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an envelope leaning against the mirror. She opened it and withdrew several bills. She counted it and was stunned to find one hundred dollars Jo had left for her. The bills were wrapped in a piece of paper containing a note and a business card. “Thank you for an unforgettable evening. The best of my life. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need assistance. Jo.” She flipped the business card over and read the inscription “Josephine Barclay, Esquire. Attorney-at-Law. St. Louis, Missouri.”
    Loretta was mildly surprised that Jo, who obviously led a secretive life, had entrusted her with her identity. She moved the table next to her bed and pulled up a loose floorboard. She dropped Jo’s card and the money into a small box hidden beneath the board. She should receive another fifty as her percentage of the money Jack had charged for her services. She was getting closer to her goal. Perhaps before the first of the year she would be able to leave this life behind.

    Chapter Three
    HETTIE TOBIAS READJUSTED her small brown valise in her hand while holding her wide-brimmed hat on her head with the other as she peeked down one side of the train platform and then the other. The covered area in front of the busy station in St. Joseph was overflowing with people milling around. Burly men in blue and gold uniforms labored to pull huge rolling carts with metal wheels, loaded with mail, supplies, and baggage down the length of the wooden walkway toward boxcars waiting to head north, south, east and west. St. Joseph was the entry point into the great unknown everyone simply referred to as the West. The accounts she had read in the Indiana newspapers regaled readers with what she suspected were heavily embellished stories of the golden plains of Kansas and the majesty of the mountains in the Colorado Territory and beyond.
    Always a bookish young woman, she had been rather thrilled when she received a reply to her query concerning a teaching position in the town of Trinidad in the southeastern corner of the Colorado Territory. Even though she lived a predictable and stable life in Germantown, Indiana, Hettie longed for adventure and the call of the west had been alluring.
    She took the hand offered to her by a smiling porter and stepped off the train. No matter how she had planned her trip there would still be a layover in St. Joseph, Missouri and she would have to use part of her savings to find a decent room for the next few nights. She had never traveled by train before and found the continual stopping and starting to load and unload passengers, freight, and mail exhausting.
    Every time she closed her eyes she was jolted awake by the shudder of the locomotive braking. It hadn’t been what she expected in the least and she hoped the remainder of her journey would be more pleasant.
    She cast a smile in the porter’s direction and walked carefully across the platform to avoid running into small children and harried adults. Despite standing on solid ground her body felt as if it was still in motion. She dusted off her skirt and pushed her spectacles back up onto her nose as she thought about where she should go next. Finally, she approached the ticket window and waited for the man behind the bars to look up. A black visor encircled his head and he finally peered up at her over his round framed glasses.
    “Can I help you, miss?” he asked as he set aside the paperwork he had been engrossed in.
    Hettie stepped closer with a slight smile. “My train west will not be leaving for a few days. Do you know of a nice but relatively inexpensive place nearby where I might find suitable lodging until then?”
    He scanned Hettie’s face and body from the waist up and said, “There’s a nice rooming house about two blocks from here. Mrs. Covington usually has an extra room and the price ain’t bad.”
    “And which direction might that be?” she asked stiffly. She needed a bath and a change of clothes. She had just spent two long days in a