Anita Mills Read Online Free PDF

taking out carefully folded banknotes.
    “Eighteen dollars to Columbus,” he said without looking up.
    “Eighteen dollars just to Columbus?” Verena gasped. “Why, that’s outrageous!”
    “Yes’m.” If he had a nickel for every time he’d heard the complaint, he’d own the railroad. “But if you’re going to Columbus, you’ll have to pay it.”
    “How much more to San Angelo? Perhaps you didn’t hear me right, but I need to buy a ticket to San Angelo, which I understand is some distance past San Antonio. Columbus is this side of it, isn’t it?”
    “Yep, but that’s as far as the train goes.” Stamping her ticket, he repeated, “Eighteen dollars.”
    She didn’t have to count her money to know she only had sixty-seven dollars left. And even with her return ticket from New Orleans to Philadelphia paid, she had a sinking feeling that unless she realized some money from her father’s estate, she was going to be alone and broke in Texas. Right now, she could think of no worse place to be stranded. But she’d come this far, and she had to go on.
    “I don’t suppose you know how I’m supposed to get to San Angelo, do you?” she asked wearily.
    “Have to take the stage at Columbus.”
    “For eighteen dollars, the train ought to go all the way. How much is it for the stage?”
    The fellow shrugged. “Can’t say—never took it. All I know is the stage line don’t go that far neither. It stops ’bout twenty miles t’other side of San Antone.”
    It took a moment to digest that; then she declared positively, “You must be mistaken. I was given to understand that there was transportation all the way to EI Paso, and I believe that’s clear across this state.”
    “Well, there used to be a stage to El Paso, but it ain’t running now. Injuns,” he explained succinctly.
    “Then just how am I supposed to get to San Angelo?” she demanded. “On horseback by myself?”
    He shrugged again. “I reckon most folks try and get a ride on one of the mail wagons going across to the forts—San Angelo’s right by Concho. If I was you, I’d go into Concho, then cross over the river there. Put you right in the place, what there is of it.”
    “I see.” But she didn’t. Where she came from, trains went everywhere, and it didn’t seem possible that there wasn’t even a stagecoach line out here. Indians didn’t seem to be a sufficient explanation.
    “You’ll probably have to spend a few days in San Antone, though,” the clerk added more kindly. “The mail don’t go out but two or three times a week, and that’s if the weather’s good. If it ain’t, it don’t go that often.”
    “But I’d hoped to be there by Tuesday next. I have an appointment,” she said desperately. “Surely—I mean, there’s got to be another way.”
    “No’m. Mebbe you’ll make it—and mebbe you won’t,” he observed philosophically. “Like I said, it depends on the weather—and the damned heathen Comanches. Seems like they’re always stirring up something out there.”
    “I thought they didn’t come that close to settlements.”
    “Humph! And why d’you think there’s forts out there? Why, them Comanches has even been here, which is about as far east as a body can go. And this is a real town, which San Angelo ain’t.”
    “You’re just trying to scare a Yankee,” she decided.
    “No’m. Them Comanches does it for us. Why, they don’t think nothing of raiding all the way down into Mexico. Like I was saying, they been right here afore the war.”
    “Well, that was quite some time ago,” she said, reassuring herself.
    “Ma’am, the U.S. government just got done building Concho, and it sure wasn’t so’s the Army could watch rustlers,” he countered. “And like I said, San Angelo’s right smack across the river there.”
    “Then I’d think it’d be safe.”
    “Well, it ain’t. Them Comanches has been known to steal U.S. government horses right out of the pens—right under the soldiers’