Rose (36 page)

“Hey, Marshal,” Bart Dawson called out again. “What you gonna do about gettin’ us an engineer?”

Kase looked at a huffing, puffing Zach who nodded confirmation; then he shouted back, “We sent to Cheyenne. It’ll take some time. Why don’t you let the women and children off?”

“Not on your life.”

“Shit!” Zach cursed and spit. Slick Knox reached down and pulled a shivering John Tuttle to his feet. Paddie was sweating despite the cold.

“What are we going to do?” Zach wanted to know. “You got any bright ideas?”

“Until one of us can come up with something, we’ll wait for the engineer and reinforcements.” A muscle jumped along Kase’s jaw as he clenched his teeth. He wanted to call out to Rose, to tell her not to panic, that he’d see her to safety, but he knew that drawing attention to her would only put her in greater jeopardy. There were two things he could do now: hope the engineer from Cheyenne arrived soon, and pray that Bart Dawson would keep his hands off Rose.

Somewhere behind her, the only other woman aboard whimpered softly. Rosa tried to turn around to see.

“Eyes forward, little lady.” The guard who paced the aisle swung his rifle in her direction, and Rosa immediately cast her eyes to the floor and turned around.

There were no more than half a dozen passengers in the railroad car, all of them male except the woman who continued to sob. Rosa had recognized Bart Dawson when he stepped out onto the platform to round her up along with the two men waiting to board the train, and although she had donned a shawl and wrapped it about her head and shoulders before she put on her hat, he immediately recognized her. Dawson had grabbed her upper arm and personally dragged her aboard the railroad car. Once they were inside, he thrust Rosa into a seat and warned her with a scowl that she had to stay put or else.

“You’re the bitch that got Bert killed, but don’t think I’m as stupid as he was,” he warned. Bart Dawson leaned close to her and Rosa tried to turn her head, but he grasped her chin and forced her to look at his face. “Don’t think you’ll be gettin’ off easy, either. You’re one of my aces in the hole, and I plan to play you. And jest ‘cause you’re a woman don’t mean I won’t kill ya.” He gave her a last hard look and then stalked away.

The guard assigned to the coach was unfamiliar to her, and she suspected he was not a Dawson; he was much shorter and darker than the two men who had been in her restaurant.

The other hostages, a varied lot, were herded together in the forward passenger car. Two young cowboys who had been waiting on the platform with Rosa had been forced to turn over their weapons and leave their belongings outside. They complied willingly with their captors’ demands, but not the railroad men, who showed their anger by arguing and scowling. After many threats and much shouting, they, too, had complied with the gang and were seated separately in the passenger car.

The wood-paneled day car held only two other passengers— a man and the crying woman whom Rosa had spared only a cursory glance after the guard warned her to keep her eyes to herself.

She tried to see out the window, but it was fogged. A few moments before, she had heard Kase call out to Bart Dawson and heard the answering gunshots. Her hands were balled in her lap, her fingers intertwined as she tried to still their trembling. It seemed an eternity before she heard Kase’s voice again and was able to breathe freely.

Prayer was an alternative to her fright. Prayer and silence. She closed her eyes and tried hard to imagine what it would feel like when she stepped off the train into Kase Storm’s arms.

A woman’s cry for help shattered the vision Rosa had conjured. The lady who had been crying was now frantic. “My husband needs help!”

Rosa was afraid to turn around again, but as the guard moved to the back of the car, she chanced a peek over her shoulder. The woman, who was well dressed and sporting a stylish hat, was fanning her husband, who had slumped against her. His face was mottled; his hands furiously clutched at his collar.

“Please help him,” the woman cried out again.

A railroad man in overalls stood up.

The uniformed conductor swore.

The guard fired the gun toward the ceiling. The sound of the shot reverberated through the close confines of the coach. Rosa pressed her hands over her ears.

“Everybody stay put,” the guard warned. His eyes narrowed until they were barely visible beneath the brim of his hat. “I ain’t fallin’ for no tricks.”

The rear door of the car burst open and a second gunman entered. “What’s goin’ on?”

The first man pointed his rifle barrel at the now gasping, obviously ailing passenger. “Could be a trick.”

“It’s no trick,” the now frantic woman stood and pleaded. “My husband has a bad heart.”

“It don’t look like it’s gettin’ no better,” the second gunman said as the sick man slumped forward and fell against the seat in front of him. The woman screamed.

The first guard unceremoniously shoved her aside and threw the unconscious passenger back against the seat. He felt the man’s neck, searching for a pulse. From the look of satisfaction on the gunman’s face, Rosa knew there was no response.

“He’s dead,” the man announced to the second guard.

The woman began to sob. Rosa longed to comfort her, but fear held her immobile.

When Bart Dawson came through the door, Rosa pulled her shawl farther forward and listened intently, trying to understand the men’s conversation.

“What in the hell was you shootin’ at?” Dawson demanded.

The guard smiled sadistically. “Just keepin’ everybody in their places. We got a dead one here, boss.” He swung his gun barrel back toward the body. “Seems he couldn’t take the excitement.”

Dawson stared at the dead man for a while; then he smiled. “Drag him out of there. I’ve got an idea.”

The guard obeyed. Rosa watched while Dawson began to pace the aisle. “We got ‘em on the run. The marshal said he’s sent to Cheyenne for an engineer. I don’t want them pullin’ anything on us.”

“You got the lookouts on top?”

“Yeah, two. Tim’s gettin’ nervous, though.”

