The Shelter of Your Arms

            “God damn it to hell!” Artie said coldly, an uncharacteristic outburst of profanity. 

            “Mmph?” Jim’s head was ringing, his mouth was full of grit and dust, and his elbow hurt like hell. He wasn’t quite certain yet where he was. 

            “You all right?” Artie’s voice had nothing in it now but anxious concern.

            “I guess so.” He still felt muzzy, though he did at least now recall their approximate location and the reason for being there—they were tracking a suspect into an old mine shaft, thanks to a tip from an informer who was going to get an earful when and if they got out of here. “Wha’ happened?”

            “The roof caved in. And the walls. And the floor too, feels like. We’re buried, in other words.”

            Jim heaved himself up from whatever he was lying on–something hard, even if it wasn’t the floor any more–and felt in his pocket for the little tin of Lucifers he carried. No luck. He remembered using the last one that morning, and putting the tin on the table in the parlor so he could refill it. Where it still sat, events having moved somewhat faster than either of them had expected.

            “You have a light?” he asked. “I used all of mine.”

            “No.” Artie’s voice had gone hard again.

            It was not completely dark after all, Jim realized. He peered up, and could see a faint rectangle of daylight a long way over their heads. “That’s all right. Look up there. We can climb out.”

            Artie didn’t answer, and his silence was so atypical that Jim peered in his direction, trying to see him well enough to determine what was wrong.

            “Are you hurt?” he asked.

            “No. Just… cold.”

            The air was not that cold, but he could, in fact, feel Artie shivering next to him.

            “Well … “ he said uncertainly, “it shouldn’t take that long to get out. We’re lucky it caved in from the top and left an opening.”

            “Right.” Artie didn’t sound as though he thought they’d been very lucky.

            “You want to go first?”

            There was a long silence. Then, “You’re lighter and more agile than I am. Probably better

if you go first.”

            There was something forced in Artie’s voice, and hearing it, Jim said instinctively, “No, you go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.” He felt around above them. “There’s a section of framing right here over our heads. Seems to be pretty solid. I’ll give you a leg up and you can pull yourself up on it.”

            “Let’s go, then.” Artie shifted sideways as far as the cramped space would allow to let Jim squat next to him, and then, with his boot in Jim’s cupped hands, clawed upward to the heavy beam lying across the space above them.

            It was more a chimney than an open space, but they eventually clambered out into fresh air. They’d had to change places just below the top, as Artie couldn’t reach the rim of the hole from the last foothold he’d been able to find, and Jim couldn’t hoist him up any farther from the meager edge of rock where he’d wedged one boot. Jim had inched up to stand next to Artie, forced into chest-to-chest proximity by the confined space. Artie was still shivering.

            “You sure you’re all right?” Jim asked anxiously.

            “I’m fine. Let’s just get out of here.”

            He was clearly not fine, but this wasn’t the place to argue with him. “I think if you can bend your knee a little, I could stand on your leg and jump up from there,” Jim suggested, and indeed that proved to be enough for him to hook an arm over the edge of the opening, grab a tree root and pull himself out. He instantly reached back down to Artie and hauled him out of the cave-in by force of muscle and pure determination.

            Glancing back down into the hole, Artie shuddered, and Jim pulled him away from it. “Come on, let’s find the horses. We can’t be far from where we went in.”

            In fact, it was less than two hundred yards down the slope to where their mounts were tied up, just as they’d left them. They checked the entrance to the mine shaft, but if anyone had followed them inside and caused a cave-in, there was no evidence of it, and in fact, neither of them remembered hearing an explosion or feeling a blast wave. It might be suspicious that they’d been told to check the old mine. Their informant might have known it was unstable and unsafe. But there was no indication of anything more than bad luck, pure and simple.

            “I think we’ve had enough for one day.” Jim glanced sideways at Artie and nudged Dusty into a walk. “Either Hollis is still in the area and we can look for him again tomorrow, or he’s fled and we’ll have to figure out where he’s headed. No hurry at the moment, in either case.”

            Artie gave him back an unreadable gaze. “That’s not like you. You’re always in a hurry.”

            “I banged my elbow.” It hurt no more than many other injuries he’d had, and considerably less than some, but it made a handy excuse. “Maybe you’d have a look at it when we get back to the train. I don’t think anything’s broken, but… “ He trailed off, leaving to Artie’s imagination what might be wrong with it.

            “Sure. Look at it right now, if you want.” Was that relief in Artie’s voice?

            Jim shook his head. “It can wait until we’re home.”

            They rode the rest of the way in near silence, punctuated only by Artie asking if yesterday’s leftover stew was agreeable for dinner. Artie was brooding, Jim thought, and he couldn’t figure out why. Nothing that had happened that day was out of the ordinary for them, not even nearly being buried alive. They’d come out of it in one piece, as they always did. What was Artie so bothered about?

            “Tell me what was wrong,” he said to Artie, who stood at the drinks table with his back to the room. “Tell me, Artie.”

            He didn’t often use that tone of voice with Artie, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to get anything but excuses out of Artie otherwise.

            It didn’t get him much more than that even now. “Tell you what?” Artie asked predictably.

            “You know what. Why you were so rattled when the mine caved in.”

            “Rattled?” Artie could manage a fine shade of indignation at any time. “Rattled? Please, James. I don’t ‘rattle’ that easily. I was cold, as I told you.”

            “You weren’t just—“ Jim broke off, not sure what to say. “You were upset. I want to know why.”

            “My best everyday jacket has a tear halfway down the back. I heard it rip. I was most definitely upset.”

            Jim leaned over to the chair where Artie had discarded the jacket. It was certainly ripped, but he’d seen Artie in tatters with less distress over his wardrobe than this.

            “No,” he said softly. “You might have been annoyed about the jacket, but you wouldn’t have been shivering. It wasn’t cold in there.”

            “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Artie said suddenly. “I’ve got a touch of fever, that’s all. I didn’t say anything this morning because I thought it would go away. And it did, but it left me shivering instead. I’m fine now.”

            Jim came over to where he was standing and felt his forehead. It was indeed warm, but then Artie had downed a substantial tumbler of whiskey neat. Whiskey, not brandy. A medicinal drink, not a social one. Jim took the glass out of his hand and set it back on the tray. “You’re holding out on me.”

            Artie turned away, but Jim took his arm. “Don’t do this, Artie. I’m responsible for the mission. You have to let me know if something is wrong, or you’re half sick.”

            Artie’s face settled into a stubborn expression that Jim knew all too well. “No more excuses,” Jim said. “Tell me what was wrong down there, or—“

            Artie jerked away from him. “Or what? You’ll ask to work with someone else?”

            Jim gaped at him. “Of course not! Why the hell would you say that?”

            Now he knew for sure something was wrong. Artie was never defensive. But it was clear that Jim wasn’t going to get it out of him at the moment.

            “Never mind,” he said. “We can talk about it another time.” He put his hand on Artie’s shoulder to keep Artie from pushing past him. “One thing, though. I will not ever ask for another partner. You understand me?”

            Artie stopped and his face softened. “Yes, I should think six months of Jeremy Pike was enough for any man. I’d have had second thoughts about accepting that assignment in Washington if I’d known you were going to be saddled with Pike.”

            “Jeremy Pike or anyone else,” Jim said, looking him straight in the face. “I don’t want another partner. Not anyone, Artie.”

            Artie gave him a long gaze. “I suppose I owe you some explanation,” he said finally, in a low voice.

            He turned back to the whiskey, and Jim let him go. “I’m not afraid of closed up spaces,” he said. “You know that.”

