Phoebe knelt at the stranger’s head and put one hand on his shoulder. She shook him gently. There was no response. Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw his hat lying under a seat. She leaned sideways, pulled it out, and set it on the flat of his abdomen. His duster lay open, and what she had suspected was a gun was exactly that. Without knowing why she did it, she raised the right side of the duster and drew it across the weapon, then secured the coat by tucking part of it under his hat.
“Ma’am?”
Phoebe raised her head. The man who had addressed her was peering over the back of his seat. His bowler sat at an angle on his head that might have been jaunty once but wasnow merely askew. He regarded her out of widely spaced gray eyes that indicated he was experiencing some pain. He did not ask for help. There was a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth and another just below his left ear. He alternately dabbed at the wounds with two fingertips and then patted the breast pocket of his jacket for a handkerchief. He merely shrugged when he came away empty-handed.
“He was trying to move toward your end of the car,” he said. “Perhaps to go to that mother and her child. I don’t know what he hit when he went down, but I heard a crack. Or at least I think I did. You might want to look for a bump. I’m going to go forward. Seems to be the heart of most of the commotion.”
Phoebe reached into her reticule, felt for her handkerchief, and passed it to him. “For your lip.”
He thanked her for it and smiled unevenly as he pressed it to his mouth. He got to his feet, wobbled a bit before he found his bearings, and then began to move to the forward car.
Phoebe watched his progress to make sure he didn’t stumble and fall. At the same time, she made a careful search of the stranger’s thick thatch of dark hair. She found no obvious lump and her fingertips were clean when she removed them from his scalp. She located the contusion at the side of his forehead, just above the gentle depression of his temple. There was no laceration and that made her suspect that he had not fallen against anything sharp. More likely he had banged his head on a wrought iron armrest.
She was on the point of trying to rouse him again by taking his shoulder in the cup of her palm when she heard the first shot. She remembered thinking that the sudden silence of the train had been eerie, but that silence was nothing compared the dead quiet that followed the gun blast. Phoebe quickly looked over her shoulder at Mrs. Tyler. That worthy was wide-eyed but still as stone. The man who had been nursing a bloody nose was sliding back into his seat. The mother and daughter continued to clutch each other. Phoebe could not see the child’s expression, but the mother was clearly terrified.
Another shot.
Phoebe jerked. While the sound echoed in her ears, the man under her hand never stirred. Oh, to be unconscious. She envied him his oblivion and could not call herself a coward for wishing that state had been visited upon her.
Two male passengers at the very front of the car had taken cover under the seats and were now belly-crawling toward the rear. As a strategy for escape, it was not a bad one. It lacked speed and dignity, one of those being infinitely more important than the other.
Phoebe gestured to Mrs. Tyler to flee the car, and when the older woman stood and turned, Phoebe believed she had been successful in encouraging her. It was not the case, however. Mrs. Tyler took only as many steps as necessary to reach the mother and daughter and slipped in beside them.
“You really should wake now,” Phoebe whispered to the stranger. “Whatever is happening is coming this way. I can feel it.” The words had barely left her lips when the forward door to the car was flung open.
The first man to enter was not dressed so differently from the unconscious man she was trying to rouse. Black hat. Black duster. Black boots. All of it was a little more battered, more weather-beaten, but essentially indistinguishable. She wondered if there was a uniform for men in the West or only men on trains in Colorado. Phoebe recognized the absurdity of the errant thought but that did not help her tamp down the nervous laughter that bubbled to her lips.
The man’s broad shoulders filled the doorway, but he had enough room to bring up his gun and point it at her. The way he did it was not a menacing gesture, merely a casual one. Phoebe instantly felt cold and the placement of her lips was frozen on her face. That was perhaps unfortunate, but at least she was no longer laughing.
Chapter Two
Mr. Shoulders—that was how Phoebe thought of him—stepped into the car and moved to the left. He was followed by two men, similarly dressed but with less imposing figures. Sweat-stained blue bandannas folded into triangles covered their faces from nose to chin. Mr. Shoulders used a black scarf to achieve the same masking effect.
Phoebe looked to their eyes for differences, but all three pairs were brown. At her present distance she could not make out any variation in the coloring. It was the same with their hair. All brown. Plain brown. Mr. Shoulders had very little of it showing below his hat, but the Blue Bandannas wore their hair longer so that it covered their ears. It made her wonder about their ears. Small? Large? Jug handles or pinned back?
It occurred to her that the three men might be brothers or at least related, and her mind wandered to gangs like the James boys or the Youngers. Regardless of their affiliation, there was no question in Phoebe’s mind that Mr. Shoulders was their leader.
“What do we have here?” Mr. Shoulders asked.
At first Phoebe thought he was addressing her, but then she realized his stare had shifted and encompassed the car as a whole. He jerked his chin toward the row of seats on her right. “Seems like two sidewinders are making their getaway. Can you see them?”
Phoebe understood that he was referring to the men on their bellies under the seats. They had already squirmedpast her and were likely only a few feet to the rear of where she knelt.
Neither of Mr. Shoulders’ companions had the same vantage of height or position to glimpse the sidewinders, but that did not keep them from acting. They strode down the center aisle in tandem, careless of the injured man blocking their path. Phoebe was able to shift to avoid them, but her patient was summarily pushed out of the way, and what wasn’t pushed was stepped on. Phoebe winced when the stranger’s right hand was ground under a boot heel.
The pair under the seats did not require encouragement to come out of hiding. They gave themselves over without guns being drawn. Phoebe understood, but she was disappointed with their immediate surrender. Apparently it was the same for Mr. Shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw him shake his head in what she thought was a disgusted, pitying gesture. She would have known for sure if she could have seen the placement of his lips.
Mr. Shoulders lowered his gun but did not holster it. “Get their valuables,” he told his men. “And their guns if they’re carrying, though that doesn’t seem likely. Put them down if you have to, but I’m not thinking that will be necessary. Get the farmer with the bloody nose next and then see to the women behind you. Go gentle. Don’t alarm the little girl.”
Before she could think better of it, Phoebe snorted. It was perfectly audible in the quiet of the car and immediately garnered the attention of Mr. Shoulders.
“There’s something you want to say?”
Phoebe lifted her chin, met his eyes, and said, “Where I come from, the snort speaks for itself. Anything I could add is simply gilding the lily.”
“You don’t say.”
“You are correct, sir. Idon’tsay.” Phoebe held her ground when his eyes narrowed and bored into hers. He was smart enough to know she was poking fun at him and clear in his own mind that he did not like it one bit. She was not surprised when he changed the subject.
