An Uninvited Bride on his Doorstep by Ava Winters
Chapter One
Bonner Springs, Kansas
1875
“Wooo-wooo! Woooo-ooooo!”
A sudden gust of air from an approaching storm riffled Rose Alston’s blonde hair and sent a few stray sprigs floating on the breeze as she stood waiting on the train depot platform. She was a pretty, fresh-faced blonde, just eighteen, holding a bouquet of daisies.
Her companion was an elderly woman with her white hair pulled back into a severe bun. She adjusted the lace collar on Rose’s blue cotton dress. “Stand still, girl,” she clucked. “Fidgeting won’t make that train get here any faster.”
“I wish it’d hurry up, Miss Barrett.”
A second distant wail announced the slow approach of the small, dark smudge on the rim of the Kansas horizon. Another train boarding at the station suddenly blasted the platform with steam as if in reply, and it distracted Rose’s attention, but only momentarily. Her eyes returned to the tiny light on the horizon and the black clouds gathering above it. A vivid flick of lightning branched across the sky in the distance.
“Looks like a Noah rain coming,” Rose sighed glumly, and kicked the depot platform with a small, booted foot. “We’re going to get sopping wet in that buckboard on the way home.”
“Well, it can’t be helped,” her neighbor replied sturdily. “And it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Rose glanced at her unhappily, and then at a pair of young men standing on the platform a few feet away. One of them caught her glance, lifted his dark brown cowboy hat, and smiled. Rose dimpled in reply and waved slightly until her neighbor’s long fingers pinched her arm. She winced slightly, gave Miss Barrett a guilty glance, and turned her attention back to the horizon.
The silence stretched out as the distant train inched toward them, and the older woman finally murmured, “Did your aunt promise to bring you something back from the state fair?”
Rose smiled and shrugged. “Stories, I guess. That prize she won only covered her train fare and the boarding house. She had to buy her own food, and she didn’t have much money for that. I hope she brings back a postcard or two, though, so we can see what the fair looked like.”
The corners of the older woman’s mouth curled up. “Your Aunt Audrey makes the best blackberry pie in Kansas, and she has for years. She deserved that trip to the state fair, and I’m glad she won it.”
Rose turned to look up at her and smiled. “So am I.”
They watched as the tiny light slowly became bigger. It seemed to take the train forever to reach them, but it was hard to judge distance on the Kansas plain. The land was so flat you could see objects a hundred miles away.
Rose glanced over her shoulder and smiled to see that the young cowboy had inched a step or two closer. He caught her eye again and lifted his hat slightly.
“Waiting for somebody, miss?”
Rose smiled at him. “My Aunt Audrey. She’s coming back from the state fair.”
“They do say it’s a sight,” the young man agreed. “I got a friend who went there and saw an elephant. He said it’s the best place to eat in Kansas. All kinds of food from all over the state.”
Rose’s mouth fell slightly open, and her companion cleared her throat and gave the young man a short, straight look.
“Are you going to see the fair?” Rose ventured shyly, and the young man shook his head. “No, miss. Wish I was, but…I’m bound for Kansas City. I got a job at the stockyards. I’m just waiting to board the train.”
Rose smiled at him, then glanced at the train parked a stone’s throw down the tracks. Passengers were disembarking, and the porters were preparing to let the new passengers board.
“Oh.”
“Kinda wish I didn’t have to go now, though,” the young man grinned, and Rose’s disapproving neighbor coughed again.
They waited, watching the horizon, as the breeze freshened and ruffled hat feathers and dress hems. A sudden peal of thunder rolled across the sky like a bowling ball, and lightning flicked again. Suddenly big drops of rain hit the depot roof like fingers on a drum, and the small crowd waiting on the platform moved back to avoid getting freckled by stray drops.
The porters helped the last disembarking passengers off the waiting train, then climbed up again to clean out the cars. The crowd waiting on the platform slowly grew, and a few minutes later a uniformed porter climbed down and called:
“Kansas City run, boarding in fifteen minutes! Kansas City!”
Rose stepped up a pace. “When is the other train arriving, sir? The one out yonder?” she asked.
The elderly porter nodded toward the approaching train. “Any minute by the look of it, miss.”
Rose glanced toward the horizon and, to her surprise, the train had suddenly become much bigger. She could see the locomotive clearly now, and the gigantic plume of steam belching from its smokestack. The deep thrum of the wheels was clearly audible now, and the ground trembled slightly at the train’s approach.
Rose tilted her head slightly and frowned. She wasn’t an expert on trains, but this one seemed to be moving very fast.
The cowboy at her elbow echoed her thoughts. “What is wrong with that thing?” he muttered and stuck his hands on his hips. “It’s flying low!”
All three of them watched in frowning confusion as the engine came on, blasting steam to the sky and shaking the boards beneath their feet. The porter looked up, looked again, and suddenly scrambled off the platform and dashed for the switch.
