They talked of everything and nothing, of likes and dislikes, of families and friends, as they shared the quiet hours before the dawn spread its light across the plain. Their whispered exchanges were silenced by stolen kisses and caresses until Kase drew Rosa close and placed a kiss against her temple.
“I have to get back to my room before Quentin gets up.”
The thought startled her back to the reality of their situation. Rosa glanced toward the darkened window. The sun was not yet up.
I’ll take you back to town with me today,” he went on, planning aloud, “and tonight we’ll have supper together. Alone,” he amended. “We’ll celebrate.”
“After the restaurant is closed,” she added. “I have a special surprise for the celebration, I think.”
He turned toward her. “Oh?”
“
Sì
.”
“What is it?”
“If I say what it is, it is no longer a surprise.” A special shipment of cabernet she had ordered from Cheyenne was due to arrive on the afternoon train.
She reached out for him and smoothed his hair back away from his face. “Is true that soon you will not be the marshal?”
“
Sì
, is true. I never planned on staying here, and now that we’re to be married, I hope Quentin finds a replacement soon.”
Impulsively, she hugged him close. “Then we go to visit your family in ...” She tried to remember the name of the city where his people lived.
“Boston. We can be married there. Wait until you see the house.” The “house” was a mansion, but Kase decided to withhold some surprises of his own. Now that things were settled, he could not wait to introduce Rose to Analisa and Caleb. He could hardly wait to see the two women together. He knew instinctively that Caleb would love Rose and welcome her into the family.
“We will not marry here?”
She sounded so disappointed that Kase found himself frowning into the darkness. “I just assumed we’d be married in Boston. If you’d rather not—”
“No.” She shook her head.
He straightened against the headboard. “I forgot about your family. Do you want to go back to Italy to get married?”
“No!” She was emphatic. “No Italy.” In the eyes of her family she was barely a widow. Five months alone in America and already she had fallen wildly in love with a man they would never approve of, not with his dark Gypsy looks. They would have nothing in common; he was not even a farmer. Her relatives, though she loved them, were as prejudiced as the rest of her countrymen. Every province claimed superiority over the others, and so suspicion was cast on anyone not of the Piedmont. No. She did not desire a wedding in Italy. “I thought here,” she said hesitantly, “with my new friends.”
He smiled into the darkness and hugged her close. There was no doubt in his mind that, given the chance, she would invite all of Busted Heel to the wedding. He wondered how many of them would actually attend and not object to their marriage. Kase was looking forward to telling Floss and Zach that his plan had not only succeeded in unruffling Rosa’s feathers, but that she had even agreed to marry him. Both Flossie and Zach felt they’d had a hand in the matchmaking.
“If that’s what you want, we’ll be married here. As soon as possible. My parents can give us a reception in Boston.”
“Reception?”
“A party. A fiesta.” He used one of the few Spanish words he knew.
“Ah. Festa.”
“Do you think it is possible, a priest?”
He could not resist teasing her. “What’s a possible priest?”
She poked him in the ribs with an elbow. “Is a priest in Cheyenne? Is possible he can marry us?”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll go into Cheyenne and find out tomorrow.”
She shook her head in protest. “Not tomorrow. You will stay with me tomorrow. For now I keep you with me.”
“Fine with me. I’ll be in your custody as long as you like, but I don’t want to wait too long.” Determined not to harm Rosa’s reputation, Kase put off thinking about their living arrangements. She would face enough change once they were married. He prayed silently that he was doing the right thing.
They fell silent, each lost in thought. Rosa hoped she would meet his family’s approval far more than she had Giovanni’s. Kase knew how proud and happy his mother would be to meet the woman he had finally chosen for his wife.
“I’m going back to my room now.” He sighed regretfully and gave her a final parting kiss, one he hoped would leave her thinking of him all day long. “I’ll see you downstairs at breakfast.”
It was near noon, but still so cold in the marshal’s office that Kase had his coat on. He added more wood to the cast-iron stove in the corner before he returned to his desk. The usual disheveled pile of newspapers and notices had been sorted into neat stacks or tossed into the stove until the desktop had taken on an entirely new appearance. His pen and inkwell had made acquaintance with each other after months of separation amid the clutter. Kase sealed the letter he had just written to his family and looked up when Zach Elliot entered the office.
