A Touch of Camelot (15 page)

The other man was losing patience. "
Now
, Mr. Shepherd."

Cole dropped the Colt and kicked it as instructed—but he kicked it back with his heel rather than forward where his adversary could reach it. He took another step forward in the process.

The man scowled. "That was a mistake." His grip on the stiletto tightened, pricking the white skin of Gwin's throat, drawing blood.

Cole's stomach muscles tightened as he watched a shiny scarlet thread slide down her neck to disappear behind the curve of one shoulder. She didn't even flinch. What had he done to her? Why didn't she wake up?

Cole heard a sound from behind.

"Gwinnie!"

Sweet mercy, it was Arthur.

Cole almost lost his composure out of sheer frustration. Now he had two of them to worry about. But the other man's concentration was also broken by Arthur's interruption. Those dark eyes flicked behind Cole for a fraction of a second. Then the train lurched into a curve and Cole saw the man's grip on the stiletto slacken.

Cole sprang forward, crashing into Gwin and her captor. All three of them went sprawling onto the floor. Cole heard Gwin moan before she curled up and rolled out of harm's way. He didn't have time to notice much else.

Cole blocked his adversary's arm just in time to avoid being blinded by the stiletto. Grasping the man's wrist, he slammed it back down to the floor, and the stiletto clattered free.

The next instant was a blur. Cole didn't know whether it was instinct or premonition that told him to move. While he had been dealing with the threat of the knife, the other man had pulled a derringer with his free hand. Cole lunged to the right but not fast enough. He felt the burn and sting of a bullet as it passed into the flesh of his left shoulder.

No other pain registered. What registered was the humbling thought that if he hadn't moved, that bullet would have drilled through his frantically pumping heart.

Arthur knelt by his sister, crying out and slapping at her wrists. Good. If they were going to get out of here, they would have to do it under their own steam.

The man rolled out from under Cole and sprang to his feet, the double-barreled derringer rising to aim at Cole's face.

Cole scrambled to his own feet at the same time, throwing a desperate, clumsy punch that knocked his opponent off balance. The derringer's second bullet plugged a new hole somewhere in the paneled ceiling before the gun flew free from the man's hand.

Cole's wiry opponent recovered quickly, dropping into a crouch. Then he moved, lightning quick, catching Cole by surprise. Before Cole could duck, he was assaulted by a sharp, shockingly forceful blow to the neck.

Cole stumbled back into a stack of luggage, toppling some pieces over his head. One oblong parcel bounced off his shoulder and fell to the floor with a
clang!
followed by an angry rustling of wings. "Demon rum! Demon rum!
Squawk
!"

Cole regained his footing, clenched his fists, and looked for an opening to strike back at his circling opponent. When he saw it, he angled in for a blind right cross that connected squarely with the bridge of the smaller man's nose.

"Cole!"

He turned and saw Arthur waving his Colt. Arthur tossed it. Cole followed its graceful arc with his eyes, reaching to snatch it in midair.

He missed.

The revolver clattered to the floor and slid, spinning out of reach.

Cole had been distracted for only an instant, but it was enough. The kick came out of nowhere. It made solid, jarring contact with Cole's jaw. He reeled back into the wall of the baggage car, his senses gone awry.
He did that with his ... foot?
This dazed thought, the only one he seemed capable of putting in order, bounced off the inside walls of his head like a rubber ball. He was down.

*

Arthur was terrified. If it had only been himself in danger, he would have run long ago, but Cole was in trouble, and Gwinnie ... something was terribly wrong with Gwinnie.

Stupid!
I should have shot at that man myself,
Arthur thought as he watched the revolver sail through the air and miss its mark. Unlike the rest of his sharpshooting family, however, Arthur had never taken an interest in learning how to use firearms. Except for his trusty slingshot, he doubted he could aim well enough to hit the broad side of a barn, much less a moving human target.

He dropped to his knees by his sister. She was starting to come around. Her eyelids fluttered open. She groaned as she tried to sit up.

"Gwinnie!" Arthur grabbed her forearms, trying to pull her to her feet. "We've got to get out of here!"

