Prologue Read online

  HOMEWARD HEARTS

  by

  Alexis Harrington

  Copyright Alexis Harrington, 1994

  To RLS, always

  Prologue

  July 1894

  At the crossroads of eternity and isolation stood the dying town of Misfortune, Oregon.

  Once it had been a prosperous, brawling mining town, waltzing the line of law and order with clumsy strides. Gunfights, knifings, and drunken chaos were standard every night. But the passage of twenty years had seen the gold mines go bust, the population dwindle to a clannish few.

  Now, in the velvety darkness of warm summer nights, all that could be heard were the soft calls of chirping crickets, an occasional barking dog, or maybe strident but muffled voices engaged in domestic disagreement. Icy winter twilights brought the lonely moan of frigid, snow-laden winds blowing down from the Canadian Arctic.

  While a few old-timers still pecked away at claims in the low hills surrounding Misfortune, the town inched along in its desolation year after year. So when an outsider was spotted within fifteen miles of the main street on that hot blue day in 1894, the news spread quickly and caused a lot of head-scratching speculation.

  After all, there wasn't much reason for a stranger to come to Misfortune.

  But one was on his way.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Chloe Maitland silently cursed the July heat. Her beige muslin dress had been fresh and crisp with starch this morning but now the skirt hung in limp folds. The sun was a silver-white disk as she closed her front door and set out for DeGroot’s Mercantile to buy groceries for Saturday dinner and to pick up her mail. Her basket on her arm, she glanced at the drooping, stunted flowers in the planter boxes that stood on either side of the porch. The lawn was a yellow, mangy mat, worn to bare dirt in some places. Now and then, a hot breeze would kick up, lifting and rearranging the dust. Rain, she knew, was still three months away.

  Maybe a letter would be waiting for her today. She didn't know where her optimism came from because every Saturday for ten weeks she'd walked to DeGroot’s, hoping for a response to her advertisement. Each week she'd come away disappointed.

  Three months. Chloe could scarcely believe so much time had passed since she'd placed an advertisement in the Baker City newspaper, forty miles away. She realized her chances of finding an experienced blacksmith were not very good, especially since she could pay no wages, only room and board. But she'd never once imagined there would be no response at all. There had to be at least one man in the county willing to do an honest day's work in exchange for good food and a roof over his head.

  As Chloe headed down the boardwalk, she tried to ignore the rundown buildings and deserted stores that cast cool shadows on her path. Her attention snagged on a tumbleweed rolling down the center of the dusty street. True, it wasn't hard to understand why the world wasn’t beating a path to Misfortune. But the town wasn't dead.

  The same anxiety that kept her awake nights suddenly descended upon her. If she couldn't find a blacksmith, she didn't know what she'd do. The washing she took in generated only enough money to feed her. There was nothing left over for a debt as big as a mortgage. If her circumstances didn't change soon, she'd lose the house and have to leave Misfortune. And go where?

  Looming ahead on the other side of the street was the silent, abandoned building that had once been Misfortune's fanciest saloon, the Rose and Garter. She averted her eyes—she didn't need to see beyond its dusty, web-draped windows to remember the mirrored back bar, lined with bottles. It had been a long time since she'd heard the jangling piano music and noisy laughter that had rolled past the swinging doors, day and night. A long time since Frank Maitland, Misfortune's only blacksmith and the saloon's best customer, had slumped at the mahogany bar letting grief chase him to the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Some people inherited money or property or heirlooms. Her father’s bequest to her had been a heart full of grim memories.

  Albert DeGroot's big wall clock was softly tolling four o’clock when Chloe pushed open the door to the mercantile. There was a mingling of scents in Albert’s store that always reminded her of when she was little, of the pickle barrel and coffee and leather harness. The shelves reached nearly to the ceiling and bore tin cans and glass bottles and porcelain jugs. Sacks of rice, flour, and sugar were propped up against the back counter, and brass spittoons graced each end. As a child, Chloe had thought the only thing better than DeGroot’s was Christmas.