“It’s about time you showed up.” Kase looked down at the letter in his hands.
“I didn’t know I was ‘sposed to be here at any given time.” Zach sauntered toward the stove and rested his foot on its nickeled footrail.
“Where you been?” Kase asked, trying to hide his excitement. He had expected Zach to be in the office when he arrived; Kase wanted him to be the first to know that Rosa had agreed to marry him.
“I been out tryin’ to stay warm in this godforsaken hole. Where you been?”
“I spent the night at Quentin’s.”
Zach arched a brow. “Oh? And the widow?”
Kase shrugged. “It started snowing and Quentin insisted we both stay on.”
“Didn’t think she was even gonna get in the rig with me yesterday. I expected her to hightail it out o’ there the minute she laid eyes on you. Now I owe O’Hallohan two bits.”
“You should know better than to bet against a sure thing.”
Zach scratched at his stubbled beard. “You’re sure a mite more confident today than you was yesterday.” He pointed to the neat arrangement of papers on the desktop. “What’s the occasion?”
Kase smiled. “It’s not every day a man gets engaged.”
“Congratulations.” Zach spit into the wastebasket. Straight-faced, he asked, “To who?”
“Who do you think?” Kase countered with a teasing twist to his smile.
“Hell, then, I just lost another two bits.” Zach smiled despite the outcome of his gambling.
“Paddie again?”
“Naw, Floss this time.”
“You should know better than—”
“—to bet on a sure thing,” Zach finished for him. He crossed the room and formally offered Kase his hand. “Congratulations again, boy. I wish you years of happiness. By the way, I saw your bride-to-be headin’ for the depot a few minutes back. She appeared to be a woman with a purpose.”
“The depot?”
“Yeah, bundled up to the eyeballs with a head scarf under her hat and a coat, but I could tell it was her just the same.”
Kase stood, set his letter aside, and stretched. He smoothed the pleated front of his blue madras shirt and adjusted the collar, then brushed back his hair with the palm of his hand. The room was getting warmer. He crossed to the coat hook intent on shedding his jacket when Zach said, “Here comes Tuttle, tearin’ up the street in an all-fired hurry. Ain’t even got on a coat.”
Kase glanced out the window at the harried ticket agent and met him at the door. John Tuttle entered the office at a run and sputtered to a halt, wheezing and gasping for air. His wild eyes looked like two beacons in the gray pallor of his skin.
“Marshal, you gotta come quick, there’s trouble on the train.”
Kase strapped on his gun belt as Zach snapped to attention across the room. “Calm down, John. What’s happening?”
Gasping for breath between sentences, Tuttle began to explain. “It’s the Dawsons. They’re here again arid they’re on the train. Took it over a few miles back and rode it on in. When the engineer refused to go on, they shot him. Threw him out on the platform right in front of me.”
Kase grabbed a rifle from the gun rack and charged out the door. Zach, equally well armed, followed close behind the two men.
“I never saw anything like it, Marshal. Never.” John Tuttle talked incessantly as the three hurried along Main Street.
“How many men?”
“I don’t know.” Tuttle shook his head. “Seems like I saw rifle barrels aimin’ out of every window.”
“What do they want, did they say?”
“Yeah. Somehow they must have found out this is the least crowded run out of Cheyenne, but it carries the railroad payroll. They want another engineer, demand to be taken as far as Denver. Somewhere before Denver they want horses waitin’ for them and a clear shot to the south. They wanted me to telegraph Cheyenne for another engineer, but the lines are down, have been since the snow last night. I thought I was gonna take a bullet when I told ‘em. They didn’t believe it. Then the ornery one got off—the one that’s been here before— and checked the telegraph key. Finally he believed me. That’s when he rounded up the folks they were holdin’ on the platform and put them aboard, too.”
Zach cut in immediately. “What folks on the platform?”
“The ones waitin’ on the three o’clock.”
Kase halted in mid-stride and grabbed John Tuttle by the front of his shirt. The small man dangled in Kase’s grip, his toes scraping the ground.
“What
people on the platform?” Cold, spine-chilling fear crawled down Kase’s backbone and then up again until he felt the hair stand up at the nape of his neck.
