Page 1 of Married By Midnight
Chapter 1
Spring 1894, Somewhere in Colorado
Ian Poole woke with a start.Where was he?The room was dark, and the smell of straw and unwashed bodies assailed his nostrils. His hands involuntarily went to his surroundings, seeking the iron bars that had kept him prisoner.
“We’re close to Creede,” a voice called from the darkness. Ian took a deep breath and dropped his hand that was seeking in the darkness.The train. He was on a train that was traveling from New York to San Francisco.
He leaned back in the straw and listened to the sound of the wheels spinning against the rail. Nearly six days. He had been traveling from freight yard to freight yard.
It wouldn’t have been a terrible journey, except everything Ian owned was in a duffle bag he carried on his back and he didn’t have a ticket for the ride. He was hopping on the train as they departed the station. His biggest fear was that he would throw his duffle bag in the car and then not be able to do so himself.
Fortunately, there were a community of train-hoppers who took Ian under their care. They taught himthe hobo code.
The code was a series of symbols written on walls or rocks. These symbols were clues for other travelers; where they could get a meal and a place to sleep; maybe pick up an odd job or two.
These men made sure he had enough to eat. At night, they taught him a song or two using a guitar that only had three strings.
Why someone would want to spend their life train hopping, Ian didn’t know. He did find out, though, that each of these men had something in common.Freedom.
That was something he desired. He had spent several days in a small cage and no one was ever going to hold him captive again.
“How much longer?” Ian asked.
A man called Deek pulled out a pocket watch and flipped it open. Ian watched as he popped his head out of the metal car and took a quick look around.
“I’d say about two hours.” The man closed the watch and put it back in his pocket. “It’s starting to rain.”
“What does that mean?”
The man looked at Ian. “Means the landing will be softer. The rain softens up the ground.”
“Even better if there is snow,” another voice said from the darkness.
“Except you can’t see the rocks,” someone else said. The train filled with light laughter.
Ian still had time before they reached the jump off point. He could close his eyes, but he didn’t want the images that were seared into his brain clogging his mind as he prepared to jump.
The nightmares were the worst after he managed to escape. He had left his best friend behind.Behind to be tortured. Honestly, he never expected to see Charlie again, so Ian was shocked when his friend showed up at the tenement in New York.
Charlie didn’t say much about the incident, but you could tell that something had significantly changed him. Gone was the carefree friend he had grown up with. In his place was a stranger Ian barely knew.
Of course, Charlie insisted that what happened to them wasn’t Ian’s fault. But every single day Ian berated himself over the what ifs…
What if he stayed and helped Charlie?Would they both have been able to escape, or would they both be dead and at the bottom of the bay?
What if the police believed him and the story he told?Would they have been able to get to the warehouse where men tortured his friend?
What if he had confronted Mr. Weston about the sale of children?Would he have been able to do anything?
Ian’s best friend, Charlie Stockton, had uncovered that the garment factory was using underage and unpaid children to sew garments.
The conditions the children were kept in was appalling. Ian had seen children as young as five chained to beds and forced to work for eighteen hours a day.
Somehow the New York Department of Justice found out about it and asked Charlie to help investigate. Not only was the department investigating the child labor in the Weston factory, they were also investigating children at the shipping docks.
The Department of Justice couldn’t just storm into the factory, because no one had reported the children missing. They could, however, open an investigation if there were children under 14 working at the factory.
Child labor was a huge problem in New York. Many of the children worked from their homes until they were old enough to go the factory. The hours were long, and it was commonplace for the children to be abused while they worked.
