"Take your time." Pearl picked up her toddler and moved back toward the store. "I'll be out front if you need anything. I'll stand guard and no one will bother you, I promise."

For a moment Rainey couldn't believe Pearl had left her alone in her home, trusting that she wouldn't steal something. Then Rainey looked around. There was nothing worth the taking-a few old clothes on pegs. Several bowls of peaches on the table. A toy horse with a broken leg.

She relaxed, glad that she'd given Pearl her business and thankful to have a priceless bit of privacy. Rainey followed the woman's advice and did take her time. While the water heated, she laid out her new belongings as if they were priceless and on display. She soaked until the water became cold and scrubbed her hair twice. Then she climbed out, dried off, and put on her new under things. The soft cotton felt wonderful against her skin. It had been weeks since she'd felt truly clean.

Wearing only her undergarments, she washed her old clothes in the bathwater and scrubbed them as best she could. She left them in a bucket while she scrubbed the rags piled in one corner that Pearl must use for the baby. They were smelly and stained. Finally, she cleaned up her mess and slipped into the first new dress she'd worn in years.

After hanging the clothes to dry on the back porch railing, Rainey smiled up into the sun, feeling better than she had in months. Her short hair dried naturally into curls, and for once she couldn't feel fleas.

Pearl tapped on the door just as Rainey pulled her new comb through her hair.

"Mind if I interrupt? Jason's hungry."

"No. Please come in. I'm all dressed." Rainey turned as Pearl walked in and caught the surprise in the older woman's glance.

"My, my. I knew you were a woman, but I never dreamed there was such a pretty one beneath all that dirt."

Rainey blushed. "Thank you kindly, but I've never been anything but plain. I came to terms with it years ago." She did feel pretty, though, in a dress that had never belonged to anyone else.

She remembered when she'd been little and attended the school her father ran. As the schoolmaster's daughter, she never had fine dresses like all her classmates. Her father thought brown or black would be proper for his daughter. Even if she had talked her parents into allowing her to have a new dress for parties, Rainey was smart enough to realize that she'd still be the last one asked to dance. No young man had ever called on her. Not even one. When she'd moved from student to teacher, it had been a blessing, for she felt like she no longer had to compete with the others. Her dresses became plainer, dulling into grays, until she sometimes felt as though she'd faded into the very walls of the school.

"I like that rose color." Pearl tugged Rainey back from the past.

"Me, too," she said, thinking that as soon as she got a job, she'd buy the green one she'd seen in the store. She swore she'd never wear gray again.

Pearl pulled a meat pie from the cool box. "And you are pretty in it," she said. "But I warn you that a girl thinking herself plain can sometimes make it so." She winked at Rainey. "So take my compliment. Carry it in that imaginary pocket in your mind. Pull it out now and then and remember that at least one person noticed how pretty you are. Couldn't hurt."

Laughing, Rainey promised. She didn't know if she'd be able to think herself pretty, but she could see kindness in this tall woman and she would remember that.

Rainey must have been staring at the pie, for Pearl added, "I'd be honored to have you join me for lunch."

Rainey shook her head without taking her gaze off the pie. "I couldn't. You've been so kind already."

"Of course you can, dear. I hate eating alone, and the pie will be spoiled soon if we don't have it all. While we eat you can tell me how you happened to end up in these parts. I've no one but boring men to talk to most of the time, so it will be nice to have a visit."

Rainey began talking as she helped clear the peaches from the table. Pearl sat down with the baby in her lap and listened. By the time they'd finished the pie, Rainey had told Pearl all about her travels. Even including her short life as a horse borrower. It felt grand to tell the truth to someone. As she ended her tale, Rainey smiled, thinking that for the first time she had something to talk about besides what she'd read in books. She had lived an adventure.

Pearl leaned forward and covered Rainey's hand with hers. "You had good reason to leave home," she said. "Don't ever look back. It may have been the first time you chose a path for yourself, but you done right. You'll be safe here in Austin, I can feel it."

Staring at Pearl's hand, Rainey understood. She hadn't said much about her father, only that he tried to make her marry a man she didn't know, but Pearl had picked up on how it had been for her.