  Today three men lounged against the counter to catch up on the latest events: Albert, Tarpaper Bolen, and Dr. Miles Sherwood. Their conversation ceased as she walked to the counter, her heels sounding on the old wooden floor in the uncomfortable silence.

  She was a tall woman and she knew that alone commanded attention. She also knew she was a popular subject of gossip and it was not beyond possibility that they'd been talking about her again.

  “Hello, Albert, Doc.” Chloe nodded at the men leaning on the counter. She made a point of standing upwind of Tarpaper Bolen, a grizzled prospector who bathed only on his birthday and Christmas Eve. “Tar.” The flat acknowledgment was descriptive of the old man's lack of personal hygiene.

  She pushed her shopping list toward Albert along with her tea tin. “Just a few things today, I think.”

  Albert scanned the list, then peered over his spectacles and took a longer look at her hair. “You know, I got in a new order of curling irons. Nice ones, too, with painted porcelain handles.”

  Albert DeGroot was one of the least tactful people Chloe knew. If she'd been younger and still capable of blushing, he would have turned her face scarlet with his remark. Getting older did have its blessings, though. For one thing, it gave her the ability to bury her hurts so deeply she hardly felt them anymore.

  Curled hair wasn't for a woman who spent the majority of her day bent over a scrub board. There'd been a time when all that fussing had seemed so very important but now she wore her red-gold hair twisted into a bun at the base of her neck. Functional, Chloe had learned, was more important than frilly. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin just a bit.

  “Just what's on the list, Albert.”

  Sure of step and firm of jaw, she knew she intimidated some people. In some cases she preferred that. Her mirror told her she didn't possess a classic beauty, but at least her features were even. Her long nose was straight on her oval face, properly aligned between high cheekbones.

  Albert nodded and shrugged. He turned to reach for a box of starch from a high shelf when Tar prompted anxiously, “What was you tellin’ us about a stranger?”

  “Oh—right. As I was saying, I had it from Andy Duykstrom, Caleb's boy,” Albert said, turning back to the counter, the starch forgotten. “We got a stranger headed this way.”

  When Chloe heard that she sighed inwardly and she knew she was in for a long wait. After The Misfortune Observer had published its last issue five years earlier, Albert had taken to holding court on Saturday afternoons to dispense the latest news to anyone who’d hold still and listen.

  “Albert, please, I'm in something of a hurry.”

  “Right away, Chloe, right away. This is really interesting,” Albert replied, putting his elbows on the counter.

  She doubted that. Albert, his wife Mildred, and Mildred's closest friend, Bertha Preston received and dispatched information—gossip, to the more discerning—with the efficiency of a daily paper. Chloe seldom found their announcements the least bit interesting.

  The balding little man pushed his spectacles farther up his nose and continued with grave importance. Chloe knew there was no stopping him now.

  “Andy said Caleb talked to a stranger walking down the road along the west edge of his spread, He wanted directions to Misfortune. Caleb tried to find out whe
re he was from, but couldn't get anything out of him, not even his name. When Caleb asked him where his horse was, the stranger said he didn't own one. Caleb offered to let him spend the night in the barn but the man turned him down flat. I ’spect by the time he gets here he'll have been walking a long time.” Albert paused here for this fact to be fully appreciated by his listeners.

  Indeed, it was an amazing suggestion since Misfortune was surrounded by miles of desolate, nearly treeless terrain. Bitterly cold in winter, mercilessly hot and dry in summer, it was suitable for the wheat that grew well in its soil but not for the support of a lone human life attempting to cross it on foot. And with the lack of nearby towns, Albert's comment was correct. For a person to get this far, no matter where he’d come from, he would have been walking for quite a while.

  “He's probably just passing through,” Chloe suggested as she studied a bolt of yellowing lace in Albert's display case. A new face in the area was interesting—even she had to admit that—but she had never shared her neighbors’ fascination with others’ business.

  “There’s no place around here to pass through to,” Tar put in, clearly suspicious of the outsider’s intentions.

