“That’s a mighty long ways to come.” He shoved a quartered potato in his mouth.
The man and those with him all nodded. “This is the biggest thing to happen in Texas since the war ended,” said the other man, who looked to be a brother to the first man.
Brooks wasn’t sure he agreed with him on the importance of the day, but it was something different, that was for certain.
“So …” a woman Brooks guessed to be the thin man’s wife gazed at him and Keri with a warm smile. “How long have you two younguns been married?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Married? The piece of meat Keri just swallowed lodged in her throat. She coughed and coughed. Her eyes watered. She grabbed her glass of lemonade and took a big swig, washing down the bite.
Brooks turned and rested his arm on the back of her chair. “You all right?”
She nodded and wiped her tears with her napkin, embarrassed to her boot tips at the spectacle she’d made. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. You ready to go and see the rest of the tents?”
“Yes,” she said, very appreciative of his offer to make a quick exit. She did not want to explain to those people that they weren’t married. Not that it was a problem, but some folks would look down their nose at an unmarried couple traveling together.
When they were outside, Keri reached out and squeezed Brooks’s hand. “Thank you for getting me out of there. I’m mortified.”
“Nonsense. Everyone chokes once in a while.” He wrapped her hand around his arm. “Shall we?”
Several hours later, they stood on the hillside in a swelling crowd of what had to be twenty thousand people, and across the tracks on the other hill stood just as many folks. Some people stood on wagon beds and some had even climbed the few trees within sight. The two trains, one painted red with green trim and the other green with red trim, were in position. The engineers waved at the crowd, arousing loud cheers as the trains crept forward and touched cow-catchers. Aptly named, the V-shaped metal grids on the front of the trains were used for clearing debris off the rails. Both engines pulled six boxcars with colorful ads on their sides promoting the Katy Railroad, the Oriental Hotel in Dallas, and the Ringling Bros. Circus.
The heat of the late September sun was stifling, especially with everyone packed together as they were. Sweat trickled down Keri’s back, but even with the discomfort, the excitement was infectious.
An ear-splitting roar rose up as the trains backed away to their two-mile starting points, from which they’d make their final run. A few minutes later, here they came! The behemoths churned out ebony smoke, and the steam jets spewed vapor. Whistles shrilled. The trains barreled toward one another at a frantic speed, unlike anything Keri had ever witnessed. Both engineers and firemen jumped from the speeding trains, did a barrel roll or two, regained their footing, and bowed to the crowd. Keri jumped with each succession of explosions of torpedoes that had been placed on the track. Brooks grinned, waggled his brows, and wrapped an arm around her.
A grand roar rose from the crowd as the two engines barreled toward each other. Keri bounced on her tiptoes. Closer and closer they came, and the crowd hushed, waiting for the crash of the steel monsters.
And then they hit. The roar of the crowd was barely heard over the thunderous crash as the two powerful behemoths collided. Box cars and flat cars climbed atop their leaders and disintegrated. The engines reared up like battling stallions and then fell slowly back to earth, each telescoping the other.
Brooks hugged Keri. “Wasn’t that a sight to behold?” he yelled.
Suddenly, another deafening roar sent the crowd running. The one bad thing that Keri had speculated about all day had happened—the boilers had exploded. Thousands of chunks of metal flew through the air like bullets. Fiery shards rained down on the helpless spectators. As the people behind them turned to run, Brooks shoved Keri to the ground and fell on top of her, his body sheltering hers. Others tumbled over them. Someone stepped on her hand. A rock stabbed her cheek and she couldn’t breathe.
She lifted her head and saw a smoke stack, blasting skyward before it fell back to earth. She couldn’t see where it landed, but prayed that nobody was nearby. All around her, moans and cries of the wounded rang out. If only she could get free, she could help, but she couldn’t move. Brooks’s heavy body pinned her down. “Get off,” she wheezed.
He didn’t move. Not a speck.
Keri’s heart thundered. Is he hurt? Dead?
