by Jake Logan
“Lady—Miss Murchison—I used to have a clerk until he got the gold fever and went up north to Deadwood. Last I heard, he caught a Sioux arrow in the back and died.”
“How unfortunate,” she said. She backed off when she saw no progress was being made by being truculent. Changing her tactics, the blonde licked her lips, smiled just a little, and pressed her unruly hair back under her wide-brimmed hat. Emerald eyes locked with the station agent’s rheumy brown ones as she said in a voice as seductive as she could make it, “Are you sure? You must—”
“Damn right, I’m sure. Morgan was a good man. To die like that on a fool’s errand to get gold outta the ground just ain’t right. He could have been my right-hand man and made a decent living one day. This here’s the only route from St. Louis to K.C. A gold mine, but not that much of a one these days,” he added hastily.
“I didn’t mean your unfortunate Mr. Morgan. I wanted you to be certain my ticket didn’t simply . . . blow away.” She tried again to be sexy without being too forward.
“There’s no ticket for you. Not from the colonel, not from any Zellnov—”
“Zelnicoff,” she corrected automatically. Zoe’s frustration mounted and she wasn’t sure what to do. “He’s my editor at the St. Louis Dispatch, and he was quite positive that I should be on the train going to Kansas City.”
“You’re a reporter? I do declare, you’re ’bout the purtiest reporter I ever did see,” the station agent said. “The whole staff, what there is of them bastards—excuse the language, ma’am—here in Columbia are the ugliest spuds you ever did lay eyes on.”
Zoe was uncomfortable with the way he stared at her now, but she knew she had to do something to get onto the train with the contestants in the Turner Haulage Company race. Without the ticket, she could not get the story, and Mr. Zelnicoff would be disappointed in her. She had worked diligently in menial jobs and argued eloquently to be assigned to report on Colonel J. Patterson Turner’s Transcontinental Race when a male reporter had fallen ill with the gout and was unable to stand without intense pain.
“I can do things for you,” she said coyly.
“Do tell.”
“I can print a story about how you were the kindest, nic est station agent in all Missouri or . . .”
“Or?” The man turned a little distant and looked at her sharply.
“Or I can let you languish, unnamed and unknown, forever a cipher as far as your fellow citizens—and your bosses on the railroad—know.” Zoe was startled to see how this threat affected the man so. It mattered more to him not to be forgotten than to be favorably written about.
“Now why would you go and, uh, do that?”
Zoe shrugged eloquently, hating herself for the way her breasts bobbed to emphasize her reluctance.
“If I don’t get aboard the train, how can I possibly ever convince my editor to publish anything I write?”
The station agent scratched his chin, but never took his eyes off her trim figure. She turned a little to the side so he could see her silhouette against the bright blue Missouri sky. It bothered her to use her gender in such a blatant fashion like some soiled dove might, but the man’s resolve weakened by the second.
“Reckon I can give you the ticket and send a bill to this here Zellycove.”
“That would be acceptable,” Zoe said. “The newspaper will honor your invoice.”
She heard the train approaching. The grinding of wheels against the steel rails as it slowed and the huffing and chuf fing steam engine sent her pulse racing. She was seconds away from the story of her lifetime. With a contested race among the colorful characters the colonel surely had recruited to publicize his freight company, she could send a riveting, engrossing article every single day, and carve out a reputation for getting to the heart of any story, no matter how complex or dangerous.
“You just affix your John Hancock on this here line, so’s I can be sure I got things all squared away,” the station agent said, shoving a sheet of paper toward her. She took it and held it up so she could read it. Zoe looked up from the contract obligating her—or Mr. Zelnicoff—to the cost of a railroad ticket, and saw the train inching into the station.
“Yes, here,” she said, scrawling her name across the bottom. “The ticket!”
“Miss Murchison, you got handwriting that’d put a doctor to shame, but then one of the town’s doctors don’t read or write. Said he was self-taught, and danged if he’s not better than the fool with a fancy diploma hiding cracks in the plaster of his office wall.” The station agent took the signed sheet, used a blotter to keep the ink from smearing, and then hummed to himself as he found the proper ticket.
