Call was aware that Stonechurch did not confirm the rumblings. Neither did he say they were rumors without foundation. “I’m thinking now that maybe they’ll need another hand or two at Morrison Station so I’m keeping my mind open to other possibilities.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Stonechurch stood. “Give me a couple of minutes to change out of these nightclothes. We’ll walk together. Brady, you get yourself to Mrs. Jameson’s before you fall asleep at my table. Come back for breakfast.”
Brady nodded. “Breakfast sounds good. Thank you.” His chair scraped the floor as he pushed away from the table. “I’m real sorry about the men’s wages. Real sorry.”
Stonechurch left the kitchen without a word.
Brady closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his palm. “Damn me if I know what happened. Didn’t see a blessed thing.” He lowered his hand and tugged at the brim of his hat, fitting it snugly on his head. “I shoulda checked the strongbox before we left Laurel Beth’s place.”
Call didn’t argue the point, though he understood why Brady hadn’t felt the need. “Are you relieving a driver tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Afternoon most likely. I’ll be headed back to Denver eventually.”
“Then I’ll probably see you.”
Brady looked Call over. “You serious about picking up work at Morrison’s?”
“If there’s a position to be had, then sure. It’s hard to fathom that if someone there made off with Mr. Stonechurch’s payroll, he’d still be hanging around the station.”
“You could be right. Then again, he or they might stay put and sit on the money for a while. Hide it. Bury it. Fill a mattress with it. Bide their time until Mr. Stonechurch moves on.”
“Is he likely to do that?”
“Hell, no. But they don’t know that.”
***
Laurel and Rooster rode until daybreak without sighting Josiah Pye. They passed one of the living stations and stopped long enough to make inquiries, but the stage tenders weren’t helpful and all their cattle were accounted for. If Pye had come this way, he hadn’t stopped to steal a fresh mount. “He’s going to run Penelope into the ground,” she told Rooster when they turned to head back. “I could string him up myself for that.”
“Hard to figure him out,” said Rooster. “Bothers me more than a little that he left under cover of night. Can’t see the point when he could have announced he wanted to leave and taken the stage or bought a horse from you if he was set on riding out.”
Laurel let Rooster go on. They’d already discussed this earlier and he was repeating himself, but he obviously needed to mull it over, get it right in his mind.
“When we get back,” he said, “you’ll do an inventory.”
“Yes. I said I would. Mail. Money. I don’t have many valuables. Penelope is the real loss.”
“You ever think about not giving the animals names?”
“No. And this won’t change my mind. I like naming them and they appreciate it.”
Rooster chuckled. “You know that, do you?”
“I do.” She looked at him sideways, saw that one corner of his mouth had kicked up, and repeated herself, this time more emphatically. “Ido.”
They rode the rest of the way back to the station in silence, together but with their own thoughts.
5
The morning stage arrived not long after Laurel and Rooster returned. The boys did the work of exchanging the team. Mrs. Lancaster had prepared the usual fare for the passengers—four men and two women this time—and collected the dollar and a half fee for the privilege of sitting at the table. Although Rooster felt it necessary to grumble mightily about being sent to the bunkhouse for some shut-eye, he did not gainsay Laurel’s order. Laurel went straight to her study to examine the mail she had sorted the previous afternoon. As far as she could tell, it was all there. No one had tampered with her safe. Since the arrival of the bank, she’d never kept much money there. She could account for what she’d put in. A quick inventory of those few valuables she had were also still in the house: her mother’s gold filigree framed cameo and her pearl earrings, her father’s timepiece and the fob it hung from, and the Springfield rifles and revolvers her brothers had been issued during the war but weren’t carrying when the renegades swarmed the station. They all had sentimental value, but on the whole they wouldn’t fetch much. She couldn’t say that Mr. Pye even knew she had the items. She never wore the pearls or the cameo. The timepiece lost minutes every hour so she kept it in a drawer in her office desk and hardly ever took it out. The revolvers and rifles were maintained in good working order, cleaned with hot, soapy water to keep them fromclogging, and greased with bear fat if oil wasn’t handy. Mr. Pye had no doubt seen her cleaning the weapons because she often sat on the front porch to do it, but he’d never commented, and he didn’t know where she kept them. They were still there.
It wasn’t until Laurel swiveled in her chair that she saw the telegraph had produced a ribbon of paper in her absence. Since it was unusual to receive any messages late at night, she had never thought to look. Now she stood, walked over to the machine, and carefully threaded the ribbon through her fingers. After tearing it off at the end of the series of dots and dashes, she returned to her chair and began to translate the code.
The message was short and to the point, but then the sender was not known for wasting words. She read the message twice before she put pen to paper and wrote it out. Somehow seeing the words made it real. Still fantastic, certainly, but real.
When she was finished, Laurel set the pen and paper down, removed the spectacles she used for close work, and closed her eyes. She pressed a thumb and forefinger to her eyelids and released a slow breath. A wave of fatigue suddenly washed over her, and her shoulders slumped. Her eyes remained dry though she felt like wailing.
Damn Josiah Pye! Hanging was too good for him. Did anyone still draw and quarter criminals? At the moment she could embrace that notion. Mr. Pye had to be responsible for the theft. He was missing. The payroll was missing. In her mind, the connection between the two events was straightforward.
