Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

 (Been able to do some of my own writing, this weekend – Sunset and Steel Rails is proceeding apace; the tale of young Sophia Brewer — who has taken the surname of Teague and gone west as a Harvey Girl. Being a woman focused on her career, and still traumatized from what happened when her older brother gaslighted her, back in Boston … she does not realize that she is being quietly courted by Fredi Steinmetz – some forty years her senior and the owner of a nascent ranch near Deming, New Mexico, in the mid-1890s. She also does not realize at this point that she is connected to the Vinings of Austin. Because – her grandfather, Horace “Race” Vining – had two wives. Simultaneously. Not the done thing, in the 19th century.)

Frank Thurmond, at the reins of the buggy, followed Mr. Steinmetz’ horse, going up a narrow and dusty track which first crossed the arroyo and then re-crossed it so many times that Sophia lost track. A thin trickle of water ran from pool to pool somewhere in the center of a stretch of tumbled rock and gravel, as the narrow worn track mounted gradually into the foothills. The abrupt and jagged slopes of a brief mountain range frowned down upon them from above – hard blue shapes, as craggy as if chipped from slabs of glass.

Almost imperceptibly, their party had mounted up into the foothills – still gently rounded hills, hardly worth the name, but the horses were at some little effort to pull, and by this Sophia knew they were going up. They came around to the top of a low knoll, and there appeared a distant aspect of Deming some distance and below, lay out to their eyes as if in a life-sized bird’s eye view map. The sun struck distant silver glints from the turning windmill wheels – that and a few birds wheeling on motionless wings high in the sky above being the only sign of life.

“Only a little farther,” Mr. Steinmetz reined in, and spoke over his shoulder. “See the top of that tree? There are a couple of cottonwoods up there, by the only year-round spring that I can find. I’ve come up sometimes of an early morning, hunting venison, but haven’t bagged one yet. I always change my mind about shooting them, when all they want is a nice cool drink of water.”

“You’re disgustingly sentimental, Fred,” Frank Thurmond observed, in slight disparagement. “Animals were put on earth so that we could make use of ‘em.”

“I do make use of them,” Mr. Steinmetz responded, without heat. “It gives me a mighty pleasure, to sit and watch them, fine and strong and proud, going about their business.”

“You’ll go hungry in winter, Fred,” Frank Thurmond replied, and Mr. Steinmetz laughed.

“What use is it to me, to gut and dress a whole deer, and smoke the meat over a fire, since it is more than I can eat in a month myself, when I can just go into town and get a good meal at Fred Harvey’s without a tenth of the trouble? Priorities, Frank. Priorities – now that I have the luxury, I might as well take full advantage.” He grinned at Sophia, who said – moved by sympathy for small and large wild things and approval of Mr. Steinmetz’ sensibilities,

“I think it very fine of you, to do so. There are wise old philosophers who sat that it is healthier and even morally superior to abstain from meat in any form.”

“I won’t say that I take it that far, Miss Teague!” Mr. Steinmetz laughed so heartily that Sophia might have taken offense; save that there was not a hint of insult in his words or tone. “I am in the cattle ranching business, after all. And I relish a good bit if beefsteak, or a pork cutlet as well as any man … most especially when it is cooked in a Fred Harvey kitchen and brought to me by one of his pretty waiter girls!”

“It is always a pleasure to set a meal before a man who appreciates good cooking,” Sophia replied, only realizing when the words were out of her mouth that she did sound terribly flirtatious. But it was not Mr. Steinmetz who took another meaning from that, but Eleanor Woods, who blurted, in tones over which a slight touch of frost hovered,

“I did not realize, Miss Teague – that you were employed by the Harvey House. You seem like such a respectable person.”

“Miss Teague is a respectable person, Ellie,” Lottie Thurmond leaped into the conversation with a tinkling little laugh, turning her head from the front seat of the buggy where she sat next to her husband. “And I relish her company very much. She is one of these New Women that you read so much about in the magazines.”

