Lewis walked through the cold with his shoulders raised to his ears. He was weary from working at the butcher shop every day then rushing over to spend time with Josephine. The trouble was, he couldn’t ask her for sympathy. He’d told her he was working on some drawings for Mr. Wilson, which was hardly physically exhausting work.
If only it were true. Since the Wilson dinner party, he’d repeatedly approached the man but had been told they’d hired another artist to do their illustrations.
No one shut the door on Lewis Simmons. Not without consequence.
“Simmons? Is that you?”
He turned around and was shocked to see the photographer from the meridian trip. He shook his hand. “Rosewood. How are you?”
“Very fine actually. Come into my studio and tell me what you’ve been up to.”
Only then did Lewis see that he’d walked past a new shop. Two men were inside, painting the name “Rosewood Photography Studio” on the windows in gold letters. Very impressive.
Inside was a photo-taking area complete with intricate, painted backdrops and props such as velvet settees and potted ferns upon Corinthian pedestals. The opposite wall was a gallery of very small photographs, two-and-a-half inches by four. Lewis moved forward for a better look.
“These are wonderful. You got some good ones of the Indians.”
“I’d love to get more, but I’m kept busy here—busy enough to open this larger studio. The small carte de visites are all the vogue here and in Europe. Queen Victoria is quite a collector.”
Lewis had never heard of them.
Rosewood explained. “Visiting cards. Instead of leaving calling cards, some of the upper crust like leaving these small photographs of themselves.”
He’d seen such photographs of Josephine’s brother and cousin in the Cain parlor.
“They’re also small enough to send through the mail.” He pointed at the studio area. “I’m getting a steady traffic of people wanting to see pictures of the West, or wanting me to take their own photographs. As you probably know, people are vain.”
“Thank goodness.”
Rosewood chuckled. Then he froze a moment and peered at Lewis. “Are you going out west again?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Because if you were, I could teach you the photographic process, and you could be my legs out there, taking photos, selling them on the spot, and sending plates back to me.”
“So you can develop the plates away from a studio?”
“I’d set you up with a traveling darkroom.”
It was intriguing. Ambition collided with his plan to marry Josephine. Yet, perhaps the two could be melded. The West . . . He would need a new place to settle himself after he carried out his revenge on the general, abandoning the man’s daughter and humiliating the Cain family. Or—what if he could hurry up the plan? “How much would I make?”
Rosewood clapped him on the back. “Now we’re talking.”
“You are doing what?”
Lewis took a step back. “I’m going out west to take photographs.”
Even after he’d repeated himself, Josephine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Since when are you a photographer?”
“Since I crossed paths with Sam Rosewood, the photographer I met on the meridian trip. That’s why I’m late coming over here. He was teaching me how to do it.”
She remembered the man. Vaguely. “You are leaving me here for weeks? Alone?”
“Actually, I’m going to be gone for quite a while.”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Perhaps a few months.”
This was getting worse.
She took her own step back, needing space between them. “What about our wedding plans? And setting a wedding date?”
He grinned and pulled her close, a hand at the small of her back. “How about today?”
She pushed free of him. “Today.”
“Then you could go with me.” He paused, then said, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Josephine threw her hands in the air. “Tomorrow? You come here to say you’re going off to my father’s railroad project for a few months, and you’re leaving tomorrow?” She let her hands come to rest on her hips. “This is not the way it’s supposed to work, Lewis. We are engaged. We are planning a life together. To-geth-er.”
“Yes, we are, and we’ll fulfill that plan, we can fulfill it by marrying today.”
Suddenly, the absurdity of the idea transformed into something palatable. The solution came as a flash, but she was quick and didn’t let it pass without her catching it. “I know the answer to all of this. We will not hurry the wedding, but I shall come with you.”
The words hung in the air. Outrageous words. Rousing words.
Yet Lewis looked anything but roused, which made her wonder whether he really wanted her along at all.
She slipped her hand around his arm. “I belong wherever you are.”
He just stood there, his face blank, as if his thoughts were requiring all his attention.
“Come now, Lewis. It will be wonderful. There is nothing I would like better than to see Papa. Besides, I’m curious about the railroad’s progress and how they are going to cross the mountains in Wyoming. I have never seen proper mountains.”