Arthur heard a crash and he turned, still on his knees. His eyes widened. Cole was down, and he looked down to stay. The Chinese man was scrambling to reload his gun.

Arthur turned back to tug at his sister's arms frantically. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks. "Gwinnie!
Gwinnneeeee!
"

Arthur heard a small sound behind him, a soft click, then, "She'll come around, young man, but not in time to save you or herself."

Arthur swallowed hard and stood, his arms falling limp to his sides as he faced the man. He felt suddenly unreal, like he was in a very bad dream.

Gwinnie moaned, but the sound faded away in Arthur's ears. He realized dimly that he wasn't crying anymore, which was good. He was no baby. If he was about to get shot, he would take it like a man. He thought about Silas and Clell, about Emmaline, and thought that if he had to die right now, at least he wouldn't be alone up in heaven.

He stared down the twin muzzles aimed at his chest.
It's a little gun
, he thought,
a little gun like that probably doesn't hurt much...

*

Cole had no idea whether two seconds or ten had passed when reality started to creep, on all slogging fours, back to him. His skull ached, his vision was blurred, and the floor beneath him seemed to slant forward at a dizzy rate as he raised his head. He saw his gun lying behind a trunk, only a few feet out of reach, and he inched forward on his belly.

Miraculously, on his first try, his fingers closed tight and perfect around its ivory grip. Rolling onto his side, he focused on the gunman, whose back loomed above him not five feet away.

The man was speaking, but the words were lost on Cole. He raised the barrel of his Colt at the same moment his adversary raised the derringer. Cole cocked the hammer and called out hoarsely, "Hey!"

Startled, the man whirled, his nose bloodied, his black eyes wide. Cole squeezed the trigger. The man's mouth contorted in surprise, and it wasn't any wonder. It looked like a cigar had burned a hole straight through the center of his pin-striped vest. A dark wetness bloomed. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Cole didn’t' move for a full ten seconds after he fired. He was a little surprised too. He had never killed anyone before.

Gwin cried out, "Arthur! Are you all right?"

Cole turned his head just as she tried to rise to her feet. Still groggy and unsteady, she tripped over the hem of her skirt and collapsed onto her hands and knees. Arthur didn't seem to notice. He stood frozen, staring at the inert body of the man who'd been about to kill him.

The parrot in its cage screeched. "Demon rum! Demon rum!
Squawk!
" Wings flapped as the cage spun toward the rear of the car. The train was taking a steep incline.

Fighting shock, Cole rolled onto his back, letting the fingers that clutched the revolver slacken. His wounded shoulder only now began to throb with pain. What exactly had just happened here?

Cole pulled himself to a sitting position and rested back against a stack of trunks near the door. By now, Gwin held Arthur's face in her hands and was shouting at him sternly, trying to snap him out of his shock.
How many people has that poor kid seen die in the past month?

Cole's mind played back over the farfetched conspiracy tale Gwin and Arthur had spun on their first day out of Topeka. Somehow, it didn’t seem quite so farfetched anymore.

Bits and pieces now fell into place in Cole's mind like a jigsaw puzzle, hinting at a picture far bigger than he had imagined. The fact that the gunman happened to be an Oriental fit nicely. Most of the Chinese population that had migrated to America were settled in one place: San Francisco. The very town they were bound for. The very town Gwin and Arthur had fled in fear for their lives.

Arthur started to come around, and Gwin caught him up in a fierce embrace. The boy didn't fight this sisterly show of affection. On the contrary, Arthur's arms moved hesitantly to encircle Gwin's waist, his fingers clutching at the loosened folds of her blouse. Something wrenched in Cole's stomach at the sight of them, something as painful in its own way as the brutal throbbing in his shoulder.

He closed his eyes to the paralyzing thought that if he had allowed just one more minute to go by before deciding to go after Gwin... 

He could not allow himself to dwell on the awful possibility of what might have been. The question he was forced to ponder now was, where did they go from here?

Chapter Eleven

"Demon rum! Demon rum! Going to hell in a hand basket!"

