Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
SPEECH BEFORE THE HAMILTON CLUB, APRIL 10, 1899

The train was almost as good as driving. Maybe even better, because watching out the big windows didn’t make Clover’s stomach do flip-flops like being in the van sometimes did.

She and Jude were in the only passenger car on the train—the one they used to transport prisoners to Reno and the country’s only execution center. Since they were headed east, it was empty. Melissa was in the engine car with her father, shoveling coal into the fire, and that was just fine with Clover.

“You know, West might be right,” Jude said, quietly. For a second, Clover tried to pretend she hadn’t heard him. The train swayed under her and the wide-open desert sped past, already so different from what she was used to.

“We need the book,” she said.

“You know that Waverly wasn’t in his right mind, don’t you? He was crazy, Clover. He’d lost something—”

“Yes, I know.”

“So then you need to be prepared. This might be another wild-goose chase. I don’t mind getting you away from Bennett—putting the whole country between him and you is fine with me—but I’m not going to let you put yourself in real danger for something that might not even be there.”

She turned away from the window and sat back in her seat, facing him in his. He fiddled with the green watch on his wrist, the one that had belonged to his brother. Bennett had taken Oscar from him, years before. “I’ve been in real danger ever since Kingston sent me away from the Academy and I don’t need you to protect me.”

He exhaled, then moved to the seat next to her, his longer legs stretching out alongside hers. Mango stirred where he lay on a seat across the aisle.

She liked when he was close to her, enough that she was willing to breathe through the initial scream from her brain that he was too close. He waited, arm on the rest between them, palm up, until she slipped her hand into his.

“The book is important to the rebellion,” she said.

“So are we. We’ll see where this goes, but if it gets too dangerous, we’re out. Please, Clover.”

She thought he was asking, not telling, so she nodded. He reached down on the aisle side of his seat and pulled the lever that reclined his seat and lifted a footrest. “Good,” he said. “Let’s try to get some sleep while we can.”

She turned back to the window without taking her hand out of Jude’s. The trees around Reno were gone, replaced by low, shrubby sagebrush. The mountains were farther away. She thought about the Veronica, and how she floated under the water of Lake Tahoe, the way the train floated through the dry, cool desert air.

She finally reached down between her seat and the train wall and pulled the lever. Her seat eased back, the footrest coming up at the same time. Jude let go of her hand and lifted his arm around her so that she could curl against him, her back to Nevada as the train sped toward Utah.

—

“It isn’t much.” Melissa handed them each an apple and half of a sandwich wrapped in paper when the train stopped outside of Salt Lake City.

It reminded Clover of the lunches they served in the primary school cafeteria. She opened the sandwich and pulled up the top piece of dense, brown bread. Peanut butter. She could live with that. “Thank you.”

“Dad thinks we should keep you guys a secret, even from the people who would be on our side,” Melissa said, instead of leaving like Clover expected her to. “Just in case, you know?”

Melissa sat next to Jude with her own sandwich. She had only half a sandwich as well, and it was obvious that she and her father had split their already meager rations with their stowaways. Clover felt a pang of guilt. She and Jude were just riding. Melissa and her father were doing the heavy labor of keeping a steam engine chugging through the mountains toward Denver.

Melissa must have seen Clover’s concern. She took a bite of her sandwich and waved her other hand before speaking. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine. We’ll get some extra food in Cheyenne. We have family there and they always give us some of their garden things to take home with us, since we can’t grow our own.”

Clover had moved across from Jude when she woke up from her nap so that they could both have a window seat to watch their mountains turn into Utah’s much larger range. Reno was green and brown and the central Nevada desert was dusty beige and sage. This area outside Salt Lake City felt outsized to Clover: bright red mountains, massive trees, sagebrush, boulders combined with perfectly smooth salt flats.

She kind of wished she’d stayed next to Jude, though. Melissa was sitting with her leg against his, eating and talking, reaching her free hand out every once in a while to touch his shoulder or his arm. He was listening intently, but Clover kept tuning her out. Melissa was covered in soot and was wearing what looked like a pair of her father’s overalls cut down and cinched in to fit her, and she was still one of the prettiest girls Clover had ever seen.