John Tuttle tried to swallow, but Kase’s desperate hold was cutting into his windpipe. “A couple of cowhands headin’ east and”—Tuttle’s eyes bulged—“Miss Rosa.” He gasped out her name.
Kase let go and John Tuttle crumpled to the snow-covered street. Zach pulled him up and dragged him along as they hurried toward the station.
By the time they had traveled the length of Main Street, Paddie O’Hallohan and Slick Knox were right behind them, armed and ready to face whatever had the other three men on the move.
“What in the hell was Rose doing here?” Kase rounded on the helpless agent when they finally reached the shelter of the station.
Tuttle ran a shaking hand across his eyes and shrugged. “She had a special shipment of wine comin’ in—been waitin’ on it for days—and today of all days she comes to see if it’s on the three o’clock. They rounded her up with the rest. Lord, Marshal, there was nothin’ I could do.”
Kase looked past the man, studying what he could see of the stranded train. His temper had simmered to a steady boil. His major concern now was to get Rosa and the rest of the hostages off the train. Then he would deal with the Dawsons. “What can you tell me about this train, John?”
“Things could be worse. Not that many cars on this run, not even a first-class coach. Couple of freight cars, two day coaches, the caboose. That’s why it’s the gold run. No fuss, no bother. They put out a dummy train all armed and guarded that’s supposed to handle the Denver payroll.”
“But if you know that, so do a lot of other people.”
Tuttle nodded. “I guess so.”
“How many of the gang are on board?”
“I think they have a man on each car.”
“Any way of uncoupling the engine from the rest?”
John shook his head. “Not from here. With the lines down there’s no way to signal ahead to the dispatcher. We could have a real problem ‘long about dark. No way to warn off the six o’clock.”
Kase turned to Zach. “Get down to Al-Ray’s and have Ray ride into Cheyenne on the fastest horse Decatur has in his stable. Have him warn them at the depot that our lines are down and that we’ve got a train standing here at the station. Tell him to bring back an engineer and as many men as the marshal can spare. If they come by train, be sure they stop far enough away to be out ofsight of town. Have Ray send his oldest boy to Mountain Shadows. Tell him to have Quentinround up his best shots and get down here.”
“Right.” Zach was off and running, one hand holding his hat on.
“What other crewmen are on the train?” Kase asked Tuttle.
“Couple o’ brakemen, a fireman, the conductor. One of the brakemen tried to jump off the top of the car, but a gunman signaled him back.”
“Are the railroad men armed?”
“I don’t know. Might have been a rifle up in the engine. Could be the reason the engineer’s dead now.”
“Damn.” Kase shook his head as he stared at the train. There had to be a way to get aboard without any of the gunmen being aware of the intrusion. If there was no way in, he would have to find a way to get everyone out.
He refused to let himself think of Rose. It was the only way he could suppress the rage coupled with fear that roiled inside him. He pulled out his watch and checked the time, then flicked the piece closed. Three-thirty.
“Tell me again exactly what they wanted you to do.” Kase spoke to John Tuttle in hushed tones as the men crouched behind the station.
“They told me to come get you. To tell you they were demanding another engineer and they wanted horses left for them just outside of Denver.”
“Wait here.”
John Tuttle was happy to oblige as Kase laid his rifle on the ground and stepped out from behind the building. He held his hands high, in plain sight of anyone on the train.
“Bart Dawson!” he called out. “Dawson, I’m the marshal here. What do you want?”
A shot rang out and Kase lunged behind the building. “Damn!” he said again.
“What I want,” Dawson called out, “is your hide; You’re the one that killed my brother, ain’tcha, Marshal ‘Breed?”
“That’s right,” Kase yelled back. “If I’m the one you want, why don’t you come on down off the train and we’ll settle this between us.”
“Not on your life,” Bart sneered back. “ ’Sides, I brought the rest o’ the boys with me. I don’t think even you can stand up to all of us, Marshal.”
“All of you?”
“Yeah. All of us. I got five good men ridin’ with me now.”
Kase turned to John Tuttle, who was squatting on the ground with his hands over his ears. “There’s six of them,” Kase whispered, then looked over his shoulder. Zach was running back up the street. Paddie and Slick Knox remained silent, willing to let Kase handle the situation.