That bird might be on to something
, Cole thought,
but if it doesn't shut up soon, I'm going to shoot it.
He sat on the floor of the baggage car, his back up against a stack of trunks, his legs sprawled in front of him. The ache in his wounded arm was growing teeth.

Arthur had thoughtfully righted the parrot's cage. It was no longer shrouded in its pillowslip, which had already been torn into strips to bandage Cole's arm. The parrot was making so much racket, however, Cole would have gladly sacrificed his bandaging if it would afford them some peace and quiet.

"I think it's stopped bleeding."

Gwin knelt beside him, applying the makeshift bandage to his wound. Her hair was a mess, half up, half down, frazzled out all over in crazy curls and squiggles. Dirt streaked her worried forehead, her skirt was wrinkled, and her blouse had been yanked free from the waist of her skirt. At this moment, there was no doubt in Cole's mind. He had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

He groaned and closed his eyes. His shoulder burned and he ached all over. He was, however, grateful to be alive. If the gunman had had his way, all three of them would be knocking at heaven's gate about now.

"You saved our lives, Shepherd, and I should thank you for that."

Cole didn't open his eyes. Right now, all he wanted, more than anything, was to go to sleep. "Just doing my job, your ladyship."

There was a long pause. "I think, as soon as you get that bullet out, you'll be all right."

"I think so, too. Hurts, though."

Another pause, a long one, so long, in fact, Cole was obliged to open his eyes to see if she was still there. She was busy folding his bloodstained coat on her lap.

As if sensing his scrutiny, she looked up sharply. "What are you staring at?"

"You."

A flood of color rose to her cheeks. She pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze. She cleared her throat. "What if there are more?"

"More what?" he asked, although he knew what she meant.

"More of
them
." She inclined her head in the dead man's direction. "I never saw him before in my life. How do we know that there aren't more of them on this train right this minute?"

"Look, I seriously doubt—"

Anger flashed in her eyes. "You doubted when we told you they tried to kill us in San Francisco, too, and look where that got us!"

Arthur, who had been poking his fingers through the bars of the parrot cage behind her, stood up now to defend Cole. "Yeah, but he doesn't doubt us now, Gwinnie. Do you, Cole? You don't doubt us now, isn't that right?"

Before Cole could open his mouth, Gwin challenged him. "But your assignment hasn’t changed, has it?"

"Well, the circumstances sure have. As soon as we reach the next whistle-stop, I'll wire the Agency and inform them that—"

"That is exactly what you will
not
do!” Gwin shot to her feet, hugging Cole's jacket to her chest. "I will not allow my brother's life to be in danger one more minute!"

She started to pace anxiously. From the moment she had regained consciousness, she had remained calm, too calm, and Cole knew that by now it was all starting to sink in. If he didn't handle this right, she would panic and try to run.

He tried to keep his voice reasonable. "But we didn't know the situation before this, Gwin. Now we do. We can handle it differently."

"Handle it differently?" She stopped pacing. "Oh, we'll handle it differently, all right. I was handling it just fine until you got involved. We might have ended up in the hoosegow a couple times, but at least no one was trying to kill us."

"Gwin—"

"We can't, we just can't!" She began pacing again, muttering to herself.

"Gwin, listen to me."

She stopped suddenly, her back to him. She didn't turn around.

"You've got to listen to me. We can figure out what to do next if you just give us some time."

She didn't move. Arthur didn't move either. He stared at his sister's rigid back, his eyes questioning.

Cole shifted position and winced. His shoulder felt like it was on fire. "You're upset right now, and that's understandable, but you can't let it cloud your judgment. Think, Gwin. There's no need to do anything stupid."

"Think ..." She fumbled with his coat, twisting and wrinkling it, before turning to face him. There was no sound but the rhythmic clack of the iron horse's wheels beating the track beneath their feet.

Arthur broke the silence. "What are we going to do?"

The question hung in the air as Gwin crossed the baggage car to Cole's side. She knelt in front of him and searched his face.

"What's the matter, Gwin?"

She wore an odd, dreamlike expression, and Cole had to wonder if she hadn't lost her senses because her next words were nonsensical. "For so many years, all I knew was your face."