Sabrina's Man (10 page)

“A man who works for the railroad. He knows if he lied I'd kill him. Anyway, we'll do some planning here.”

The plans were all made, and Callie warned Waco as the men left. “Don't turn your back on him.”

“I won't.”

They rode out, and as always Waco kept to one side where he could watch all the men. Trey had made a good plan pointing out that there was one spot where the train had to slow down practically to a stop in order to make a sharp curve.

“You and me will get on that train, Waco,” Trey said. “We'll go up and force the engineer to shut down. The rest of you go through and find that gold.”

Waco did not particularly like it. He didn't like working with other thieves. He made up his mind he would leave after this particular robbery.

The heist went as planned. The train had to slow down, and it was no trouble for Trey LeBeau and Waco to get on board. They made their way along the top to the engine, jumped down and put their guns on the engineer and the fireman, who was holding a shovel and staring at them with wide-open eyes.

“You fellows be still, and nobody'll get hurt,” Waco said. But no sooner had he spoken than he heard a shot.

Trey had shot the fireman, then turned and shot the engineer. Even as they were falling, he had raised his gun and brought it down on Waco's head.

As everything began to fade to black, Waco realized he had been betrayed yet again.

Out of the darkness Waco came, and he heard voices. He felt something tying his arms, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that he was a captive. A man with a star on his vest said, “Well, I hope you enjoyed your robbery. You're going to hang for it.”

“I didn't shoot anybody.”

“I'll bet,” the lawman said. “We'll let the judge decide about that.”

Things moved much more quickly than Waco had ever known legal matters to. He spent two weeks in a vile jail, then was brought up before Judge Parker. During the trial, the fireman, who had survived his injuries, testified that it was another man who had shot both him and the engineer, who had died. “He hit this fellow in the head, but this man didn't shoot anybody.”

“Well, the longest sentence I can give you for holding up a train is ten years,” Judge Isaac Parker said. “I wish it were for life. If you give me the names of the rest of the robbers, I'll make it five.”

For a moment he was tempted to do it, but then he said, “No, I won't squeal.”

“Honor among thieves,” Judge Parker said cynically. “All right. Go on to jail then.”

The days passed in his cell, then the weeks, the months, and finally the years. Time had crawled by more slowly than Waco could have imagined. He had put in days on a road gang chained to other prisoners. Sometimes he had been locked up in the cell for months without getting out to the sunshine.

Finally one day Mel Batson watched him scratch on the wall and said, “What's that for, Waco?”

“My anniversary. I've been here five years today.”

“Well, you only got five more to go,” Batson said. “You won't get no parole. You've been a bad prisoner. Me, I'm trying to be a good boy.”

“I'm not licking anybody's boots. I'll do my ten.” Waco lay down and thought of the five years that lay ahead of him. He had been beaten and mistreated, but his spirit had never been broken.
I'll do five more
, he thought bitterly,
and then I'll go looking for Mr. Trey LeBeau…

Memphis, Tennessee, 1870

“
D
ulcie—you've got this water too hot!”

Sabrina Warren had stuck her toe in the zinc bathtub and jerked it out immediately. Glaring at her maid, her voice filled with irritation as she went on. “Can't you even draw a bath right?”

Dulcie, at age twenty, was as black as nature would allow. She was an attractive young woman, but now her lips drew tightly together as she glared at her mistress. “I doin' the best I kin. If I don't get it hot enough, you raise a ruckus! I get it too hot, you do the same thing. How I'm supposed to know what you want?”

Sabrina glared at Dulcie. “You're supposed to have a little sense! Test it yourself before I boil my feet off!” Sabrina Warren knew she was tall for a woman at five ten. She also knew she was quite beautiful with her auburn hair, green eyes, and peaches-and cream complexion. To top this off, she had a splendid figure. No one had ever questioned her good looks, but she readily admitted, to herself anyway, that her temper was more volatile than one would expect of a young woman in her position. “Well, pour some cold water in there and cool it off!”

“Then it'll be too cold. You watch what I says.” Nevertheless, Dulcie picked up a bucket and dumped half of it into the tub. “All right. See if that suits you. Nothin' else does.”

“You're getting too uppity.” Slowly Sabrina stepped over the edge of the tub, and when she stuck her toe in she found it suitable. She stepped over with the other foot and, holding on to the edges of the tub, lowered herself down into it. A look of relaxation came to her eyes then, and she forgot about Dulcie, her fit of temper quickly over. She slid down into the tub, luxuriating in the warm water, and as she did, she looked around the room that had been converted from a large bedroom into a spacious bathroom.

