Comanche Sunset Read online

  Jennifer studied the faded picture again. The man was neither handsome nor ugly. He was simply average-looking, with dark hair and eyes. She shivered at the thought of what she was doing, but there seemed to be no other choice. She had considered just selling the jewelry and boarding a coach or a riverboat for any destination she pleased; but she had no idea where she would go, and she felt a little more secure having a destination where someone would be looking for her, waiting for her. Besides, her uncle would never suspect she would head for a place like west Texas. It was the last place he would look. She realized that if selling the jewelry did not bring enough money to reimburse Sergeant Enders in case she chose not to marry the man, she might have to marry him whether she wanted to or not.

  She folded the letter and put it back into her handbag. She decided that marrying a man who sincerely wanted a wife and children would be better than being molested and all but imprisoned by a lusting uncle. The sin and shame of it would destroy her. She looked up again at the pawn shop sign. If she did have to marry the soldier, perhaps he would at least be respectful and kind to her, not ugly and leering like Uncle John. Surely he would understand that she would need time and patience before consummating the marriage.

  She walked into the pawn shop, realizing how desperate she must be to be doing this. She knew nothing about Texas, except stories she had read about how wild it was, and big. There was still Indian trouble there, and she could only pray she would not run into any wild Comanche before reaching Fort Stockton. The stories she had read and heard about what Indians did to white captives made her chest feel tight with fear.

  She had already considered just leaving Uncle John but staying in St. Louis and finding a job here; but she knew her uncle, with all his power and influence, would find a way to force her to come back. He seemed to have the attitude that he “owned” her and that she was obligated to please him for having taken her in all those years ago. He had stolen her inheritance, and he meant to take her along with it.

  She approached a man behind the counter, hoping he didn’t know John Andrews. “Help you, ma’am?” he asked.

  Jennifer took two rings, a broach, and a pearl necklace from her handbag. “Yes,” she answered, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “These things…belonged to my mother. I don’t want to sell them, but I have no choice. I need the money. Could you tell me what they’re worth?”

  The man picked the items up one by one, studying them carefully. He glanced over his glasses at her, wondering why the very beautiful young lady with the exotic green eyes was selling her mother’s jewelry. He had no doubt whatsoever that under the hood and cape there rested a woman of exquisite beauty, with a body to match the face. Jennifer dropped her eyes, keeping the hood drawn over her hair.

  “Hmmm,” the man finally muttered. “Looks like the real thing, all right. I’ve seen enough to know the difference.” He set down the pearl necklace. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars for all of it.”

  Jennifer frowned. “Two hundred! Surely it’s worth more than that.”

  “Might be. But I don’t know if I can get what it’s worth, and I don’t know that this is really yours to sell. I’m taking my own chances, lady. Two hundred.”

  Jennifer refused to allow the tears of anger to come. Oh, how she would miss Aunt Esther. She had never felt so alone and vulnerable, not even when she lost her parents. “I’ll take it,” she answered, unsure how to argue with a pawnbroker.

  The man smiled with pleasure at knowing he had made a very good deal. “Three days,” he told her. “If you don’t reclaim this stuff in three days, I have a right to sell it. What’s your name, lady? I’ll tag the jewelry.”

  Jennifer swallowed back a lump in her throat. “Never mind. I won’t be reclaiming it. Just give me the money, and I want most of it in coins. I don’t trust greenbacks. I’ve heard people say that with this country on the brink of a war between the states, paper money might be worth nothing in a few months.”

  The man glowered at her slightly. He didn’t much approve of women who could think for themselves. He shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.” He walked away from the counter, returning with two hundred dollars, most in gold and silver coins, about fifty dollars in paper money. Jennifer dumped it all into her handbag.

  “You better keep a tight hold on that thing, lady,” the storekeeper told her.

  “I will. Thank you.” She quickly left, hoping the man didn’t know who she was. Her mind swam with thoughts of how she could get away now without her uncle knowing it. She hurried through the streets to the crowded docks, clutching her handbag tightly. She knew it was safer to take a carriage, but she didn’t want to spend one cent of her precious money. She realized it would not be enough to pay back her fare if she didn’t want to marry Sergeant Enders, but perhaps he would take what she had and she could somehow work off the rest at the fort. She could only pray he was an understanding man. Whatever happened, at least she had enough money to get to Texas. The money the sergeant had wired would pay her fare, but she would have to spend some of her own money for food and lodging. Where she would go from Texas if she didn’t marry the sergeant, she had no idea.

  The docks were noisy with crowds of people, and the clatter of wagons and bellowing of cattle and oxen being loaded and unloaded from what seemed hundreds of steamboats. Jennifer watched the boats, seemingly hundreds of them docked, others steaming up and down the Mississippi, and more heading west on the Missouri. St. Louis was a primary junction for all rivers north, south, and west. This was where most people going west gathered, most of them taking the steamboats because the railroads went no farther than Kansas and were very expensive.

