Текст книги "Tiger Prince "

Prologue

Promontory Point, Utah

November 25, 1869

“Wait!”

Dear God, he hadn't heard her. He was still striding across the wooden platform toward the train. In a moment he would be out of reach.

Panic soared through Jane Barnaby and she broke into a run, the faded skirts of her calico gown ballooning behind her. Ignoring the pain caused by the ice shards piercing her feet through the holes in the thin soles of her boots, she tore through ice-coated mud puddles down the wheel-rutted street toward the platform over a hundred yards away. "Please! Don't go!”

Patrick Reilly's expression was only a blur in the post-dawn grayness, but he must have heard her call, for he hesitated for an instant before continuing toward the train, his long legs quickly covering the distance between the station house and the passenger railway car.

He was leaving her.

Fear caught in her throat, and she desperately tried to put on more speed. The train was already vibrating, puffing, flexing its metal muscles as it prepared to spring forward down the track. "Wait for me!"

He kept his face turned straight ahead, ignoring her.

Anger, fired by desperation, flared within her and she bellowed, "Dammit, do you hear me? Don't you dare get on that train!"

He stopped in midstride, his big shoulders braced militantly beneath the gray-checked coarse wool of his coat. He turned with a frown to watch her dashing toward him down the platform.

She skidded to a stop before him. "I'm goin' with you."

"The hell you are. I told you last night at Frenchie's you were to stay here."

"You gotta take me."

"I don't have to do nothin'." He scowled down at her. "Go back to your ma. She'll be looking for you."

"No, she won't." She took a step closer to him. "You know all she cares about is her pipe. She don't care where I am. She won't mind if I go with you."

He shook his head.

"You know it's true." Jane moistened her lips. "I'm goin' with you. She doesn't want me. She never wanted me."

"Well, I don't want you eith—" A flush deepened his already ruddy cheeks, and his Irish brogue thickened as he said awkwardly, "No offense, but I don't have no use for a kid in my life."

"I'm not so little, I'm almost twelve." It was only a small lie; she had just turned eleven, but he probably wouldn't remember that. She took another step closer. "You gotta take me. I belong to you."

"How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not your father."

"My mother said it was most likely you." She touched a strand of the curly red hair flopping about her thin face. "Our hair is the same, and you visited her a lot before she went on the pipe."

"So did half the men of the Union Pacific." His expression softened as he suddenly knelt in front of her. "Lots of Irishmen have red hair, Jane. Hell, I can name four men on my own crew who used to be Pearl's regulars. Why not pick on one of them?"

Because she desperately wanted it to be him. He was kinder to her than any of the other men who paid her mother for her body. Patrick Reilly was drunk more than he was sober when he came to Frenchie's tent, but he never hurt the women like some men did and even treated Jane with a rough affection whenever he saw her around. "It's you." Her jaw set stubbornly. "You can't know for certain it's not you."

His jaw set with equal obstinacy. "And you don't know for certain it is me. So why don't you go back to Frenchie's and leave me alone? Christ, I wouldn't even know how to take care of you."

"Take care of me?" She stared at him in bewilderment. "Why should you do that? I take care of myself."

For an instant a flicker of compassion crossed his craggy features. "I guess you've had to do enough of that all right. With your ma sucking on that damn opium pipe and growing up in that pimp's hovel."

She immediately pounced on the hint of softening. "I won't be a bother to you. I don't eat much and I'll stay out of your way." He was beginning to frown again, and she went on hurriedly. "Except when you have something for me to do, of course. I'm a hard worker. Ask anyone at Frenchie's. I empty slops and help in the kitchen. I sweep and mop and run errands. I can count and take care of money. Frenchie even has me time the customers on Saturday night and tell them when they've had their money's worth." She grasped his arm. "I promise I'll do anything you want me to do. Just take me with you."

"Hell, you don't under—" He was silent a moment, gazing at her pleading face before muttering, "Look, I'm a railroad man. It's all I know and my job here is over now that the tracks have been joined. I've got an offer to boss my own crew in Salisbury and that's a big chance for an ignorant mick like me. Salisbury's way across the ocean in England. You don't want to go that far away."

"Yes, I do. I don't care where we go." Her small hand tightened on his arm. "Try me. I promise you won't be sorry."

