Bound for Sin

by Tess LeSue

  TAKING LEAVE OF his train was harder than he’d expected. He’d grown quite attached to his people, and it was hard to leave them with Seb.

  “Stop fussing,” Seb complained, when Matt went over the route for at least the tenth time. “I’ve been doing this longer’n you have.” Which was true. Seb had run the chuck wagon for Matt’s brother Luke when Matt was still a youngster trapping his way through the Oregon hills.

  “You give this to my brother when you get to Utopia,” Matt told Doc Barry, handing him a crumpled note of introduction. “He’ll be sure to look out for you. He’s wanted a doctor in the town for years, so I’m sure you’ll be well taken care of.”

  “You’re like a mother hen,” Seb grumbled.

  “You’d best be too, if you want to get them there alive.”

  “Cluck, cluck.” Seb patted him on the back.

  “I might see you in Utopia by winter, if everything goes to plan.”

  “I’ll be there. If the widow Hooks is still single and hoping to warm her bed for the winter.” Seb winked at him.

  Matt watched the train head out. Their road was still long and treacherous. He felt like he was abandoning them to their fate. But better them than Georgiana and the children. Resolutely, he returned to his new family, marveling at the twists and turns fate had in store for a man.

  33

  ALMOST AS SOON as they hit the fork where the Snake River split off to Oregon and the Raft River struck out for California, the whores were causing trouble. Or rather, the men caused the trouble and the whores set to protesting. Loudly.

  “You tell ’em to keep their goddamn hands to themselves!” Seline’s voice carried all the way up the line.

  Matt didn’t envy Joe, who bore a long-suffering look as he headed back to deal with the trouble. “This is your fault!” he called over his shoulder as he passed Matt’s wagon.

  “What did he mean, this is your fault?” Georgiana didn’t sound pleased.

  “What’s a whore?” Susannah asked.

  Matt was glad the children took up the issue of defining a whore at that point, as he didn’t really want to discuss Seline with Georgiana.

  “You’re all wrong,” Honey LeFoy called from where she trotted on her donkey, valiantly trying to keep up with the twins and their horses. Her golden curls flopped in her face with every jolt. She pushed them back. “A whore is like a wife only she gets paid.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Georgiana cut them off sharply. “Polite people don’t speak of such things.”

  “How do wives get paid?” Matt heard Susannah whisper to Ginger, who was sitting close beside her on the bench.

  Matt tried not to laugh. The LeFoy girls were good for the kids; they brought them back to acting like children again. Susannah and the twins had been subdued since Wilby’s death; they watched their mother with anxious eyes and were too serious for children of their age. They hadn’t spent much time with the LeFoy girls since Independence, as the LeFoys rode at the back with Joe’s party, miles behind Matt’s wagon train. But now they were all in the same train, and the LeFoy girls worked like a tonic on the children. They were loud and animated and filled with humor. Ginger and Susannah had become inseparable, even though Ginger was a good couple of years older. They were both prim, ladylike girls who liked to spend their time daydreaming together, sometimes up in the wagon with Matt and Georgiana and sometimes riding pillion on Princess. Flower and Honey were sturdier sorts than their sister and tended to muck in with the boys; particularly Honey, who was a tomboy through and through. LeFoy wouldn’t let his girls ride his only horse, so Honey had spent the months on the trail, cap in hand, singing after supper, collecting coins from the wagoners until she could afford to buy an animal for herself. She had a lovely voice and a way of making people laugh, so she did fairly well. By Fort Hall she’d saved up enough to buy a swayback old donkey, which she promptly named Thunder, on account that it was an incredibly flatulent swayback old donkey.

  “You tie that donkey up well away from the tents,” Becky nagged every night. She had taken to acting like LeFoy’s wife, mothering the girls whether they liked it or not. Most of the time they didn’t.

  No one had been happier about joining the California Trail than Becky. She’d inserted herself into LeFoy’s daily life, trying to make herself indispensable. She volunteered to drive LeFoy’s wagon, to cook for him and his daughters, and to do their wash.

