Chapter Two
Outside Buffalo, Wyoming Territory
By the time Eliza reached the Maddox homestead, the world had grown too large for her courage.
For weeks, she measured her life by stations, changes of train, stage stops, strange beds, cold biscuits, and the ache of sitting too long beside people who asked too many questions.
The farther south she rode and then north again by stage, the more the familiar world seemed to fall away behind her.
Missouri had been streets, river fog, church bells, and whispers.
Wyoming was sky and wind and distance enough to swallow every wicked thing ever said of her.
Ruth’s directions had been folded and unfolded so many times that the paper had gone soft at the creases. Eliza kept one gloved hand closed around it as the hired wagon rattled up the last rise, her carpetbag wedged against her knees and her heart lodged somewhere high beneath her ribs.
“There,” the driver said, pointing with the end of his reins. “Maddox place.”
Eliza leaned forward. The house stood alone in a shallow valley, modest but firm against the land.
It had weather-gray boards, a stone chimney, a narrow front porch, and a roof that looked as if it had endured years of hard snow without surrendering an inch.
A small barn sat beyond it, with a fenced corral and a wind-bent cottonwood standing guard near the well.
The mountains rose in the distance, blue and solemn, their peaks still touched with snow though the grass below had begun to green.
It was not grand. It was not elegant. It had none of the polished manners of Hannibal parlors. Eliza nearly wept at the sight of it. After all the fear and running, even that lonely little place looked like mercy.
No one waited on the porch. No one peered from behind curtains. No Silas Whitcomb stood with his watch chain gleaming over his waistcoat, smiling as though he had already bought her obedience.
Only wind moved there, grass, and the slow golden light of late afternoon.
The driver carried her trunk no farther than the porch and gave her a curious look when she paid him with trembling fingers.
He was an older man with a sun-browned face, a tobacco-stained beard, and patient eyes that lingered on her traveling dress, her gloves, and the carpetbag she clutched too tightly.
“Someone meetin’ you?” he asked.
“No,” Eliza replied, then remembered that lone women invited questions. She lifted her chin. “I am expected.”
That much, at least, was not entirely a lie. Ruth expected her to be here. Perhaps expectation could be stretched across distance and made into something like protection.
The man nodded, though doubt remained in the set of his mouth. “Weather turns quick in these parts. Don’t let that stove go cold if clouds come down from the peaks.”
“I won’t,” she smiled politely.
When he left, silence nestled in its place, vast and breathing. Eliza stood with her carpetbag in one hand and Ruth’s key in the other, listening to the low rustle of prairie grass and the faint creak of the porch boards beneath her boots.
She was alone.
The thought should have frightened her. Instead, relief weakened her knees.
Inside, the house smelled faintly of pine soap, cold ashes, dried herbs, and sun-warmed wood.
Eliza stepped into a main room that was plain but lovingly kept.
A braided rug lay before the hearth. Shelves held a few books, a chipped blue pitcher, neatly stacked dishes, and a tin of matches.
The table near the window had been scrubbed pale with use.
Two chairs stood beneath it, one with a mended rung.
Everything bore marks of wear rather than neglect.
Someone cared for this place. That knowledge eased her in a way she had not expected. A house could be empty and still feel watched over. It could hold the shape of hands that swept, patched, polished, and repaired until the very walls seemed to know how to endure.
Eliza set down her carpetbag and drew off her gloves.
Her fingers were stiff from travel, and her nails rimmed with dust no amount of washing at stations had quite removed.
She looked down at her brown traveling dress, creased and tired, the hem stained from mud and wagon steps.
She hardly recognized the woman wearing it.
Or perhaps she was just beginning to.
She moved slowly through the rooms, following Ruth’s careful instructions in her mind.
Ruth described the house in practical terms: pantry to the left of the kitchen, extra linens in the chest upstairs, wood stacked behind the lean-to, water from the well safe if boiled.
Ruth had not described how it would feel to stand here with no one demanding anything of her.
The kitchen was small but serviceable, with a black iron stove, a worktable scarred by knives, strings of dried peppers and onions hanging near the window, and a sideboard that held flour, coffee, salt pork, and beans.
In the pantry, Eliza found jars of preserves, potatoes with soft eyes sprouting in a basket, and a sack of cornmeal tied with twine.
There was a crock of lard with a clean cloth over it and a row of dried apple rings strung along the wall.
Nothing for display, everything meant to keep a body living through weather, hunger, and solitude. It was enough.
A fine layer of dust lay over some surfaces, but not neglectfully.
Rather, it seemed the house had been waiting with its breath held.
She ran her fingertips along the edge of the worktable and left a narrow trail behind.
Her touch looked like proof. She was here.
She made it this far. The thought came with such force that she had to grip the table until the dizziness passed.
Upstairs, the bedroom was even plainer. There was a narrow bed, a washstand, a small bedside table, a trunk at the foot of the bed, and a quilt folded with exact care. The window faced west, and when Eliza crossed to it, the breath went out of her.
The valley stretched below in waves of grass and light.
Beyond it, the mountains rose like something from Scripture, stern and magnificent, their shadowed slopes turning purple as evening gathered.
The sky was wider than any ceiling she had ever known.
