Phoebe raised her skirt a few inches to make the climb easier. “And he thinksmybag is missing a few marbles,” she muttered to herself. “Where does he think I can go?”
“You say something?” he called to her.
“No!” She thought she might have heard him chuckle, but the thought that he was laughing at her was so unpleasant that she dismissed it from her mind. When she finally reached the rocky perch, she ducked behind it and squatted low, making herself invisible to Shoulders. She wondered how long she could stay where she was before he became suspicious, and then she wondered if he would check after her to see if she had done anything except waste his time. She adjusted her skirt, petticoats, and knickers, closed her eyes, and put the image of a narrow stream of rapidly running water in her mind before she made her own.
Well, at least now there would be evidence. When she had finished relieving herself, she straightened her clothing and stood, and was not entirely surprised to see Mr. Shoulders had covered half the distance to reach her. He stopped as soon as she stepped away from the outcropping. She thought that he might offer her assistance during her descent, but he simply turned and headed back to the horses. She was grateful for his lack of attention and wished she were capable of mounting the mare she’d been given without assistance from him.
No words were exchanged as he helped her up and onto the saddle. Her mare remained tethered to his until he was mounted and then he took up her reins as well as his own. Phoebe did not know how to hold herself easy in the saddle.Her spine was not merely upright; it was stiff. It was not long before she once again felt every movement of the mare as a jolt, not quite painful, but more than uncomfortable. To distract herself, she focused on her surroundings, looking for landmarks that might help her later when she made her escape. And she would escape, she thought. From the moment Shoulders had insisted she accompany him and his men, Phoebe had been plotting how she would get away from them. They had not yet traveled so far that she could not make it back to the train tracks on foot, if not to the train.
She did not deceive herself that there would be a search party. Phoebe concluded that she was on her own when no one from the train stepped forward to help her. Not that she blamed them. She was fairly certain that the passengers had been relieved of their guns, and the one man who was still carrying was lying unconscious in an aisle. Even if someone made noises about following Shoulders and his men, how could they manage it on foot? The telegraph lines had been cut. She knew that because she overheard the men masked by the blue kerchiefs talking about it. It seemed to her that they meant her to overhear, meant her to accept there would be no rescue. She supposed she was meant to embrace hopelessness and therefore be easier to manage.
They didn’t know she had been managing situations more hopeless than this since she was thirteen and the actress in the role of the ingénue inThe Tiny Housecame down with chicken pox. She had been a seamstress then, a dresser, occasionally moved props, but more often inventoried them. She had been called upon to open and close the curtains when Mr. Bird was so drunk that he was more likely to hang himself in the ropes than pull on them, and she was allowed to give cues to the actors from the wings because her stage whisper was never audible to the theater’s patrons. So when the production ofThe Tiny House,a play in three acts written by their most influential supporter—and their leading lady’s current lover—was set to open and the ingénue had more spots than a Dalmatian, something had to be done. A generous application of greasepaint disguised the spots butexacerbated the itch. Phoebe pointed out that the actress was going to permanently scar herself with her scratching, which had an immediate but short-lived effect, and when the fevered scratching resumed, it was apparent that appealing to the actress’s vanity was not the solution that would see them through opening night.
Phoebe had never had the least desire to move beyond the wings. She was satisfied with whatever work was thrown her way and being backstage suited her just fine, so no one was more startled than she when she announced, quite boldly as it happened, that she would stand in for the ingénue. Everyone in the crowded dressing room gaped at her. She was six years younger than the part called for and more than a decade younger than the actress she was replacing, but none of that mattered. She knew the lines, and at the moment, that was the salient point.
In very little time she was dressed, painted, and turned out in manner that made her unrecognizable when she regarded herself in the mirror. The director pronounced he was satisfied. The leading lady gave her stiff encouragement. The playwright looked her up and down with an interest he had never shown before.
She went on. Her fellow thespians were supportive, the audience warmed to her, and the critics wrote kindly of her performance, if not of the play. Phoebe remained in her role until the afflicted actress recovered and then she played a succession of smaller roles, male and female, as other members of the cast took ill.
The Tiny Housestayed open for two months, primarily because the playwright had misplaced pride in his work and the deep pockets to support it. Phoebe never took a role onstage again, which was acceptable to her. She was a manager anyway, and her real strength was in acting as if she weren’t.
Phoebe’s head turned in the direction of her captor. “You should allow me to examine your arm. That’s why you brought me along, isn’t it?”
He did not look at her. “Later.”
“Thatiswhy you brought me, isn’t it?” When he ignoredher, she asked, “Why can’t I see your friends? Shouldn’t we be close to them by now?”
“We’d be considerably closer if you hadn’t needed to stop.”
“And you’d be with them if you hadn’t insisted that I come with you. What purpose can I possibly serve? I’m no nurse, which I told you. And we both know you were not grievously wounded. I will be surprised if the bullet from my pistol did more than graze you. I am not a good shot.”
“Good enough.” He rolled his shoulder, drawing her stare. “That’s blood on my sleeve. You didn’t miss.”
“I was aiming for your heart.”
“Oh. Well, then you’re not a good shot.” Now he spared her a glance. “You had no call to shoot me, by the way. I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“Plenty of people got hurt when you stopped the train. That alone made you worth shooting, but stealing Mrs. Tyler’s ring... that was...wrong.”
“Wrong,” he repeated. “You’ve got me there. But it hardly seemed worth it to stop the train only to get you off it. The effort justified a guaranteed reward. That was their thinking, by the way, but not unreasonable.”
Phoebe frowned deeply. She tried to slow her mare by making a grab for the reins, but Shoulders snapped them away and urged the horses to a quicker pace. She had no choice but to grip the saddle horn and keep her eyes on the horizon as a wave of nausea roiled her stomach.
“Slow down,” she said. “Slow down or I am going to be sick.” She felt his eyes on her, but she did not return his stare. Whatever he saw in her profile must have convinced him she was telling the truth because the horses slowed. She wished she understood how he did it. There was no perceptible movement that she could glimpse. “It’s not the baby. It’s the motion. It was the same on the train.” The headache that was forming behind her eyes was also quite real, but she did not mention it.
“Explain yourself,” she said when she thought she could speak without vomiting. “Please.”
“You heard me fine. You just don’t believe it.”
Maybe that was true. “You stopped the train to take me off. That’s what I heard.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw him nod once. “But why?”
“Figure you’re good for ransom. Saw you switch trains in Denver. Made a point to find out where you were headed because I recognized that you carrying a child and all would add to your value. From there it was just a matter of crossing your path again.”
“Ransom.” She said the word under her breath before she added more loudly, “What makes you think there is anyone who will give you money for me?”
“Just a feeling I have.”
“Do you think my husband is waiting for me?”
