Page 18

T welve

Josh saw the caboose up ahead. A slight curve in the tracks showed six cars. Sure enough, he was gaining on them.

He felt the stamina and courage of his horse as he closed the distance between himself and the fancy train. Yet he knew a short train like this, once it reached full speed, would surely outpace him, even if he were riding a fresh horse. And his buckskin was a long way from fresh.

The thundering hooves of his horse, the smell of the coal-fired train, the clacking of the wheels, it all called out to him to hurry. Hurry. Hurry!

Bending low over his stallion’s neck, he closed the distance even as the train picked up speed. Josh narrowed the gap, his gain slow but steady. His horse was sweating, his coat lathered.

Josh gave all he had to urge the horse forward.

And then the horse’s pace faltered, and he realized he was losing ground. He was within ten yards of the train, but he wasn’t going to make it. He’d kill his horse trying.

Then the horse stumbled, and Josh stayed in the saddle only because of experience and his having a firm grip on the reins.

The train pulled away.

“No!”

The horse was pulling up. Maybe lame. Maybe just exhausted. His mind frantic, Josh watched as the train left him behind.

Suddenly a window exploded. A chair flew out onto the ground, and right after that, a body.

A woman’s body.

Tilda!

Josh fast-trotted his horse over to her. He swung down and dropped to his knees beside her still form. Then he rolled her onto her back just as the wheels of the train squealed. Thankfully, the train was well away from them.

“Tilda, are you all right?” Josh was afraid to move her, yet he was afraid not to.

“Josh?”

“Yes, it’s me. Can you move?”

“I’m fine, I think. Just dazed mostly.” Her words were slurred but coherent. “I had to get out before we were going full speed. I couldn’t let Ben take me away from you.”

The words wrenched his heart. She looked battered.

The land was soft here, thick with grass, but she could have broken her neck.

She was conscious and talking, which was good.

He ran his hands quickly down her legs and arms. Slowly, she got up on her hands and knees, and he stood and helped her to her feet. In the distance, the train slowed.

Sweeping her into his arms, he looked around and saw an outcropping of rocks on a nearby hillside. His horse wasn’t up to carrying double, nor even single most likely, so he took the horse’s reins and hurried with Tilda toward that nearest pile of boulders.

The train, now slowed to a stop, began to back up.

“There’s more than just Ben on that train.” Tilda sounded more like herself now. “He had a man with him at the ranch house. There must be an engineer and a stoker, probably someone in the caboose.”

He studied her as they rushed toward shelter.

Her dress was torn, one arm scraped raw.

“We’ll take shelter behind those boulders”—he pointed up ahead—“and anyone who wants you is going to have to go through my bullets.” Josh figured he had a hundred feet or so to cover before the train got back close enough for Ben and his outfit to step off.

He picked up the pace.

“You smashed out a window!” He kissed her on the forehead without slowing one bit.

“I wedged something under the door in case it took me several hard whacks to break the window.”

“You could have died from the fall, Tilda.” He kissed her again just as the train drew even with him. “Will they shoot? Is Ben a killer?”

“I don’t know. Even when I woke up, he—”

“Woke up? He knocked you out? He hit you?”

They ducked behind the nearest boulder just as a shout came from the direction of the trail leading back to town. He looked toward the shout, afraid Ben had more men working for him, riding after him from town.

His heart leapt, and he almost shouted out loud when Zane charged down the road that ran alongside the tracks. His big brother and ten more men! The train’s wheels squealed to a stop, and then the engine began chugging forward again. They must’ve spotted the men coming to the rescue.

“No, he didn’t hit me,” answered Tilda. “He used something to drug me, to put me to sleep.” Tilda shook her head as if to clear it. “My brain feels a bit fuzzy still.”

The train had picked up speed and was well away before Zane and his crew got close enough to jump aboard and drag every man off and beat them into the ground.

Josh had never loved his bossy big brother more.

Watching the train as it grew smaller in the distance, he saw Ben poke his head out the broken window. The man looked furious.

“This isn’t over, Tilda!” he yelled.

