by Delynn Royer
Gwin cried out, "Arthur! Are you all right?"
Cole turned his head just as she tried to rise to her feet. Still groggy and unsteady, she tripped over the hem of her skirt and collapsed onto her hands and knees. Arthur didn't seem to notice. He stood frozen, staring at the inert body of the man who'd been about to kill him.
The parrot in its cage screeched. "Demon rum! Demon rum! Squawk!" Wings flapped as the cage spun toward the rear of the car. The train was taking a steep incline.
Fighting shock, Cole rolled onto his back, letting the fingers that clutched the revolver slacken. His wounded shoulder only now began to throb with pain. What exactly had just happened here?
Cole pulled himself to a sitting position and rested back against a stack of trunks near the door. By now, Gwin held Arthur's face in her hands and was shouting at him sternly, trying to snap him out of his shock. How many people has that poor kid seen die in the past month?
Cole's mind played back over the farfetched conspiracy tale Gwin and Arthur had spun on their first day out of Topeka. Somehow, it didn’t seem quite so farfetched anymore.
Bits and pieces now fell into place in Cole's mind like a jigsaw puzzle, hinting at a picture far bigger than he had imagined. The fact that the gunman happened to be an Oriental fit nicely. Most of the Chinese population that had migrated to America were settled in one place: San Francisco. The very town they were bound for. The very town Gwin and Arthur had fled in fear for their lives.
Arthur started to come around, and Gwin caught him up in a fierce embrace. The boy didn't fight this sisterly show of affection. On the contrary, Arthur's arms moved hesitantly to encircle Gwin's waist, his fingers clutching at the loosened folds of her blouse. Something wrenched in Cole's stomach at the sight of them, something as painful in its own way as the brutal throbbing in his shoulder.
He closed his eyes to the paralyzing thought that if he had allowed just one more minute to go by before deciding to go after Gwin...
He could not allow himself to dwell on the awful possibility of what might have been. The question he was forced to ponder now was, where did they go from here?
Chapter Eleven
"Demon rum! Demon rum! Going to hell in a hand basket!"
That bird might be on to something, Cole thought, but if it doesn't shut up soon, I'm going to shoot it. He sat on the floor of the baggage car, his back up against a stack of trunks, his legs sprawled in front of him. The ache in his wounded arm was growing teeth.
Arthur had thoughtfully righted the parrot's cage. It was no longer shrouded in its pillowslip, which had already been torn into strips to bandage Cole's arm. The parrot was making so much racket, however, Cole would have gladly sacrificed his bandaging if it would afford them some peace and quiet.
"I think it's stopped bleeding."
Gwin knelt beside him, applying the makeshift bandage to his wound. Her hair was a mess, half up, half down, frazzled out all over in crazy curls and squiggles. Dirt streaked her worried forehead, her skirt was wrinkled, and her blouse had been yanked free from the waist of her skirt. At this moment, there was no doubt in Cole's mind. He had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.
He groaned and closed his eyes. His shoulder burned and he ached all over. He was, however, grateful to be alive. If the gunman had had his way, all three of them would be knocking at heaven's gate about now.
"You saved our lives, Shepherd, and I should thank you for that."
Cole didn't open his eyes. Right now, all he wanted, more than anything, was to go to sleep. "Just doing my job, your ladyship."
There was a long pause. "I think, as soon as you get that bullet out, you'll be all right."
"I think so, too. Hurts, though."
Another pause, a long one, so long, in fact, Cole was obliged to open his eyes to see if she was still there. She was busy folding his bloodstained coat on her lap.
As if sensing his scrutiny, she looked up sharply. "What are you staring at?"
"You."
A flood of color rose to her cheeks. She pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze. She cleared her throat. "What if there are more?"
"More what?" he asked, although he knew what she meant.
"More of them." She inclined her head in the dead man's direction. "I never saw him before in my life. How do we know that there aren't more of them on this train right this minute?"
"Look, I seriously doubt—"
Anger flashed in her eyes. "You doubted when we told you they tried to kill us in San Francisco, too, and look where that got us!"