The thought of never seeing the rascal’s smile again brought a strength to her that she’d never had before. Pushing with all her might, she managed to ease out from under him. She spun around and gasped. Blood seeped from a wound on the side of his head, but it was the twenty or so dots of blood on his back that drew her gaze. The debris had rained down on him as he’d protected her. One slit in his shirt smoldered. She grabbed the edge of her skirt and smothered the life out of it. What if she’d lost him?
Blinking back tears, she reached out and touched him. He was warm—still alive. She searched for her handbag and found it a few feet away. She pulled out a clean handkerchief and dabbed Brooks’s forehead. It was the worst of his injuries, she suspected.
She looked around, and as far as she could see, people lay or sat on the ground, tending one another. It looked like she imagined a Civil War battlefield would look. She needed to get help for Brooks, but how could she in this mess?
“Help!” she screamed. No one even so much as glanced at her.
She turned back to Brooks and shook him. “Wake up, please. You need to wake up.”
He didn’t move.
She needed to get him back to their train before it left without them. The crash had started late because of the spectators crowding the tracks, which meant they hadn’t much time left before it pulled out.
A man rode by on horseback, dodging the injured. Keri chased after him. “You, hey. Wait!”
He reined to a halt and glanced over his shoulder. She ran up to him and grabbed his leg. “I need your help.”
He lifted a haughty brow and stared down.
“Please. Help me.”
“What do you need?”
“My friend is injured. We’ve got to get to the train before it pulls out.”
He blew out a sigh and nodded. Relief made her limbs weak. “Oh, thank you so much.”
She spun around and rushed back to Brooks. Too late she realized the stranger could have ridden off, but when she looked back, he was there.
He peered down at Brooks and harrumphed. “If you’d told me your friend was a man, I’d have probably ridden on.” Still, he bent down and tugged on Brooks’s arm. “He’s a large man. I don’t know that I can lift him myself.”
“I’ll help.”
Keri spun around to find a soldier carrying a piece of metal debris from the crash. “I’d be ever so grateful.” She batted her eyes at the man, just as she’d learned from friends at finishing school.
“It’d be my pleasure, ma’am.”
A short while later, she and Brooks were finally aboard the train. “I can’t thank you enough for your assistance, sir. You may well have saved his life.”
“My pleasure. I just hope that one day I find a woman who’s willing to manhandle a stranger should I ever need help.” He tipped his hat and smiled, then slipped out the door.
Keri touched Brooks’s face—still warm, but not hot. Good. She hoped he didn’t fall off the seat where the stranger and a depot clerk had laid him.
“Here, ma’am.” A lady carrying a basket shoved a roll of bandages under her nose. “Looks like your man needs some doctoring.” She shook her head. “Pitiful thing this crash is. So many hurt, even children.”
Keri glanced around the train car. Everywhere were people with bloodstained clothing, people comforting one another or trying to calm a crying child. This day had looked so promising, but had turned out so disastrously.
She wrapped Brooks’s head, but the nicks on his back wo
uld have to wait. The train whistle blasted, the passenger car shuddered, and then they started moving. She’d get Brooks home and tend him there—send for the doctor if need be.
With her head against the warm windowpane, she watched the grasslands roll by. The sun was preparing to set, but still cast plenty of light. Keri sighed and closed her eyes, just wanting to be back home at Raven Creek and for Brooks to be all right.
The screech of the train’s whistle made her jump, and Keri realized she’d fallen asleep. The conductor stepped into the car. “Waco, in two minutes.”
Keri blinked and stared at him. Waco? That was the opposite direction from where they needed to go.
Brooks struggled to open his eyes, but a room finally took shape. It smelled like an apothecary. Where was he?
He started to sit up, but the room swam like a top some youngster had spun. His back stung, as if a hundred nails had been driven into it. What happened?
“Brooks!” Keri hopped out of a chair and hurried across the room. “Don’t get up. The doctor says you have a concussion from the blow you took at the train crash.”
“Where are we? This isn’t Doc Brown’s office.”
