A Wanted Man by Linda Lael Miller (16)

CHAPTER 14

AUTRY HAD JUST BEEN SERVED a king’s breakfast at the table in his railroad car when the whistle shrilled and the wheels screeched, grabbing so hard at the tracks that his coffee and everything on his plate flew at him like they’d been sprung from a catapult.

Esau, his butler, who always traveled with him, was thrown clean to the floor.

Autry bellowed a curse, but it was barely audible over the shriek of those wheels, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw blue sparks shooting past the window, like a shower of strange, small stars.

Esau, an aging black man, portly and slow, groped his way to his feet, holding on to the edge of a seat to keep from being flung down again. “Lord have mercy,” he cried. “This train done jumped the tracks!”

Furious, Autry grabbed a linen napkin and swabbed futilely at his egg-stained clothes. Spilled coffee, fresh from the dining car, burned his hide right through his pant legs.

The locomotive gave a great, teeth-rattling shudder and stopped, and the shock of it reverberated right through Autry’s car and on down the line. Cries of alarm echoed from behind him as he stood, shoving Esau aside to storm through to the engine room.

Up ahead somewhere, a gunshot cracked in the crisp air.

A robbery?

No. Impossible. Everything Autry Whitman did was news, given the extent of his financial empire, and that meant everybody capable of reading the papers knew he was onboard that train.

By God, no one would dare stop a train pulling his private car.

No one.

He blazed into the engine room like a wildfire, and found the engineer standing stock-still at the controls, face colorless, shoulders heaving, mouth working like a fish flopped up on a creek bank, staring out the little window above the levers and gauges.

Livid, Autry descended upon him, his big fists clenched at his sides. “What the hell…?”

The engineer turned, stared bleakly at Autry. “They blew the tracks up—see for yourself, boss—”

Autry blinked, stunned—as scalded as he’d been when his morning coffee cascaded into his lap. He stooped a little, being a tall man, peered out through the rectangular window and saw twisted, blackened track and railroad ties standing up in the ground, splintered and leaning.

Riders waited, three on either side of the ruined tracks, bandannas tied over their faces, rifles upraised.

Autry watched through a red haze as a glistening black gelding separated itself from the other horses. Bold as you please, the bandit steered that critter right up alongside the locomotive and leaped deftly from the horse to the metal steps leading into the engine room, without ever touching the ground.

“If I hadn’t stopped,” the engineer lamented stupidly, apparently more afraid of Autry than the half-dozen train robbers bent on stripping every strongbox, every wallet and purse, every copper cent from that train, “we’d have jumped the rails!”

“Shut up, you damn fool,” Autry growled.

Meanwhile the robber, a leanly built, agile-looking fellow, boarded the train, clad in rough clothes and muddy boots. His eyes were a vivid and strangely peaceful shade of blue.

Autry remembered the small but deadly pistol in his inside suit pocket and reached for it.

“I wouldn’t,” the robber said, lowering the rifle and cocking it, one-handed, in the same motion.

“This is an outrage!” Autry blustered.

“I reckon it is,” the bandit replied, boldly relieving Autry of both the hidden pistol and his wallet.

Autry’s gizzard rushed up into the back of his throat, and he was mad enough to chew it up and spit it out. “It’ll cost me thousands of dollars just to fix those tracks. And I’ve got a trainful of passengers stranded out here, with no way to get to Flagstaff—”

The robber opened Autry’s wallet, extracted the fat wad of bills inside and had the effrontery to toss the empty billfold straight into the furnace that powered the boiler, where it curled in the coal embers. “I reckon the good folks in Flagstaff will send help, once word reaches them,” he said.

Autry saw the other riders trail, single-file, past the open doorway, set to board—and loot—every other car on that train. He seethed.

The bandit put the money—Autry’s money—into the pocket of his coat. Nudged at Autry’s chest with the tip of his rifle barrel.

“Rich man like you,” he drawled, “with his own private railroad car, well, it just stands to reason there’d be a safe somewhere, doesn’t it?”

“I do not have a safe!” Autry lied, perhaps a bit too vehemently.

“Move,” the robber replied.

The engineer cowered in the corner, of no earthly use at all. Autry could only hope that Esau would have armed himself by now, from the small arsenal stored carefully in a discreet wooden chest behind the two rows of seats in the next car.