            Jim snorted. “I guess not, considering that you’ve ended up in a coffin more than once.”

            “No, I can get out of something like that, unless it’s put together a lot better than either of those was.”

            “Is it just being underground, then? We’ve been in cave-ins before and you never seemed to be bothered.”

            Artie sighed. “I wasn’t that bothered today either. I told you the truth—I was a bit under the weather this morning. Perhaps it left me more vulnerable to feeling trapped.” He turned around, an empty glass in his hand as though he’d forgotten it. “Let me tell you something. No matter how I feel, I’m not ever going to have the vapors and leave you to manage on your own.”

            Jim heard the conviction in his voice and acknowledged it, regardless of whatever misgivings he might still be feeling. “All right.” He thought of something else, though, and added, “You know, if something like that did happen again, and we couldn’t get out of it—well, at least we’d be together.”

            Artie gave him an incredulous stare. “That isn’t much comfort. I hardly want you to be buried alive with me.”

            “No, I suppose not,” Jim said, a little confused at what he was feeling. “But if it happened—I mean… “ He broke off uncertainly, and then just said what was in his mind. “I’d want to be with you.”

            “Immolation isn’t the fashion in America,” Artie said, his voice rough with some emotion he was holding back. Jim couldn’t tell what his expression meant.

            “What?”

            “You know. In India, they throw the widow on the funeral pyre. “

            “Not the same thing,” Jim said steadily. “Don’t argue with me, Artie. If it happens, I want to be with you.” He grinned suddenly, trying to break whatever tension this was between them. “I’d get us out, you know.”

            Artie pulled in a long breath, and visibly relaxed. “Yes, you would. You always do. I’ll try to remember that.”

            And then he did move away, purposefully and with obvious intent to end the discussion. “I have to check on an experiment I left running.”

            “Sure.” Jim watched him go, wrestling with a flood of chaotic thoughts. He thought of Artie as being as infinitely tough and hardy. But Artie was not invulnerable, any more than he was himself, if he was honest about it. Hearing that Artie was even mildly bothered by what had happened today made him see his partner in a new and different light. It troubled him, because they needed to depend on each other, wholly and implicitly, without second thoughts. He couldn’t function in this job if he was worried that Artie might not be able to hold up his end of it.

            And he felt unexpectedly… protective. He wondered suddenly whether this was what Artie felt when Jim risked his life for a case. Artie had long since given up haranguing him for some of the crazy chances he took, but there was always some distance between them afterward, as though there were things Artie wanted to say, and could not.

            He sighed. It was too complicated to figure out right now, when he needed a drink and a bath, definitely in that order. And by the time he emerged from the bath, wrapped in a dressing gown and nursing his still throbbing elbow, Artie had dinner on the table and the atmosphere was back to normal.

            “Don’t bother to dress,” Artie said. “Everything’s ready. Just sit down and eat before it gets cold.”

            Jim nodded and addressed himself to his plate, but his sore arm must have been obvious. He knew he was holding it stiffly “I meant to look at your elbow,” Artie said. “Want me to do it now?”

            Jim shook his head. “Eat first. Nothing’s broken, just bruised. Maybe you could put some arnica on it.”

            He attacked his plate, to make his wishes clear, and Artie silently followed suit. But afterward, Artie wouldn’t let him help with the clearing away. “I can handle the dishes,” Artie said firmly. “Sit there and let me get my bag, I might need to splint the arm.”

            He fussed over the bruise until Jim told him to just put something on it and leave it alone. “It’s all right. Just sore. By tomorrow it’ll be fine.”

            Artie opened the bottle of arnica and applied it with a cloth pad, his face closed off. “I’ll make some willow tea if you like,” he said, as he corked the bottle and put it back in his bag.

            “No, whiskey will do just fine.” Jim stood as Artie moved away, and caught at Artie’s sleeve. “I’m not sure why we’re… “ He stopped and took a breath. “At odds with each other. I don’t like it.”

            Artie shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have let you see that I was uncomfortable today. Now you’re wondering if I’ll be able to hold up my end of the job.”

            “No, I trust you. You’ve never let me down.” He found as he said the words that he truly believed them.

            Artie nodded slowly. “I won’t ever let you down. I swear it.”

            Jim clapped him on the shoulder. “You don’t have to swear anything to me, Artie.” He let his hand slide down Artie’s arm, and they clasped hands for a moment. Jim went out to do the evening stable chores, and when he returned Artie was ensconced on the sofa with a book and a glass of brandy. They passed an entirely ordinary evening discussing the case, tossing ideas back and forth for the next day, suggesting ways in which they might smoke Hollis out of cover. Eventually Jim found himself yawning, and Artie stood and took their glasses back to the galley, saying over his shoulder, “Long day, and tomorrow’s not likely to be much better. What say we call it a night?”

            Jim nodded and stretched, wondering if he should say what was on his mind, or just let it go. He still couldn’t decide if Artie had been lying to him about feeling unwell that morning, but he was equally uncertain whether Artie would tell him the truth if he made an issue of it. Best not to bring the whole thing up again, he decided.

            He went to his cabin, but once undressed and in his bunk, he found he couldn’t sleep. What had Artie been feeling that morning? He hadn’t been shivering. He’d been trembling. Jim sat up abruptly and kicked the covers away. How could he have missed that? He’d missed it because he’d never seen Artie afraid before. Artie dove into every situation they encountered with no hint of reluctance or cowardice.

            Jim shook his head sharply. Cowardice was the wrong word. There was absolutely nothing of the coward in Artie. And there was no character defect in being uncomfortable in tight places. If he wanted to dwell on them, he had his own demons. He just didn’t dwell on them. But he would have sworn that Artie–while less headstrong than Jim and less likely to throw himself into clearly hopeless situations–was equally as confident of his own ability to get himself out of tight places, physical ones and metaphoric ones alike. Something was missing here. There was something he wasn’t seeing.

            In spite of his earlier decision to leave the subject alone, he went out of his compartment and down the short hall to Artie’s door. He knocked, but seeing the thin edge of light under the door, he eased it open and went in. They had never been formal with each other, and the knock was only to let Artie know he was there before he just barged in. Artie was propped up in his bunk with a drawing pad on his knees and a stick of charcoal in his hand, and the lamp turned up to illuminate every corner of the room.

            “What is it?” Artie set the pad aside and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Is something wrong?”

            Jim reached for the pad and turned the paper over. Puzzled, he saw that Artie had drawn a child, a dark-haired boy. The face was only sketched in, two dark smudges for eyes and a downturned line for a mouth. In comparison, the rest of the scene was fairly detailed. The child crouched on the top step of a staircase, peering through the keyhole of a door. The wall’s framing was visible, stark bones of vertical supports and horizontal boards, no wallpaper or molding. Was it a cellar stair, perhaps? Below the child, there was a swirl of darkness where the charcoal covered the paper in dense swaths, and Artie had begun to scratch out a shape. What exactly he had meant to depict was not clear, but there was something inimical in it already, something malevolent.

            Jim could hardly breathe, and when Artie silently took the paper away and put it on the nightstand, he let it slide out of his hand without objection.

            “So now you know,” Artie said without inflection.

            “I don’t know… what it is I know.”

            “Why I don’t like being shut up in dark places.”

            “The boy,” Jim began, and to his astonishment, his voice was shaking. He cleared his throat and indicated the drawing. “That’s you.” That was why the face wasn’t clearly drawn in, he realized. Artie didn’t need to be reminded of his own visage. Even so, the child’s expression suggested blind terror.

            “Yes.” Still nothing in Artie’s voice but calm deliberation.

