This Loving Land - Dorothy Garlock [3]
Summer stood beside the grimy coach and waited with the other passengers for the driver’s helper to hand down her trunk. She held tightly to John Austin’s hand, in case he saw something that interested him and tried to wander away. She glanced shyly at the people lined up to meet the stage: cowboys, drifters, soldiers from Fort Croghan. No one came forward to speak to her, but their interest was so embarrassing that she turned her eyes toward the stage driver and kept them there. In that brief look at the bystanders, she saw no one she would take for Sam McLean.
The driver climbed down, then reached up and swung their trunk to the boardwalk.
“Someone a meetin’ you, miss?”
“I don’t know. Ah . . . arrangements were made for us to stay at the hotel.” Her voice, which had begun strongly, coolly, faltered to a near-stop under the steady gaze of the driver.
Summer let her eyelids drop over her eyes and failed to see the expression of softness come over the weathered face.
“Wait right here. I’ll take you up there myself soon as I’m done. Ain’t no call fer you and the kid to be a walkin’ up there by yoreself.”
Summer hadn’t known how apprehensive she was until she realized how much his words relieved her. Pride made her cover up quickly.
“Thank you. Arrangements have been made for us,” she repeated, lifting her chin, shaking her head a little.
Hamilton, Burnet County, Texas, was not much of a place from what she could see. The wind blew dust clouds through the early darkness and drove grit into her eyes, making it just that much more difficult to see it. But as they waited for the driver, she was able to take a quick look around and her face fell. She’d seen quite a few new towns on the journey west, but she’d not set eyes on one as primitive as this. It was a hodge-podge of unpainted buildings and lean-to’s like the one used as the stage stop, and was strung out along a rutted track. Very few lights glowed in a street that swarmed with men, teams and wagons, saddle horses and soldiers.
The driver nodded to Summer and shouldered her trunk. She picked up her valise and, pulling John Austin along beside her, followed closely as he stepped off the boardwalk into the dusty street. It was all very new to her—this rawness, wildness, newness. Music, played on a twangy, out-of-tune piano drifted from one of the buildings they passed, a dance hall where men could have a rousing gallop around the plank floor with one of the girls employed there. There were only three or four horses tied in front of the building; but then, the night had just begun.
Her first look at the hotel told Summer why the driver had elected to escort them. One of the town’s four or five wooden buildings, it was hard to distinguish from the saloon. Split log steps climbed to a board porch lined with benches, occupied by an assortment of men of all ages and, from their attire, all occupations.
A handsomely-dressed man in a dark frock-coat and ruffled white shirt lifted his bowler hat as she passed. His dark eyes roamed her figure boldly, and he showed even white teeth beneath a trim black mustache when he smiled, knowingly, at the crimson that flooded her face. He moved to approach her, bowing slightly, then whirled away, as if suddenly changing his mind.
There were two slatted, swinging doors leading off the porch into the saloon and a tall, narrow door that opened into the long, thin hotel lobby. A fat-faced man sat behind a counter eating a bowl of stew that reeked of chili powder. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and got to his feet.
“Ya got lodgers, Bill?”
“You got room for ’em?”
“If’n they’s the Kuykendall