If death hid everywhere, and he knew it did, he had nothing to lose by dodging the railroad dicks and hiding until he came up with a plan to get away.
“I can only die once,” he said, but that prospect did nothing to reassure him. Ike dashed into the tangle of tracks, jumping over them and going deeper into the yard, where thrown switches turned entire trains away and set them on tracks leading to who knows where.
He dropped to his knees and tried to hide behind a switch as a man in a striped hat and the overalls of an engineer hurried along to jump into a locomotive cab. Ike heard the engineer barking orders to the stoker. An orange glow danced from the cab as the furnace door opened and coal began being shoveled into the fire to build a head of steam.
He had found his way out of town. This train was pulling out immediately. Ike left his worthless sanctuary behind the switch and hunted for a freight car door that hadn’t been sealed shut. Defeat met his every attempt. Finally, he came to a flatcar loaded with steel rails. Somewhere along the route this cargo was being sent to extend the rail system. Ike pulled himself onto the flatcar and pressed against the lengths of cold metal track.
A soft sigh escaped his lips. He was headed away from all his woes.
“I see you,” came a loud voice. “Get down. Now. You climb down right away. No one believes you’re a section of track.”
Ike jumped a foot when a hand clutched at his arm.
Caught!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Flat along the pile of steel rails, Isaac Scott found himself unable to grab for the six-shooter pinned under his body. He rolled onto his back, expecting to feel a dozen bullets slam through him.
“Don’t shoot,” he croaked out.
“Please, I need your help.”
Ike blinked and sat up. His hand rested on his pistol butt. Craning about, he saw Lily standing forlornly beside the flatcar, wringing her hands.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you get away from the railroad bulls?”
“They caught Mama. Please. You helped us before. We—I—need you.” The redhead looked up, her bright green eyes welling with tears. She reached out imploringly, then drew her hands back and crossed them over her breast. “You’re the first man who’s ever helped us without wanting anything from us.”
Ike’s heart went out to her, but something about the way she gestured made it seem as if she had practiced the moves, rehearsed the words, had expert direction to wring the most emotion possible from him. He remembered she and her mother were actresses.
“Climb up here and—” Ike lost his balance when the train surged. The engineer finally got up enough steam to pull out of the yard. He held out his hand to her. “Jump on. The train’s leaving.”
“Mama! She’s been caught again, and they’ll hurt her. That terrible man named Kinchloe trapped her trying to move our belongings.” Lily ran alongside the accelerating train. Ike tried to pull her aboard, but she yanked free and stepped away.
He stared at her as the train gathered speed. Without thinking, he rolled off the flatcar. With a thud, he landed hard. Only Lily tugging on him kept him from rolling the wrong way and being chopped to mincemeat under the grinding steel wheels. She helped him to his feet. When his eyes focused, he found himself impaled on her bright green stare. Lily clutched his arm and pulled him closer. Their bodies pressed together. Ike wasn’t sure if the pounding heart he felt was his or hers.
“You’ve got to help. You’re the only one in this terrible town that’s shown us the smallest bit of charity.”
“I saw the Grand Palace,” Ike said, still shaken from his fall. “And I think I saw Zachary. He was onstage and collected money and—”
“Please!” Lily shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Mama needs our help.”
Ike regained his senses and looked around, hunting for any sign that the railroad bulls had spotted them. Other than a few men obviously from train crews, no one stirred in the shadow-cloaked yard.
“Let’s go,” he said, not sure where. Lily steered him toward a large warehouse on the far side of the tangle of tracks and switches. He let her pull him along until even the dull ache behind his eyes faded away.
He might not be thinking as fast as needed, but he wasn’t in a daze any longer.
They slipped past a large, partially opened door. Tracks branched away from the main line. Three boxcars were pushed to the rear of the huge warehouse, sliding doors open and crates piled all around waiting to be loaded.
“How’d she get nabbed again?” he asked.
“Oh, pish and twaddle,” Lily said. “Excuse my language. She makes me so mad sometimes. We should have run like frightened rabbits, the way you did, but she hid and tried to rescue our scenery and luggage. That cyclorama is so important to her. It’s becoming too much of a nuisance, and we should leave it behind.”
“The thick roll of canvas? It has a background on it?”
“When it is properly installed, a spring mechanism unwinds from one side, pulls the scenery across the rear of the stage and rewinds on the other side. We perform according to the scenery. There’s a woodlands where I do a ballet dance. Madragora, it’s called. I dance like an insect sampling nectar from a flower. Mama choreographed it herself. Then—”
“Never mind,” Ike said. He steered her to a safer spot out of sight. The warehouse was strangely deserted. Freight trains left the rail yards at all hours, and he doubted Schofield was a man to allow slackers to work for him.
“You’re right. We must save Mama.” She smiled almost shyly as she looked up at him. “I’d like to show you the dance sometime. It’s quite . . . stimulating.”
“I’m sure it is,” he said, pulling her deeper into shadows as the tramping sounds of boots crunching against cinders outside alerted him to a half-dozen men entering the warehouse.
“What are we going to do?”
Ike shushed her and pulled her around stacks of boxes. The work crew passed by without noticing them, intent on their job of loading the crates into the three freight cars across the warehouse. Stepping lightly, he pulled Lily along behind. She tried to jerk free, but he refused to let her go.
“Are you sure she’s in here somewhere?” Ike held the woman close, feeling the heat of her body and the soft gusting of her breath against his cheek.
“I’m positive,” Lily said. “I saw her disappear through the far door. That one over yonder! Kinchloe and his sidekick followed her. There was no way they missed seeing her.”
“Smitty,” Ike said, distracted. The workers suddenly stopped loading the crates into the nearest boxcar when a freight handler cried out.
Ike forced Lily to sit on a box and silently admonished her to stay put. He made his way between the stacks to peer out at the boxcars. The man—it had to be their foreman—chewed out a worker who had dropped a large box.
“You’re drunk!” the foreman roared. “I oughta fire you right now. You coulda kilt the lot of us. Get that loaded into the car right now, and be more careful.”
“I ain’t drunk. I had one or two ’fore I showed up, but I ain’t drunk.”
Ike wondered at the rest of the men’s reactions. They all shied away from the foreman and the clumsy freight handler as if the two men had the pox. Huddled together, they whispered. A short man, visibly trembling, edged away farther, then ran. Ike had seen angry foremen before, but this one didn’t lash out with his fists. The fear caused by the man chewing out his probably drunk worker was out of proportion.