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“They’re not very smart bandits, ma’am,” Liam whispered. “I watched ’em up in the express car. We’re not so finished as you think.” He looked out the window, making Holly wonder what kind of life the orphan boy had known to stay so remarkably calm and cocky under such rough treatment. “Where are we?”
Holly looked out the window again. Evans Grove had nothing more than a sad little platform built alongside the spot in the tracks where the train occasionally stopped. She could see that sad platform just beyond the next outcropping of rocks. They were very nearly at Evans Grove. Someone small and fast could get to town and bring help.
“Liam,” Holly whispered with her eye on their enormous captor, “how fast can you run?”
* * *
“Sheriff! Sheriff Wright, did you hear what I just said?”
Mason Wright pinched the bridge of his nose and longed for patience. When he envisioned breaking up feuds and brawls in the tiny town of Evans Grove, he hadn’t pictured the combatants wearing bonnets.
“Yes, I heard you clear.” He glanced over at the door of his office, still swinging open from Beatrice Ward’s blustering entrance, and thought it might be time to make up a “Closed” sign to hang in the window. “But, Miss Ward, I don’t have to tell you times are tight all over these parts. I don’t see how requiring curtains is going to solve much of anything. People have more important places to put their time and money.”
Miss Ward puffed herself up like a fussing hen. The way that woman clucked, it wasn’t hard to draw the connection. “Ephraim always said, ‘appearance is everything.’” Beatrice was forever quoting “wisdom” Mason had never seen the spinster’s late brother display. “If we look respectable and civilized, why then we behave respectable and civilized.”
Mason didn’t see much he’d call respectable and civilized in the “basic privacy of curtains” battle Beatrice Ward had launched at this week’s town meeting. He’d seen less contentious hound fights. Honestly, the woman had been on a righteous tirade ever since the storm took the roof off her house. Always proud of her fussy little cottage on Second Street—or what she liked to call “the high side of town”—Miss Ward took her home’s destruction as a personal insult, as if no one else in town had ever lost their home or kin. Truth was, far too many had lost homes and kin when the storm burst a nearby dam last month. Most especially the Widow Evans, Beatrice’s current opponent in the room. He offered Pauline Evans a sympathetic glance before saying, “I have to agree with Mayor Evans. I can’t enforce this.”
“Acting Mayor Evans,” Beatrice corrected, casting a derisive glance at the other woman. Some days Beatrice treated Pauline Evans as if she had stolen the title off her late husband’s still-warm body instead of the sad inheritance it was.
Robert Evans had been a fine man and a huge loss to the town, and Mason had to give Pauline credit for setting aside her grief to uphold her husband’s office. If the widow never did anything else for Evans Grove, her decision to step in kept Beatrice Ward from declaring herself mayor. Beatrice always acted as if chairing the Evans Grove Ladies’ Society—which merely consisted of eight grandmothers who met weekly in the church parlor for tea and criticism—gave her supreme authority.
“We’ve sent off for funds as it is, Beatrice.” Mayor Evans—Mason refused to think of her or address her as “acting mayor” no matter what Miss Ward insisted—squared her shoulders and jutted her chin in defiance. “We need to rebuild, not redecorate.”
“One fuels the other,” Miss Ward preached. “Who’d want to invest in a drab little town?”
“The Prairie Trust Bank of Nebraska, if you both remember. Miss Sanders wired yesterday to say she’d be on this morning’s train to Greenfield and taking the stage back here this afternoon.”
“Why on earth doesn’t the train stop here regularly? We have a station,” the spinster declared with undue pride.
“We only have a platform, and you know we can always get a whistle-stop if we ask a day ahead of time,” Mason felt compelled to correct. “What matters is that Miss Sanders will be on that stage from Greenfield today with important promissory papers, and I intend to be waiting to meet her. But before then, I got a pile of paperwork to tend to, a bag of government mail left over from the flood and two complaints about Vern Hicks out yelling down by the saloon again last night. Can you see that I might have more important things to tend to at the moment?”
Mason had hoped that the mention of Vern Hicks, who spent far more time with a bottle than his wife, might throw righteous Miss Ward off her present course. It only seemed to deepen the woman’s ever-present scowl.
Truth to tell, Mason felt a little like scowling himself. Miss Sanders was a sensible sort, but he didn’t like the idea of her traveling alone on the train. He would have been much more satisfied with Miss Sanders on yesterday’s train with an Evans Grove whistle-stop, but she’d wired to say the meetings took longer than expected. Mason wasn’t much for changing plans last minute with so much at stake, but who was he to tell a banker how long it takes to get business done? No one asked him if it was wiser to wait one more day so they could request a whistle-stop right here in Evans Grove. No, that banker had gone right ahead and put her on today’s train that went on through to Greenfield. It may get her home today, but he liked the idea of a woman alone on an open stagecoach from Greenfield even less than a train.
