He missed hearing from her, missed the unusual friendship he had developed with her through their letters. He supposed it was best to end it after all, considering that their paths would never cross again. Even if they did, where would he fit into her life, or she into his? Still, he could not help wondering if she was still all right. Anything could happen on her many trips to New York and Washington, with the damn war escalating the way it was.
This is an exciting but also frightening time, he read again, always trying to picture how she might look, sitting at a desk, slender fingers creating the lovely handwriting. As I begin this letter, I am sitting in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., where I have come to again discuss the railroad with senators and congressmen. It is not easy to get their attention. Everyone here is, of course, afraid of a Confederate attack. The train I rode on to come here was packed with volunteers for the Union Army, and when I arrived in Washington, the city was a rush of thousands more volunteers, men from New York, Vermont, Ohio, Michigan, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, nearly every northern state. Never have I seen such movement and chaos, even in my own big city of Chicago. The capital is in a state of near panic, main thoroughfares guarded, common citizens who live on the borders of Virginia and Maryland flooding in for protection. Troops guard the Potomac and the James rivers, and it is rumored there will be a Union campaign to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which is very close to Washington.
I have never seen such a mess—people tenting in the streets, a shortage of water and a lack of sanitary conditions. It is times like this that I like to daydream about being out there where you are, where it is quiet, and a person can go for miles without seeing another human being.
Colt smiled at the remark, sometimes feeling like she was sitting right next to him telling him these things. He remembered how she used to love to write in her daily journal, wondered if she still did that.
In spite of the mass of soldiers to guard our own capital and president, I wonder about our Union leadership. We have suffered two major defeats, at Manassas, Virginia, and at Leesburg, Virginia, where the ghastly number of nineteen hundred Union soldiers died. We do at last have a blockade set up around southern ports, and recently the Union fleet captured two Confederate forts on Port Royal Sound in South Carolina, so we are now able to attack from the coast.
It seems strange to talk about this awful war, our own people fighting against each other. This is the saddest, most hideous kind of war. My sister-in-law Vi has volunteered to work at a big hospital in Chicago, where some of the more seriously injured Union soldiers have been brought, as well as injured but captured Rebels whose wounds are to be treated before they are sent to our Union prison at Rock Island. I have helped out occasionally at the hospital, but I am afraid I do not have the constitution for it that Vi has.
In the meantime, I pray that none of the trains I take on my own trips are attacked by Rebels, a constant danger. Still, I feel compelled to continue my own work for the railroad in spite of what is happening. I refuse to let the issue be forgotten because of the war, and a bill has finally been introduced that might be voted on next spring.
Colt sighed, refolding the letter before finishing it. It was dated late October 1861. Now here it was almost June of ’62, and the war was apparently in full explosion. He had read in an Omaha newspaper about terrible casualties in a conflict called the Battle of Shiloh, in Tennessee. Nearly twenty-five thousand men had been killed and wounded. The numbers that were being printed in the newspapers were staggering, and sometimes Colt wondered how there could be that many men in the entire country, to lose so many in one battle and still be able to carry on the war.
Brother against brother, the headlines had read. What kind of hell was taking place back east? He was feeling more and more uneasy about it, wondering if it was right for him to be sitting in bed with a whore in Omaha while men his age were fighting and dying to save the Union. The more he thought about it, the more he realized there couldn’t be a much better way for someone like him to pass his time—excitement, danger, certainly no time to think about the graves he had left back in Colorado. War was the perfect answer for a man who didn’t give a damn if he lived or died.
He had hoped that the Homestead Act President Lincoln had recently signed would mean some kind of work for him, but people were just beginning to trickle in. It was predicted they would soon start arriving by the thousands, but rather than whole wagon trains to lead to Oregon and California, it was already obvious they would come in more individual groups, one to three wagons at a time, with no need for a guide because they didn’t intend to go much farther. They were being aided by land speculators, sinfully cheated by some, Colt suspected. At any rate, the new Homestead Act had not provided the kind of work he was looking for.
Actually, he considered the act as nothing more than another thorn in the side of the Indian. A new flow of settlers would begin arriving, many of them deciding to homestead on lands the government had promised would forever belong to the Indians. So much for the white man’s promises.
He figured Sunny was thrilled about the new settlement act. The more people who came out here to live, the more need there would be for a railroad. There were times when he wanted to hate her for being part of a system that was changing the West as he had once known it, but he knew that what was happening was inevitable. If not Sunny and her cohorts, then someone else. It was going to happen simply because progress and settlement were so much a part of the white culture, and he couldn’t hold himself blameless. After all, he had led many a wagon train himself.
He laid the letter back on the night table next to him, then snuffed out the cigarette, turning to the young woman stretched out naked beside him. Her name was Billie White, short for Belinda, and she was about LeeAnn’s age, with LeeAnn’s coloring and small build. Still, she was not LeeAnn, no matter how hard he tried to imagine that she was.