Clouds moved across it in slow, luminous drifts.
If Hannibal had been a cage, this was the open door.
Eliza pressed her palm to the cool glass. For the first time since she had fled before dawn, she allowed herself to think the words fully.
I escaped.
Her knees trembled. She sank onto the edge of the bed and covered her face.
She did not cry long. Exhaustion had wrung too much from her already, leaving her hollow.
After a few moments, she washed herself, unpacked only what was necessary, and lit the small lamp on the table as the room dimmed around her.
Then she took out a piece of paper and wrote to Ruth.
Dear Ruth,
I have arrived safely. The house is exactly where you said it would be, though I confess I doubted every turn once the road became more grass than road.
It is quiet here. So quiet I can hear the boards settle and the wind pass over the roof.
I think I ought to be frightened by the emptiness, but for now it feels like room to breathe.
Eliza paused, her pen hovering.
She wanted to say that every mile felt stolen and that at every station, she looked over her shoulder for Silas Whitcomb. She wanted to say she wasn’t sure she escaped Hannibal at all. Maybe it was still behind her, waiting to drag her back.
She thought, too, of Ruth’s face in the dressmaking room, pale mixed with resolve as she offered the key.
Ruth acted as if saving another woman from a dreadful marriage were as natural as hemming a skirt.
Eliza wondered whether Ruth had any notion what her kindness had done.
It had not merely opened a door. It reminded Eliza she was not a thing to be traded.
Instead of writing all that, she dipped the pen again and continued more carefully.
Please do not worry for me. I shall manage carefully. I hope you are safe and that no trouble has come to you because of me.
She signed her name, sanded the page, and folded it with care. The letter would have to wait until she could find a way to post it, but writing it steadied her. Ruth had sent her here. Ruth believed this place could shelter her. Eliza wanted to believe it, too.
Before preparing for bed, she made a careful round of the house.
The front door had a solid bar, which she dropped into place with both hands.
The back door took a key and a bolt. She checked the kitchen window, then the parlor window, then the smaller one near the stairs.
On the second floor, she latched both bedroom windows, though one stuck and she had to wrestle with it until her shoulder ached.
She checked everything twice. Then, ashamed of her own fear but not ashamed enough to stop, she checked a third time. Only when everything was secured did she change into her nightdress and wrapper.
She left the lamp burning low. The bed smelled faintly of cedar and sun-dried linen.
Eliza lay very still beneath the quilt, listening.
The house made unfamiliar noises around her.
Sleep would not come. Her body was worn to the bone, but her mind would not lie down.
It traveled back over every mile, back to Hannibal, back to Silas Whitcomb, the banker whose offer had been a threat dressed as salvation.
Would he be angry? Amused? Would he send men?
Would he tell everyone she had proven exactly what they already suspected?
Eliza turned onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut.
She was safe. She had locked the doors. No one knew where she was except Ruth.
Then, a sound came from below. Eliza’s eyes burst open. At first, she did not breathe. The house settled again, and she told herself it was just old boards, wind, and her own fear, taking shape in the dark.
Then it came again, a dull thump. Not outside… downstairs.
Her heart began to hammer so violently that it seemed impossible the sound would not give her away. She sat up slowly, feeling every muscle cold and sharp. The lamp flame trembled beside her, throwing the room into uneasy gold.
Another noise followed, transforming into a scrape. Then, she heard the faint clatter of metal.
Someone was in the kitchen.
For one wild moment, she thought of hiding beneath the bed like a child. Then she saw Silas Whitcomb’s face in her memory, smiling because he expected fear to make women obedient.
No.
Eliza slid from the bed. The floorboards chilled her bare feet through her stockings. On the bedside table stood a heavy brass candleholder, its base wide and solid. She picked it up with both hands. Its weight steadied her.
She moved to the door. Each step down the stairs was an act of defiance.
The candleholder trembled in her grip, but she did not turn back.
Her breath came shallowly through parted lips.
The darkness below was not complete. A faint orange glow flickered from the kitchen, where someone had lit the stove or a lamp.
The smell reached her halfway down.
Bacon.
Eliza froze. It was so ordinary, so absurdly homelike, that for a moment, her fear stumbled over confusion. Grease hissed faintly. A chair creaked. Someone moved with the ease of a person who had no fear of being discovered.
Her fear sharpened into anger. She crept along the wall, past the shadowed main room, and stopped at the kitchen doorway, only to find a man standing at the stove.
He was tall, broad across the shoulders, and half-dressed, wearing dark trousers held low at the hips and nothing above them but a union shirt hanging open from one arm as if he had been interrupted while putting it on.
His hair was dark and damp, curling slightly at the ends.
Lamplight slid over the hard line of his jaw, the scar near his ribs, and the lean strength of his back.
A revolver belt lay on the table within reach, beside a plate already crowded with bacon.
He turned another strip in the pan as calmly as if he owned the place.
Eliza’s mouth went dry. She crossed half the country to escape one man’s claim over her life, only to find another stranger standing in Ruth’s kitchen in the middle of the night, eating bacon.
Her fingers tightened around the candleholder.
“Do not move,” she spoke, her voice shaking but loud enough to make him turn.