Only My Love (4 page)

Michael accepted the informal moniker from her colleagues as the first sign that she belonged. She knew it started in an attempt to needle her, to point out that she would never be part of the reporting staff no matter what Logan Marshall thought she could accomplish on the Western Tour. Calling her Mike was meant to ironically emphasize her femininity and keep her separate—in what the men perceived to be her place. At some point, however, the tone became affectionate, accepting, and eventually a little awed. Michael felt she had earned the right to the name and the byline, which headed all the dispatches she sent back to New York. She had lived up to Logan Marshall's expectations and put to rest the concerns of most of her male colleagues.

It had only taken three months, 14,000 miles, and 200 hours at the poker table.

Michael's mind wasn't on the poker game as she listened to Hannah Gruber tell her story. Marveling that the woman had strength to talk, troubled as she was by shortness of breath and a cold in her chest, Michael made notes in her pad about the Atlantic Crossing, the impersonal, even degrading inspection upon entering the United States, and the slow and hazardous journey the Gruber family was now making across the country. Hannah cradled a baby in her arms while one of her toddlers slumped against her shoulder. Sitting stoic and silent beside his wife, Joseph Gruber held the other toddler in his lap and watched his wife carefully.

Michael was touched by the concern she saw in Gruber's face, the way his eyes wandered to his wife's careworn features and the tired slope of her shoulders. She felt his disapproval when Hannah agreed to speak to her, but he did not forbid his wife the opportunity to spend time with another woman. He might have spoken in place of Hannah but his knowledge of English was too poor. Michael also suspected he wanted to give his wife this one small pleasure. Since leaving Germany there had been far too few of them.

The stench in the emigrant car was a force to be reckoned with. Even after nearly an hour Michael wasn't accustomed to the smell of unwashed and ailing humanity. It was too cold to open the windows, and the air was further befouled by the uncovered oil lamps and the stove, which burned the dirtiest and cheapest of coals. The car was so crowded that it was impossible for Michael to sit without someone giving up their seat. The uncovered benches were too narrow to comfortably accommodate anyone but the young children. The aisle was cluttered with belongings that could not be contained overhead or under the seats, and the toilet was a curtained-off affair that did little to secure one's privacy or dignity.

It was not the first emigrant car Michael had visited and though she found the conditions deplorable, she also found them to be fairly typical. Forty dollars did not buy much in the way of comfort. It bought hope.

Journey of hope, she thought. It had possibilities. She scrawled the title across the top of her notes on Hannah. Listening for a few more minutes, Michael closed her interview when she saw Hannah was tiring to the point of complete exhaustion. Perhaps California's warmer climes would bring Hannah relief for her lung congestion, but Michael wasn't convinced Hannah would make it that far. It was rare for an immigrant
not
to experience some infection, by virus or vermin, during the cross country trek, but dying from it was not the norm. Michael remembered a doctor she had spoken to briefly in one of the first class cars. Perhaps he could be persuaded to examine Hannah and recommend something for her cough.

Michael shut her notepad, slipped a pencil behind her ear where it joined another, and pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. Slipping a gold piece—part of her poker winnings—in the small dimpled hands of the Gruber toddlers, she thanked Hannah and her husband for their time and threaded her way down the aisle to exit the car.

Outside, the relief was both blessed and brief. No. 349 was moving slowly through the mountain passes, but at their present altitude the air was bitterly cold even without the wind whipping around her. Michael slipped the notepad into the pocket of her duster and went forward to the next car. After just a few moments in the fresh air, the odor in the second immigrant car was nearly intolerable. It took an incredible act of will not to screw up her features in distaste as she wended her way through the car. She was largely ignored by the passengers, used as they were to curious first class passengers coming through to discover the plight of the poor. Most of the comment she caused was simply due to the fact that her face didn't register contempt or derision or sympathy. She merely appeared accepting. A change of clothes and she could have been one of them.