Keri nibbled her lip and looked away. “Well, you see, there was a lot of confusion right after the crash. Lots of people wounded—two even died. All I could think of was getting you away from there and to a doctor.”
His gaze roamed up and down, as if searching her body for something. “Were you hurt?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Nothing more than a few bruises. You protected me when you threw me to the ground and fell on me.”
“I did that?” He grinned to hide his concern. He didn’t remember falling on her. Surely that’s something he’d remember if he was in his right mind. “Where are we, Keri?”
She wilted and cast him what looked like an apologetic grimace. “Um … Waco.”
He bolted up. “Waco?” A thousand spears pierced his head, and he grabbed hold of it. The room swirled again. He closed his eyes.
“Lie down, son,” a man said. “You took a bad hit to your temple. You need to rest.”
He pressed the palm of his hands against the side of his head. “I can’t rest. I have a ranch to run.”
“You’ll do no one any good like you are now. Just rest.”
Brooks groaned.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby.” Keri pressed him down and held him there. “Don’t make me have the doctor restrain you.”
He peeked out one eye. “You wouldn’t.”
She lifted both brows, giving him a schoolmarm glare. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, not sure whether she was teasing or not. But she didn’t understand that he couldn’t relax in Waco—not when his family was just a few miles away—the family he hadn’t seen in ten years.
Keri guided the buggy she had borrowed from the doctor over another rise, hoping she hadn’t gone taken a wrong turn. She’d driven over a dozen of these little hills without finding what she was looking for, but this time she was rewarded. A well-tended clapboard house sat in a copse of trees, and not too far away was a tall, red barn with a paddock off to the side. The house rested in a lovely valley with a creek running through it. A dozen horses grazed on the far hill. A serene setting if she ever saw one. So this is where Brooks grew up. If she lived in a place like this, she wouldn’t ever want to leave.
Now that she’d seen his former home and knew it existed, she ought to just turn the buggy around and go back to town, but she was curious. She wanted to meet his mother. His father. His siblings.
But she feared he’d hate her for it.
Still, he deserved to reconcile with his family, like she had. To know his family again. To see how they all had changed. Ten years made a big difference in people’s lives. She knew all too well.
A woman stepped out onto the porch and shook a rug. She laid it across the railing and started to go back inside, but she shielded her eyes with her hand and glanced up the hill, right at Keri. She lifted her hand and waved.
Caught.
Now she couldn’t turn back.
Her heart pounded and hands shook as she drove the buggy down the hill and pulled to a stop in front of the house. The woman left her porch and walked over to her, a welcoming smile gracing her face. “Afternoon.”
Keri gave her a tight-lipped smile in return and climbed out of the buggy. She stood facing a woman whose light-brown hair was starting to gray, but her kind brown eyes looked curious. “I’m Annie Morgan. Are you looking for someone?”
“I—I’m a friend of your s-son’s.”
“Oh? I’m sorry, but Phillip is out working with his father today. They’ll be home for supper, but that isn’t until later. You’re welcome to wait if you’d like.”
Keri couldn’t stop shaking. But after being separated from her mother for so long, to have been in the same town and not seen her would have been impossible, even if she had to go to the cat house to do so. She took a deep breath and strengthened her resolve. “I’m a friend of Brooks, ma’am.”
Mrs. Morgan gasped a cry and lifted her fingers to her mouth. “Brooks? Is he—safe? Alive?”
Keri relaxed and smiled. “Yes, very.”
Mrs. Morgan collapsed on the porch steps, tears pouring from her eyes. “Thank you, Father. I’ve prayed so many years for Brooks. We’ve missed him terribly. Since we hadn’t heard anything in so long I feared he must be dead.” She wiped her tears on the edge of her apron. “I’m sorry for not being a good hostess. Would you care to come in and have some tea?”