The second guard looked around the car. “I ain’t feelin’ none too easy about this, either.”

Dawson grunted a noncommittal reply, then turned back to the first guard. “Shut her up,” he growled, indicating the still sobbing woman. Obeying orders, the guard walked back to where the woman stood and stared at her for a moment before he reached out and backhanded her into unconsciousness.

Rosa felt the bile rise in her throat. She choked it down.

Dawson opened a window and bellowed out one word. “Marshal!”

Rosa held her breath and waited for Kase to answer.

“I’m still here, Dawson,” Kase called back.

Moments before, when the sound of a gunshot rent the air, Kase had been hard put to keep from rushing the train. Now, as he waited for Dawson to respond to his shout, he glanced at the men beside him. Zach chewed his tobacco as he stared off in the direction of Cheyenne. His face an emotionless mask, he held his rifle at the ready. As smooth and unruffled as he was when he held a winning hand, Slick Knox worked a toothpick between his teeth. The stout Irish barkeep was sweating profusely, his thick neck creased by the starched celluloid collar that seemed to have grown tighter in the last few moments. John Tuttle, wearing a jacket one of the men had loaned him, looked about to vomit onto the slush at their feet.

Kase knew he could count on Zach. As for the others, he was afraid to hazard a guess as to how they might react in a crisis. Even as Kase measured the men’s worth, Bart Dawson’s voice drew his attention.

“We’re sick of waitin’, Marshal.”

“It’ll take time to get an engineer out here from Cheyenne.” Kase’s even tone belied the nervous tension that was eating at him. “We’re working on it.”

“You damn well better be,” Dawson warned.

Kase tensed when he heard a woman on the train scream. He felt Zach step closer. The scout put a restraining hand on his shoulder. When two more shots rang out, Zach’s fingers bit into Kase.

The sound of a hollow thud alerted them to movement on the platform. Kase shook off Zach’s hold and stepped forward, careful to keep close to the station wall. Slowly, carefully, he looked around the corner of the building and saw a man’s body sprawled lifeless on the wood-plank loading dock beside the train. A vibrant bloodstain bloomed across the man’s shirt-front, the crimson a shock of color against the brown tweed of the dead man’s suit.

“That’s just a warning, Marshal. If you don’t want more dead men littering your station, you best hurry it up.”

“Dammit, Dawson,” Kase called out, “it’s going to take some time!”

“Yeah? Well, jest be sure you ain’t usin’ the time to get any big ideas about comin’ in after us. We won’t stop to think about puttin’ the rest of these folks outta their misery.”

Hard-pressed to contain his outrage, Kase did not deign to reply. He motioned Zach forward. The scout stared at the fallen man as he whispered to Kase, “We can wait ‘em out. Try and stall ‘em for a few hours, but Dawson sounds as jumpy as a flea on a dead dog.”

“No way I’m putting an engineer on that train,” Kase affirmed. “No way in hell.”

“You may not have to worry about it. If the folks that run the line come in from Cheyenne, you may not have a say.” Zach looked out toward the horizon. “With the sky as gray as it is, there ain’t more’n a few hours of good daylight left. If we could hold off till dark—”

“We’d stand a better chance of boarding,” Kase finished for him.

“Jest what I was thinkin’.”

“Think it can be done?” Kase asked, his eyes searching the frosted windows for any sign of Rose.

“Anythin’ can be done if you put your mind to it.” Zach spit an amber stream of tobacco across the slush-coated ground.

“Keep reminding me.”

When Bart Dawson and his henchman dragged the lifeless man’s body down the aisle past her, Rosa started shaking. When they fired two shots into the body and shoved it out of the car, she was certain her tremors would never cease. Now, three hours later, she discovered that all visible trembling had subsided, but not her overwhelming fear of the men who held her hostage. Rosa was certain of one thing; she was enough of a coward to do anything the men asked. For that reason, she thanked God they had not paid any more attention to her. As the afternoon passed, Bart Dawson had been too preoccupied with his plans to notice her. He spent the day roving from car to car, occasionally stopping to talk to the ever-changing guards he left with the passengers.

Rosa hated Bart Dawson, and it was a new feeling for her; she could not remember ever having hated anyone in her life. The other guards were nothing more than faceless entities to her—puppets that did Dawson’s bidding—but each of them represented a threat that was so vile she could not put the thought into words.

The hysterical woman passenger who had witnessed not only her own husband’s death but the subsequent mutilation of his body, had become a mindless, helpless heap in the rear of the passenger car. Slouched in her seat, Rosa had long since given up any hope of offering the woman comfort. Around her, the male passengers sat as rigid as she, some staring into space, their thoughts centered on their own predicament, others ever watchful of their captors.

It had been hours since Dawson had exchanged words with Kase. Long, silent hours that passed as slowly as a hard winter. Rosa’s tailbone ached from sitting, her bladder felt near to bursting, but she refused to ask—as some of the men had—for the privilege of using the toilet. The temperature in the car had dropped rapidly. As her breath fogged the chilly air, Rosa was thankful she had worn her heavy winter coat and the shawl that was still tied around her head. She suspected the shapelessness of her bulky coat turned aside the men’s attention. Staring at the empty seat before her, Rosa wondered what, if anything, was happening outside. By now Kase and the men must have assumed that the robbers had killed the dead passenger outright. If so, they were aware of the dangers they faced. Suddenly, but not surprisingly, Rosa found herself grateful for Kase’s ability with a gun.