The woman grinned. "Yeah. It was real cute. I hung it up back in the kitchen. I'll go get it."
A train pulled into the station and the restaurant manager looked a little nervous as his waitresses gathered around the one table while ignoring the customers. They passed the sketches back and forth, trying to remember the day the cute little boy had been in. Peter placed both hands on Janice's shoulders and rubbed while listening for any clue that might be helpful.
The redhead returned with a sketch drawn on the blank side of a paper menu. Janice spread it out on the table and Peter studied it from over her shoulder. It showed a bull sitting at a table across from a little heifer in a restaurant similar to the one they were in. A cattle train was pulling into the station that could be seen through the window beside them.
Peter didn't see the point of the cartoon until the waitress leaned over and showed him the pieces of paper sticking out from under the rumps of the animal patrons.
"See? Those are our menus they're sitting on. She said it shows we've got beef on the menu. Isn't that the greatest thing you ever saw?"
Beef on the menu. Surely the child wasn't developing a warped sense of humor at this late date. Every sketch she'd left had been a clue. Stephen obviously kept an eye on her so she didn't dare write anything. What was she trying to say? Peter picked up the paper to study it closer.
Cattle train. Beef. Idly, he flipped the menu over. The word "beef" was circled under "roast beef sandwich." Peter's stomach clenched. He scanned the menu. Various numbers were circled as if randomly. If they meant what he thought they meant, the damned kid was as clever as her mother.
He peeled another bill off the roll Daniel had given him. "I think Betsy may have meant this as a message to us. I'll have her send you a new one as soon as we find her, but we'd like to keep this if you don't mind."
He didn't give the waitress a chance to argue, not that she meant to argue after pocketing the cash. Peter caught Janice's elbow and helped her to her feet, well aware that she watched him with renewed hope. She stayed silent until they reached the street.
"What does it mean? That they took a cattle train?" She hurried to keep up with his long strides.
"Maybe. I want to get back and compare these numbers to the train schedules. There's not too much cattle being shipped through here. I can't imagine them taking a cattle car."
Seeing Tyler heading down the street, Peter flagged him to hurry. Tyler waved and veered off to fetch Evie. Within minutes, they were all in the hotel room studying the sketch and the menu. Manuel ran in to join them not long after.
"We need to be looking for people carrying pencils. Betsy seems to be improving the kind she's using at each stop," Evie commented wryly as she passed the sketch to Peter.
"I'll sew one in all her petticoats as soon as we have her back," Janice promised.
Peter squeezed her hand and began copying the circled numbers from the menu onto another sheet of paper. He ran his finger up and down the train schedules looking for corresponding sequences. He stabbed at a train number and circled it, then drew a line beneath the times and destinations listed after it.
Looking over his shoulder, Janice breathed softly, "Train number 242, arrives Langtry at 2:35."
"Langtry! Hell," Manuel exclaimed in disgust. "There isn't anything out there but dust and desperadoes."
Tyler gave him a look that should have killed. "Shut up, Rodriguez. You're not helping any."
Manuel reddened beneath his deep bronze and gave Janice an apologetic look. "Sorry, Jenny. I was just surprised, that's all. They've got law of a sorts out there now. Shouldn't be hard at all finding a pretty little thing like Betsy there."
A knock at the door intruded, and Tyler answered it, handing the messenger a sizable tip for the telegram he carried. Everyone waited silently as he read it.
He passed it to Peter. "Daniel found a conductor who remembers Bobby Fairweather getting off at Fort Worth. He didn't see Betsy or Stephen."
Peter glanced over the telegram, then back to Manuel. "You know Fairweather better than Daniel. If he knows where Stephen's headed, we'll have to shake it out of him. You can get the Hardings to help, can't you?"
Manuel took the telegram, folded it, and put it in his pocket. "I'll take the next train to Fort Worth. Wire ahead to tell Jason I'm coming. He can be looking out for Fairweather and hold him for me."
"Thanks." Peter handed over enough cash to cover the ticket and expenses. He would be in debt to Daniel for a thousand years, but he didn't care any longer. The money was pointless while Janice clung to a cliff of fear.