“I suppose so,” Eleanor Wood’s voice thawed slightly, although she still sounded dubious. “It doesn’t seem quite right to go away from your family, and work for wages …”

“I’m an orphan, with no close living relatives,” Sophia replied, as if by rote. “I consider Fred Harvey as my family.”

“But still,” Eleanor Wood persisted. “It still seems very strange – even if for family, doing work in the public sphere. A woman’s proper place is in the home …”

Mr. Steinmetz snorted in derision. “Tell that to my sister and niece – they worked in the family general store, while my brother-in-law and I drove freight wagons. Later on, when my niece married, she took to trailing cattle north with her husband … and the Vining boys – their mother kept a boarding house, and she was a very fine woman indeed, by all accounts. You’d meet the finest sort of folk in Texas at her table. No angel of the hearthside business for them. There was too much to do.”

“But that was in the West, before everything was settled as it should be,” Eleanor Wood argued. “Conditions were different than in the east, then…”

“So they are still,” Lottie Thurmond agreed. “And may continue to be, for I favor such a wider degree of freedom, and I am certain so does Miss Teague … is this your darling little spring, Fred?”

During that conversation, the buggy had come around another turn in the rough track, and now they looked full on a steep rock hillside, with a pool of water at its base, rimmed by smaller rocks, and stands of water-loving reeds. A narrow white thread of water fell down through a ragged cleft between two rock faces, which were painted with small blotches of velvety green moss. The sound of the water, splashing and chuckling to itself was musical, entrancing as the scent of cool fresh water – cool water and a patch of green grass. The leaves of the poplar trees rustled in the light breeze over their heads. The air in the little dell felt deliciously damp after the aridity of the open desert around town. The wagon track went no farther than here, for the hillsides closing in all around were too precipitous for any but a single man on foot. The little dell was adorned with some bright green vines, spotted with red and blue flowers, hanging along the steep rock slope, and a few straggly bushes covered with yellow blooms which looked like daisies – as lovely a wild garden as could be wished for in the west.

“It’s beautiful!” Sophia’s breath caught in her throat, overwhelmed by a sudden longing for the verdant green of the east. Mr. Steinmetz hastily tied up his pony, and reached up to help Sophia down.

“Do you really think so?” he asked, and Lottie Thurmond replied,

“The most perfect place for a picnic luncheon can hardly be imagined than your little paradise, Fred.”

“It is the most perfect place,” Sophia echoed, and it seemed that Mr. Steinmetz was most ridiculously pleased by her approval. Lottie, looking on them both with a certain amount of approval, continued briskly.

“Fetch us down the basket, Fred … and the rugs. Frank wishes to try his hand with his new fishing rod…”

“There aren’t any fish there save minnows,” Mr. Steinmetz warned and Frank Thurmond hissed, “Not another word from you, spoil-sport!”

Mr. Steinmetz shook his head in pity, and handed down little Ellie from the buggy.

“There are some tiny little frogs, though,” he added. “And one morning, I saw a wild jaguar-cat come down to drink.”

Ellie gave a small squeak of dismay, and her mother exclaimed,

“Surely there is not any danger to us, Mr. Steinmetz!”

“Only if it diverts you to think so, Mrs. Wood; they are nocturnal creatures and normally very shy.” He sounded exasperated; Sophia recalled his impatience with what he called female megrims. Of course, as a man of the world and long experience of the west, he would have encountered many more ferocious and dangerous animals.

“I would love to see such a beautiful creature as a jaguar,” she said, feeling slightly breathless. “Not as in a zoo, as in Boston … but wild and free; here – just as you observed the deer.”

“He won’t come today, that I can assure you, Miss Teague.” He smiled at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a most endearing way. “Wish that I could whistle him up for a visit here, just for you. Perhaps another time?”

“Perhaps, Fred,” Lottie replied, just as brisk. “Sophie and Eleanor, my dears – can you assist me with setting up our feast? The gentlemen are hungry – there should not be any great labor involved, for my cook has packed every kind of delicious food, and it will not take any time at all.”

