Chapter 45

“WHAT . . . WHERE . . . ?” EZRA WALDRON SAID, WAKING up suddenly. He felt the jerking and hissing of the braking train as the demons that had haunted his catnap fluttered away on leathery wings, back to their hiding places in the recesses of his subliminal mind.

“Must be Raton . . . at last,” he said, opening his eyes.

“My recollection was of a town that was a lot bigger,” Siward observed, looking out the window at a handful of dismal little shacks, which cast long shadows in the late afternoon sun.

“This is probably just the edge of town,” Waldron said, leaning back. “Maybe there’s another train in the station. The engineer is letting it clear before we pull forward. We’ll be moving in just a minute.”

A minute came and went, and then another. Soon, these two were joined by several more.

“We aren’t moving,” Siward observed.

His was not the only such observation. Several other passengers in the car were grumbling and remarking. One man pushed down a window and leaned out.

“Hebron,” he said.

“Hebron?” someone asked incredulously.

For some, the first thought was of the ancient city of Israelite refuge, which was mentioned in the Book of Joshua. Waldron knew it as the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe whistle-stop a dozen miles south of Raton.

“How long are we going to be stuck here?” someone shouted as the conductor came into the car.

“All I can tell you is that the station agent received a telegraph message requesting that the train be stopped and held here,” the conductor explained.

“Why?” another man shouted.

“I don’t know that,” the conductor admitted, clearly chagrined not to have the answer.

“How long?” Waldron asked.

“That I don’t know either.”

“I’ll see about this,” Waldron said, standing to detrain.

Followed by Nathaniel Siward, he stepped onto the platform and strode purposefully to the stationmaster’s office inside the small depot building.

“I’m Ezra Waldron,” he announced. “I’m an executive of this road with important business at the home office. I insist on knowing the reason for this delay. Is there something wrong with the tracks ahead?”

“Not that I’m aware of, sir,” the man said, rising in the presence of a superior.

“Then why are we stopping?”

“I received a wire from Santa Fe, sir. Orders to have this train stopped until further notice.”

“I thought the telegraph wires were down,” Siward said.

“They were. All night and until about an hour ago. They’ve gotten them repaired.”

“Who ordered the train to stop?”

The man put on his spectacles and picked up the telegram.

“Mr. Joseph Ames, sir.”

“Ames?” Waldron said angrily. “What is that damned fool playing at?”

Waldron cursed under his breath and paced the stationmaster’s office, making the other men nervous.

“I herewith countermand that order,” Waldron said at last. “Get this train running.”

“I can’t do that, sir,” the man said.

“Why the hell not?” Waldron demanded.

“The rules state that no order issued by any main office can be countermanded in the field except in cases of imminent loss of life . . . I’m very sorry, sir.”

“Damn you, man,” Waldron shouted. “Get that train running!”

“Can’t do it,” the man said firmly. “I’d lose my job.”

“Then I’ll send a wire to Ames and tell him to order you to do it,” Waldron said, stomping out of the office with Siward at his heels.

They went to the telegraph desk, where Waldron scratched out a message and exhorted the agent that it be sent to Santa Fe without delay. Waldron had no idea that he was the reason for Ames ordering the train to be stopped. He assumed that Ames still wanted him on his way to the home office as expeditiously as possible.

“Wish they had beer for sale here,” Siward observed after having watched Waldron pace the platform for nearly half an hour.

His boss simply glowered.

In the distance, they heard a train whistle and looked down the track behind the stationary train on which they had arrived in Hebron. There was a tiny smudge of smoke on the horizon. With the earlier train having been delayed by lengthy whistle-stops, the later train was finally catching up.

“That’s the through train,” Waldron observed with a sense of relief. “They can’t stop the through train. We’ll just transfer our baggage to the through train and be on our way.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Siward said cautiously. “There’s no siding here in Hebron. Our train is in the way. It would be impossible for another train to pass ours. If we’re stopped . . . they have to stop.”

“Damn it,” Waldron muttered, launching into a tirade of curses as the second train came into view.

“Now you have the through train stopped,” he said to the agent as he appeared in the depot doorway. “Surely you’ll have to move this train forward to a siding to let the through train pass by.”

“Sir, my orders are to let no trains proceed past this point on the line,” he replied as they heard the hiss of the through train’s air brakes.

“I’ve already wired Ames, telling him to rescind this damned fool order,” Waldron said.

“Sir, when I hear from him, I’ll waste no time in releasing both trains,” the man promised.

He then turned to go back to his office, leaving Waldron and Siward on the platform with the smattering of travelers from their train who were also pacing in frustration as they watched the through train pull into the station, its brakes hissing loudly.

* * *

“YOU LEFT SANTA FE WITHOUT SAYING GOOD-BYE.”

Ezra Waldron turned quickly at the unexpected sound of a familiar voice.

It was Nicolette de la Gravière.

“You left so quickly last night,” she continued.

“How did you get here?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

“When I learned that you had left on the morning train without saying good-bye, I knew I must catch up to you. There are so many things that were left unsaid between us. Mr. Ames was so kind to give me a pass . . . and to arrange for me to be driven to Lamy to catch the through train.”

