Involved: Day 3

Word Count: 18,007

Summary of Events:

After spending the first day of travel mourning the loss of his sister, Samuel started to think about the woman who had sent the letter and getting more and more upset that she knew his real name. After church Charlotte was unable to escape without women expressing excitement to her about Violet's upcoming marriage and pressing her to get married soon too. Samuel arrived at Denver and, in spite of the changes that had taken place in the six or seven years since he'd last seen the place, was able to find his way to a place he'd liked to go to when he'd been there before only to find it shuttered, leaving him with no reason to linger in Denver, so he headed west, the direction of Georgetown . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Just as before — which actually surprised Samuel a bit — it didn’t take long to reach the edge of Denver, and as soon as she realised they were leaving the buildings behind Cheyenne seemed to become delighted, stepping with an eager liveliness, as opposed to the tense fearfulness she’d displayed when they’d gotten into the thick of Denver.

Mountain peaks that still had snow on them loomed ahead, and it was behind some of them that Samuel knew he was going to find Georgetown, but what he was going to find when he reached Georgetown he didn’t know.

According to Mrs. Annesley’s letter none of the bodies were in Georgetown — living or dead — they were all in Kansas where the crash had happened.

It had, however, been about two weeks since Mrs. Annesley had penned her letter, meaning that things could have changed since then; if not, then Samuel would be turning back and making for Kansas, but he didn’t want to head that way unnecessarily.

In fact, really, Samuel didn’t want to have to go to Kansas at all. He didn’t want to see the site of the crash, the mangled wreckage that, to an extent, probably still remained; he wasn’t even sure he wanted to see Isabelle’s lifeless form — but he knew he needed to in order to prove that she was dead and he wasn’t being possibly lied to in order to be trapped by some nefarious people.

Sure, he’d made it through Denver without incident — the fire wagon aside — but Samuel still wasn’t certain that he was at least as safe as he’d felt back in Casper, and he wasn’t going to feel that safe until he knew just who in the world this Mrs. Annesley was and how many other people in the area of Georgetown might possibly know his birth name — much less who they might possibly have told it to, if it was, for some reason, no longer a secret.

He certainly hoped that his name wasn’t common knowledge throughout Georgetown, he didn’t see why it would need to be, but yet he couldn’t help but worry that more people knew his birth name than he wanted to, people had neither need nor right to know it.

If Isabelle would’ve told anyone she would have told him that she had done so; he hoped that she would’ve even asked his permission before telling his name to anyone, and would’ve told that person that they weren’t to divulge it to anyone, but since he had no record of Mrs. Annesley in the letters that Isabelle had sent him he couldn’t be sure that Isabelle had ever known this Mrs. Annesley.

Isabelle was a good judge of people, she wouldn’t befriend anyone that she thought would be dangerous, so if this Mrs. Annesley was a friend of Isabelle’s, then Samuel would be fine, but if she wasn’t, then Samuel was sure he had a very real reason to be afraid.