“Do you know who I am?” Autry demanded.

The rifle barrel poked into the hollow at the base of his throat, and the robber flicked the hammer back with a gloved thumb. The blue eyes above that mask were glacial. “I know, all right,” the man answered, “and I’d just as soon shoot you as listen to another word.”

“Do what he says, Mr. Whitman,” the engineer pleaded. “You’ll get us all killed if you don’t—”

If Autry had been close enough, he’d have backhanded that yellow-belly hard enough to hit the wall and slide down it. But a sudden move would not be wise, with that rifle barrel shoved into his gullet.

Autry swallowed.

“Keep your hands out from your sides,” the robber ordered, as Autry turned to cross the coupling into his private car, his den, his sanctuary.

Autry obeyed, having no immediate choice in the matter. He’d left the door to the locomotive open in his haste, and the one leading back into his car as well.

The rifle jabbed hard into his spine as he navigated the coupling.

Esau sat, bound and gagged, in Autry’s own seat, while two of the other bandits ransacked the place.

One of them found the store of guns and let out a whoop. “Pay dirt!” he yelled, and started tossing the rifles, two by two, to his partner, who caught them readily and relayed them to someone outside the train.

“Those weapons are valuable!” Autry protested.

“All the more reason to take them,” replied the man at his back.

“You’ll pay for this,” Autry growled. “I’ll have rangers and Pinkertons all over you—”

The rifle barrel skipped up Autry’s vertebrae, one by one, to chill the underside of his skull. “Where’s the safe?”

Esau’s eyes were the size of wagon wheels. He was sitting on the safe, which was cleverly hidden beneath the seat cushion. Watching Autry, he made a pleading sound through whatever had been stuffed into his mouth before they’d gagged him with one of Autry’s own monogrammed table napkins.

Without thinking, Autry shook his head.

The gunman behind him slammed him to the floor with such suddenness and force that, for a moment or so, Autry honestly believed he’d been shot. He waited for the pain, but all that came was a boot, pressing hard into the small of his back.

He gave a yelp, and that was when a weight came down on him, knocking the breath from his lungs.

The weight, which must have been Esau, was hauled off him.

Damnation, had they whacked Esau up alongside the head with a pistol butt?

Autry was significantly less concerned with that possibility than the safe hidden, heretofore, under Esau’s black butt.

“Tie his hands,” the leader said.

Autry groaned as his wrists were wrenched together behind his back and bound with what felt like a leather belt, cinched tight enough to cut off the blood flow to his hands.

“There’s a real pretty woman in the third car back,” a youthful voice said. “Can we bring her along?”

“Leave the women and the kids alone,” the leader said coldly. It was a tone not even Autry would have defied with a gun in each hand and an army of Pinkertons standing with him.

He heard Esau moan, somewhere nearby.

Then they found the safe.

Dumped the cushion right on Autry’s head.

He closed his eyes and silently damned all their souls to perdition.

“What’s the combination, old man?” someone asked.

Autry clamped his jaws shut.

A shot splintered the air, frigid because of the open door between Autry’s car and the locomotive, and Autry felt that bullet as surely as if it had penetrated his own flesh, instead of the lock on his safe.

“Well, now,” the leader remarked. “That was worth the whole exercise.”

Autry listened, helpless, while they looted personal funds.

“Just let me have the one woman,” the young voice wheedled.

“Lay a hand on her,” the boss replied, “and I’ll kill you.”

Someone else spoke up. “What’s one female?” a man asked. “We been hidin’ out a long, lonely while—”

The rifle barrel rose from the back of Autry’s neck, and he felt a rush of relief—until he heard it go off with a bang that must have blown a three-foot gap in the teakwood-lined roof of his railroad car.

A tense silence fell, and Autry felt the first snowflakes drifting down through that hole above his head, coming to rest cold and soft on his nape.

“Mount up and ride,” the ringleader told his men, apparently having made his point concerning the woman.

“This train is due to roll into Flagstaff at two o’clock this afternoon. When it doesn’t show, the rangers will follow the tracks right back here, and we’re going to be hard put, with all we’re carrying, to get clear of the place.”

Suddenly there was a lot of scrambling, and Autry literally felt the blessed absence of everybody but Esau and the man who’d forced him onto his face in his own railroad car and robbed him blind.