“Miss Teague is well acquainted with the method of serving food in a small amount of time,” Eleanor Wood observed, in a tone of lazy malice, but there was no sting in it, and Sophia – overtaken by a sudden fit of school-girl emotion – stuck her tongue out at her, behind Lottie’s back. Eleanor Wood’s expression went through a brisk series, from startled, through pique, and then to rueful humor. She stuck out her own tongue, and then both of them burst into giggles.

“If you are both quite finished with being juvenile,” Lottie observed, without turning around, “The gentlemen are hungry. And so am I.”

“The schoolmistress has eyes in the back of her head, so she has!” Eleanor whispered, Lottie stated, without turning around, “No – only one which works properly to the front, but my hearing is extraordinarily acute,” whereupon all three women dissolved into giggles. Young Ellie and the two men regarded them, baffled – as if they all had gone quite mad.

(Yes, I have squeezed in a bit of writing on this holiday weekend – another half  chapter of Sunset and Steel Rails; how a proper young Bostonian became a Harvey Girl in the 1880s, went west, and discovered … her destiny as well as certain things about her family.)

Chapter 15 – Haunted

The attempted robbery of the Deming Harvey house would prove a nine-day wonder, long-remembered and recalled by everyone who had been present, every detail discussed and agreed upon. All agreed that Mr. Lloyd had been stalwart beyond belief; faced with two armed men and a demand for the takings for the day, and that Mr. Steinmetz had acted the very part of the hero in so promptly realizing the gravity of the situation and taking swift action in dispatching the most threatening of the two robbers.

“Miss Teague might have been harmed as well!” Selina Burnett exclaimed with much indignation. “Sophia dear, you look so dreadfully pale, as if you would faint away directly – do you want us to call for the doctor? He will attend on you at once, I am certain ….”

“No!” The vehemence in her own voice startled her very much; she shook off Selina’s concern and Mr. Steinmetz arm, feeling as if she were being slowly strangled in the cotton-wool of everyone’s insistence that she must be distraught. This was too much like how everyone had talked to her when Lucius Armitage had broken their engagement, insisting that she was upset, ill, sad – when she felt nothing in the least. “No, I don’t need the doctor, or to go upstairs and lie down. I am perfectly well.”

“You are certain?” Selina and Mr. Steinmetz both regarded her with some doubt – after all, the sheriff’s deputies had only just removed the body of the dead robber and taken away the live one in handcuffs, commanding Mr. Steinmetz himself to follow shortly, to answer questions.

Only Selina spoke, “I still think you…”

“I am fine, Selina – and there is a train coming in. I would really rather be working.”

“Sometimes it’s the best thing, to get back on the horse that threw you,” Mr. Steinmetz agreed. “But may I come and speak with you later tonight? If you like, come and sit with me on the platform when I bring Miss Kitten her late supper.”

“I might like that,” Sophia agreed and gratefully escaped to her regular duties. The day might have been disrupted for a time by the robbery – but hungry passengers cared little for that, only for a good meal, well and attentively served.

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(After five years working in various places as a Harvey Girl, Sophia Teague — still using another woman’s last name – arrives in Deming, New Mexico – where she encounters an old friend and makes a new one.)

Chapter 14 – Lottie

            The streets of Deming were filled with ruts, the occasional puddle and mound of horse-dung, and lined with unadorned frame and adobe-brick buildings, but at least the city fathers had lined a few of the main streets with wooden sidewalks. Ahead of them, Sophia could see a plain white-washed steeple which must mark the sanctuary of St. Luke’s. This was not anything like the spires of churches back in Boston – tall stone or brick, ornamented with carvings and iron-work, from which the chiming of bells rang out the hours and events. But this was the West, and Sophia had over the last six years become accustomed to it.

“I like to look out and see mountains,” she remarked, for such mountains rose all around Deming, dark-blue, tan, or rose-colored, depending on the time of day and angle of the sun. “There were none to speak of around Newton, but there were splendid ones at La Junta. Flee as a bird to the mountain … I always liked that verse, even though there were no mountains around Boston – only hills.”

