then, even through my exhaustion, alarm sings through me. “Don’t touch it!” I say, more sharply than I intended.

  Alice blinks at me. “But it’s just a baby.”

  Will, who must have had more experience with nature than his city-bred sister, catches on quickly. “I doubt it’s a—”

  Before he’s finished speaking, there’s an unearthly noise, something between a scream and a growl. A much larger shape erupts through the shrubs, and the three of us emit various shrieks.

  A cow elk faces us. She’s tall—much taller than I am, probably taller even than Will. It’s early in the day for her to be abroad. Maybe we passed her nest and woke her. She stares at us a moment, her large dark eyes unblinking, her nostrils quivering. Her ears lie back. She stomps her front feet—then charges.

  The ground beneath us seems to rumble. A roaring sound fills my head.

  And as I always seem to do in times of crisis, I freeze.

  There’s a strand of trees not far from us. I know—I know—that the trees offer our best protection. But I can’t seem to get my brain to stop spinning and my feet to start moving.

  Alice grabs my hand and starts to run, shocking me from my stupor. But she’s running parallel to the tracks, not toward the grove.

  “The trees!” I manage, pulling Alice to the left.

  Will, possibly with some misguided notion of chivalry, darts across our path, toward the tracks, and waves his arms in the air. The cow ignores him—perhaps because his waving arms make him appear a threat, perhaps because our fluttering skirts draw her attention.

  She’s coming straight at us.

  I knew a man that died, accidentally trampled by a bull. Shoving Alice ahead of me, I duck behind a tree. Alice sucks in air beside me, her back flat against a trunk.

  The cow elk, satisfied that she’s defended some invisible territorial line, shies away from the trees and drops her head. She barks once at her calf, and then the two trot off.

  Alice and I look at each other.

  “Glory be,” Alice breathes. “Was that a moose?”

  “No,” I say, still fighting to breathe properly. “An elk.”

  Then we both laugh, relief and hysteria mixing together until we are both crying. Will lopes over to us, carrying Alice’s hat, which fell off in our mad dash. The elk put her foot square through the gauzy thing, leaving a gaping hole.

  “Whoo,” Will says, grinning fit to burst. “That was some rush, wasn’t it?”

  Alice catches her breath, spies the hat, and sets off laughing again. My sides ache from laughing, but it feels good too—a release of all the tension and fear and anxiety of this night, the past two nights, really, since I left Salt Lake City alone.

  And then the skies open up.

  chapter eight

  Thursday, July 11, 1878

  Somewhere Near Rawlins, Wyoming

  Eighteen days until eclipse

  For a moment we just stand under the rain, laughing, because the alternative would be to cry. Nothing about this night—morning?—has gone as I planned. My only hope now is that neither dawn nor Rawlins is too far off. Within the span of the last half hour, I have been by turns terrified, tired, cold—and now wet, with blisters starting on both feet, thanks to my damp stockings.

  Will starts walking again, and, grumb
ling only a little, Alice and I follow. My stomach growls, though it’s impossible to hear over the distant rumble of thunder. My skirts, growing slowly heavier with the water, tangle about my legs and I have to step carefully to avoid tumbling over. Walking through the downpour is like trying to swim fully clothed.

  That look suits you. I shake my head, trying to clear the echo of Samuel’s words from my head. No doubt he would find all this funny. For a brief second, I find myself wanting to tell him, if only to hear his laugh. I push the feeling away. We were never really friends, and after the way we left things in Salt Lake City, not even that.

  In the absence of her hat, Alice’s finely coiffed hair is falling down about her cheeks in messy curls. A great hunk of hair slips over her eyes just as her boot slides along the muddy ground, and she lets out a decidedly unladylike word. Or two. Will catches her before she falls.

  She looks back at me swiftly, one hand over her mouth. Does she think I would judge her for her words?

  I grin at her. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  She laughs and presses forward.

