“No!” Flynn and Wash both replied in harsh whispers.
“His name is Baird. He works for the government in some fashion.”
“Is he a lawman? Because technically we’re hoping to kill you too,” Flynn responded as he glanced over at the man Gabriel had identified as Baird.
“Decidedly not a lawman,” Gabriel mumbled. He crawled a few feet then craned his neck to peer around a large barrel full of peanuts. Cage watched him incredulously, wondering if this was another attempt at escape, or if Gabriel was sincere in his peculiar brand of caution. He looked positively ridiculous.
Cage bit his lip and looked away so he wouldn’t start laughing.
“Would you get up off the blamed floor, please?” Wash muttered as he bent to take Gabriel’s elbow.
“Marshal, what portion of ‘he tried to kill me’ was difficult for you to understand?” Gabriel whispered as he let Wash pull him to his feet. He still hunched, though, ducking his head and keeping his face hidden by Wash’s shoulder and pulling the ascot over his face to hold it over his mouth and nose.
The effort was wasted, in Cage’s opinion. Anyone who had looked into Gabriel Rose’s black eyes would recognize them from a mile away.
Cage glanced over at the man again, frowning. He didn’t think Gabriel was actually afraid of the government man
—
and he certainly was a government man, Cage could tell that much just by looking at him. Stiff shoulders, straight back, heavy walrus-style mustaches of an indistinct brown color drooping over his lip. He stood with one hand in a pocket of his gray frockcoat, and in the other hand he held a dime novel he had picked from the rack.
Cage frowned, recognizing the dime novel as the very one that related the misadventures of one Dusty Rose.
Cage carefully touched Marshal Flynn’s elbow to get his attention. The marshal was already standing with his hand on the butt of his gun, Cage didn’t want to give him reason to draw it. But Flynn merely glanced at him, his eyes following the finger Cage pointed at Baird. Flynn obviously noticed which dime novel Baird had picked up as well, and he took a step closer to Wash and Gabriel.
“Let’s get him outta here,” he murmured to Wash.
Wash turned to look at him, an expression of mixed amusement and vexation on his face, but he must have seen something in Flynn’s eyes and he nodded almost instantly without saying a word. He took Gabriel’s elbow and pointed him toward the door. Gabriel quickly handed off everything he’d been holding, depositing it all unceremoniously into Cage’s arms, then he ducked his head and let Wash lead him from the Emporium.
Cage and Flynn stood together, nonplussed.
Finally, Flynn sighed and turned to look at Cage. “Man should pick out his own hat. Find you one and let’s get before we meet anyone else who wants to kill him.”
Cage glanced over to where Baird had been, but the man was gone. He scanned the Emporium quickly, looking for the dove gray top hat Baird had been wearing. He shook his head and met Flynn’s eyes worriedly.
“Faster we get to the river, the better off he’ll be,” Flynn murmured to him.
Cage nodded jerkily. Flynn took the clothing Gabriel had dumped into Cage’s hands, and Cage reached out with both cuffed hands to pluck the closest hat from a nearby shelf. It was a brown bowler with a square crown, made of fur felt with hand stitching. It was a fine, expensive hat, and when he put it on it fit him reasonably well.
“Is it pricey?” Flynn asked him as he adjusted the brim.
Cage nodded and winced. They were putting everything on Gabriel’s tab by necessity.
“Good,” Flynn grunted, actually grinning as he clapped Cage on the shoulder. “Go ahead and get two,” he suggested with childish delight as he headed for the front counter to tally their purchases.
“
Y
OU
want Cage or Rose?” Wash asked Flynn quietly as soon as they’d reached one of the cabins they’d procured on the large paddle steamer. One was on the Cabin Deck, which was the second deck up. The other room, the room they were in, was a floor higher on the Texas Deck and at the very end of the starboard side of cabins. The lower cabin was a larger suite, opening up into the main cabin area of the Cabin Deck. This cabin, though, was barely large enough for all of them to stand together, and the door opened up to the outer decks. They did have a small porthole window that looked out on the promenade deck, though, which didn’t make Flynn feel one bit more comfortable about the tiny space.
Rose had already stretched out on the cot they had caused to be set up, and Cage sat gingerly on the edge of the cot at Rose’s hip. Whether he was trying not to tip over the flimsy cot with his weight or self-conscious of where he touched Rose, Flynn didn’t know.