Josh was sure Ben had intended to come after him and Tilda, until he saw Zane. No, this wasn’t over.

When Zane drew closer, Josh stepped out from behind the rocks with Tilda in his arms. “Over here, Zane.”

Zane’s horse was as lathered as Josh’s, their critters spent.

Zane pulled up along with the cowhands who’d joined him from the Two Harts.

Josh had never appreciated the loyal men they had at the ranch more than at that very moment.

He walked over to meet his brother, with Tilda held tight against his chest. As he did so, Josh whispered to her, “We need to get married right away.”

Not that he was at all sure that would stop Ben from trying to take her again. But it gave Josh more power to defend a wife than a fiancée.

Tilda leaned her face against Josh’s chest. “Yes, we do.”

She had to feel his heart speed up under her ear.

Zane rode up, then swung down from his black stallion, Zane’s favorite horse. The one he’d ridden out to check the cattle. He rushed to them. “Is she all right?”

Hoofbeats came from the direction of Dorada Rio. Josh looked up, realizing how on edge he was, expecting more trouble. It was Sheriff Stockwood along with five men, all of them riding fast. He glanced toward the train and saw it was too far away to be caught now, even with fresh horses.

Looking more closely at Tilda, he could see fresh scrapes and bruises on her face, her hair tumbled from its pins. He caught a faint whiff of something medicinal and wondered if she might have been drugged just as she’d said. Crouching down, he laid her on the thick grass alongside the road.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“Y-yes. I think so.” Tilda touched her scratched-up face with her fingertips. Moving her arm made her wince in pain. “I’m battered from the fall, but I don’t think it’s serious.”

“What fall?” Zane said as he approached.

“She smashed out a window on the train and jumped out.” Josh dropped to his knees beside her and pressed his lips to her forehead.

“I believe Ben drugged me.” Her forehead furrowed, and she hesitated.

“That was his family’s private train. He said he was sorry, but he was taking me to see my father.

He was done waiting. He’d been planning.

..” She stopped and shook her head. “I’m not sure.

I think a man snuck into your house, Josh.

He was there when I woke up on the ride to Dorada Rio, where Ben drugged me again.

I woke up on the train, which was already moving.

He stuck me in a private bedroom and locked the door.

There was a small table and one chair. I wedged the table under the doorknob.

I grabbed the chair and broke the window he’d had sealed shut. Then I jumped.”

Zane gasped quietly. “Gretel told me you’d been taken by Ben.”

“You saved yourself, Tilda. You’re a strong, brave woman.” Only fear she might have injuries kept Josh from hugging her close. He needed to be very gentle with her.

Yet she held him tight, even though her arm hurt. “But when I saved myself, you were there. Thank you, Josh.”

He nodded and smiled, then held her closer still.

The sheriff rode up then, and Tilda had to share the whole story again, this time coming up with a few more details under the sheriff’s questioning.

“We need to get you to town.” Josh rose with Tilda in his arms. “I’ll carry you on my horse, but the poor critter is about spent. We’ll need to take it slow.”

Zane said, “That might be for the best anyway. We don’t want to shake her up a bunch.”

“Did you send a wire?”

“Yes, I left Shad in town with orders. Mrs. Lewis was shouting and waving us after the train, hollering about sending a wire ahead, all without giving us time to stop. She said she’d already started turning the town upside down looking for the sheriff, and she’d send him after us as soon as he could be found. ”

“Someone saw a herd of deer west of town. I went out with several men hunting. Sorry I was slow in getting here.”

Zane clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, you came fast once they found you, and we appreciate it.”

Josh looked down and saw Tilda had closed her eyes. He hoped she was just weary from all the morning’s mad ness. “We need to get her to the doctor. She said she’d been drugged. It might still be affecting her, not to mention the fall from the train. It’s a miracle she’s even alive.”

Josh mounted up, and they started for town. “They’ll stop Ben Cabril in Sacramento. We’ll teach him you don’t put your hands on a woman like he did. Not out west.”