“Do you think Miss Sanders is traveling with any funds right away?” Mayor Evans asked, evidently glad for a change of subject.
“We won’t know. The bank could send a small start-up fund, but I told her not to make any mention of it if they did. If she’s traveling with any gold at all, the fewer people who hear about it, the better. No offense, but I’d hope the Prairie Trust Bank would know better than to send even one brick of gold with a tiny little thing like Holly Sanders.”
“Well, I should hope—” Miss Ward’s declaration was cut off by the sound of yelling in the street.
“Sheriff!” Shouts and the sound of galloping horse hooves sent Mason to the door in a flash. Ned Minor was coming up the street at full speed yelling “Sheriff Wright!” as his horse kicked up a cloud of dust. The young hotel clerk was a dozen yards away when a scraggly boy lunged off the back of the horse to run full tilt at Mason.
“It’s the train,” the boy yelped, pointing back toward the tracks. “Gunmen. Miss Sanders had Miss Sterling fake the vapors so I could...sneak off and get help.”
Holly Sanders? Here? Now?
Ned pulled up his horse behind the boy. “Robbers!” Mason was already untying his horse. “The train Miss Sanders is on is stopped just down the tracks. Bandits...”
Mason had one foot in the stirrup and the safety off his gun. Turning his horse south, Mason barked to Ned, “Get every man you can and meet me at Whitson’s Rock. Get Bucky Wyler first—he’s a good shot.” He’d swallowed a bad feeling in his gut all yesterday, a twist that had been there ever since the wire from Holly Sanders. I had a hunch and I ignored it. Tamping down the chill such thoughts sent down his spine, Mason reached down to the lad and hoisted him into the saddle behind him. “Tell me everything you know while we ride.” Looking to Ned, he called, “Be fast and quiet.” The thought of tiny Holly Sanders under the gun of some lawless bandit drove Mason’s boot heels into Ace’s flanks and his gut down through the soles of his feet. If any harm came to her, he’d feel even more doomed than he already did.
Chapter Two
“Mercy!” Miss Sterling fanned herself, clutching her chest as she draped herself against a rock. “I believe I was going to faint without some air.”
Holly mused that the woman could have had a career in the theater. Miss Sterling was a stunning beauty, and had quite the gift for producing a fit of the vapors on command. It had only helped matters when one of the little girls yelped out a need to “use the necessary.” Within minutes all the children “needed” to get off the train and relieve themselves, giving Holly—and Liam—the perfect opportunity.
“Just get them kiddies done with their business and get back on the train, lady.” Their beefy captor was annoyed but clearly in no mood to deal with the mess ignoring the children would have brought.
“This is the last one,” Holly called to him, holding the hand of a little girl named Lizzie while Mr. Arlington pretended to be watching over Liam’s ministrations. He had led the boys as a group to the edge of the clearing on the pretense of tending to their needs. Rebecca was to send up just enough of a fuss to keep the robbers from counting heads as the children filed back into the passenger car. Trying not to stare at the scraggly bush behind which Liam disappeared, Holly said a desperate prayer. Father, let him reach town in time. Guide his steps along the directions I gave. Send help. Save us from these men!
Holly caught the eyes of Rebecca and Mr. Arlington as they filed back into the car as casually as possible. How awful and odd to be so close to home and in such a spot. When the brutal storm hit Evans Grove last month, she’d thought that the low point. When the subsequent flood washed mercilessly through the low parts of town, she’d thought then that things had looked their worst. As Holly stood on the rocky soil, casting a worried gaze toward the express car where the banging noises had now stopped, she couldn’t help but wonder if the worst was still to come. Had they gotten the safe open? What of Mr. Brooks? Even if he should be all right, the funds were surely gone by now. If the bank wouldn’t replace them, Holly worried Evans Grove wouldn’t survive this final blow.
A volley of sharp yells echoed across the clearing. After a loud clang, Holly saw the doors of the express car slide open and a pair of hands push Mr. Brooks down out of the car. He’d barely regained his footing from the leap when a large black box crashed to the ground at his feet. He was nearly crushed by the metal cabinet, which made a strange, chinging sound as it tumbled to settle heavily onto the ground. The safe. Mr. Brooks’s jacket was off. He looked as if he’d been roughed up, but he was remarkably calm.