"I'll send a wire to Townsend telling him where we're heading." Tyler spun on his heel and walked out. Evie didn't have to be given instructions; she followed close behind, heading for their room to pack their bags.
Peter stood up and took Janice in his arms, hugging her close. The only way he would ever be able to pay his debts would be to return to Ohio when this was all over, but he didn't tell her that. He already knew how she felt about Ohio.
He didn't think he could bear to part with her, but he couldn't ask her to go back where she would be unhappy. He loved her too much for that.
If he had to leave her to make her happy, he would.
Peter covered Janice's mouth with his and drank deeply of the nourishment he needed to live. Going to Ohio without her would be like dying and going to hell, but he could do it. He'd promised to take care of her, and he was a man of his word if he was nothing else.
Chapter 38
The train wailed through the desert night. Janice clung to the hand holding hers. She knew Peter was as awake as she was, but they sat silently, pretending to sleep.
"Please, God, stay with her," she prayed, her lips barely moving. As if he had intercepted the prayer, Peter squeezed her hand. It would be all right. It had to be.
"They must have dozens of cattle ranches out there," she murmured, continuing an earlier argument as if it had never ended.
"The porter told us the train Stephen took had a bull on it destined for the Crooked R. We'll start there," Peter recited patiently. "That could be why Betsy drew bulls in the cartoon."
Starting wasn't enough. She wanted to talk about ending. Janice bit her lip. Everyone was more than kind and doing everything within their power. She couldn't fault them for anything. But she'd been walking around with her stomach tied in knots for nearly a week now, and she was having difficulty being patient.
Langtry was just a little cow town. Surely somebody had seen Betsy—if they'd read the clue right. If Stephen had taken the train he told Betsy he was taking. If he didn't change his mind.
She could think of a dozen more "ifs," but she tried not to. Betsy was there and they would find her.
Laughter erupted among the traveling circus performers at the front of the car. They'd been sharing a bottle of whiskey and playing cards since leaving El Paso, and the noise wasn't conducive to sleep. Tyler and Evie had joined them briefly earlier, but they'd gone off to find some rest. That left Peter and Janice to be distracted by their antics. At the moment a man in a red clown wig and no face paint was honking his rubber nose and declaiming Shakespeare. Janice smiled slightly at the sight and curled up against Peter's shoulder to rest.
A telegram awaited them when they reached the nearly deserted train station at Langtry. Amid the clamor of the performers being forcibly evicted from the train, Peter leaned against the board wall and tore the message open, scanned it, and handed it wordlessly to Janice.
The wire from Stephen had finally arrived. Townsend forwarded the message in its entirety. Stephen wanted ten thousand dollars delivered to a post office box in San Antonio. He'd leave Betsy at an unspecified location after he received it—if he wasn't followed. If anyone followed him, they'd never see Betsy again.
Janice handed the paper to Tyler and curled into Peter's arms. Ten thousand dollars. Stephen had to be insane.
Tyler cursed and handed the telegram back. "What do you want us to do, M
ulloney? Daniel and I can scrape together the cash by this time next week, I reckon."
"We're not giving him a dime," Peter answered firmly. "Let's find a place to stay first. Evie needs to make some more sketches so we can hand out new posters. Then the two of you might go to San Antonio and see what you can find out from that end. We'll discuss it in the morning."
The raucous argument behind them escalated when the circus car was unhitched from the rest of the train and left abandoned on a side rail. Never having seen a circus before, Janice glanced over her shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the performers. There were women as well as men, and most of them seemed quite drunk. Losing interest, she silently followed the others to the nearest hotel.
If she'd thought the hotel in El Paso shabby, this one could be called little more than a shack. They dipped pitchers of water from a barrel to take to their rooms for washing and discovered the mattresses too bug-infested to sleep on. Janice tried to imagine what horrendous place Betsy could be sleeping in now, but she couldn't picture anything worse than this.