“There were hills where I was raised as a boy,” Mr. Steinmetz said, and Sophia looked sideways at him – an easy undertaking for their heads were much on the same level.

“I thought that you came from Germany,” she ventured, and he nodded.

“I did. From a little village in Bavaria that no one has ever heard anything of or likely will. But when my father and my sister Liesel’s husband decided that we should take up the offer of the Verein and come to Texas, my brother and I were only seven. My mother … it was very sad – she died on the ship coming over. You remind her a little of her, Miss Teague, or so I can remember. My father was an unworldly sort; he made clocks and read books. We finished up in the hill country of Texas, two or three days’ journey north of San Antonio. What with one thing and another, Johann and I were too much for him to handle, so Vati sent Johann and I to live with my oldest sister and her husband. They had a fine little ranch on the Guadalupe River – my sister is quite formidable, you see. Magda’s husband was born American, and he was formidable in his own way. Then Johann went back to Germany to study medicine, and I got the gold fever … but in between times, I usually came back to to live at their place. Magda’s son owns it now, and he has a family…” he grinned at her, “So, I had to finally settle on my own place.”

“Was that the cattle baron?” Sophia frowned in deep puzzlement. “The man who owned all the cattle and ranches, and the parlor car?”

“That was Hansi – Liesel’s husband. Magda’s husband Carl was murdered by the hanging band during the War. He was a Unionist, you see. A long time ago, then, but she still wears black for him … may I ask the favor of sitting with you for the services, Miss Teague? I have been so long and unremitting in my absence from such observances that I fear the roof may fall in on me, so I beg the pleasure of your company.”

“Certainly,” Sophia replied, with as demure a manner as Fee had always urged upon her. “Although … I have not always been observant, either, of late.”

“The days sometimes just run away from you,” Mr. Steinmetz observed, wryly, as they approached the church, with its brave little tower lifted up into the faultlessly blue sky. There were other churchgoers ahead of them, lingering about the door greeting arriving friends before the service began. Most were men, stiff and formal in dark town suits which they only donned once a week, but there were two or three women among them – plainly wives or daughters. Sophia was rather glad to be with Mr. Steinmetz; men so usually outnumbered women in the west, and if she had come alone to church, she would have been the focus of interest – wistful on the part of single men and censorious on the part of women, single and married alike.

“Gott in Himmel,” Mr. Steinmetz exclaimed, reverting into German in his surprise. “As I live and breathe, Lottie Deno! And with Frank Thermond too – so she married him at last! Good for them both, I say!”

“Who is Lottie Deno? Was she someone you knew in California?” Sophia assumed that he meant the handsome woman dressed in the height of fashion, standing at the church doorway. The woman had flaming red-gold hair, piled high under a fashionable hat, and she leaned on the arm of a tall man in a well-cut suit that was equally the match to her elaborate day-dress. Mr. Steinmetz grinned like a mischievous boy.

“No – San Antonio, when I used to amuse myself playing cards at the University Club; I confess, Miss Teague – it was a gambling den, but one of the honest ones – and she dealt poker there. She didn’t allow any bad language or liquor at her table, neither – the most lady-like dealer you ever laid eyes upon … that is, if you set foot in a gambling den at all, Miss Teague. Her right name is Charlotte Thomkins, but one night a cowboy with too much liquor in him looked at her pile of winnings and said, ‘Darlin’, with winnings like that, you outta call yourself Lotta Dinero,’ and after that, everyone began calling her Lottie Deno.” He looked sideways at her, and added. “She’s a good ‘un and a lady as well … but don’t ever bet money against her when she’s flipping those pasteboards. Might just as well give her your poke straight-out, and save time and trouble. I’ll tell you the one story about her that I saw with my own eyes …”

He was interrupted, by that handsome woman exclaiming, “Fred! Darlin’ Dutch! I knew you were in Deming, Frank relays to me all the suitable gossip, but I never in all my days expected to see you here!” She came down the steps toward them, a white swan among ducks, a sailing yacht among scows – all parting from her path like commoners before royalty. Her accent was Southern, as sweet and slow as honey dripping from a comb, and she embraced Mr. Steinmetz with as much affection as if she were a kinswoman.

