by Beth White
No, that was not a choice she could make. Not until after her meeting with the banker in Oxford, at least.
Putting a hand against the knot in her stomach, she turned from the window, her gaze colliding with that of the young man seated across from her. He nodded, then returned to scribbling notes in the small leather-bound book he’d pulled from his coat pocket after getting on in Memphis. She’d been sneaking glances at him, wishing he’d look up and speak to her. He had the cheekbones of a Viking prince and an appealing upward curl to the corners of his mouth, but his expression was guarded. Though the war had ended almost five years ago, that hard look was all too common in men who’d fought on either side.
Selah couldn’t help wondering what he was doing with that notebook. Maybe he was a reporter. Or maybe he was writing a letter to his sweetheart. A man with a face like that had to have a beautiful woman somewhere waiting for him. What would it be like, to receive a written expression of fondness and devotion, composed for no one but her?
Just imagining that possibility brought her courage, like the appearance of a bright red cardinal on a rainy gray morning. She took a long breath, oddly settled. She was the practical one, and God would give her wisdom when the time came.
Staring at strangers, however, was ill-bred. She turned back to her seatmate and found the woman watching her with a small, knowing smile. Blushing, Selah asked, “Will you be getting off in Oxford or going on to New Orleans, ma’am?”
“Going on. My son is getting married there.” The woman made a face. “I’m sorry, my dear—I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Mrs. Norton.”
“I’m Selah Daughtry.” Selah tipped her head. “Are you not happy about the marriage?”
Mrs. Norton heaved a sigh that all but pushed Selah off the seat. “I confess I’d hoped my son would find a Memphis girl and settle down closer to home. But that’s what happens when you bear nothing but boys. They leave home and never come back.” She chuckled. “My husband tells me I’m entirely too sensitive. I should be glad that now I’ll have the perfect excuse to travel down to New Orleans and go shopping.”
Selah laughed. “One can never enjoy too much shopping.”
“True.” Mrs. Norton addressed the man opposite them with mock severity. “Young man, I hope you will accept my advice and consider your poor mama’s feelings when you choose a mate—if it’s not already too late, that is.” She shot an inquisitive glance at his naked ring finger.
To Selah’s surprise, he closed the notebook and grinned, creating a shallow crease along one cheek that in a softer face might have been called a dimple. He was younger than she’d first thought.
“My mother would be thrilled if I married anybody at all,” he said, tucking the notebook into his breast pocket. “She has all but given up on my settling down.”
“Bless her heart.” Mrs. Norton tsked. “Where are you from, sir? You don’t sound Southern at all.”
“I grew up in Illinois. I’m Levi Riggins.” He touched the brim of his hat with a polite nod. Nice manners, for a Yankee.
Selah studied him, taking in the plain but neat clothing, the well-made suit tailored to fit his tall, muscular—well, she had no business thinking about his physical form. “So what are you doing all the way down here in Mississippi, Mr. Riggins?”
He pushed back his shallow-crowned hat and regarded Selah cautiously. “Was that a ‘Yankee go home’ kind of question?”
She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean—”
The train gave another hard jerk, and the car rocked sideways, slamming Selah’s shoulder against the window. Grinding metallic noises, screaming and shouting exploded all around her as the front of the car pitched downward. Selah’s stomach lurched. She fell into Levi Riggins’s arms as passengers came hurtling over the seat from behind, and Mrs. Norton flumped onto Selah’s back. Riggins held on to her as the cars crashed together.
Struggling to breathe, Selah lay with her face smashed against Riggins’s coat. His arms crushed her, but she couldn’t move, not with Mrs. Norton screaming and flailing about.
“Ma’am, you’ve got to be still.” Riggins’s deep voice was strained but calm. “We don’t know how we’re situated, and if the car rocks and upsets the balance—I said stop it!”
To Selah’s relief, the weight on her back settled, quivering.
Riggins released a breath against her ear. “Are you all right, Miss Daughtry?”
