to reach the end of the line—literally—because the railroad was under construction across West Texas. This community was the jumping-off point to launch her into her new life.
The train whistle jostled her back to the present and Natalie stood up to work the kinks from her back. She took her place in line behind an elderly gent who braced his arms against the back of the seats to steady himself as he moved slowly down the aisle.
Beneath the lacy black veil of her widow’s digs she had donned to conceal her identity and provide protection, she smiled in triumph. She had succeeded! She had calculated, planned and outsmarted the conniving bastards trying to control her life. She would like to see their expressions of confusion and surprise when they realized she had vanished into thin air like a fleeting phantom.
Serves them right, she mused as she stepped onto the landing. She tapped the gold band on her left ring finger and told herself that her mother was up there somewhere, smiling down on her. This is for both of us, Mama, she thought as the conductor offered a hand to assist her down the steps.
With Phase One of her escape plan completed, Natalie surveyed the crowd waiting for arriving passengers. There were a dozen women waiting to welcome home their menfolk. There were several older men waiting to greet women passengers.
But there was no knight in shining armor waiting to help Natalie complete the next phase of her plan.
Disappointment swamped her as she searched for the man she’d hoped would meet her. She had been so certain her provocative telegram would produce the wanted results.
Although she wasn’t sure what Donovan Crow looked like, because she didn’t have an accurate physical description, she knew him by reputation. She had read every article she could find in the newspapers. The legendary thirty-two-year-old gun for hire—known from Louisiana to Arizona and points north—had been the subject of her research for the past three months.
Refusing to be discouraged because her heroic knight wasn’t waiting for her, Natalie stepped to the ground. She searched the gathering crowd once again, while the porter retrieved the luggage.
She fixed her gaze on a rough-looking character with a scraggly beard. Unkempt hair poked from beneath his oversize sombrero. Surely he wasn’t her gallant knight.
Next she focused her attention on a thin, wiry, scholarly looking young gent who kept pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose—a nose that looked as if it had been broken sometime in the past. He was well dressed and reasonably attractive. He glanced this way and that, as if he were expecting trouble. Then he whirled around and strode past the depot to disappear from sight.
“May I help you with your luggage, ma’am?”
Natalie pivoted back to the porter, who looked to be in his mid-fifties. “I would be most grateful if you could direct me to the best accommodations Wolf Ridge has to offer,” she said in an exaggerated Southern drawl. “It has been a long, tiring ride and I am most anxious to rest.”
The frizzy-haired porter with a pot belly and thick shoulders smiled kindly at her. “That’d be the Simon House. The restaurant adjoining the hotel serves fine food, too.”
Natalie clutched the hem of her black dress to keep from dragging it in the dirt street and tramped off behind the porter, who lugged her oversize suitcase and tattered carpetbag. She paid close attention to the row of stores facing each other on Main Street. This town—the last civilized outpost on the Western frontier, and the end of the tracks—boasted a livery stable, blacksmith shop, billiard parlor, three hotels, several cafés and two general stores.
She noticed a gunsmith shop—which she intended to visit first thing in the morning—a newspaper office, boutique, bank and three saloons named Road to Ruin, End of the Tracks and Last Chance. She frowned disapprovingly at the three bordellos that set apart from the businesses and residences. A covered walkway connected the upper story of the billiard parlor to the more elaborate-looking brothel.
The town couldn’t match New Orleans in architecture, accommodations or extensive selections of supplies or luxuries, but it looked like heaven to Natalie. This was the Promised Land. This is where her freedom and independence began—if only she could locate the legendary gun for hire that could help her achieve her long-held dreams.
She reminded herself that Donovan Crow might be on assignment, in which case he wouldn’t have received her telegram. Which would explain