If they were back home in China, ah, how different it would be. Her daughter would be chosen as someone’s wife and given a good life, and Lee-Lee would have brought her mother into the household.
“Nay, that is never to be,” Jade sighed as she covered the food with a red-checkered cloth.
She carried the basket out to the wagon in the stable, then hurried back inside and gathered clothes and blankets and took them out to the wagon, too.
She covered the satchel of clothes and blankets with one larger blanket and set the basket of food on the seat.
After hitching the horse to the wagon, Jade took a long look at the house where she had lived for the past year. Had the man who had employed her been a decent sort, she would have been comfortable living there for many years . . . if she could have brought Lee-Lee there to live with her.
Having dressed today in something besides her usual black servant dress, Jade already felt free. She smiled as she slapped the reins and rode away from this house of evil.
When she drove into Tombstone she headed directly for the crib.
It was still too early for her daughter to be displayed in the window. The men who paid for her services came later in the day, and at night, when her daughter stood in the window illuminated by candlelight.
She would never forget the first time she had been sent into town late for supplies. She had seen her daughter standing in the window, scarcely clothed, a look of despair and shame in her beautiful black eyes, lipstick smeared on her pretty lips, and rouge bright red on her round cheeks.
It had been at that moment she knew she had to find a way to free her daughter from such degradation. But it had taken the courage a white woman showed her to finally decide to better her daughter’s life, as well as her own.
Ai, Jessie had instilled in Jade her own courage. Jade hoped they would meet again someday.
But first she had to free her daughter from the crib and then get her to safety inside the burial cave that terrified Reginald Vineyard more than any other place.
She and Lee-Lee would have to risk facing whatever dwelt there besides the bodies of long-dead Sioux chiefs. Anything was better than bowing down to the wishes of a deranged man.
As she drove through the streets of Tombstone, Jade held her chin high and tried to pretend that this was just another trip to buy supplies. Her heart t
humping in her chest, her fingers quivering, Jade made a sharp turn left down a small alley between two cribs and stopped when she came to Lee-Lee’s.
She sat a moment as she got the courage to continue with her plan. Then she approached the man who always guarded the cribs, handing him a note she had written herself, forging Reginald Vineyard’s signature. The note said that the guard was needed out at the ranch.
Mumbling a few curse words, the man gave Jade a hard look, then spat into the dust. “Looks like the boss needs me elsewhere,” he said.
Still muttering to himself, he strode off toward the livery stable to retrieve his horse.
Jade tried to control her nervous breathing and the shaking of her hands as she grabbed the wicker basket from the wagon.
She tried to look ordinary as she went to Lee-Lee’s door and knocked on it.
She was, oh, so relieved when Lee-Lee opened it and let her inside.
But the moment Jade saw Lee-Lee, she went cold inside. Like Jade, Lee-Lee had a bruise on her cheek, as well as a blackened eye.
“Daughter, oh, daughter, who did this to you?” Jade cried as she placed the basket of food on the floor.
Lee-Lee hurriedly closed the door, then flung herself into her mother’s arms. “It was just one of those men who ask things of me that I do not want to do,” she cried, clinging. “Oh, Mother, I cannot live like this any longer. I choose death over this terrible life. Please, oh, please understand.”
Hearing her daughter actually say that she was going to take her life, Jade was so glad that she had come today to set her free.
Had she not, it might have been too late for her beautiful, sweet daughter!
“Do not speak of such a thing,” Jade said, stepping back from Lee-Lee. She placed gentle hands on her daughter’s tiny, frail shoulders. “We are leaving today, Lee-Lee. Get dressed in something more than a robe. But first, wrap some of your more decent clothes in a blanket. As you dress, I will take your clothes to the wagon.”
“Mother, what are you saying?” Lee-Lee asked, her eyes wide as she wiped tears from them.
“I am saying that while Reginald is at the Indian village begging forgiveness, I will take you away to a new life,” Jade said, stroking her daughter’s pale cheek. She could see the imprint of a man’s hand there.
“But where . . . how?” Lee-Lee asked, too stunned to move.