The Union Belle

by Gilbert, Morris

  “You did that very easily,” Mark remarked quietly.

  She had been stirred by the kiss more than she wanted to admit. “That’s what you wished, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re thinking I’m easy, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not thinking that.” He tilted his head down to catch her eyes, then added, “I’m thinking of Ray.”

  “I’m not married to Ray!”

  “You’re going to marry him, aren’t you?”

  “I—I don’t know.” She was disturbed by the scene, her agitation obvious in the nervous manner she twisted her hands. “He wants me to.”

  “And what do you want?”

  She was suddenly aware that her feelings for Ray were even more confused than she had thought. Almost angrily, as if he had accused her of something wrong, she said, “Don’t pick at me about Ray, Mark!”

  He studied her, not understanding what was behind her words. The entire scene had affected him deeply. “I guess we better get back to town, Moira.”

  She took a deep breath, getting control of herself, then came up with a smile. “Don’t you trust me, Mark?”

  As they moved away from the wall, tracing their way back toward the town, he said, “No . . . and I don’t trust myself, either. But I know one thing, Moira. Ray’s a friend of mine. He loves you, which means you’re off bounds for me.”

  Moira walked beside him, annoyed for some reason, but not completely understanding why. When he left her at the hotel, she moved to the window and watched as he made his way down the street. When he turned in the direction of the Union Belle, she shook her head in an angry gesture, and without thinking, picked up a book from the table beside her bed and threw it against the wall.

  Neither of them had noticed Hayden as they had returned to the hotel. He had come back to town and inquired at the Union Belle for Moira. Jeff Driver had smiled and mentioned that she had left with Winslow. A potent flash of jealousy had flashed through him, and he had lurked across the street from the hotel waiting for them to return. When they came into sight, there was something in their attitude that angered him. He watched them go up, and left at once for the Wagonwheel.

  He stayed at Valance’s saloon, drinking steadily for two hours, and getting thoroughly drunk. It was at that time that Jason Wallford came to sit beside him. Wallford had been observing him carefully, and now he said quietly, “Been thinking things over, Ray?”

  Hayden looked up, and when he spoke it was with the carelessness of a drunk man. His blurred eyes tried hopelessly to focus on the powerful man beside him. “Yeah. I’m ready to listen, Jason.”

  “Fine. Come along and we’ll see what we can work out.” As Wallford led the way through the crowd with Hayden stumbling along behind, he caught Valance’s eye, and nodded slightly. Valance smiled and watched as the two men disappeared.

  “Like a lamb to the slaughter,” the saloon owner said quietly. When he turned back to his game it occurred to him that he’d just seen the fall of a man. Hayden’s move proved once again that his philosophy was sound—every man was for sale.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Shepherd Calls

  Jack Casement’s troops marched across the plains steadily throughout May and June, leaving the shining rails behind as a monument to their progress. The big knock-together warehouses bulged with railroad fittings, materials, and provisions. Tie contractors had a thousand men busy up on the Black Hills slopes, cutting good hard pine and spruce and hemlock in an attempt to trim the cost of hardening the flimsy cottonwood. In their camps along the Laramie, Medicine Bow and North Platte rivers, huge stocks of ties and bridge timbers accumulated, ready to be floated down to the grade.

  Cheyenne flourished. The call for labor had gone East, bringing trainloads of restless Irishmen, some of them fresh out of the steerages of Western Ocean immigrant packets, eager to join the veterans who whiled away their final weeks of idleness in dining, gambling and fighting.

  Cheyenne was Julesburg all over again, but a bigger, more vigorous place, sure of its destiny. General Dodge called it the gambling capital of the world, noting that “Every known gambling device is in lucrative operation there.” The hundred foot span of the lavish Wagonwheel Saloon contrasted sharply with the ten by fifteen shack that served as the U.S. Post Office, a clear measure of who controlled the town. In addition to the saloons and gambling houses, there were six bonafide theaters, and at least seventeen “variety halls”—usually a saloon, a theater and a house of prostitution combined under a single roof. The Cheyenne newspaper, The Leader, ran a daily column under a standing head, “Last night’s shootings,” and a local magistrate, Colonel Luke Murrin, levied a ten-dollar fine on any man who drew a gun on another inside the city limits, “whether he hit or missed.”

  The result was that Cheyenne’s reputation spread far and wide, a stink in the nostrils of the godly. If Julesburg had billed itself as the most wicked city in America, the depths of Cheyenne’s depravity could be judged by the fact that visitors revealed an almost compulsive tendency to describe it in terms of the regions below the earth.

  Even the tolerant made jokes about it, one of which concerned a conductor whose train was boarded in western Nebraska by an obstreperous drunk. When the man loudly announced that he “wanted to go to hell,” the conductor immediately sold him a ticket to Cheyenne.

  After Editor Samuel Bowles of the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican visited Cheyenne, he commented, “Hell must have been raked to furnish them and to Hell they must return after graduating here.”