            “Someone shut you up in a cellar.”

            “Yes.” After a moment, Artie said, “But I got out.” He laughed shortly. “My first attempts at lock-picking.”

            “Who did that to you? Not your parents, surely.”

            Artie shook his head. “No. It was a woman who came to stay with me when they were

out. They called her the governess, but that was just to impress the neighbors.” After a moment, he added, “I corrected her pronunciation the first time she was there, and she hated me for it. Said I was disrespectful and arrogant.” He shrugged. “After that, I was. Disrespectful, I mean. I did it on purpose.”

            “So she locked you in the cellar?” Jim asked, disbelieving. The half-delineated shape at the bottom of the stairs suggested a huge malignant rat.

            “Until she discovered that I could get out by myself. Then she shut me up in a cupboard. That was worse, because I couldn’t move around. It was too small.”

            “Didn’t you tell anyone? Your parents?”

            “She said they wouldn’t believe me. She was right.” Artie said it dismissively, but there was a universe of betrayal behind the words.

            “God, Artie!”

            Artie shrugged. “I figured out how to get the cupboard open too. But I wasn’t stupid enough to let her see that I could. I unlocked the door, so I knew I could open it if I wanted to, but I left it closed.”

            “How old were you?” Jim had to clear his throat again, appalled at the idea of a child

being treated that way.

            “Seven. Eight, by the time we moved away. After that, my parents didn’t have the money to entertain, so they didn’t go out any more.”

            He might have been speaking of someone else. Jim sat on the bed, afraid to touch him and equally afraid to leave him.

            “Don’t even think of offering pity,” Artie said, with a ferocity Jim seldom heard in him.

            That dried up anything Jim might have been about to say, because he didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t sound like pity. Sympathy didn’t come close to what he was feeling, and anger was pointless when the offense was so long ago, the offender quite possibly dead by now. Pity for that child was exactly what he was feeling. He knew he wouldn’t have wanted pity either. But he had to say something.

            “Why did you draw it?”

            “To remind myself that I got out of there by my own wits. I didn’t sit there howling with fear and I didn’t wait for someone to open the door.” Regardless of the matter-of-fact tone of voice, the words resounded with a child’s long-ago misery.

            Jim leaned against him for a moment, unable to verbalize his confused feelings.

            “You could have gotten out of the cave today, too,” he said finally. “Might have taken a little longer if you’d been alone, but you could have done it.”

            Artie returned the pressure, with the first smile Jim had seen from him since he entered the room.

            “I know. But thanks for saying it.”

            It was a dismissal, and Jim eased away from him and stood. But even if Artie had dealt with his feelings tonight, Jim had not. He seethed with anger that he didn’t know how to express. He cared for Artie more than anyone else in the world, and he was infuriated that someone had hurt Artie, even if it had happened decades ago. Looking around, he saw the sketchpad on the night table and snatched it up. He ripped out the drawing and crumpled it in his hand, wanting to obliterate the fear and the dark and the evil.

            “I’d like to tell that woman what I think of her,” he ground out, “and your parents too, for not believing you.”

            Artie looked a bit startled. “It was eons ago, James. I’ve long since gotten over it.”

            “Doesn’t matter,” Jim declared, ignoring the falsehood. “We’re a team, Artie. You look out for me and I look out for you. I won’t let anything happen to you, do you believe me?”

            The lamplight threw long shadows on the walls and on Artie’s face, and Jim couldn’t make out his expression. But after a moment, Artie said softly. “Yes, I believe it. I know it.” After a moment, he said, “And I’ll be at your back, always.”

            Jim nodded emphatically, and then, as quickly as it had come upon him, the emotion drained away. He looked down at the crushed paper in his hands and said ruefully, “I’m sorry. I

wasn’t thinking.”

            Artie took it from him and tossed it into the wastebasket in the corner. “Don’t apologize. I was finished with it anyway. I never keep them long after I draw them.”

            Confused all over again, because he’d never thought this was something Artie might have done before, Jim opened his mouth, shut it, and backed toward the door. “All right. I’ll see you in the morning.”

            Artie nodded, and Jim got himself out of the room and closed the door behind him. He was shaking, and he could not, for the life of him, understand why. It was partly anger for the little boy Artie had been, partly relief for their relatively easy extrication today, and partly something else he didn’t know how to define. He wanted to stay in there with Artie, wanted to put an arm around his shoulders and promise him nothing bad would ever happen. And not only could he not do that with his partner, but he knew he might very well be the one sending Artie into danger tomorrow.

            “Hell!” he said explosively, but under his breath, so Artie wouldn’t hear him. Instead of going back to his compartment, he went silently on bare feet out to the parlor, poured himself a stiff drink by the faint light coming through the windows, and downed it in a single swallow. It wasn’t like him to drink just before bed when they were in the middle of a mission. He wanted to be clear-headed in the morning, and before then too, if it became necessary. But he couldn’t bring any order out of the jumbled chaos of thoughts in his head, and a shot of whiskey sounded like a good sedative just now.

            In fact, he was awakened before dawn by someone pounding on the outer door of the car. He stumbled out of bed, lurched through the car with Artie in his wake, and yelled at whoever it was to pipe down. “Who is it? What do you want?”

            “It’s Logan! Hollis just rode out of town. He been in Miss Landry’s house all night.”

            Logan was their informant, a seedy ex-soldier with a greater appetite for drink than his occasional income provided for. Jim wasn’t certain how reliable he was, but he knew the area and the`people, and until the previous day’s fiasco, everything he’d told them had been useful.

            “All right, hold on a minute.” Jim disarmed the door and opened it while Artie lit a lamp. “Come on in. I don’t suppose you have any idea where he was headed.”

            Logan snorted. “He didn’t slow down long enough to tell me. In fact, if he’d seed me, he’d probably a’ shot me.”

            “What were you doing skulking around at three in the morning?” Artie asked the man.

            “I been down to Miss Hattie’s,” Logan said, a bit defensively. Miss Hattie’s was the brothel at the lower end of town, the one patronized by the drovers and cowboys. Miss Landry’s was situated considerably closer to respectability, but it cost enough that people of Logan’s stature didn’t darken its doors. Hollis, however, had money. Hollis had more money than he had any right to have, since he’d appropriated a substantial amount of the government’s money.

            “Can you at least tell us which way he was going?” Jim demanded in exasperation.

            “Looked like he was headed for North Powder. Like he had a devil on his heels, whippin’ up his horse and wavin’ his spurs.”

            Jim glanced at Artie. They’d been certain Hollis had an accomplice, and he wondered whether the two of them might have had a falling-out.

            “You didn’t see anyone ride after him, did you?” Artie asked.

            Logan shook his head. “I didn’t hang around to watch, but no one rode out while I was gittin’ my horse. I’d a heard ‘em.”

            That seemed reasonable, and Jim waved the fellow to a chair–a hardback chair with no upholstery for him to soil. “We’ll be ready in a minute, no more.”

            “We should check out Miss Landry’s,” Artie murmured, as Jim went back toward his

compartment to dress. “How much you want to bet we’ll find a body there?”

            Jim nodded. “Keep Logan occupied for a minute, will you? I want to send off a message. I’d just as soon he didn’t see the pigeons.”

            “No trouble at all,” Artie said, suddenly grim. “I can think of several things I’d like to ask him.”

            Starting, Jim thought, with why he sent us to that old mine.

            He could hear the murmur of voices as he prepared a message on the little scroll of thin paper and affixed the canister to the leg of Taunton’s carrier pigeon. Taunton, their liaison in North Powder, would know what to do when he got it. Satisfied that he’d set wheels in motion, Jim dressed swiftly and went back to the parlor to relieve Artie.