“So long, Mr. Whitman,” the robber said cordially.

Autry was draped in a sheet of snow before he dared get to his feet.

* * *

ROWDY KNEW, when Sam and the major met him and Gideon on the outskirts of Stone Creek, leading a fresh horse, that he wouldn’t be taking Lark to the dance that night, and the state of her bloomers would remain a mystery.

“The two-o’clock train never arrived in Flagstaff,” Sam said.

Without even dismounting, Rowdy climbed from Paint’s back into the saddle of the chestnut gelding Sam had brought along as a spare.

“See to Pardner,” Rowdy told an openmouthed Gideon, “and then go on over to Mrs. Porter’s and convey to Miss Morgan my regrets concerning the dance. Tell her I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Gideon swallowed, nodded. “I don’t reckon I could go along?” he ventured hopefully.

“Do as I asked you, Gideon,” Rowdy replied.

“I guess, as deputy marshal, I ought to stay in town. Make sure things stay peaceful.”

Sam gave one of his spare smiles, then bent to catch Paint’s reins and hand them to Gideon. “That’ll be a real help,” he told the boy.

Gideon sat up a little straighter in the saddle, looking proud.

“We’d better ride,” the major said, standing in his stirrups. “We’ll be damn lucky to get to Flagstaff before dark as it is.”

Rowdy shifted, adjusting himself to the new saddle and the prospect of a ride he didn’t want to make, with a lot of things he didn’t want to do at the other end of it.

Gideon tugged at his hat brim, out of deference to Sam and the major, and rode straight-spined for home.

Rowdy hoped to God there wouldn’t be any real trouble in Stone Creek while he was away. If anything happened to Gideon, he’d bear the weight of it for the rest of his life.

* * *

THE RUM CAKE SAT, fragrant, in the middle of Mrs. Porter’s kitchen table, with a fat candle stuck in the middle of it. There was to be a party of sorts, in honor of Mr. Porter’s birthday.

Lark wondered if he might actually show up, in the flesh or as a specter, and put on the coat his wife had brushed and aired and hung on a peg beside the back door.

She glanced at Lydia, bundled in a quilt in a chair drawn up close to the stove, and smiled. The little girl was wearing one of the nightgowns Mrs. Porter had bought for her, and Mai Lee had braided her hair neatly for the festivities and given her a piece of rock candy to soothe her sore throat.

“If it’s somebody’s birthday,” Lydia inquired, “why aren’t there any presents?”

Lark was trying to think of a reply when a knock sounded at the back door. Her heart leaped a little.

Rowdy?

She’d have to face him eventually, of course, but at the moment she’d have preferred to hide behind a door, or even under a bed, until he left.

Since Mrs. Porter was in the study, and Mai Lee had gone out to run the usual errands, there was no one else to answer.

Lark drew a deep breath, released it slowly, smoothed her skirts and her hair and crossed the kitchen. Turning the knob, she closed her eyes for the briefest moment and felt color seep into her cheeks.

But it was Gideon who’d come calling, not Rowdy. Pardner was with him, wagging his tail in greeting.

Looking up into Gideon’s solemn face, Lark was briefly, terribly, afraid. Had he come to tell her—

She caught hold of her imagination. Even managed a wobbly smile. “Come in, Gideon,” she said. “And you, too, Pardner.”

The young man, her newest pupil, removed his hat. Stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him.

“Rowdy asked me to come,” Gideon said shyly.

“He can’t take you to the dance tonight because he had to head straight back to Flagstaff, when we’d no more than got here.”

Lark was both relieved to know that Rowdy was safe, and disappointed that she wouldn’t see him that night. “Back to Flagstaff?” she asked.

“We had to go there so I could get a horse,” Gideon explained, swallowing once and looking for all the world like a young man telling either a bold-faced lie or a partial truth. “The one I had was hired from the livery. Coming back, we met Sam O’Ballivan and Major Blackstone, and they wanted Rowdy to go on with them.”

“I see,” Lark said, still smiling even though a little frisson of alarm went through her. She knew Sam and the major had hired Rowdy to serve as town marshal, but what business could all three of them have in Flagstaff? “Let me take your hat and coat, Gideon. And do sit down.”

