Smoke River Bride

His eyes went even wider. “Good God, you…you’re a Celestial!”

“I am half Chinese. My mother’s name was Ming Sa. She is now dead, as well.”

He kept staring at her, his mouth hanging open. Finally his jaw clicked shut. “Look, miss, I placed my notice because I need a…well, a wife. I never figured you’d be a…a foreigner.”

“According to the Immigration Authority, I am not a foreigner. My father was an American citizen, a missionary living in China, so I am American, too.”

“Well.” The man cleared his throat. “I never expected this. I mean, you.”

Not a good sign. “You mean you expected me to be a white woman. Caucasian.” It wasn’t a question. She knew how the Chinese were regarded in the West. The tales she had heard of the treatment of “Celestial” railroad crews made her cringe.

Leah watched his expelled breath puff into a foggy white cloud. “Yeah,” he muttered at last. “I guess I did expect you to be…well…” His voice trailed off.

Heavenly Father, he would send her back! She could never return to San Francisco. Not now.

“Wait,” she said. “I can cook and clean and care for a child. I have had experience at the Christian mission orphanage in Canton. And I can sew and embroider… .”

But she could not return to China. Never. Third Uncle would lose face, and besides, there was no longer any place for her there. In China, she was not half Chinese, she was half White Devil. She no longer knew where she belonged.

She watched him look away, then back to her. “It’s not that I think you’re not qualified, miss. But—”

“You need not explain, Mr. MacAllister. It is clear that you no longer want me.” She had half expected such a reaction, but now what was she to do?

She hefted her valise and started moving slowly toward the station house entrance.

He caught up with her in two strides. “It’s not that you’re a Celestial, not exactly.” He lifted the suitcase out of her hand and fell into step beside her.

“Then what is it, exactly?” She sneaked a look at him.

His mouth tightened. “Aw, hell, I don’t know. The folks here in town might not—”

“Would you protect me?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“Mr. MacAllister, I cannot go back to San Francisco. It took me eight days to escape from my host lady. She was a very bad woman. I will not go back.”

He pulled open the door of the station house just as the train gave a high, throaty toot and chuffed on down the track. “Come inside, miss. You look like you could use some—”

“Tea,” she supplied without thinking. “Yes, please.”

He frowned down at her, then stamped the snow off his boots. “You might let me finish a sentence now and then, Miss Cameron.”

“Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr. MacAllister. Father and my teachers always said I was impulsive and outspoken. They were right.”

His rust-brown eyebrows waggled. “You’ve been to school, then?”

“Of course. I can read and write in two languages. My father headed a mission school in China. I was educated there until…” She bent her head.

He waited. “Until?”

Leah clenched her jaw until the urge to cry passed. “Until Mother and then my father died of cholera. Papa saw to it that I was well educated.”

“Aye, I can see that. You talk right proper.”

“Thank you.”

“Me, I know farming—cattle, and this year I’m trying some wheat. Nobody in these parts grows wheat, but…Let’s see, where was I? I know how to build a barn and a house and I can read and write. That’s what I want for my boy, and more.”

He guided her to a stool at the counter. “Tea for the lady,” he said. “Coffee for me, with a shot of—Aw, skip it, Charlie. Just coffee.” Charlie was the manager, the telegraph operator and the ticket seller for the small Smoke River station.

The short balding man leaned over the counter. “This yer, uh, new bride?”

Thad purposefully cleared his throat. “Mind your own business, Charlie.”

“Hell, ever’body in town knows you sent away for…” He focused on Leah’s face and his voice trailed off. “Oh, I see.”

“Oh, you do?” Thad challenged.

“Yeah, I do,” Charlie said quietly. “Won’t be easy, Thad. Good luck to ya.” He clomped over to the black potbellied stove in the center of the small reception room and tossed a small log into the fire.

Within minutes the room was toasty warm. Leah sent the stationmaster a grateful smile, stood up and shrugged out of her ankle-length wool coat. Thad stood, as well, grasped the coat and strode off to hang it on the coatrack by the door. When he turned back to Miss Cameron, the floor tilted under his boots.

Jehosephat, she was a looker! She wore some kind of silky blue-green trousers and a matching long-sleeved tunic with frog loops down the front. But what he noticed most was how the smooth fabric curved over her breasts and hinted at her hips. She was small and slim, built like a China doll, but she sure looked womanly.

And she’d come to Smoke River to be a bride and run a home? Hell, she looked too delicate to hang out the laundry, let alone boil sheets and dungarees in a tin washtub.

“Listen, Miss Cameron, you sure you want to live out on a ranch? To be honest, it’s a hardscrabble life out here in the West, and some years it’s harder than others. Summers can be scorching, winters are—”

“Snowy,” she interrupted. “I understand. It snows in China, too, Mr. MacAllister.”

He walked a slow circle around her. Huh. She’d blow over in a stiff wind. And he sure couldn’t see her down on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. Or anything else, come to think on it.

“Miss Cameron, you don’t know how hard ranch life can be.”

She spun toward him. “I am not afraid of hard work. I fear only being alone and unprotected in a big city where I know no one.”

“Like San Francisco?” He was fishing, but he had to know something about her. “What scared you in San Francisco that wouldn’t scare you here in Smoke River?”

She was quiet for a long minute. “It was not safe in that city,” she said softly. “Especially for a Chinese girl. I…I had to get away.”

Thad frowned. Something didn’t add up. “How come?”

She twisted away from him so he couldn’t see her face. “When I left the ship, two men laid their hands on me. They wanted me to come with them. I showed them my papers, but they laughed and tore them up.”

“Good grief,” Thad muttered. “I never thought about…Sit down, Miss Cameron. Have some more tea.”

She sank back onto the stool at the counter and wrapped her slim fingers around her teacup. “Those men dragged me into a carriage, but I escaped through the other door and ran down an alley and kept running, but they caught me.”