A Shelter of Hope

by Tracie Peterson

  Louis ignored the man’s thoughts on the matter. Simone would probably be too frightened to get off before the assigned town. “When was that?”

  “Oh, pert near a week ago. Maybe more. Say, you gonna buy a train ticket? Eastbound’s due inside of thirty minutes.”

  Louis shrugged. “Perhaps. I need to do some thinking first.”

  At this, the ticket agent lost all interest in Louis and turned his attention to a stack of papers. Louis thought to question the man further but realized he’d already provided the bulk of necessary information. Leaving the depot, he looked up the street, first one direction and then another, finally deciding that what he needed was a drink.

  She couldn’t have gotten far on her own, Louis decided. Of course, he hadn’t planned on her being quite so enterprising. So far she’d managed to keep herself just a few paces ahead of him, and it was only by the grace of the modern steam locomotive that she managed to separate herself in any real manner from her father’s diligent search.

  Uncertainty and doubt plagued his mind. He’d already expended more energy and time on Simone than he’d intended. The fool girl had wandered in circles in the mountains, consuming days—even the better part of a week. Louis had easily picked up her tracks, then not so easily covered up both his and her markings to keep anyone else from following after them. But was it worth the cost of following her to Chicago? After all, his money was starting to run low. Panning for gold awaited him in Colorado, and that was only a couple of days journey to the south. He could easily lose himself in one of the many mining communities and forget about Simone and everything else that had happened to him in the past few weeks. Or …

  “She’s worth a fortune,” he muttered. He remembered the enthusiastic suggestions from his companions in Uniontown. They had lusted after her in a way that evidenced the possibility of making easy money. “I could put her to work in the mining camps, and even at the cheapest rates she would bring in a profit. Why allow her to go her own way?” It was, after all, a matter of pride and an issue of obedience. He had given her over to Davis, and she had gone against his wishes. With Davis dead, she was once again Louis’s responsibility … and property.

  Approaching the nearest saloon, Louis paused long enough to take heed of two lawmen already congregated by the hitching post outside the poorly constructed building.

  “I have a description of the man’s horse,” the younger of the two men said. “I sent Billy down to the livery to check out if old Bailey has seen anything of a sorrel mare with two white socks on the front and a white blaze on the forehead. I figured Laramie is the closest town of any real size, and since the Union Pacific is here, it would be the logical place to head. Then, too, if a fellow was making his way on the run, it would be a good place to load up on supplies before trekking out across the mountains or the plains. One way or another, he’d probably stop to see the horse fed and cared for before setting off again.”

  “Possibly,” the man replied. “But other than the description of the horse and the dead man, Garvey Davis—”

  Louis barely heard anything else. So they know Garvey Davis is dead. That could be a problem. He hadn’t figured on anyone finding out so soon. What could have happened? He knew for a fact that Simone hadn’t gone into Uniontown. Was it possible that someone from town had come out to check up on Davis and Simone? Possibly. He knew he had to learn whatever else they might know, but to hang around the men with no real purpose might appear out of line. Glancing down, Louis spotted horse droppings and purposefully stepped in the pile. No one would question his need to pause and clean off his boots. Cursing and putting on a show of disgust, he walked right past the two lawmen to a place four or five feet away before pausing to sit down on the planked boardwalk.

  “Zack, are you sure no one in the town knew where this Dumas man and his daughter had gone off to?”

  Louis had just picked up a stick and had proceeded to clean his boot when his name was mentioned. He felt his heart begin a rapid beat.

  “No, sir, I already told you. Dumas was last known to be headed for Colorado, but nobody knows much of anything else. I’ve asked in all the saloons around town, but no one fitting his description has been seen over the last couple of weeks. Of course, I don’t have that good of a description to go on, but Dumas would have naturally passed by this way if he was headed south. The daughter was supposed to be given to Davis for a wife, and while I have a good description of her, nobody remembers seeing anything of her in the local stores. I thought I’d best check things out with the depot stationmaster to see if he’s seen either one of them. They can’t just have disappeared.”

  Louis heard exasperation tinge the young man’s words. He almost sounded anxious, as if the entire matter were of the utmost importance to him. But why should it be? So what if an old drifter was dead? It happened all the time, and in these parts, it wasn’t at all unusual to be bushwhacked by one person or another. Hardly seemed necessary to include a sheriff on the matter, but it was evident that this was the case. He picked at the boot and waited for something more to be said. Surely now that there was little or nothing to be gained in the way of information, the man would just let the matter drop.

  “Zack, I know you did your best,” the man began saying. “Frankly, it’s just good to have you back safe and sound.”

  The younger man quickly interjected, “Dad, I feel sure that I’m on the verge of putting it all together.”

  Ah, so they are father and son, Louis thought. Perhaps this accounted for the younger man’s anxiety. Zack continued speaking, and Louis forced himself to pay close attention to the details.

  “There are just too many things that don’t add up. Dumas seemed rather anxious to sell off and get out of Uniontown. At least according to the folks I talked to.”

  Good-for-nothings, Louis thought. There was a time when he would have killed a man for opening his mouth to bear witness against him.

