CHAPTER 37

WHEN Brady Kenton came to, it was daylight. But not a normal kind of daylight—it was a misty, green, organic light, soft and filtered, and with it a smell equally organic. The scent of fresh earth, something like that of a freshly dug cellar.

He groaned and tried to take a deep breath, but couldn’t. His nose was shoved into the soil on which he lay. He was surrounded by greenery; a leaf tickled the back of his neck, making it itch.

Kenton moved his head a little, and the deep breath came. He groaned again, then pushed himself up, through the leaves that surrounded him.

He blinked in the broad morning daylight. For a time he couldn’t figure out where he was or how he had gotten here. His memory was a muddle.

It hit him suddenly, and he looked around, wondering where Kevington was. No sign of him. Kenton stood, wary, and looked again. He was at the base of a steep trackside grade, down from the rails a good twenty feet, and he’d rolled into a natural recess in the slope, a crevice about the size of a large coffin, and covered over with brush. The brush had given way and let him fall into the crevice, then had covered him like a lid, hiding him.

Kevington had been with him when they’d fallen from the train. He remembered it now. They’d rolled and tumbled and suddenly had gone out the door, pounding down the grade and breaking away from one another. Obviously Kevington had rolled off somewhere else, and Kenton had dropped into the natural hiding place.

He wondered how long he’d lain there, knocked senseless. It must have been hours.

Kenton looked around, thinking maybe Kevington had been killed in the fall. If so, he couldn’t be far away. But he saw no body.

On the other hand, Kevington might have lived. In the darkness he might have sought Kenton and been unable to find him. Even in the daylight he would have been unlikely to find Kenton in the hidden niche that had caught him. So maybe Kevington had wandered off eventually, assuming Kenton must have lived and headed back down the track …

To find Rachel. Kenton tensed at the realization. Rachel had fallen from the train farther back; to reach her he would have to walk back in the direction of Denver. What if Kevington was already doing that? He might find Rachel … maybe he already had.

Kenton had no weapon. Kevington had a pistol, unless he’d lost it in his tumble. Kenton looked around, hoping to spot it, but didn’t.

No more time to waste. Whatever the odds, he had to go back down the track and find Rachel. He prayed that Kevington hadn’t gotten to her already. If he had, it was already too late.

He examined himself to make sure there were no unnoticed injuries, and saw that his left arm was cut and quite bloody. But the blood was crusted now, and the arm didn’t hurt much. He’d cut it somehow in the tumbling fight in the dark with Kevington.

It would take more than that to stop him. He climbed up to the tracks and set out walking as fast as he could back down toward Denver, keeping his eyes peeled for Kevington and Rachel, as well, hoping he would find the former dead, and the latter alive and well.

*   *   *

The station was nothing more than a watering stop, with a log station house and a tiny cafe that sold sandwiches, tea, and coffee. Normally trains stopped there for only minutes, but that had changed last night. A wire had come from Denver saying that the train now at the station should be stopped and searched.

The train, though, had been late in arriving, and when at last it did, the stationmaster learned that the delay had happened because the train had already been searched even before it got to his station.

At the moment, he was scratching on a pad of paper with a pencil, taking down a report of what had happened. He’d learned long ago that when something went askew, the railroad loved words on paper. Document, record, and document some more. And make sure that any blame that came down, came down somewhere else.

“All right, slow down a minute,” he said to the brakeman, scribbling as fast as he could. “You heard shots and had the train stopped and searched. And you found…”

“We found nobody. A boxcar with an open door and some blood on the floor, and a few bulletholes in it. Whoever it was fell out, or jumped, with the train still moving.”

“No bodies found?”

“Not yet. There’ll be a search now that it’s daylight, I’m sure.”

The scribbler nodded, chewing on his tongue in concentration, and finished his writing. He lowered the pad and looked at the other man.

“I don’t know what happened here, but you and me have both done our duty. You searched the train once and I’ve searched it again, and there’s nothing more to be found here. I’m going to send this report back down to the central office, and as far as I’m concerned, you fellows can roll that train on and get it out of here.”

“I wonder who it was?” the brakeman said, looking again at the bloodstain on the floor.

“Some tramps, most likely. They’ll probably be found dead somewhere back down the track. When folks fall off a train moving as fast as this one must have been, folks tend to die.”

*   *   *

Rachel Frye hadn’t died. She’d fallen screaming from the train and hit the ground hard, rolling like a log, abraded quite badly. Her dress was torn and filthy, hardly more than a rag now, and her arms were scratched and bruised.

But she was alive. And without any injury except a rib that was very badly bruised and maybe cracked, for it hurt her to walk and to breathe. She kept on walking and breathing anyway, heading up the track. She’d debated whether she should go back down toward Denver, or on up, and had decided on the latter. Denver was far away; the next train station was probably closer. And there she might find out the outcome of the fight between Kenton and Paul Kevington. She prayed that Kenton had prevailed.

She’d been walking since just after dawn, but had no idea how far she’d come. It felt like miles, but given her condition and the fact she was climbing in thin mountain air, she couldn’t really guess how much distance she’d covered. The thing was to keep on going.

But suddenly she stopped. Up ahead, coming down toward her, was a man, on foot. He was at the moment too far away to make out clearly, but she saw that he was looking right at her, and knew it was too late to avoid being seen.

The man paused, then came on again, faster. He broke into a trot.

Her heart nearly failed her. It was Paul Kevington.

Rachel stood where she was, a rabbit hypnotized by the stare of a snake about to strike it, a deer frozen in the headlight of an oncoming train. She snapped herself out of it, and looked for a way of escape.

Off to her left, and down the slope, she saw something unexpected: a jumble of old train wreckage, including a locomotive. It was rusted and splintered and ugly, overtaken with vegetation. She supposed the railroad must have chosen to leave the wreck where it was because its location would make it nearly impossible to pull out again.

Right now it seemed her only hope. If she could hide there, maybe find something to use as a weapon …

She ran down toward the wreckage as Paul Kevington continued down the track toward her. He shouted her name, and it scared her to death even to hear his voice.