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Story of a Woman in the West Chapter 1 Lizzie Nicholas ached. Every bone in her body seemed to moan as she awoke and struggled to sit upright. Not that she had gotten much sleep since settling in to get a few hours rest the night before. She had boarded the train in Kansas City two days earlier and now as it chugged across the Great Plains toward Denver she regretted once again not being able to afford an actual ticket and instead having to take a seat on the floor between the two cars near the train's caboose. The ride was bumpy and noisy. She was cold at night and hot during the day, and the constant clackity-clack of the train's wheels had given her a headache, but at least being this far back she did not have to inhale the black coal smoke from the train's engine up ahead.
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She had only been accosted twice, which was not too bad for a young woman traveling alone in 1878, and the train's conductor had grudgingly agreed to let her ride without paying, at least so far. Lizzie guessed he felt sorry for her, a woman trying to make her way West with very little money and no husband to take care of her. The conductor had at first refused to let her board the train but had changed his mind once she quickly explained her story. That she had a nearly perfect smile and deep green eyes had not hurt her cause. She only wished that she could have talked him into a seat inside the train.
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| Lizzie, born Elizabeth
Nicholas, was 22 and headed to San Francisco
where she had heard that an aunt of hers lived. She had never met
the aunt and was not exactly sure where she resided, but she was the
only family Lizzie had, as far as she knew, and it seemed time to meet
her. Alone in the world, Nicky longed to find some family, any
family. She had been orphaned at eight years old when her parents'
covered wagon had overturned enroute to Kansas City from St.
Louis. The horses, two sturdy Belgians from the family farm, had
seen a coiled rattlesnake, spooked and then bolted across the brown open
grassland at a breakneck speed. Lizzie remembered screaming
and holding onto her mother as her father frantically tried to reign in
the two massive horses, but their eyes had rolled back in their heads
and they were running blindly as if chased by the devil himself. Copyright © 2007. Webwerxx, Inc., 2770 S. Elmira St., Denver, Colorado 80231. All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reprinted or reused in any manner whatsoever without written permission of Webwerxx, Inc. |
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