"The devil I won't be sorry." His tone was suddenly impatient as he shook off her grasp and rose to his feet. "I won't be saddled with no whore's kid for the rest of my life. Go back to Frenchie's." He started toward the train again.

The rejection frightened but didn't surprise her. She had been rejected all her life by everyone but the inhabitants of Frenchie's crib and had learned long ago she wasn't like the children of the respectable wives who followed the railroad crews from town to town. They belonged in a world of clean crisp gowns, Saturday night baths, and church on Sunday mornings while she . . .

Jane felt suddenly sick as memories flooded back to her of the lantern-lit haze of Frenchie's tent, where the cots were separated only by dirty blankets hung on sagging ropes, the sweetish smell of the opium her mother smoked from the funny-looking glass bowl by her cot, Frenchie's hard palm striking her cheek when she wasn't quick enough to do his bidding.

She couldn't go back to that now that escape was so near.

Her nails dug into her palms as her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "It will do you no good to leave me. I'll only follow you."

He reached the train and placed his left foot on the metal step.

"I will. You belong to me."

"The hell I do."

"I'll follow you to this Saddlebury and—"

"Salisbury, and you'd have to swim the goddamn ocean."

"I'll do it. I'll find a way. You'll see that I'll find a way to—" Her voice broke and she had to stop.

"Dammit." His head lowered, his gaze fixed on the ridged metal of the step. "Why the hell do you have to be so damned stubborn?"

"Take me," she whispered. She did not know what else to say, what to offer him. "Please. If I stay, I'm scared someday I'll be like her. I ... don't like it there."

He stood there, his shoulders hunched as moment after moment passed. "Oh, what the hell!" He whirled, jumped back down on the platform. His big, freckled hands grasped her waist and he effortlessly picked her up and lifted her onto the train. "Jesus, you're tiny. You don't weigh anything at all."

Had he given in? She was afraid to believe it. "That doesn't matter. I'm small for my age, but I'm very strong."

"You'd better be. I guess you can trail along, but it don't mean anything. I'm not your father and you'll call me Patrick like anybody else."

"Patrick," she repeated obediently.

"And you'll damn well earn your keep."

"If you say so." She held tight to the iron guardrail as the relief pouring through her made her dizzy with delight. "You won't be sorry. I'll make it up to you. There's nothing I won't do to make it—"

"Wait here and I'll talk to the conductor about letting you on board." He turned away from her. "Christ, he'll probably make me buy a ticket for you. I spend years building this damn railroad and now they make me pay hard cash for—"

"Two tickets."

He stopped and slowly turned back to her. His tone was ominously soft. "Two tickets?"

She braced herself. "Li Sung." She lifted her arm and waved it at the small, thin young man who had been following her and now stood waiting in the shadow of the station house. "He's goin' too." At her signal the Chinese boy limped forward, carrying a knapsack and a worn, dilapidated carpet bag. "He's my friend. He won't be any trouble."

"No trouble? He's a cripple."

"He can cook," she said quickly. "You know he can cook. You had some of his stew once at Frenchie's. And he's smarter than almost anyone I know. He's teaching me to read and cipher and knows all about herbs and—"

"No," Patrick said flatly. "I ain't draggin' no cripple along. The chink goes back."

"He has to go with us." He was scowling again. What if he changed his mind and sent her away too? Yet she couldn't leave Li Sung. She went on urgently. "You're letting me go along and Li Sung is seventeen, almost a man. He'll be able to help you more than—" Patrick's expression wasn't softening. "He won't bother you. I'll take care of him."

Patrick looked at her incredulously.

"I can do it. Just buy him a ticket." She whispered, "Please."

"You think I'm made of money?"

"I can't leave without him. Frenchie does terrible things to him."

Li Sung stopped beside them, his glance going from Jane's face to Patrick's. "I am going?"

Jane gazed pleadingly at Patrick.

"Dammit to hell." Patrick whirled and started down the platform toward the uniformed conductor who was talking to the engineer in his cab. "Only as far as Omaha. I'll be damned if I tote him with me any farther."

Jane's breath escaped in a little rush. "It's all right. Get on the train, Li Sung." "Where is this Omaha?"

"A long way, I think." Jane was a bit vague about that too. "And by that time I'll think of a way to make him keep you with us all the way. He's not a hard man."