            Logan looked considerably less energetic than he’d been when he arrived. He was staring at the floor with his hat in his hands. He hadn’t taken the hat off when he came in, Jim remembered. No doubt part of Artie’s harangue had been to explain to him that gentlemen removed their hats indoors. Artie was merely glaring at him now.

            Jim beckoned to Artie, and waited until he was close enough that they could speak softly. “Don’t get him too upset. We may need him again.”

            Artie just grinned. “Don’t worry. I just reminded him that his source of funds would dry up if we were killed. He’s appropriately remorseful.” He caught at Jim’s arm as Jim was about to pass him. “I did find out something that may prove useful, assuming Logan knows what he’s talking about. Miss Landry is not just an expensive whore. Her father and Hollis used to be in business together.”

            “Is that right!” Jim whistled softly. “So she may be the accomplice. Or her father.”

            “No, Logan says her father died last year. I’m afraid she may be the body, if they’ve had some disagreement.”

            “Hell, I hope not. We’ll get more information out of her alive than dead.”

            Artie nodded and went on to his door. Logan proved to have given up all the information he had, or was willing to admit he had, and Jim got no more out of him than a sullen request for “what I’m due.”

            “I appreciate you coming out here in the middle of the night,” Jim told him as he counted out dollar bills. “You didn’t have to do that. We won’t forget it.”

            That brightened Logan up considerably, and by the time Artie appeared, dressed and armed, he was almost cheerful.

            “You gents going’ to Miss Landry’s?” he wanted to know. “I gotta friend works there, if you wanta talk to her.”

            “One of Miss Landry’s girls?” Artie asked doubtfully, with a raised eyebrow at Jim.

            “Naw, she ain’t one of the girls. Works in the kitchen.”

            “What’s her name? Can’t hurt to see what she knows.”

            “Mikey,” said Logan, improbably. “It’s Mee-kay-la, or sumpin’ like that. Cain’t nobody say it right, so she jus’ goes by Mikey.”

            “Mikey. All right.” Jim buckled on his gunbelt and took his hat off its peg. “Let’s head out, then.”

            At the foot of the steps, Jim turned toward the stable car, saying to Artie, “You tackle Miss Landry, right? I’ll take off after Hollis.”

            Artie gave him a mildly surprised look, but nodded and went off into the dark with Logan, and it wasn’t until Jim had Dusty saddled and was leading him out that he realized there had been no need to be explicit about the division of labor. In the past, he would simply have jumped on his horse and taken off, and Artie would naturally have gone to the brothel, because that was the best use of their respective talents. Why had he felt it necessary this time to ensure that Artie stayed safely in town?

            He knew the answer and he didn’t like it, and at the moment, he couldn’t do anything about either his actions or his feelings. He couldn’t even ride hellbent down the trail after their fugitive, not in this light. So he put it out of his head and just concentrated on tracking Hollis. The road was rocky but there were occasional patches of sand where hoof marks could be made out. Hollis almost certainly didn’t know that one of his horse’s shoes had a distinctive nick in it. But Jim had made a point of speaking with the owner of the livery where Hollis kept his mount, and examining the horse itself, and Jim did know. He half expected Hollis to lay off the road somewhere between Baker City and North Powder, but the man kept straight on.

            A man with a guilty conscience, Jim thought. And not just because of the money. Hollis might not even have realized yet that he was suspected of embezzling the money. No, something had happened back there in Baker City, and he prayed that Artie wasn’t getting shot at or beaten up, or even worse, tied up. Would that be worse? Did he have the same reaction to being restrained as he did to being closed up in a tight place?

            “Hell!” Jim said again, but aloud this time. Dusty’s ears came back, but he was used to unexpected noises and didn’t otherwise react. What did happen startled Jim so badly he almost didn’t respond to it in time. Ahead of them a horse neighed, a man yelled, and a gunshot rang out. Jim froze for a second, then flung himself from his horse and pulled his revolver all in one motion.

            “Is that you, Mr. Hollis?” he called into the darkness. “Don’t shoot, okay? I’m a friend.”

            There was a long silence, so long that he began to wonder whether he’d been mistaken in his assumption that the man was Hollis. Then, “Who is it?”

            “It’s Kenny Ragsdale,” Jim called, making things up as he went along. “I work in the stable.” He hoped Hollis was one of those men who didn’t see laborers and servants, people below his own station. And the livery was large and prosperous enough that he might well never have met all the employees anyway.

            “Mr. Hollis?” Jim hollered again. “Mr. Peters, he said yer horse had a shoe loose. He was gonna get the blacksmith today. When I told him you’d saddled up and gone, he said to foller you and let you know so he didn’t come up lame.” Peters was the owner of the livery, someone whose name Hollis certainly knew. As he spoke, Jim skinned off his jacket and weskit and threw them behind a boulder. He ran his fingers through his hair and scuffed some sand up onto his trousers, hoping to look more like a stable hand and less like a Secret Service agent. It was fortunate that he and Hollis had never met, but the man wasn’t stupid or he wouldn’t have been appointed to the position he had. Jim knew he would probably have about two seconds to act once Hollis got a good look at him.

            As things turned out, he didn’t have that long. Hollis had backtracked, and done it very quietly indeed, while Jim was getting out of his jacket. The only warning Jim had was the brief flare of a Lucifer, and then Hollis was upon him. The man fought like a wildcat, and by the time Jim subdued him, they both looked like brawling schoolboys. Jim’s trousers were split down the back, his shirt was ripped half off his chest and his hair was disheveled and hanging over his brow. Blood dripped down his face from a cut near his eye. His only consolation was that Hollis was in even worse shape. Jim had to knock him out before he could get handcuffs on him.

            Hollis was propped against the boulder now, his ankles tied with a line from Jim’s saddlebag, while Jim retrieved Dusty and Hollis’s mount. “I knew you were a fake,” Hollis snarled. “Peters doesn’t have a hand named Ragsdale. You’re a damned robber, a God-damned highwayman!”

            Jim ignored him. If Hollis truly thought he was a criminal, Jim might get more information out of him than otherwise. But he suspected that Hollis knew he was a lawman. The man’s reaction had been too extreme, too desperate. Too extreme for embezzlement even if he knew Jim was a lawman, for that matter. But perhaps not too extreme for murder.

            When Jim came back with the horses, Hollis had already crawled ten feet away. Jim hauled him back by the simple expedient of picking him up by his belt and dragging him bodily back to his horse. “On your feet,” he ordered, reinforcing his words with a knee in the man’s rump. Hollis instantly swung around, fists held together in the cuffs like a club. But Jim was ready for him this time, and knocked him on his face on the ground.

            “One more smart move, and I’ll cuff your hands behind your back and leave you here tied to a rock while I go get the sheriff,” Jim growled at him, thoroughly aggravated. “It’ll be hot as Hades before we get back. Is that what you want?”

            Hollis glared at him, but shook his head.

            “Get the hell up, then, and get on your horse. I’m out of patience with you.”

            By the time they reached Baker City, the sun was up. Artie met him at the sheriff’s office, pushing his way out from a knot of men gathered in the street. “The sheriff’s not here,” he said rapidly. “We’ll have to lock him up in the train. Go right on–this bunch is about to get fractious. Miss Landry is dead, and the girls say Hollis killed her. Take him to the train, and let me settle them down.”

            Jim nodded and grabbed Hollis’s reins. “Artie, take care.”

