Wyoming Lawman. Victoria Bylin

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СКАЧАТЬ of the child, the freight driver shouted at the team of six mules to pick up their pace. As the beasts surged forward, Pearl hiked up her skirt and ran down the boardwalk. “Stay there!” she cried. “I’m coming for you.”

      Instead of stopping, the child ran faster. The mules gained momentum and the wagon swayed. Pearl cried for the driver to stop, but he couldn’t hear her over the rattle of the wheels. The child, now halfway across the street, saw only the woman she believed to be her mother.

      Praying she wouldn’t slip in the mud, Pearl dashed in front of the mules, each one snorting and chuffing with the weight of the load. The driver cursed and hauled back on the reins, but the wagon kept coming.

      So did the child.

      So did Pearl.

      She could smell the mules. Puddles, mirroring the clouds, shook as the animals lumbered forward. With more speed than she rightly possessed, she dashed in front of the beasts, hooked her arm around the child and pulled her back from the wagon. Together they fell in a tangle of skirts and pinafores with Pearl on her belly. Her knees stung from hitting the dirt and she’d muddied her dress.

      She didn’t give a whit about her knees, but the dress mattered. She planned to wear it to her interview at Miss Marlowe’s School for Girls. A woman in her position had to always look her best. One wrong impression and she’d be worse off than she’d been in Denver.

      With her heart pounding, she raised her head and looked at the child. She saw eyes as blue as her own and hair that could have grown on her own head. The girl looked to be five years old, but there was nothing childlike about her expression as she clutched her doll to her chest. Like Pearl, she had the look of someone who’d learned not to hope…at least not too much.

      Her voice squeaked. “Mama?”

      “No, sweetie,” Pearl said. “I just look like her.”

      The child’s mouth drooped. “You do.”

      Pearl rocked back to her knees. Reaching down, she cupped the girl’s chin. “Are you hurt?”

      “No.”

      “What’s your name?”

      “Sarah with an H.”

      Pearl couldn’t help but smile. “You must be learning your letters.”

      “I am. I go to school.”

      Pearl wondered if she attended Miss Marlowe’s School, but other questions were more pressing. She pushed to her feet and offered Sarah her hand. “Who takes care of you?”

      “My daddy.”

      “Let’s find him,” Pearl replied.

      Sarah looked at the ground. “He’s gonna be mad at me.”

      Pearl had an angry thought of her own. What kind of father left a five-year-old alone on a busy street? The more she thought about the circumstances, the more irritated she became. Sarah could have been killed or maimed for life. Pearl’s problems paled in comparison, but she’d just ruined her best dress. Pale blue with white cuffs and silver buttons, it now had mud stains. She had another dress she could wear to the interview, but she’d stitched this one with her friends in Denver. The love behind it gave her confidence.

      As she looked around for Sarah’s father, she saw the start of a crowd on the boardwalk. The driver, a stocky man with a bird’s nest of a beard, came striding down the street. When he reached her side, he swept off his black derby to reveal a bald head. “Are you okay, ma’am? Your little girl—I didn’t see her.”

      She’s not mine. But Pearl saw no point in explaining. “We’re fine, sir. I saw what happened. You weren’t at fault.”

      “Even so—”

      “You can be on your way.”

      He looked at Sarah as if she were a baby chick, then directed his gaze back to Pearl. “Pardon me, ma’am. But you should watch her better.”

      Pearl’s throat tightened with a familiar frustration. She’d been in Cheyenne for twenty minutes and already she was being falsely accused. Memories of Denver assailed her…the whispers when her pregnancy started to show, the haughty looks before she’d taken refuge at a boarding house called Swan’s Nest. She’d gotten justice in the end, but she longed for a fresh start. When her cousin wrote about a teaching job in Cheyenne, Pearl had jumped at the chance for an interview.

      Winning the position wouldn’t be easy. As an unwed mother, she had some explaining to do. Not even her cousin knew she had a baby, not because Pearl wanted to keep her son a secret, but because she couldn’t capture her thoughts in a letter. The two women didn’t know each other well, but their mothers had been sisters. Carrie Hart was Pearl’s age, single, a respected teacher and the daughter of one of Cheyenne’s founders. If Carrie spurned her, Pearl would be adrift in a hostile city. Even so, she refused to pretend to be a widow. More than anything, she wanted to be respectable. If she lied about her son, how could she respect herself? And if she couldn’t respect herself, how could anyone else? She had a simple plan. She’d tell the truth and trust God to make her path straight.

      She had also planned to arrive in Cheyenne quietly. To her horror, a crowd had gathered and people were staring. She’d be lucky to avoid the front page of the Cheyenne Leader. Her father broke through the throng with her son in his arms. Even before she’d stepped out of the carriage, the baby had been hungry and wet. Any minute he’d start to cry.

      “Pearl!” Tobias Oliver hurried to his daughter’s side. A retired minister, he’d once been her enemy. Now he lived for the grandson sharing his name. “Are you all right?”

      “I’m fine, Papa.” She touched her son’s head. “Take Toby to the room, okay?”

      “But you need help.”

      She shook her head. “I have to find Sarah’s father.”

      As he looked at the child clutching her doll, his eyes filled with memories, maybe regret. Pearl had once shared Sarah’s innocence but not anymore. She’d been raped by a man named Franklin Dean, a banker and a church elder. Her father blamed himself for not protecting her.

      “Go on, Papa,” she said. “I don’t want all this attention.”

      When Tobias met her gaze, she saw the guilt he lived with every day. He nodded and headed for the hotel.

      Squeezing Sarah’s hand, Pearl turned to the opposite side of the street where she saw twice as many people as before, almost all of them men. She couldn’t stand the thought of shouldering her way through the crowd. Most of the onlookers were gawking.

      “Please,” she said. “Let us pass.”

      A businessman removed his hat and bowed. A cowboy tried to step back, but the crowd behind him pressed forward. A third man whistled his appreciation and another howled like a coyote. She turned to go in the other direction, but another crowd had gathered. She heard more catcalls, another whistle.

      Sarah buried her face against Pearl’s muddy skirt and clutched the folds. The child didn’t like being the object of so much attention especially after falling in the dirt. Neither did Pearl. She patted the СКАЧАТЬ