“I think so. Yes.” The top of her head throbbed where it had hit the slatted seat, but she was alive.
“Good. I’m going to see what I can do to get us out of here.” Riggins raised his voice again. “Mrs. Norton, can you roll to your left?”
The weight on Selah’s back shifted, relieving some of the pressure on her rib cage and lungs. She gasped a quick, grateful breath.
“There’s a man lying in the aisle,” Mrs. Norton said, “but I think I can step over him. Oh, mercy, he’s bleeding—”
“I’ll see to him,” Riggins said. “Just move slowly so we don’t jostle the car.”
“All right.” Mrs. Norton moved again, awkwardly.
Suddenly Selah could breathe freely. She turned her head and found herself staring directly into Levi Riggins’s hazel eyes. They were narrowed with concern. Or perhaps pain. Involuntarily she looked at his mouth and found his white teeth gritted. She must be crushing him.
She started to push away, but he clasped her tighter. “No, wait,” he said, “you have to move slowly too. I’m all right, just a little . . . winded.” He winked, then spoke to Mrs. Norton. “Stay right there, ma’am. Miss Daughtry and I are going to try to stand up.”
Selah took in their predicament. The three of them, seated toward the back, had escaped the worst of the damage, but the passengers at the front of the car were beginning to stir and call out for help.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked Riggins.
His eyes warmed with approval. “Push yourself up so I can slide out from under you. Then sit down again until I can figure out what to do.”
“All right. Here we go.” Struggling against gravity, tight corset, and voluminous skirts, she managed to get herself upright—though in rather humiliating intimacy with this complete stranger.
Don’t think about it.
Riggins slid out from under her, her skirt going with him, though she supposed a flash of petticoat was the least of her worries. He bent over the man on the floor, then stood, mouth grim. “Stay here and try to keep everyone calm,” he told Selah. “I’m going to climb out and see about getting help.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“These people need you here. I promise I’ll be right back.”
Somehow she believed him, trusted him. She swallowed her fear. “All right. But hurry.”
The tail of Levi’s greatcoat billowed in the wind as he balanced on the window ledge, looking down. Climbing out the window proved to be the easiest part of escaping that death trap. If he fell now, he’d either break his neck or impale himself on the scrubby pines and bare-limbed yellow oaks poking up along the slope like the teeth of a broken comb. Swallowing, he reminded himself that Mrs. Norton and Miss Daughtry depended on him to bring help.
Miss Daughtry, with the brown-cinnamon eyes and a voice that reminded him of a Liszt nocturne, must not die.
Well, neither must Mrs. Norton.
With a deep breath he swung onto the top of the railcar, righted himself, and crouched, panting in the freezing air. He took in the devastating totality of the train wreck. The engine had crossed the bridge, but the car behind it had come uncoupled and gone over, yanking the rest along with it. Three cars lay crushed and scattered at the bottom of the ravine like toys hurled by a spoiled child. The next two hung angled off the bridge, shattered but supporting the one out of which he’d just climbed. Only the caboose remained fully on the tracks.
It hit him that he should have been in the shattered car in the ravine, along with the man he’d been following. If he hadn’t seen M
iss Daughtry through the window at the station and impulsively exchanged his ticket with a gentleman who wished to ride in the executive car, he would likely be dead instead of contemplating this suicidal climb up to the top of the bridge.
Since he’d been providentially preserved for this event, he’d best get on with it.
He began the climb on hands and knees along the roof until he reached the back end of the car, which rested on the bridge. Jumping down, he staggered and righted himself to straddle the rail ties, legs shaking. He’d made it, but there was no way those two women—or anybody else still trapped in the car below, for that matter—would make that climb.
Picking through what he’d learned from civil engineering studies at West Point and from his wartime experience, he realized he needed a rope-and-pulley system. And some help. And he’d better tackle it now, before the train’s balance shifted and the whole thing tumbled into the ravine. He leaned out to peer down the side of the caboose. Precious little room remained between it and the edge of the bridge. Except for the trusses crushed by the wrecked cars, the bridge looked stable, but the cause of the accident could be out of sight on the other side of the bridge.