            “Go on!” Artie hissed at him. “I can handle this. Just get Hollis out of here.”

            Jim went, as fast as it was possible to go while leading another horse. Their engineer, alert as always, came back to the stable car while Jim was locking Hollis into the cell.

            “How fast can you get under way?” Jim asked him over his shoulder as he patted Hollis down for weapons.

            “Ready to go now, if you need to. I don’t have clearance for the main line, but I can stay on the secondary as far as the yard in North Powder.”

            “As soon as Mr. Gordon is on board, then. We’ll signal you. And Barney? We may need

to be quick about it.”

            Barney grinned at him and touched his cap. “Happy to oblige, Mr. West. Just give me an extra yank on the signal cord.”

            “It’ll probably be obvious even without that,” Jim said dryly. “People yelling and shooting, and chasing Mr. Gordon.”

            “Oh.” Barney considered that for a moment. “I can make some noise too, if that might be a useful distraction.”

            “Might,” Jim agreed. “Yes, that just might be a good idea. If I pull on the signal three times, you let go with the whistle and whatever else you have.”

            Barney nodded and disappeared in the direction of the engine, and Jim hurriedly brought the horses in and pulled up the ramp. Hollis’s horse had to be coaxed into the spare box, nervous with the unaccustomed feel of a floor under its hooves and shying at the least noise. Jim cross-tied him so he couldn’t rear or fling himself against the partitions, and put fresh water and hay out for all of them. Hollis sat in a corner of the cell, glaring at Jim, but less trouble than he might have been if not for the potential for being lynched. He must know he was safer where he was at the moment than on the loose in town.

            “Why did you kill Miss Landry?” Jim asked him, once he’d gotten the most urgent tasks out of the way.

            “I didn’t.”

            “My partner said she was dead.”

            “I don’t know who killed her. I’d like to find him and beat his head in. I was in love with her.”

            That had the ring of truth, and Jim gave Hollis a surprised glance.

            “What happened?”

            “Someone throttled her. You could see the marks on her throat. I was asleep in her rooms, and when I woke up, I found her lying on the floor of her parlor. I picked her up—“ He stopped, his voice breaking. “I was crazy, crying, begging her not to be dead. Then her parlor door burst open and two or three of the girls came in. When they saw me with her, they started screaming their heads off that I’d killed her. I ran back into the bedroom, grabbed my clothes and my gun and jumped out the window.”

            It might be true. And then again it might not. Hollis was an intelligent man, and quite possibly knew what kind of story was most likely to sound plausible. “You’ll have your day in court,” Jim said. “I have things to do in the other car. Don’t bother trying to get out of the cell. I’ll bring you something to eat when I have time to fix something for myself.”

            “You could at least get me a drink of water,” Hollis said sullenly. Jim shrugged and went down to the end of the car where a bucket of water and a dipper were mounted. As he ladled out a dipperful of water, the whistle blew a long triple blast. Jim dropped the dipper, thrust his head through the door at the end, and then flung himself on through into the parlor car. Artie was running like the wind down the long station platform, followed by a crowd of angry, yelling men. Jim yanked the signal cord three times, and then leaped down onto the platform..

            “Get on board,” he bawled as Artie came up to him. “I’ll slow them down.”

            Artie kept on going without a word, and Jim flung himself at the nearest pursuer. Down they went into a tangle of arms and legs, tripping up the next man, and then two more. Jim rolled away from the melee and bounded up in an instant. Someone hit him, and he threw a punch back. Someone else grabbed his arm, and he slammed into the man and shook himself loose. By then, the chase had turned into a free-for-all with fists and boots flying in every direction. A flurry of small explosions rang out—some of Artie’s pyrotechnics, no doubt—and he took advantage of the momentary pause and confusion to leap over the nearest body and make a dash for the already moving train. Artie stood on the little gallery at the rear of the car with a hand reaching out for him, and by the time the men on the station platform realized what was happening, Jim was on board and the train was moving rapidly down the track.

            Jim exchanged a grin of exhiliaration with Artie and pushed him inside, breathing hard. “Damn! What did you do to that bunch to get them so riled up?”

            Looking offended, Artie declared, “I had them eating out of my hand. Then this little girl with the reddest hair I’ve ever seen came tearing up shrieking that I was the one who killed Miss Landry, not Hollis. Next thing I knew, they were ready to string me up. I didn’t know I could run that fast!”

            “I didn’t know you could either,” Jim told him. He let out a long breath and plopped into a chair. “Christ, what a mess.”

            “You’ve got Hollis locked up?”

            “Yes. And I don’t think he killed Miss Landry either.”

            “No?” Artie said, surprised.

            “He claims he was in love with her, and I’m inclined to believe him.”

            “Love has never gotten in the way of murder,” Artie said dryly, but Jim shook his head.

            “Unless he’s a better actor than I think he is, he’s telling the truth. Besides, you say that red-headed girl said Hollis didn’t kill Miss Landry.”

            Artie shook his head. “I don’t know what that was all about. She didn’t have any reason to accuse me. Or let Hollis off the hook, either, as far as I can see.” He peered out the window. “Where are we headed?”

            “North Powder. We’re not cleared to go any farther. I just wanted to be out of the immediate vicinity of that mob.”

            “Mm. Good enough.” He turned toward the galley. “God, I need coffee.”

            He stopped, though, and looked back at Jim.

            “Jim.” His voice was hard. “Don’t coddle me.”

            “What?” The question was reflexive. Jim knew perfectly well what he was talking about.

            “You know what. If you can’t trust me to hold up my end of things, then ask to be teamed with someone else.”

            “I do trust you,” Jim protested, but Artie wasn’t having it.

            “You made a point of telling me to go into town while you took off after Hollis.”

            “That was the obvious—“ Jim began.

            “Of course it was!” Artie snapped back at him. “And since when do I have to be ordered to do the obvious? Since when do I have to be told to be careful?”

            Jim looked away. He had no good answer, and they both knew it.

            “I don’t want to work with anyone else,” he said stubbornly. Hadn’t he made that clear the previous day? “I won’t coddle you, Artie.” He hoped the hell he wouldn’t.

            Artie’s face softened. “It’s my fault as much as yours. I shouldn’t have let you see that I was—“ He hesitated and started over. “That I wasn’t feeling well yesterday. Or maybe I should have told you first thing in the morning. I just didn’t expect it to be a problem.”

            “It wasn’t your fault.” Jim was weary suddenly of the whole issue. “Let’s put it behind us and get on with the case.”

            Artie nodded. “Coffee, then?”

            “You bet!” Relieved at finding something they could agree upon, Jim put his fears out of his mind and headed back toward the stable car and Hollis. “I’m going to ask Hollis about the red-haired girl,” he call over his shoulder. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

            Hollis sat where Jim had left him. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What was all the shooting and noise about?”

            “A little necktie party for you,” Jim said, retrieving the water dipper from the floor. “We left them behind. You can have some water now, or coffee in a few minutes. Which one do you want?”

            “I’ll wait for the coffee,” Hollis said with a small smile, the first expression other than anger or sullenness that Jim had seen on him. “Especially if you put a good slug of whiskey in it.”

            “No luck. But it’ll be hot and strong, I can promise you that.” 

            Hollis nodded. “I can use it. I’m sore everywhere, damn you.”

            “You gave as good as you got,” Jim said equably. “By the way… “ He waited until Hollis’s face turned toward him. “My partner said a red-headed girl told the men at the jail that you didn’t kill Miss Landry. Would you know who that is?”

            “A little wisp of a thing with hair like a blazing fire and a temper to match? That has to be Mikey O’Shaunessy. She worked in the kitchen at the house.”