Many houses had taken this method of adding a bathroom, for most of the mansions in Memphis had not made provision for bathing back when they were built in an earlier day. She glanced around and saw that the ornate gas chandelier had been left in place so that it shed its luminescent beams over the marble floor. She knew it had come from Italy for she had ordered it herself. Her father had almost fainted when he saw the bill, but she had patted him on the cheek and said, “Now, Daddy, you know we've got to have a good bathroom.”

She eased down more into the tub and thought,
I'm going to get rid of this zinc tub. It's ugly
. As a matter of fact, it was rather ugly. It had a flat bottom and a raised back, but it did not suit her sense of decorum. The walls had once been papered, but the steam from the hot water had caused the paper to begin to peel. So she'd had to work to take it all off and put instead wooden panels that she had had painted a beautiful shade of orchid. There was an ornate dressing table over to one side and two chairs in front of a full-length mirror. As she closed her eyes, she thought,
Must have been awful not to be able to take a bath back in the old days
.

She lay in the bath until it grew tepid then said, “Get some of that rainwater, Dulcie. I want you to wash my hair.”

“You done washed it yesterday.”

“Well, wash it again!” Sabrina snapped.

Grumbling under her breath, Dulcie found the bucket of pure rainwater, and selecting a soft soap, she wet Sabrina's hair down and worked up an ocean of suds. “Don't see no need in all this washin' anyhow,” Dulcie grumbled. Actually she did not mind helping Sabrina. She knew she had an easy place and was not at all unhappy in her situation.

Sabrina sat up in the tub, and as Dulcie washed her hair with the soft water, she began thinking about Lane and the ball she was going to attend.
I wish Lane were more dashing
. The thought came to her mind, and it was not the first time. Indeed, Lane Williams was not a dashing man at all. He was, as a matter of fact, two inches shorter than Sabrina. He had brown hair that he kept carefully trimmed, along with a brown mustache and mild brown eyes. He was neat in all of his ways but had never taken a risk in his life.

Sabrina sighed and relaxed while Dulcie finished her hair. Finally Dulcie rinsed the soap out with several buckets full of soft water then began to dry it. “There. Get out of there, and I'll dry you off.”

It was difficult to get out, for she had relaxed almost to the point of going to sleep, but finally Sabrina stood.

With a huge, fluffy white towel, Dulcie dried her off carefully.

“Don't dry me off so hard,” Sabrina complained.

Dulcie ignored her curt words. “You sit down there, and I'll fix your hair.”

“All right.” Fixing hair right was the one thing Dulcie could do excellently. Sabrina knew that many society belles of her station had to put up with much worse, and she sat quietly, thinking about the ball, smiling slightly. As a matter of fact, her life was made up of parties, balls, teas, an occasional trip to the Memphis symphony, and a traveling opera on occasion. Her family was not in the upper regions of society but just in what was not far from it. Sabrina had grown up with never wanting for anything, and now at the age of twenty-four she was one of the belles of Memphis society. “Don't pull my hair out by the roots!”

“I ain't pullin' nothin' by no roots. You just set still.”

Finally, when her hair was fairly well fixed, Sabrina sent Dulcie off to get some perfume, and while she was gone, she slipped into her underwear that Dulcie had laid out. The garments were all made of silk or fine linen.

When Dulcie came back, she stopped dead still and stared at Sabrina. “You ain't got yo' corset on.”

“No, I don't, and I'm not going to wear that old thing,” Sabrina said. “I don't need it.” Indeed she did not, for her waist was small. She smiled at Dulcie and said, “You don't have to wear one. You don't know how uncomfortable those things are, and the bustles are just as bad.”

“All the respectable women wear corsets to them balls.”

“I don't need one. It rubs me wrong.”

“You know your momma ain't gonna let you go to no ball without a corset.”

Sabrina laughed. It made a pleasant sound. She knew well how to work her parents. “We just won't tell her, Dulcie.”

Dulcie was shocked. “Maybe you won't—but I will.”

“No, you can't tell her.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I wear an old corset? I look well enough without it.” Indeed she did, but corsets were standard equipment for young ladies of her station. An idea came to Sabrina, and she said, “I'll tell you what, Dulcie, if you don't tell Momma that I'm not wearing a corset, you can have that red dress of mine that you covet.”