  My wet dress begins to chafe. A gust of wind whips sodden hair into my eyes, and I blink at the sting. I’d give every dollar I don’t have just to be dry.

  Will begins singing. “Then meet me at twilight before the bright waters…”

  Alice sighs. “Bright waters, Will, really? Isn’t the rain enough for you?”

  He flashes her an unrepentant grin over his shoulder and continues to sing the love ballad. Am I imagining things, or is the landscape growing brighter? No—a thin gray line edges the horizon ahead of us. And beneath that—

  “Are those lights?” I ask.

  Alice lifts her hand to block the rain from her eyes and squints into the dimness. “I do believe they are. Hallelujah—Rawlins at last!”

  Sighting the town gives us renewed energy, and we stumble toward the lights. But hope also makes me incautious: I haven’t gone a dozen steps before I put my foot on a mud slick and go down. But there’s no Samuel to laugh at me here.

  Alice exclaims, and she and Will help me to my feet. I’d attempt to brush the dirt off my backside, but I’m afraid clean clothes are a lost cause and the mud will only spread. I’ll simply have to hope that my trunk arrives with the train before too long. At least there will be hot food at the hotel, and it will be dry.

  There isn’t much to the town as we stumble into it, but it looks plenty fine, and a good sight nicer than the bleary darkness we’ve traveled through. A simple wooden station lit by a few lanterns stands alongside the tracks. Beside it rests the hotel, the front ablaze with lights. Scattered before it lie a handful of houses and other buildings, most everything coated in the same rust-red paint.

  We head directly for the hotel. In the lobby, Will pauses. “Why don’t you ladies take a seat in the dining room, get some tea or something warm in you? I’ll take care of the rooms.”

  I bite my lip. I haven’t any money to my name, let alone a sum sufficient to cover the cost of a room—but I can’t simply hole up in the dining room until the train arrives, which might take another day or two. Perhaps the clerk will let me work in exchange for lodging—I could wash dishes or clean rooms.

  “Thanks all the same,” I say, “but I can arrange for my own room.”

  Will shrugs. “Suit yourself, Miss Bertelsen.”

  “Oh, please call me Elizabeth. After the night we’ve had, it seems silly to be so formal.”

  Will only nods. In the dim glow of the lamplight, his light brown skin looks chalky with exhaustion. His fine hat is matted and droopy. Alice, too, looks ready to drop. There’s a smudge of dirt across one cheek, and her hair is all undone. I probably look even worse—my skirt torn and muddy where I fell.

  Alice and I follow Will to the front desk. A skinny young man with a prominent Adam’s apple looks up as Will approaches. After a quick survey, his gaze goes back to some papers before him, and he pretends to be engrossed.

  “Excuse me,” Will says. “We’ve come from the train—no doubt you’ve heard now about the damage to the track and the robbery. I’ll need two rooms for the night, for me and for my sister.”

  The young man lifts his head again, his blue eyes disdainful. “I can’t give you two rooms. We’ve already got a group here for that eclipse, and we’re expecting a load from the train. I can put you in with another man, and your sister will have to share. Unless you’re wanting to share yourselves.”

  Will sighs. “That will be fine.”

  The young man’s eyes skip past Will to me, and his tone brightens a bit. “And you, miss, are you needing a room?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “That is, yes, I hope so, but how much are the rooms?”

  “Six dollars,” he says, after a pause that makes me think that is not their typical rate. Alice’s gasp behind me confirms that. My heart sinks.

  “Six dollars!” Alice says. “Why, that’s extortion. My grandfather doesn’t charge more than five dollars for the finest rooms in his Denver hotel, and it’s ten times nicer than this one.”

  “There’s no other hotels here and there’s going to be lots of folks looking for rooms.” The young man shrugs. “Take it or leave it.”

  “We’ll take it,” Will says, waving at Alice to be quiet.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t so much,” I say. “All my money was stolen on the train. But I can work for you—cleaning, washing, whatever you need. Surely you’ll need extra hands with the crowd coming. And I don’t need my own room.”

