A Bride for Donnigan

Chapter Eight

Meeting

The next morning Kathleen went promptly for her appointment. Mr. Jenks rose to meet her as she entered the room and took the liberty of using her first name. “Kathleen,” he beamed, taking her arm and steering her to a chair placed a little too close to where he himself had been seated. He reclaimed his chair, so close to Kathleen that she feared they would bump knees. She drew back in her seat as far as she could.

“And are you feeling quite well now, my dear?” he asked solicitously.

Kathleen assured him that she was fine.

“You are such a delicate little thing,” he said smoothly, “that I feared for you on this arduous journey.”

“I’m stronger than I look, sir,” Kathleen responded a bit curtly.

He nodded and changed the subject. “We dock this afternoon.”

Kathleen nodded her head.

“I was hoping that we would have some time to—to enjoy each other’s company on the voyage, but the heavy seas—”

Kathleen shifted uncomfortably and broke in. “I’m anxious to hear where I’ll be going, sir,” she dared to say.

“Oh yes.” He came back to attention and placed his hands on his knees. “Well—that, my dear, is still a matter of concern for me, as well.”

Kathleen did wish that he would stop calling her his dear.

“As a matter of fact,” he went on, “it has still not been decided.”

Kathleen frowned.

“Oh, never fear,” he said reaching to take her hand. “You will have a place, I can assure you. Even if I have to take care of you myself.” He winked and grinned and Kathleen felt terribly annoyed.

“Why am I here?” she asked boldly. “Why make an appointment just to tell me that there have been no arrangements?”

“There have been arrangements,” he said, and reached to give his mustache a twitch. “I would like you to take dinner with me tonight at my hotel. I’m staying at a rather elegant place downtown. I think you will like it. Perhaps without the tossing of the sea we will have better opportunity to—”

“That is unthinkable,” said Kathleen, standing to her full five feet two inches. Her face flamed with her disgust. “I will stay with the others—wherever they are staying.”

His face grew dark with anger. “You are a proud one, aren’t you!” he spat at her. “And after all I’ve tried to do.”

“Sure now, and I was of the impression that my passage was paid by an American gentleman,” Kathleen reminded him heatedly.

“Yes, Miss,” said the man, his anger now matching her own. “And he shall have you—pity him, whoever he is. I wouldn’t want to deal with such a temper every day for the rest of my life.”

Kathleen spun on her heel and left the room.

“Stay with the others,” he called after her. “I want you around to take the orders of where you are to go.”

Kathleen didn’t answer. She needed to get into the wind to cool off her hot cheeks.

But she would be there when it was time to find out where she would be going. And she hoped with all her heart that it was a long, long way from Boston and Mr. Jenks.

There was much commotion when the ship finally pulled in and docked in Boston Harbor. The women milled around, squealing and shouting and clutching belongings. Kathleen crowded close to her cabin mates, her dark eyes big, her face pale. As crowded as the cabin had been, she wished for just a few more days of feeling secure there.

Their names were called out and they walked the gangway by groups of four. As her feet touched the firm dock, Kathleen nearly lost her balance. Erma, close beside her, giggled.

They were all placed into carriages and taken through the streets to a large hotel. It felt strange to be back in a city again. Kathleen noticed that it was much newer, much cleaner, than her familiar section of London. She wondered if it would be possible for her to stay on here. She felt a drawing to this new American city. A feeling that she might soon be able to “belong” here.

But the very next day they were called to a drawing room where Mr. Jenks presided.

“Ladies—we are about to the end of our journey together,” he informed them as though this were a matter of deep sorrow to all. “You will be heading west—to one point or another. From here to Chicago you will share a train. There you will be met by a gentleman by the name of Mr. Henry Piedmont. He will give you your final tickets and send you on the last leg of your journeys. From Chicago on, you will be fanning out and heading in different directions—though still westward.

“I do wish each of you every happiness in your new land—and your new unions.”

He bowed low and gave them one final grin, smoothed his mustache, and then said firmly, “Miss Kathleen O’Malley—you will need to see me for final instructions.”

He turned on his heel and was gone.

All eyes seemed to fix on Kathleen. She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and followed the man from the room.

He must have expected her to do just that, for he went only a few steps beyond the door and turned to wait for her.

“This way,” he said with a nod of his head, and Kathleen obediently followed him.

They crossed the hall and entered a small room, and he motioned toward a chair and turned to lift a sheet of paper from his pocket.

“Before I hand you this,” he said, looking straight at her, “might I say that I am a tolerant man. I am staying on in Boston. I am quite willing to forget your outburst of last evening—should you have changed your mind.”

For one moment Kathleen frowned, not understanding his words. When the truth finally dawned, she rose quickly from the chair, her face flushing, her eyes flashing anger. Without one word she reached out and snatched the paper from his fingers before he had a chance to react.