“I’ll take Rose,” Flynn answered grudgingly as he looked over at them. Flynn knew, on the surface, that it seemed Cage was the easier prisoner to control, and he knew that it would seem that Flynn was giving him to Wash to guard for that reason. But Flynn was afraid of what Rose would say to Wash, more than what he would do to him.
Even with just the one hand, Wash was no easy fight. But he was susceptible to a silver tongue and a sad story; he had already proved that in regard to Cage and Rose and their unlikely little burgeoning romance. Rose was a silver-tongued devil if Flynn had ever seen one. And while the silent scout may have had a story sad enough to win over the hardest of hearts, he certainly wouldn’t be telling it to anyone.
“You want to risk putting him in the dining salon for supper?” Wash asked with a frown.
“I think we can handle anyone who recognizes him,” Flynn answered with a shrug. Seeing the man in the Emporium had spooked Rose, but the charismatic Englishman had recovered quickly from the incident. He didn’t seem worried now, and so Flynn had brushed the incident aside entirely. Unless they tried it while Rose was in his custody, it was no business of Flynn’s who wanted to kill him. Flynn narrowed his eyes at Rose. He wasn’t worried about the other passengers. If trouble came, it would come from Rose himself.
“I’ll mind my manners, Marshals,” Rose crooned, as if he knew what Flynn had been thinking. “We’ll be on the river, after all. I can’t exactly throw myself overboard and doggy paddle to safety.”
“You may not be able to swim it, but just remember you can still be thrown overboard,” Wash warned with a wry quirk to his lips.
Rose raised one eyebrow and gave Wash a slight bow of his head in acknowledgement of the threat, his lips twitching with a smile. To Flynn’s mounting unease, Rose seemed to be enjoying himself more and more as his situation became increasingly more difficult to escape. At this rate, the man would be practically giddy once his neck was in a noose.
C
AGE
glanced at Wash and raised an eyebrow as soon as they shut the cabin door behind them.
The marshal shrugged. “If that man don’t beat the Dutch, huh?” Wash murmured to him with a slight smile. “Some men just got guts of iron, I reckon. I’m surprised Flynn ain’t killed him yet.”
Cage smiled gamely. So was he, actually. Gabriel was pushing the already cranky marshal a little too much for Cage’s comfort, but he supposed that was just the kind of man Gabriel was.
“Ain’t ever seen someone poke Flynn like that,” Wash mused as he put his hand gently on the back of Cage’s elbow and led him discreetly down the outer deck toward the grand stairwell all the way near the bow of the boat. Cage glanced sideways at Wash. “It’s just this side of amusing,” Wash told him with a smirk. He looked at Cage and shook his head. “Don’t you go telling Flynn I said so, though,” he warned, his tone light and teasing.
Cage raised his hands and nodded, smiling crookedly as he promised he wouldn’t say a word. His chains clanked as he lowered his hands again. Cage found himself hoping they didn’t meet any of the other passengers as they made their way down the stairs. Their cabin was a deck below, right across a small corridor from the huge main cabin area and opposite the dining salon, where people would soon be gathered, socializing and playing cards and sipping genteelly at expensive liquors. The large room had struck Cage stupid when he’d first entered it, with its high sweeping ceiling, ornate chandeliers, shining tin tiles on the walls, and plush carpet.
He was wearing the new clothing they’d purchased, the highest quality the store had possessed, all at Gabriel’s insistence. They’d also had time to visit the barber, and he was clean-shaven. His hair had been cut as well, a little too short probably. But at least it wasn’t dirty anymore. He looked like a gentleman, save for the irons on his wrist. He tried to hide them so they wouldn’t draw any attention, but it was nearly impossible. He held his new hat between two fingers, trying to make it cover the chains.
“Found you a nice hat, I hope?” Wash drawled to Cage as they strolled through the vacant cabin area of the Cabin Deck. “Nice beaver one, maybe?”
Cage smiled fondly at the marshal and nodded. He liked how the marshal always spoke to him as if he might one time respond with more than a nod or shake of his head. It spoke of the man’s eternal optimism.
Cage had found, over the years, that you could hear a lot about a man if you stayed quiet long enough.
