Kissing Comfort (57 page)

“My valise.” He jerked his chin toward the narrow aisle. “Put it here. Beside me.”

Kellen's own valise was stored under the bench. He didn't bother offering to put the stranger's bag there. He picked up the bag, discovered it was heavier than he anticipated, and made a small grimace as he hefted it onto the bench. It occurred to him to ask what was in the bag, but engaging in conversation was probably not exactly what the man had in mind. “I won't be long.”

The stranger shrugged. “S'fine. Don't have long.”

Kellen knew that if the stranger was to have even a slim chance of surviving, he had to ignore that. He twisted his wrist, and the man's fingers fell away. Kellen stepped back into the aisle and confirmed his promise to return with a quick nod.

He found the conductor four cars forward. It took him more time than he had allowed for because passengers two cars ahead had opened up their baskets and were sharing food across the aisle and between the benches. The atmosphere in that car was as festive as a summer picnic, and he was encouraged by every traveler of the female kind to sample a slice of this and a square of that. Exigency warred with civility. He was polite but firm, then coldly polite, and finally merely cold. No one offered him anything on his return passage.

The conductor, a smallish man with widely spaced eyes and spectacles that sat too narrowly on the bridge of his nose, had his hands full keeping two women from clawing each other—or him. Lying in the aisle between the would-be combatants was a flattened black velvet bonnet, artfully decorated with black-and-white glass beads and a large black-tipped ostrich feather. Kellen assessed the situation as a standoff and concluded he could expect no help without intervening. While passengers on either side of the aisle called out their opinions and generally egged on the spitting and hissing females, Kellen slipped the toe of his boot under the bonnet's brim, gave a little kick, and sent the bonnet sailing toward the coach's ceiling. Both women leaped, and once they were airborne, Kellen reached between them, grabbed the conductor's arm, and yanked him free of the dispute.

Kellen couldn't be sure, but he thought he glimpsed a look of gratitude before the conductor began to make all the proper noises about not abandoning his post even as he was being dragged toward the rear of the car.

Between cars, Kellen explained the situation. He had precious few details to offer. No, he couldn't say who was responsible. No, he didn't know when the man was injured. Yes, he was certain it was a grievous wound. Yes, the man required a doctor's attention if one could be found.

The conductor, in Kellen's opinion, delayed their progress unnecessarily by insisting on proper introductions, and Kellen had the impression his name would find its way into an official report to the Union Pacific Railroad or, more concerning, to the local vigilance committee. He was tempted to ask Mr. Berg if he knew the names of the unbalanced women in the forward car. He resisted the question because Mr. Berg seemed as if he might be the sort of person to go back and correct this oversight.

“There is a physician in the next car,” Mr. Berg explained. “Go on ahead, and I'll ask him to attend us. I won't be but a minute or so behind you.”

Kellen didn't know what he would find by the time he returned to his car. When he didn't immediately see the stranger, he thought the impossible had happened and that somehow the man had moved on. That wasn't the case. As Kellen moved closer to his seat, he saw the stranger was doubled over, bent so far forward as to be invisible from the front of the car. Far from being dead, the man was purposefully rooting through his valise. Kellen had a distinct memory of setting the bag on the seat beside the stranger. Had it fallen to the floor?

“What do you need?” asked Kellen. “Let me get it for you.” He watched the man remove his hand as quickly as a child caught in the act of swiping his finger through a freshly frosted cake. “Then let me get it out of the way.” Kellen pushed it under the bench beside his own bag and sat down. “Conductor's bringing a doctor. Maybe you've got longer than you think.” He helped the man straighten and situated him once more in the corner of the seat, allowing him to rest his shoulder against the side of the car. His head lolled against the window. Kellen removed his own jacket, folded it, and placed it under the man's head and shoulder.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Kellen asked.

The stranger lifted one ginger eyebrow. “You interested?”

“I am.”

“Didn't seem like you might be. Runnin' off the way you did.”

Kellen had to lean close. The man's voice was weak, softer than a whisper, and hard to hear over the steady clickety-clack of the train on the rails. He watched the stranger's lips and strained to hear.

