He dumped the contents out—a couple of dirty shirts and even dirtier socks—then, using his knife, he began to carve out the components of a pair of moccasins.
Meanwhile, Pamela put on the clothes he’d given her. “You can look now,” she said.
Hawke turned around and smiled. The bottom of the pants legs were rolled up several turns. “You look better in my clothes than I do,” he said. “Even if they are too big. Hold up your foot.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Hold up your foot, I need an idea of how big it is.”
Pamela held up her foot, and Hawke measured it by making a fist then extending his thumb and little finger. Satisfied, he went back to work.
“Oh, my,” Pamela said, pointing to the clothes Hawke had dumped. “I must say, you keep cleaner clothes in your satchel than they did.”
“I like to keep a clean change of clothes all the time,” he replied. Looking up, he smiled at her. “After all, you never can tell when you might run into a pretty young woman.”
“And tell me, Mr. Hawke, do you put your clothes on every woman that you meet?”
“No,” Hawke replied. “On the other hand, I don’t run into that many women who are wearing only their sleeping gown.”
“Touché,” Pamela said.
“Give me your foot,” Hawke said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Give me your foot. I want to see if this will work.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
Pamela extended her foot, and Hawke slipped the moccasin on and tied it in place with a strip of rawhide cut from the saddlebag.
“How does that feel?”
“Quite comfortable, actually.”
“I’ll have the other one done in a couple of minutes.”
Resuming work, he said, “You say these two men actually took you off the train?”
“Yes, in the middle of the night, when we were stopped to take on water.”
“That sounds like a well-thought-out operation. I wouldn’t have given those two credit for that much intelligence.”
“Oh, they didn’t come up with it by themselves.”
Hawke looked up. “They didn’t?”
“According to Poke, it was all ‘thunk up’ for them.”
“Do you have any idea who that would be? Who would be behind such a thing?” Hawke asked.
“No. Oh!” she said suddenly. “If there is someone else, they may be coming here.”
“That’s true.”
“Then we must get out of here. Mr. Hawke, would you please take me back to Northumbria? I’m sure my father would be quite generous with his reward.”
“Northumbria? Is that a town near here?”
“Northumbria is my father’s estate…uh, ranch. It’s near Green River.”
“I’m not familiar with this area. How far is Green River?”
“It’s about forty miles, I would think.”
“I’ll get you home, Miss Dorchester, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a few days.”
“Why is that?”
Hawke took his hat off and ran his hand through his trail-length ash-blond hair. “Unfortunately, the horses are dead.”
Pamela looked at him incredulously. “The horses are dead? All of them?”
“They shot my horse and I shot both of theirs.”
“That seems unnecessarily cruel of you,” she said. “Those poor beasts certainly had nothing to do with any of this.”
“It was an accident,” Hawke explained. “I didn’t intend to shoot them. Here. Put this on.”
“Oh, so then it becomes less a matter of cruelty and more a matter of extreme clumsiness,” she said as she put the second moccasin on, tying it down just as Hawke had. She laughed. “Heavens, I don’t know which is the more discomfiting thought.”
“Yes, well, whatever the reason, the horses are dead, so the only way we have of reaching Green River is by shank’s mare.”
“Shank’s mare?”
“Walking.”
“You Americans and your quaint expressions.” Pamela sighed. “Very well. If we are going to go ‘shank’s mare,’ as you call it, then it might be better to walk to the railroad.”
“How far are we from the railroad?”
“I don’t know exactly how far, but I’m sure it’s much closer than Green River. As I said, Poke and Gilley took me off the train when we stopped for water.”
“You should’ve screamed or something. They would never have gone through with it if anyone on the train had been alerted.”
“I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything. It was all I could do to breathe. They put something over my mouth and nose, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up here.”
“My guess is they used chloroform,” Hawke said.
“Yes, well, the problem is, I was unconscious when they took me, so I don’t know if we are north of the railroad or south. And if we start out in the wrong direction, we could wander around for who knows how long.”
“We’re south of the railroad,” Hawke said.
“How do you know we’re south? I thought you said you were new here.”
“I came up from the south and I haven’t crossed it,” he explained. “You think your feet will hold out for nine or ten miles? The moccasins will keep the rocks and stickers out, but they won’t give your feet much support.”
“They’ll be fine,” Pamela insisted.
“All right, we’ll head for the railroad. We’ll start as soon as the rain stops.”
Chapter 6
HEADING TOWARD THE BRILLIANT SCARLET AND gold sunset beneath the darkening vaulted sky, the Western Flyer made its way west across the Wyoming landscape. Inside the Baldwin 440 locomotive the engineer worked the throttle while his fireman threw chunks of wood into the roaring flames of the firebox. The train was exactly on schedule, passing a milepost every 180 seconds.
Behind the engine and tender was a string of coach cars, inside of which the passengers were getting down to the business of eating their supper. Although America liked to call itself a classless society, nowhere were classes more evident than on a transcontinental passenger train.
The third-class passengers were the immigrants seeking better opportunities out West than they had found in the East. The immigrant cars were filled with exotic smells such as smoked sausages, strong cheeses, and fermented cabbage.
The second-class passengers were those in the day coach. Often, these were not transcontinental passengers, but merely people traveling from one city or town to another along the route. Most of them were eating their dinner from the boxed meals they had bought for twenty-five cents at the previous stop.
The more affluent, first-class passengers occupied the parlor cars, and they took their meals in the dining car at linen-covered tables set with gleaming china and sparkling silverware. They made their meal selections from expansive menus that could compete with the finest restaurants in the country.
One of the diners stopped the conductor as he passed by the table. “I say, how long until we reach Green River?”
The conductor was wearing a watchfob, chain, and watch across his vest. With an elaborate show, he pulled the watch out and opened it.
“We shall be there in exactly two hours and forty-seven minutes,” he said. “Barring any unforeseen stops.”
To his relief, Hawke discovered that as he walked, his leg felt better, and after a while he lost the limp altogether. When he and Pamela Dorchester reached the railroad, Hawke dropped his saddle with a sigh of relief, then climbed up the little rise to stand on the tracks.
Before him the empty railroad tracks stretched like black ribbons across the bleak landscape, from horizon to horizon. The tracks gave as little comfort as the barren sand, rocks, and low-lying scrub brush of the great empty plains, but Hawke was certain that a train would be coming through before sundown.