It was more difficult to move among the second class passengers. She was propositioned three times by two miners and a cowboy, all of them declaring eternal fidelity until they reached the brothel in Barnesville. Michael merely gave them a hard look over the top of her spectacles. That look did not invite additional comment.

***

My God, Ethan Stone thought, she still wore pencils in her hair. He lifted his hand to shade his mouth and control the urge to speak to her as she passed. At least her spectacles were on her nose where they belonged. Counting backward on mental fingers, Ethan realized it was a little more than six months since the one and only time he had seen her. He wondered at himself for remembering her so quickly. He was good with faces. In his line of work it could make a life and death difference, and often did. But this was something different. Seeing her again, he recalled more than her face. He remembered the solemn and sober set of her mouth, the shape of her shoulders as she sat hunched over her desk, and the stiff way she held herself as she accepted Logan Marshall's reprimand.

As she walked past him on her way to the first class cars, Ethan felt himself struck once again by her determination, her hard sense of purpose. He was also struck by the slender line of her body, a waist he thought his hands could span, and breasts that made him reconsider that he had once thought her figure rather boyish. It wasn't completely surprising that she was propositioned three times as she wended her way through the car. She was the first decent, unattached woman most of the men in the car had seen in a month. There was a lot they were willing to overlook. Like the pencils. But then, when it was too late to discover the answer, he found himself wondering about the color of her eyes. It was not a comfortable thought.

Ethan pushed his long legs into the narrow aisle and stretched as soon as she was gone. Until he felt the tension uncoil from his neck, shoulders, and back, Ethan hadn't fully appreciated how nervous Miss Dennehy's presence had made him. Recognition on her part could ruin everything. It made him wonder how good
she
was with faces.

Ben Simpson nudged Ethan with his elbow. Ben was a gaunt, bony man and the poke caught Ethan in the ribs. Ben flinched when Ethan turned and gave him a sour look.

Clearing his throat, Ben said quietly, "Check the time, will ya?"

"It's two minutes later than the last time you asked me. Relax, Ben. Everything's planned right down to the kerchief you're wearing around your neck. Houston saw to it himself."

Ben's thin body was filled with restless, nervous energy. He tapped his fingers on the bench in the space between Ethan and him. He wanted to check the inside of his coat once again, just to feel the reassuring shape of his Peacemaker. He didn't do it because Ethan would have given him that belittling look again. Ben wasn't certain he liked Ethan, or trusted him completely, but he did respect the way the man had with a shooter. Considering what they were going up against, that counted for a great deal in Ben Simpson's book.

"Seems like we've been climbing the side of this mountain forever," Ben said, staring moodily out the window. Darkness made it impossible for him to the see the sheer drop on his left but he knew it was there. Long before the railroad had come to the Colorado Rockies, Ben Simpson had explored the length and breadth of them on horseback. "I once had a mule that could do it faster."

Ethan closed his eyes, ignoring Ben's complaining, and reviewed in his mind the steps necessary to make Nate Houston's plan successful. His own success depended on making things work.

Ben poked him again. "You ain't asleep, are you?" Then, without waiting for an answer, "Check your damn watch."

Ethan took his time about sitting up and made a small production of patting down his vest pockets to find the one with the watch. "9:30," he said slowly, not showing his surprise. Perhaps he actually had fallen asleep. "It's time."

Ben was already on his feet, stepping over his partner and heading toward the car door. He didn't have to look back to know Ethan was following him. It was part of the plan.

Once they were outside and standing on the small balcony of the car, they didn't waste any time getting to the ladder of the car in front of them. Ben went first, making the climb to the passenger car's roof quickly and with a lightness that mocked his fifty years. Ethan waited until Ben cleared the ladder, then followed. Although No. 349 was in a steep climb and moving slowly, the cars bucked and wind swirled icily around him. The clear night sky was brilliant with star shine but only a sliver of new moonlight. Eventually the night would afford them the protection they needed as fugitives. Now it posed a danger. Ben and Ethan braced themselves, feet apart like sailors on a rolling ship, and waited until their eyes had adjusted to the darkness before they began moving toward the express mail car.