“I told you it wouldn’t work!” The bandit leader’s voice pitched in frustration as he followed Mr. Brooks out of the express car, gun trained on the banker. “More n’ likely you’ve busted up the mechanism and we’ll never get it open now.”
The third and fourth bandits climbed from the car. “Do we go get the horses now? Time to take the safe and run?”
Holly was tempted to point out that one does not just take a safe and run, but kept her mouth shut in remembrance of the backhanding Liam had endured. Short of a wagon or a stick of dynamite, that safe was not going anywhere. Nor did it look as if it would open. Taking a step toward Mr. Brooks, Holly scanned the area and tried to think of where she would hide horses nearby.
“Time,” sneered the leader as he raised the gun to Mr. Brooks’s temple, “to up the ante. You’re making me wonder, bankerman, if you ain’t hiding the real key.”
“Stop it!” Holly cried before she could think better of interfering. “Give him our money, Mr. Brooks. Nothing is worth a life.”
“I assure you, Miss Sanders,” Mr. Brooks said, his voice winding tighter with every passing second, “I am doing my level best to do just that.” He held the key up to his captor. “Look at the numbers on this key.” He was trying to make the bandit see reason, but it only seemed to anger the man. “They match the markings on the safe. This is the right key, but it won’t work. Have sense, man. All your gun pointing can’t change the fact that this key will not unlock a damaged mechanism.”
Holly heard Mr. Arlington’s voice behind her. She turned to find him holding out a hat filled with watches, wallets and the fine beaded reticule she’d seen on Miss Sterling. “Take what we’ve got and let us be. There are children here, for goodness’ sake. We’ve no way to pursue you. Why don’t you just leave?”
Holly heard a horse’s whinny off to her right. Was it the robbers’ accomplice or had Liam been even faster than she’d hoped? Father, protect us!
The leader turned to Mr. Arlington, eyes blazing in fury. “Howsabout you just shut your mouth?” he yelled loudly. Then to Holly’s great horror, the bandit raised his pistol and fired.
She heard the terrible sound. She saw the dust rise up as the hat full of loot hit the ground. She felt the impact as if it sucked the air from her lungs. Someone screamed. A woman, a child, or perhaps it was both. It couldn’t have been her—she had no voice, no breath. The entire world boiled down to the smell of gunpowder and the red stain blossoming under Mr. Arlington’s hand as he clutched his chest. The look of shock in his eyes as he tilted forward turned Holly’s heart to ice.
Nothing. They’d shot him for nothing. Who would they shoot next and for what?
* * *
The sound of the gunshot pounded in Mason’s chest, and he urged Ace faster toward the spot on the railway line just east of town Liam had described. The boy had told him enough to chill his blood. If they were the clever kind, who knew what these men were capable of, what lengths they would go to succeed? “Give me a dim-witted thief any day,” he said to himself as he swung down off his saddle, glad to see townsfolk coming a half mile behind him.
“You might get your wish,” Liam commented as he slid off the saddle and they scrambled up the rock outcropping that gave both of them a view down onto the track clearing. “They didn’t seem too smart to— Oh, no!” Liam gasped, covering his mouth in horror as he saw what Mason saw: Holly Sanders and two other people crouched in panic over a bleeding man. “They shot Mr. Arlington!” His voice was a whispered yell, full of shock and fear. He looked up to Mason with panicked eyes. “How could they have shot Mr. Arlington like that? Mr. Brooks had the key to the safe. Mr. Arlington didn’t know nothin’!”
Mason didn’t know what to say. His brain was churning through options, working furiously to find some way out of this. One thing was clear from the chaos below: these men weren’t killing by plan, they were killing by panic. Panic was far more dangerous than clever, and from the looks of the safe dumped out on the packed earth just a few yards away, and the yelling going on between the bandits, things had gotten out of hand.
Within minutes, Bucky Wyler came up crouching behind Mason, rifle ready in his hand. “Aw criminey,” he muttered as he took in the scene, “what now?”
“Act fast. Too much longer, and things will go from bad to worse.” Mason looked over his shoulder at the four other men coming up the path, motioning for them to come closer but to keep down.
“Worse already, if you’re asking me.” Bucky settled onto his stomach and pulled his rifle up to rest on the rock. “What do we do? There’s too many of ’em down there to shoot.”
“You can’t shoot.” Mason grabbed Bucky’s arm. “There’s young’uns down there.”
Bucky palmed his hat off his head. “Kids?”
“Orphans. Handful of ’em. That’s one of the agents on the ground.”