They spent the afternoon talking. Rainey held the baby while Pearl waited on customers and helped her stock while little Jason slept. Rainey insisted on making a peach pie to pay Pearl back in a small way for having eaten half her lunch. The smell of baking peaches filled the kitchen and drifted into the store. Pearl swore she sold three bags of peaches that afternoon because of the smell customers enjoyed while in the store.

"I wish we had the money to hire you," Pearl said as Rainey organized the spices. "The place looks better today than it has since the baby came. I don't seem to be able to do as much out here with him holding on to my skirts, but my Owen never complains." She laughed. "In fact, he told me yesterday that he wouldn't mind if our little Jason had a brother or sister." She blushed.

"I'll find something." Rainey tried to sound hopeful. "But first I'd better be off to find a place to board for the night. In this dress I could never go down to the creek to sleep tonight."

She'd just walked through the door when she noticed a tired man climb from his wagon and walk toward the store. He was stout, and balding, with a mustache that seemed to run from ear to ear. "Pearl!" he yelled as he neared the door. "Are you in there, or did you finally get an ounce of wisdom and leave me?"

Rainey heard Pearl's laughter. She rushed into his arms a moment later, and they hugged wildly, as if it had been days not hours since they'd seen each other. Rainey smiled as she walked away. She'd made a friend today. And to know her new friend was loved made Rainey feel good, even hopeful.

The good hotels all had Full signs swinging above their doors. A few places said they took men travelers only. She'd asked a man at one of the hotel desks, who looked like he might have been in Austin a while, if he knew of a place where respectable young women boarded. He said there was one fine women's boardinghouse and one not so grand on opposite ends of a street called Congress Avenue. One stranger asked if she might be the new schoolmarm, and Rainey realized she looked exactly like what she'd always been, an old maid schoolteacher. She'd been thirteen when students first called her Miss Adams, and she felt she'd aged a decade for each of the eight years she taught.

She didn't want to go back to teaching, but at present it seemed her best option. Jobs for women were few in this part of the world, and respectable jobs were almost nonexistent. She walked the busy streets reading posted notices in windows. A cook needed at one place, but offering less money than a boardinghouse would charge each week. Several notices were posted for house servants, promising room and board and a half-day off each week, but little pay. She found two ads for clerks, but one business wanted a man, and the other position had been filled before Rainey could find the address.

By dusk she decided to drop her bag off at the less expensive boardinghouse and make sure she had a bed for the night.

When she first saw the rooming house, she thought it looked respectable enough, only it was gray, the one color Rainey decided she hated. The old woman who ran the Askew House said she only had one room, a small third-floor space with a tiny window overlooking the alley.

"I'll take it," Rainey said and followed the rail of a woman up the carpeted stairs.

"I'm Mrs. Vivian. My husband and I came here with Mr. Stephen F," the owner said.

"Stephen F," Rainey repeated as she followed.

Mrs. Vivian stopped and turned around. "Stephen F Austin." She raised her chin. "We were part of the original three hundred."

Rainey wasn't about to repeat anything else. Whatever Mrs. Vivian thought she was because she and her husband arrived first seemed to be very important. "Yes, ma'am," Rainey whispered.

"I run a respectable house." The landlord continued up the steps.

"I understand," Rainey said without having a clear idea what the woman meant but guessed if she asked for a list of what wasn't respectable, horse borrowing would probably be on it. So she followed up to the second flight of stairs.

When Mrs. Vivian learned Rainey was looking for work, she insisted on collecting the entire first week's rent in advance. It was twice what Rainey hoped it would be.

"Don't know if you'll find work." The old woman pulled her mouth into a bow of wrinkles. "Most places don't pay women enough to live on." She raised one rather bushy eyebrow. "I guess they figure any proper woman would find a husband to provide for her." The landlord looked her up and down. "You're not very big, but you should have no problem finding a man to marry you if that's what you came to Texas looking for."

"No." The last thing Rainey wanted was Mrs. Vivian trying to match her up with a man. "I came to work and make my own way."

The old woman raised her nose. "It's not easy. Leastwise if you plan to make an honest living, and I don't rent rooms to those of them that don't."