by Nann Dunne
They described in detail everything that happened during the attempted robbery and signed the written version the sheriff provided. Afterward, they walked to the train station with Sarah leading Redfire. Before they got to the station, Sarah stopped near a bench and tied Redfire to it. "Wait here a minute. I have something for you." Mel and Rusty looked at her quizzically and sat on the bench Sarah had waved them toward.
She entered the store and returned carrying two oblong packages. "These are for you." She handed one to each of them.
"What is it?" Rusty asked even as she tore off the paper. "Sarah!" She looked toward Mel and waited until he opened his package. They smiled at each other then at Sarah.
"This is really nice, Sarah," Mel said.
"Nice?" Rusty said. "They're beautiful." She blushed. "If you can call a drawing of yourself beautiful." She leaned toward Mel. "Yours is beautiful, too."
"It sure is," he agreed. "Thank you, Sarah. This means a lot to me."
"You're welcome. I'm glad you like it."
Rusty laid her framed portrait carefully on the bench and leaped up. She threw her arms around Sarah's neck and stood on tiptoes to kiss her cheek. "Glad? I'll treasure this, and I know Mel will, too. Thank you so much."
Sarah hugged her back then stepped away. "You made me the vest to remember you by, and now you have something to remember me by."
Rusty picked her picture up. "As though teaching me to read wasn't enough. I'll never forget you. I hope you decide to live here, and we'll be neighbors."
Mel rose. "You were a big help with the mining and cutting the wood, too. You don't owe us anything. Rusty's got it right. We owe you. Thanks again." He held his portrait so he could see it, and his mischievous grin appeared. "And thanks for making me look so good."
Sarah thumped him on the back one last time. "You do look good." She started walking. "But we better get to the station so I can make sure Redfire is loaded all right. Also," she said as they came to each side of her, "there's someone at the station I want Rusty to meet. The ticket person's a woman."
Mel lifted his eyebrows in question, and Rusty said with mocking scorn, "What do you mean? Are you trying to fix me up with someone?"
Sarah raised her hands shoulder high. "That's not up to me. I'm just introducing you to her." Rusty opened her mouth, but Sarah spoke ahead of her. "Wait until you meet her and then argue with me if you want to."
She tugged on Mel's sleeve and said in a loud whisper, "I don't think she'll argue."
Chapter Twelve
1871—Missouri
Clack, clack, clack, clack. Sarah tried to sleep in her compartment, but the monotonous noise generated by the train wheels seeped into her whole body. She received some respite when the train stopped to pick up passengers at other stations. Uncharacteristically impatient, she wasn't sure which bothered her more, the incessant clacking or the numerous stops and starts. She had to keep reminding herself that every clack, every stop brought her closer to home. Closer to Faith.
She imagined several scenarios. What should she say to Faith? Would saying "I'm sorry" be the right approach? Would Faith even speak to her? She recalled that Rusty said to sweep Faith off her feet, but Rusty didn't know her redhead. Faith could just as easily knock Sarah on her ass.
Going around and around with confused thoughts eventually wore her out enough to suppress the effects of the noisy, jerky train trip.
Each night, she managed some fitful sleep, but not enough. Early on the morning they were due to arrive at Bonneforte, the train came to a sudden stop, unlike the slowing down done at a station. Passengers looked around at each other as though one of them would explain what was happening.
Sarah lifted a window and looked toward the front of the train. She blinked against the soot and ash emitted by the smokestack and put her hand over her nose to avoid the strong odor. The edges of some kind of debris stuck out from the track just ahead of the engine. No trees were near enough to have fallen on the track. Robbers. A chill went up her spine. Maybe she really did attract violence.
The back door of the passenger compartment banged open. Four men rushed in. Pillowcases covered their heads, and sheets draped their bodies. Sarah hadn't heard of the Ku Klux Klan robbing trains. Or was their apparel meant to be misleading?
Two men carried shotguns. The other two held pistols. All were aimed at the passengers. One shouted in a disguised voice, "Put your hands in the air and stand up. No tricks and you ain't going to be hurt."
