About one hour after full darkness, Matt climbed out of the arroyo and walked quietly, cautiously, up to the marshal’s stable. Opening the bottom half of the door, he moved into the stable, which was partially lit by a silver bar of moonlight that splashed in through the door.
“Spirit?” he called out.
Again, he heard Spirit respond and, heading toward the sound, reached the stall where Spirit was being kept. Stepping inside, he reached out to pat Spirit on the neck. Spirit lowered his head and nuzzled him.
“Did you think I had abandoned you, boy?” Matt asked.
Spirit pawed at the ground.
“I need to find the saddle,” Matt said. Taking a match from his pocket, he lit it by popping it on his fingernail. A little bubble of golden light illuminated the stall sufficiently well for him to see the saddle, which was draped across a sawhorse in the back of the same stall that housed Spirit. Extinguishing the match, Matt got the saddle, and then put it on Spirit, all the time talking quietly and reassuringly to him.
Once Spirit was saddled, Matt led him out of the stable, back across the arroyo. Not until he was on the other side of the arroyo did he climb into the saddle. He rode out into the desert country just to the north of the town of Purgatory. Once again, he was well mounted and free. It was a good feeling, and he knew that the only thing he had to do to put all this behind him was ride back to Colorado.
The instinct to return to Colorado was strong, but he couldn’t get the scene of the little girl, impaled by the bloody stake from the smashed railroad car, out of his mind. As he had passed her broken body to her mother, he had made the decision to go after the men who had caused the wreck. And he wasn’t going to go back on that decision now.
He would take care of that first. Then he planned to come back to Purgatory and clear his name. He wasn’t sure how he would be able to do that, but he did not plan on spending the rest of his life with wanted posters dogging him everywhere he went.
Matt reached down and patted Spirit on the neck. “It’s good to have you back, boy,” he said. “I was getting lonely without my old friend to talk to.”
Spirit whickered, and bobbed his head a couple of times. Matt laughed out loud. “Yes, I know, I know, you’ve heard all my stories. You’re just going to have to hear them again,” he said.
It was mid-morning of the next day when Matt happened onto a remote building. At first he thought it might be a line shack for some ranch, no more substantial did it appear. But as he came closer, he saw that it was a combination store, saloon, and hotel. The sign out front read:
LONESOME CHARLEY’S
Food–Beer–Beds.
Some might wonder how a business so remotely located could possibly survive, but Matt knew that it survived precisely because it was so remote. Any traveler who happened by and needed supplies would have to shop here, as there was no competition.
The building either had never been painted, or was in such need of new paint that no semblance of the old paint remained. The wood was baked gray by the Arizona sun, and the roof over the porch was sagging on one end. There was a wasps’ nest in the joint between the roof and the front of the building. A dog lay sleeping on the porch, so confident in his position that he didn’t even wake up as Matt stepped by him, then pushed open the door to go inside.
The inside of the building was lit by washed-out sunlight that stabbed in through windows that were so covered with dirt that they were nearly opaque. In addition, bars of sunlight stabbed through the wide cracks between the boards illuminating thousands of glowing dust motes. The inside of the building smelled of bacon, flour, and various spices. An old woman was sitting on a chair, smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. Matt could see the headline on one of the stories.
TRAIN WRECK ON SOUTHERN PACIFIC! MANY DEAD! MANY INJURED!
The woman looked up as Matt entered. “My man will be with you in a moment,” the said. “He’s back in the outhouse.”
“I’m in no hurry,” Matt replied.
Almost before Matt got the words out of his mouth, a white-haired man, wearing an apron, came in through the back door. He was still poking his shirttail down into his pants.
“Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” he asked.
“I’ll take some jerky and coffee,” Matt said.
“Yes, sir, we’ve got some fine jerky. What about bacon? Freshly smoked, it’s mighty tasty with biscuits and a little redeye gravy.”
“I’m sure it is,” Matt said. “But jerky and coffee are all I need right now.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll get it together for you. We just got the paper in today. We’ve been readin’ all about the big train wreck on the Southern Pacific. Have you heard anything about it?”
“Not too much,” Matt answered.
“They’re sayin’ a fella by the name of Matt Jensen caused the wreck. Got away with a hunnert thousand dollars, too.”
“Don’t be silly, George, it wan’t no hunnert thousand dollars,” the woman said. “It was only fifty thousand.”
“How much ever it was, I hope they catch him,” George said. He wrapped Matt’s purchase up in a piece of oilcloth and slid it across the counter to him. “That’ll be five dollars,” he said.
“Five dollars?” Matt replied, stunned by the amount. The purchase should have been little more than fifty cents. “That’s pretty high, isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to buy here,” George said.
Matt chuckled, then shook his head. He gave George a five-dollar bill. “You know what? You are what they call a sharp business man.”
“I appreciate the compliment,” George said.
Taking his purchase, Matt told both George and his wife good-bye, then went outside, swung back into the saddle, and rode away.
“That was a handsome young man,” George’s wife said after Matt left.
“I suppose so,” George said. “I sure wouldn’t want that fella mad at me, though.”
“Why not?”
“There was somethin’ about him, a hint of sulfur or somethin’, that tells me he is one dangerous man. And the way he was a’wearin’ that gun—he knows how to use it, I’m sure.”
“Oh, pooh,” George’s wife said. “A nice, pretty man like that has probably never even shot a gun.”
George was silent for a moment before he responded.
“Yeah,” he said. “You might be right.”
United States Marshal Ben Kyle sat at the desk in his office in Sentinel, drumming his fingers as he looked at the passenger list from the train wreck. By now, all the dead had been identified, as had all the injured. Some of the uninjured passengers had already continued their westbound journey, but he had managed to talk to each of them before they left. None of them recalled seeing a man brought on board in chains, and none recalled seeing anyone in chains leave the scene of the wreck.
Sentinel had been the final destination for four of the passengers, and he had spoken to them as well, but none of them could recall seeing a man in chains. Or at least, if anyone saw him, they wouldn’t admit to it. Why was that? he wondered. Were they frightened? Had Jensen gotten to them, threatened them in any way?
As Kyle continued to study the passenger list, he picked up his pencil and then drew a line under two names.
Louise Dobbs
Jerry Dobbs
Marshal Kyle knew Louise and Jeremiah Dobbs. They owned a small ranch just outside of town. Mrs. Dobbs and her two children, Jerry and Suzie, had gone to Purgatory to visit her sister, and were returning when the train was wrecked. Purgatory was where Matt Jensen had boarded and Mrs. Dobbs had to have seen him.