  A wife who didn’t get paid, Matt thought dryly, as he watched her wrestling with LeFoy’s ox team up ahead. Meanwhile, LeFoy’s girls had decamped to Georgiana’s wagon, spending their days with the Blunt children so as to avoid the young woman who was trying to marry their father.

  This was his life now, he thought, resting his elbows on his knees as the wagon rattled alongside the rushing waters of the Raft. He didn’t have to scout trails or manage disputes; he just had to roll along, watching the people around him, listening to the chattering of the children, talking aimlessly with his wife.

  His wife. That word never failed to make his heart skip a beat.

  “Hey, Matt, can we go fishing tonight?” Flip called over.

  “Sure.” He didn’t have to think twice. He no longer had to do the rounds of the wagons, making sure everything was well and good; he didn’t have to pore over his map or check on the rations. Once he’d pitched the tents and settled the animals, he had all the time in the world to go fishing.

  “Can we take the rifle?”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” Phin protested, “it would be easier with the rifle!”

  “It would be dumb,” Matt said, stretching his legs out. “One shot and you’d scare off all the other fish.”

  “Matt!” Joe returned from the back of the line and fell into a trot beside the wagon. “Can I borrow you for a bit?”

  Matt could see by Joe’s expression that there was trouble. Real trouble. He sighed. He’d spoken too soon. The evening might not hold fishing after all.

  * * *

  • • •

  “SOMEONE’S GOING TO get shot,” Joe complained, as they rode down the line. “And I cain’t say I blame her.”

  “Jesus.” Matt was shocked at the sight of the whores. They were thin and worn, many sporting bruises. “What in hell happened?”

  “I told ’em we were closed for business,” Seline snapped, “that’s what happened.” She had a pistol in each hand and a box of ammunition next to her on the bench. She also had the angriest-looking black eye Matt had ever seen. It was bloodshot and surrounded by puffy purple flesh.

  “They stopped turning tricks back in Fort Hall,” Joe explained.

  “They’re animals,” Seline elaborated, jerking her head at the cloud of dust ahead. They’d pulled to a stop beside the rushing river, to talk plain with Joe and Matt. “We cain’t be working all night and traveling all day. Everyone’s plumb wore out. And now Ella is pregnant and Dottie is feeling poorly. We’ll never make it to California being used up like this.”

  “What’s with the bruises?” Matt asked grimly.

  “They didn’t like being told ‘no’ by a pack of whores,” Seline snapped. “Like we don’t have the right to say no.”

  Matt swore.

  “Damn straight,” Joe agreed. “What should we do? There ain’t no way we can hold that lot off ’em.” His gaze was on the retreating train ahead.

  Joe’s party was predominantly gold hunters, rough men who gave Matt pause. They were bored and tired from travel, with drink and cards and whores their only entertainment. The few families scattered in were woefully outnumbered.

  “To be honest, it’s been a right struggle keeping it under control,” Joe said. “They’re like kids in a candy store.”

  “And we sure as shit ain’t candy,” Seline snapped. For all her bravado, Matt could see that she was more than a touch scared. And Joe
was right: she was heavily armed and on a hair trigger; she was liable to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Matt scratched his beard. Goddamn. Life could never just be easy, could it?

  “You likely to want to turn any tricks between here and California?” he asked Seline.

  “Hell, no. You think we want to do anything but sleep after a day spent in these hell wagons?”

  Matt nodded. He and Joe exchanged a look. There was really only one thing for it. Unfortunately.

  “All right, set up camp,” he told the whores. “Wait here till I come and get you.” He swung back up onto Pablo’s back.

  “Thanks,” Joe told him as they rode back down the line.

  Matt accepted his thanks without much grace. “You want to tell my wife for me?”

  “Hell, no.” Joe looked appalled.

  “You think anyone else will join us?”

  Joe didn’t think so.