The passengers stood and one of the intruders went seat by seat, collecting the guns and putting them in a burlap bag. "Empty your pockets and purses. Put your money and jewelry on the seat," the apparent leader said. "Everything that's worth anything."
As another man collected the discarded items, the leader stopped next to Sarah, who was standing near the aisle. He peered at her, then pushed her hat off with the tip of the gun's barrel. The hat fell onto the floor. She didn't move. The man looked down at the contents of Sarah's pockets that she had put on the seat. He pushed the coins and comb and spectacle case out of the way and laid bare the folded and tied piece of leather. "What's this?"
"Nothing of value to you," Sarah said.
He stuck the pistol in his belt and picked the leather up. He untied it, opened it, and barked a short laugh. "Hah. A lock of your sweetheart's hair?" He scraped the hair loose with his fingernails and tossed it into the air. The hair fell in a clump at his feet, and he ground it into the floor of the passenger car. Sarah noted that his boots were plain with nothing distinguishing about them. He ground his foot against the red hair once more, and Sarah made a motion as if to step forward. He grabbed the neck of her shirt and laid his gun barrel alongside her face. His voice sounded guttural. "You want to start something? You want more scars like you already got?"
Sarah smelled the mixture of metal and oil and another substance as the cold barrel pushed against her cheek. Calm down, she told herself. She could get another lock of hair. "No," she said in a steady voice. "No trouble."
"Bitch," he said in a low growl. He shoved her down onto the empty seat next to the window and smacked her across the head with the side of the gun. That was the last she remembered until she came to.
A woman held a cloth against her head. "Are they gone?" Sarah whispered.
"Yes, thank goodness. They took all our belongings and left. Some of the men are clearing the track so we can continue."
"Did the robbers hurt anyone else?"
"No, just you, Mr....?"
"Coulter," Sarah said. She didn't feel a need to explain she was a woman. There'd been enough stir already. She put her hand on the cloth. "I can hold this now. Thank you for your help, Miss...?"
"Schumacher. You're welcome. I hope your head doesn't hurt too much." She pointed to Sarah's suit jacket. "I cleaned your face, but you bled some on your clothes."
Sarah smiled wryly. "My favorite suit."
Miss Schumacher touched her own right ring finger. "They took my favorite ring. It was a cameo with a woman's head in profile on a rose-colored background. My mother gave it to me before she died." Tears spilled slowly down her cheeks. She tugged an embroidered handkerchief from her sleeve and patted her face dry.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Sarah said. "Maybe the sheriff can catch the thieves and get it back for you." On the seat next to her, she saw the piece of leather and handkerchief that had held Faith's hair. She picked them up, refolded, and pocketed them, wondering when, and if, Faith would give her another lock.
By the time they reached Bonneforte that afternoon, Sarah's nerves were frazzled. All the passengers were held on the train until the sheriff could be fetched to question them. When Sheriff Schmidt arrived, he set up a table on the platform. The conductor directed the passengers to form a line in front of the table. Sarah got permission to get Redfire first.
She paced up and down the platform, waiting for him to be unloaded. As soon as she saw him being walked down the ramp, saddled and ready to go, she h
urried to him. The man leading Redfire handed her the reins, and Redfire banged his head into Sarah's arm. She slapped his shoulder. "Hi, Red. Bet you're anxious to get moving." He whickered as though agreeing with her.
Sarah opened the saddlebag, retrieved a sack that held a few coins, and gave the man a silver dollar. "Thank you for caring for him." After leading Redfire off the platform, she hitched him to a rail and pulled another Colt from the saddlebag to replace the stolen one. She slipped the pistol into her holster and joined the tail end of the line of passengers.
When Sarah got to the table, Sheriff Schmidt said, "Miss Sarah, glad to see you again. Wish the circumstances were different, though."
Sarah added her twenty-dollar loss to the list the sheriff was accumulating and straightened up. "Me, too, Sheriff. I didn't expect a train to be robbed so close to home. The thieves were dressed like members of the Ku Klux Klan."