            Mikey. Logan’s friend.

            “My partner said a ‘little’ girl. I don’t know whether he meant young or just small.”

            “Either one would fit. I don’t suppose she’s more than sixteen or seventeen. A little wildcat, that one.”

            “That sounds like the girl. How would she know whether you killed Miss Landry?”

            “Damned if I know. Unless she killed Althea herself. Mikey hated her. But I didn’t think she was capable of murder, or I’d have told Althea to send her packing.”

            “Why was she working for Miss Landry if she hated her?”

            Hollis shrugged. “It was a job. Althea was picky about everything. She could rip a person up one side and down the other if she was put out with them. But she paid the domestic staff well. Most of them seemed to think it was better to be yelled at sometimes and earn good money the rest of the time than to settle for the kind of wages they’d get anywhere else.”

            There were a lot more questions that Jim wanted to ask, but he also wanted some of Artie’s coffee. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. Hollis nodded and went back to his bench.

            In the parlor, the stove had been lit, and coffee filled the air like a spicy perfume. Artie stuck his head out of the galley door. “Coffee’s ready now. Breakfast in ten minutes.”

            “Better fix something for Hollis too, I suppose,” Jim said. “By the way, it appears that your redhead was Logan’s friend Mikey.”

            “Is that so? Hm.” Artie disappeared, but a moment later he popped out again. “I don’t understand why she would want to divert suspicion from Hollis, since it sounds as though she could be a suspect herself.”

            “What did you find out about her?” Jim asked.

            “Not much. Logan told me a little more about her after you left. He said she hated Miss Landry, but he didn’t know why.”

            “Interesting. That’s the same thing Hollis said, that she ‘hated’ Miss Landry. But he said a lot of people didn’t like the woman. She seems to have had a pretty sharp tongue.”

            “Not much of a motive for murder,” Artie said. “Unless it was a crime of passion, in the heat of the moment.” He disappeared again, and came back with a steaming mug. “Not our problem, anyway,” he added, handing Jim the coffee. ”The sheriff will have to handle that one.”

            “That’s true. Unless it was Hollis who killed her.”

            “Still not our problem,” Artie said dismissively..”All we have to do is find the missing money, and then get him to the federal marshals in St. Louis. If he’s a murderer, the territory of Colorado will have to wait its turn to try him.”

            “True,” Jim said again, trying not to be irritated with Artie’s assumptions. “Let me have another cup of that coffee. I told Hollis I’d bring him some.”

            “Don’t be getting too attached to the fellow,” Artie said, sounding amused. “Unless you’re buttering him up to find out where he stashed his ill-gotten gains.”

            “I wasn’t, but it’s not a bad idea.”

            “Here’s another mug, then,” Artie said, handing it out to Jim. “He’ll have to make do without milk.”

            Jim sipped from his cup, and then drank a long swallow of the fragrant coffee. “It doesn’t need milk when you make it, Artie.”

            Artie grinned at him, as though the praise was only his due. “Happy to please. Go away, now, and let me finish making breakfast.” He eyed Jim’s state of dishevelment and added. “You might want to consider doing something about your uncivilized appearance.”

            “Hell, I’d forgotten. Hollis fights like a panther, and that brawl on the platform didn’t help either. He’ll have to wait for his coffee until I change.”

            He emerged from his cabin in somewhat more presentable condition, took Hollis’s coffee back to the stable and handed it through the bars of the cell. Hollis drank as though it was ambrosia, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he’d gulped down half the mug.

            “God, I really needed that.” He set the cup down on the bench. “Now will you tell me why the hell you’ve still got me locked up, if Mikey said I didn’t kill Althea?”

            “I wasn’t tracking you because of that,” Jim said carefully, hoping to be cagy enough to prompt Hollis to incriminate himself.

            Hollis gave him a bewildered look. “Why were you after me, then?” he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “Or is this because I attacked you? I didn’t have anything personal against you, you know. I just thought you were trying to arrest me for killing Althea.”

            “I didn’t even know she was dead at that point,” Jim said.

            “Then why?” Hollis demanded.

            Jim gave up trying to be subtle. Artie could probably have danced around the truth a bit longer, but he was tired of it, for one thing, and found himself unaccountably liking the man, for another. He wanted to make it clear to Hollis that they were on opposite sides of the law.

            “You embezzled five thousand dollars of the government’s money, that’s why,” Jim said bluntly. “We’re on the way to turn you over to the federal prosecutor in St. Louis.”

            “I did what?” Hollis sounded completely dumbfounded. “Are you crazy?”

            “You claimed to have purchased several tracts of Indian lands in the name of the government, but instead, you deposited the money in an account in your name. You withdrew it, allegedly to pay for the land, but no one knows where it is now. The deeds you sent to Washington were invalid–the signatures were forged.”

            Hollis’s jaw hung open for a moment, but then he recovered his wits and his voice. “I certainly did deposit the money in my name. How else was I supposed to get access to it? And the deeds were genuine. Why on earth would I forge the deeds?”

            “So you could keep the funds and not have to pay the owners of the land.” Jim gave him an assessing look. Hollis was playing the outraged innocent to the hilt, but the evidence against him was substantial.

            “You are crazy,” Hollis said emphatically. “Did you bother to check with Bartlett, the land agent? He’s the one who drew up the deeds and arranged to get the signatures. He can tell you they were genuine. And he witnessed the transfer of funds. Chief Flying Arrow and his people got about half the money, and Chief Benjamin and the Nez Pierce got the rest of it.”

            It was in fact the land agent who had alerted Washington to the fact that Hollis was diverting their money for his own use. Jim opened his mouth to tell Hollis that, and then closed it again. What if Bartlett had been running a fraudulent scheme instead of Hollis? He had seemed uncomfortable when Jim and Artie spoke with him earlier in the week, but they’d had no sense that he was lying to them. And Hollis’s actions—especially his disappearance on the day the train pulled into North Powder—suggested a guilty conscience. But it was quite true that there could be other reasons for the apparently damning circumstances.

            “You’ll have to get yourself a lawyer and let him sort things out,” Jim said shortly. “It’s not my job to determine whether or not you’re guilty. All I’m supposed to do is deliver you to the prosecutor in St. Louis.”

            Hollis stared at him, at a loss again for words, evidently. Then he slumped onto the bench, knocking the mug onto the floor. “Jesus Christ,” he said, wiping a hand across his eyes. “I don’t believe this.” He shook his head. “This is insane.” He jumped up again and came across the cell, his hand held out. “Mr.—I don’t even know your name. Look, I cared about these people. The money was supposed to build schools for them, and pay for doctors and decent houses. I would never have stolen it.”

            “You’re very persuasive,” Jim told him, stepping back judiciously from the outstretched hand. “But I’m not the one you need to persuade. And my name is James West. My partner and I are agents with the Secret Service.”

            “Am I under arrest, then?” Hollis wanted to know.

            “Not yet. The federal marshal in St. Louis will do that. We’re just bringing you in.”

            He drank down the rest of his coffee and turned toward the door, noting that the train was slowing. They must be approaching the yard in North Powder. “I’ll bring you something to eat in a while,” he said.

            Hollis sank back down onto the bench with his head in his hands. “I can’t believe this,” he murmured again. And as Jim went out the connecting door, he heard Hollis yelling after him, “I did not steal that money!”

            The hell of it was that he half-believed the man.

            A platter of bacon and a bowl of scrambled eggs graced the table in the parlor, along with stacks of flapjacks. “Come and eat,” Artie told him, bringing the coffee pot in. “You’re just in time.” He stopped and looked at Jim more closely. “What’s the matter?”

