Sierra Bride

by Jenna Kernan

  “He get my note?”

  Sam stepped away from Kate. “I got it.”

  Kate looked from Sam to Crawford and her confusion hardened to understanding. She lowered her chin. “You’re the one who told these lies about me!”

  Crawford ignored her. “They’ll be here in a few minutes. Might want to secure her for now.”

  “Secure her?” screeched Kate. She lunged at Crawford and Sam grasped her about the waist.

  He spoke to Cole. “I’m sending her down.”

  Kate struggled. “No, Sam. I want to stay.”

  He snorted.

  “Just lock her in a shed,” said Crawford.

  Sam ignored him and Cole stepped before him. “Might need that engine.”

  Sam gripped Kate’s arm as she struggled for release and still faced off with Cole. “I’m sending her down.”

  Cole raised his hand in surrender as he stepped aside.

  Sam grabbed Kate’s upper arm and pulled her to the closest car, the one used to carry freight to the building site. It was one of two remaining cars still coupled to the engine and could be ready to roll in only a few minutes.

  She clutched the black velvet bag that hung by ribbons to her wrist. Sam recalled Cole’s warning, and thought it might be less painful if she just shot him and got it over with. But she did not draw her weapon. Instead, she swept forward and clung to him.

  “I want to stay with you. Please don’t send me away.”

  He peeled her hands off his lapels. “Might just as well sleep with a rattlesnake in my blanket.”

  “Don’t Sam. Don’t believe him. It’s a lie.”

  He stared at her. She had betrayed him and all he could think to do was to send her away from danger, away from the possibility of harm.

  She began to cry.

  “That trick might have worked once, but no longer. Stay on this train till you hit Sacramento.”

  “You might need me.”

  He glared coldly. “I won’t.”

  She looked at him as if he had struck her. Sam grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her like luggage into the empty compartment. Then he waved to the engineer. “Take her back down, Paul. Don’t stop till you hit the main terminal.”

  A moment later the whistle blew.

  Kate looked for a moment as if she might leap from the car.

  Sam stared up at her. “I never want to see you again.”

  She staggered backward. He grabbed the handle and pulled. The heavy door rolled along the track, shutting her into the car. The last thing he saw was wide-eyed astonishment on her perfect face.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  S am watched the train roll away.

  Cole frowned. “You ought to be sending her to jail.”

  “Don’t press me.”

  Cole raised an eyebrow.

  Sam glared. “What makes you so damned sure that Crawford is right and Kate is wrong?”

  Cole watched the engine chug away, billowing black smoke. “Okay, partner. We’ll get to the bottom of it. But now, you need to focus on what’s coming at us.”

  Sam nodded and Cole grabbed a pry bar and jacked open a crate of dynamite. Sam retrieved a coil of fuse.

  “How many?” Cole asked Crawford.

  “I counted seven. Donahue is out of the shadows and stepping up his attack, taking it right to you. Once you are both dead, there’ll be nobody to stand against him.” He pointed at Cole. “Donahue figured you’d fold if he threatened your family.” He pointed at Sam. “He knew you wouldn’t back down. But you were supposed to have died in that alley.”

  “Would have if not for Kate,” said Sam.

  “She just was smart enough to turn that situation to her advantage.”

  “Disobeying Donahue?” said Sam. “That’s just a way to get killed.”

  Crawford had no answer.

  Sam narrowed his eyes. “How do you know Kate betrayed me?”

  “Later,” said Cole. “They’re coming.”

  “Now,” said Sam.

  Crawford shrugged. “Because her partner had your property.”

  “How’d she get it?”

  “Said Kate gave it to her.”

  Kate didn’t have the necklace. But that wasn’t enough to condemn her in his book. He wished she’d been straight with him, but the woman had plenty of cause to be hesitant about trusting men. Sam had a hunch. It tingled inside him with the same intensity as the time he’d followed the tracer vein right back into the mountain to find the mother lode. He thought of Kate’s face when he’d accused her. Just like a tracer vein, she’d given him a sign. The disbelief and confusion had been plain, but he’d been too hurt to see it.