“Thanks,” she said. “I need to get aboard.”
“Train’s not leaving the depot until it takes on water,” the station agent called. He leaned forward and yelled, “You didn’t ask my name. I’m Herman Bronson! Wait! That’s Herman Bronson, Sr.!”
“Yes, thank you, you’ve been a darling,” Zoe said, not quite understanding what the agent had yelled at her. She was too intent on boarding the train and beginning her interviews. Fifty racers would require a considerable amount of work on her part to buttonhole them and finally distill what they said about their hopes and aspirations to a pub lishable story. It would not only get her national notice if the stories were syndicated, but it would cement her job at the newspaper. No more working as little more than a copy girl!
“Pardon,” the tall man said, bumping into her as she hurried to board and he exited at the same time.
Zoe stepped back and looked at him, wondering if he were one of the racers. He was tall, dark-haired, and had eyes as green as her own. Rangy, moving with sure, quick movements, he had the look of a gunfighter about him. The pistol slung low in a cross-draw holster on his left hip convinced her he was a dangerous man. The worn ebony butt of the Colt only added to the picture of a no-nonsense hombre.
Zoe started to get aboard, and was almost bowled over by a woman rushing after the man. Zoe stepped back and watched, trying not to eavesdrop but being too close not to. Something about being a reporter turned her into a snoop. The woman was paying the man a princely sum to find someone—Zoe couldn’t figure out who, but the dangerous-looking man was reluctant.
“I’m coming along, John,” the other woman said. She stamped her foot and tried to look determined. Zoe thought it only made the woman look petulant.
Unconsciously, Zoe patted more of her hair into place. She knew she looked a fright after the frantic race in the buggy to reach the train depot. Why she wanted to appear as perfect as the other woman was something of a mystery since she had a job to do and neither the woman in her fancy traveling clothes nor the tall gunman with her needed to be impressed.
Still, Zoe wanted the man to at least glance in her direction. When he didn’t, she heaved a sigh. The gunman and the woman hurried off, arguing in low voices as they went down the steps at the far end of the platform. In spite of herself, Zoe wondered what their story might be and if it wouldn’t be better than the fifty men hunting for Colonel Turner’s fabulous treasure trove.
“You gettin’ on board, miss?”
She looked up to see the conductor studying her. A quick glance over her shoulder reassured her that the station agent wasn’t rushing out to snatch the hard-won ticket away. All it would take was a simple telegram from Mr. Zelnicoff saying the newspaper would not pay for her ticket to rob her of this chance to justify herself.
The station agent remained where she had first seen him, seated in his tiny office, peering through the dirty window overlooking the platform. Unworried, the agent had not contacted the newspaper. Zoe worried that the man might wire ahead and have her arrested in K.C., but if he did, she would have a great start on her series and could wheedle Mr. Zelnicoff to pay if he wanted more of her fabulous stories.
“I am,” she answered the conductor. “I’m a reporter. Do you have any objection to me speaking with the gentlemen engaged in the race?”
“Don’t know how you’re gonna do that, miss,” the conductor said.
“I can—”
“Not a gentleman in the lot, so you talkin’ to a gentleman’s gonna be mighty hard.”
In spite of herself, Zoe had to laugh. “You are such a card, sir.”
“Yes, miss, reckon it goes with the job. If I couldn’t laugh, I’d start flingin’ them off my train.”
She looked at the car loaded with men with a combination of trepidation and eagerness. These were fodder for her mill. These were the men she needed to make a reputation for herself as reporter.
“Wait,” she said, grabbing the conductor’s sleeve before he could go forward to the other passenger car.
“Miss?”
“The woman who just got off. Was she a racer, too?”
“Can’t rightly say, but I reckon that to be a fact. Her and the tall man with her, both of ’em was askin’ questions and soundin’ as if they was in the race to get the gold. Are you one of them?” The conductor tipped his head in the direction of the men in the car, now all looking at her as if she were dinner and they were hungry wolves.