Cautiously he got to his feet, aware of the panicked noises of passengers below as he edged around the car.
Vaulting onto the platform of the caboose, he called, “Hello? Anybody in charge here? We need to start getting people out.”
A uniformed porter, harried of face, appeared in the caboose’s doorway. He blinked in obvious astonishment. “Where did you come from?”
“Down there.” Levi gestured toward the coach he’d just climbed out of.
The porter’s eyes widened. “You climbed all the way up here on your own?”
“Yes. There are people still alive in that car, and we have to organize a rescue before the train dislodges.”
“We’ve sent to Oxford for help, but it’ll be a while before the equipment arrives.”
“Equipment? All we need is some rope and a couple of strong backs.” Riggins was used to being obeyed, and this man’s reluctance was maddening. He’d just have to find somebody else with a little gumption. He wheeled.
“Wait!”
Levi spared a look over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“I’m coming. Let me get us some gloves, and I’ve got rope in the storage bins.”
“Good. Who else can help?”
“A porter named Lunsford. I’m Kerr, by the way.”
“Levi Riggins. Lead the way, I’ll follow you.”
Within a short while, Levi and the two porters, equipped with a heavy tool box and three stout coils of rope, edged along the bridge toward the derailed cars. By now people were leaning out the windows, crying out for help.
“Hang on, folks,” he called. “We’re going to find a way to get you out.” He stopped to estimate the distance to the bottom, then turned to his companions. “It will be easier to get them to the bottom than to bring them up to the top. We’ll make a harness and slide them down one by one.”
Kerr scratched his head. “But there’s probably water down there—cold water. The women aren’t going to like that.”
“They’d like falling forty feet even less,” Levi said with a grimace.
The porter named Lunsford peered over the edge. “He’s right. Even if we managed to bring them up to the bridge, there’s a long stretch of track between here and solid ground.”
“It’s going to take some time to get the line secured,” Kerr objected. “What if the car falls before we can get the passengers out?”
“That might happen anyway,” Levi said. “Listen, there’s no perfect way to do this. Either we stand here arguing until we lose daylight, or we give this our best shot.” He explained what he wanted, praying that Kerr and Lunsford would come to the sticking point without getting anybody killed.
He knotted the end of the rope securely about the rail, backed over the edge, and lowered himself. Arms straining to control his descent, he felt with his feet for the trestles, occasionally looking down at the spikes of trees at the bottom of the ravine. The women were going to be terrified.
But the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
Bracing himself against a sharp, buffeting wind that made his coat flap about his legs, he kept going down, down, his reluctant gaze on the silent wrecked cars. He had come through the war with death-scars on his soul that he feared might never heal. But somehow this accident, so many innocent lives cut obscenely short, struck him as the ultimate tragedy.
At the bottom, he disconnected himself from the rope and moved to investigate the first passenger car. No survivors, including Priester, whose body he found in a heap of splintered wood and bent metal. That part of his investigation had come to a screeching halt.
Sickened, he assessed the scrubby underbrush, briars, and vines, and rotten dead wood clogging the space between the ragged trees. It was going to take some doing to hack out a navigable path for the surviving passengers to get on the road for Oxford. He hoped they wouldn’t run into a flooded stream or other roadblock on the way.
Muttering a prayer for wisdom and favor, he climbed over scattered luggage and broken pieces of the train to the second passenger car. He was about to abandon the search for survivors as a lost cause when he thought he heard a scrabbling sound from the center of the car.
“Is someone there?” Galvanized, he hauled aside shattered train walls and seats, shoved away a couple of dead bodies. A voice, a young one, rose from somewhere below the pile of rubble, but the words were undecipherable. “Where are you?” Levi shouted.
“Hurry, mister, I can hardly breathe,” the young voice gasped.
