had been more from unhappiness. For as long as she could remember, her mother had looked sad, the kind of bone-deep sadness that made her age twice as fast as most folks.
Rainey closed her eyes and remembered the last time she'd seen her mother. Her father had made Rainey pack her things and leave home to live in the dorm that housed the youngest girls. He told her he was giving her extra responsibility, but she knew it was just extra work.
Her mother had cried when she'd seen her only child leaving, but as always she hadn't dared question her husband. But, as Rainey slipped through the door, her mother had grabbed her hand and shoved a ring into her palm. 'It was my mother's. Your father doesn't know I kept it. I want you to have it now.'
For the first time in Rainey's life it seemed her mother had stepped from behind her father and shown her love. The action hadn't been to hold Rainey, but to say goodbye.
She touched the tiny bag that held the ring. As long as she had it, there was still a chance, a possibility that she'd find what her mother, who married at fourteen, must have never known. Freedom.
As Rainey dried, her hair haloed around her head in blond curls. She stretched in the slender beam of sun slicing through the trees and felt more like a wild animal running free in nature than a proper schoolteacher escaping a horrible fate.
She was changing day by day, molding into someone her parents would no longer recognize. Rainey smiled. Elisabeth Rainey Adams was coming into her own. She was no longer a product of her parents, but a woman making it alone. She'd taken her middle name-her mother's maiden name-as her own, and now she would build a life to fit the new name. She would make her way and answer to no man. Smiling, she daydreamed of sleeping in a huge bedroom with a fireplace warming the room and a featherbed beside a light left burning all night.
She would have it all… if she could come up with a new plan. So far she felt like a frog who kept jumping into muddier water. The bedroom with the fire and light looked farther away every day.
Now she had no choice but to wait for the next wagons going north, and she had no idea how long that would be.
She combed through her short curls. Cutting her hair had been a brilliant idea, along with getting away as fast as possible once she built up enough courage to run. She'd thought she could dress as a boy and slip onto a train just like heroines do in novels. After all, at her height, people often thought her years younger than she was, and her slim body looked more like a boy than a girl anyway. She'd read the schedules carefully every time she took students back and forth to the station and knew them by heart. Finally, just before her wedding, the dorm was clear for the break, her father was busy planning a party he'd forgotten to invite her to, and the safe had been left open for a few minutes while he checked the mail. She recognized her chance.
She took the money, praying he would leave early to prepare for the party. The moment he did, she packed one bag, cut her hair, dressed as a boy, and ran to the train station in time to catch the last train. With luck he wouldn't notice she was gone for a day, maybe two, and she'd be halfway to New Orleans by then.
The disguise worked, too. No one noticed she was a woman. Once she got on the train, she wrapped her cape around her like a blanket and pretended to be asleep. In the days that followed, she traveled south, and then west to New Orleans, living on apples and a box of sweets one of her students had given her for Christmas.
Once in New Orleans, she changed into her only dress and searched for her aunt's house. There had been no letters from Aunt May since a year before her mother died, and when Rainey reached her aunt's last address, she found out why. Her aunt had died six months before her mother. Mrs. Haller, who ran the boardinghouse where her aunt had lived, felt sorry for Rainey and insisted on taking her in for the night. When she learned why Rainey had left home, she helped Rainey book passage from New Orleans to Texas.
'I've known girls like you before,' Mrs. Haller admitted, 'on the run from bad marriages or bad home life. If you think there's a chance your pa will come after you, change your name, your look, even the color of your hair. Then he can ask all he wants, and no one will remember you passing this way.'
'I think he'll come,' Rainey admitted. 'Not because of me, but because of the money.'
Mrs. Haller nodded. 'Some folks are like that, I guess. If he finds you, will he hurt you?'
Rainey remembered the bruises on her mother's cheeks. She nodded. This was the first time she'd ever dared cross him because a piece of her had always known that if she did he'd be angry enough to kill her. She'd not only stolen from him, she'd disgraced him, and her father would never forgive that. 'He'll kill me,' Rainey whispered.
'Then you got to go all the way to the end of the earth, child. Go where he'll never find you, and when you get there don't have nothing to do with the law. He's probably already filed charges on you for taking that money that was rightfully yours.'
The memory of Mrs. Haller's words stayed with her.
'The end of the earth,' Rainey mumbled as she tugged on the trousers and shirt she'd worn for the train ride. Though she had washed them, they still looked dirty. She'd used them a few times to slip into the settlement on busy days. When several families were milling around, everyone thought she was someone else's kid.
The Ranger might be looking for her, but no one would give a boy a second glance. There were always youths coming and going at the trading post. She'd be able to move about without many questions. She'd lost so much weight in the past few weeks, her disguise hung on her frame.
As she dressed, she studied her small stash of supplies.
In a cotton napkin lay food she'd lifted from the table last night. She took inventory. A half loaf of bread and several meat pies almost as large as her palm. Two apples and a handful of nuts. Not much. Not enough if she had to wait days for the next wagons.
When she'd traveled with the old freighter, she'd felt like she was going somewhere. She was disappearing like Mrs. Haller told her to do. When she reached the trading post, she wasn't sure that she was at the end of the earth, but she felt like she should be able to at least see it from here.
Since it appeared she'd overslept and missed her chance of traveling with the Germans, her only choice was to survive a little longer on her own. And to do that, she needed to know what was going on at the trading post.
She circled around to the back of Elmo's place, staying in the shade as much as possible so that anyone passing wouldn't get a good look at her.
By this time of day there were usually several wagons and horses pulled up to the loading porch. Folks stopping by to talk more than shop. Travelers looked to be pausing for a noon meal in the shade of a tree that grew between the trading post and where the Germans' wagons had been last night. Maybe she'd pick up some news. If it looked busy enough, she might even brave going into the post. She had enough money to buy a pickle, then stand near the back and eat it while she watched folks come and go.
A few men sat in chairs near the corner of the porch where Mr. Anderson kept a jug of whiskey on a barrel. They were regulars. She'd seen them before, though she'd never walked close enough to them that they'd noticed her.
Pulling her hat low, she headed for the corner of the building.
Someone jumped from the porch of the trading post and walked, in long strides, toward his horse. Like a man taking stock of his surroundings, he glanced first at her, then at the men by the barrel. He was almost as tall as Travis McMurray, but his hair was brown and his eyes blue.
Rainey froze, staring from him to the bay tied to his saddle with a lead rope. The same bay she'd borrowed, then lost, last night.
As he untied the reins to his horse, Elmo Anderson yelled at him from inside. 'Teagen! Wait a minute.'
The man didn't slow down.
'Wait I said!' Mr. Anderson appeared on the porch, his dirty apron flapping in the wind like an old flag, his wrinkled face set in anger. 'We'll get men together and be ready to go by morning. There's no need for you to go alone and get yourself killed. All the talk right now is rumors, nothing more.'
'Yeah, McMurray,' interjected one of the men who'd been at the far corner of the porch. He stood beside the store owner. 'You can't go this one alone. Not on something one cowhand said he saw three days ago. He could have been drunk or lying to his boss to explain why he was late.' His words already sounded slurred with drink. 'Maybe he just rode through here an hour ago and told us his tale to stir things up and get everyone frightened.'
'And if he's not lying?' the man near the horses said. 'If he did see a raiding party camped between here and the fort just waiting for the next settlers who come by?'
The man Elmo had called Teagen looked like he had a hair trigger on his anger.