“Lottie, my darling – you are as refreshing as a spring of cool fresh water in the desert,” He kissed her hand with gallant affection. “I had no idea you were in Deming until this moment – have you and Frank re-opened the University Club without telling me?  I shall have to come and sit for a game…”

“La, you are naughty, Dutch!” Lottie struck him lightly on the arm, with mock-anger. “We have given all that up, being respectable citizens now. Frank is a banker – can you imagine?”

“He certainly banked enough of my money, over time,” Mr. Steinmetz answered, laughing and Lottie struck him – again, lightly.

“And you have not introduced me to your lady! Were you born in a barn, Dutch?”

“Close to it,” Mr. Steinmetz replied, much amused, although he covered Sophia’s hand with his own in a reassuring way. “Lottie, may I present Miss Sophia Teague – a young lady of good family from Boston who has lately arrived as an employee at the Harvey House. We are acquainted from the time that she worked at a Kansas Harvey house, and have just this moment renewed the acquaintance. Miss Teague – Mrs. Charlotte Thurmond, likewise of a family most suffocatingly respectable, but also afflicted with an equally impetuous spirit of adventure …”

“Isn’t he the naughtiest,” Lottie Thurmond replied, although her brown eyes sparkled with merriment. “How can you endure him, Miss Teague?”

“With the same composure which was my family habit,” Sophia replied, and Lottie Thurmond giggled in delight.

“Yours too, Miss Teague? We must become friends, then.” To her vague surprise, Lottie Thurmond embraced her, in a froth of sweet-smelling ruffles and lace, whispering, “The Harvey House – how tremendously exciting! I will want to hear all about it! Our little outpost of civilization in a far and desolate land … oh dear – there is the bell. Come and speak to me after the service. This is our highest social occasion of the week, you see. Attention must be paid!”

The bell in the steeple above rang once, twice and once more – the last of those latecomers catching a hasty greeting from their friends on the steps before the door recalled the purpose for which they had assembled themselves on an early morning. Sophia and Mr. Steinmetz found themselves sitting in pew, side by side.

“You said that you would tell me a true story about Mrs. Thurmond,” Sophia whispered, under the murmur of other parishioners settling themselves into their own favored pews. “It’s not improper, is it? I would hate to hear something … rude, when she has been so welcoming.”

“No, it’s not improper,” Mr. Steinmetz whispered in return. “There was this one evening at the University Club when she was dealing, and two men quarreled and drew on each other … and every man jack of us hit the floor or ducked behind the bar at the first shot. When they were done exchanging lead civilities, there was Lottie, sitting as prim and calm as you please, and she said, “Gentlemen, I came here tonight to play poker, not roll around on the floor! Cool as a cucumber, she was.” Mr. Steinmetz shook his head, obviously still in awe.

The familiar words of the service were as a balm to a troubled soul; Sophia found herself comforted, recalling as they did her happiest childhood days in Boston, sitting between Mama and Great-Aunt Minnie in the Vining family pew. Why, oh why had such happy contentment not continued on as it had? If she had married Lucian Armitage as had been intended, they would have undoubtedly been blessed by children by now. When she was a little girl, she had pretended that her dolls were children – her own family. She deeply envied Laura her children.

Sitting next to Mr. Steinmetz, sharing her prayer book with him, silently pointed out the order of service and the readings – that was a balm as well. He sang well, too – a light and pleasant tenor, although he whispered to her at the end of the service,

“Doesn’t seem right to me, being in English; back in Texas when I was a boy, our church was in German, but I always fell asleep during the sermon anyway.”

“That was very naughty of you,” Sophia replied. “What did your father say, then?”

“Nothing much – he was a free-thinker. My sisters would pinch me, though. I always thought it was just because I was a boy and Pastor Altmueller’s sermons bored me. Then I grew up … and he was still boring. He’d say five sentences together, and I’d start to snore.”