He was lonely and he had a need. It was as simple as that. He had met Billie in the tavern downstairs, and he had stayed with her every night for the past three nights, taking out his pent-up frustrations on her, even crying on her shoulder one night. Wild as she was, she had a heart and a good ear, and he thought how under other circumstances, a man could love her for his own. But this one belonged to any man with the right amount of money, although when a man was with her, she treated him as if he were the only one in her life.
“Wake up, Billie,” he said softly, moving between her legs again.
“Oh, you’re mean,” she groaned. “I’m sleepy, Colt.”
“And that’s my money lying on your night table.”
He wondered how someone so young and pretty had ended up selling herself to lonely men, but he had not asked questions. Most whores didn’t want to talk about why they did what they did, the same as he didn’t always want to talk about why he was there in the first place.
He pushed himself deep inside her, and she responded with the exotic precision of a woman who knew all the ways there were to please a man. Still, it was not as satisfying as lying with a woman who truly loved him, a woman who wanted to give him children, a woman he in turn loved more than his own life. What a difference there was between having sex and making love. There was a physical relief in this, but no emotional joy. He took her almost violently, angry that she was not LeeAnn.
He rose to his knees and stared down at her small breasts, their pink nipples taut from the sudden arousal. He deliberately took a long, hard look at her nakedness, wanting simply to get rid of the strong physical needs that months of being without a woman had left him with. He would get this out of his system, but it wouldn’t make the loneliness go away. It wouldn’t bring back LeeAnn or Ethan. It would simply tide him over for a while as far as his natural needs were concerned.
He grasped her slim hips, and she gasped his name and arched up to him in an exquisite gyrating motion. He rammed himself
hard into her, wanting it to last as long as possible. He moved with such energy that he began to perspire, letting go of her hips then and bending down to taste each nipple. He grabbed her hair then, and buried his face against her neck, his broad shoulders hovering over her. He felt her fingers lightly caress his own nipple, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. With one final thrust his life spilled into her once more, life that would never come to fruition. The scar across her belly was proof she would never have children. He had not asked how or why she had come to have the operation, satisfied that it was simply an added convenience that left both her and her customers less to worry about.
Colt shuddered a last sigh and rolled away from her. Billie lay spent and panting, looking like a wilted flower. “You could have been a little more gentle,” she complained, “especially after waking me up like that.”
Colt rubbed his face and sat up. “Sorry.” He got up and walked to a washstand, pouring water from a pitcher into a bowl. He soaped up a rag and began washing his privates. “You’d better be as clean as you say you are.”
“That’s part of the high price. I don’t sleep with just any bum who comes in here, you know. I’m careful. Hurry up and wash so I can wash too.”
Colt finished, turning to see her sitting with a towel between her legs but otherwise completely naked. She was smoking a thin cigar, her dark brown hair in a tangle. He studied her a moment, thinking how, if she didn’t wear all that paint and would dress like a decent woman, she could be anybody’s proper, churchgoing and quite pretty daughter.
Her sultry eyes fell to his privates as he walked back over to the bed. “You sure are hung,” she commented. “You going to stay in Omaha? I wouldn’t mind being your favorite—you know, reserving myself for you and not taking any other customers? I’d be willing.” She licked at her lips. “Something as good-looking and built like you doesn’t come along very often.”
He smiled almost bashfully. “I guess that’s supposed to be a compliment.” He reached over and took his long johns from where they hung on a post of the brass bed. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do right now. I’m thinking I ought to be doing something about the war. I took a room in Denver for a couple of days when I was there. Somebody had left a book there called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I was bored as hell, so I read it. It was about slavery. Gave me the shivers. Between that and not feeling right about the country being all torn up like it is—” He shrugged. “Just seems like a man with no family and no responsibilities ought to do his part.” He pulled on the long johns and sat on the edge of the bed, taking a cigarette paper and his pouch of tobacco from the night table and rolling himself another cigarette.
“War has to be awful ugly, Colt, especially a civil war. I read the papers too, you know. I read about those thousands of men killed and wounded at Shiloh. I had a customer not long ago who said he was a volunteer medic for the Union. He was at Shiloh, and he deserted—said what he saw made him so sick he couldn’t look at it anymore—men screaming, dying of awful infections, getting their legs or arms cut off. You ought to stay right here.”
Colt rose, bending over the oil lamp and lighting his cigarette, then walking to a window, watching the activity in the dimly lit street below. He was still surprised how much Omaha had grown since he brought Sunny here five years ago. “Somebody has to do it, Billie. Might as well be men like me who won’t be missed if they’re killed.”
She stuck out her lower lip. “I’d miss you.”
He looked over at her and snickered. “Only until somebody hung bigger came along.”
She smiled seductively. “They don’t come any bigger.”
He laughed lightly and shook his head, looking out the window again to see a gang of five men ride up to the front of the tavern just below, apparently in quite a hurry. They stormed inside, and Colt could hear a commotion downstairs. He frowned, hurrying over to open the door to Billie’s room.
“What is it, Colt?”
He put up his hand for her to be quiet and walked farther out onto the balcony, still in his underwear. Billie listened intently to men shouting in the tavern below. Colt looked over the railing at the intruders, who were brandishing guns and yelling threateningly at the tavern patrons.