He hesitated, then nodded. Shed his coat and handed it over, along with his hat. His gaze strayed to the rum cake, and Lark smiled again.

In the meantime, Pardner had gone straight to Lydia, who was making a fuss over him, and Lark saw Gideon’s regard move in their direction and soften slightly.

He approached Lydia’s chair, crouched, looking up into the child’s eyes.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

Lydia nodded. “I remember you,” she said. “You brought me here on your horse. And it was snowing out, and very cold.”

“That’s right,” Gideon said hoarsely.

Lydia was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “My papa died. His funeral is Sunday afternoon.”

Lark’s throat tightened around a spiky ball of pain.

“I know,” Gideon replied. “I was real sorry to hear that.”

“I’m going to Phoenix to live with my aunt Nell.”

Lark sank slowly into a chair at the kitchen table, careful not to disturb Mr. Porter’s birthday cake. She’d tried several times to broach the subject of Nell Baker’s impending arrival, but always without success. Lydia would simply bite down on her lower lip and look away, sometimes giving her head a small, decisive shake. Now, perhaps because Gideon, big as he was, was in some ways another child, or perhaps simply because he’d rescued her and she was grateful, Lydia was ready to confide in someone.

Lark was desperately relieved.

“I went to Phoenix once,” Gideon said quietly, and it struck Lark, once again, how like Rowdy he was, in his appearance as well as his manner and his countenance, but also in deeper ways. He was kind, and he didn’t shrink from hard duties; he simply did what needed doing, efficiently and without complaint. “It’s warm all the time there.”

“Are there Indians?” Lydia asked, very solemnly.

“Pimas, mostly,” Gideon confirmed. “They’re peaceful. Farmers. They’ve got irrigation ditches down there that are better than ten thousand years old.”

“Ten thousand years?” Lydia marveled.

Gideon nodded.

Lydia considered that extraordinary length of time, which must have seemed like an eternity to an eight-year-old, then gestured, and Gideon obligingly leaned forward, so she could whisper in his ear. Even from halfway across the room, though, Lark, whose eyes were glazed with sudden tears, heard the child’s words.

“I’m scared,” Lydia said earnestly.

“I reckon your aunt Nell must be a nice woman,” Gideon said, giving one of Lydia’s pigtails an affectionate tug. “She’ll take real good care of you.”

Pardner looked on, turning his head toward Gideon, then back toward Lydia.

“Do you really think so?” Lydia asked, in a breathless tone, her eyes wide.

“Sure I do,” Gideon answered. “She’s coming all this way to get you, and that means she wants a girl to raise.”

“I hope she’s not like Mabel,” Lydia said.

Lark sniffled and dried her eyes on the cuff of her dress. Straightened her back. Lydia would be safe with Miss Baker, almost surely, and she’d be fed and clothed. Was it too much to hope that the woman would love Lydia as well?

“I don’t figure she could be like Mabel,” Gideon mused.

“How come?”

“Well, because she’s your aunt. That means she’s got to be a little bit like you, anyhow. Maybe she’s even a lot like you. And you’re real nice, Lydia, so she must be, too.”

“What if she’s mean, though?” Lydia fretted.

“Then you just send me a letter,” Gideon said staunchly. “I’ll come right down to Phoenix, first thing, and fetch you back here to live with Miss Morgan.” He turned his head, looking at Lark. “It’s all right to promise that, isn’t it?”

Lark could barely speak. “Yes, Gideon,” she managed. “It’s all right.”

He turned back to Lydia. “See?”

“I don’t know how to write,” Lydia said, worried again. “I mean, I can write some, but my letters go every which way.”

Gideon must have smiled, because, suddenly, Lydia smiled, too. “If Miss Morgan will give me a sheet of paper and an envelope, I’ll write the letter for you. Make out the envelope and put a stamp on it, too. Then, if you ever have any trouble with anybody, all you’ll have to do is mail the letter. Soon as I get it, I’ll be coming for you.”

After some searching—given that she was a fugitive, living under a partially assumed name, she didn’t write letters—Lark produced a sheet of tablet paper, along with a pencil. The envelope was Mrs. Porter’s.