Peter spread Janice's mantle on the floor for a bed and used his carpetbag for a pillow. When they were curled together in the folds of cloth, he whispered, "I'm sorry, Jenny. I meant for you to have the best of everything. I wish I could go back to last spring and undo it all."
Janice lay quietly in his arms, listening to his heart thump against her breast. "I don't," she whispered, and she knew that it was true. She may have been through several kinds of hell these last months, but she'd seen the pinnacles of heaven too. For the first time in years, she felt fully alive.
Peter's arms closed tighter around her, and she smiled. He would find Betsy, she knew. Her husband was a much smarter man than Stephen.
Evie spent the better part of the next day producing more sketches of Betsy in boy's gear. If Betsy was nearby, it didn't seem wise to announce their presence to Stephen by circulating the posters around town, but Peter wanted them available if needed.
He and Tyler separated and circumspectly made the rounds of saloons and stores, listening to gossip and asking general questions that would not directly implicate their interest in the Crooked R. Left to her own devices in a less-than-respectable town, Janice donned her schoolmarm disguise and took up tatting on the lone wooden chair in the hotel lobby. Even dressed as an old maid, she attracted interest.
That was how she came to meet the circus people.
She had watched their comings and goings from the hotel window just as she kept a careful eye on everyone else who passed her perch. It was easy to identify the circus folk, and she watched them out of curiosity. The men who inspected her, ejecting tobacco juice into a nearby spittoon before walking on by, she watched for a different reason. Any one of them could know where Betsy was hidden. She thought if she studied them long enough, she could read their guilt in their faces.
Several men stopped and tried to engage her interest, but Janice had long ago learned the tactic of ignoring men. Most of them wandered on, but one cowboy didn't. He leaned over and removed her spectacles instead. Janice screeched in outrage and grabbed for her glasses, but the bully held them out of reach.
"Give me a kiss, missy, and I'll give them back."
"I'd sooner kiss a jackass. If you don't return my glasses, I'll call my husband." Recovering from her surprise, Janice retreated behind her facade of propriety. Returning her tatting to her bag, she gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave. The bully stood too close to push around him.
"I believe the lady has expressed her disinterest, sir. I'd suggest you return her property and remove yourself from her path." A gold-knobbed cane tapped insistently on the cowboy's shoulder.
Snarling, the man swung around, raising a clenched fist. With a cry of fury, Janice grabbed his upraised arm while the intruder brought his ebony cane down over the wrist clenching the spectacles. Attacked on both sides, the man howled in anger. He dropped the glasses but attempted to swing his fist with Janice still clinging to it.
Her caped rescuer laughed and stabbed the head of his cane at a particularly sensitive portion of his assailant's anatomy. The man bent over immediately with a howl more of anguish than anger this time. Janice released his arm and grabbed her spectacles from the floor, retreating quickly from the injured man's vicinity.
"Thank you, sir," she managed to murmur as she backed toward the hotel door. The man holding his privates and howling looked ready for murder, and she wished to be out of his reach when he recovered.
"It was my pleasure, madam," the courtly old man responded. "If I may, I'd like to suggest that we find some other place to exchange pleasantries. I dislike having to break my last walking stick over the head of one unappreciative of my sacrifice." He held out an arm garbed in a frock coat with elbows polished from wear.
Janice accepted and they fled the lobby.
"If your esteemed husband is within walking distance, might I suggest we locate him?" the stranger offered gallantly.
"My sentiments exactly. Might I have the honor of knowing to whom I speak so I may introduce you properly?" Janice answered him in the same exaggerated formality he used.
He laughed. "Very good, my dear. You are a natural mimic. You may introduce me as Theodophilus Charlemagne, proprietor of The Great Hammond's Traveling Circus and Magic Show."
"Very well. I am Janice Mulloney. It is a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Charlemagne." She refrained from commenting upon the history of the ridiculous name.
Several doors down, Peter slammed through the swinging doors of a saloon and came running in their direction. Beside him a small boy in short pants tried to keep up. When Peter saw Janice, he slowed his pace to better observe her companion.