“Mr. Arlington’s not dead, is he? We gotta get down there.” Liam looked as if he’d burst down into the clearing in two seconds if Mason didn’t do something. He scanned the scene again, grasping for any tactic.
“Bucky, can you shoot the safe?”
The man squinted through his gunsight. “Yep, but it’s not likely to do much.”
“It’ll be distraction enough.”
Just then, in the worst possible timing, the children came piling out of the car. There was an old woman trying to hold them back from the gruesome scene, but the orphans were too wild with panic for one old woman to keep them corralled. Mason swore under his breath. Even Bucky’s sharpshooting was too much of a risk with all those youngsters about.
“Get back in the car!” The woman with Holly Sanders stood up and waved the children off. When the youngsters only rushed at her, she moved as quickly as she could away from the injured man. Thankfully, they followed, putting a bit of distance between themselves and the bickering robbers, who were now circled around the safe.
It didn’t take long to figure out who was in charge. The other three were clearly muscle; only one of them seemed to be shouting commands. “There’s our man,” Mason said as he pointed to the leader. “If we could take him out...A shot in the leg ought to do the trick.”
Bucky settled in to line up his shot, following Mason’s thinking. “Then we can pick off the rest.”
“Just do something! Mr. Arlington’s bleeding bad.” Liam was growing frantic.
Mason was out of options. He looked at Bucky and gestured back toward the now dozen armed men behind them. “Give each of them a target—wounding only, no killing in front of those youngsters. Understood?”
As Mason started to move, Liam grabbed his leg. “What about me?”
“You stay here. You’ve been brave enough already.”
“No!”
Mason couldn’t say he was surprised, and he didn’t have time to argue. “Are you good at sneaking?”
“The best.”
Mason pointed to the most likely spot for some accomplice to be hiding horses. “Head on over there and look for horses.” He tossed the lad the bosun’s whistle from his vest pocket. He used it for shooing away stray dogs, and the thing always made Ace crazy. Maybe it would rile up the bandits’ horses if they had any. “Blow this all around to spook them and then run back here but be careful. Someone’s bound to be guarding them.”
The boy caught the whistle with one hand. “Got it.”
Mason picked his way down between the rocks toward the rail line, still unsure how he was going to draw the men. He was almost in range when the biggest of them said, “How about I go get the horses and we haul that safe outta here?”
Not a lot of brains there, Mason thought to himself as he imagined the robbers attempting a getaway while dragging a heavy safe through the Nebraska countryside. Their lack of speed would be compounded by the obvious tracks.
The leader surprised him by consenting. “Just go get the horses. Jake,” he shouted, pointing at another man, “get that hat full of loot, and fer Pete’s sake get Miss Prissy and them brats back in the car.”
Mason waited until the last possible moment, weighing every stride the big man took toward the horses—and Liam—with every child who stepped back onto the train. Bucky must have followed his thinking, for just as Mason cocked his pistol Bucky’s shot rang out, pinging loudly against the safe to ricochet into the woods over Mason’s left shoulder. From behind him the
bosun’s whistle sounded; Liam had found the horses. Run, kid. Mason sent him a mental message as shouts went up from all corners of the clearing and from other passengers who’d had enough sense to stay inside the railcars. The leader turned in the direction of the shot long enough for Mason to burst from behind the rock cropping, shouting himself.
In the two seconds it took the leader to turn, Mason fired. The bullet tore into the man’s pant leg just above the knee, sending him to the ground. Half a dozen shots came from the ridge above, sending the place into a frenzy. Hoping Bucky was as good a shot as usual, Mason sprinted across the clearing to grab Holly Sanders by the waist and nearly haul her into the railcar behind the other woman and children. The fallen robbers managed a small volley of return fire, but even a sharpshooter would have a hard time hitting the men hid up in the rocks. When the bosun’s whistle echoed again from the safety of the rock outcropping, Mason let out the breath he’d been holding for the boy.
There was a moment of stunned stillness. The robbers had used up their ammunition. Bucky and the others were surely trained on each of the fallen men, ready to fire if one of them made a move. Mason left Miss Sanders at the railcar with the children—most of whom were screaming by now along with half the passengers—and rushed to crouch at the still body of Mr. Arlington.
One hand on the man’s bloody chest told Mason nothing could be done. “Rest in peace, Arlington.”
* * *
Holly watched in horror as Sheriff Wright took off his jacket and laid it carefully over Mr. Arlington’s face. The man was dead. Shot for the crime of trying to let the bandits go, for trying to save the children from harm. The cruelty of it seemed to pummel Holly’s lungs, and her steps wobbled as she made her way toward the sheriff.