Levi kept working. “Hang on, I’m coming.” Finally he flipped over a seat back to reveal a pile of bodies, beneath which a hand moved weakly.
“I’m here . . .” The voice was adolescent male. The grubby hand, attached to a skinny arm in a threadbare coat, lifted again. As Levi pulled aside the bodies, the boy sat up with a gasp. “Oh, thank God!” He knuckled streaming eyes, clearly choking back sobs.
Levi squatted and took the boy by the shoulders. “Are you hurt? What about your legs? Can you stand?”
“I think so. My ribs hurt.”
Levi helped the boy to his feet, keeping a critical eye on the long, coltish legs. A bit wobbly, freckles standing out on the pale face, but apparently in one piece. “I’m Riggins. Don’t know how you survived that, son, but you’re a lucky man.”
The boy sniffed hard, lifted his chin. “My name’s Wyatt. Thank you for coming for me. My—my father’s dead, isn’t he?”
Levi cast a reluctant glance about the scene of destruction. “So is everybody in those first two cars but you, I’m afraid. Wyatt, if you’re sure you’re all right, I’m going to leave you and climb back up to start bringing the other survivors down to safety.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“Good man. Rest for a few minutes, then you can start clearing a path out to the nearest road. We’ll have to get wagons in here for the women and children eventually.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy promptly folded to the ground, leaned over and emptied the contents of his stomach.
Shaking his head in sympathy, Levi left him. He walked over to the bridge, grabbed the rope, and began to pull himself upward hand over hand. By the time he got to the top, Lunsford and Kerr had completed a sturdy cradle harness. Levi and Lunsford strapped the pint-sized Kerr into it and lowered him to an open window about a third of the way from the back of the car. Levi could hear the voices of the passengers inside rising in excitement.
“Hey, folks, stay calm,” Kerr said, grabbing the edge of the window to lean in. “I’m one of the porters, and we’re working to get you out of here. One of you gentlemen climb up here to talk to me, will you?”
As Kerr conferred with a large bewhiskered gentleman, Levi tended the rope to make sure it held, all the while wondering how Miss Daughtry fared. He imagined her soothing th
ose around her with that calm, magnolia-soaked voice. He’d been calling her “Miss Daughtry” in his mind, but she’d introduced herself as Selah without an honorific. Perhaps she was married.
Selah surely was a pretty name, for a very pretty woman. He hoped she wasn’t married. Not that he’d ever see her again after today. He had a job to do, and she was going to . . .
Where was she going? She’d already been on the train when he boarded, so she’d come at least as far as Memphis. She was dressed like a lady, the suit modest in cut and design. He didn’t know enough about fashion to determine if she was stylish or not, but her clothes had that ragged-edged look of hard times so prevalent here in the South. Still, there was something intriguing about her, besides the interesting shape of her face and figure (which had been so delightfully pressed against him in the aftermath of the wreck). There was intelligence and determination in her eyes. Something awake and lively that made him want to know her better. Perhaps he could gain her direction and look her up when his business was completed.
Assuming, of course, that she wasn’t married.
“Hey, you two!”
Kerr’s shout jerked Levi’s mind from Selah Daughtry to the business at hand—that of rescuing a train full of frightened and injured passengers.
Kerr was peering up at them, looking irritated at the delay. “Let me down,” he said. “Colonel Brice here will follow and help me with the clearing of the path.”
And with that, the rescue operation commenced. By the time a few men had been lowered with the harness and had begun to assist in rescuing the women and children, several citizens from Oxford arrived in their buggies with mattresses in the back to help remove the injured. An hour or so later, a special train, notified of the disaster and sent on with rescue and medical equipment, chugged to a stop behind the wreck.
Levi found himself in the position of organizing the effort, coordinating railroad personnel, civilians, and doctors—including several former soldiers like himself. Perhaps that was because he had initiated things. Perhaps because, as his little sister had once told him, “Levi Riggins, you are the bossiest human I ever met.”