F
LYNN
sat staring at Rose after Wash and Cage had left them. He was thinking of all the possible escape routes the dining salon would offer; the unguarded exit, the bank of stained glass windows at the bow, all the people milling about, and all the weaponry the other passengers would be carrying. It was a horrifying thought; all of the ways in which Rose could cause trouble. Especially if they were going to have to keep him low-key and unrestrained like the captain had requested.
The captain might just have to be disappointed tonight. Flynn would put Rose in irons if he had to, even if it did cause trouble.
Maybe having food delivered to the room would be the better option, after all.
Rose grinned at him crookedly as if he knew what Flynn was thinking. “We could go to dinner early,” he suggested helpfully.
“We’ll go at the time we agreed on.”
Rose merely shrugged and continued to smile. Several minutes later, he shifted and cleared his throat. “You know, if the goal is to draw little to no attention, you may want to go ahead and take these off,” he pointed out as he raised his wrists and clanked his chains noisily.
“And why is that?”
“To give the marks on my wrists time to go away,” Rose answered, as if that should be obvious.
Flynn frowned and leaned forward as Rose held out his hands. He was surprised to find the skin beneath the iron rubbed red and even bleeding in places. Flynn hadn’t realized they were so tight. He opened his mouth to say something
—
an apology for not allowing him to pad the irons with anything, he realized
—
but he couldn’t force the words out as he looked up into Rose’s eyes. He just couldn’t make himself say “sorry” to the man.
“Give ’em here,” he said gruffly instead, gesturing for Rose’s hands as he extracted the keys from his pocket.
Rose shifted closer to the edge of his cot and held his hands across the narrow space between them.
Flynn took the chain that attached the two cuffs and pulled it closer, glancing up at Rose as he placed the key against the first lock. “One more blow to the head and you’re likely to slobber the rest of your life.”
“I’m well aware,” Rose responded wryly.
“I’d take your word for it if you said you won’t try nothin’ else,” Flynn offered. He may have been taking a foolhardy risk by doing it, but Rose seemed the type to honor his word when he gave it, as odd as that observation seemed to Flynn.
Rose pressed his lips together tightly, obviously mulling over the offer, and finally smiled brilliantly at him. “I am a man of my word, Marshal Flynn,” he said in a low, smooth voice. Flynn waited with eyebrows raised expectantly, and Rose simply smirked at him. “I wouldn’t feel right giving it, in that respect.”
Flynn rolled his eyes and sighed, turning the key and releasing Rose’s hand anyway. He unlocked the second cuff and watched warily as Rose rubbed at his sore wrists.
“I reckon I could allow you to change into something clean,” Flynn mused as he looked Rose over. His clothes were still damp from his escapade in the bath, and he looked slightly tattered.
“That would be quite human of you. If you’ll just hand me my bag
—
”
“I’ll hand you whatever you want out of your bag,” Flynn interrupted sternly. “Your hands ain’t going in that thing where I can’t see ’em.”
“Fair enough,” Rose said with an elegant shrug.
Flynn got up slowly, his eyes never leaving Rose as he opened up the bag and extracted several items of clothing. It was all high quality fabric, obviously stuffed haphazardly into the bag by someone who had not cared much for Rose or his belongings. The deputies in Junction City had made a quick job of gathering his things.
“If they left me any valuables, I’ll be quite shocked,” Rose murmured with a heavy sigh.
Flynn patted down a white linen shirt and then handed it to Rose. He inspected a pair of pinstriped trousers and a black silk vest as well, finding nothing in the pockets or in the lining, and he handed them over. There were no undergarments of any sort to be found.
“That’s low,” Rose grumbled to himself as he changed unselfconsciously. “Stealing my underthings. Those were from Paris.”
“I’m sure they were something to write home about,” Flynn muttered wryly.
Rose snorted at him unhappily and went about disrobing and then putting on his clean clothing. Flynn had to admit the man cut a striking figure once he cleaned himself up, much like Cage had managed to do. They might turn heads, but it wouldn’t be because they were in irons.
Flynn handed Rose a wool frockcoat to top it off and the man shrugged into it with a nod of thanks. He patted the lapel pocket and then winced. “My pocket watch is gone,” he murmured in what appeared to be genuine distress.