The anger and defiance on Metzger’s face was replaced by a flicker of fear. He stood there blinking, trying unsuccessfully to regain a little of his self-respect. Finally, he ran his hand through his beard, combing out some of the bits of tobacco, and turned toward Hawke.
“You,” he said. “You’re the cause of this. One day me ’n’ you’s goin’ to run across each other again.”
“I look forward to the day,” Hawke said easily.
“Go, now,” the bartender said, coming around the bar and poking Metzger with the end of the double-barrel.
Metzger moved toward the door with the bartender behind him. Everyone but Hawke went to the door as well, and they watched as Metzger climbed onto his horse.
“Gittup!” Metzger shouted to his horse, and a moment later the clatter of galloping hoof beats filled the street. The patrons of the Brown Dirt Cowboy cheered.
Chapter 4
ON THE UNION PACIFIC TRACKS, THE EASTBOUND train on which Pamela Dorchester was a passenger made a midnight stop for water. Asleep in the top berth of the Pullman car, Pamela was only vaguely aware that the stop had been made. She was too comfortable and too tired from all the packing and preparation for her visit to Chicago to pay too much attention to it.
Rolling over in bed, she pulled the covers up and listened to the bumping sounds from outside as the fireman lowered the spout from the trackside water tower and began squirting water down into the tank.
“I tell you what, Frank, we didn’t stop a moment too soon,” the fireman called back to the engineer. “This here tank is dry as a bone.”
Pamela could hear the fireman’s words. She thought of him standing out there in the elements in the middle of the night. In contrast, it made her own condition, snuggled down in the covers of her berth, seem even more comfortable. She felt herself drifting back to sleep.
Just outside the train, Poke Wheeler and Gilley Morris slipped through the shadows alongside the railroad track. The train was alive with sound; from the loud puffs of the driver relief valves venting steam, to the splash of water filling the tank, to the snapping and popping of overheated bearings and gear boxes.
The two men had been in position for nearly an hour, waiting by the tower where they knew the train would have to stop for water. Behind them, tied to a willow tree, were two horses. One of the horses was hitched to a travois.
“Which car is she on?” Poke asked.
“Well, according to what we was told, she’ll be in the first Pullman behind the baggage car,” Gilley answered. “First berth on the left.”
Glancing up toward the tender, they saw the fireman standing there, directing the gushing water from the spout into the tank. Satisfied that his attention was diverted, the two men stepped up onto the vestibule platform. They remained there a moment to make certain they had not been discovered, and when they were sure they were safe, they pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The car was dimly lit by two low-burning gimbal-mounted lanterns, one on the front wall and the other on the rear. The aisle stretched out between two rows of closed curtains, and heavy breathing and snores assured the two men that everyone was asleep. Toward the back of the car the porter sat on a low, wooden stool. He was leaning against the wall, asleep himself.
Gilley took out a small bottle and poured liquid from the bottle onto a handkerchief. That done, he nodded to Poke, who jerked open the curtains of the berth.
Pamela, suddenly awakened when the curtains parted, turned in her bed. Before she could react, however, a handheld handkerchief clamped down over her face. She tried to scream, tried to fight against the cloying smell, but it was a losing proposition. Within seconds she was unconscious.
Still unobserved by anyone else in the car, Poke and Gilley lifted Pamela from her berth and carried her off the train. No one noticed them putting her unconscious form on the travois.
“Let’s go,” Gilley said.
The two men mounted and rode off, even as the train, its tank now full of water, got underway again.
Troy Jackson was the porter for the first Pullman car. A former slave, he been a railroad porter now for five years, and he enjoyed the job.
“Best job they is for a man of color,” he would tell anyone who asked. As a porter, he had traveled all over America, from New York to San Francisco, and from Chicago to New Orleans.
He took pride in his work too, which is why he was beginning to get nervous about the lady in berth number one. It was nine o’clock in the morning and her booth was the only one still not made up. He didn’t want to arrive in Cheyenne without all the berths being properly made.
He had stood just outside the closed curtains of her berth a few moments earlier calling out to her, but she didn’t answer. He couldn’t very well stick his head in. Suppose she was just getting dressed? Finally, he stepped up to the seat of a lady passenger who was only one seat behind the still-made berth.
Bowing slightly, Troy touched the brim of his cap. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but I needs to check on the lady in this berth and it would be unseemly for me to stick my head in. I wonder could you do it for me?”
“Yes, of course,” the woman replied with a smile.
Troy stood back to offer as much privacy as he could while the female passenger checked on the berth for him. She stuck her head in, pulled it back out almost immediately and looked over at Troy.
“There’s no one in the berth,” she said.
“Ma’am?” Troy responded, surprised by the announcement.
“Here, have a look for yourself,” the woman invited. “There’s no one in the berth.”
Troy looked in the berth and saw only the empty sheets. Pulling back from the berth, he lay his hand alongside his cheek.
“Oh, Lord have mercy,” he said. “Where did she go?”
As soon as Troy reported to the conductor that one of his passengers was missing, the conductor turned out all the porters for a thorough search of the train. Every car was searched, to no avail.
“Are you sure you did not see Miss Dorchester leave the train at one of the stops?” the conductor asked.
“Yes, sir, I’m sure. I stood in the door at ever’ stop, just like I’m s’pose to.”
“What about during the water stops? Maybe she got off to stretch her legs and didn’t get back on the train before it left.”
“Maybe that could be. I don’t stand in the door at the water stops,” Troy said. “Ain’ nobody ever told me to do that.”
“I’m not blaming you, Troy,” the conductor said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to her.”
The conductor sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. “We’re goin’ to have to send out telegrams to every station back along the way telling the trains to be on the lookout. Lord have mercy on her if she’s wandering around out there.”
“Extra! Extra! Woman disappears from train!” the newsboy shouted, hawking his papers in the café of the Cheyenne depot.
“Big mystery!” the boy shouted. “Her sleeping berth found empty! Extra, extra!”
“Boy, I’ll have one of those!” a woman called.
The boy reached down into his bag to pull out one of his papers.
“Yes, ma’am, that’ll be—” he started to say, but paused in mid-sentence, staring at the woman.
She was only four feet tall. He had never seen a full-grown woman this small, and he stared at her with his mouth open.
“You’re going to catch flies if you leave your mouth open like that,” the woman said. It was obvious that she was used to such stares.
“Yes, ma’am,” the paperboy replied.
“Well, are you going to bring me the paper?”