[Previously...]Ms. Katherine James appeared in Galveston one early August evening, astride a clear-eyed red dun with a stern young companion at her back. To say the apparition wasn't poetic, even for the bustling port town, would be a grievous omission.
On their first day in Galveston, Kate and Rachel install themselves in the first fancy hotel they agree upon; an opulent Greek Revival with a hotel saloon and all the latest comforts. Galveston's as big a city as you could hope for out West, and they find no trouble filling the hours with twenty-five cent baths perfumed with rose petals and lye soaps, hot square meals, entertainment, and the first comfortable night spent in their respective rooms — feather pillows and silk sheets — since they started on the trail east from Cuero.
It takes a few days for everyone to find each other. Ace is the first to ride in, followed a day later by Butch and Mireille. In that time, Kate takes to exploring the island. Her father would come home with stories after business trips and quick errands, but Kate herself has never been to the coastal cities. She's never seen the buildings pock-marked with salt mist and sun and mildew, or smelled the tangled gardens hung heavy on the muggy air. Galveston's a wealthy, modern, commercial gateway to cotton, cattle, and other trades, whose mercantile benefactors have made it a cultural and architectural showpiece without equal west of New York.
Having seen the New York of the future, that makes Kate smile privately. Wandering Galveston's urban streets makes her wonder if someday it will sprawl just as big, whereas now it swims like a guppy in the vast ocean of progress where New York City is a shark.
(And, unmentionable, unthinkable, comes the pang that accompanies remembering her
trip to New York, where thoughts of Tommy are quickly suppressed.)
Kate catalogs the avenues, the back streets; making maps of getaway routes in her mind. The Strand spans Twentieth to Twenty-fifth Streets, a commercial epicenter akin to Wall Street, where she counts five enormous banks and eight newspapers. The former makes the gears in her mind crank, potentials endless, but she meekly skirts past the latter for fear of being recognized. Ms. Katherine James, daughter of wealthy cattle baron Elijah James, secretly the infamous kissing outlaw half of Texas now hunts. Wouldn't that sell a rag or two?
Punctuating the western end of the Strand is the Sante Fe Railroad station. Steam billows from an engine, which looks to her like an angry bull impatiently awaiting a rider; the rumble and ruckus of lever, engine, and air is low, but deafening. Kate wanders the limestone halls, glancing over newsstands in search of familiar names and dollar amounts.
'CUERO BANK ROBBED BY KISSIN' KATE!' But she sees nothing.
Yet.
She meanders through the East End, along Sealy, Ball, Winnie, and Church Streets, across Broadway where business gives way to extravagant Queen Anne style homes, fine cast-iron Gothic Revival verandas, wooden galleries, columns, and balustrades carved with intricate Gothic and Greek Revival designs — every ounce of wealth from the Strand on display, boasting, bragging. She pauses for a while outside the limestone and granite mansion she's told is the "Bishop's Palace", and wonders what it would be like to strip these people of their grand vestments. To show them what it's like to live like Viktoria, and the rest of the people of Cuero so long taken advantage of.
The thought passes.
She eventually makes her way back through the business district (and even it peacocks about, cast-iron facade decorations and iron hoods over every window), the ghostly scents of oleander and hibiscus melting away to German Jewish delicacies, the scent of the cotton mills, horses, and sweat. The occasional blast of salt and sea off the Gulf. The barking calls of merchants haggling, inviting, tempting; the sound of wagon wheels and clinking glasses and people laughing and crying and buying and selling and
living.
It's a good place to get lost, if you're running from something.
But Kate stands in the broad way, and thinks to herself,
Goddammit, I'm gonna make you people see me.The trick will be not letting them see Weyland's giant mechanical bird first.
(Finding a suitable place for
Hildegard didn't exactly come easily, but rich Victorians who rely on oil and shipping as their main trades don't have much use for plow, hoe, or most helpfully, barns. The golden bird tucks herself in the hayloft, nests in old straw; Mireille is satisfied, though some mean streak in Kate's humor is tempted to let her loose on those fine Queen Annes and watch the people scatter as she picks off cattle and sheep for snacks.)
Their first night all together, Butch, Ace, Mireille, Rachel, and Kate, is spent in celebration. Kate promised them a party, and she found one in the
Garten Verein. The city's so bright and shiny with all the finest modern ideas that bona fide electricity lights up the German dancing pavilion, giving Kempner Park a soft, unearthly glow. Folk are nice enough, the night is warm, there's no lack for beer, and the time stretches on in laughter, dance, spirit and song. After the
job, it's a needed respite. And before she can buy Butch that
dinner she promised him, it's a welcome moment to spend in merriment.
For every thing there is a season.
For every wound, a salve.
For every job there is a time to spend, to keep breathing, to live.