  “Why should I believe her over Kate?”

  Crawford shifted. “Listen, I’m trying to do the job you paid me for. Mrs. Wells’s integrity is in serious question. I don’t know which one of them to believe.”

  “Well, I do.” Sam stared at the line of smoke spewing from the engine. He glanced at Cole. “I think I just made the worst mistake of my life.”

  “She’s not in on this?” asked Cole.

  He shook his head. “I’d bet my life on it.”

  Cole reached into his pocket and handed Sam back the red leather ring box. Sam closed his fist around it.

  It was dark inside the freight car. Kate squinted until her eyes adjusted. Her efforts to open the sliding door failed. She turned to the other side and noticed a beam of sunlight shining through a crack in the door on the opposite side of the car. The whistle gave a shriek and the cars lurched, throwing Kate to the floor.

  She lay for a moment on the dirt planks, pressed down by despair.

  He didn’t believe her, but he had ignored that man’s suggestion to lock her in the shed and he had ignored his best friend’s observation that they might need the engine. Why would he do that?

  Because he promised to protect you.

  Kate gasped at the implication. He needed to send her away to protect her. She sat up.

  “He’s in danger.”

  She leaped to her feet. She had to get out. She had to get to Sam. Oh, God, what if something happened to him? What if those outlaws killed him?

  Her blood turned icy as spring runoff.

  “No, no. Sam!” She beat her fists against the door. “Let me out! Please, sweet Lord, let me out.”

  She glanced frantically about. Sunlight blinded her. She turned to see a crack of daylight and dashed to the opposite side of the car. She clutched the handle of the unlocked door and threw all her weight against it, pulling with all her might. It didn’t budge. She screamed out her frustration. The train lurched and then began to roll. Panic bubbled up in her throat. She braced her back on the door and used both hands and one foot to push against the adjoining wall. The door rolled slowly aside, leaving an opening of just ten inches.

  She thought of the gunmen and Sam as she gripped the side of the compartment and stared down at the rail ties, blurring beneath her feet. Suddenly, she understood her terror and her desperation to get to him. She couldn’t lose him because, because…

  She loved him. Finally, she had found a man she could trust, a man she could adore, and she would be damned if she’d let some outlaw take him from her.

  The world beyond her car flew by at dizzying speed. Her breath caught.

  Do you love him or not?

  Kate held her breath and leaped.

  She skidded on the gravel, tumbling down the incline. Her reticule thumped against the ground and then her leg with such force she feared her derringer might go off.

  Behind her came the whooshing sound of gravel skittering. Kate’s roll ended in an undignified slide on her bottom. She clawed like a madwoman at the loose shale and gravel, finally bringing herself to a stop.

  Kate groaned as she crawled to her feet. She twisted to examine her posterior.

  “Drat.” The velvet and satin had torn from the waistband, leaving a gaping hole in her skirts that revealed her ravaged petticoats. She patt
ed her behind. “Good padding, that.”

  Kate next discovered she had ruined another pair of gloves, but they were, at least, intact and had protected her hands from further harm. Not so for her left elbow, which she had skinned. She smoothed her hair and recalled she hadn’t had time to put on her hat. She brushed off her hind quarters, sending dust everywhere. Then she lifted her right arm and gave a startled cry.

  “My bag!”

  She searched the area and found it near the top of the incline. Her reticule had torn and she spent several minutes searching for her derringer, finding it, at last, glinting in the sun. She was forced to tuck the gun into the waistband of her skirt.

  She glanced about. The train was out of sight, but the gray smoke rose above the pine trees as the engine chugged along, picking up speed on the down grade.

  What should she do now?

  Her question was answered a moment later with the explosion that shook the earth. This time, she recognized the sound of dynamite. She turned in time to see shattered timber flying skyward above the pines. An instant later there came the shriek of metal on metal and a crash that shook the earth. She could think of only one thing that could cause such tremor.