Arthur, who had been poking his fingers through the bars of the parrot cage behind her, stood up now to defend Cole. "Yeah, but he doesn't doubt us now, Gwinnie. Do you, Cole? You don't doubt us now, isn't that right?"
Before Cole could open his mouth, Gwin challenged him. "But your assignment hasn’t changed, has it?"
"Well, the circumstances sure have. As soon as we reach the next whistle-stop, I'll wire the Agency and inform them that—"
"That is exactly what you will not do!” Gwin shot to her feet, hugging Cole's jacket to her chest. "I will not allow my brother's life to be in danger one more minute!"
She started to pace anxiously. From the moment she had regained consciousness, she had remained calm, too calm, and Cole knew that by now it was all starting to sink in. If he didn't handle this right, she would panic and try to run.
He tried to keep his voice reasonable. "But we didn't know the situation before this, Gwin. Now we do. We can handle it differently."
"Handle it differently?" She stopped pacing. "Oh, we'll handle it differently, all right. I was handling it just fine until you got involved. We might have ended up in the hoosegow a couple times, but at least no one was trying to kill us."
"Gwin—"
"We can't, we just can't!" She began pacing again, muttering to herself.
"Gwin, listen to me."
She stopped suddenly, her back to him. She didn't turn around.
"You've got to listen to me. We can figure out what to do next if you just give us some time."
She didn't move. Arthur didn't move either. He stared at his sister's rigid back, his eyes questioning.
Cole shifted position and winced. His shoulder felt like it was on fire. "You're upset right now, and that's understandable, but you can't let it cloud your judgment. Think, Gwin. There's no need to do anything stupid."
"Think ..." She fumbled with his coat, twisting and wrinkling it, before turning to face him. There was no sound but the rhythmic clack of the iron horse's wheels beating the track beneath their feet.
Arthur broke the silence. "What are we going to do?"
The question hung in the air as Gwin crossed the baggage car to Cole's side. She knelt in front of him and searched his face.
"What's the matter, Gwin?"
She wore an odd, dreamlike expression, and Cole had to wonder if she hadn't lost her senses because her next words were nonsensical. "For so many years, all I knew was your face."
"What?"
She closed her eyes and whispered, "She knew naught but his princely face. It was when her brave knight returned to her in the garden that the queen first asked him his true name."
Before Cole could ask what she was talking about, Gwin leaned forward. Her lips touched his, gentle and warm as sun-kissed flower petals. It was fleeting and chaste and compelling. For a second, he even forgot the agony in his arm. He caught a heady whiff of lilacs and raised his hand to touch her hair. It felt soft and thick, heavenly. Before he had a chance to absorb what was happening, she pulled back.
He stared at her, speechless.
Her eyes were still closed. "Oh, my love," she whispered, "I am all yours."
Cole knew that he'd heard her right that time, but the words she uttered still made no sense."Gwin, what's—?"
Her eyes opened, and they seemed to shine in the dim light. Cole thought for a moment that there might be tears brimming there."I'm sorry, Cole.
"
A handcuff slipped over his wrist before he could react. If it hadn't been his bad arm, he could have easily yanked it away before she had a chance to anchor the other end to the metal lock of the sturdy trunk behind him.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
She stood and jumped back, dropping his jacket to the floor. He caught a flash of silver as she tucked a key into her skirt pocket. "The bleeding's stopped, so you'll be all right if you don't struggle. The conductor will be through here on his rounds soon, and—"
"No!" Frustrated, Cole tried to stand. The trunk, which he would have sworn was packed full of nothing less than pure lead, didn't budge. He only succeeded in jarring his bullet wound. "Gwin, don't do this."
But she was already moving away from him, pulling up her skirt in handfuls, tucking the hem into her waistband. He saw before she turned her face away that she really was crying. She looked almost comical with her skirt all bunched up around her waist, revealing the stark white pantalets that clad her slim legs beneath it, but he didn't have much time to pay attention to that. He knew now what she planned to do, and there was nothing funny about it. She planned to jump the train.