            Jim shook his head as he slid into a seat. “Hollis. I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ve got the wrong man.”

            “Did he try to blame Bartlett instead?”

            “No, he claimed that Bartlett could prove he was innocent. Said Bartlett had witnessed

him paying the Indians for the land.”

            “Hmm.” He could see Artie turning that over in his head. “That does implicate Bartlett, even if Hollis didn’t come right out and say so. Perhaps we ought to have another little talk with him.”

            “Mm,” Jim said, through a mouthful of eggs. He washed it down with more coffee, and attacked the pancakes on his plate. “Good.”

            “I take it you’re referring to the food, not the complexities of the case.”

            Jim smiled and forked two more pancakes onto his plate. “Wouldn’t be any fun if all the

cases were easy.” He waited but Artie didn’t take the bait. “The food’s okay too.” Artie’s expression didn’t change. “Hell, you’re no fun. The food is perfect. No one makes pancakes as good as yours.”

            Artie’s mouth tilted up in a smirk. “Just don’t forget that, my boy.”

            Every indication was that relations between them were completely back to normal. Yet Jim found himself watching Artie later as they worked on their respective reports on the case. It had been Artie’s idea, when they were first teamed together, to spend a few minutes each day making notes of what had transpired so far. Jim had never had problems recalling the facts of a case, but he had to admit that it made writing the final report a lot more easy. Now Artie’s face was screwed up in its usual concentrated expression as he jotted down what he had found at the brothel that morning.

            He glanced up and caught Jim’s eye. “Something on my face? Or on your mind?”

            “No. Just—uh, just trying to remember exactly what Hollis said to me when I caught up with him last night.”

            It sounded weak even to Jim. Artie gave him a long, even look, and then closed his notebook and handed it across the table. “Why don’t you read my notes, and while you’re doing that, I’ll go have a talk with Hollis. See whether he spins the same yarn he gave you.” He walked out without waiting for Jim to reply.

            So they were back to being stiff with each other, Jim saw, and it was clearly his own fault. But dammit, he couldn’t stop his brain from going back over and over the previous day’s events. How could he have missed any sign of Artie’s discomfort on earlier occasions? Because there hadn’t been any, he finally decided. Artie had been telling the simple truth, that his mild fever that morning had left him more vulnerable to emotions he wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. You need to get over this preoccupation with Artie’s feelings, Jim told himself severely.

            He set his pen down with more force than he would normally have used, and got up to pace the length of the car. They couldn’t go back to Baker City until later that afternoon; a long string of freight cars was stopped behind them now on the secondary line, and the main line had to be kept open for the non-stop to Portland. If not for Hollis to worry about, they could have ridden back, but the man was too clever to leave him alone.

            Perhaps he should leave Artie with Hollis and go back by himself. That would keep Artie from being threatened again by Althea Landry’s devoted customers—no, wait a moment. Jim stopped his pacing and gazed unseeing out the window. Those men couldn’t have been her customers. Some of them didn’t look as though they had enough money to patronize Hattie’s place, much less Miss Landry’s. No, someone had roused up that mob on purpose. For what reason, he couldn’t guess, unless it really was to distract suspicion from Hollis. But why would the O’Shaunessy girl want to do that?. He sighed inaudibly. This case was growing new layers of mystery by the moment, and his own deep concern about Artie wasn’t helping him concentrate on them.

            He returned to the table and picked up Artie’s notes—might as well see what Artie had made of the case. They were as terse and sketchy as always, but he had no trouble following Artie’s train of thought.

            Althea Landry dead–strangled? Why?

            No forced entry, no outcry, Hollis killer?

            Someone alerted girls, why?

            Hollis / Landry father - what business

            Why mob? Who Mikey?

            And that just about summed up the whole matter, Jim thought. Why was the mob organized, and by whom. And who was this Mikey?

            Well, perhaps he could find out that much, at least..

            He retrieved his hat and holster, and went forward to the stable car. Artie and Hollis were engaged in mutual glaring, and Jim allowed himself a silent snort of satisfaction that Artie hadn’t had any more luck with the man than himself. He quashed that immediately, though. They had never competed with each other to see who “scored” the highest on a case. Partners couldn’t do that and still work together as a team. But Artie was so much better at interrogation that he was occasionally just a bit smug about it, and Jim thought—ungraciously, he had to admit—that this time, Artie was making no more headway than he had himself.

            “I’m going to pay our partner a visit,” he told Artie. Artie would know who he meant. “See if he’s come up with anything helpful. You have questions you want me to ask him?”

            Artie shook his head. “Background on all the people would help. But you know that.”

            “Right. Be back soon.”

            Hollis yelled after him, “Ask the newspaper editor about me! He’ll tell you I’m honest!”

            Jim stopped and turned around. Taunton, their contact, was the editor of the little North Powder weekly newspaper. He knew they were looking for Hollis, and had not once mentioned that he knew the man.

            “What is your connection with him?” Jim asked softly.

            “Connection?” Hollis sounded confused and defensive. “No connection. He just helped me get in touch with the Indians. I didn’t know how to start looking for them, but Abner–Bartlett, I mean—said Mr. Taunton could help me. He got word to someone, and one of the Nez Pierce chiefs came to meet me. Later, he helped me find Chief Flying Arrow so I could give him the money for the rest of the land.”

            Jim gave him a long look, shifted his eyes to Artie in a meaningful glance and nodded shortly. “I’ll certainly ask him about you,” he said.

            Artie made a small gesture that meant he understood and agreed, and Jim went out with a whole new set of conflicting claims. Was Hollis simply lying, hoping to set all the players against each other long enough for him to get away somehow? Or was Taunton part of the swindle himself? He’d come well recommended by someone in Washington. They had never been told who it was, but their superiors seemed to be satisfied with his credentials—a longtime newspaper editor with widespread contacts in both the white and the Indian communities.

            Taunton, when Jim finally caught up with him, was surprised at Jim’s rather cool questions.

            “Sure, I let my Indian friends know there was someone with money for them from the government. Never had any more dealings with him than that, though.”

            “You didn’t tell us you knew him,” Jim said.

            Taunton shrugged. “I didn’t know him. Only met him once. He told me what he wanted, and I said I’d see what I could do.”

            “You could have told us that.” Jim was still aggravated, and knew that it showed.

            “Don’t see what difference it makes,” Taunton said stubbornly. “If he took the money, he took the money, whether I helped him get in touch with the Indians or not.”

            Jim took a deep breath. “Is there anything else you should tell me about Hollis? Or about his meeting with the Indians?”

            “I don’t know anything about the meeting. Chief Benjamin got word back to me that he’d meet Hollis at Eagle Rock. I passed that on to Bartlett, and I assume he told Hollis.” He hesitated and then added, “Never had any more conversation about it.”

            Jim couldn’t tell whether he was trying to distance himself from Hollis, or truly didn’t know more than he had told them. It was odd that he wasn’t more curious about the details of the transaction than he seemed to be. Jim would have expected the land deal to warrant at least a few column inches of newspaper space, if not a front page headline.

            “How about a woman, maybe no more than a girl, named Michaela O’Shaunessy? A little spitfire with bright red hair, so I’m told.”

            Taunton’s mouth twitched. “Don’t tell me she’s involved with this! Sure, I know who she is. She rode in with a crowd of troublemakers about a year ago. Loud-mouthed bunch of gamblers and louts and their girls, started fights in the saloons and strutted up and down the streets. The sheriff ran most of them off, but Mikey had a job over in Baker City by then so he left her alone. I don’t know much about her besides that.”