  No, Chloe thought, that's true. Misfortune was the end of the line. She placed her basket on the counter, hoping to hurry Albert along.

  Albert sprinkled tea onto his scale, then stood back, hands at his sides. He always made a point of proving to his customers that the weight of his thumb was not included in the price of their goods. He poured the tea into the tin Chloe had brought with her and with all the subtlety of a cow flop, he said, “Looks like another Saturday night dinner with Evan—he does like his tea, doesn't he?”

  Chloe felt annoyance roil in her. Oh, the clacking, wagging tongues—did they really have nothing better to do than chart her activities? She could imagine them at their windows on Saturday evenings, noses pressed to the glass, watching Evan walk through town toward her house, carrying his usual bouquet for her.

  “I'll bet he can’t wait to move out of that attic at the Tollivers’,” Albert prattled on. “When do you expect him to pop the question, Chloe?”

  She supposed she should be grateful that Albert at least refrained from adding the general feeling of the townspeople: Chloe Maitland, with her sharp tongue and bossy ways, had better marry Evan Peterson—the schoolteacher was her first and, no doubt, last prospect.

  Tar's brows flew up at the shopkeeper's prying foolhardiness.

  Doc Sherwood merely shook his head at Albert's rude presumption.

  Chloe gave Albert a cold steady look before replying. She wasn't about to stand here and discuss personal matters with this nosy fool. Anything she said would be all over town by tomorrow’s breakfast. “I guess that's my business, now, isn't it?”

  “Oh, sure, Chloe, sure.” Albert had the good grace to appear ashamed of himself. “I'll just get that baking powder.”

  Chloe heard Doc's low chuckle. She flashed him a look and a small private smile. She was especially fond of the old physician. He was one of the few who’d never once commented about the loss of her “glowing beauty” after her mother died and her father started drinking. And once, it got back to her, Doc had taken the sheriff to task for saying he’d rather try to arrest a drunken buffalo hunter than deal with her.

  A can of baking powder was thumped down on the counter in front of Chloe.

  Evidently undaunted by his earlier blunder, Albert said, “I'll put all this on your account, Chloe.”

  She was tempted. She thought about the few coins in her bag and how nice it would be to keep them a while longer. But, no. Debts had a nasty way of growing quickly. Credit, she felt, was a luxury designed for those who didn't need it rather than those who did.

  “No, thank you, Albert. I'll just take my mail.” He turned toward the pigeonholes that served as his post office, his hand extended.

  Chloe held her breath.

  Then Tar, ever worried about claim jumpers, frowned through his greasy beard and brought the conversation back to the topic of the afternoon. “Well, that drifter best not have any ideas about workin’ my Pony Gal. I'll bean him with my shovel if’n he gets too close. I've done it before.”

  Albert stopped short of completing his task and gave him an impatient look. Tarpaper, so called in honor of his first mining shack, had lived in the hills for nearly thirty years and it had made him peculiar. Although his claim, Pony Gal, had never yielded enough gold to let him do more than barely survive, he was certain his one big strike was coming any day. All the old prospectors felt the same way about their claims.

  “Nobody is interested in that picayune stake of yours, Tar,” Albert pointed out. “You’ve been scraping away at that thing since Moses was a boy and it ain’t made you rich yet. Nobody is interested in mining these parts at all. The big money was taken out of here years ago.” Then he added, “The one time you got into a scuffle over that patch of dirt, you were full of the Grover sisters’ moonshine.” He jerked a thumb at the row of jars on the shelf behind him. “And you're lucky you didn't get killed.”

  Chloe felt all eyes in the room dart to her uncomfortably, then skitter away.

  The old miner shifted his tobacco from one jaw to the other, then broke the awkward pause. “It wasn’t my time to leave this earth, and it ain’t yet. I reckon I'll keep my eyes open for this stranger, just the same. What's he look like, Albert?”

  “Well, Andy didn't say, exactly,” Albert admitted. “He said Caleb told him the man takes after the devil, but we know Andy tends to be a mite addled sometimes. I suppose we’ll find out soon. The man asked where Misfortune was and Caleb sent him off in this direction. Without a horse, I don’t imagine he’ll be here for another day or so.”