“I don’t care who wins,” Zoe said, “as long as I can be with him.” She covered her mouth when she realized how that sounded. The conductor snorted and turned away quickly. “That’s not what I meant . . .” She spoke to a closed door. Heaving a deep sigh, she turned back to her work. There were more than twenty men in the car, all waiting to give her an interview. Zoe knew that by the way they crowded close and peppered her with questions.
“Wait, please,” she cried, holding up a gloved hand. “I’m a reporter and will want to speak with each and every one of you—in turn.” She tried to look stern, and knew she’d failed.
Two of the men got into a scuffle and then a fight over who would speak to her first. Before she could order them to stop such foolishness, a burly man reached down, grabbed each by the scruff of the neck, and lifted. Zoe’s eyes went wide when he lifted them bodily until the toes of their boots barely touched the floor. With a tremendous heave, he slammed their heads together and let them fall back to the floor, knocked out cold.
“Now, ma’am, you kin start talkin’ with me.”
“I’d be delighted,” she said, feeling the opposite. Among dangerous men, this one looked the most likely to take a life and never notice—or if he did, he would no more care for the life snuffed out than he would a stepped-on bug.
“These yahoos ain’t got no couth,” he said, pushing his way through the throng, dragging Zoe along behind him. His huge hand circled her slender wrist like a prison manacle, and trying to escape was futile. With great reluctance, she let him pull her to the rear of the car.
“I need to get my pencil and—”
“We kin go on into the mail car fer a proper interview.”
The train lurched and unbalanced Zoe. She grabbed the back of a seat and looked out to see the tall, dark-haired man with the woman hurrying down the steps from the platform. They vanished in the distance as the train gathered speed and its whistle let out a baleful screech.
“I said, come on!”
“You’re hurting me!” She tried to fight, but could not overcome the man’s immense strength. Thinking fast, she fumbled in her purse and got out her pencil. She used it like a knife, stabbing down hard into the man’s wrist with the sharp tip. He jerked, but did not release her.
Contemptuously, he plucked the pencil from her hand and tossed it aside.
“We got bizness, me and you.” He almost yanked her arm from the socket as he pulled her through the tiny door at the rear of the car, across the metal platform, and through the door into the mail car.
The clerk looked up in fright.
“I ain’t got nuthin’, mister. I swear!”
“You got a big mouth.” The man grabbed the clerk and bodily tossed him out the open side door.
Zoe let out a gasp and ran to the door, clutching the edge so she could lean out far enough to see if the clerk had been injured. He struggled to sit up beside the tracks as she was yanked back into the car and flung to land heavily atop a heap of mail sacks. The rough canvas under her made her breath come faster. She knew this was going to be the bed where she was raped. The man worked to unbutton his fly and reached inside to pull himself out.
She tried to scream, but nothing came from her mouth. Her throat had tensed as surely as if he strangled her. She tried to back away on the mountain of mailbags, but only succeeded in miring herself down amid them. She realized too late that there was no place to run. Either she fought here and now, or she would endure the disgrace the man was about to perpetrate on her body.
“You jist lie back and enjoy it. Hell, you can squeal and kick around a mite. I like that.” He stepped closer. Zoe prepared to kick him in the balls, but he was too quick for her. Before she could rear back and lash out, he dropped down, pinning her legs down under his knees.
He moved closer, his hands fumbling under her skirts.
Zoe was never sure what happened next. The rapist’s weight held her down, and then she was so light she might have floated away. The man was choking, gurgling, strangling. Then that ugly sound disappeared.
Focusing her eyes took a few seconds. She saw a whipcord thin man going through the would-be rapist’s pockets. He found something worth keeping and tucked it into his own vest pocket, then grabbed a handful of throat and dragged the man to the open side door. Without seeming to exert any effort, he tossed the man off the moving train.