A face beyond Lewis’s and Papa’s flitted through her thoughts. One she had very purposefully nudged aside since last October.
She shoved it aside once again.
“Telegraph your father,” Lewis said with a sigh. “Tell him the two of us are coming. And Mrs. Schultz again, I suppose.”
“Tell him?” She was close to Papa, but even she knew better than to tell him something.
“Ask him, using all the pretty words of a loving daughter. Tell him you miss him and—”
She raised a hand, stopping his words. “I know what to say.” Then she looked toward the stairs—toward her other hurdle. “Mother will never agree.”
“You are an adult. You do not need her permission.”
“She has been feeling better lately. I’m not sure I could leave her if she were sick.”
Lewis took her hand and strode toward the door. “Let’s go to the telegraph office. Contact your father first.”
“But you were leaving tomorrow.”
“I shall postpone my departure.” He held her cape. “I shall wait for you.”
“If Papa says yes.”
“He will say yes. He wants to see you as much as you want to see him.”
Josephine could only hope that were true, as the anticipation building in her chest was the first she’d felt in months.
Hudson stood in the Cheyenne railway office, waiting for further instructions from General Cain, who was busy going over a map with one of the surveyors. The general glanced up, acknowledged Hudson with a nod, then looked back at the map.
Hudson didn’t mind the wait. He had good news to report about a shipment of ties. They’d be ready to begin laying track soon. Although it was backbreaking work, he enjoyed seeing the constant progress, the knowing that what he was doing was vital to one of America’s dreams. To his dream.
He trembled at the notion that he was a part of something so important. No one would ever remember his name, and history would go on without notice of him, but the people he was working for—General Cain, Thomas Durant, Samuel Reed, General Dodge—these were men that history would embrace. To think that he talked to these men, followed these men, worked with these men . . . that was a fact no one could take away from him.
“Excuse me, General? This just came for you.” The telegraph operator sidestepped around Hudson and handed him a note.
The general read it, shook his head no, then said, “Well . . . why not?” He turned to the operator. “Write back, ‘I miss you too. Travel with Lewis and Frieda at your convenience.’”
Lewis? Lewis Simmons? Was the note from the general’s daughter?
As the operator left to send the message, the general chuckled to himself. “She is a spirited thing.”
The surveyor said, “Sir?”
“My daughter.” He looked at Hudson. “You know my Josephine.”
“Yes, sir. I had the pleasure.”
“It appears her fiancé, Mr. Simmons, has found himself an assignment taking photographs out here. And she is coming with him.”
Hudson’s mind stuck on the word fiancé. They’d become engaged? To the general he said, “I’m happy for you, sir. I can only imagine how you’ve missed her.”
“Not going home for Christmas . . . that was hard on me, and on my family. You didn’t go home either, did you, Maguire?”
“No, sir. My brother and I decided to stay here and keep earning our nest egg.”
“Nest egg?” he asked with a smile. “So you have a sweetheart back home?”
He hesitated, then hesitated some more when he realized he’d hesitated. “Yes, sir. Sarah Ann.”
“I’m sure she misses you greatly.”
“Hopefully, sir.”
The general’s eyebrows rose.
“I haven’t heard from her since before Christmas.”
He stroked his beard. “Letters can be slow in coming. You know that.”
“I know that.”
Then the general nodded toward the telegraph. “Wire her right now. Tell her you love her. Tell her . . . whatever you want to tell her.”
The idea that Sarah Ann could receive a note from him on this very day was almost too much to fathom. But the bigger question was whether she would welcome it.
“You’re not going to even try?” The way the general looked over his reading spectacles was a challenge.
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. It is worth a try.”
The general called out to the operator, “Frank, send Mr. Maguire’s message.”
“Yes, General.”
He shooed Hudson away. “Go tell your girl you love her, and by the time you’re through, I’ll be ready to listen to your report about the supplies.”
Hudson took his time crossing the room. He’d never had a chance like this. He didn’t know exactly what to say.
Frank looked up at him, pad and pencil in hand. “Where’s it going to? And to whom?”
“Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. To Sarah Ann Daugherty.”
“Keep it short. That’s the key.”
Short. Short was good.
His first inclination was to send: I love you. But somehow, those intimate words sent across the country, over some wire-whatnot . . . it just didn’t seem right.
