HIGH SIERRA
APRIL 16, 1906. 12:25 A.M.
Several hundred miles east, near moonlit Lake Tahoe, the Overland Limited of the Southern Pacific Railroad gasped and wheezed through its final ascent, up the treacherous eastern slope of the High Sierra. It was pulling four mail cars, twenty-three passenger compartments with four hundred and seventy-eight passengers, including Kaitlin Staley, the newly anointed "Belle of the Pullman."
In a second-class coach halfway between the engine and caboose, Jeremy Darling watched as Kaitlin sketched her ideas for women's "elegant but inexpensive gowns." Most of the passengers were fast asleep, chortling a disparate melody of familiar snores as Jeremy rubbed his sandy eyes, feigning interest in Kaitlin's deft drawings. Fashion meant nothing to him. His true interest was Kaitlin.
"You're sure you're only eighteen? You draw like someone who is—much older."
Jeremy had been making inane comments since she boarded the train in Kansas City and chose him as the most harmless-looking man on board. She had been wearing, at the time of boarding, a tailored shirtwaist with hand-stitched gigot sleeves, lace collar, and bodice under a wasp-waist bolero jacket. The black bolero melded with a pleated ankle-length skirt that partially covered a pair of battered and misshapen leather high-low boots, the one item she had not been able to fashion for herself.
She had plunked down next to Jeremy, pointed her high bosom and flashed her pale blue eyes and gleaming white teeth straight into his heart.
"Kaitlin Staley. Some people call me Kate but my name is really Kaitlin. With a K. It was the doctor's mistake. Makes you wonder what kind of doctor can't even spell a kid's name. This seat isn't taken, is it?" Jeremy shook his head, speechless, as she squeezed in next to him. "I am going to San Francisco. I have never been there before. Have you?"
"Jeremy Darling," he croaked. "I'm assistant professor of geology at the University of California. That's in Berkeley, which is just across San Francisco Bay."
"Geology. How fascinating, Professor Darling."
"Geology and seismology."
"I'm somewhat of a size-mologist myself. I can just look at you and tell you're a hat size six and three-quarters."
"Seismology. The subterranean movements of the earth's giant plates. That's what causes earthquakes. I study them. If one studies earthquakes, one ought to be in San Francisco or at least nearby."
"Do they really have earthquakes in San Francisco?"
"We had one two years ago this month. Two of them, actually. The last really big one was in '68."
"Well, I'm not having any earthquakes while I'm there. Especially not any really big ones."
"I'm just returning from England, from seeing a man named John Milne. He has built seismograph stations all over the world, so we can measure and record them when they strike. San Francisco is on an earthquake fault they call the San Andreas."
"I'm going to San Francisco to design clothes for the opera and the theater. Clothes that look very expensive but aren't, so women who don't have a lot of money can afford to go nice places."
By the second day, Kaitlin was on her third outfit and fourth or fifth hat. Jeremy was in too much discomfort to keep track. His derriere had died outside of Denver. The entire westbound passenger contingent twitched and slithered, displaying the pained waddle dubbed "towing the iron caboose."
Kaitlin scarcely noticed. To her, it had been the "Journey of a Thousand Moments," as she had read repeatedly, through the endless Plains and majestic Rockies, over Promontory Point, past the Great Salt Lake, winding through the Wasatch Range and across the broad Nevada desert into their final leg.
Halfway up the eastern slope of the High Sierra, Jeremy excused himself and headed toward the toilet compartments, discreetly trying to massage life back into his wounded posterior.
Antoine Dugay slid into the vacant seat. He had bribed the conductor with a Parisian Kiss from one of his three female cousins to glean that Kaitlin had boarded alone and was en route to San Francisco.
"You are very beautiful girl," Antoine said, showing a little pink tongue and harelip camouflaged by a greasy mustache. "I can make you mow-nee in San Francisco, lots of mow-nee."
"Oh, yeah, how is that?"
"The melodeons, you can sing, maybe you dance, you tell some joke, some-sing like zat. Men give you mow-nee, lots of mow-nee."
She knew little of melodeons but a lot about manure. "I don't sing, I don't dance, and they didn't make many jokes where I grew up."
"My cousins, they make lots of mow-nee, they no sing, dance so good."
She looked over at his cousins. One was a Jewish girl who sported a dented silver Star of David, a Polish accent, and flaming red hair. The second was an Indian with black circles under her eyes, and the third a waif-like blonde with the hundred-yard stare and slow nod of the opium chum.
Kaitlin had observed the women leaving their seats with gamblers who had slid a coin into Antoine's pocket. Their activities had since been restricted to the baggage stalls, after travelers who actually used the sleeping compartments for sleeping complained about the moaning and banging at all hours of the night.
"Your cousins, they look about as much alike as two stray dogs and a hickory stump."
"What?"
"Hickory stump, dogs, you know, little dogs? Rrr-uff, rrr-uff."
Antoine thought she meant his girls were dogs; that dogs would not have them. "Antoine has no dogs. Antoine has fine bitches," he said, one watery eye twitching steadily.
"Maybe you should slide back on over and join those fine bitches." Antoine's face showed a mild flush, his jaw clenching. Kaitlin noticed his hand slide into the pocket of his vest.
She tensed. With her hands folded, she began to slide free the long, thick hat pin she had embedded in her left coat sleeve, a trick her father had taught her years before.
"Excuse me," Jeremy interrupted. "I have been sitting in that seat since Chicago," and had the pickled posterior to match the upholstery indent to prove it.
Antoine offered Kaitlin a final flash of the lazy pink tongue. "May-haybe we see each other some time again in San Francisco, ma cherie." He limped away.
Within the hour, the train reached the summit of the High Sierra as Kaitlin dozed. The hacking snore of the apothecary's wife in the seat across the row awakened her. She listened to the rhythmic clacking of the steel wheels and gazed down the aisle.
Four seats away, Antoine's eyes were staring at the ceiling, his thin moustache drawn about his oval, sucking mouth. Protruding from the bottom of the blanket on his lap were the soles of a woman's shoes. The blanket bobbed up and down near Antoine's lap, his pant legs bunched about his ankles. Antoine shivered and shook. In a final gasp, the air rushed past the uneven gold teeth, setting his bountiful nose hairs aflutter.
The Indian cousin emerged from beneath the blanket, dabbing her lips with a handkerchief.
Kaitlin, flushed and startled, suddenly understood what the men who had approached Antoine meant by the "Parisian Kiss." She turned to avoid Antoine's wink, staring out the window as the train entered Summit Tunnel, longest in the High Sierra.
She braced herself as the rocking and swaying increased, the Overland clearing Donner Pass and suddenly making its heady descent toward Dutch Flat and Whiskey Ridge.
They emerged from the tunnel; the moonlight illuminated a sign that read WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA-THE 31ST STATE, above an advertisement for men's hair tonic.
Kaitlin pulled her diary from her bag and began to record the evening's events, unaware of how important her highly detailed observations would soon become. She entered a simple phrase.
At least my father will never find me.