  “If the heat doesn't kill him first,” Doc Sherwood put in, mopping his forehead with a large handkerchief. He was a tall, elegant-looking gentleman with a full head of snowy hair and a luxuriant mustache. “This is the hottest July I can remember around here. A man would have to be a damned idiot to try to walk anywhere in heat like this.”

  “Albert,” Chloe prompted firmly, “my mail?”

  “Hmm? Oh, right—mail.”

  Albert finally turned back to the pigeonholes, then returned, shaking his head. “Nothing this week, Chloe.”

  Disheartened but unwilling to show it, she paid her bill and said goodbye, waving to Doc Sherwood. When she stepped outside, she glanced up at the hot sky. Doc was right: a man would have to be a damned idiot to travel on foot under a sun like this and she had no time to spare for idiots.

  * * *

  Miles away, Travis McGuire shuffled to a stop on a low rise. He lifted his eyes to gaze over the vast rolling plains surrounding him. Like a castaway set adrift on a strange yellow sea, his sole point of reference was the broiling sun overhead. He reached for his canteen and listened as he shook it, then tipped it over his open mouth to drain the last swallow of stale water.

  The prying farmer he'd talked to early last evening had said he’d get to Bad Luck or Hardship, or whatever the name of that town was, out here if he maintained this course. He was beginning to think he’d be in Wichita before he found it.

  Fatigue made his legs shake now that he was standing still. He considered sitting down for just a moment but changed his mind; he wasn't too sure of his ability to get up again.

  His cheekbone and brow throbbed, a reminder of the punishing blow his face had taken yesterday morning when his horse snapped a foreleg in a gopher hole. The horse had sunk heavily with the fracture and he was pitched over the animal’s head, landing on his chest and face against earth as hard as concrete. His eye had begun to swell shut even before he got to his feet again. Blood had run from the scrapes on his face and dripped on his torn shirt.

  The horse had thrashed and kicked, trying to stand. Seeing the broken bone, something very close to grief had twisted his heart before he squelched the feeling. He’d drawn his Colt revolver and fired two shots, shattering the utter silence o
f the prairie and ending the life of the only companion he’d had in years. Then he’d pulled off the saddle and saddlebags and started walking. He carried the saddle for a while but as he trudged over barren miles it became a pointless burden and he abandoned it.

  Now he stood looking at the infinity before him, resting his weight on one hip. A sigh rose in his chest. The saddlebags containing all he owned in this world lay heavy on his shoulder and he shrugged against the load, shifting it. He recognized that he was only a scrap of humanity on this plain, that his life could easily be snuffed out and its passing not even noted. Worse than being on foot, having no water reduced considerably his chances for survival.

  But he had one thing going for him that gave him an advantage, something that had seen him through the last five years. A thing he nurtured and polished and carried before him like a shield against the world.

  That one thing was grim resolve.

  * * *

  “Miss Chloe, you've outdone yourself again,” Evan said, spooning up three-quarters of the mashed potatoes. He heaped them on a plate already burdened with a biscuit and most of a roast chicken.

  A stiff breeze blew this evening, lifting the snowy lace curtains and brushing them against the wallpaper filled with the figures of cabbage roses. It was too warm to close the windows but Chloe could feel a fine grit under her shoes and knew it was settling on everything in the dining room.

  Where was he putting all that food? Chloe wondered, taking what remained of the dinner she’d cooked onto her plate. She supposed the odd jobs he did around the Tollivers’ farm in exchange for his keep might give him an appetite. Yet while he sometimes gobbled her food like a starving man, barely tasting it, on other evenings he’d pick suspiciously at the meals as though they were poisoned.

  “Did you hear about the drifter on the Duykstrom property?” he asked, skewering peas on his fork. He chased those he missed, clinking the tines on his plate and pushing a few peas off onto the embroidered tablecloth. “Albert told me he'll be here any day and that he’s disfigured.”