Chapter Twenty-eight
“I’m sorry we couldn’t finish what we started that night on the prairie,” Blanche Carter said. “My father pretty much takes all my time and attention.”
Red Ryan smiled. “There’s always a next time.”
Blanche nodded. “Yes, of course. There is always a next time.”
She tiptoed, kissed Red on the cheek. “Now I must get back to the hotel.”
Hannah Huckabee watched the woman leave and said, “There goes another adventuress. I’m so glad I met her.”
“I sure can’t disagree with that,” Red said. “She does adventurous things.”
The thanks to Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon from the professors was prolonged and profuse. There was much handshaking, backslapping, talk about lives saved and villains slain, and Sir Richard Owen hinted in confidential tones that he might name his latest find a Ryanosaurus.
Farewells were said, backs slapped once again, and then the Patterson stage left Fredericksburg with a sound of rolling thunder, and Buttons, looking like an old pagan god, cracking his whip to supply the lightning. Teutonic voices raised in cheers as the stage hurtled across the city limits and then rocked headlong into the wilderness.
Up on the seat, Red sat with his shotgun across his knees and grinned, “You gave them a show, Buttons.”
“Damn right, I gave them a show,” Buttons said. “One them squareheads will never forget.”
Hannah had refused to sit inside with Latimer, despite his prowess with the Gatling gun, and Mr. Chang and took her accustomed place on top of the stage when they left Fredericksburg. The brim of her pith helmet dropped over her eyes several times as Buttons’s shenanigans bounced her around, but now it felt wonderful to be rolling across the vast prairie again, under a limitless sky. The sense of freedom it gave her was exhilarating.
Buttons slowed the team to a trot, turned his head, and said, “Miss Huckabee, according to the map, we got ten miles of good level grass ahead of us and then we ford the Perdinales River and get into hilly country. A few miles beyond that and we can change horses at the Mullen’s Creek station.”
“Is the river deep, Mr. Muldoon?” Hannah said.
“Not at this time of the year, but flash floods can happen at any time, so we need to be careful.”
Red explained, “First you see rainclouds, then there’s a downpour, and then the flood. Anybody standing in its path gets swept away.”
“Thank goodness the sky is clear,” Hannah said.
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Red said.
As it happened, the stage forded the shallow Perdinales without much difficulty, there was no flash flood . . . but Mullen’s Station no longer existed.
“Apaches,” Buttons said as he looked bleakly at the ruined cabin, barn, and corrals. And to Hannah, “The Mescalero and Chiricahua broke out last year and played hob all over this part of Texas, a lot of white folks killed.”
Red climbed down from the stage and scouted around the place. When he returned, he said, “Two graves back there. Looks like the army dug them.”
“I was here once before a couple of years back,” Buttons said. “I didn’t like Pete Mullins much, or his wife, and the grub they served tasted like it had been cooked in year-old axle grease.” He shook his head. “They didn’t deserve to be killed by Apaches, though.”
Buttons decided to rest the team for an hour and then continue on to Austin, where there was a Patterson depot. “Get there by sundown, I reckon,” he said. “Red, in the meantime, boil up some coffee, and, Miss Hannah, there’s some bacon if you’d like to try it.”
“I’m so tired of bacon I’d rather wait and get a proper meal in Austin,” Hannah said.
“Then the Driskill Hotel on Sixth Street fits the bill,” Buttons said. “It claims to be the finest hotel south of St. Louis, and maybe it is.”
“Good, it will be nice to wear a dress again,” Hannah said. “If my luggage has survived.”
“It’s all there, Miss Hannah,” Buttons said. “Seen to it my ownself.”
“You’re a treasure, Buttons,” Hannah said, smiling.
“It’s all part of the service,” Buttons said.
“Mr. Muldoon take good care of passengers,” Mr. Chang said, bowing.
“And don’t you forget it, Chinaman,” Buttons said.
Why Buttons thought Mr. Chang would forget it, is not known.
Hannah studiously ignored Latimer and busied herself helping Red gather wood for a fire. The Englishman followed Hannah with his wounded brown eyes but made no attempt to talk to her.
But on that day came the small beginning of what would turn out to be John Latimer’s redemption.