  “No one seemed to think much of the idea that Dumas had sold his daughter. Seems quite a few of the men in the area fancied themselves as potential suitors for Simone Dumas. To hear them tell it, she was quite a beauty.”

  “Was?”

  “Is or was,” Zack replied. “I have no way of knowing if she’s still alive. I searched the area and didn’t find any signs of a body or anything else that would give an indication to her whereabouts. There wasn’t much in the cabin to suggest that any female had ever lived there. I did find a few dodads and notions in an old trunk, but nothing else. If Simone Dumas lived there, she did so without much in the way to call her own.”

  “Or she took it all with her,” Zack’s father suggested.

  “That hardly seems likely. If she’s like most females with their baubles and clothes, she couldn’t have crated the stuff out in two wagons, much less on foot or horseback. Even the few things I did find seemed more likely to have belonged to her mother.”

  “Most likely they were too poor to have much in the way of niceties.” Louis would have laughed out loud had he not known it would draw attention to himself. Niceties, indeed. What did a girl like Simone need anyway? A roof over her head, food on the table, and the clothes on her back. Why should he have provided more? He had given her mother plenty, and look where that got him.

  “I’m afraid that whoever killed Garvey Davis might have taken Simone with them.”

  “What if the girl did the deed?” the older man questioned.

  “That is possible,” Zack answered.

  More than possible, Louis thought, remembering the mess he’d found when he’d come back to the cabin.

  “But you don’t sound convinced that she’s to blame.”

  “Mr. Matthews! Zack!” a boy of about fifteen or sixteen yelled, waving and hollering as if someone had set fire to his backside.

  “What is it, Billy?” Zack questioned, stepping down from the boardwalk to meet the boy in the street.

  “Bailey has her!”

  “Has who?”

&nb
sp; Louis looked up just enough to get a good view of the man and boy. The older man joined his son.

  “Davis’s mare!”

  Zack looked to his father and back to the boy. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Says a young girl with dark black hair and the face of an angel brought her in last week. Both were pert near worn to death, but she asked Bailey to buy the horse and seemed in an all-fired hurry to get the matter settled. Sold him the horse and gear, and he never saw her agin.”

  “A girl, you say?” the older man questioned.

  “She fits the description of Simone Dumas,” Zack muttered. “I have to admit it looks like the field of suspects has just narrowed significantly.”

  “And it makes sense as to why you didn’t find any of her things. Apparently Miss Dumas loaded her things up and took off on Davis’s horse. Apparently she didn’t think much of being given over to Davis. Of course, it doesn’t mean that Louis Dumas wasn’t in on it. Could have been a bit of father-daughter teamwork. Sell off to the man and get most of his money, then leave the girl to do him in and get the rest of it. They could have had plans for her to join up with her father elsewhere. Let’s go check out the livery and see this animal for ourselves,” Zack’s father suggested. “Maybe we’ll manage to figure out what to do from there. Bailey know which way she was headed?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Billy replied.

  The three took off down the street, leaving Louis Dumas to stare after them. He frowned, wondering what he should do. He heard the train whistle in the distance and remembered the ticket agent saying that it would be only a matter of half an hour until the eastbound would be pulling into Laramie. Perhaps he would do well to be on it when it headed east. After all, he’d asked questions of the liveryman concerning Simone. When this Zack fellow began asking his own questions, the man would no doubt remember Louis’s inquiries and make comment on another man looking for the petite, black-haired girl.Then, instead of blaming Simone for Davis’s murder, the law just might come looking for him.

  Louis got to his feet in a hasty manner and threw the stick away. He had his own horse and gear still hitched in front of the station. He could just book passage for himself and leave before the lawmen had a chance to come back and check matters out. At least, he hoped it would work that way.

  One thing was certain, though. He couldn’t stay in Laramie.

  “So you don’t remember the girl telling you where she was headed?” Zack Matthews asked Joe Bailey.

  The man glanced up from his work. He was backed up against the rump of a horse, the mare’s rear leg bent upward between his own legs. He stood short and wiry, but his arms revealed the raw strength and muscles necessary for his trade. “Nope. Figured maybe she was here to stay. Elsewise my guess is she took the train and didn’t want to have to bother with the horse. She didn’t say much, and I didn’t ask.” He turned his attention back to cleaning the mare’s hoof.

  “We could ask the stationmaster,” Zack told his father. He felt a rush of excitement with this first real lead he’d had on this case.

  “That’s what I suggested to that other feller,” Bailey offered to no one in particular.

  “What other fellow?” Zack and George Matthews questioned in unison.

  Bailey looked up and shrugged. “A rough-looking fellow who was in here this morning. Said he was looking for a girl and described her. I told him what I just told you, and he took off out of here.”

  “Who was he?” George asked.

  Bailey shook his head and continued his work. “I don’t know. He was dark-headed, had a full face of whiskers, and was built a little heavier than you, but about the same height.”

  “Sounds like Louis Dumas,” Zack said, completely baffled by this new twist. He’d received only the briefest descriptions of Dumas from the folks in Uniontown. It seemed the group was rather clannish in protection of their own.