  Yet under all the tawdry glitter and the evil capering lived the solid, sober citizens who had also followed the Union Pacific into town. On January 5, 1868, with the thermometer standing steady at twenty-three degrees below zero, the newspaper noted that Cheyenne’s first public school building was dedicated.

  Another event transpired in Cheyenne, but there were no notices in The Leader. In a small frame building on the east side of town, Jude Moran had his first service. There were only seventeen people there, most of these Indians who had come over from Fort Sanders for the event. Lola had not been there that morning, but on the following Monday morning her father paid a visit to the Union Belle. Shep and Lola were having coffee, and Yancy offered at once, “Well, if it isn’t the preacher. Come and have some breakfast, Reverend.”

  “Already had mine,” Moran smiled. “But some of that coffee would be good.”

  “Maureen—bring some fresh coffee for the parson,” Yancy called out. Turning back to Moran, he said, “Hear you quit the Union Pacific.”

  “That’s right. I’m going to start a church here in Cheyenne.” He looked at Lola and said, “You’re looking fine, Lola.”

  She felt awkward, not knowing yet what to call him, but smiled anyway, saying, “I hope the church does well.”

  “I’m not much of a preacher,” Moran shrugged. “All my life I’ve had to muscle things around. Guess I know how to get work out of men . . .” He took the coffee that Maureen brought, then laughed, “Sometimes when I’m preaching I have a notion to grab some heads and knock them together like I did as a foreman.”

  “Well, you got the muscles for it, Parson,” Shep grinned.

  “I guess—but brawn won’t do it for what I’m after. You can whip a shoddy worker—but that never changes his heart. And that’s what’s got to happen before a man or a woman can get right with God.”

  Lola studied him as he talked, fascinated by the thought that he was her father. Other than her eyes, she saw none of him in her physical appearance—her mother’s Spanish blood dominated those traits. But somehow she felt at ease with him, and by the time he got up to leave thirty minutes later, she asked, “Please, come by and have supper with me tonight.”

  He stared at her, caught off-guard, but a flush of pleasure rose to his cheeks. “I’d sure like that.”

  After he left, Shep said, “He’s a fine fellow, Lola. He’s certainly no one to be disappoint
ed in—I’m glad he’s your pa.”

  Moran came back that evening for supper, and the two of them enjoyed each other’s company. Lola was once again apprehensive that he would try to force his religion on her, but he said nothing about it. He had been all over the West and they sat sipping coffee while he told her tale after tale. He was a natural storyteller, and she was content to sit and listen. It wasn’t until ten o’clock that she began talking about herself.

  Moran toyed with his coffee, letting her speak at her own pace. He felt guilty about neglecting his daughter, and listened as she spoke of how hard it had been living with her mother and sister in the cantina. Even though she didn’t complain, her manner betrayed how difficult it had been. He sensed the goodness that was in her, and rejoiced in it, marveling that God had kept her from the low life of the saloon.

  It was nearly midnight when Lola finished her story. She had been staring down into her coffee cup for a long time when she said softly, “ . . . so it was Mark who got me away. If it hadn’t been for him, I guess I’d still be there.”

  “But you rescued him, too,” Jude said quietly. “Maybe God saw that the two of you needed a boost, and put you together.”

  The sound of his voice startled her, and she sat up quickly, a faint flush in her cheeks. “I . . . I’ve never told all that to anyone,” she admitted.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Daughter,” he said. “God has watched out for you. That’s been my prayer since I held you in my arms the first time, when you were just a baby.” His brow suddenly contracted, and he shook his head. “I’ve grieved all my life over what happened. I loved your mother—but she never loved me, I guess.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said quickly. Putting her hand on his, she smiled. “I’ve wondered about you all my life. Now I’ve found you.”

  Giving her dainty hand a tight squeeze, he said huskily, “I thank God for keeping you safe.” Then he stood up. “This has been the best evening of my life. I hope we can do it often.”

  “Yes,” Lola agreed, getting to her feet. The moment of parting was awkward, and she made it lighter by saying, “I’d like to visit your church next Sunday.”

  “Well, you know how much I’d enjoy that,” he smiled, leaving the restaurant with a final wave of his hand.

  Lola lay awake for a long time that night thinking of the unique evening. Jude Moran provided the part of her life that had been missing—the stability that she had always longed for and never had. Not once in all her years of growing up had she felt the security that had come to her during the simple meal with her father. Without realizing it, she had built up a wall of defense to protect herself from the life that had surrounded her at the cantina. Everyone she knew had been a potential betrayer—but Jude Moran was safe. As she drifted off to sleep, she basked in the knowledge that he wanted only what was best for her.

  She thought often about her father as the week passed, though she didn’t see him again. On Sunday morning, she put on a simple blue dress and left the Union Belle. The quietness of the morning washed over her as she made her way along the boardwalk, and she regretted that the demands of her work kept her from enjoying the peaceful morning hours. The streets seemed almost deserted. Only a few horses were tied to the hitching posts, and she saw fewer than a dozen people on her journey.

