“This is where the train stopped,” Tom replied.
Rebecca laughed again. “That’s reason enough, I suppose. Are you looking for work?”
“Well, yes, I guess I am.”
“Meet me in the lobby of the Clark Hotel tomorrow morning. Someone will be coming to fetch me from my father’s ranch. Pa is always looking for good men. I’m sure he would hire you if you are interested.”
“Hire me to do what?”
“Why, to cowboy, of course.”
“Oh. Do you think it would matter if I told l him I have never been a cowboy?”
Rebecca smiled. “Telling him you have never been a cowboy would be like telling him you have blond hair and blue eyes.”
“Oh, yes. I see what you mean.”
“It’s easy to learn to be a cowboy. Once he hears what you did for me tonight, you won’t have any trouble getting on. That is, if you want to.”
“Yes,” Tom said. “I believe I want to.”
As Rebecca lay in bed in her room at the Clark Hotel half an hour later, she wondered what had possessed her to offer a job to Tom Whitman. She had no authority to offer him a job; her father did the hiring and the firing, and he was very particular about it.
On the other hand, before she left to go to Marshall, she heard him tell Clay Ramsey that he might hire someone to replace Tony Peters, a young cowboy who had left for Nevada to tr y his hand at finding gold or silver. Rebecca had a sudden thought. What if he has already hired someone to replace Peters?
No, she was sure he had not. Her father tended to be much more methodical than to hire someone that quickly. But that same tendency of his to be methodical might also work against her, for he would not be that anxious to hire someone he knew nothing about.
Well, she would just have to talk him into it, that’s all. And surely when her father heard what Tom Whitman had done for her, he would be more than willing.
Rebecca wondered why she was so intent on getting Mr. Whitman hired? Was it because he had been her knight in shining armor, just when she needed such a hero? Or was it because he might be one of the most handsome men she had ever seen? In addition to that, there was something else about him, something she sensed more than she saw. He had a sense of poise and self-assuredness she found most intriguing.
Because Tom liked to sleep with fresh air, he had raised the window when he went to bed. He had taken a room in the same hotel as Rebecca because she had suggested the hotel to him. He was awakened by a combination of things, the sun streaming in through his open window and the sounds of commerce coming from the street below.
He could hear the sound of the clash of eras—the whir of an electric streetcar, along with the rattle and clatter of a freight wagon. From somewhere he could hear the buzz and squeal of a power saw, and the ring of steel on steel as a blacksmith worked his trade. Newspaper boys were out on the street, hawking their product.
“Paper, get the paper here! Wyoming to be admitted as state! Get your paper here!”
Tom got out of bed, shaved, then got dressed. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he frowned. He was wearing a three-piece suit, adequate dress if he wanted to apply for a job with a bank. But he was going to apply for a job as a cowboy, and his outfit would never do.
Stepping over to the window, he looked up and down Houston Street. On the opposite side, he saw the Fort Worth Mercantile Store. Leaving his suitcase in his room, he hurried downstairs, and then across the street and into the store.
A tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed mustache and garters around his sleeves stepped up to him. “Yes, sir, may help you?”
“I intend to apply for employment at a neighboring ranch,” Tom said. “And I will need clothes that are suitable for the position.”
“When you say that you are going to apply for employment, do you mean as an accountant or business manager?” the clerk asked.
“No. As a cowboy.”
The expression on the clerk’s face registered his surprise. “I beg your pardon, sir. Did you say as a cowboy?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “Why, is there a problem?”
“No, sir,” the clerk said quickly. “No problem. It is just that, well, sir, you will forgive me, but you don’t look like a cowboy.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “That’s why I’m here. I want you to make me look like a cowboy.”
“I can sell you the appropriate attire, sir,” the clerk said. “But, in truth, you still won’t look like a cowboy.”
“Try,” Tom said.
“Yes, sir.”
It took Tom no more than fifteen minutes to buy three outfits, including boots and a hat. Paying for his purchases, he returned to the hotel, packed his suit and the two extra jeans and shirts into his suitcase, then went downstairs, checked out, and took a seat in the lobby to wait for the young woman he had met last night.
As he waited for her, he recalled the conversation he had had with his father, just before he left Boston.
“You are making a big mistake by running away,” his father had told him. “You will not be able to escape your own devils.”
“I can try,” Tom said.
“Nobody is holding it against you, Tom. You did what you thought was right.”
“I did what I thought was right? I can’t even justify what I did to myself by saying that I did what I thought was right. My wife and my child are dead, and I killed them.”
“It isn’t as if you murdered them.”
“It isn’t? How is it different? Martha and the child are still dead.”
“So you are you going to run away. Is that your answer?”
“Yes, that is my answer. I need some time to sort things out. Please try to understand that.”
His father changed tactics, from challenging to persuading. “Tom, all I am asking is that you think this through. You have more potential than any student I ever taught, and I’m not saying that just because you are my son. I am saying it because it is true. Do you have any idea of the good that someone like you—a person with your skills, your talent, your education, can do?”
“I’ve seen the evil I can do when I confuse skill, talent, and education with Godlike attributes.”
His father sighed in resignation. “What time does your train leave?”
“At nine o’clock tonight.”
His father walked over to the bar and poured a glass of Scotch. He held it out toward Tom and, catching a beam of light from the electric chandelier, the amber fluid emitted a burst of gold as if the glass had captured the sun itself. “Then at least have this last, parting drink with me.”
Tom waited until his father had poured his own glass, then the two men drank to each other.
“Will you write to let me know where you are and how you are doing?”
“Not for a while,” Tom said. “I need to be away from everything that can remind me of what happened. And that means even my family.”
Surprisingly, Tom’s father smiled. “In a way, I not only don’t blame you, I envy you. I almost ran off myself, once. I was going to sail the seven seas. But my father got wind of it, and talked me out of it. I guess I wasn’t as strong as you are.”
“Nonsense, you are as strong,” Tom said. “You just never had the same devils chasing you that I do.”
Tom glanced at the big clock. It showed fifteen minutes of nine. Shouldn’t she be here by now? Had she changed her mind and already checked out? He walked over to the desk.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Whitman, may I help you?” the hotel desk clerk asked.