Hannibal Cage had been an engineer with the Union Pacific for three years. He had worked his way through the ranks, starting as a switchman, then a brakeman for four months, and finally as a fireman. He was a bull of a man, broad-shouldered and thickly muscled, and fully aware his strength was nothing compared to the power he wielded in the cab of Engine No. 349. He was completely in control of 35 tons of steel and steam, the final authority over his brakemen, fireman, and porters, and the guardian of the passengers' safety. He survived by taking his job seriously. He respected No. 349, treating her delicately in regard to the amount of coal and water his fireman gave her. He worked her slowly up a grade, never pounding her, and knew how to keep her to the curves on the sharp, treacherous descent down a mountain.

It was a matter of some debate whether Hannibal Cage loved his locomotive more than his own life. On the night of October 22 it was a moot point. When Hannibal saw the bonfire laid across the tracks as No. 349 cleared the grade, he threw the Johnson bar into reverse, signaled his brakemen with three short blasts of his whistle, and commented calmly to his fireman that he figured somebody was up to no kinda good.

The two guards in the express mail car were on their feet as soon as the train shuddered to a halt. Underneath them, along the entire length of the train, the wheels shot off sparks and screechingly protested the abrupt application of the engine's reverse lever. In anticipation of being boarded from the front, the guards raised their shotguns toward the car's large sliding door. It was an unfortunate assumption. Ben Simpson and Ethan Stone used the regular doors at either end of the car to enter simultaneously and surprise their victims.

Ethan's Colt .45 was leveled directly at the back of the stockiest of the two guards. His voice was low and even, rough in a whiskey-whispered sort of way. "You'll want to put those shotguns down, gentlemen, and you'll want to do it carefully. I'm not anxious to kill you, but I can't speak for my partner here."

Behind the kerchief that hid half his face, Ben Simpson bared yellowed teeth in a happy grin. "Can't say that I'm anxious, boys, but I ain't reluctant, if you take my meanin'."

The guards took his meaning quite well, placing their shotguns on the floor of the mail car and pushing them toward the robbers without ever turning around to face them.

Kicking the weapons out of the guards' reach, Ethan approached them cautiously. Fairly certain they had relied on their shotguns for protection and carried no pocket revolvers, he motioned Ben to close in. "You wouldn't want anyone to think you made it easy for us, would you?" he asked. He saw both of his victims wince as they anticipated what would come next. Ethan made the blow as sharp and clean as possible, bringing the butt of his Colt down hard on the back of one guard's skull. Ben's man flinched at the last second and had to be clubbed twice before he dropped unconscious to the floor.

"They're not going anywhere," Ethan said as Ben poked both men with the pointed toe of his boot. From the deep pockets of his coat he pulled out a stick of dynamite. "C'mon. We have work to do."

In the engineer's cab Hannibal Cage did not go down as easily as the express car guards. He had no intention of resisting the robbers until he was asked for the one thing he couldn't give: No. 349 herself. He fought like the man he was, hard and fair, and he gave as good as he got until Jake Harrity managed to get his gun between their twisting bodies and fire off one shot. When Hannibal slumped to the floor the fireman surrendered his shovel and complied with Jake's order to remove the engineer from the train.

"You'll never make it down the mountain on your own," the fireman warned Jake as he tended to his friend's grave chest wound. "No. 349 will take you right over the side."

Above his kerchief Jake's brown eyes raked the blackened and greasy face of the fireman. He shrugged, unconcerned by the railroader's warning. "We got us a man, tallow pot."

In the caboose, the conductor and two brakemen were easily overpowered by another team of robbers before they could respond to the engineer's whistles. After tying up the brakemen, Happy McCallister and Obie Long began moving forward with the intention of relieving passengers of whatever struck their fancy.