  Following her father’s directions, she made her way down one of the side streets at the edge of town, and found the building he had described. It was an unpainted one-story affair, like most of the other buildings in Cheyenne, and in front of it two wagons and a dozen or so horses filled the space at the hitching post. The sound of singing greeted her as she approached the door. She hesitated for one moment, then resolutely pushed it open and stepped inside.

  She saw her father standing beside a table at the front of the room. A short, red-faced man was leading a song vigorously, and her father came at once to her side. He was smiling, and said, “Why, it’s good to see you, Daughter. Let me find you a seat.” The room was fifteen-feet wide and less than thirty-feet long, but it was full of people. Over half the congregation was Indian, and she saw at least two white families with smaller children. He led her to a seat close to the front, then left her. She found herself standing between a short squatty Indian who studied her intently, and Jake Kilrain, a tall man in his late forties. Jake was a foreman for the Union and came to the Union Belle frequently.

  “Hello, Lola,” Jake said cheerfully. “Glad to see you.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Lola listened as the song leader, Joshua Long, another railroader she knew, led the singing. Joshua came into her place with Jeff Driver fairly often, and his bright blue eyes caught hers and he gave her a smile. He had a clear tenor voice, and threw himself with gusto into the singing. Lola had a good voice and a quick ear, and because Long sang each song several times, often calling out the words before they sang, she was able to join in. Her clear contralto swelled with the voices of the men, and Long gave her a nod of encouragement, saying once, “Fine! Fine! We need some ladies to help us with these good old songs of Zion!”

  The singing was not polished and the setting was rough—but as Lola stood there in the crowded room, she began to be affected by some quality that she could not explain. Most of the songs were simple, and all of them were about Jesus. Lola knew Jesus Christ only as a statue she had seen on the walls of a church, but the vigorous words that composed the songs that morning said he was more than that. One of the songs stirred her greatly. It spoke of the death of Jesus, and for the first time in her life she thought of Jesus as a real man, suffering real pain. The first verse ran:

  When I survey the wondrous cross

  On which the Prince of Glory died,

  My richest gain I count but loss

  And pour contempt on all my pride.

  And the second verse spoke of the physical details of the cross of Jesus:

  See from his head, his hands, his feet,

  Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

  Did ere such love and sorrow meet

  Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

  The song stirred something in Lola’s heart, and to her surprise, she found her eyes growing misty with tears as the song went on, for the death of Jesus had become more than a dry, dusty historical fact, or part of a crucifix on the wall.

  Finally Josh stopped and said, “We’ll sing just one more song. It was written by one of the most wicked men who ever lived—a man named John Newton. Newton lived a terrible life of sin, and became a slave trader. But God reached down and saved him, and Newton wrote this song about the grace that could save the worst of men. It’s called ‘Amazing Grace,’ and I guess all of us can join with John Newton in thanking God for His mercy in saving us.”

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind but now I see.

  Josh belted the words out, and soon Lola found that she could join the simple melody. But the lyrics troubled her—especially the word “saved.” Josh had said that Newton had been “saved,” but that meant nothing to her. Saved from what? she thought. Nevertheless, she found her heart touched by the words as Josh led them through the other verses.

  Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

  And grace my fears relieved.

  How precious did that grace appear

  The hour I first believed.

  But it was the last verse that moved her most—perhaps because the breaking in Josh’s voice made it difficult for him to sing.

  When we’ve been there ten thousand years

  Bright shining as the sun,

  We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

  Than when we first begun!

  “It’s going to be wonderful when we leave this old world,” he concluded with a tearful smile. “Heaven is nearer than we think!” Then he turned and said, “Brother Moran, come and preach the Word of God to us.”

  A
feeling of awe had touched Lola whenever she saw her father, and it came again now, stronger than ever, as he picked up his Bible, opened it, and began to read. He was not particularly impressive in manner or appearance—yet at the same time there was a dignity in him that captivated her as she listened.

  “Our text is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter fifteen.” He waited while those with Bibles thumbed through them. Lola felt a touch on her arm and turned her head to see the stocky Indian on her left shoving a tattered Bible at her. Not certain of what he wanted, she stood there helplessly until Jake Kilrain reached over and took the Bible. He ruffled through it expertly, found a page and handed it back to her, pointing to a line just as her father started reading.

  “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.”

  Jude began to speak in a quiet voice, saying, “Not all of us have had flocks of sheep to care for, but we’ve all lost something. Maybe you’ve seen a huge flock of sheep and wondered how one shepherd could keep up with so many of the creatures. Well, in a human way, I don’t think one man could know all that many sheep very well—but in this story that Jesus told, the shepherd knew all of his sheep personally. So when one of them got lost, wandered away from the flock, the shepherd’s heart went after him. He was more concerned over that one lost sheep than he was for those that hadn’t strayed off.”

  Jude was a good storyteller, and as he continued telling of the plight of the sheep and the determination of the shepherd to save him, Lola found herself caught up in the tale—and when she glanced around, she saw that the other hearers were equally entranced. When Jude began to make an application of the parable, she found herself moved to the heart.