And you aren’t sure the words are true, either.
“Come on, man,” Frank said. “I have work to do.”
“Just write, ‘I miss you. Hudson.’”
“That certainly is short.”
“Too short? Because I—”
But Frank had already tapped out the message. “All done.”
Yes then. All done.
Hudson helped himself to the mashed potatoes, then handed the bowl across the table to Raleigh. He wasn’t sure he should say anything to his brother, because if he did, he’d get teased, yet if he didn’t—
Suddenly, he heard himself saying, “She’s coming.”
Raleigh’s helping was twice the size of Hudson’s. He passed the bowl to the next boarder. “Who’s coming?”
Hudson regretted starting this, but he couldn’t stop now. “You’ll never guess.”
“Pass the gravy.” Raleigh poured two ladles full on the moat of his potatoes, and another over his meat. Only then did he look at Hudson. “Surely not Sarah Ann.”
Surely not.
“Josephine Cain. The general’s—”
“I know who she is.” He took a bite of potatoes, breaking the levee, allowing the gravy loose. “Why is this any business of yours?”
“It isn’t. I was just—”
Raleigh pointed his fork at him. “You’re just getting yourself into a heap of trouble.”
“What trouble? I was stating a fact, a bit of news.”
“Yeah, she’s some bit-of-news, all right. A five-foot-nothing, perky, freckle-faced bit-of-news.”
Hudson wasn’t sure how to respond. To get defensive would just egg his brother on. “I simply enjoyed talking to her.”
Raleigh leaned close across the table. “Are you sure that’s all you did?”
“Are you accusing me of being disloyal to Sarah Ann?”
Raleigh backed off. “I’m just saying. You told me about showing her the sunset. Sounds romantic, that’s all.”
It was romantic.
“I think she could be a convert to the West.”
“Is that your goal? Converting her to liking . . .” He swung his fork around the cramped dining room. “The grand life of the Wild West?”
“There’s more to the West than what we’ve had to endure this winter.” It was Hudson’s turn to point his fork, and he pointed it toward the western point of the compass. “There is something grand about what’s out there, beyond here.”
Raleigh went back to his roast, dragging a piece through the potatoes. “The trouble is, neither you or me know if beyond here is better than here. You’re thinking it’s heaven, but it could be hell.”
It could be. “The thing that intrigues me the most is that we’re getting a chance to find that heaven.”
“Even if you have to travel through hell to get there?”
It was complicated. This life wasn’t easy. Heading through the Wyoming Territory, water would be scarce, the terrain a challenge, and the days interminably long. The months ahead were totally unknown, with only one guarantee: the work was going to be grueling, as bridges and tunnels would have to be built. Yet Hudson felt a spark in his stomach, as though something was burning there, just waiting for the right time to fire up.
“Now you’re not so sure about that heaven, are you?” his brother asked.
“I am sure. Just because I can’t articulate it—”
“Ar-tic-u-late.” Raleigh laughed. “I’m guaranteeing that no one in this entire town can ar-tic-u-late much of anything.” He turned to the room. “Right, men?”
Grumbles all around. No one was listening.
Was anyone feeling what he felt? Or were they just going through the motions, doing the work, waiting for a paycheck so they could blow it at a saloon or Miss Mandy’s?
Some words came to him. “‘Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.’”
Raleigh dug a piece of meat out of his teeth. “Race? Yeah, there is a race between the two railroads. But is it our race, Hud? Or are we merely pawns in someone else’s chess game?”
There had to be more to it than that. He felt it deep inside.
He also felt that somehow Josephine Cain was part of it. Not romantically—she was coming out here with her fiancé—but somehow she was the key to . . . to . . .
It did no good to speculate. God’s ways were unfathomable. And talking about any of this to Raleigh or anyone else was not the way to go.
But that didn’t mean he would stop thinking about it.
Cousin Frieda stood before Josephine, her hands on her hips. “Did you ever consider asking me if I wanted to go? Did you, girl?”
Josephine didn’t have time for this. She’d asked Dowd to bring her trunk down from the attic and was already busy packing. “When Mother first said I couldn’t go, I had to think of something. And so I reminded her that you would be going with me. And it worked, because she agreed.”
