The train exhaled a great, final sigh of steam and shuddered to a halt. For Beatrice Kincaid, the sound was a death knell for the civilized world.
She stood, brushing imaginary dust from her navy serge traveling suit, the heavy wool an act of defiance against the suffocating heat that already seeped through the carriage windows. Outside, there was no manicured platform, no bustling porters, only a raw, splintered plank walkway laid over a sea of rust-colored dust.
This, according to the conductor’s gruff pronouncement, was Redemption, Texas.
The name felt like a cruel joke. There was nothing redemptive about the scene that greeted her.
A single, wide street baked under a sun so white and merciless it bleached the very color from the sky. Buildings, hastily constructed from rough-hewn timber, leaned against one another for support, their false fronts like tired masks on weary faces.
A profound sense of disorder reigned—a stark, chaotic antithesis to the meticulously ordered gardens and lecture halls of her Boston life.
With her leather-bound satchel in one hand and her precious specimen case in the other, Beatrice descended the steep steps.
The moment her button-up boots, so sensible on cobblestone, touched the ground, a puff of fine ochre dust coated their polished leather. The heat was a physical blow, a dry, baking oven-blast that stole the moisture from her throat and made the whalebone stays of her corset feel like a cage of fire.
Her arrival did not go unnoticed. Life on the main thoroughfare, what little there was, seemed to pause.
A blacksmith, his face a mask of soot and sweat, stopped his hammer mid-swing. Two women in faded calico dresses, their faces prematurely aged by sun and hardship, paused their conversation to stare openly.
A trio of cowboys lounging in the sliver of shade offered by a canted awning fell silent, their eyes tracking her as if she were some exotic, and likely foolish, species of bird blown disastrously off course.
Beatrice lifted her chin, a gesture practiced in the male-dominated halls of the university. Condescension was a language she understood, though she had never encountered it in this raw, unfiltered form.
It was in the slow, deliberate way the men looked her up and down, their gazes lingering on the impracticality of her attire—the fitted jacket, the slight bustle, the hat pinned at a precise, fashionable angle. They saw a fool. Let them.
Fools were underestimated, and in that, there was a certain advantage.
Her mission was all that mattered. The image of her father, his once robust frame withered by a persistent, rattling cough, was burned into her mind.
The doctors in Boston, with all their modern medicine, had offered only platitudes and laudanum. But Beatrice had found a reference in a dusty, forgotten text—a mention of a rare lily, endemic only to the most treacherous, sun-scorched canyons of West Texas.
Lilium umbratile, the Shadow Lily. Its properties, the text hinted, could form the basis of a tonic to quell the most violent of lung afflictions.
It was more than a daughter’s desperate hope. It was her thesis, her life’s work.
Finding this flower, classifying it, and harnessing its medicinal power would not only save her father, but it would also silence the sneering Professor Albright and the board of trustees who viewed her botanical ambitions as a charming, but ultimately frivolous, feminine hobby. She would earn their respect, not by asking for it, but by seizing it with the incontrovertible proof of her discovery.
First, however, she had to get to the canyons. And for that, she needed a guide.
Clutching her bags, she began to walk, her rigid posture a silent rebuke to the town’s slouching languor. The street was a gauntlet of stares.
She ignored the pungent smells of manure, unwashed bodies, and cheap whiskey that hung in the air. Her destination was the largest building, a two-story structure with a sign that read “The Gilded Cage Saloon & Dry Goods.”
A saloon was hardly a respectable place for a lady to conduct business, but it appeared to be the town’s central hub, and time was a luxury she did not have.
Pushing through the swinging doors was like stepping into another world, one thick with tobacco smoke, the low murmur of male voices, and the sharp scent of spilled spirits.
The room fell into a sudden, weighted silence. Every eye turned to her.
The piano player in the corner fumbled a note, then ceased playing altogether. Beatrice felt a hundred judgments settle upon her like the dust outside.
She fixed her gaze on the man behind the bar, a portly figure with a magnificent mustache and a stained apron. Ignoring the rapt audience, she marched directly to him, placing her satchel firmly on the polished wood.
“Good afternoon,” she said, her voice clear and crisp, a bell in the dusty silence. “I require some information.”
The bartender blinked, wiping a glass with a rag that had seen better days. “Ma’am, this ain’t the information bureau.
And it ain’t no place for…” He gestured vaguely at her person, encompassing her dress, her posture, her entire existence.