  “Could you describe him enough for Zack to sketch out a picture?”

  “I suppose so,” the wiry man replied. “He wern’t hardly here long enough to get too good a look. Now, the girl, well, she’d be a different story.”

  “I’d like to sketch her out, too,” Zack replied, pulling a small book from his back pocket. He opened the book to reveal an empty page and stub of a pencil marking the spot where he’d left off. For as long as he could remember, he’d loved to draw anything and everything. He’d tried desperately to get sketches of the Dumases in Uniontown and felt like a complete failure to come away empty-handed. And even now his father had been the one to ask about the possibility of Bailey giving the descriptions to Zack.

  “You think them there pictures will help you?” Bailey questioned, dropping the horse’s leg. He finally seemed intrigued enough to give the Matthews men his undivided attention. Even Billy seemed excited by the idea of Zack’s work.

  “They’ve helped before,” George stated seriously. “Zack makes some of the best Wanted posters around these parts. Can’t help but work to our advantage.”

  “Well, I always figure on helping the law where I can,” Bailey said, putting down the hoof-pick. “What do you want to know?”

  Twenty minutes later, Zack held up the book to reveal sketches of Louis and Simone Dumas. “Is this pretty close?”

  “For sure on the girl. The man … well … like I said, I didn’t pay him much attention.”

  “That’s all right, Bailey,” George Matthews said, nodding approvingly at his son. “This will take us quite a ways.”

  FIFTEEN

  SIMONE WAS TOTALLY unprepared for the kindness she found in her Harvey House sisters. Given the experiences she’d shared since leaving Uniontown and her father, Simone was quickly coming to realize that the rest of the world operated in a much different manner than Louis Dumas.

  Her roommate in the upstairs dormitory of the Harvey House was Una Lundstrom. Una, a big-boned Swedish girl, was a fair-haired contrast to the petite frame and ebony tresses that Simone possessed. Una spoke perfect English, but the long letters she wrote home to her family in Lindsborg, Kansas, were generally written in Swedish. Una had explained that it was important to her family that she be an American, as was her birthright. And while many of her relatives were unable to boast that privilege, Una explained that being American was very important to her family. They eagerly clung to and took on for themselves the coveted title of their children’s American heritage.

  Simone thought little on the matter. Being an American had never been much of an issue in her home. Her father was American, but her mother had been Canadian by birth. Winifred had moved with her family to Denver, Colorado, shortly before her fifteenth birthday, but by that time her French heritage and cultural background had been clearly instilled. Simone had grown up with flavoring from both American and French ancestry and had never given the matter much consideration. Una made it clear, however, that while she was proud of her Swedish heritage, she was prouder still of her American birthright.

  Night after night, once the rigors of the daily routine had passed, Una could be found sitting at the tiny desk in their shared room laboring over a letter of love. Simone wondered what it would be like to have a family who cared about her and missed her. She had never known that family could be so concerned and considerate of one another. She remembered her mother’s love but buried it down deep within so that it couldn’t hurt her with the painful reminder of how love had departed from her life. Kansas and Fred Harvey’s business were her future. It did little good to dwell on the past and what she had lost. The girls here were friendly and eager to strike up conversations and companionships, which should have made it easy to set aside her nightmarish childhood.

  Simone, however, remained wary. Who could be trusted? What if someone hurt her again? Worse still, what if someone learned about her past and knew her secret? She couldn’t afford to get close to anyone, although it greatly appealed to her in a way that she couldn’t argue or fight. She watched with envy and frustration as she observed the clo
seness of some of her Harvey sisters. Perhaps it was just as well that Una preferred spending her time writing letters and focusing on family rather than on Simone.

  “Are you going to walk uptown today?” Una asked one morning.

  Simone yawned and stretched before answering. It was her day off and, with the last bit of money she had managed to hold back, Simone was determined to buy herself material for a day dress to wear when she wasn’t required to be in uniform.

  “I’m going shopping,” she finally admitted.

  “It’s going to be a hot one,” Una said, the cadence of her voice clearly betraying her Swedish background.

  “I’ve never known heat like what Kansas has,” Simone said, forcing herself out of bed. Even with the window open, the room was stifling, and sweat left her nightgown sticking to her most uncomfortably.

  “This is nothing,” Una said with a brief smile. “Some humid days make you feel like you just stepped into a laundry house. Only you can’t step out into someplace cooler and drier.”

  Simone nodded and scowled at the thought of donning cotton stockings and petticoats. She thought of the dry mountain air she’d grown up with—thought, too, of her simpler life without concern for stockings and shoes.

  “Makes a body want to find a shade tree and sit until it cools off,” Una added.

  “Just remember, heat or no heat, you promised to show me how to run the sewing machine. I’m going to buy material for my dress today, and then I’ll have something to work on while you write your letters home.”

  Una nodded. “Ja, I’ll show you.” Una glanced at the clock. “I’ll have to hurry. I’ve got the front station, and there’s a lot of work to be done. Rachel said we needed to go over all the china. She’s been finding chips in the plates and says that if Mr. Harvey shows up and sees them, he’ll throw the things across the room.”