“She agreed, she agreed,” Frieda said, pacing back and forth. “I don’t want to go west again. I don’t want to sleep in a tent and worry about Indians and wild animals and, and . . . and whatever other dangers they have out there now. You used me to get your way.”
Josephine stopped folding her nightgowns. Frieda was right. “Yes, I did. And I apologize.”
Frieda stopped her pacing and took the nightgowns from her, refolding them her way. “At least you admit it.”
Josephine ran a hand along her back. “It’s just that with Lewis going, and Papa saying yes, I couldn’t not go.”
Frieda’s face softened. “You couldn’t not go. But . . .”
“But what?”
She looked at Josephine, then away. “I was just wondering if there was someone else involved in your desire to go west.”
Her stomach clenched. “Someone else?”
“Don’t act coy with me.”
Josephine was about to deny everything, but just as Frieda knew her, she knew Frieda would never give up until she admitted it.
“If you are talking about Hudson Maguire, then—”
Frieda touched the tip of her nose. “He’s the one.”
She busied herself by going through her jewelry box. There would certainly be no need for much jewelry except for a few ear bobs. “I admit it will be nice to see Mr. Maguire—if he is still there. Papa has written that worker turnover is a huge problem.”
“Oh, he’ll be there,” Frieda said.
Really? “How do you know?”
She shrugged, then said, “’Tis the way God does things.”
“What has God got to do with this?”
“The Almighty is very adept at getting people to the right place at the right time.”
It was an intriguing thought. “But Mr. Maguire is not the right people. He is simply a man I met in Nebraska.”
“Who showed you the sunset.”
“A sunset. He showed me a sunset.” But she mentally corrected herself. There was no denying it was the sunset. “And I am engaged. I am planning my wedding. To Lewis.”
“Planning a wedding is not the same as being married.”
No, it wasn’t. But Josephine defended herself. “I thought you liked Lewis. I thought you wanted us to marry.”
Frieda took the bracelet Lewis had given her out of the jewelry box and pressed it into Josephine’s hand.
“Of course. I was planning to bring this.”
Frieda sighed. “I do like Lewis, and I do approve of your upcoming marriage. Yet underneath this plump body and wrinkled face, I’m also a romantic at heart. I saw Hudson Maguire looking at you, and I saw you looking at him, and . . . well . . .”
Josephine wanted to hear more. How had Hudson looked at her? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Deny it all you want, but a spark flashed between you two. A big one.”
I know. I felt it.
“I didn’t think any more about it because you came home and he stayed out there. Some sparks die. But others . . .”
“Others?”
“Smolder, ready to flame again if circumstances allow.”
Circumstances like my going out west again.
“Enough of such talk,” Josephine said. “I am engaged to a wonderful man, a budding artist. Besides, Papa and Mother approve of the match. And they would never approve of Mr. Maguire, an Irish spiker from who-knows-where.”
“Pennsylvania. You told me he was from Pennsylvania. And you’re Irish too.”
The memories of Hudson rushed back.
“Enough talk. We have packing to do.”
Luckily, Josephine was adept at doing two things at once.
Mother did not come to the train station, suffering another bout of avoidance of all things that took effort. Or were her episodes of illness caused by the need for attention, or simply boredom? Josephine supposed it was a little of each.
And so once again, Josephine, Lewis, and Frieda left Washington with no one to see them off.
They watched as the porter loaded their trunks. “It’s thrilling to visit Nebraska just weeks after its statehood.”
“I doubt much has changed,” Lewis said, slipping their tickets in the inner pocket of his coat. “And if passing through Nebraska isn’t wild enough, we shall be slipping into Colorado before we end up in Wyoming. Neither of those are states yet.”
“I am not looking for anything wild,” she said, “just interesting.”
“You may get both.” He took her arm. “Come now. Let’s board. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“But since we have done it before, it should be easier this second time.”
He shook his head and checked the number of the car before entering. “Should be, but probably won’t be. The first time we had General Dodge and all the others taking care of things for us. This time we’re on our own.”
She squeezed his arm. “You will take care of us and keep us safe, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best.” He looked for Frieda. “Mrs. Schultz? You first.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Frieda said. With one step to go, she turned back to them. “Do you think they’ll have those delicious teacakes aboard like last time?”
“I don’t think so,” Josephine said.
“We’re on our own,” Lewis repeated.
He did not sound confident.