“Lord have mercy on poor Mr. Arlington. Lord have mercy on all of us.” Even as she felt relief that the gunfight was over, sorrow made her tears hard to fight back.
One of the things Holly most admired about Sheriff Wright was his quiet passion for justice and safety. Today held no justice and precious little safety. She would not have thought it possible for Mason Wright to look more stoic, but he straightened from the body with such a weary, pained effort that she felt it constrict her heart. He felt the crime—the murder—as sharply as she, even though neither of them knew the slain man.
There was a selfish corner of her heart that insisted this could have been prevented if Mason Wright had accompanied her to Newfield. He’d raised a lukewarm objection, saying he wasn’t in favor of her going at all, but eventually consented to letting her travel alone. That hurt. A childish part of her wanted to think today wouldn’t have happened if Mason Wright had been her protector.
But today had happened, and while she heard the old woman and several others flutter in panicked concern over a crying Miss Sterling behind her, no one steadied her as she stood over the body. Now, as always, she was the last one anyone thought to protect. Quiet, competent, invisible—even in this. All yesterday’s sense of accomplishment evaporated just as quietly as Mr. Arlington’s blood seeped into the sod. No comfort would be coming her way. That meant that it was time—as usual—for her to look past herself and see to comforting others.
“You saved us,” she said, as she moved toward Sheriff Wright. Holly needed to keep speaking, to hear her voice fight the sense that she was evaporating into the sod herself.
He looked at her, his blue eyes brittle and hollow. She so rarely viewed those eyes—downcast as they often were or hidden in the shadow of his hat brim—that they never ceased to startle her when he stared. “No.” He raised the single syllable like a knight’s shield.
“But it is true.” The sheriff seemed so very tall as she ventured another step toward him. Mason Wright was the kind of man who would take Arlington’s loss as a personal failure, ignoring all the lives—including hers—he had just saved, and she hated that. Hated that she’d fail in this attempt just as she failed in every attempt to make him see his worth because he never looked at her long enough to notice.
He held her gaze just then, doubt icing his eyes until Holly felt a shiver run down her back. “No,” he repeated, but only a little softer. Holly hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath until Sheriff Wright broke his stare and looked down at the body shrouded in his own coat. Her practical nature wondered if his coat would be stained beyond repair, or if he would even care.
The shift in Sheriff Wright’s attitude was physically visible. Whatever emotion had bubbled to the surface was resolutely put down with a deep breath and squared shoulders. His attention spread out beyond her and the body to take in the whole of the clearing and the larger crisis at hand. Everything about him said “enough of that, now to business,” and Holly wondered if she would see that side of him up close ever again.
Even his voice changed. “Is she the other agent?” He nodded toward Rebecca Sterling and the upset children, now surrounded by the few other railcar passengers. “Liam mentioned a Miss...”
“Sterling, yes, that’s her. Liam!” Holly suddenly remembered the brave boy who’d run off to get help. “Is Liam all right?”
“Shaken, but fine. Clever boy.”
“I was so worried, sending him off.” She scanned the clearing for signs of his red hair. “How foolish of me to gamble dangerously with a boy’s life like that.”
“Not at all.” He looked at her again, this time with something she could almost fool herself into thinking was admiration. “It was quick and clever. If anyone saved the day here, it was you.”
Holly blinked. From Mason Wright, that was akin to a complimentary gush. “It was the only thing I could think of to do.” A murderous crisis was no time to get flustered, but she felt her blood rush to her cheeks just the same. She hadn’t realized just how much she needed someone to affirm she’d done the right thing. The relief threatened a new wave of tears, and she fought them off with a deep breath.
A child’s cry turned them both toward the bedlam surrounding Miss Sterling. The children were understandably out of control with fear and shock, and Miss Sterling didn’t seem to be in any shape to take things in hand. Who would be in such a situation?
She would, that’s who. Holly was an excellent teacher with a full bag of tricks at her disposal to wrangle unruly children. With one more deep breath, she strode off to save the day a second time.
* * *
Mason wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Usually, when Holly Sanders’s eyes tripped him up, he kept his mouth shut and steered clear. Sure, he’d worried about her in Newfield, but he’d worried more about how her wide eyes and meek smile would force him to get all close and protective of her if he went along on the trip. Mason always fought an urge to protect the tiny schoolteacher, and that urge could not be allowed. Ordinarily, Miss Sanders kept to the sideline of things, so it was easier to fight the urge, to not let himself be drawn in by her admiration. Staying away from Holly Sanders ensured he’d never again risk the kind of failure he’d already known.
