Thanks to all the guests, except the one negative guest, who has posted reviews. I'd have thanked you guests personally as I did the sign-in reviewers if I could have. Guest, who wrote review number 8, only shows his/her ignorance.
Chapter 2 – Meeting a Stranger
There were no problems on the first leg of the trip. The train pulled into Denver as scheduled without a single robbery attempt or any other disturbance, major or minor. They managed to switch their bags from the baggage car of the train they left to the San Francisco bound train and even secure a couple of the new, comfortable compartments in the sleeper cars that had just been installed. Matt and Doc booked one and Kitty secured one next to theirs, paying the extra so nobody else would be able to purchase the other bed in the compartment. Of course Doc pretended not to notice that Matt entered Kitty's sleeper Thursday night rather than the one they supposedly shared.
By Saturday morning the train had left Colorado, Utah and most of Nevada behind. Around 11:00 they were treated to a view of the northern edge of Lake Tahoe, the beautiful body of water that provided part of the border with California. At 1:00 the train stopped in the California town of Truckee where a girl of about 19 boarded and took a seat by herself halfway down the car from where they sat. Matt had a clear view of the young lady as two obviously drunk men came toward her seat. Watching the scene that was about to unfold, he was ready to spring forward and come to the pretty brunette's rescue even before it was absolutely necessary.
In five strides he was beside the young woman's seat confronting her tormentors. A couple of backhands and a stern look was all it took to send them stumbling unsteadily toward the opposite end of the car from where Doc and Kitty remained seated.
"Miss, come sit with us. You might feel more comfortable," he said pointing to the end of the car where his companions sat facing each other.
"Thank you. I would feel better sitting with a man with a badge if it isn't too much of an imposition."
By the time they reached his companions Matt knew her name and she his so he could properly introduce her to Doc and Kitty. Petite, brunette Matilda Gilroy had been visiting with her grandparents in Truckee where her father Leonard had been city marshal until he took a job as a detective on the San Francisco force eight years ago, leaving the task of defending the people of the small railroad town to Jacob Teeters. He'd advanced rapidly through the ranks in the intervening years and was respected enough for his abilities that he also was another of the speakers at the law conference. He would be speaking on the topic "The Application of Crime Fighting Techniques Learned in a Rural Setting to an Urban Setting."
Leonard Gilroy, they learned from their new acquaintance, upon his latest promotion became captain of the entire precinct, but remained chief of its criminal investigation unit. The locals refer to this high crime downtown district, favored by high livers among the wealthy as the Tenderloin. This notorious home to prostitutes and gamblers, Matilda informed her new friends, isn't home to the Gilroy family, who live in a quieter nearby residential area, the not very distant Mission District, but it happened to be where Julie Blane relocated her establishment on Mission Street, a far more reputable location than the even more infamous Barbary Coast. Kitty remembered visiting Julie's previous gambling house and saloon while still a girl very well.
Tilda, as she liked to be called, wanted to take a trolley to her house from the station, but Matt insisted they stop to report what happened to her father first. Then, leaving her with her father, the Dodge City visitors would continue on to Blane's House of Cards. Accordingly they hired a wagon to transport them and their baggage to the precinct building and from there to Julie's place of business and residence.
"Tilda, who are these people?" Captain Gilroy asked before his daughter could utter a word. "You took quite a chance sharing a ride with total strangers. I sent a police landau driven by Sergeant Parker to meet you at the station. He's probably frantic by now wondering where you are."
"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't realize Tim would be waiting for me. Papa, this is United States Marshal Matt Dillon, who helped me out of a minor difficulty on the train, and his friends Doctor Galen Adams and Miss Kitty Russell. They've traveled all the way from Dodge City, Kansas. Marshal, Doctor, Miss Russell, my father Captain Len Gilroy."
Gilroy breathed a sigh of relief when he realized his daughter had aligned herself with a fellow lawman who diffused what the relieved father finally accepted as a minor incident on the train. Still, mindful of his abandoned sergeant, Gilroy ushered his daughter and her companions out to where they left the waiting wagon to say her farewells. While father and daughter returned to the train station to join Tim Parker, Tilda's fiancé, and then continue on home, the Dodge City visitors could travel directly to their destination.
The three Dodge friends soon found themselves in front of Julie Blane's establishment. They made short work of getting their luggage inside with the help of the driver, who was soon on his way, pleased with the generous tip. Both Matt and Doc had taken it upon themselves to pay him something extra. Glancing at their surroundings, Kitty was the first to spot her friend standing by the bar giving instructions to the bar girls and the bartender. The place was far too noisy to shout, so Kitty touched the arm of a passing barmaid.
"Please tell your boss her guests have arrived slightly ahead of schedule," she said once she had the girl's attention.
The pretty blond couldn't have been more than 19, Tilda's age, but it was obvious she'd experienced more of life than someone her age should have. Kitty sympathized with her. By that age she'd been a working girl for six years, but was lucky and resourceful enough for her fortunes to significantly change thanks to spotting the tall, handsome marshal now standing by her side. She wondered if this girl would have a similar opportunity. Julie Blane, the woman walking toward them, had recognized Kitty's potential early on and had given her the knowledge she'd need to run her own business. Kitty suspected this young looking grandmother, who had treated her like a younger sister, might be doing the same for the girls now working for her.
During her previous visit to San Francisco, where the then teenaged redhead had hoped to remain, Julie's husband was still alive, Lon was a small boy of five and the infant her mentor had been carrying before the Blanes relocated from New Orleans was lost to a miscarriage during the trip west. On orders from Marc L'Hommedieu, they opened a saloon hard by the docks on the Barbary Coast that catered to sailors and other less savory characters who populated the area. While crime was also rampant in the Tenderloin at least a higher-class gambling den like her current business could attract a cliental of mostly society gents out for a good time, especially situated like they were on the edge of the district, and because of its proximity to the wealthy Nob Hill. She'd sold off the Barbary Coast saloon and bought this gambling and drinking establishment a year before her rebellious son left to turn outlaw. Like in the previous building, the third floor remained off limits to all but her closest friends. Even so, Julie hoped this neighborhood, as bad as some thought it was, would prove to be a far better place to raise her grandson than where she had raised his father Lon.
"Doc, Kitty, Matt. It's good to see you. Let me arrange for your luggage to be brought upstairs to your rooms so you can settle in and rest a bit from your trip. I've arranged for us to have supper upstairs at 8:00. That way we can catch up on everything that's happened since I last saw you while I keep an ear out for Stephen's needs. His nanny's with him, but a grandmother can't allow someone else to have the pleasure of watching him grow up without butting in."