“You may be sorry, you know,” he called after her as she moved from the room as quickly as her limp would allow.

Kathleen did not return to her room immediately. She had to find some privacy before she dared look at the paper she held. At last she found a chair tucked in a rather dark corner of a distant hall and dropped onto it, trying to still her anxiously beating heart.

Carefully she unfolded the bit of paper.

“Donnigan Harrison,” said the paper. “He is a late signer like yourself. Not much is known of him. I hope you will not be sorry.”

Kathleen crumpled the paper in her hand and then felt immediate remorse. Carefully she placed it on her lap and tried to smooth out the wrinkles. She would need that piece of paper. It was all she had.

“Donnigan Harrison,” she repeated. Then her eyes lit up. She wasn’t really familiar with the surname, but Donnigan did sound rather Irish. For the first time she felt some hope.

The train ride was long and stuffily hot. Kathleen had thought the boat trip had been difficult—but at least then they had enjoyed the crispness of the ocean winds. Not given the luxury of berths, they were crammed together in seats with hard straight-backs and no place to put their tired heads. The long nights were spent in restless shifting to try to find some way to relax tired bodies.

At last they reached Chicago. Kathleen may have been interested in studying the city had she not been so totally exhausted.

The man called Piedmont was on the platform when they arrived. As they stepped off the train, he rounded the women up and hustled them to a side room, much like herding cattle, and grinned at the group nervously as he called out names and passed out tickets. Kathleen had not felt particularly close to many of the women, but as she sat and watched group after group being hurried out to catch this coach or that train, she felt panic tighten her throat.

At last her own name was called along with a number of others, and she stood up and walked numbly past the man and accepted the ticket along with its instructions of where to go and how to get there.

She was more than a little relieved to look around her and find that Erma was also in the group.

But Peg was gone. As were Nona and Beatrice. There were just Erma and her and four other women whom she didn’t know well. All four were from the Continent. She wondered if they spoke English. They seemed so shy and frightened. Kathleen moved closer to Erma, drawing some assurance from the presence of her friend.

Quickly they compared sheets and found to their relief and excitement that they shared a common destination. With excited cries they threw their arms around each other and wept unashamedly. It would be so wonderful—so wonderful to know someone, to have a friend in the new, strange land.

Soon they had boarded another train and were chugging their way out of the station. Though still not given a berth, they were not so crowded. By now they were so weary that Kathleen felt they could have slept almost anywhere.

She was right. The girls from the Continent fell asleep almost as soon as they boarded the train, the oldest of the group soon snoring loudly.

Kathleen did not stay awake to see if it annoyed other passengers. She rolled up her shawl against the coolness of the window, laid her head against it, and fell asleep.

She was stiff when she awoke in the morning, but at least she felt somewhat better.

“And how long are we to be on this train?” she asked Erma.

“I’m not sure. Someone said three days.”

Kathleen winced. She was so tired of travel. Travel and heat and people and dust. It seemed that it all went together in America.

After the train came the stagecoach, which they met in a small, dusty frontier town of gray wooden buildings and gray wooden boardwalks. The sign at the post office indicated that it was Raeford. Kathleen felt that they must be going to the end of the world. She had given up craning her neck to look out the window. There were so many miles of the same thing. She did find the herds of deer and antelope and buffalo rather exciting. She had seen no such animals on the back streets of London.

But for the most part, they rode in silence. There was really very little to talk about.

When they reached a small station by the name of Sheep’s Meadows, one of the girls from the Continent was separated from them and sent in another direction on another stage. Kathleen could sense the girl’s panic. She felt her own hand go out to grasp Erma’s. She was so thankful that she would not be going off all on her own.

Later, two of the other girls were sent off in another direction. Kathleen wondered how far they would travel before they were separated again.

There were still three of them when the stage pulled into Aspen Valley. They all looked at their sheets of paper one last time. They were home.

Donnigan wished he had made arrangements for Wallis to ride along with him to town. He could have used some support. Never in his whole life had he felt so nervous—not even when he had been treed by a big grizzly or the time he had been thrown in the path of stampeding cattle. Somehow he had managed to escape those perils. It seemed there was no escaping this one.

He cast one last glance around his snug cabin. All the dishes had been washed. Even the pots. They were all stacked carefully on the shelf beside the stove. He had made his bed rather than just tossing the blankets up to cover the pillow. He had even used a scrub brush and hot soapy water on the floorboards. Things looked pretty good.

He moved from the room and closed the door firmly behind him. As he walked the dirt path toward the barn and corrals, he studied his makeshift flower garden. He had lost only one of the plants that he had brought from the meadow. But only three were still blooming. Still, it was better than nothing, he reasoned.

He would have loved to show up in town with the black. Everyone around admired the magnificent horse, and Donnigan couldn’t help but feel that the big stallion would make some kind of favorable impression.