He blinked his eyes in speechless disbelief.

“You left so quickly last night that I did not have a chance to ask you why the man’s gun was pointed at me,” she said, her tone more stern than angry. “Do you know why, Ezra? Did this have something to do with a certain letter that you left on your desk . . . a certain letter from the Denver & Rio Grande?”

“You had no call disturbing my papers,” Waldron said as the small woman in the dark blue traveling dress walked steadily toward him on the platform.

“Had you a call to scheme a robbery against your emloyer for your own personal gain?”

“You can’t understand . . .”

“Your letter was quite clear,” she said.

“What letter?” Waldron retorted with a nervous chuckle. “You said you saw a letter, but can you produce such a letter?”

“There was also the matter of a certain brokerage statement,” Nicolette said pointedly. “Do you find the names Ripley, Storey & Bledsoe familiar?”

“Many people have accounts with them.”

“How many people working for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe purchased shares of the Denver & Rio Grande a month before a robbery on the former caused the shares of the latter to nearly triple in value?”

“Where’s the statement that shows this?”

“You left last month’s statement behind,” Nicolette said. “Everyone knows what happened to the value of the shares, and with that statement, everyone knows that you own shares in the other railroad.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“If you don’t believe me,” she said slowly, “you may ask Sheriff Sandoval in Santa Fe. He’s keeping the statement safe for you in his office.”

“You’ve made your point,” Waldron said quietly. She had now approached to a point just an arm’s length away. “Let’s just put this whole misunderstanding behind us. Come away with me. I have plenty of money. We could recapture some of the magic that we had . . . that you know we had.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said, ignoring his invitation. “But I think I know why that gun was pointed at me last night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Waldron insisted.

“He does,” Nicolette said, nodding to Siward. “I can see it in his eyes. As I remember, when that evil, ugly man lay dying, I demanded that he tell me who hired him. He started to say something that started with the letter ‘S.’ I thought he was just hissing, but he was saying ‘Siward,’ wasn’t he? You’re part of this too, aren’t you?”

Siward blinked and looked away.

“What do you want?” Waldron asked, almost pleading. “Come with me. Come away with me. I have money, lots of it. If you came, we could have a . . .”

“I’m not going anywhere with you but back to Santa Fe,” she said. “I want you to tell Sheriff Sandoval why that gun was pointed at me . . . I want you to tell him the truth.”

“Did you bring a gun, Nicolette?” Waldron said, continuing to back away. “Are you going to force me to go back?”

“I have no gun,” she said, matching each of his backward steps with a forward one of her own. “I only came to ask that one question, and to tell you that you can never escape the truth . . . no matter how far you go . . . no matter how much money you have.”

By now they had passed from the platform and away from the station to the threshold of the wilderness that had been cleaved by the steel rails.

He looked down at her beautiful face, bathed in the deep light of the sunset, and thought of their happy moments together. He looked down at her lovely features, exaggerated by the deep shadows of the edge of night, and thought of his haunting dreams.

He turned and walked away.

“I’ll never let you forget me, and I’ll never let you forget the gun that was pointed at my head,” she promised, deliberately walking after him.

“Get away from me,” he shouted. “Just leave me alone, you harpy.”

“I’ve been called worse,” Nicolette said with a taunting chuckle.

In the gathering darkness her voice came to him with the same texture of his nightmares. Maybe it was the exhaustion of having gone so long without sleep, or perhaps it was the weight of thinking of all his gold, languishing in accounts that lay waiting for him, but which were still just outside his reach.

If only Muriday had succeeded in killing this damned wench, she would not be here pointing her accusing finger at me, Waldron thought.

As he stared into the evening that was closing in on this desolate whistle-stop, an idea swam out of the darkening shadows of his mind.

After Siward had said that the railroad had brought civilization to Las Vegas, Waldron had the thought that in these whistle-stops, the railroad was the only civilization.

If a killing took place here, there would be no Sheriff Sandoval to investigate it. The railroad was the only civilization, and Waldron was, for the time being at least, still the railroad.

They were now well away from the station, and the people back there had more pressing concerns to preoccupy them. Nobody was watching. It was getting dark, and nobody was looking their way.

What if Siward tried again to kill the girl?

What if he succeeded despite Ezra Waldron’s attempts to save her?

What if Waldron succeeded in killing Siward in the tussle for the gun, this being Waldron’s own desperate struggle for his own life?

Two loose ends, two last loose ends, would be loose no more.

“Just shoot her, damn it,” Waldron demanded of Siward in a low voice. “Finish her off.”

The hotter the fire burns, the more likely it is to consume the finer qualities of rational thought, and to tip the greedy toward the cauldron of madness.

“No, sir,” Nathaniel Siward said. “I can’t. We’ve done enough. We just have to stop. I can’t . . . We can’t . . .”

Ezra Waldron lunged angrily, grabbing the gun from Siward and wheeling around to point it directly at the beautiful face of Nicolette de la Gravière, the exquisite Nicolette de la Gravière, the enchantress, with her deep, dark eyes and her lips the crimson of chilies.

Bladen Cole’s finger squeezed the trigger of his Winchester.