"I heard there was trouble," he said cautiously, holding out his hand to his wife and eyeing the stranger in his incongruous black cape and straggling gray hair.
Theodophilus shook his shaggy head at the small boy jumping up and down with energy and excitement. "The lad is a trifle impetuous, I fear, although he puts two and two together very well. He not only thought to save my frail neck, but to obtain a quarter or two for his efforts. Clever, Milo, but no cigar. Get on back to your mother, now."
Almost managing a grin, Peter flipped the child a coin before he ran off, then turned his attention back to Janice, who was now clinging to his elbow. "Are you all right?"
"Very well, thank you, thanks to Mr. Charlemagne. I think I should like to own one of those very handy walking sticks."
Theodophilus lifted the cane to his head in salute. "You were quite fierce on your own, madam. I could never have performed so well without your aid."
By the time Tyler caught up with them, the episode had been thoroughly reviewed, reenacted, and rehashed, and had to be repeated for his benefit. The tale became much funnier with each retelling, until even Janice was learning to smile at the older man's theatrics.
"Ahh, she does smile!" he exclaimed upon noting the curve of her lip. "I feared the sun had gone into permanent eclipse."
Tyler laughed and clapped the old man on the back as he introduced him to Evie, but the main topic on their minds quickly replaced their momentary mirth. As Tyler and Peter exchanged notes, the circus proprietor audaciously eavesdropped. When Peter concluded that Tyler and Evie would have to go to San Antonio to cover all possibilities, Theodophilus frowned in thought.
"Perhaps I may be of some assistance," he offered during a lull in the conversation. At the instant interest of his companions, he coughed lightly. "I happen to be... ahem... a trifle financially embarrassed after a poor season among the heathens. If I put the multitude of talents of my many performers at your assistance, perhaps we might come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."
Evie and Tyler grinned at the old fraud's blatant appeal, but Peter's brow drew down in thought. As Janice listened in astonishment, Peter arranged for half the circus performers to follow Tyler and Evie into San Antonio for the price of their train fare. In exchange, they were to canvas the town wit
h posters of Betsy. Within minutes, with the help of the circus proprietor, Peter had arranged a search they could never have accomplished on their own.
Another day was lost by the time the train to San Antonio pulled into the station. Janice watched with worry as Tyler and Evie entered the train with the throng of crazily appareled performers. The atmosphere of the travelers was that suitable for a circus. They laughed and sang and every so often one of them would come up and hug Janice to reassure her all would be well. Betsy's story had spread among them with rapidity, and they were buoyed with hope for their gallant mission. Janice only wished she could have their confidence.
Theodophilus remained behind with the rest of his merry band. They surrounded Peter and Janice as the train pulled from the station, waving and shouting encouragement and promises to see each other soon. When the train rattled out of sight, the old man banged his cane against the wooden platform and gazed upon his new employer.
"Well, Mr. Mulloney, it's time you and your charming wife joined the circus."
Chapter 39
"The Crooked R just received a bull and some visitors. They're not a social lot out there, so no one knows exactly who the newcomers are." Theodophilus sent Janice a concerned look and managed to indicate to Peter that he had more to say, but he didn't wish to say it in front of the lady.
Peter glanced to his wife who was ostensibly mending one of his shirts. "Janice, do you think they have any more of that coffee downstairs?"
She didn't look up from what she was doing. "You didn't drink the first cup. And if I don't hear what Mr. Charlemagne has to say now, I'll just pry it out of you later. You might as well save yourself the trouble of repeating it."
Peter grimaced but leaned his chair back so he could touch her hand. She gave him a quick, untranslatable look, but the understanding flowed between them. He nodded his head at Theodophilus. "Go ahead. She'll only imagine worse if we don't tell her."
Theodophilus nodded sagely. "It is good that you both have strength so one does not need to carry the other at times like this. I don't have much else to impart but the fact that the Crooked R was apparently named for more than the brand it uses on cattle. Rumor has it that the owners are cattle rustlers or worse. The men they have working for them are particularly loathed in these parts."
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