But the black hated the harness, and Donnigan knew that he could hardly ask his new wife to climb up behind him and be toted back to the farm cowboy fashion. Then there would be all the trunks and cases that she would have with her. No, it just wouldn’t work to take the saddle horse. Donnigan hitched the team to the wagon and started off to town.

The stage was late. Most of the town didn’t even notice, but the three men who paced back and forth waiting anxiously for its arrival and trying hard to hide their jitters certainly did.

Lucas, who felt in charge because of having collected the passage money from the other two men, pulled out his gold watch on the long gold chain over and over to study the time.

Donnigan simply checked the sky. The sun was moving on past where it should have been at the proper arrival time. Wallis stomped back and forth, back and forth, spitting chewing tobacco at the end of his boots. Then the three would shift positions slightly and begin all over again.

“Fool driver!” exclaimed Wallis angrily, letting go with another streak of brown stain. “Shouldn’t be allowed to fritter away his time and keep workin’ men waitin’.”

Donnigan had to smile in spite of his own impatience.

“Do you want to come over to the hotel for coffee?” asked Lucas hospitably, but just as he asked the question a cloud of dust appeared in the distance.

With the sighting of the stage, Donnigan really felt his stomach begin to rile up. “This is it! This is it for sure,” he said to himself. “There’s no turning back now.”

Then a new thought struck him. “What if she isn’t even on the stage. Maybe she changed her mind or got sick or—”

He felt sudden exultation like he had when he had escaped the bear’s long fangs. But only for a moment. He admitted to himself that even though he was terribly nervous about the whole doings, he would be dreadfully disappointed if she did not show up.

The stage rolled to a halt in a whirl of dust. As the three men held their breath, the stage master stepped forward and opened the door.

Out stepped a lady. She was not too tall, rather pleasingly plump and had a slightly nervous yet generous smile. She scanned the three men before her, then looked again at the tall blond man with the broad shoulders and wide Stetson and gave him a special smile. As Donnigan’s heart leaped in response, Lucas stepped forward.

“Welcome, Miss—?” he said, lifting his hand to doff his hat.

“Kingsley,” said the young woman; her voice was soft and husky with emotion. “Erma Kingsley.”

Lucas suddenly looked as nervous as a schoolboy. “You’re mine,” he blurted, then flushed with embarrassment. “I mean—Lucas Stein here, ma’am.” He reached out a hand and she accepted it.

Donnigan was momentarily disappointed, and then his attention jerked back to the stagecoach where another woman was making her appearance. She was tall and a little stiff, her eyes dark and piercing. She straightened to her full height and surveyed the men. Before any of them could make a move she spoke in broken but careful English, “Which of you is the gentleman Tremont?”

Wallis swallowed his chew of tobacco and his face turned deep red. Donnigan wasn’t sure if it was the fault of the potent chew or his nervousness over meeting his Risa.

At length he seemed to get hold of himself, but not before the woman had given him a dark, stern look.

“Ma’am,” he said and copied what he had seen Lucas do. Only in his great agitation, the hat that he had intended to doff flipped from his shaky fingers and went flying into the dust at his feet. He stammered and stuttered and bent to retrieve it, slapping it on his thigh and making a little puff of dust lift almost in the lady’s face.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he had the good sense to apologize. She did not look pleased.

Donnigan turned his attention back to the stagecoach door. So far two very different women had descended. If Donnigan could have had anything at all to say in the matter, he would have hoped the third one would be somewhat like the first one.

But as he lifted his head, a little wisp of a thing was descending the steps. Maybe his wife-to-be wasn’t on that stage, after all.

The young girl moved slowly toward the little group, and Donnigan noticed that she walked with just the slightest limp. She was a pretty youngster. Donnigan wondered fleetingly if she was the daughter of a local farmer or rancher, but he hadn’t seen her around before. Perhaps she was a visiting niece of someone.

Miss Erma Kingsley turned as the young girl neared them. She spoke again in a voice that didn’t sound quite as strained now. “This is Miss Kathleen O’Malley,” she said evenly, and Donnigan was glad he didn’t have a chaw of tobacco in his lip. He surely would have swallowed it just as Wallis had.

Kathleen O’Malley? His thoughts ran quickly But she’s a child. I—I ordered a—a woman.

“I guess you must be Mr. Harrison,” Miss Kingsley said to Donnigan, “as you are the only one left.” She gave him a warm, candid smile and Donnigan found himself wishing again that the fates had been kinder to him. For a brief moment he envied Lucas. Then he turned to the approaching Miss O’Malley and carefully doffed his Stetson.

“Miss,” he said and forced a smile. He could hardly address her as ma’am, now could he?

She returned his smile with a hesitant one of her own—and as Donnigan looked into the clear dark eyes, he felt his heart give a little flip.