Adventure stories; Fiction; Mystery fiction; Short stories
When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said,
both money and papers; and telling me that I was already over the borders
in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I reached
the railway station, half a mile below. ‘Here,’ he added, ‘is your
ticket as far as Council Bluffs. The East express will pass in a few
hours.’ With that, he took both horses, and, without further words or
any salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.
Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train as
it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of the
mountain. The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still throbbing
terror of pursuit—above all, the astounding magic of my new conveyance,
kept me from any logical or melancholy thought. I had gone to the
doctor’s house two nights before prepared to die, prepared for worse than
death; what had passed, terrible although it was, looked almost bright
compared to my anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a full
night in the flying palace car, that I awoke to the sense of my
irreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm about the future. In this
mood, I examined the contents of the bag. It was well supplied with
gold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as far
as Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me with a
fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence, and
bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son. All then had been
arranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and what was tenfold
worse, upon my mother’s voluntary death. My horror of my only friend, my
aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against the whole
current and conditions of my life, were now complete. I was sitting
stupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very
pleasant lady offered me her conversation. I clutched at the relief; and
I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor’s letter: how I was
a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money I
had, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had exhausted my
instructions, and, as the lady still continued to ply me with questions,
began to embroider on my own account. This soon carried one of my
inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a shadow on the
lady’s face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly addressed me.
‘Miss Gould, I believe?’ said he; and then, excusing himself to the lady
by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform of the
Pullman car. ‘Miss Gould,’ he said in my ear, ‘is it possible that you
suppose yourself in safety? Let me completely undeceive you. One more
such indiscretion and you return to Utah. And, in the meanwhile, if this
woman should again address you, you are to reply with these words:
“Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will suffer me to
choose my own associates.”’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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