CHAPTER THIRTEEN
You’re a hero.” Lily Sinclair snuggled closer, her grip on Ike’s arm leaving red finger marks. She rested her cheek on his shoulder, then pulled back. “Sorry. I don’t want to get cosmetics on your coat.”
Ike laughed. He was so dirty after the gunfight with Lester Buchanan and traipsing through the desert that it might take two baths to get all the grime off. Then he glanced down and saw another problem, one that Lily knew all too well being an actress. She’d rubbed the makeup from her face and slowly turned from an old lady into a young one. Her bare cheek glowed with vitality unexpected in any septuagenarian.
He saw that her wig was askew from her saving him from too much notice back at the Eagle Pass depot. With a tentative touch, he pushed it back into place to hide a strand of her red hair poking out from under.
“We have to be careful. Schofield will kill me if he gets the chance.” Ike hesitated to add that Lily was also in danger. Even if Schofield hadn’t recognized her, she had come to Ike’s defense.
“It’s not him who worries me,” Lily said. “His right-hand man, Kinchloe, saw me up close when he chained us in the warehouse. He never got a really good look at me on the platform because I tried to keep my face turned away, but he knows. I know he knows.”
Ike touched his lips and remembered the kiss Lily had given him.
“Good tactics the way you distracted . . . him,” he said.
“I know how to play to the audience, and I also know when to focus attention on other actors. I am well-known as a generous actress when it comes to sharing the marquee billing.” She looked smug and self-satisfied as she spoke. “That was a difficult performance because we were center stage and neither of us should have been in the spotlight.”
“Getting back on the train was a mistake,” he said after a long consideration. But events flowed along like a river over flood level. Fighting the flow was possible only if a course had been laid out in advance. Ike was only too aware that he was a leaf swept on the river, going wherever the current took him. That had to change.
“What else could we have done? It was apparent from what the Eagle Pass marshal said that you weren’t at the end of your trip. And for the audience to buy me as your mama, getting back on board was all we could do.”
Ike chuckled, remembering how Lily had outmaneuvered Schofield into revoking his invitation to travel in his Pullman car. An old woman chattering about her toddler son’s every picayune incident as if it were a major milestone in the history of the world convinced any railroad executive used to being the center of attention that he’d made a mistake with his offer. She drew too much attention for both of them to simply disappear.
The situation became perilous, in spite of this minor victory. It’d have to change. He was tiring of looking over his shoulder, waiting to be caught—or worse. Ike stared at Lily and realized she was in more danger because of everything she’d gone through.
“Where’s your mother?”
She looked up, bright green eyes flashing. Her lips thinned, and she shook her head as if denying something he hadn’t even said.
“Mama is still in San Antonio. She refused to leave the cyclorama and our costumes and . . . our lives.”
“Did you intend to leave her behind?” Ike saw the answer in the way she crossed her arms and silently folded into herself. Lily had wanted to leave and had done so. Her mother was too tightly bound emotionally and professionally to their possessions. For the first time, Ike wished Lily were more like her mother. If she had stayed in San Antonio, she’d be safe. Aboard the train, death lurked with every click of the wheels and whine of the steam whistle.
He turned at the sound of someone tromping forward from the back of the car. Ike touched the butt of his six-shooter when he recognized Smitty. Schofield’s henchman looked down at them and sneered, but he never slowed. He disappeared through the door leading forward to the first passenger car.
“They check on the engineer,” Lily said. “It’s as if threatening him can make the engine pull faster.”
Ike wondered if that was the real reason.
“Did you get a look at the other cars? Behind Schofield’s Pullman? I think I saw a few freight cars, but I haven’t had much chance to be sure.”
“There are three freight cars, then the caboose. That’s not so unusual. One might be a mail car, or Schofield can be shipping important cargo north.”
“This isn’t his track,” Ike said. “And I overheard him saying . . .” He dropped his face down again as Smitty swung along the aisle, returning to the distant Pullman car. Ike waited until the railroad bull was gone, then looked over his shoulder to be sure. He had the feeling that locking eyes with the gunman would spark an immediate showdown.
“What did you hear, Deputy?”
“Ike,” he said. “Only call me Ike.”
“Very well,” Lily said, grinning. “I love playing out a secret plot in real life rather than doing it on stage. This way I don’t know how it’s going to end. With a script, unless I improvise, of course, there’s always a conclusion penned by some loco writer.” She pursed her lips as she thought. “It hardly seems like much of a script now that Schofield and the others, all the passengers on the train, really, know your true identity.”
Ike let her ramble on. If anything, it bothered him that he didn’t know how this was going to end. Dealing with men like Schofield too often ended in disaster. Ike had known Augustus Yarrow for only a short while. Dead. And he had never even met Gregorio. Dead. Adding himself to that list wasn’t something to relish.
A quick look at Lily made him all the more eager to settle matters right away. She blundered into trouble, considering it all a lark. Life wasn’t a stage play, but she played out her role thinking there’d always be a happy ending.
“Stay here,” he said, standing and spinning around her. He looked down into her bright eyes. For a change, they looked up at him without guile. She reached up and pressed her hand against his chest.
“Be careful, Ike.” Her lips hardly moved.
He stepped into the aisle, trying to decide which way to go. Since Smitty and the others were at the back of the train, he went forward. He pushed through the doors into the lead passenger car. Most of the men here slept, heads propped against the wall and snoring. One man in particular made more noise than the clacking of train wheels along the rails. Ike opened the front door, only to run into the conductor. The man pushed him back into the car.
“No call for you to go up and bother the engineer. Not unless you want to take a turn shoveling coal into the boiler.”
“My leg cramped up. All I wanted was to get some exercise.”
The conductor looked at him and cocked his head to one side. “You looking for another robber to run to ground?”
“Nothing of the sort,” Ike said. He had no quarrel with the conductor, but he wanted the man to look the other way while he poked around.
“There’s no one left aboard who looks suspicious.” The conductor eyed him significantly, obviously putting Ike into that very category. “I never got a good look at the robber you shot down,” the conductor said. “But I don’t remember anybody getting off the train there. Every trip up to Marfa, I count heads. One less is all there was after we pulled out of Eagle Pass.”