“We saw that black bugger run in this direction,” one of them was bellowing. “There’s laws against hiding fugitive slaves!”
“Why don’t you go back south where you belong and fight with them that’s dying so you can keep your damn slaves,” someone grumbled. “We haven’t seen any runaways in here, and we don’t have no use for anybody that would use humans like damn mules.”
“Mr. Tibbs is willing not to press any charges if you’re hiding him,” one of the other gang members told the customers. “Just turn him over.” He gave a signal to one of his men, and Colt watched warily as the second man turned and headed upstairs.
“You all might say you’re Negro lovers,” the man talking below went on, “but do you love them more than money? Our boss will pay good money to the man that turns the boy in. He’s small built, eighteen years old, wearing a fancy suit. Tibbs treats his slaves good, especially his personal servants. Nothing’s going to happen to him if you turn him in.”
“Except a good whipping that will open up his back, right?” someone said with a sneer.
Colt boldly met the eyes of the man who had come upstairs. The man hesitated, his eyes moving over Colt, taking the several scars on his face and naked torso into account. After years of hard living and personal loss, Colt looked older. The scar above his right eye indicated a man who could be mean when necessary, let alone the fact that he stood over six feet tall, his arms and chest hard-muscled. He kept his cigarette between his lips, literally frightening the intruder with his eyes as he stared him down. “There’s nobody in there but my own personal whore,” he said firmly but quietly. “You’ve got no right coming up here and disturbing people. Get the hell out.”
The man kept a gun on him, moving to peek around the doorway. Billie, still sitting stark naked on the bed, smiled and waved at him. The man took a moment to get a good look before turning back to Colt, clearing his throat nervously. “There’s a reward, if you’re interested. The boy’s name is Elam. He’s the boss’s favorite, if you know what I mean. Mr. Tibbs will pay plenty to get him back.” The man turned and went downstairs, leaving with the others then to continue their search. Colt went back inside Billie’s room and began dressing.
“Where are you going?” Billie asked him.
“Out for some fresh air. I just saw something that made me feel a little sick. Besides, I’m wide awake now.”
“You’re going to look for that Negro kid yourself, aren’t you?”
“No. I just have a sudden urge to get the hell out of here, maybe go for a ride. I’ve got some things to think about.” He finished dressing and strapped on his gun. He picked Sunny’s letter up from the night table and shoved it back into his saddlebag, then shoved in other personal articles. He tied his tobacco pouch onto his belt and picked up the saddlebags and his carbine.
“You won’t be back, will you?” Billie asked.
He met her eyes, seeing a hint of sadness. “Probably not. Thanks for the last three days. I needed it.”
“I’m sorry about your wife and all. I just wish you wouldn’t go get yourself involved in that war, Colt. You’re a nice man, way down deep inside that mean-looking exterior. If you get wounded, lose a leg or something, who’s going to take care of you?”
He smiled sadly. “I’ve always found a way to get by. Take care of yourself, Billie. Be careful who you invite up here.”
She grinned. “They’ll all be a disappointment after you.”
He laughed lightly, showing the melting smile that made her wonder if maybe she could love a man at that. But then, what man would love her back? “Bye, Colt. You’re one hell of a man.”
Colt just shook his head. “Bye, Billie.” He headed out and down the stairs, walking out into the cool night air and taking a deep breath. He could hear the gang of searchers pounding on doors and shouting farther up the street. Suddenly, he wanted to get the hell away from all of it. He walked in the opposite direction to the livery where his horse was kept. He had already paid the owner for Dancer’s stall for tonight, so he decided it wouldn’t matter if he got his horse and left.
He reached the livery only to find that the front doors of the shed were padlocked. “Damn,” he muttered. He paced in front of the building, frustrated. He started for the back then, remembering there were more double doors on the opposite end of the shed. If those were simply board-locked from the inside, then if he could get inside himself, he could open them and get the hell out of there. He had no idea where the owner lived, and he was not about to wait for the man to open up in the morning. When Colt Travis got an itch to ride, there was no waiting around.
He checked the back doors, secured from the inside, just as he had suspected. He looked up—no window. He walked back around the side of the building, remembering he had seen a window there. It was then that he noticed some crates stacked against the side wall of the shed, leading right up to the window, almost as though they had been put there deliberately. The window had been pushed open.
Frowning with curiosity, Colt slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and climbed up on the crates to the window, which was only eight feet off the ground. He peeked inside the darkened shed. A couple of horses whinnied, but he wasn’t sure if it was from his appearance, or if someone else was inside.
He let his eyes adjust to the moonlight that came through another window at the front of the shed, and he saw a stack of hay below him. He swung his legs over the windowsill, throwing down his saddlebags first, then keeping hold of his rifle as he jumped into the hay. A few more horses whinnied and snorted. Colt picked up the saddlebags, talking softly to the horses to calm them, then making his way over to where he knew Dancer was kept. He found an oil lamp, then felt around in his saddlebags for a match, taking one out and lighting the lamp just enough so he could see to saddle Dancer.
Thunder on the Plains Page 21