Kate smelled trouble. She smelled it big time. She'd had two good days with Little Cloud and her husband, the Pastor Francis James. Little Cloud was as big as a house with her pregnancy and beaming. The couple had been so in love it was almost sickening. Kate had left her hotel to stay with them in a guest room.
She'd done dishes and laundry for Little Cloud to help out, cleaned the church for Francis. Still, being in the city had bugged her and she went to the telegram office hoping for distraction from Isabella. It had come.
Kid STOP Great to hear retiring STOP Have favor to ask STOP Jerome arriving St Louis May 12 STOP Need you escort him here STOP Thank you, friend STOP Will discuss retirement then STOP Love, Isabella STOP
So she'd said goodbye and promised to return soon, and left for St Louis. Sweet didn't complain, he liked the city less than she did. The only one they had to pass through was Springfield on their way south. She'd taken her time as President Johnson delivered a speech on the same grounds Lincoln had made famous. She stopped to listen, ending up staying the night outside of town in the kind of subdued saloon the states offered.
St Louis wouldn't be much better, she knew. But she'd have to try and find entertainment while she could. She could hardly go drinking, gambling, and fighting while babysitting Jerome the city-slicker.
So she checked in to a seedier hotel, put Sweet up in the connecting stables and bribed the stable boy to keep an eye on him. With her hat pulled low she went in search of the illegal games. Gambling wasn't anything more than distraction. As a woman in the west she couldn't go whoring, gunfights were business, not pleasure, that left little for her. So gambling it was.
She found a back alley saloon with painted women singing off key and a few rousing poker games going. She ordered a beer and downed it from its filthy glass while being dealt in. In two hours she'd lost over one hundred dollars and won back twice as much.
Happily drunk and richer, she stumbled back to her hotel. As Kate stripped down she replayed the night, like so many others, in her mind and dismissed it as a life not well spent, but it was the life she knew. She helped Isabella run the Inn in San Francisco during the Spring and Fall. In the summer and winter she rode the open plains.
Jobs came for her. Land disputes, protection. She made decent money and she never had to kill. Those who tried to make her learned to regret it. She gambled, she drank, she had no real home. She only owned two shirts, three now that Little Cloud had embroidered one for her. Kate lived off a bedroll, her guns, and a burning anger deep inside.
She'd been cheated of a name, a family, a history. All she knew was anger, and violence. The contest of wills that had been her and Pierre. The hunting parties and needless war of the Lakotas. The bitter gunfighters and deserters populating the west. It was the life she'd been born to, the only one she had.
Kate wanted more. Something more she couldn't name. She wanted to know about her family, she waned to know why she'd been abandoned long ago. She wanted to know who Kate was, what her real name was.
Was she respectable? Did she have a family name somewhere that would cover up her misdeeds? Could she just move somewhere, don a dress, coif her hair, and be as respectable as Isabella?
Kate looked at herself in the mirror, at the hollows, planes, and curves of her naked body. She was muscled sleekly from years as hard work. The toughest had been riding scout and hunter for the Oregon trail in its final days, and that, like all her travels, had left its marks on her.
She looked her face over. Kate honestly couldn't say if she was good looking or not. She lived a world of whores and schoolmarms, where beauty was subjective and often freakish. She saw the woman there, more than ever now. But she also felt the Kid.
And that was just something she couldn't walk away from.
#
In the end she wore her embroidered shirt and newly cleaned jacket to the train station. She wore her hair up but allowed a few tendrils to fall loose. She wore her gun belt inside of her jacket, a very uncomfortable but polite decision. Though she still bound her breasts and wore pants, for all the world to see, the Kid was a woman.
As soon as they moved west the guns would come out and the hair would go up. Kate took no chances.
She tried to imagine what Jerome looked like as the train slowed into the station. Isabella spun romantic tales that sounded suspiciously like dime novel heroes. If he was like the other business men, she supposed he was short, balding, old, nearsighted, and stooped. But if Isabella truly loved him he was a good man, and that made him a friend.
The huge ten wheel steam engine was an impressive sight. Kate had yet to need to ride on the rails, but she supposed some day she would. There were rumors it was coming to California soon. Until then guides like her were necessary even when traveling the stage. She'd made some money doing just that. She'd also worked guiding people privately, as she was about to do. She'd weathered prissy young misses, foreign mail order brides fraught with nerves, and lame old men before. She could do it again.
As soon as the train stopped passengers alighted. Kate watched, waiting. One man caught her eye as soon as he departed, as she was sure he caught the eye of every woman. He was tall, very tall, and broad. Underneath his denim shirt she was sure were corded muscles. His jeans were tightly molded to the finest pair of legs she'd ever seen. His hair was black as midnight and shone blue highlights under the glow of the gas lamps, long enough to curl over his collar. His skin was tanned gold and she wondered what his eyes would look like. There was something familiar about him, had she seen him before?
Something inside her sparked as she tracked his movements. He disappeared inside the telegram office, his well-made form moving gracefully. She hungered for him. Hungered for him the way Isabella and Little Cloud had told her she should want a man. It was like a lightning bolt, shattering her and making all her previous wonderings pale.
Then the thought struck her. Dear God, he was just the kind of man Isabella loved. Was that Jerome? The sudden flash of guilt was almost crippling. Had she just lusted after the man her best friend loved with all her heart?
Kate found a nearby post and hit her head against it with a groan. She was going straight to hell, she just knew it.
"Uh, Kid?"
Kate straightened and tried to school her features in a look of composure. She turned around slowly. Kate was tall and used to looking most men in the eye. Her eyes met with a neck. She looked up.
He was very tall, but lean. Broad shouldered and narrow waisted, he was dressed at the height of fashion in a pinstriped suit and matching bowler hat. His hair was deep brown, almost black and his eyes like obsidian. His face was harshly angled and fierce looking. He was handsome in a compelling way, scarier than hell for a tenderfoot.
"Jerome Williams?"
He nodded and swept his hat off. "Someone pointed me in your direction when I asked for the Kid. Isabella never told me you're a woman." He said this with surprise but didn't look it.
She stepped back and sidestepped the beam. He was solidly built and she had to wonder why a man like this would need a hired gun. Even if he'd never seen the business end of a rifle no one in their right mind would mess with him.
He smiled and spoke as if reading her thoughts. "I've never been even this far west, let alone left the states. And there are many in the business world that would not want to see me married to my lovely Isabella."
She nodded. "Got your bags?"
"They're being transferred to my coach. I'm just waiting for my friend to send a message and then we're off."
"Friend?"
He nodded again and finally placed his hat back on. He held a cane that gleamed silver in the sunshine let in by the windows in the ceiling. He looked hard to her but his smile was genuine. She returned it.
"Rafe MacNeil," he said.
Her world began to spin.
"Rafe? Rafe MacNeil? He's your friend?" Rafe was a man with a reputation. He'd been an educated southern gentleman who'd left New Orleans after some bad blood. He was a hired gun to be feared, a bounty hunter without equal, never moving west of Texas., which was lucky for her. Someone was paying him to track her down, or so Spotted Horse had told her the last time they'd crossed paths.
"He is, know him?" Jerome looked around for him.
