Chapter 1

Laurie Matheison felt conflicting emotions as the train rocked along down the tracks. She was scared half to death at the prospect of what

would soon happen to her, but her heart soared with happiness at what she was experiencing.

Winter had finally given up its grip on the land, and now things were growing everywhere. Laurie had seen many things on this trip that amazed and amused her. She’d never been more than ten miles from home until she boarded this train.

Laurie stared at her reflection in the fly-specked window. She wouldn’t turn sixteen for three more weeks, which was why she was in the situation she was in. Just a few short weeks ago, she and her parents had been talking of the future. Now, through cruel fate, she was an orphan. Had she been older when that happened, things might have been very different now.

But she was still a minor, so other people made decisions for her.

There had been a letter in what was left of her parent’s things, from a man who had written to her mother. She’d never met him, or at least couldn’t remember him. Nor could she remember her mother ever mentioning him. But Laurie herself was mentioned in the letter, asking how the beautiful little girl was. The rest of the letter was about how much he missed her mother. There were spots on the letter that looked suspiciously like dried tears had caused them, and the letter had been unfolded and folded many times, as though it was brought out to read frequently. The name it was signed with was unfamiliar to her as well. Old Mrs. Thompson, who was the cook at the hotel in town, said the letter writer was her mother’s brother, but her mother had never spoken of a brother.

The town fathers - the town mothers in all reality - had decided she should be sent to the return address on that letter. That decision hadn’t been made out of charity, though. For Laurie was beautiful, with long, golden hair, full breasts, a narrow waist, and swelling hips that promised easy delivery of many children. In the little western town of Silver Center, she was arguably the most beautiful woman in town.

The bank had taken what was left of the farm in payment, they said, for the loan on it. The only other prospect for a homeless young woman such as Laurie, was Miss Kitty’s Saloon, where several young women lived and worked, seeing to the needs of the rough miners and cowboys ... and husbands in the town.

Officially, these girls served drinks to the men. But there were rooms upstairs, and they were visited with enough frequency that Miss Kitty was richer than most of the mine owners in the area.

The city mothers knew that if Laurie ended up there, they’d never get any attention from their husbands until she was worn out and old ... like them.

So she had been sent to live with a man she’d never met, her only known family, traveling by herself in a world that often preyed on beautiful young women. By western standards she was of marriageable age and ripe for the plucking. Some of those town mothers assumed she’d never make it a hundred miles before being snatched up and put to work on her back. As long as it wasn’t where their men could find her ... so be it.

Being on the train all by itself was an education. As the locomotive chuffed it’s way east she’d seen the few remaining buffalo herds, more towns than she thought there were in the whole world, more people that she could imagine, and miles and miles and miles of prairie. And she still hada thousand miles to go.

Those thousand miles is another story, several, in fact, but those are stories for another time. For our purposes today, it is only necessary that you know she arrived on the rocky coasts of New England, in County Rochester, with her virginity intact, hunger gnawing at her spine, and penniless.

Now all she had to do was find Mr. Martin Trumble, the mysterious “uncle” she’d never heard her mother speak of. What was more puzzling was that her mother’s maiden name had been McPhereson, not Trumble. In any case, to learn more, all she could do was seek this man out at “Middleton Tower”, whatever that was. She put one slim hand on her empty stomach, over the fabric of the last dress she owned. Her luggage had been stolen in Ohio.

She went to the Porter’s office and asked for Martin Trumble by name, to no avail. At the mention of Middleton Tower the gruff man pointed south.

“Down the coast. Twenty miles mebbe.” His speech sounded odd, almost foreign. He turned back to his work.

Laurie felt faint as she went back out on the porch of the depot. If she didn’t get something to eat soon she’d crumple. But the little money they’d given her before she left was gone now. She walked through town until she heard the noise and smelled the odor of a saloon. Knowing she couldn’t go in the front, she went to the back door and waited until a fat woman in an apron came to the door to throw out a pot of dirty ... something.

“Please Miss ... I can wash dishes. I’ve had nothing to eat for two days.”

It was dark by the time they let her go, but her stomach was full. Having no place to stay, she walked in the dark. She knew South from looking at the stars. She needed sleep, but it was still spring, and cold at night. If she stopped too long she knew she could get sick. She couldn’t afford to get sick.

She’d find a place to hide and sleep when the sun was up. After what seemed hours, she topped a hill and saw an amazing thing. Far off in the distance, clear to the horizon, there was a ... dot ... of light. And from that pinprick there shot out a thick ray that moved.

She had seen shooting stars, but this was static, sitting there on the horizon as the beam moved around that bright dot.