She stayed close, watched over Gideon’s shoulder as he wrote, “Please come and get me right away” in large block letters, slanted forcefully to the right. He read the message to Lydia, who nodded her approval, then carefully folded the paper, tucked it into the envelope and addressed it to himself:

Lark purloined a stamp from Mrs. Porter’s supply and gave it to Gideon, who licked the back of it and ceremoniously pressed it to the envelope with the pad of his thumb.

“What if you aren’t here when the letter comes?” Lydia asked.

“Somebody will forward it on to me, wherever I am,” Gideon replied, with the kind of certainty only the young could offer so readily.

Lydia grasped the letter tightly. “When I grow up,” she said, her gaze searching Gideon’s face, as if to memorize his every feature, “can we please get married?”

Gideon patted Lydia’s small hand. “If you still want me then,” he replied easily, “we’ll tie the knot. Chances are, though, you’ll forget all about me, and when you’re old enough, and pretty enough to have your pick of suitors, you’ll marry somebody else.”

“I’ll never forget you, Gideon,” Lydia said solemnly.

And neither will I, Lark thought. Neither will I.

* * *

THE RIDE TO FLAGSTAFF seemed longer this time, being so soon repeated, and when Rowdy, Sam and the major got to the railroad depot, it was full dark. Little splashes of lantern light stretched along the train tracks as men rode back and forth, ferrying women and children into town, then turning right around to head back out for more.

Clearly, there had been a robbery, and maybe something even worse.

Reston materialized out of the gloom to greet them as soon as they rode up—Sam first, then the major, then Rowdy, who was the last to dismount.

“They dynamited the tracks,” Reston reported gravely.

Rowdy stiffened inwardly. He’d never known his pa to use dynamite, but there was always a first time. If a train was moving fast enough, it might roll right through a blaze laid on the tracks, even with logs the size of whiskey barrels.

“Anybody get hurt?” Sam asked Reston. He had to be thinking about an experience he’d had with a train down in Mexico, Sam did. God Almighty, Rowdy hoped this robbery hadn’t been a calamity like that one.

“Nope,” Reston replied, his gaze straying, measuring, to Rowdy, before shifting back to Sam. “No injuries to speak of, beyond a few bruises. Folks were scared, though, and they were a long time out there before we got to them. Soon as the train was late, though, we sent riders out to investigate.”

The major scanned the darkness, as though he could see all the way to that train, stranded out there in the dark and cold. “I suppose the robbers were masked,” Blackstone said, resigned.

Reston nodded. “According to Mr. Whitman—he owns this railroad and we brought him back among the first of the passengers, thinking he might have a heart attack, he was in such a dither—the leader had blue eyes and rode a black gelding. That’s about all we know.”

Rowdy’s stomach pitched, then rolled over backward.

Blue eyes, striking enough to be memorable to a frightened old man.

A black gelding.

Payton Yarbro.

Damn if the old bastard hadn’t lied through his teeth when he’d said he’d given up robbing trains. And when he’d claimed he was headed for Mexico, too.

“The old feller’s over at Ruby’s right now,” Reston said. “You might want to talk to him yourselves.”

“That can wait,” Sam replied, “until after all the passengers have been brought in.”

“We’re almost done with that,” Reston told Sam, but he was looking at Rowdy again. Probing at him in a way that made the small hairs rise on the back of Rowdy’s neck. “No sense in wearing out your horses. Or yourselves.”

Sam considered, then nodded. “Ruby’s?” he asked.

Reston nodded. “Your friend here knows the way,” he said, before peeling his eyes off Rowdy’s hide. To Rowdy it felt like some of the skin came away with his glance.

Sam looked Rowdy’s way, very briefly but in some depth, then mounted up again. Rowdy and the major followed suit.

After he’d shaken off the effects of Reston’s stare, Rowdy turned his thoughts to what little he knew about the robbery. Two details, that was all he really had. And all he really needed.

If he could have found his pa right then, he’d have done it. Handed the lying son of a bitch over to the rangers without batting an eye.

The lights of Ruby’s Saloon glowed in the gloom as they rode up, but the piano wasn’t playing. Out front, Rowdy, Sam and the major dismounted and found places for their horses.

Autry Whitman held court in the middle of the big, smoke-blued room, his white hair standing on end. A black man sat at the same table, as did Ruby herself, but everyone else kept their distance, staying on the periphery, lining the bar and claiming the far tables.