“Yes, thanks, but I can’t stay long. I need to get back.” She followed Mrs. Morgan into the nice, two-story house. A large parlor sat on her left with a smaller office/library on the right. They passed both rooms and stepped into a nice-sized kitchen, one twice as big as the one at Raven Creek. A pale yellow color on the walls gave it a cheery atmosphere. Things were tidy and in order. Somehow she’d expected Brooks’s family to be less than perfect. Why else would he have been so determined to get away from them?
“Please, have a seat at the table. It won’t take long to reheat the water.”
Keri perched on the end of her seat. Now that she was here, she didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t asked Brooks if he wanted to see his parents. He had mostly slept the past two days, but he was sitting up for longer times. The doctor said they could leave in the next day or two if he continued to progress. She knew if she was going to talk to his parents, it had to be now.
Mrs. Morgan set a plate of cookies in front of her. “It’s funny, I must have had Brooks on my mind, because I baked oatmeal cookies today. He loved them the first time I made them, but then he left before I made another batch. I always wished he’d come home so I could make him some more.” She wiped away her tears and sat down. “Please Miss—”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Keri Langston, and I’m from Shoofly.”
“Why, that’s not all that far from here.” She leaned forward. “Is that where my son is?”
“It’s where his ranch is.”
She sat back against her chair, eyes blinking. “Brooks owns a ranch? I thought he hated ranch life. That was why he left us.”
“Things change in a decade. I think you’ll like the man he’s become.” Keri smiled, hoping to reassure the woman.
“I’m so glad you’ve come here, Miss Langston, but why now? Why didn’t Brooks come too?”
Keri told her the story of the Crash at Crush, of the explosion, and how Brooks had been injured trying to protect her. “And when the train pulled to a stop, we were in Waco, not Shoofly. I got Brooks to the doctor so his injuries could be treated and sent a telegram home so my ma wouldn’t worry about us.”
“How bad are his wounds?” Suddenly she jumped up so fast, her chair fell backwards, banging against the floor. “Wait! You mean to say that Brooks is in Waco?”
Keri smiled and nodded.
“Oh!” Mrs. Morgan pressed her hands to her chest. “We have to see him.” She
spun and ran out the back door and pounded the clangor on the metal triangle. Then she rushed back inside, grabbed a rifle that had been hidden behind the open door, went back outside, and fired three shots in the air.
She hurried back inside, put the rifle away, and stripped off her apron. She patted her hair. “How do I look? Should I change dresses? This one has some smudges on it.”
Keri took her hands. “You look fine.”
Tears made Mrs. Morgan’s brown eyes shimmery. Keri could see little glimpses of her expression in Brooks. “I didn’t tell him I was coming out here.”
Mrs. Morgan stiffened. “What if he doesn’t want to see us?”
“He might say that and even be angry at me for taking you to see him, but deep inside, I know he misses his family. He doesn’t feel worthy enough to return.”
“Surely he knows all is forgiven. We just want our son back.”
“He’s not the boy you knew back then.” Although as soon as she said the words, she wondered if she wasn’t wrong. Brooks would always be a cocky teaser. That was just his personality. But she felt certain he had matured. Just the fact that he wanted to make a go of the ranch proved that.
The sound of galloping horses approached the house, then footsteps rushed toward them. A tall man came in, an older version of Brooks from his dark hair with silver accents to his square face and blue eyes. He glanced at her, a rifle in his hand, then at Mrs. Morgan. “Annie, what’s wrong?”
She rushed to him and grabbed his arms. “Oh, Riley. Something wonderful has happened.”
The man relaxed his rigid stance and the wariness in his eyes vanished, replaced by curiosity.
“What is it, Ma?” A tall, thin young man—Keri guessed to be a few years older than she—stepped around Mr. Morgan. Phillip, she suspected. He had his mother’s brown eyes, but had gotten his stature from his father. He glanced at Keri and smiled, much like his brother.
“This woman—” her voice caught, and she dabbed her eyes again. “She’s a friend of … Brooks. He’s here. In Waco.”
The man blinked. “Brooks is in Waco?” His stunned expression hardened. “Why didn’t he come to see us?”
End of the Trail Page 17