At first she thought it just moved back and forth. Like a huge eye that was looking for something. It looked to her left and then her right and then the dot disappeared. But she could see the ray, pointing away from her, reflected off of low clouds. And then the dot reappeared and it swept across her field of vision again. She imagined what it would be like to be closer to that light. If she could see it so far away it must be bright as the sun, though, of course smaller. Its light would wash across her, making all color disappear. Her eyes would have to be closed tightly or she’d be blinded. She closed them now, wishing she could feel the wash of that light. Maybe it would carry her away to some magical kingdom somewhere.

A bird made a sound in the night and she opened her eyes. She shivered and looked at that distant pin prick of light again.

She realized that the light was revolving in a circle. In the dim recesses of a tired mind she remembered a story her mother had told her, about Pirates who lured their victims onto the rocks of the sea shore by shining a big light out to sea. She shuddered. Pirates. That was all she needed.

She trudged onward.

She smelled the smoke first, and went on guard. Using skills she didn’t know she had, she tracked the smell to its source and stood within twelve feet of the campfire without the man lying beside it ever knowing she was there. She would have moved off without him ever knowing it too, had not her stiff dress caught on a branch that bent and snapped before she could un-snag it. The man was up instantly, a flash of silver in his hand.

“Who’s there?” he yelled.

Laurie held her breath, hoping he’d lie back down and she could steal away.

“I’ve got a pistol! Come into the light where I can see you!”

Laurie sighed. It wasn’t a man at all. It was just a boy. He was about her age. In the old west, “man” meant a male three to four years your senior, if you were female. Males your own age were ‘boys’. She stepped out of the woods and into the circle of light thrown by the campfire.

“It’s just me,” she said. He was staring at her and she realized his hand was shaking. He looked scared!

“Who’s with you?” he asked, looking around the dark circle outside the light. “I have a pistol!“ he shouted again.

“Nobody. Calm down,” she said. “I’m alone. I won’t hurt you. I can’t hurt you.”

It took her a while to convince him there wasn’t someone else out there. Women just didn’t travel alone in those days. Finally he invited her to the fire, and she began to warm herself. It was wonderful.

At first there was only uncomfortable silence. Then he asked her where her horse was.

“I don’t have a horse,” she said.

“Don’t you have saddle bags? Or a valise? Or even a sack?” He was clearly curious as to why she had turned up in the middle of nowhere, carrying nothing.

“I was on a train. I got off at a little town to get a breath of fresh air and stretch and when I got back on the train my suitcase was gone. I tried to get the porter to hold the train so I could call for the Sheriff, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”

Then the boy sheepishly had to admit that he had none of those things either. He knew how to ride, but had no horse or gear. He lived, it seemed, from hand to mouth, making his way in the world drifting from one place to another.

That gave them something to talk about. So they talked and she eventually told him some more of what had happened and that she was being sent to her Uncle.

“Who’s your Uncle?” he asked casually.

“I’ve never met him. His name is Martin Trumble,” she said.

The boy stared “I know that man,” he said. His voice sounded scared again. “He’s the lighthouse keeper down at Middleton Bay.”

Laurie felt the first excitement she’d experienced in days. “Can you take me there? How far is it? What’s he like?” She had a hundred questions.

“Hold on there,” he said. “I can take you there, that’s no problem. But I don’t think you want to go. From what I hear he’s a bad man. He killed two men with just his hands. I heard the story from a man who saw it. These two men were drunk and shooting their pistols in the air. He told them to stop and they threatened him. He killed one just by hitting him with his fist. The other man shot him in the leg. He broke that man’s back. He’s big. I seen him once. He looks mean to me. He’s over six feet and probably weighs 250 pounds. He’s got a big bushy black beard. When I seen him he was lifting barrels of oil for that big lantern onto his wagon like they didn’t weigh nothin’. I don’t think you want to be with him.”

Laurie stared. She knew about violence, had seen plenty out west, but this boy’s emotion at describing the events shocked her. Her heart sank at the thought of having to live with a brute like he was describing.

“I have no place else to go,” she moaned. “And I won’t go to the brothels,” she said firmly.

She knew about sex. Back on the plains there had been no privacy and no shame. When her parents had wanted to have sex, they just did so, and if little Laurie saw them ... well, then ... she’d need to know about such things one day. So she knew what hung between her father’s legs, and how it got long and stiff, and what he did with it when it was so. Her mother had obviously loved what he was doing to her, so much so that when Laurie got old enough, she touched herself in the places her father touched her mother, just to find out why her mother liked being touched in those places.

Chapter 2 »