Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (4 page)

      
”A year! Jesus, Jimmy, what's she tryin' to do, kill you to test your loyalty?” She sat bolt upright. “You can't go one week, much less a year!”

      
He laughed and pulled her back into his arms. “Well, I'll just have to learn to curb my baser impulses.” At her skeptical expression and snort of disbelief, he went on. “I don't mean I'll be celibate for the next year, just that I'll have to be a little more discreet in seeking out my necessary pleasures.”

      
“And that means no more live-in women, for sure. We've caused enough high-tone noses to be out of joint already, what with my livin' in your house so open. Tomorrow—”

      
He interrupted her. “Rosie, I'm not turning you out penniless. There'll be a nice poke sack of gold waiting for you. Where would you like to go?”

      
Rosalie considered, knowing he'd be generous. She was touched by his concern for her welfare. “I just might buy me passage west to California. I hear there are lots of big Mexican ranchers and even some rich Yankee sea captains settled out there, just lookin' for a good time. It should be fun, darlin'. Like I was sayin', tomorrow I pack. Tonight...” Her words trailed off as she ran her hands over his body in devilish ways. “Ah, Jimmy boy, you're gonna miss me.”

Chapter Two

      
The girl was slight, barely over five feet tall, fine boned, and slim. Her brownish hair was partly tucked into an untidy bun that the sticky Missouri humidity was trying its best to undo. Wisps hung damply on her forehead and neck. She knelt by the fresh graveside and placed a small bouquet of jonquils beneath the rough oaken cross upon which was inscribed simply: Lillian McAllister 1795-1842.

      
Pushing the hair from her eyes and forcing back burning tears, Charlee rose. “I reckon you'll find peace here, Mama, next to Papa. It's where you always wanted to be buried.” Her voice almost broke as she realized how premature Lillian McAllister's death had been. A typhoid epidemic had claimed her while she was nursing the other victims.

      
Now she lay beside Micah, her beloved husband. Charlee was left all alone. But only for the present, she assured herself resolutely, renewing her determination to find her brother, Richard Lee. She had distant kin, her pa's cousins in St. Louis, who said they'd take her in. Even now, Cousin Burt waited for her at the house.

      
Charlee smoothed her wrinkled black skirt. Lordy, how she hated skirts, so hot in the sticky misery of early spring humidity. Wistfully, she thought of her cool, comfortable old shirt and pants, hidden in a satchel upstairs in her bedroom. Mama had forced her to wear ladies' clothes for the past year or so, ever since her figure had begun to show signs of maturing. Charlee viewed her skimpy curves with innate distrust and longed to return to the carefree days of being a tomboy. But that could never be, especially now with Mama dead and Cousin Burt and his prissy wife Maude waiting to take her to St. Louis.

      
As she walked slowly up the lane, Charlee couldn't help smiling a bit, despite her sorrow. Wouldn't her dour older cousins be in for a surprise when they awakened tomorrow and found her gone! She had it all planned, right down to finding a place for Mose and Lizzie. Without her cousin's knowledge, Charlee had sold the small acreage of McAllister land to Cy Forrister, a neighbor and lifelong friend of the family. He had given his word to her that he would allow Mose and Lizzie to live in their cabin on the farm for the rest of their lives. She was sure that once Cousin Burt found her gone, he would be forced to honor the sale.

      
Charlee had received a fair price for the land, a little nest egg that would enable her to make her escape from Burt and Maude. She would head out to Texas to find Richard Lee.

      
Texas! The very sound of the word filled her with quivering anticipation, the big, rich, wild, free, uncivilized Republic of Texas. Imagine going to live in a foreign country! Well, not really foreign with the former Tennessee governor Sam Houston as president and a whole host of Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia men in the legislature and cabinet. No, Texas was full of Americans and someday would be part of the United States. Hadn't Richard Lee said so?

      
Thinking of her brother, Charlee felt less alone. Now that Mama was gone, there was nothing to hold her in Missouri. Richard Lee had cautioned her to wait until he could send for her and their mother, but Charlee knew what she must do. Waiting was no longer acceptable.