  Black slaves loaded and unloaded cargo. Carriages clattered by, children laughed and cried, chickens in cages squawked and clucked. Jennifer watched a group of soldiers disembark one steamboat, and it reminded her how close the country was to splitting apart. It seemed another good reason to get away from St. Louis. Heaven only knew what could happen here. More soldiers were being pulled out of the west and brought back east in case of trouble, and she wondered if Sergeant Enders would be among them. What if she got all the way out to Fort Stockton, only to find he had been sent back east? Surely he was quite sure he would remain in Texas, since he had already sent the money.

  She wondered if he sympathized with the North, or with the South. It mattered little to her, except that she thought slavery was wrong. At least that was one thing her uncle agreed with. For now, the slavery issue was the least of her worries. She only knew she could not spend many more nights under her uncle’s roof. The maid always left at night, and there would be no one there but her and Uncle John—no one to hear her scream for help or to hear her tears of humiliation.

  She hurried to an office that read TICKETS—NEW ORLEANS. She went inside, again watching the crowds to be sure she saw no one she knew. Her uncle let her out of the house so little that she was not a familiar face in town. She asked about tickets to New Orleans and connections to a stage that could take her to Fort Stockton, Texas.

  “Not many people headed that way these days,” the man replied. “Seems like a lot of folks are coming back East because they think they’re going to fight a war.” He studied his connections. “Well, there’s a boat out of New Orleans that goes through the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston. Then you can catch the San Antonio-San Diego stage line—goes all the way from Houston to southern California, right by Fort Stockton—barring Indian trouble, that is.”

  “That’s what I want then.”

  The man scowled. “You sure about this, ma’am? I mean, you going alone?”

  “Yes. And I’m sure. My…my brother is at Fort Stockton. Our mother has died, and I’m going out to be with him now.”

  The man sniffed, writing something down. “If you say so. That’s pretty dangerous country once you leave San Antonio—lots of Comanche renegades in the area.”

  “I’ll be all right. My brother is sending an escort to meet me
in San Antonio,” she lied.

  The man did some figuring. “That trip runs three hundred twenty-five dollars—five fifty to go all the way to California.”

  Jennifer’s heart fell. She would have to spend twenty-five dollars of her own money. “That…seems like a lot.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, but that’s what it costs. The stage line jacks the fare up when there’s Indian trouble—have to pay their drivers more for the risks they take. It’s not so much when you figure how far you’re going—including the steamboat trips. And the boat fare does include two meals a day. I can’t guarantee how good the food is, though.”

  “What about the stage line?”

  “Food? You’ll have to buy your own at the stage stops.”

  Again the tears wanted to come. She would have to spend even more of her own money, leaving her little to offer Sergeant Enders if she chose not to marry him. “It doesn’t matter,” she told the man. “Just get me there.”

  His eyebrows arched. “To each his own. Name?”

  She hesitated. Uncle John might check here once he knew she was missing. He could track her down if she used her own name. “Charlotte,” she answered, “Charlotte Eyre.” She spelled the last name for him. Having just finished Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, she quickly came up with the name from a mixture of the two. The man wrote down her name, and she began counting out the money. She used the paper money she had received after cashing in the bank draft Enders had sent her, as well as some of her own paper money. As long as it was still good for now, she decided to use that up first. “When would I leave?” she asked.

  “Day after tomorrow, about 9 A.M.”

  “Fine.” Her aunt’s funeral was tomorrow. A lot of people would be in the house, cooking and such after the funeral. Aunt Esther had been a popular, well-liked woman. She had a lot of friends. Already Jennifer was thinking of how she might be able to talk one or two lady friends into staying over that night to “watch over” her “grieving” uncle.

  The man handed her the tickets. She shoved them into her purse, her heart racing with her daring plan. She could only pray it would work. Now all she had to do was leave the house very early the morning of her departure. Uncle John was a heavy drinker, which she knew would work to her advantage. The day of the funeral he was certain to down a good deal of whiskey, which meant he would sleep late into the next morning. She would be headed down the Mississippi on the steamboat before he realized she was gone.

  “You sure about this, son?” Lester Morrow watched his adopted son pace. He seemed always restless and unsettled, which Lester attributed to his Indian blood. Wade Morrow was twenty-six now, a tall, handsome young man with the dark skin, high cheekbones, and straight, black hair of an Indian; but the taller build and deep blue eyes of a white man.

  “I’m sure. You need me to go to San Antonio anyway. I’ll see what I can do about setting up a new connection there for the freight line, and on my way back I’m going to see what I can find out.”

  Lester’s heart ached at the thought that he could actually lose this young man to that part of Wade Morrow that belonged to another world. He and Vivian had both dreaded this day, but they knew Wade had the right to find out whatever he could about his Indian family if that was what he wanted.

  “I’d make the trip myself, but these bones are getting old. Coming here to Tucson is as far away as I like to get from your mother and brothers,” Lester told Wade. “If we do expand the business, it will be up to you and Henry and Billy to keep it going and do the traveling.” He eyed Wade closely. “If you’re still a part of this family after you check things out in Texas.”