“Sermons are supposed to be improving to one’s character,” Sophia reproved him.

“I always wondered about that,” he admitted. “But as I said – I think my brother Johann got most of the brains intended for the pair of us. You should be warned, Miss Teague – I believe that Lottie is waiting for you by the door.”

So she was; as soon as Sophia and Mr. Steinmetz approached, Lottie Thurmond exclaimed, “Miss Teague, Fred – you simply must join us for Sunday dinner – I must insist on it. Frank wishes to catch up on old times, and I am perishing for lack of stimulating conversation … if I listen to one more conversation between two females comparing their children’s clevernesses, and recipes for jam, I vow to you that I will scream … say that you will indulge me, Miss Teague. We will talk about books, or the diseases plaguing cattle, the difficulties in digging wells in this country, or Indian depredations, and you may tell me all about your adventures … whatever you wish.”

“Why … yes, certainly,” Sophia replied, charmed and slightly overwhelmed by the intensity of Lottie Thurmond’s interest.

“Splendid! Frank is bringing around the buggy – although it is a short way to our house, we could almost walk, but the day becomes so warm … Fred, you are building a new house, are you not?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will be doing that,” Mr. Steinmetz explained. “As soon as the wells are dug; can’t have the cattle dying of thirst, you know.”

Swept along in Lottie Thurmond’s enthusiasm and Mr. Steinmetz’ friendly interest, Sophia spent the remainder of the day most enjoyably – much more so than she had expected. The ghastly story in the New York newspaper – which still had the power to horrify – somehow did not seem to matter to her quite as much as it had when she first read of it. Boston and the events surrounding her departure from it seemed again to have receded back into the past. Late in the afternoon, Mr. Steinmetz walked with her back to the railroad station and the Harvey house, replete with good food, and an afternoon spent in the Thurmond’s congenial company.

(This story is shaping up into three parts, each of them spaced about at about 5 or 7 years apart. So – go with it. Sophia is five years older, has found her feet, professionally and personally … and now embarking on a significantly new portion of her life … but still, there are some occasional hauntings from her past. Enjoy. I am trying to finish this to bring it out late this year.)