She snagged Arthur by the arm and swung him around, pointing him toward the door, toward the open observation deck that sided the day coach ahead of them. "Let's go!"
Arthur hesitated. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his treasured slingshot. He tossed it to the floor next to Cole. "Here, take care of this for me, will you?"
Cole tried to reason with him. "Arthur, you don't have to do this."
But the kid wasn't open to argument. He would stick with his sister, crazy or not, stupid or not, reckless or not. With only a wistful look back, he vanished through the open doorway.
Cole strained at the cuffs, ignoring the pain that gnashed through his damaged shoulder. "Damn it, Gwin! Please don't do this!"
She looked back at him, her fingers clutching at the splintered archway as she blinked back tears. "I'm sorry, I have to. Can't you understand?"
"This isn't the way! Just stay and together we can ..." But the plea died in his throat.
"Good-bye, Cole."
And then she was gone.
PART TWO
“With bereaved hearts, the two lovers parted. They would be lovers nevermore. To her lone, cold chamber stole the queen, her cheeks still wet with tears, while Lancelot took his horse and rode slowly into the forest ...” From the love story of Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, as told by Emmaline Pierce to her daughter, Guinevere Pierce, 1868
Chapter Twelve
Virginia Range Mountains, Nevada
Cole figured he must have eaten something so horribly disagreeable before going to bed that it was now fighting its way out somewhere within his digestive system. The result, of course, was a long night of bad dreams.
He was in his own narrow bed in his own neat-as-a-pin apartment on Madison Street in Chicago. If he listened hard enough, he could hear the clip-clop of the horses' hooves passing along the cobblestone street below and the familiar call of morning pushcart vendors. If he opened his eyes, there, flanking his bed, would be an oak dresser. Atop the dresser, inside two oval brass frames, would be the faded daguerreotypes of his parents, the father he had idolized and the mother he had never had the chance to know.
If it was Thursday, Mrs. Chalmers, the housekeeper who came in once a week to tidy up, would soon be knocking at his door. A plump woman, she would be wheezing like a set of hearth bellows after having climbed the stairs.
In terms of housekeeping, she didn't have much of a job when it came to looking after Cole's place. Cole always picked up after himself. And so, perhaps it was because she was not kept busy enough that she had taken to concerning herself with Cole's state of bachelorhood. "You find yourself a nice girl to marry, Mr. Shepherd," she'd advise. "There are plenty of nice young ladies who would jump at the chance to catch themselves a fine young buck like you."
Cole smiled to himself. Perhaps Mrs. Chalmers was right. Maybe it was time he thought about finding himself a nice girl to settle down with. A nice, sweet—
"Curse it all to hell! I can't budge him. He must weigh two hundred fifty pounds. I swear, if he up and dies on us, I'm going to leave him here for the birds."
Not two-fifty, dear heart, one-ninety last time I checked. And even as he corrected her exaggeration of his weight, Cole was forced to confront the gloomy possibility that he might not be the victim of bad dreaming after all. When he forced his eyes open, he saw that he was not in his cozy little room overlooking Madison Street. It was dark and cold, there was dirt in his mouth, and it felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through his arm.
"Gwinnie! He's waking up! He's waking up!"
Cole hoped it was part of his dream that someone seemed to be tugging on his left leg in a futile attempt to drag him, but he feared not. The leg-pulling stopped just before Guinevere Pierce's pale, dirt-streaked face swooped down into his narrow line of vision. "You're bleeding again and you're too heavy for us to move you. Are you all right?"
Cole spat out some dirt. "Sure I'm all right. I'm just dandy, Gwin."
He closed his eyes again, perhaps in a last ditch effort to convince himself that this was all indeed a dream. It had to be. If it wasn't, and he really was on his first assignment, it certainly wasn't going very well, was it?
Fritz Landis's words came back to him with stunning clarity: "Your first solo assignment is to escort them from Caldwell to San Francisco without misplacing them along the way."