"So I heard. I had suspected as much."
"Has this happened before?"
"Twice. Shortly after you left and again about two months ago. Never found enough clues to be much help. One of the passengers told me you got hit in the head. Are you all right?"
Sarah removed her hat, tilted her head to the side, and pointed to the laceration. "He whacked me here, for no real reason. Just plain cussedness, I guess."
"You ought to get Doc Litchfield to take a look at that."
"No, I'm all right." Doc Litchfield was the last person she wanted to see, ever.
Schmidt pointed his pencil toward her holster. "They didn't take your gun?"
Sarah patted the Colt. "They did. I just grabbed this one from my saddlebag. I don't like to be traveling without one."
"Don't blame you. Always good to be prepared. Tell me anything you remember. Don't worry about repeating what I already know."
"The train stopped short. I stuck my head out a window and saw debris on the track. I had just shut the window when four men came in the back of the coach. Two had shotguns and two had pistols. We didn't have a chance to resist." Sarah paused to bring the scene to mind. "The leader wasn't dressed in a way to make him stand out. No one was. All had pillowcases over their heads and sheets draped around their bodies. Nothing notable about any boots I saw."
She explained about the lock of hair she carried and what the leader had done. "I did notice one thing. When he scraped the hair out of the cloth, I saw he had clean fingernails."
Schmidt paused in his note-taking and looked at his fingernails. He grimaced. "Not a working man, huh?"
"Hard to say. He could be a shopkeeper. Or a professional man. Maybe a lawyer."
"Could be. Or a doctor," Schmidt said. Sarah raised her eyebrows, and Schmidt looked up and grinned. "No love lost between you and the doc, is there?"
Sarah just snorted.
"Anything else you noticed?"
"When he put his gun up against my cheek, I smelled something besides metal and oil. Something I smelled before, but I can't think what it could be."
Schmidt stopped writing. "If you figure it out, be sure to tell me."
"I will." Sarah stuck out her hand, and Schmidt rose and shook it. "See you around, Sheriff."
As she walked away, something kept nagging at her mind, as though she'd forgotten to tell Schmidt everything. Maybe she'd recall it later.
She hurried to Redfire, mounted, leaned forward, and patted his neck. She walked him toward her former home, giving his muscles time to loosen after five days cooped up on a train.
As much as she wanted to see Faith, she realized the better plan would be to stop at the house, clean up a bit, and rest. And eat. She almost foamed at the mouth thinking of eating food prepared by Leah. Sarah doubted she would ever become attached to train food. At least not until it improved.
In due time, she nudged Redfire into a trot and heaved a sigh of relief when the house came into view. As soon as she tied Redfire to the hitching post, she heard the door open and Leah came hurrying across the porch toward her.
"Sarah, how wonderful to see you." She met Sarah at the top of the porch steps, and they embraced. "Welcome home, darlin'. We didn't know when you might arrive." She leaned and looked more closely at Sarah. "What happened to you?" She took Sarah's hat off her head. "Bang your head on something? It looks pretty fresh."
"I'll tell you everything when we get inside."
"All right." She took Sarah's hand. "Come in and tell me all about your travels. I'm so glad you're home." Leah kept talking as she led Sarah inside and hung her hat on the rack in the entry hall.
Sarah followed her into the kitchen, happy to let Leah take charge. Leah and Faith were about the only two people Sarah would let boss her around without incident. And Lindsay. Sarah gave a fleeting thought to her sister-in-law and the talks they had.
"Sit," Leah said. "I was just having coffee. I'll get you something to eat. Are you hungry?"
Sarah sat with her back to the warm fireplace. "Starved."
Leah grinned. "For a minute there, I thought you'd lost your voice."
"For a minute there, I thought I'd never get a chance to talk."
Leah smacked Sarah's shoulder. She let out a giggle when Sarah grabbed her around the waist and pulled her onto her lap-Sarah squeezed her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "You have no idea how much I've missed your nagging," she said with a puff of laughter. She let go of Leah, who stood up, straightened her dress, and leaned over and kissed Sarah's cheek.