“Sorry I was late to this party, ma’am,” the man said, touching the brim of his hat. He hadn’t even worked up a sweat dealing with the mountain of gristle and meanness who had tried to rape her. “My name’s Thom Carson. Big Thom Carson, at your service.” He doffed his hat and made a mocking bow in her direction.
“Big Thom?” It was all Zoe could think to say. The man was half the size of the rapist, yet he had handled him easily. Manhandled! “You don’t look so big. I mean—”
Carson laughed easily. “I know what you mean. I hear it all the time. I’m not some huge bear of a man, so how come they call me Big Thom.”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said.
“It’s not the men who call me that. It’s only the ladies.”
“I see,” she said weakly.
He laughed again.
“You just might, if you’re lucky enough.” He reached into the vest pocket where he had stashed whatever he had taken from the other man.
Zoe knew then what had provoked the petty theft. Big Thom Carson had taken the other man’s gold key. If only one opened the lockbox at the end of the hunt, a man doubled his chances with two keys.
“Now,” Carson said, securing the key in his pocket. “Shall we get down to it?” He hitched up his pants and looked expectant.
“D-down to it?” Zoe felt faint. She had traded one rapist for another.
“You’re a reporter. So interview me.” Big Thom Carson flopped on a convenient stack of mailbags and lounged back, fingers laced behind his head. “I never been interviewed before by a reporter, much less a lady reporter as pretty as you.”
Zoe struggled to remember any of the clever questions she had formulated before she had boarded the train in Columbia.
5
“It’s never going to stop raining,” Molly Ibbotson said, pulling Slocum’s slicker up even more to protect her head. She huddled, cold, wet, and miserable, next to a scrub oak trunk that afforded little protection from the wind and blowing raindrops.
Slocum was inclined to agree. He had seen frog stranglers in his day, but this rainstorm threatened to go on forever. It had come up just before sundown, and had continued throughout the night until the prairie was an ankle-deep mud pit. Traveling in such treacherous weather over dangerous ground was more than foolish. It approached suicidal. Not for the first time, Slocum cursed Harry Ibbotson and the way he had lit out across the prairie instead of following the railroad tracks like any sane man would.
&nbs
p; What had he been thinking? The train tracks obviously led to Columbia and the chance that his sister would be waiting for him there. To head across country without supplies made it seem to Slocum that the man wanted to kill himself. Living off the land wasn’t difficult, but all Ibbotson had with him in the way of supplies was whatever he had stuffed in his pockets. He night have a penknife or a small pistol, but Slocum didn’t remember seeing a three-pound six-shooter strapped to the man’s hip. Truth was, Slocum had barely caught sight of him as he boarded the train. Harry had left his sister immediately and gone to the mail car for whatever reason.
“He’s a gambler.”
“What’s that?” Slocum had pulled his Stetson down so low his ears were bent out of shape, and he didn’t hear much more than the rain pattering hard on the broad brim.
“My brother is a gambler, and not a very good one. That’s what you were wondering, wasn’t it?”
“Reckon so.”
“He’ll gamble on the turn of a card or whether the next man to walk through a doorway is left-handed. I saw him gamble on which fly would leave a piece of rotting meat.”
“Did he win?”
The look Molly shot him told the answer. Her brother wasn’t a good gambler. That might explain why they had gotten tangled up in the ridiculous scheme Colonel Turner had concocted. At the thought of the freight tycoon, Slocum touched his vest pocket. His finger outlined the gold key hidden there and, just for a moment, he wondered what he would do if he won the $50,000 in gold. Then he shook himself to get some sense back into his head. The chances of winning the race were small. Having the proper key to open the strongbox with the treasure was even slimmer.
He recognized the fever in himself for what it was. It wasn’t any different from the men who struck out to find their fortune in a goldfield, or others thinking they could get rich following any other route to sudden wealth. Slocum recognized the fever and knew he was a better man than to succumb.
Still, $50,000 in gold was a lot of money and would take a long time to spend. A real long time.