Chapter 13 – Arrival in Deming

“We’ll be in Deming in ten minutes,” the Pullman porter observed, as he passed by Sophia’s seat in the regular train from Albuquerque to Guaymas in Mexico. “You all ready for the wild west, Miss Teague?”
“Don’t be funning with me, George,” Sophia replied, laying aside the book that she had been reading, and slipped it into her reticule. “I’ve been working for Fred Harvey Company five years now – and I have been singularly disappointed with the actual wildness of every place that I have been, for all the sensational newspaper stories and dime novels. Wild west indeed – I consider that the wildness is vastly overrated.”
George – whose name wasn’t really George, but all Pullman porters were called George – was a casual acquaintance of some years standing, an association farther tightened by their mutual service to the railway.
“Shush yourself, Miss Teague,” George replied, with a conspiratorial wink. “Them writer fellas mus’ have something to write about. And sometimes those range wars get to be pretty intense. I used to ride trail for the RB outfit in the Panhandle country, til’ they got sideways of a bunch of cattle thieves – it was no game for a man who wanted to live long enough to have grey hair.”
“Did you indeed?” Sophia asked, suddenly interested. Somehow she had always assumed that he had always worked for the Pullman company. “You really were a cowboy, then?”
“Indeed I was for a time, Miss Teague. But’s hard work; only a young man can endure it. Had me some fine times, though.” He grinned, in reminiscence. “I might write up an account of them, someday.”
“You ought to do that,” Sophia replied, as she stood up, reaching for the trusty old carpet-back in the rack over her head. “I would most definitely read it.”
“Allow me, Miss Teague,” George said. He lifted it down easily. “So – are you going to work in the Deming Harvey house, or jus’ stopping for a visit?”
“Work,” Sophia sighed, in happy appreciation. “One of the girls from when I started in Newton is here – Selina Burnett. She wrote and told me that there would be an opening, and Deming sounded interesting… so I requested a new posting.”
“You been all over the Atchison-Topeka Harvey Houses, haven’t you?”
“I have,” Sophia replied. She could sense the train beginning to slow. She and George stood by the end of the car, closest to the door. “La Junta, after Newton. Then a couple of months at the Montezuma Palace, in the dining room. That was a bit boring – no trains. And all the way out to California, to Barstow – there were trains but it was all sand and desert; even more boring. And then to Albuquerque … I substituted from there, to other Houses which were short-handed. I liked that – having once learned the Harvey method, I could go practically anywhere, and I had friends in every other house after the first few years … George, can you arrange with a porter, to take my trunk from the baggage car to the House lodgings? I expect that they will need me to help out today. There was a message yesterday morning before I left, saying that two girls were sick in bed and couldn’t work.”
“Mos’ certainly, Miss Teague. No rest fo’ the righteous, so it says in the Good Book,” George observed.
“Indeed,” Sophia said, although there was no real reply for that. The train slowed even more; as it curved around a bend in the track, Sophia could look out and see the tops of tall trees, and a metal daisy-field of windmills, with the railway water and coal towers thrusting up at the heart of Deming. Her heart lifted in happy anticipation.
Five years as a Harvey girl; she would not have traded the experience of that for anything in the world. She had a substantial nest egg saved from her wages, a small but elegant wardrobe, bought new and to her own taste, and she had traveled! Oh, how she had traveled, confidently and alone, for the most part; mostly for the business of the Harvey Company, which provided a train pass on the AT&SA for every one of their employees. The little pewter pin for her work pinafore now bore a number 5 on it, which made her relatively senior at any House. With seniority came responsibility; also increased authority, which Sophia relished very much. Some day she might even rise far enough to manage a Harvey House. Wouldn’t Great-aunt Minnie be amazed and proud, if she could see that!
Boston was so far behind her now. She had even stopped reading the Boston Daily Advertiser so assiduously. It just did not seem so important any more to view the activities of those whom she had once known so well at such a distance. It was long ago and far away, and of decreasing importance in her life. For the first two years, it had been in the back of her mind that Richard and Dr. Cotton, or some men working for him might suddenly step from a train brandishing warrants and papers, apprehend her as a fugitive, and pack her back to Danvers. It had never happened; she never set eyes on any acquaintance from Boston again … and anyway, she was now Miss Teague, a valued employee of Fred Harvey Company. No one west of the Mississippi would have dared lay hands on her, wild and lawless or not.
She took her carpetbag from George, with a word of thanks – for he was caught up in attending those passengers also debarking at Deming – and was down from the train before it even entirely stopped moving. She swung the carpetbag, feeling some of the joy of a child released from school; she knew the Deming station from having stopped there several times, and also because the Harvey Houses were often arranged on similar principles; everything just so. If you knew one or two of them well, then you knew them all. Just ahead of the surge of other passengers, she walked into the Harvey House, past the busboy standing ready at the gong.
“Is Miss Bennet in the dining room, or the lunch room,” she paused briefly to ask.
“Dining room,” he replied, looking beyond her at the scattered passengers making a purposeful way towards the house. “Miss Teague? You were expected on this train.”
“And now I’m here,” Sophia strode briskly into the house and stepped into the dining room, where a harassed-appearing Selina was overseeing the last few preparations. “Selina – I’ll put my bag upstairs and change immediately. Where do you need me?”
“Thank heavens,” Selina brightened. “Second room along on the right is yours – the laundry sent along your work things. The lunch room, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Sophia replied. “I’ll be down in two shakes.”
She had become accustomed to amazingly swift changes in her toilettes in the past five years. Off came her travel dress and the plain flat straw boater pinned at a daring angle on her hair, already arranged in a plain bun. She wore black shoes and stockings as a matter of habit. She was fastening her white cuffs as she ran down stairs, and through the kitchen. One of the cooks waved to her from behind the stove. The kitchen already smelt of good food excellently cooked.
“Not wasting a moment, Miss T., are you?” He had worked at the Montezuma Palace.
“Never,” she called back, moving swiftly through the doors into the lunchroom just as the first customers emerged from the other side.
“Miss T.!” chorused the duty waitresses, in relief and gratitude. She recognized all three; in fact, she had trained two of them in the Harvey method, although in separate places and the third had also worked with her at the Montezuma – a circumstance which relieved her mind no end. Today was no time to be training a new girl, when they were short-handed.
“Remember,” she whispered, bringing an answering smile to all three faces. “Left to right – and always go by the right-hand door!”