      
Her steamer ticket had been purchased secretly last week while she had been in town, and her possible sack was hidden beneath the bed in her room, ready to go. There remained only one ritual she must complete.

      
Taking a penknife from her pocket, Charlee headed for the stand of cottonwoods by the stream. In the fading afternoon sunlight, she read the carvings inside the oblong patch now grayed with age on the tree trunk. Had it truly been six years since Richard Lee had made these marks? Grimly, she filled in March 19 1842 beneath her initials. In a few years weather would age the wood until it looked the same as Richard Lee's carving. Where would she be when her mark was gray and smooth?

* * * *

      
Nervously, Charlee scanned the murky depths of the river. It was the color of blood, rightly named the Red River, swollen by the dismal, cold rain. It seemed that she had endured the pulsing vibrations of steamboats forever, first down the Mississippi, then backtracking northwest across Louisiana on the Red to reach her first debarkation point on dry land, Natchitoches. Lordy, it would feel good to sleep on solid ground once more! Unseasonably heavy spring rains had raised the river to flood level and set adrift dangerous debris, uprooted tree trunks, even pieces of boats, and docks torn from their moorings. After several near collisions, the steamer was docking safe and sound, and none too soon for Charlee!

      
In the dim twilight, the bleak river settlement looked shabby and forbidding. What to do next? First, she must navigate the rickety gangplank and set foot on terra firma once more. After that everything else would be easier. Grimly, Charlee resolved never to become a sailor. She hoped the rivers between here and her destination were all small and easily crossed. So intent was she on not looking down at the rushing water that she did not notice the tall, thickset man in her path. No sooner had she stepped onto the dock than he reached for her, grabbing her possible sack and scooping her into his arms.

      
Whiskey-rancid breath assaulted her nostrils as the reeling welcoming committee of one spoke. “Wal, pretty li'l thang, yew be all alone and so be I. Yew'n me kin have us a time, I ‘spect.”

      
Frantically looking around for help, Charlee squirmed furiously against the greasy girth of her assailant. No assistance was forthcoming. All the other passengers were off the waterfront already. The captain had made it clear to her that a young, single woman traveling alone was no better than she ought to be. He would probably feel she had gotten just what she deserved if this animal raped her right here on the dock! When Captain Morse's attempts to lure Charlee to his cabin had met with a swift, unsubtle rebuff, he had left the girl to fend for herself. Of course, fending for herself had become her long suit ever since her pa died and her brother left home.

      
“Let me go, ya plug-ugly bastard!” Charlee's elbow connected with the drunk's solar plexus. All the air left his lungs in a whoosh. Just as he released her, her kneecap bashed his privy parts with agonizing accuracy. The stench of his breath almost caused her to lose the initiative and her breakfast, but Charlee jumped away as he fell to the ground. Grabbing her possible sack and small portmanteau, she fled up the levee without looking back.

      
One night's lodging in a cheap hotel was enough to convince her that Natchitoches was no place for a girl alone. Charlee must become Charley. Once more she would be a boy. As she stripped off the skirts and petticoats her mother had lovingly decreed she wear, Charlee looked scornfully at the sign posted in her room. NO SPITTING ON THE WALLS

      
The profuse brown stains around and over it indicated the way the injunction was customarily observed.

      
“In this kinda place, I better be a boy. Sure is a pain in the ass bein' female, that's for certain!” Being a girl was cumbersome and restrictive, and invited all sorts of unwelcome attention, like the drunk's on the riverfront last night. Anyway, who in hell wanted to wear corsets and long hot skirts, curl her hair, and bat her eyes at men? Bah! What a stupid waste of time!

      
Charlee inspected her appearance after binding her breasts and tucking her shirt loosely into her shabby pants.
Not bad,
she thought, but she needed to do something with all that hair! Resolutely she braided it into a tight coil, which took some time since it fell well below her waist and was thick and curly. She wadded the braid up and tucked it beneath a weather-beaten felt hat. Somehow, cutting it would be too much a betrayal of Mama. Now, she'd smear a bit of dirt across her nose and slump like an adolescent boy to hide any hint of bosom—perfect!