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHAT DO YOU mean, we’re traveling with the whores!”

  Matt winced. He’d expected Georgiana to be mad, but he hadn’t quite expected her to be this mad. It was the most lively he’d seen her since Wilby’s death.

  “Just let me tell you why,” he strove to sound calm. “You might not yell at me after.” Or she might. Maybe sympathy for whores wasn’t in a proper lady’s constitution.

  She listened but only got madder when she found out that they weren’t breaking camp the next day, but were waiting for a couple of days so Joe’s train could pull safely ahead. They didn’t want any of the men to be able to ride back to the whores when the train stopped at night.

  “What about Leo?” she asked him. “Are you really putting a pack of whores ahead of my son?”

  Matt didn’t know how to answer that. He couldn’t see that two days would make a big difference. But also, yes, he guessed he kind of was. Because what else could he do? He wasn’t about to let Seline and her girls suffer at the hands of those gold diggers. Leo might be in danger, but he’d been in danger for the best part of the year, and a day or two more wasn’t going to change that, while Seline and her girls might not make it through another day without shooting someone, or getting shot.

  “We’ll all be safer with a couple of days between Joe’s group and ours,” he tried to explain, but she was already stomping off. She didn’t speak to him for the next couple of days.

  Their new party was small. The LeFoys opted to stay with them, as did two other families: the Tuckers and the Boyds. None of them were too pleased about traveling in close proximity to the whores, but they liked the drunken ways of the gold diggers even less. Matt had promised until his face was blue that the whores weren’t trading on the trail anymore and that their husbands and sons were safe from sin. He asked Seline to have the girls button up so not an inch of extra flesh was on display, and she complied. Her girls were exhausted and more than happy to have relief from male attention. They settled cheerfully into small-train life, pitching in enthusiastically. Seline in particular turned out to have a knack for cooking and always made enough to share. She made fresh sourdough daily in her Dutch oven, with a starter she said she’d nursed since she was fourteen years old, and her gifts of hot bread slowly won people over. Gradually, people relaxed around them, although Matt noticed that the women never left their husbands unattended in the camp.

  Matt and Georgiana’s wagon was the new lead wagon, as Matt followed in Joe’s wake. The train ahead left a clear enough trail to follow. They’d stay in their wake until they’d crossed the mountains, and then they’d break off to Mokelumne Hill, while Joe’s party headed for American River. Matt hadn’t told Georgiana yet that Seline was considering following them instead of rejoining Joe. The whore didn’t fancy seeing any of Joe’s party again. Ever.

  Sometimes Matt had to saddle up and ride ahead, but he preferred to sit next to Georgiana on the wagon seat. As the days passed, she talked more and brooded less, and he learned a lot more about the woman who was his wife: about the queer ways of her childhood, with its servants and governesses, town houses and lake houses and beach houses; her proud mother and her distant father; and the lonely days she passed in all those grand places, without another child for company. At least until she was sent off to finishing school. Matt knew loneliness when he heard it—he should do; he’d felt it often enough.

  And as he listened, the days passed. They traveled through the granite spires and cathedrals of the City of Rocks and down the South Fork of Junction Creek, following a dozen small streams until they reached the Humboldt River, which traced a crooked path across the Great Basin. When they reached the Basin, they near about groaned in despair. The arid desolation was far too reminiscent of the Lava Lands for comfort. Everyone got a grim, mulish look and was short of temper and out of sorts.

  “I knew it was going to be a long way to California,” Georgiana said glumly, regarding the blazing stretch of treeless plain ahead. “I just didn’t know how hard it would be.” The skin under her eyes was so dark it looked bruised. She still didn’t sleep well, and grief had made her thin.

  “If you don’t start eating soon you’ll waste right away,” Seline told her one morning when she was ladling out bowls of her creamy porridge. She dominated the cook fire, whether people liked it or not. Becky was as black as a thundercloud because the LeFoy girls ate from Seline’s pot rather than hers.

  “I’m not hungry, thank you,” Georgiana said politely.