“Thought you might be squeamish. Didn't think you were when I first noticed you, but you never know.”

Kellen ignored that. “You're wasting your breath,” he said. “Literally. Who are you?”

“Name's Nat Church. Heard of me?”

Arching an eyebrow, Kellen revealed his skepticism. “Nat Church.” His wintry blue eyes dropped to where the stranger's hand disappeared under his coat. Somewhere beneath the heavy woolen overcoat, the man was still pressing a dime novel against his wound. “
Nat Church and the Ambush at Broken Bow. Nat Church and the Indian Maiden. That
Nat Church?”

“That's right.”

“Huh.”

“You don't believe me.”

“Sure don't, but I don't think it matters.” Kellen watched the man who called himself Nat Church shrug and immediately regret the small movement. A grimace twisted Mr. Church's mouth into a parody of a smile. Kellen looked away and in the direction of the passenger car's door. Help wasn't arriving as quickly as the conductor had indicated. Perhaps the doctor was reluctant to offer assistance.

Several rows ahead of them, a father sitting with his young son glanced back. Kellen intercepted the glance, and the father immediately turned away, apparently as disinclined to become involved as the doctor. When the boy started to swivel in his seat, the father clamped a firm hand on the back of his son's skull and made him keep his eyes forward.

Another quick survey of the car told Kellen all he needed to know about the likelihood that there would be help from another quarter. The passengers studiously avoided his eyes every time he attempted to catch theirs. Kellen could tell they all knew now that something unpleasant was happening within spitting distance of their seats, but their instinct was to maintain that distance lest some spittle attach itself.

Their reaction struck him as odd. They were behaving counter to his experience. In his travels, he'd found that people in the wide-open Western territories were more likely to step up and lend a hand than city folk or the denizens of small towns where the yoke of lawlessness was still a heavy burden.

There was a possibility, however, that explained it. Kellen bent his head slightly and addressed Nat Church. “You told them to stay away.”

Mr. Church did not pretend that he didn't understand. “'Course I did.”

Kellen had the impression that Nat Church was not only at peace with what he'd done, his fleeting smile seemed to indicate that he was satisfied that Kellen had figured it out. “All right,” said Kellen. He concluded there was no point in challenging the dying man's assertion that he was Nat Church, in spite of the fact that he looked nothing at all like the hero described in all twenty-two of the wildly popular dime novels. The fictional Nat Church was in his twenties, easily half the stranger's age. Nat Church of the serialized adventures had hair as black as tar and eyes so impenetrable that light was neither emitted nor reflected. The man sitting beside Kellen had a face that was infinitely more expressive, eyes that were as gray as the wiry strands of hair at his temples, and a thin face whose deep lines were a map of life experience. The hero of
Nat Church and the Sleeping Detective
and
Nat Church and the Hanging at Harrisonville
had wide shoulders and wore a beaten, buttery-soft brown leather duster, not a woolen coat with the heavy collar turned up to hide a pencil-thin neck; and Church, the hero, sported scuffed brown boots with tarnished silver spurs, not ones that were polished to a military shine. “There's no good reason not to believe you. You're
the
Nat Church. Are you going to let me see your wound?”

“Can't. Lift the book . . . I'll bleed out.”

Kellen was certain that was going to happen regardless. There was nothing to be gained by hurrying the process along. “You were stabbed, is that right? Not shot.”

“How you figure?”

Impatient with the man's need to hear an explanation, Kellen set his jaw for a moment. He said, “You didn't board the train injured. It's my habit to watch people at the stops, see who's coming and going. I saw you walking the platform; saw you waiting to climb aboard. Hands at your sides. Patient to take your turn. Watchful but not worried. I saw enough to be confident that whatever happened had happened after you stepped on the train. I didn't hear a gunshot. No one in this car reacted as if they'd heard one either. That leads me to conclude you were stabbed.”

There was humor in Mr. Church's voice as he whispered, “ ‘Leads me to conclude.' You a lawyer?”