  “Lady,” he says, in a tone that suggests he thinks I am anything but, “nobody is getting their own room tonight. And if you can’t pay up front, you can’t have a bed.”

  Everything in me aches. I am cold, I am wet, and the thought of sitting up for hours, even in the dry dining room, makes me want to cry. I wish I was home, warm in my own bed, listening to my sisters snore.

  Will reaches in his pocket, then freezes. He looks up at the clerk, eyes wide. “I—the robbery. I can wire for money from my father, but it might take some time to arrive.”

  The clerk sighs, and repeats, as though to a slow child, “If you can’t pay up front, you can’t have a room.”

  “My grandfather owns the Trans-Oceana in Denver,” Will says. “I promise you my family is good for the money.”

  Alice lifts her chin and sails past Will and me, coming to a stop at the desk and setting her palms atop it. “Mr….”

  “Colburn,” he supplies with obvious reluctance.

  “Mr. Colburn. Tonight I have survived a train robbery, an elk attack, and a thunderstorm. I do not intend to be routed by a small-minded clerk who is likely pocketing the excess of his extortionate rates. I suppose your manager might be quite surprised to find out about your new charges—you see, I do understand how hotels work.” Her eyes glow, and despite her bedraggled state, there’s an elegance to her I wish I could imitate.

  The man’s eyes grow wide, and he steps back a pace, even though there’s a desk separating him from Alice.

  Alice reaches up, unfastening a choker that was hidden beneath the high collar of her shirt, a cameo hung on three strands of pearls. “These pearls are genuine. They should more than cover our stay, however long we choose to stay, and whatever attentions we might demand.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man manages.

  Alice looks back at me. “Elizabeth, why don’t you stay with me? Your thinking of the trees saved me from death by elk trampling tonight, so it seems only fair. And you’ll spare me from listening to Will snore—or rooming with a total stranger.”

  “I—” My nose prickles with imminent tears at her kindness. She’s the one that saved me, by getting me moving when I stood frozen.

  “You should say thank you,” Will advises. “It’s faster.”

  “Thank you,” I say, thanksgiving w
elling up inside me along with actual tears. I blink rapidly and brush them from my cheeks.

  Alice turns back to the clerk. “You’ll find my brother a room with a gentleman, if you please, and have someone bring some tea and toast up to our rooms as soon as can be managed. We’ll want some warm water too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The clerk fetches two keys from somewhere beneath the desk, and hands them both to Alice. Then he leads us, personally, up to the second floor, showing Alice and me to an empty room at the end of the corridor and Will to one a few doors down.

  We help each other out of our wet and muddy dresses, a difficult task with cold fingers and sodden fabric. The room has two narrow beds, one against each wall, and I wrap myself in the blanket, already feeling more cheerful now that I am no longer freezing and face the prospect of a real bed. While Alice fusses over her bed arrangement, I whisper a prayer of genuine gratitude.

  I mean to stay awake for the arrival of hot water and food, but I don’t make it more than a minute before I collapse onto the bed and sleep.

  chapter nine

  Thursday, July 11, 1878

  Rawlins, Wyoming

  Eighteen days until eclipse

  There’s still no sign of our trunks later that morning when we awake, so Alice and I do our best to brush the dirt from the dresses we wore the night before and put them on again. I inspect the contents of my carpetbag in some dismay. My canteen suffered no harm, and the small wooden comb is still intact, but my two books are soaked through, their pages buckled and smeared. I take them out with a small cry.

  Alice whirls from her spot at the small vanity. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” I say, though I wish it were only that I’d hurt myself. The books belong to Miss Wheeler, and how I shall replace them I don’t know.

  Alice’s eyes fall to the books clutched against my chest. She walks briskly across the room and opens the window, letting a sweet-smelling breeze into the room. The summer day is rich with the scent of wet earth. Alice takes one of the books from me, and sets it on my bed, near the window—open so a few pages flutter in the wind.