  Kate scrambled up the incline toward the tracks.

  Sam turned toward the explosion and then covered his ears at the deafening screech of the brakes seizing the twin rails. The thundering boom told him the engineer had failed to stop the engine in time.

  Sam stared in horror.

  “They blew the tracks,” Cole said.

  Sam stared in shock at the debris rising into the air. His stomach dropped as a plume of gray smoke continued to billow into the sky.

  “Kate,” he whispered.

  She was on the train, he had forced her aboard.

  Sam started running. Something tangled around his ankles and he fell facefirst into the road. He glanced back to find Cole lying on his legs. Sam lifted a boot to kick him off.

  “Wait.” He pointed. “Horses, rifles.”

  Crawford was already back in the saddle of his spent horse as Cole and Sam ran down the short incline to the corral where the horses were saddled.

  They swung up in unison.

  Sam spurred the mount, leaning low across the horse’s neck.

  Behind them, men shouted, but he ignored them. He couldn’t think past reaching that train and getting to her.

  Kate crested the tracks and stood on the wide tie just in time to see Sam tearing down the road on horseback with Cole close behind. They were already fifty yards past her and riding at a full gallop.

  “Sam! I’m here! I’m safe!”

  They did not pause.

  Was he charging to her rescue or in pursuit of the perpetrators? It didn’t matter. Sam was riding toward danger.

  Kate lifted her dragging skirts in one hand and her derringer in the other and stormed down the tracks like an infantry soldier.

  Cole and Sam knew better than to ride straight down the tracks, so they had left their horses and come at the wreck from the high ground, halfway up the ridge on the right of the rails.

  Sam scanned the mayhem before him. The engine had jumped the tracks at the breach and now lay on its side, spewing steam. The coal car had disgorged its contents down the graded embankment and also lay on its side still tethered to the engine. Beyond that, the two crushed freight cars had splintered against the cliff side like empty packing crates thrown from a wagon.

  Sam searched the wreckage for a glimpse of black velvet and found none. He was just about to charge down the track when his partner grasped his arm.

  Cole pointed.

  Men crept from cover, rifles ready as they inched toward the train.

  “They think we’re aboard,” said Cole.

  “Kate.”

  “You’ll do her no good leaking blood.”

  Sam clenched his jaw. It was the first time since the mountain that they had disagreed.

  “I’m for charging down there, guns blazing.”

  “How about we keep to cover until we know where they all are?”

  Crawford crept along to join them, having secured their horses down the tracks a piece. Crawford drew up beside Cole and stared down at the three men. “Where are the others?”

  Cole’s jaw was granite. His eyes narrowed. “Hanging back, I’d imagine.”

  Sam lifted his rifle and took aim. Cole followed his example. Crawford, unfortunately had only a pistol and he wisely moved a few yards away and took cover.

  “I got left,” said Sam, his voice low and deadly.

  “Right,” replied Cole.

  “On three, then. One, two.” There was no need to say three as both shots exploded from the barrels and two men dropped. The third started running as Crawford fired and missed. Cole and Sam cocked their rifles and took aim. The gunman dove and made it behind the engine as the shots zinged past him.

  “Damn it!” cursed Cole.

  “Change location,” said Crawford, holding his revolver as he headed up the embankment.

  Cole and Sam crept between the boulders, keeping an eye out for the remaining men. They didn’t have long to wait.

  Kate froze at the sound of gunfire, squatting low on the tracks, then inched over the outer rail and scrambled down the embankment toward the woods. She reached the trees and discovered a narrow animal trail running parallel to the tracks. She lifted her dragging skirt and hurried along, her steps faltering when she glimpsed the wreckage through the forest.

  What should she do? She wanted to help Sam, but did not want to distract him. She had only her tiny pistol with a range of just a dozen feet.