“No.”

“Sound like a lawyer . . . maybe a politician.”

“Neither.”

Church nodded once. “Can't abide either one. Thought maybe I lost my touch for takin' a man's measure.”

Kellen was curious about what made this Nat Church choose him, but he didn't take the dangling bait. It was sheer hubris to suppose that he was picked because Church sized him up and surmised something steady about his character. It was far more likely that he had been selected for what he'd been reading at the time. He might have been passed over completely if he'd been holding
The Pickwick Papers
.

“Who did this to you?”

Again, the small smile. “Ain't it the way of life that most things is done
by
ourselves,
to
ourselves?”

“Philosopher? The Nat Church I read about is none of that.”

“Even a good writer can't put all of me on the page.”

“I see. So are you saying you stabbed yourself?”

“Hardly. Not such a fool as that. Just tryin' to say that I had some part in it.”

Kellen watched the man take a short, steadying breath, drawing air through clenched teeth. In spite of the pain, it seemed to Kellen that Mr. Church wanted to take his time, tell his tale slowly in the fashion of Scheherazade, as though he might be granted a night's reprieve if he could spin the ending to another chapter.

Kellen put his next question bluntly. “Do you know the name of your murderer?” He gave Nat Church full marks for not flinching. Perhaps he had something in common with the man he purported to be after all.

“Never saw it coming . . . crowded in the aisle . . . people trying to get settled.”

“One car back? That's where I thought you boarded.”

Mr. Church tried to suppress a cough but couldn't. He pressed the ball of his free hand against his lips.

Kellen passed him a handkerchief.

“Thank you.” He wiped his mouth and crumpled the handkerchief in his fist. “Yes, one car to the rear. Did I say I never saw it comin'?”

“You did.”

“Should have seen it. Half expectin' it since . . . since forever. Knew what I was up against. Wife would've tried to stop me.” A short laugh had him raising the handkerchief to his mouth again. “Damn me if that don't hurt.”

It hadn't occurred to Kellen until now that there might be someone to notify. “Who should I tell? How can I find your wife?”

“Can't. She's gone now. Same as me.”

“There must be someone.”

“Bitter Springs.”

Not a person at all, but a place. Kellen's Western journeys had taken him past the town on several occasions. It existed on Wyoming's high flatland near the Medicine Bow Mountains, a survivor of the camps that sprang to life as the Union Pacific laid track from Omaha toward Utah. Instead of disappearing as so many of the camps did when the rails passed them by, Bitter Springs found commerce in cattle country and as a water way station for thirsty engines and their thirstier passengers.

Kellen had never seen anything from his train window that recommended Bitter Springs as a place of particular interest. Now he wondered what he might have missed by not spending a few days with the locals. “Is that your home? Bitter Springs? Were you going there?”

“Going there . . . not home.”

“Expected?”

Mr. Church nodded. “Pennyroyal. Should find her . . . tell her . . . she's waiting.”

“Penny Royal. All right. I'll be certain to—” He stopped, his attention caught by the coach door opening. Mr. Berg appeared on the threshold with a man Kellen supposed must be the doctor on his heels. The late arrival was explained by the doctor's condition. The man required the conductor's shoulder to keep him steady and upright. Kellen swore under his breath and got to his feet. “Right here,” he said. He stepped into the aisle, backing up as he pointed to Mr. Church. He jerked his chin at the doctor but addressed his question to Mr. Berg. “You sure he can help? He looks as if he can hardly hold his bag any better than he can hold his liquor.”

“Don't like the looks of you much either,” the doctor said, answering for himself. He kept pace with the conductor and then switched places so he could sink onto the bench beside Mr. Church. He flipped the clasp on his medical bag and opened it, offering his resume to Kellen as he withdrew a ball of tightly wound bandages. “Woodrow Hitchens. Late of St. Louis. Graduate of Philadelphia Medical College, class of'60. Cut my teeth in the field hospitals at Manassas, Gettysburg, and Shiloh, to name a few that you might have heard of, you still being a whelp and all. That suit you?”