  Matt kept close watch on them from where he stood yoking the oxen, ready to step in if need be. He could see the stiffness in Georgiana’s shoulders from here.

  “Sure you are,” Seline said, filling a bowl and leaving it on the ground next to her, “you just ain’t realized it yet. Your body’s screaming out for vittles, but your mind’s too noisy to hear it.”

  Georgiana merely handed the bowl to Phin as soon as Seline moved off.

  “You need to do something about that woman of yours,” Seline told Matt a few days later. She’d found him by the river gutting fish. The twins were big on fishing but tended to disappear into thin air when it was time to scale and gut their catch.

  “I don’t recall asking your opinion.” Matt didn’t look up from the flick of his knife.

  The whore snorted and flopped down by the riverside. A puff of dust rose into the air around her. She sneezed. “I surely miss grass,” she complained. “When I get a place of my own, I’m having grass as far as the eye can see. And trees. The kind that turn all sorts of colors in the fall and just about shout with blossoms in the spring.”

  Matt kept on with his work.

  She sighed again. “Look, Slater, I know it’s none of my business, but you’ve been good to me, so I thought I could help you out.”

  “I didn’t realize I needed help.”

  “Your dumber’n I thought, then.” She tugged her boots off and rolled down her stockings so she could lower her bare legs into the cool water. “You keep going on the way you are, both you and the lady are going to have a miserable time of it all the way to California. That woman is sadder than that fish you’re gutting.”

  “She lost her son, Seline,” Matt said tightly. “Have some compassion.”

  The whore gave him a filthy look. “I ain’t stupid. I’m well aware of her misfortune.”

  “I think she’s got every right to be miserable.”

  “Maybe so. But maybe she needs someone to pull her out of it.” Seline’s tawny eyes narrowed. “She ain’t the only woman ever to lose a child, you know. Life’s a mean old drunk. And you can either get down in the gutter with it and keep pouring hooch down its throat, or you can pull yourself up and move along.”

  Matt shook his head. “That’s the worst way of looking at it I ever heard.”

  “It ain’t no way of looking at it; it’s the truth. I lost my first baby when I was fifteen
years old,” she snapped at him, “and I’ve lost a damn sight more since then. Some stillborn, some gone before they had chance to even take root, some lasted a month or two, one a whole year.”

  Matt’s filleting knife paused. He took in the fierce glitter in her eyes and the severe set of her shoulders.

  “And I bet you most of the women in this camp could add to that list, those respectable married sorts as well as my whores.” She kicked her heels in the water. “Grief is a hard and bitter thing . . . but it ends. You make it end.”

  Not for the first time, Matt wondered where Seline hailed from and what in hell had brought her to whoredom. She was powerful clever, one of the sharpest women he’d ever met; she was still young and had her looks; and she was as enterprising as all hell. Put her in a respectable dress and get the henna out of her hair, and she wouldn’t look any different from the decent women Matt knew. Except for the hardness in her gaze. She had a flinty stare and a directness that was more like a man than a woman. There was no softness in her manner. And no wonder, he thought, after so many losses. And God knew how many black eyes and bruises.

  “Your woman needs to be reminded that she’s still alive,” Seline told him. “And that she’s got three healthy kids left.”

  Four, Matt amended silently. If Leo was still alive.

  “And she’s got you.” Seline looked vaguely annoyed as she said it. “She was making calf-eyes at you from the moment she saw you, and now she’s got you.” The fury faded from Seline’s voice. “She’s a lucky woman, and she needs to remember that. She could be like me, or like Ella back there, knocked up by one of those gold-hungry animals. Ella would kill to have a man like you to watch out for her. Hell, who even knows if her baby will make it out of the womb safe, the way we’re traveling? You want to talk misery, Ella’s the one who should be miserable.”

  “She’ll come through,” Matt said.

  “Who? Ella or your woman?”

  “Both.”

  Seline snorted. “Easy enough for you to say.”