“Yeah,” Zimmer said. “Yeah, I want to go. But hurry back, will you? If there really was a train wreck, those folks out there are goin’ to be needin’ us to come out as quick as we can.”
Marshal Kyle was lying in bed with his hands laced behind his head. Sally was lying on her side, with her head elevated and supported by her left hand. The way she was lying, with her arm crooked at the elbow, caused the bedsheet to slide down and expose both her breasts.
A small smile played across Kyle’s lips.
“What?” Sally asked. “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re laughing at something. I can see it in your face.”
Kyle turned to look at her. “I was just thinking of what a difference one day can make,” he said. “Last night, I had to be satisfied with some Indian girl I saw on the trail. Now, here I am with a beautiful white woman in her own bed.”
It took just a second for Kyle’s words to sink in. Then, when she realized what he said, she gasped.
“What?”
Kyle started laughing.
“What Indian girl?”
Kyle laughed harder. “I’m joking.”
“That’s nothing to joke about!” Sally insisted, and getting up, she jerked the cover off the bed so that both were exposed.
They looked at each other for a moment, then Kyle reached for her. “On the other hand,” he said, “this is no joke.”
“Indian girl my foot,” Sally said as she sat down on the edge of the bed, then leaned over to kiss him.
Suddenly, there was a loud knock on the door.
“Marshal? Marshal Kyle, are you in there?”
Boomer’s loud words were augmented by more knocking on the door.
“Just a minute, Boomer, just a minute!” Kyle said with a frustrated sigh. He reached for his clothes. “Give me a minute.”
“Yes, sir,” Boomer said. “I don’t mean to disturb you and Miss Sally none, but this is important.”
“It damn well better be,” Kyle said.
A few moments later, when both were fully dressed, Kyle walked over to sit on a settee. He nodded toward Sally as a signal that she could open the door now.
“Good evening, Boomer,” Sally said as sweetly and innocently as she could muster.
“Evenin’, ma’am,” Boomer replied. “Is the marshal here?”
“I’m here in the parlor, Boomer,” Kyle called back. “What is it? What is so all-fired important?”
“It’s about the train, Marshal. Doc’s train.”
“What about Doc’s train? Did he miss it?”
“No, sir,” Boomer replied. “Well, that is, I don’t know.”
“No, he didn’t miss it, or you don’t know? Which is it?” Kyle asked, confused by the answer.
“I mean the train ain’t got in yet,” Boomer said.
“The train hasn’t arrived?” Kyle glanced at the wall clock. The clock read five minutes until nine. “It was supposed to have arrived at seven thirty, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. And Mr. Cooley, he got a telegram that said the train left Purgatory Station on time. The thing is, Marshal, it don’t take but a little over an hour to get here—but the train is already an hour and a half late.”
“Does Cooley know where it is? What happened to it?”
“No, sir, I don’t reckon he does know,” Boomer said. “There don’t nobody know.”
“Saddle our horses,” Kyle said. “We’ll ride down the track toward Purgatory and see what we can find.”
“We could do that,” Boomer said. “Or we could…” He let the sentence hang.
“We could what?”
“We could take a train. Cooley’s puttin’ on the switch engine, and he plans to run it back down the track toward Purgatory. If the train left Purgatory when it was supposed to, and when the folks back in Purgatory said it did, then we’ll find it quicker by goin’ on a train than if we was to go back ridin’ horses.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Kyle said. “Also, if there was a wreck, we’d need the train to bring the people back to Sentinel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, come along then. No sense in wasting time here.”
“No, sir, I figured you’d be wantin’ to get on this right away,” Boomer said. “Miss Sally, I’m sorry to be bustin’ in like this, breakin’ up your welcome home to Marshal Kyle ’n’ all.”
Sally nodded. “Don’t you worry about it, Boomer, you did the right thing,” she said. “If there was a train wreck, Ben needs to get out there as fast as he can.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s sort of what I was thinkin’, too,” Boomer said.
Chapter Nine
By the time Kyle and Boomer made it back to the railroad station, they saw that a car had been attached to the little switch engine. The car was crammed full with rescuers, in the event their worst fears were realized and there was an actual train wreck. For that reason, Kyle believed there were probably as many sightseers as there were actual rescue workers on the train.
“Cooley! You need to add some more cars!” Kyle said. “At least three, and maybe more.”
“What for? Ever’body that’s goin’ is already aboard,” Cooley replied.
“What about the people we find at the train wreck?” Kyle asked. “Don’t you plan on bringing them back?”
“Oh, yes,” Cooley said. “Damn, I completely forgot that.”
It took another five minutes for the engine to back up the switch track to find a couple more cars. Not until then was it ready to go.
As Kyle and Boomer started to board, Kyle walked up toward the engine.
“Where you goin’?” Boomer called.
“I’m going to ride up here,” Kyle said.
“All right, I will, too.”
“No,” Kyle replied. “There won’t be room for both of us. And I really think you should be back with the others to sort of keep them calm.”
“Yes, sir, I reckon you’re right about that.”
The fireman, seeing Kyle starting to climb up in the engine, reached down to give him a hand.
“You ever been in the cab of an engine before?” he asked.
“No,” Kyle said. “Just tell me where the best place is to stay out your way, and I’ll go there.”
“If you want to look ahead, you can stand there on the left side of the cab,” the fireman said. “I’ll be busy keeping the steam up, and the engineer looks out the other side.”
Taking in the engine cab, Kyle saw a bar running horizontally across the cab from the left to the right.
Seeing him look at it, the engineer spoke up.
“Maybe I’d better explain some of this to you,” he said. “If you know what is what, it’ll help you to stay out of the way.”
“Good idea,” Kyle replied.
The engineer pointed to the bar that had caught Kyle’s immediate attention.
“That’s the throttle,” he said. “You make it go by pulling it back. And this sturdy-looking ratcheted lever with a hand release—this vertical bar on the right is the Johnson bar. It controls which way the steam goes into the cylinders. Helps you to decide whether you want to go frontwards or backwards. And right next to it here, this chunky-looking brass handle sticking out to the left is the air brakes.”
“Thanks for the lesson,” Kyle said. “It will help me keep out of your way, I’m sure.”
“All right, boys, here we go,” the engineer said; then, after three long whistles, the engineer positioned the Johnson bar and opened the throttle. The train pulled out of the station. At first it was moving rather slowly, but the speed kept building and building until soon the engine was going so fast that the ground below was whizzing by in a blur.
Looking ahead, Kyle saw the track unfold out of the black void, come into the light of the gas headlamp, then slip behind them as the train hurtled through the darkness.
“How fast are we going?” Kyle shouted above the noise of the engine.