“It’s a runaway!” the cowboy shouted, and the people on the platform screamed and scattered in panic as the approaching engine barreled toward the parked train. Rose watched in fascinated horror as the engineer and porters leaped from the motionless train and sprinted off in every direction.
“Come on!”
The cowboy grabbed hers and Miss Barrett’s arm, and hustled them down off the platform, out into the rain, and as far behind the depot building as they could run.
“Get down!” he shouted.
The cowboy shoved Rose to the ground and threw himself across her as the runaway train’s thunder filled the air. When she tried to look up, all she could see were her daisies, scattered in the grass around her. The next instant, there was a huge bang and a long, ear-splitting screech that made Rose’s head throb, followed by an explosion that blew the depot apart like a matchstick toy. Fierce heat blazed in the air around them, broken boards rained down from the sky, and bang after bang after bang made it clear that train cars were crashing into one another and flying off the tracks.
Rose squeezed her eyes closed and screamed in terror, and the cowboy pushed her into the ground so hard she got grit in her teeth, but all she could think of was her helpless aunt on one of those train cars that were getting smashed from behind or slammed off the rails.
“Aunt Audrey!” she sobbed, then screamed again as a train car came sliding by not ten yards away, plowing up the ground before tilting over onto its side with a thunderous crash and a tinkle of broken window glass.
Rose’s shoulders heaved with sobs, but she could feel the cowboy’s weight lifting off of her. Immediately sheets of rain plastered her hair to her head and ran down into her eyes.
“Are you all right, miss?”
She nodded because she couldn’t speak.
He scrambled over to check her neighbor. “Ma’am? Ma’am?”
Miss Barrett raised her head slowly and gasped. She was soaking wet.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I think so,” the old woman quavered.
“I’m going to check on that train car,” the young man told them. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
There was a scrambling sound, and when Rose lifted her head, he was already climbing up onto the wrecked car. An instant later he disappeared inside.
Rose panted in terror but raised her eyes. The depot roof had been blown clean off, and what was left of the building was jagged and on fire. Burning boards and broken glass were all around her, and to her horror, the sound of moans and cries were beginning to rise all around her.
Her elderly neighbor dragged herself over to her side and put an arm around her shoulder. Rose looked up and moaned. “Miss Barrett, your face is bleeding!”
The older woman put a hand to her brow. “It’s just a cut,” she muttered. “Flying glass.”
Another man ran up to them. “You ladies all right?” he asked.
Miss Barrett looked up at him. “We’re all right.”
“Can you stand up?”
“You’ll have to help me, I think,” the older woman grunted, and the man leaned over and helped her to her feet.
Rose staggered up slowly, and the man turned to her. “You ladies come with me. I’m gathering up the women to go back to town.”
“But my aunt is on that train!” Rose cried, then half-sobbed. “We have to find her. We can’t leave here without her!”
The pity in the man’s eyes made Rose’s widen in fear. “Don’t worry, young miss,” he told her softly. “We’ll find your aunt. But this is a job for the men folks.”
Miss Barrett put an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, Rose.”
“But what about Aunt Audrey?”
“We’ll find her,” the man soothed. “Come on now.”
Rose looked around the depot yard in dazed confusion. “Where’s the boy who helped us?”
The man glanced back at her over his shoulder as he helped her elderly companion. “What boy, miss?”
“There was a young man who helped us get off the platform,” Miss Barrett explained, then added, “I expect he’s off helping folks get out of the train cars, Rose.”
“That’s right.” The man nodded, and he led the way across the yard to a knot of shivering women standing together in the pouring rain.
“I sent a boy to go chase down my buckboard,” he told them. “My horse ran off with it, but he’ll get it. See, here he comes.”
The rain was falling so hard that Rose could hardly raise her eyes to look at the approaching wagon. She trembled with shock and grief, and when she turned back to look at the track, she gasped in horror.
The two locomotives were standing almost upright, head-to-head, like a pair of bulls that had reared up and locked horns. The tenders had overturned and scattered coal over the track and the depot, and a dozen cars were smashed up all together in a knot. Some were on fire, others were lying on their sides, and the ones closest to the engines were crushed to a third of their former size.
Rose’s mouth dropped open. Men were clambering all around the train cars, breaking out windows, climbing inside; but it was plain as print that most of the people inside were dead. Even she could see that. Fire belched from dozens of windows, and some cars were crushed like tin cans.
“All right, everybody climb into the wagon,” the man’s voice was saying. “Quickly, now! We want to get you ladies out of the rain.”
The women climbed up slowly into the buckboard, sodden and crying softly. Rose helped Miss Barrett up, then followed her miserably. The elderly woman hugged her close as they huddled together.
“Be brave, Rose,” she whispered. “It’s what Audrey would have wanted.”
Rose looked up at her in dismay. “Don’t talk about her as if she’s dead!”
The wagon took off with a lurch, and the buckboard jounced down the dirt road roughly. Rose looked back over her shoulder longingly just in time to see another small fire bloom up from one of the engines.