Jude turned to lean against the window, so his leg was pressed even closer to Melissa’s and he could face her completely. He laughed in all the right places—the places that didn’t hit Clover until a beat too late. Melissa’s red hair was pulled back into two buns that were messy, but still managed to look right. Clover ran a hand through her own black hair and felt the staggered, rough layers where she’d cut it without thinking about how it looked.

“Clover, wait until you see Wyoming. Sometimes we see buffalo and antelope.” Melissa leaned forward, the remains of her sandwich still in her coal-stained hand. She turned back to Jude. “Did you even know that there still were buffalo? Isn’t that wild?”

“Of course he knew,” Clover said, the words snapping off like twigs. “He’s not stupid.”

“Oh,” Melissa said. “Oh, yeah, I know that.”

Jude shot Clover a look. “I hope we see some.”

Clover wanted, badly, not to care. But she wanted to see them, too. Whatever Utah and Wyoming and Colorado, and the states farther east, had to show them, she wanted to see. She felt like she’d somehow found a way to jump into the books she’d read all her life. Anything that wasn’t Reno or the area around Lake Tahoe was new and exciting and made her blood sing through her veins.

Melissa finished her sandwich and stood up. She was nearly six feet tall, and even in her weird overalls, it was clear she had an athlete’s strength, from years of working on the train with her father, and a body like the models in the old magazines Clover sometimes pored over in the library.

“We’re taking off again in ten minutes.” She smiled at Jude and then Clover. If she was put off by Clover snapping at her, it didn’t show. “I’m so excited you guys are riding with us.”

When she was gone, Jude sat up straighter in his seat. “Why are you so rude to her?”

“I’m not,” Clover said, but then stopped, because it wasn’t true. She was rude. And it didn’t make any sense. Melissa had never been anything but nice, more than nice, to her. “I don’t know.”

“She wants to be our friend. We aren’t really in a position to turn away friendship, you know. Not from the people who are sneaking us thousands of miles from home.”

I don’t want her to be your friend. Clover put her fingers over her mouth to make sure that didn’t slip out. It wasn’t even true. What was wrong with her? “I’m sorry,” she finally said.

Jude looked at his watch. “I wonder if the time has changed yet.”

“We’re in Mountain Time. I’m going to take Mango out.”

Clover stood up and walked away from him, toward the open door to the train car. Mango followed, and Jude stayed. That was fine with her. Between his warnings about this whole thing being a wild-goose chase and the way Melissa flirted with him, she needed a minute to herself.

The air smelled different here, she decided as Mango walked off, exploring some rabbit trail he’d picked up. It was drier and somehow dustier, like she could feel the desert sliding into her lungs. It wasn’t a bad feeling.

It was strange to be so far away from Reno. Stranger even than being at the ranch had felt at first. There, she was close enough that she could have been back in the city within an hour. Now she was hundreds of miles away from the only places she’d ever been before, and it left her feeling oddly disjointed. Like the tethers that held her to her world had been cut.

She looked up at the shadow of the almost-full moon just visible in the afternoon sky and thought she was so far from home, she might as well be sitting there, looking down on the earth.

“Clover?”

She startled when Frank said her name just behind her. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay. Is it time to go?” She turned to look for Mango. “Mango!”

“Almost. Beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

She looked out again, at the mountains that were somehow more than the mountains that she was so used to. Their angles were more extreme, their colors more vivid. “Yes.”

“I’m going to introduce you to my son Xavier when we get near Denver. He’ll be able to put you and Jude up for a day or two, and then you’ll take the train to St. Louis. It gets harder after that. My contacts are more removed that far east. I’ll be headed back west three days after we get to Denver, if you change your mind.”

They wouldn’t. They couldn’t, but Clover didn’t say that. “Thank you, Frank. For everything.”

“Doctor Waverly saved my son’s life. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do what I could.”