It had sounded simple. Insultingly simple. Fritz had neglected to mention, though, how incredibly lovely Guinevere Pierce was, how she would have a way of getting under his skin that would make him want to choke her one minute and pull her into his arms the next. There had been no mention about the kid, about how Cole might find himself growing attached to the shaggy-haired ragamuffin who carried a cheap slingshot named Excalibur. There had been, come to think of it, no mention either of Oriental assassins, gunshot wounds, or jumping trains that were moving at twenty-five miles per hour across rocky, desert-like terrain. Just a simple assignment.
Simple.
The memory of his own escape now came back to him. He had wasted two or three minutes swearing at the top of his lungs and struggling with the handcuffs, trying to drag that trunk full of lead across the floor of the car—a worthy cause, certainly.
Next, he had frittered away more time trying to devise a way to reach the call rope to signal the conductor—another physical impossibility. It was then he'd begun to pity himself, vividly picturing his career going all to hell. Finally, he had remembered the hatpin Arthur had used the night Gwin had cuffed Cole to his berth.
Cole had taken that hatpin from Arthur and dropped it into his own coat pocket. Gwin might have confiscated the key, but she couldn't have known about the hatpin. She had dropped his coat on the floor within reach, and Cole snatched it up eagerly.
Picking the handcuff lock had seemed to take forever and he had been tempted more than once to give up, but he sweated it out. After all, a Pinkerton man never gives up. Isn't that what he had always believed?
By the time Cole had freed himself from the cuffs, he figured he was twenty minutes ahead of Gwin and Arthur on the line. Since it was night, he hoped they would stick close to the tracks. If he headed east on foot, he had a good chance of running into them. And with that last thought in mind, he'd jumped the Central Pacific Express 420.
He didn't remember much after that. Whatever he had banged his head into upon landing had been made of much sterner stuff than his poor, aching skull.
"Cole! Can you sit up? Are you all right?" There was an exasperated feminine squeal. "Holy Moses, I think he's passed out again. What are we going to do now?"
Cole groaned and rolled over onto his back. His arm felt like it was about to snap off. “I believe you mentioned leaving me for the birds.”
Her hands were on him then, smoothing his hair back, cupping his face.
It felt nice.
"Cole Shepherd, open your eyes!"
"I can't. If I open my eyes now, I'll find myself somewhere in Nevada with a mangled arm, a dented head, and two crazy people who will not rest until they've destroyed my career and left me for the birds. However, if I keep my eyes closed, the dream will eventually end. When I finally wake up, I'll be back in Chicago in my own bed and—"
"He's delirious. Arthur, come here, we've got to slap him awake."
Cole glared up at her. "I will not take one more slap, bump, dent, kick, punch, or bullet tonight. Maybe tomorrow."
Gwin reached behind his shoulder, grunting as she tried to pull him to a sitting position. "Can you walk?"
He winced as a sharp new pain bolted from the back of his head straight through to his forehead. "You should've known I'd catch up with you, Miss Pierce. I always do."
She muttered something he couldn't make out.
Arthur dropped to his knees beside him. "You didn't catch up with us. We caught up with you. I told her you're no quitter."
Gwin spoke. "Come on, Cole. Help me."
Cole hooked one arm around Gwin's neck and pushed the rest of the way up to sit. His head throbbed but it was still attached to his neck and seemed to be pointing in the right direction.
He surveyed the landscape. They were in the mountains, the eastern side of the Virginia Range. On the other side would be Reno, Carson City, Virginia City. There were a few trees, tall, standing silhouettes against a starry, moonlit sky, but most of what he could make out were rocks—rocks, dirt, scrubby grass and prickly bushes.
"How did you get loose from those handcuffs so fast?" Gwin asked.
"You're not the only one with a few tricks up your sleeve."
Arthur crooned, "Oh, I bet I know how!"
Cole gave him a warning look. "And you'll keep it to yourself. There are some things we men have to stick together on. Am I right?"
"You bet your boots!"