Whitman exuded power—and righteous wrath. He looked like some Old Testament prophet, and kept clenching his fists and mumbling, while Ruby, looking pale and jumpy, tried to ply him with free whiskey.

Rowdy knew what was going to happen. Knew there was no way to avoid it. So he resisted the urge to pull his hat brim down low over his eyes.

Sam was the first to speak. “Mr. Whitman,” he said, evidently needing no introduction, “my name is Sam O’Ballivan. I’m an Arizona Ranger. This is Major John Blackstone and Rowdy Rhodes.”

Whitman’s stony gaze moved from Sam to the major to Rowdy, and stopped with a lurch as jarring as a train coming fast onto a gap in the tracks.

The old man narrowed his eyes.

“That’s him,” he said, flushing dangerously and starting to his feet.

Rowdy stood his ground, didn’t move or speak.

He felt Sam and the major looking at him.

Whitman half rose, then sat down again, heavily. Shook his head, as if suddenly confused.

“It couldn’t have been him,” Ruby said evenly. “He was in this saloon when that train was robbed.”

“Those blue eyes,” Whitman murmured.

“Lots of people have blue eyes,” Sam said quietly. But he glanced thoughtfully at Ruby, then turned his attention back to the railroad mogul, skipping over Rowdy entirely. “Do you know what time it was when the train was robbed, Mr. Whitman?”

“Ten-thirty,” Whitman said, with an accusing look at the black man. “I’d just looked at my watch, to see how late Esau here was, serving up my breakfast.”

Esau looked mighty uncomfortable, and didn’t speak.

“At ten-thirty,” Ruby said, “Mr.—Rhodes was right here in this saloon. I remember him because of the badge.”

They were on dangerous ground, and Rowdy hoped Ruby knew that and would tread lightly. If she said Rowdy was her stepson, Sam and the major were sure to make the obvious connection. Then they’d want to know all about Jack Payton. And what Ruby didn’t tell them they could learn by questioning anybody on the street.

Again Rowdy silently cursed his father. For robbing trains. For living a decade in one place, and a very public one, at that. For the pure, reckless arrogance of using his famous first name as part of his alias.

And then there was Gideon. He’d stood there in Mrs. Porter’s kitchen, right after he’d shown up in Stone Creek, and said his name was Payton, not Rhodes. No one had commented at the time, or since, but Rowdy knew the landlady wouldn’t have missed something like that, and neither would Lark.

Lark.

Rowdy ached inside. He didn’t know which would be worse—leaving her behind with a hasty explanation or none at all, or seeing the look in her eyes when he was arrested for things Rob Yarbro had done.

Robert Yarbro. That was the name on all those Wanted posters, but in its way, it was as much an alias as Rowdy Rhodes.

Whitman studied Rowdy afresh. “He wasn’t as tall as you are,” he said.

For the space of a heartbeat, Rowdy didn’t know what the man was talking about.

“Were you here today, Rowdy?” Sam asked quietly.

“In this saloon, I mean?”

Rowdy nodded.

Gideon had been with him, when they’d all met up on the road earlier, outside Stone Creek. Suppose Sam and the major or—God forbid—Reston, decided to question Gideon?

Rowdy was an experienced liar, a thing he wasn’t proud of but nonetheless had to acknowledge, at least to himself. Gideon, on the other hand, was bound to slip up.

He was just giving silent thanks that Reston was still at the depot, when the man crashed through the swinging doors.

“We found one of them,” he said. “He was facedown in the snow, shot through the forehead. Pockets stuffed full of other folks’ money.”

Having made this announcement, Reston turned and went out again.

Rowdy, Sam and the major all followed, with Autry Whitman not far behind.

The body was draped over the back of a horse.

Rowdy knew immediately that the corpse wasn’t his pa, but there was something familiar about the man’s form, just the same.

Reston stepped up, got the dead man by the hair of his head and lifted, so the lights of Ruby’s Saloon fell on the blood-streaked face. The bullet hole was small and neat, except for the dried blood dribbling down from it.

Bile scalded the back of Rowdy’s throat as he looked into the sightless eyes of a man who’d once been a trusted friend as well as an in-law.

It was Chessie’s younger brother, Seth Alden.