  She crept along the trail, unsure who was shooting and where they might be. She drew even with the derailment. Her eyes widened as she took in the destruction. One look at the two freight cars told them she would not have survived.

  Shots cracked from an outcrop of rock above the train and return fire popped from close by. She squatted down, scanning until she located two men, hunkered behind the coal car waiting for the men on the ridge to quit firing. A little farther down she saw someone crawling from the engine. Blood covered the top of his head and one side of his face. He paused to drag another, unconscious man from the compartment. The engineers, she realized, had somehow survived the catastrophe.

  Her peripheral vision caught movement. A man stood in the trees not twenty feet to her left. He pressed his chest to a thick trunk as he stared at the ridge. He drew his pistol and took aim, but then changed his mind and lowered his weapon.

  Kate crept closer but stopped, lest he notice her. She hid in a grove of pines just off the tail. From here she saw the two by the coal car glance back at the trees. Kate crouched, afraid they had spotted her, until she realized that they looked to the man by the tree.

  He held his fists side by side and then slowly separated them. The two men nodded. Did he want them to separate?

  She glanced up and spotted Cole and Sam moving in opposite directions, just as the man before her had indicated. He was revealing their positions.

  Kate spotted three men creeping down the ridge toward Sam. She lifted a hand to her mouth to shout a warning. But before the words left her lips someone yelled from the top of the ridge. Three men sat on horseback, rifles raised. She recognized them, the men who had guarded Sam since he left Sacramento. The Pinkertons had arrived.

  “Pickett! Behind you.”

  Sam whirled and fired, hitting the man on the left. The man screamed and clutched his face, falling backward and out of sight. The other men spun and began a rapid exchange with the Pinkertons above them, then dove behind a boulder. The Pinkertons retreated to cover, but Sam used the distraction to move to another spot, disappearing from her sight.

  He popped up from behind a rock a moment later and shot one of the men above him in the chest. The man fell from the ridge, his body flailing until he collided with the rocks beside Cole.

  The final man fired at Sam as he vanished again. Kate gasped, pressing her hand over
her mouth to keep from screaming. Cole was standing now, firing at the remaining man, his bullets pinging off the rocks, pulverizing the stone into little puffs of dust.

  Kate heard the shots nearby and saw Cole spin, clutching his shoulder, and then disappear behind the rocks. The two by the coal car had crept from cover and continued to fire even though their target had vanished.

  Kate’s breathing stopped. They had hit him. Hadn’t they?

  Above them, the Pinkertons now sent a heavy volley of bullets down at the men on the tracks. Kate pressed her face into the crook of her arm and ducked behind a tree trunk as bullets zipped past her, shaking the leaves of the bushes.

  Someone screamed. Kate peered out to see one of the men at the back of the coal car fall backward, his arms spread wide upon the ground as if he were surrendering. He thudded hard to the ground and then lay still. His partner crept toward him, squatted beside him for an instant and then resumed his position.

  Kate stared up at the ridge. Cole was climbing higher as Sam and the detective pinned down the man above them with a flurry of shots. Cole drew even and, as the man swung his rifle toward him, he dropped the man with a single shot.

  Sam was now charging down the steep incline, scrambling along until he hit the flat just before the engine.

  “Kate!” he called.

  The last outlaw took air at Sam. Kate lifted her derringer, knowing she was too far away for an accurate shot.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  K ate fingered the trigger as a hail of bullets came from above her on the ridge. The Pinkerton’s gunfire sent the man into retreat.

  Sam continued running down the embankment, making no effort to seek cover as he made for the demolished freight car where she should have been riding. The Pinkertons on the ridge sent a barrage of shots at the remaining shooter, who was now sitting huddled in a ball with his back pressed to the coal car. He clutched his rifle between his hands as if aiming at the sky. He looked as if he were praying. At last he glanced back at the man still hidden in the woods. When the shooter on the tracks made a move to run toward him, he raised his pistol and aimed at his own man.