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hem of her heavy black wool coat. The coat was so heavy that the extra weight would not be noticed if someone picked it up. The same coat was now her blanket on this journey west.
    She kept herself from fingering the coins for fear of drawing attention to them. What wealth. More than enough to buy a ticket back for Joel, for she doubted that her father would find the money to buy the boy a ticket and send it to her in Medora.
    Once they left the mountains, the trip was indeed more comfortable, just as the conductor had assured her. She looked with delight out the windows at the passing scenery—bare trees, lakes rimmed with ice, sleeping fields and smoke rising from chimneys on farms and in villages. Since she had never traveled farther from her home than Smithville, where she sold her wares and attended church, the expanse of the country was a constant awe to her.
    The power and heat of the steel plants in Pittsburgh hinted at the fires of hell. The black soot that hung in the air assured her of it. How could people live and work in such a place? Changing trains set her heart to pounding while the smoke brought on a coughing fit. When she was finally on the correct train heading west—she’d checked her ticket several times and asked the conductor to make sure she was on the right train—she could breathe freely again. Rationing the food she’d brought in her basket made her stomach growl in resentment, but the fear of running out of money before she returned home made her drink more coffee from the pot on the heating stove in the middle of the car.
    She knit her way through the tenements of Chicago, anything to distract her from the squalor she’d read about but could barely believe even when she saw it: a woman in rags standing on an iron stair of the third floor of a brick building, smoking a cigarillo, a small boy at her feet, with not enough railing to keep the child from falling to his death. A line of raggedy clothing looped from the railing, behind which the woman stood talking to another.
    A woman smoking. Ishda . Colleen wanted to scream out the window. Take care of that child; you are fortunate to have one . But if the window did indeed open, she’d not let the frigid air in. Snow on roofs and icicles hanging spoke to the cold. The stockyards had seemed to go on for miles, myriads of cattle, some with horns, some not, in a patchwork of corrals with a stench strong enough to permeate the train.
    At the train station she ordered a bowl of soup at the counter that served lines of travelers. Shaking her head over the exorbitant price, she took her plate with bowl and a slice of bread over to one of the tables. A man stepped back and bumped her arm, sloshing her soup.
    “Oh, excuse me, ma’am.” He eyed her hat, which was, as usual, fighting the battle to be free of her hatpins, and smiled. “I hope that wasn’t so hot as to burn you.”
    “No, no. Not at all.” She set her plate on the table and used the napkin to mop her gloved thumb. “Just messy.”
    “I am sorry.” He tipped his hat and strode off. Other than the conductor, he was the first person to speak to her in three days.
    She ate her hearty bean soup, the smell of ham and beans reminding her of the smokehouse at home. Was her father keeping the fires stoked? Had he fed the livestock? Of course he had. While he was inclined to laziness, he would not hurt the animals that provided their livelihood—would he? A pang of homesickness caused her to choke on her soup. Tears burned behind her eyes, so she had to blow her nose in one of the handkerchiefs she’d hemmed herself. How quickly would she be able to reach Medora, find Joel, and head back home? She listened to the voice announcing the trains that were loading and departing. When she heard the voice call for Minneapolis/St. Paul, she quickly finished her soup and tucked the bread into her carpetbag to eat later.
    Waiting in line to board, she watched the people around her. Reverend Landers