      
With a gamin grin, she picked up her possible sack. The portmanteau had her girl-things in it—dresses, books, and such. She would simply have to leave it behind. She had her cash, some spare shirts and socks, her cooking gear, and a dog-eared daguerreotype of Mama in the sack. As an afterthought, she stuffed in one dress, a loose and comfortable gingham weave. With her possibles slung across her shoulder, “Charley” McAllister slipped from “his” room in the hotel. As a boy, she could sign on one of the settlers' trains leaving Natchitoches. She knew she must have company to cross the Sabine into Texas and follow the long road southwest to the Bluebonnet Ranch, where Richard Lee was foreman.

* * * *

      
For about ninety dollars Charlee bought a spavined old nag that would, with luck, get her across Texas. She had little time to find a better deal and so took the horse despite its poor condition. The small wagon train pulling out the next day would take a lone youth only if he provided his own transportation.

      
In return for passage and food, “Charley” McAllister chopped wood, hitched up oxen and did any other camp chores assigned her. She also displayed her hunting skills by borrowing a musket and bagging squirrels, rabbits, and even an occasional deer for the train cook pots. Game certainly seemed plentiful in western Louisiana, and Texas abounded with every variety, ripe for the shooting. She eagerly looked forward to each day.

      
Despite the arduous and uncomfortable nature of the trek, Charlee was in love with this new land. Travel was slow and primitive. Roads were nearly imaginary, visible only when so mud rutted as to be impassable during the spring and early summer rains. Mud deep enough to swallow oxen was the rule, and twelve to fifteen miles a day was the most a wagon train could hope to travel. But if the road was long and uncomfortable, it was filled with fascinating glimpses of life in Texas.

      
This was a rich land, no doubt. Coming from the rocky, poor-soiled lands of southeast Missouri, Charlee thought the rolling plains of east and central Texas were incredibly fertile. Zeb Moser, one of the emigrants for whom she worked on the train, said you could plant ten-penny nails and harvest a crop of iron bolts. Certainly eighty bushels of corn per acre—as one east Texian along the way assured them he produced—set all the farmers among the party agog. One grower bragged of fourteen-foot cotton plants. Although Charlee saw none that enormous, the vast acreage set in dense snowy bolls was very impressive to a girl raised on a hardscrabble farm.

      
Texas was a place of contrasts. She heard stories about alligators and whooping cranes, even exotic spotted wildcats called ocelots, all creatures of storybook fantasy to her. Of course, these creatures lived farther south toward the more tropical gulf country. No less exciting to Charlee were the buffalo and wild horses, whose vast, swarming herds were as yet undepleted by the hand of man. The mustangs were wary and kept their distance from the plodding train. Only when she ventured out by herself to hunt did Charlee catch a glimpse of them as they grazed on rich prairie grass. The bison were more placid and easier to approach. The rich, sweet, beef-flavored meat of these shaggy cattle of the plains became a favorite of hers as the train inched its way ever westward.

      
The vegetation was no less exotic than the animal life. Fields of gently swaying bluebonnets lay beside the spiky outgrowths of yucca plants. Primroses bloomed next to prickly pear. The spring rains, which had engorged the Red River, also had created the spectacular beauty of the flowering countryside. Of all the wild and beautiful flora that abounded in the Republic, the shaggy bronze, yellow, and orange Indian paintbrush was her favorite.

      
One night, as Charlee sat inconspicuously in the shadows of the campfire finishing her dinner of salt pork and cornbread, she listened to Zeb Moser and their scout discuss the remainder of the trip.

      
The large, heavyset old farmer took a swallow of bitter coffee adulterated with ground roast corn and grimaced. “Supplies are gettin' mighty low, Lon. When you reckon we'll reach San Antonio?”

      
Lon spat a dollop of tobacco juice, narrowly missing Charlee's boot, as he replied, “Less'n a week if’n nothin’ more goes wrong. Keep all yore stock movin' and yew’ll be dancin' th' fandango with th' señoritas by Sunday.” Lon Farrell, a lean range scout of indeterminate years, laughed and strolled over to squat beside Charlee.