“I am aware of my surroundings,” Beatrice cut in, her tone sharp with impatience. “I am a botanist from Boston.
I am here on a scientific expedition and I require the services of a guide. Someone who possesses an intimate knowledge of the surrounding canyon systems.”
A low chuckle rippled through the room. The bartender’s expression shifted from surprise to weary amusement.
“A guide?” he repeated, as if the word were foreign.
“Lady, you ain’t dressed for a walk to the privy, let alone Devil’s Maw Canyon. What’s a botanist want out there, anyway?
Pickin’ daisies?”
More laughter, louder this time. A flush of anger, hot and fierce, crept up Beatrice’s neck.
She fought it down, refusing to give them the satisfaction of seeing her flustered.
“My research is of a specific nature,” she stated, choosing her words with care. “I am searching for a particular species of flora.
A rare lily that is said to grow only in the deepest, most shaded parts of the canyons.”
The amusement in the room curdled into something else: suspicion. The stares were no longer just curious; they were hard, assessing.
In this land, people didn’t risk their necks in treacherous canyons for a simple flower. They did it for gold, for silver, for water rights—for things of tangible value.
A grizzled man with a patch over one eye leaned forward from his table. “A lily, you say?
What’s so special about this lily?”
Beatrice saw the trap. If she spoke of its medicinal value, they might think she was searching for a miracle cure-all, something to be exploited.
If she spoke only of its scientific importance, they would think her a mad fool.
“Its value is academic,” she said coolly. “It is an undocumented specimen.
Its discovery would be a significant contribution to the field of botanical science.”
“Science,” the one-eyed man grunted, and spat a stream of tobacco juice into a nearby spittoon. The message was clear: science was a worthless currency here.
The bartender leaned his thick forearms on the bar. “There ain’t no guides for hire, ma’am.
Not proper ones. The canyons are treacherous.
Apaches, rattlers, rock slides. Not to mention the heat.
No one’s gonna risk their skin so some fancy lady can press a flower in her book.”
Desperation began to prick at the edges of her composure. She had anticipated hardship, but not this united wall of contempt and mistrust.
She had come prepared to pay handsomely.
“My expedition is well-funded,” she announced to the room, a strategic error she recognized the moment the words left her mouth. The avarice that flickered in a few men’s eyes was more dangerous than the open scorn.
“I will pay a generous sum for a man’s time and expertise.”
A cowboy at the end of the bar, young and cocky, pushed his hat back. “Maybe you need more than a guide, ma’am.
A pretty thing like you, all alone out here… you might need a protector.” He gave his companion a lewd wink.
Beatrice’s spine went rigid. “I can assure you, sir, I am perfectly capable of protecting myself.
I require a navigator, not a nursemaid.”
The bartender sighed, a long, drawn-out sound of finality. “Look, miss.
The only man who knows those canyons like the back of his own hand wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire, let alone guide you. He don’t care about money, and he sure as hell don’t like outsiders.”
“And who is this man?” Beatrice demanded, seizing the first glimmer of a lead.
“Wes Callahan,” the bartender said, and the name seemed to cast a chill over the room. The men shifted, their expressions turning wary.
“They call him the Black Fox. Half-breed Comanche living out on a scrap of rock his mother’s people claimed.
He keeps to himself, and everyone with good sense keeps away from him.”
“Where can I find him?”
The man shrugged. “Follow the dry creek bed west out of town.
‘Til you see the rock formations that look like a wolf’s teeth. His land is just past there.
But I’m tellin’ you, it’s a waste of your time. He’ll probably greet you with a shotgun.”
Beatrice straightened, her resolve hardening into a diamond-sharp point. They thought her weak, a foolish woman in a wool suit.
They thought this Wes Callahan was an impassable obstacle. They were wrong.
She had faced down the disdain of the entire Harvard academic community; she would not be deterred by a dusty town of misogynists and one reclusive half-breed.
Without another word, she picked up her satchel. The silence in the saloon held as she walked back toward the swinging doors, her back straight, her steps measured.
She could feel their collective gaze on her, a physical pressure of disbelief and morbid curiosity.
She stepped back out into the blinding sunlight, her heart hammering against her ribs not with fear, but with a renewed, furious determination. Far in the distance, the hazy outlines of the canyons rose against the sky, their jagged peaks like the teeth of some great, sleeping beast.
They looked like a fortress. But Beatrice Kincaid had every intention of finding the key.
And if a man called the Black Fox held it, then she would simply have to bargain with the fox himself.