Late that night, when she finally reached the end of the shift, and wearily climbed the stairs, she found her trunk sitting in the middle of her new room. Yes – when you worked for Fred Harvey Company on the railway – you were a member of the tribe, that tribe who looked after other members.

Before she had been in Deming a week – not even long enough to have a day off on Sundays, that distant past was recalled to her in an unexpected manner, through a conversation between a pair of customers in the lunchroom. Two travelling drummers in city-cut suits and lamentably garish waistcoats came in together, amongst the usual crowd, taking seats together and continuing their conversation – a conversation which seemed to be focused on headlines in a newspaper which one of them carried. They seemed quite interested in that story, for a reason which Sophia could not quite fathom. They asked for coffee, and ordered the cheapest meal possible: she ordered their cups and bustled away towards the kitchen, and as she went, she heard one say, in tones which combined a degree of gruesome relish with sanctimonious disapproval,
“… was ruined in the bust-up of the Marine National Bank, but went on living like a lord in a big house on Beacon Street…”
Her ears pricked up: Beacon Street? The Marine National Bank? Of course, there would have been many once-wealthy men ruined in the collapse of the Marine National Bank of New York, and surely there were Beacon Streets in other towns than Boston? When she returned with a tray off plates, she cast her eyes down on the newspaper, lying carelessly between the two drummers. Judging by what she could see of the banner across the top page, it was a newspaper from New York. She could read the garish headlines up-side down, the letters big and black: Wife and Child Drugged in Fatal Fire, and in slightly smaller letters, Accused in Horrific North Town Murder.
“… thought it was an accident, ‘o course,” the first drummer said. “And the house burned so hot, it wasn’t certain for days.”
“Shocking,” the second man tucked into his lunch, hardly looking at it. He seemed to have more of an appetite for scandal than for nourishment. “So when did they think something was amiss about it all?”
“Well, he’d been cut in the street by all of his friends, after he was brought in to be questioned the first time. And people thought there was something odd going on, anyway … Miss, may I have some more coffee?”
“Certainly,” Sophia replied, and signaled the girl with the tray of jugs and carafes. Curiosity did not in the least overwhelm her sense of devotion to Harvey strictures on unnecessary conversation with customers, especially during a stop by a train. She continued taking orders from other customers, ferrying trays from kitchen to lunch counter, contriving to pass by the two drummers with the intent of overhearing their conversation. To her disappointment, they were now talking about the trials of their journey, and the eccentricities of the customers they encountered. When the train whistle sounded the alert for departure, they both gobbled the last few bites of generous quarter-slices of apple pie, flung down a few coins where they had sat, and made as if to depart for the cashier’s desk.
“Excuse me, sir,” Sophia called after them. “You have forgotten your newspaper!”
“Already read it,” the drummer in the loudest suit called back, over his shoulder. “It’s yours, if you want it.”
“Thank you, sir!” she said, as the door closed behind them. She claimed the newspaper, rolled it under her arm. Now time to read at any length, although she sneaked a look when the lunch counter was clean and fresh-laid, awaiting customers from the next train.
Mr. Richard Brewer, of Beacon Street in Boston’s most prosperous neighborhood of Back Bay, was found dead by his own hand in the burned remains of his family home on Tuesday last … the remains of his wife and youngest son were also discovered among the wreckage of what had been the ancestral mansion of one of Boston’s most prominent families …
Sophia folded up the newspaper very small. “I need to go up to my room,” she said to the closest of the young waitresses in the lunchroom. “Just for a moment – I will return to help with laying out for the next train.”