But despite taking the time to tend Tilda in town, and a bit more time to go over everything with the sheriff again, no word came from Sacramento that Ben’s fancy private train had been stopped. Sheriff Stockwood said he’d wire again and get to the bottom of what happened.

Josh and Zane had been asked to stay out of the examination room while she was with the doctor, which gave the brothers a few minutes to talk.

“I think Tilda and I should get married,” Josh said.

“You would have left her alone in the house whether you were married or not. So don’t go beating yourself up feeling guilty. But I agree, you ought to marry her now and not wait. She adds a lot to the family.”

Josh was sure she’d add a lot to his life, too.

He waited until they were allowed into the doctor’s office, then Josh convinced Zane to give him a few moments alone with the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

* * * *

“Let’s go get this wedding over with.” Josh hovered over her as she sat up on the examination table. He took her arm and helped her to her feet.

Tilda wasn’t a woman with a lot of fanciful dreams. What’s more, she’d never expected to marry. Her mission in life, a calling from God, was to help the orphans. Back when she was an orphan, she’d never been helped—which was why she wanted to be there for these orphans, now, as a grown woman.

She’d expected to dedicate her life to that mission. No husband, no children of her own, just a life of service.

With all that being said, it seemed like Josh’s suggestion that they “get the wedding over with” was given by a lunkhead.

On the other hand, she wanted to get this wedding over with, too. She wasn’t sure why, but right now, marrying Josh felt like she was rushing toward base in a game of tag.

She’d be safe if she and Josh could just reach a parson.

Because that didn’t really stack up to any form of common sense, she didn’t examine it too closely.

Honestly, a man who’d kidnap a single woman would kidnap a married woman, wouldn’t he?

Shaking away these fretful thoughts, she went along with her soon-to-be husband with a willingness that she knew was about more than just safety.

She really wanted to marry him, and so, feeling a bit unsteady, with Josh holding on to her, surrounded by Zane and his cowhands and the sheriff—who still wanted to question her further—they made their way to the church.

It wasn’t exactly a normal wedding. No white dress and posies, no organ music and bridesmaids.

Instead, she had ten or so heavily armed men as her only guests, and her dress was torn, her face barely done bleeding, and her hair a mess.

But again, she had no dreams of a proper wedding, so all this was fine with her.

Parson Lewis had heard what was going on from his frantic yet valiant wife.

He performed the service with a solemn expression, Mrs. Lewis standing at Tilda’s side, so Tilda counted her as a bridesmaid.

The second the vows were finished, Mrs. Lewis told everyone she’d sent a telegraph to Sacramento to stop the train. Ben might well be in custody by now.

Moments later, the telegraph operator ran into the church waving a piece of paper. “That private train roared right through the station. The sheriff there was ready to arrest everyone on the train, but it kept going.”

“I thought a train could go only fifteen miles or so without having to reload its water supply.” Josh stormed straight for the telegraph operator, towing Tilda along. He snatched the paper out of the man’s hand and read it.

That’s when Tilda remembered something Ben had told her earlier. “His train has two water tanks,” she said.

Josh frowned. “How do you know that if you were unconscious when you boarded?”

She patted him on the arm. “Ben boasted about it. He said they were set to go far and fast. I’m not sure how far, though.”

The sheriff turned to the telegraph operator. “Let’s send another wire farther on down the line. That train has to stop sometime.”

As the operator stormed out of the church at a near run, the sheriff turned back to Tilda. “I wonder what else I should be asking?”

“I was groggy, Sheriff. If you ask the right questions, something might come to me.” She shrugged apologetically.

The sheriff nodded. “I’ll give you a day or so to rest, Mrs. Hart. While you’re doing that, we’ll round up this sidewinder and the men working for him. I’m even going to arrest that train engineer. They were all in on it.”

He spun away and rushed out.

Tilda leaned hard on Josh, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“Let’s go home.” Josh swept her up in his arms and headed for the door. They were galloping toward the Two Harts within minutes.

This time on Josh’s horse, Tilda felt as safe as a babe in his arms, and she fell asleep there in her new husband’s embrace.