Rachel fanned her face with a little fan that she carried in her purse, and stared out the window of the railroad coach. Low, wooded hills lay on both sides of the unmoving train. A well-traveled road ran parallel to the railroad tracks. The road lay empty and fall of dust.
The train had been on the railroad siding for half an hour as it waited for the westbound train to pass on the single set of tracks. The interior of the coach was sweltering hot and not a breath of air stirred. Every seat was occupied. She was the only woman. The Army recruits, still in civilian dress, sat listless and silent in the heat. Most of them were from farms or ranches and had tanned faces and calloused hands. The men from the towns appeared pale in comparison.
At the beginning of the train ride east out of Texas and into Louisiana, some of the more daring young men tried to strike up a conversation with Rachel. However, the heat, and smoke from the engine, often streaming in through the open windows, soon put a stop to all talk.
The heat had built to a formidable level and Rachel felt suffocated. She rose from her seat and went to the back of the coach, and out onto the little outside platform on the rear to get some air. She had chosen the coach farthest from the engine so as to escape, as much as was possible, the smoke and cinders from the smokestack. She fanned herself and leaned out over the safety chain that enclosed the platform, and looked along the tracks in the direction from which the westbound train would come.
A sense of trepidation at her daring for undertaking a journey that she knew was perilous crept into her mind. Had she made a foolish decision? Should she get off the train at the next station and return to Marshall? She hastily shoved the thought away. The danger to her was as nothing compared to the danger facing the young men inside. They would soon be fighting enemies making every effort to kill them, and they weren't running away.
The whistle of the westbound train sounded shrilly through the woods. She leaned farther out over the safety chain to look for it. The train broke into sight, bore on ahead, came even, and went rumbling past. She watched the train recede along the two glistening rails.
Rachel's train started with a jerk. The sudden movement caught her unexpectedly and she lost her balance. She started to fall and grabbed for the safety chain. Her hand missed the chain and found only air. The chain caught her across the waist and she cartwheeled over it.
Rachel crashed down onto the stone ballast of the railroad bed. Her head struck one of the wooden railroad ties with a sodden thud. Daylight left her with one last blinding flash.
* * *
Karl Redpath was two days west of Shreveport and traveling in a Phaeton buggy drawn by a team of black pacing horses. Both the buggy and the horses were stolen.
After killing the Confederate lieutenant, Redpath had hurried west across the town. He had little concern that he would be caught. Most likely the man's body would not be found until daylight the following morning. Still, he knew it was wise to put distance between himself and the soldiers stationed in Shreveport, who would be searching for him.
As he had made his way across the town through the darkness, he had come upon the team and buggy hitched in front of a general store. The buggy was one of Phaeton's largest sizes and had padded leather seats, leather side curtains, and a large rumble seat. The matched pacing horses were of excellent quality. Wanting the vehicle, Redpath looked through the wide front window to the inside of the store for the owner. In the light of two coal-oil lamps, a man and woman were talking and paying no attention to the outside. He had simply dropped his trunk into the rumble seat of the buggy, stepped up into the vehicle, and driven away into the night.
Redpath noted that some distance ahead of him a piece of yellow cloth lay near the railroad track that ran parallel to the road. He thought little about the cloth as the pacers stepped lively along. Just cast-off trash. As he drew ever closer, the amount of cloth visible grew larger. Then it became a woman's dress. Redpath thought he could make out the form of a woman's body within the dress.
He reined the horses off the road and up beside the body and stepped down. The woman lay on her back on the crushed-stone ballast of the railroad tracks. So still and quiet was her body that he thought her dead. He went closer.
The bosom of the woman rose ever so slightly. Then it sank, the smallest of breath taken. Redpath went quickly to her. She lay on her back, and he saw her eyes were half open and staring into the sun. He leaned hastily over her to put her eyes in shadow to protect them from damage by the bright rays of the sun. A huge bruise on her forehead leaked lymph and a little blood.
Redpath knew about broken bones and wounds, for in his business they were often encountered, and he set about examining the woman thoroughly for injuries. He turned to the head wound first. The flesh was badly bruised over an area more than an inch square. He could not detect any damage done to her skull. Most often the seriousness of such a wound could only be determined with time. She had scrapes and cuts from falling onto the stone ballast of the tracks. None of them were of a nature to cause worry.
Though she was bruised, bleeding, and unconscious, the young woman's beauty struck Redpath powerfully He had owned many women, all of them above the ordinary in prettiness, some exceptional, and he had made love with every one of them before he sent them out to ply their trade of being a whore. But never before had a woman affected him as this one did. He was staggered by the sudden and overwhelming impact of desire for her.
He saw no rings on her fingers and judged she was most likely single. He took the purse off her arm and examined all the contents, discovering her name and address. There was nearly a hundred dollars in gold. She hadn't been robbed and thrown from the train. So what was a single woman doing in this particular place, at this particular time?
From her position on the side of the railroad track, Redpath believed she had fallen from the train. He eliminated the possibility of her being pushed because of the presence of the money. Two trains, one going west and one east, had passed him within the last hour. Which one of them had she been traveling on?
He went to the buggy for a canteen of water from his supplies. On the second day of his journey, he had stopped in a town and bought provisions for a long journey. He returned to the woman and began to bathe her face.
"Wake up, miss," he said.
She gave no indications she felt the water or heard his voice. He shook her, somewhat roughly. Still, there was no response, her body loose and slack as a rag doll. He spread a blanket on the floorboards of the buggy and placed her upon it. The side and rear curtains were dropped to put her totally in the shade. He popped the whip over the ears of the horses, and they quick-stepped with the buggy off along the road.
Now and again he passed people on the road, and each time put a fold of blanket across the woman so she could not be seen. In the evening, he came to a town, but he continued straight through it. The town was large enough to have a doctor, but there was nothing a doctor could do for the woman's wounds that Redpath couldn't do.
He made camp beneath a large tree far enough back from the road that they couldn't be seen by passersbys. He tended to the woman first, spreading a blanket on the grass and laying her tenderly down on it. He doctored her head wound and the lesser ones on her body with salve. The one on her head was bandaged.
She must have water, so he turned her head to the side and poured a few teaspoons from the canteen into her mouth. He was pleased when she swallowed the water.
Rachel's eyes opened and she looked up at Redpath. She instantly shrank back from him, and uttered a cry of fright.
"It's all right," Redpath said. "You're safe."
"What happened?" Rachel asked in a scared, bewildered voice. She was totally confused.
"You fell," Redpath replied. "I've doctored your injuries." His mind was racing to conceive how he was going to keep her with him. She was the most desirable woman he had ever met and he meant to possess her. That was so regardless of how much she resisted him.
Rachel touched her bandaged head. "I fell?"
"Yes, from the buggy."
"Where am I?" The fear in her voice was intense.
"With me. How do you feel?"
"I'm sore all over. But there's something wrong."
"In what way?"
The woman appeared baffled by some question she was asking herself. "I don't know who I am. Who you are."
Redpath had his answer. Somehow the blow to the woman's head had damaged her mind to the degree that she had lost her memory.
"Who am I?" Rachel asked, her voice trembling.
"Why, you're Marcella Redpath, my wife."