"And I've missed your ornery hide, too." She poured Sarah some coffee and sat down. "Tell me what happened to your head."
After Sarah told the story of the train robbery, Leah looked angry. "There've been a couple of other train robberies by the Klan, but they've never beat on anyone. Why pick on you?"
"The leader messed with my belongings, and without thinking, I stepped toward him. I guess he didn't like that. But forget about that for now. Didn't you mention something to eat?"
"Oh yes. I'm sorry." Leah jumped up and busied herself gathering food. "I'm having pork roast for supper, so how about I cut a few slices and make you a pork sandwich for now? Save your big appetite for later."
"That's perfect. How are Phillip and the children?"
"They're doing well. They'll be delighted to see you. Amy's had her nose pressed to the window for the last two days. I kept telling her you couldn't get here that fast, but she paid me no mind."
"It's past school time. Where is she now?"
"She and Phillip went to town to buy him a new hat. She insisted on going with him, said his last hat was a disaster. The baby's taking his afternoon nap."
Leah set a plate holding a sandwich on the table and added silverware and napkin. She poured two cups of coffee and sat across from Sarah. "You look tired."
"I'm exhausted. You would think five days on a train would give me plenty of rest, but I didn't sleep much." She wolfed down half of the sandwich.
"Why was that? Too noisy?"
"Partly. And partly because I couldn't stop wondering about Faith." She hesitated. "I'm not sure how she'll react to my return."
"Did she know you were coming back now?"
"Yes, I wired her the same message as I did you. I'm home earlier than she first expected, though. School's not out for the year yet. I kept thinking about Joel Litchfield seeing her every day, and I couldn't stay away any longer."
"Sarah, I have some bad news about Joel Litchfield."
Sarah couldn't read Leah's expression, but the tone of her voice made Sarah's heart leap with apprehension. Had Faith already chosen him? "What? What is it? Tell me, for God's sake."
Leah patted her arm as if to calm her. "This isn't about Faith, at least not directly. Litchfield seems to have everything a woman would want in a husband, and I began to wonder why he'd never married. So the next time I saw JoBelle, one of the girls from the tavern, I had a talk with her."
Sarah didn't need Leah to spell out that she'd explained some of her past to the girl in order to get information from her. A feeling o
f warm gratitude spread through her. Leah had worked hard to leave her past behind her and build a new life. To jeopardize her current reputation for Sarah's sake touched her deeply.
"So," Leah said, "I asked her if the doc ever visited her or the other girls, in a non-medical way. She said no, but I should check Calleton, two towns away. One of the girls there was a friend of hers and told her they often had customers from Bonneforte. She gave me the girl's name and how to contact her. So I did."
Leah stopped to refresh their cups of coffee. Sarah was on tenterhooks. She could barely restrain herself from yelling at Leah. She felt like saying, "To hell with the coffee. Talk!"
Before she burst with curiosity, Leah sat back down and continued. "First, I went to the newspaper office. I told them I was considering a piece on doctors in the county and asked if they had pictures of any of them. One of those was a good, clear picture of Litchfield. I took that with me when I went to Calleton and showed it to JoBelle's friend, Trudy. She recognized him right away. He started coming there a couple of years ago, but under a different name."
Sarah could feel a sneer growing on her face, but she kept quiet and listened as Leah went on.
"Trudy said he had a long history at the Crossroads Tavern, both for visiting the girls and for gambling. She said he did all right gambling until eight or nine months ago, then he started losing. But he never seemed to run out of money. In fact, lately he'd been giving some of the girls presents, and you know they all liked that."
Something niggled at the back of Sarah's mind, but she ignored it. "So why the hell is he after Faith?"
"Maybe he's looking to settle down and raise a family."
With a snort, Sarah jumped up and started pacing. "Not with my woman. I'll skin him alive if he even touches her." Had he touched her? Just the idea made Sarah want to throw up. A sudden question occurred to her. "Did you tell Faith about him?"