  Wade turned to face the white man he had called father—the only father he had ever known. They shared a hotel room in Yuma, having gone there on business. Lester Morrow’s dream of a successful freighting business had come true. Morrow Freighting Services was the biggest of its kind in the Southwest, and Lester had built his wife the grand home he had promised her. Their wealth was considerable, and Wade had been allowed to be as much a part of that business as Vivian and Lester Morrow’s blood sons. Since Wade had already been a part of the family when Henry and Billy were born, there was no animosity on the part of Wade’s two white brothers toward him. They had grown up knowing Wade as a brother, and the loving atmosphere of the Morrow home, especially their Christian upbringing by Vivian Morrow, had kept the brothers close.

  “I’ll always be a part of this family, Pa,” Wade answered. “I intend to come back. But I’ve been haunted by this curiosity about my Indian side for years, especially after you told me I might have been a twin.”

  Lester sighed, his heart heavy. “Wade, you might have Comanche blood, but you don’t know anything about them.”

  “I’ve learned a lot from the scouts I’ve ridden with all these years taking our freight wagons back and forth to El Paso. I know most of my experience has been with the Papago and Navajo—but I’ve also had some experience with the Apache, who aren’t a lot different from the Comanche.”

  “The Comanche are even more bloodthirsty.” Lester saw the hurt in Wade’s eyes. “I know I’m talking about people of your own blood, but we have to be realistic, Wade. You can learn the Comanche tongue from the scouts, and listen all you want about their way of life and all—but to actually ride into one of their camps is different. Besides, most of them are on reservations now, and those that aren’t are wilder and more vicious than ever. They’re renegades, struggling to stay alive. To them you would probably be just as much an enemy as any white man. After twenty-six years, what difference does it make any more, Wade?”

  Wade plunked down in a chair in the corner of the room, his long legs sprawling out in front of him. “It just does, that’s all. I can at least try to find out something. It’s like…there’s this whole other side to me I don’t know anything about.”

  Lester ran a hand through his hair, coming away from a window to sit down on the bed. “Maybe you’re better off not knowing.”

  Their eyes held. “Maybe,” Wade answered. “I’m a big boy now, Pa. I can handle it. And I’m sure I can handle the Comanche. I’ve learned a lot about them from old Gabe Sanders. I can speak their tongue pretty good and I have a pretty good idea about their customs.” He took a thin paper from his pocket and a tobacco pouch from a nearby table and began rolling a cigarette.

  Lester studied the young man lovingly. He had not thought he could love the Indian baby Vivian had insisted on keeping that night in Texas twenty-six years ago, but the boy had turned out to be bright and handsome and loving. Vivian had loved him like her own almost instantly, and Lester had never been able to bring himself to give the boy away while he was still a baby. Soon it was too late to even consider such a thing, too late not only for Vivian, but for himself.

  “There’s something else to think about,” he spoke up.

  Wade lit the cigarette, taking a drag and leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t like to hurt you, Wade, but you know how some whites have treated you. It hasn’t been easy for you, I know that. We’ve never gone as far as Texas before with the freighting business. You could get treated even worse there, being part Comanche. The word Comanche leaves a pretty bitter taste in the mouth of most Texans—the words Comanche and hate mean the same thing. You being educated and raised by whites won’t make any difference to most of them.”

  Wade looked down at the cigarette in his fingers. “I know that. I’ve been handling whites all my life. I’ll be all right.”

  “I wish you’d wait for Henry or Billy to come along. I can send one of them when I get back.”

  “No. I want to make the San Antonio deal alone, Pa. I want to show you I can run this business as well as you or my brothers. As far as stopping off in west Texas on my way back, it’s something I have to do, Pa.” He met the man’s eyes. “I guess with you knowing both sides of your own family, you can’t completely understand why I have to do this. It’s hell
not knowing the truth about your past. And to think I could have a twin brother out there somewhere among the Comanche just makes it all the harder.”

  “And if you find him?”

  Wade took another quiet drag on the cigarette. “I don’t even know. I guess I’d just feel better meeting him—knowing he exists.”

  “It could be very dangerous. The Comanche consider twins a bad omen. By all rights you should have both been destroyed at birth. You could not only be risking your life, but also that of the twin brother, if he even exists. After all the fighting between the Comanche and the Texas settlers, the man could have been killed off long ago. Or he could have died from natural causes before he even grew up. The Comanche lead a hard life, Wade. It’s a miracle any of them survive to adulthood.”

  “I know. I might not find out anything at all, but I’ll feel better trying.”

  Lester began pulling off his boots. “Things could work out the other way. You might be welcomed by them—might find out the life of the wild renegade suits you.”

  Wade laughed lightly. “Pa, I was raised differently. Oh, I like my freedom—like being out there in the mountains and the deserts riding guard with the freight wagons and all that—but I’m not about to paint my face and go raiding and killing innocent people.”

  “To the Comanche they aren’t innocent. Those Indians have just as much reason to do what they do as the whites. It’s a vicious circle—constant revenge. I don’t know how or when it will ever really end.” The man set aside his boots. “But I do know you have a restless spirit, son, and without any Indian upbringing, you’ve chosen to let your hair grow long.”