Li Sung smiled bitterly. "But he is Irish and the Irish do not like my race."

"I'll find a way," Jane repeated. "Just stay out of his sight for a while."

As she opened the door to the passenger coach, she felt the floor suddenly vibrate beneath her feet and froze in alarm. The motion felt . . . odd. Though she could not remember a time when she had not been dragged with her mother from tent city to tent city as Frenchie followed the construction crews who laid the tracks, she had never actually been on a train before.

Li Sung nodded understandingly as he met her gaze. "Much power. I can see why they call it the iron horse."

She shook her head. "It's more like the dragons you told me about, breathing fire and smoke and swishing their tails." She went on down the aisle ahead of him. "We'll get used to it."

Li Sung nodded as he set the knapsacks on the rack above her head and the carpet bag beside her. "If it is possible to become used to dragons."

"It's possible." She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. The air smelled of stale cigars and the fresh-cut wood and coal in the fuel box by the stove at the front of the car. She must become accustomed to the vibration, the scents, the noise that was to make up this new life. "It's going to be all right, Li Sung. You'll see, we're going to be—"

A mournful whimper suddenly issued from the carpet bag.

"Oh, damn, I hoped he'd stay asleep." Jane glanced furtively out the window and saw Patrick still arguing with the conductor. She quickly opened the carpet bag. Immediately a brown and white muzzle poked into view. She gently stroked the soft fur on the head of the scrawny beagle pup. "Hush, not now. No noise."

"I told you not to bring the stray."

Her head lifted and she glared fiercely at Li Sung. "Sam's only six weeks old. Frenchie would have let him starve like he did his mother and the other pups. I had to bring him."

A small smile lit Li Sung's sallow face as he nodded resignedly. "I know, it is your nature. Still, your father will not be pleased."

"He doesn't know . . . yet." She quickly closed the carpet bag and thrust it at Li Sung. "You'd better take him up to the front of the car and stay there until I come for you."

Li Sung shrugged and took the carpet bag. "He will probably throw me and the pup off the train."

"No, he won't. I won't let him. I'll just convince him we'll need a guard dog in—" She paused a minute, trying to remember the name of the town for which they were destined. "Salisbury."

"And how will you do that?"

"I'll just keep at him and never give up." She set her jaw. "If you want something bad enough, you can make it happen. You just keep on going until everybody else gets tired of fighting."

"Let us hope he grows weary before we reach this Omaha." Li Sung limped down the aisle toward the far end of the car.

Her father had finished his discussion with the conductor and was striding down the platform, his expression distinctly displeased.

Father. She must remember not to call him that, she thought wistfully. He would not acknowledge her as kin, and it would only anger him. Perhaps, if she worked very hard, if she made herself useful enough, someday he would let her use the word.

The piercing blast of the whistle made her jump and then grab hold of the wooden seat as the train lurched forward.

She heard Patrick's obscene exclamation as he loped the last few yards, jumped for the steps, and pulled himself on the train.

Steam frosted the cold air outside the window as the black dragon began to glide slowly away from the hastily erected shacks and weather-stained tents that was Promontory Point.

Fear caught and held Jane as she saw the scenes flying by and realized everything she had ever known was vanishing before her eyes.

"Want to go back?"

She looked up to see her fath—Patrick standing beside her, his expression hopeful. "I can send you home once we reach the next stop."

"No."

"Last chance."

Promontory Point vanished from view as if it had never been, and suddenly her fear also vanished. "No." She did not really know much about homes, but she was sure Frenchie's had never been one. Her father was a railroad man who moved from place to place, so perhaps this puffing, roaring dragon they were riding would be her home from then on. If so, she must learn everything about it and make it her own. Yes, that was what she must do; her father loved the railroad and it must become as much a part of her as it was of him.

She settled gingerly back on the hard seat and deliberately tried to relax her tense muscles. "I'm not goin' back. I was just a little scared for a minute, but I'm all right now."

He muttered something beneath his breath and dropped onto the seat next to her.

She closed her eyes and listened to the rumble of the wheels on the iron track. Slowly, gradually, she became aware of a rhythm in the metal clatter like the beat of a giant heart, a cadence in the hissing of the steam that was vaguely soothing. Perhaps the dragon wasn't so fierce after all. Perhaps, in time, he would let her befriend him and learn all his secrets. . . .