of a freight wagon. From somewhere he could hear the buzz and squeal of a power saw, and the ring of steel on steel as a blacksmith worked his trade. Newspaper boys were out on the street, hawking their product.
“Paper, get the paper here! Wyoming to be admitted as state! Get your paper here!”
Tom got out of bed, shaved, then got dressed. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he frowned. He was wearing a three-piece suit, adequate dress if he wanted to apply for a job with a bank. But he was going to apply for a job as a cowboy, and his outfit would never do.
Stepping over to the window, he looked up and down Houston Street. On the opposite side, he saw the Fort Worth Mercantile Store. Leaving his suitcase in his room, he hurried downstairs, and then across the street and into the store.
A tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed mustache and garters around his sleeves stepped up to him. “Yes, sir, may help you?”
“I intend to apply for employment at a neighboring ranch,” Tom said. “And I will need clothes that are suitable for the position.”
“When you say that you are going to apply for employment, do you mean as an accountant or business manager?” the clerk asked.
“No. As a cowboy.”
The expression on the clerk’s face registered his surprise. “I beg your pardon, sir. Did you say as a cowboy?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “Why, is there a problem?”
“No, sir,” the clerk said quickly. “No problem. It is just that, well, sir, you will forgive me, but you don’t look like a cowboy.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “That’s why I’m here. I want you to make me look like a cowboy.”
“I can sell you the appropriate attire, sir,” the clerk said. “But, in truth, you still won’t look like a cowboy.”
“Try,” Tom said.
“Yes, sir.”
It took Tom no more than fifteen minutes to buy three outfits, including boots and a hat. Paying for his purchases, he returned to the hotel, packed his suit and the two extra jeans and shirts into his suitcase, then went downstairs, checked out, and took a seat in the lobby to wait for the young woman he had met last night.
As he waited for her, he recalled the conversation he had had with his father, just before he left Boston.
“You are making a big mistake by running away,” his father had told him. “You will not be able to escape your own devils.”
“I can try,” Tom said.
“Nobody is holding it against you, Tom. You did what you thought was right.”
“I did what I thought was right? I can’t even justify what I did to myself by saying that I did what I thought was right. My wife and my child are dead, and I killed them.”
“It isn’t as if you murdered them.”
“It isn’t? How is it different? Martha and the child are still dead.”
“So you are you going to run away. Is that your answer?”
“Yes, that is my answer. I need some time to sort things out. Please try to understand that.”
His father changed tactics, from challenging to persuading. “Tom, all I am asking is that you think this through. You have more potential than any student I ever taught, and I’m not saying that just because you are my son. I am saying it because it is true. Do you have any idea of the good that someone like you—a person with your skills, your talent, your education, can do?”
“I’ve seen the evil I can do when I confuse skill, talent, and education with Godlike attributes.”
His father sighed in resignation. “What time does your train leave?”
“At nine o’clock tonight.”
His father walked over to the bar and poured a glass of Scotch. He held it out toward Tom and, catching a beam of light from the electric chandelier, the amber fluid emitted a burst of gold as if the glass had captured the sun itself. “Then at least have this last, parting drink with me.”
Tom waited until his father had poured his own glass, then the two men drank to each other.
“Will you write to let me know where you are and how you are doing?”
“Not for a while,” Tom said. “I need to be away from everything that can remind me of what happened. And that means even my family.”
Surprisingly, Tom’s father smiled. “In a way, I not only don’t blame you, I envy you. I almost ran off myself, once. I was going to sail the seven seas. But my father got wind of it, and talked me out of it. I guess I wasn’t as strong as you are.”
“Nonsense, you are as strong,” Tom said. “You just never had the same devils chasing you that I do.”
Tom glanced at the big clock. It showed fifteen minutes of nine. Shouldn’t she be here by now? Had she changed her mind and already checked out? He walked over to the