             “You must have known Althea Landry and her father. What can you tell me about them?”

            “Not much. They’ve only been in the area a couple of years, and Davis Landry was an invalid when they moved here. He died last year, and left the daughter penniless. It was a bit of a scandal, because they had lived pretty high on the hog, and everyone assumed he was wealthy. But when the debt collectors descended on the estate, there wasn’t a farthing to be found. Althea was engaged to a lawyer here in North Powder, but he threw her over when the inheritance evaporated. Next thing anyone knew, she’d set up in business in Baker City.” His lips twitched again. “By all accounts, she’s done pretty well for herself too.”

            “She’s dead,” Jim said, without preamble or inflection.

            Taunton’s face went blank for an instant, and then his mouth fell open. “My God!” he said. “How did that happen?”

            “You didn’t know? I’d have thought the news would be here already.”

            “I’ve been out of town all day. There was a mudslide up the mountain—half buried a logging camp and killed a couple of the loggers. I went up there to get the details for this week’s edition. I just got back a few minutes ago, and you’re the first person I’ve spoken to.”

            “You haven’t seen the message from me, then? I sent it by the pigeon.”

            Taunton shook his head. “As I said, I’ve hardly done more than walk in the door and set down my notebook. What was your message, then? That Althea Landry was dead?”

            “No, we didn’t know about that yet. Our contact in Baker City told us that Hollis was hightailing it out of town, and I was about to take off after him. I just wanted you to know that Hollis might be heading this way. But I caught up with him first.”

            Taunton nodded. “I wasn’t here, so it’s just as well you didn’t need me. I got word about the mudslide around four in the morning, and I’ve been up the mountain ever since. Damn stupid logging company–I told them they couldn’t clear off that steep hillside in the rainy season, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Now their camp is gone and three of the men too.”

            He let out a long exhalation and gave Jim a hard look. “I have the feeling you want something from me. Why don’t you quit dancing around it and just tell me?”

            Surprised, Jim said, “You’re supposed to be our liaison. I want whatever information you have that would be helpful, and whatever assistance you’re able to provide as we need it. We’re on the same side here, right?”

            “I have my own responsibilities,” Taunton said, with an edge in his voice that mirrored the look in his eyes. “I’m not a government employee. I’ll help when I can, but that doesn’t mean doing any of your work for you.”

            “We haven’t asked for that,” Jim said evenly, trying to keep the irritation from showing. “But withholding information isn’t helping. You could have told us about your contact with Hollis.” He decided it wouldn’t hurt to make his point a bit more emphatically. “After all, it begins to look as though you might have some interest in the money too.”

            Taunton stood up. “I don’t have to listen to that. You take yourself out of here, and don’t come back.” He sounded less outraged than might have been expected, and one hand hovered near the top left desk drawer. Jim suspected he might keep a gun in that drawer, and decided not to provoke the situation any further. If they really needed Taunton, Artie could be depended on to sweet talk him into helping again, and if—as Jim was beginning to think—he was part of their case in a more sinister way, there was no point in further antagonizing him now.

            He stood himself, and held out his hands, open palms up. “No need to get up in arms, Mr. Taunton. Being suspicious of people is part of my job.”

            Taunton didn’t answer him, and Jim turned his back and walked out, feeling the man’s glare like a knife in his ribs.

            Outside, a light breeze kicked up little dust devils in the warm sun. The air felt thick and looked hazy, as though a storm was brewing up somewhere over the horizon. Jim stood indecisively in the street for a moment, and then walked down toward the land agent’s office. If Taunton was part of the fraud, then Abner Bartlett was the next most likely suspect. That didn’t mean Hollis wasn’t equally guilty, but it was always possible that Hollis had been set up to take all the blame.

            The office door was locked, and a glance through the dusty window suggested that Bartlett might have left in a hurry. File drawers were pulled out, and the large desk was strewn with papers. An inkpot had been overturned, and a black pool glistened on the floor. Jim turned away to head back to the train, but then stopped. The ink was still shiny. Still wet. It couldn’t have been there long. Someone had been there no more than a few minutes ago, and had left in such a hurry that they had ignored that puddle of ink. He stepped back up to the porch, took out his little packet of lockpicks, and had the door open in a moment. Before he was more than halfway into the room, he could see the pair of boots protruding from behind the desk. The body wasn’t visible from the window, and if he hadn’t noticed the fresh ink, he would have assumed Bartlett was merely out of the office.

            A pool of red was spreading slowly across the floor to meet the puddle of black from the ink. There was no sign of injury to Bartlett’s chest or abdomen, though, no indication of a bullet wound. Jim pulled him over on one side and the reason became clear. A knife–no, a silver letter opener, probably from Bartlett’s own desk–protruded from his back, and from the quantity of blood still oozing from the wound, it had clearly hit a vital organ. Damn. One more mystery. Bartlett’s murder could mean that he would have confirmed Hollis’s story and therefore had to be silenced. Or it could be completely unrelated to their case, though Jim didn’t really believe that.

            Could Taunton have stabbed Bartlett, and then made it to the newspaper office before Jim arrived? It seemed to Jim that for the ink to still be wet, it couldn’t have been spilled for more than five minutes, and he’d been in Taunton’s office for at least that long. He turned back to the desk and gingerly touched the stream of ink. It was nearly dry now, thickened and viscous and yielding only slightly to the pressure of his finger. It was barely possible for Taunton to have killed Bartlett and then to have been in his office when Jim came through the door. But just barely. He’d have had to run almost 100 yards, enter through a rear door, and be sitting at his desk as though nothing was wrong when Jim came in—not impossible, but a stretch of the imagination.

            Jim shook his head, sighed, and went back to the door. Outside, he hailed a passerby and asked the man to fetch the sheriff.

            It didn’t take long for Taunton to turn up once the noisy crowd gathered at Bartlett’s door. Jim had expected that. What he hadn’t expected was Taunton’s white face and ravaged expression when he saw the body, nor the sheriff’s murmured sympathies. The sheriff was clearly not going to entertain suspicions that Taunton had committed the murder.

            “Friend of yours?” Jim asked softly, as Taunton stepped back from the desk.

            Taunton nodded. “We came out here together,” he said, with unmistakeable emotion in his voice. “Fifteen years ago. Met on the train on the way out. We hit it off, and we’ve been the best of friends ever since.” He turned away. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it. Who would want to kill him?”

            “Did he have any enemies that you know of?” Jim asked.

            Taunton shrugged as though helpless to answer the question. “Not–no. I mean, no more than—none who would have killed him. In his job, sure, there were people who disagreed with decisions he made, but no one who would have . . . “ He stopped again. “Nothing recent, anyway. There was a man last year who threatened him, but he’s dead now himself.”

            “That Andrews fellow?” The sheriff asked. “Yeah, he winked at one married lady too many and took a bullet from her husband. Good riddance, if you ask me.”

            “Friends of Andrews?” Jim suggested, but both Taunton and the sheriff shook their heads.

            “He didn’t have no friends,” the sheriff said, and others in the room nodded in agreement.

            A few more questions made it clear that Bartlett had been respected, if not well liked, had good relations with the local Indian tribes, and had never been implicated in any kind of law-breaking whatsoever. His reputation was a bit too squeaky-clean for Jim to be entirely comfortable with it, but there was no hesitation about the answers he got, no eye-shifting or uneasy postures. Everyone seemed to be wholly shocked at the idea of Bartlett being murdered.

            Which put the reason for the crime right back into Jim’s purview. Hollis was locked up, but Mikey was unaccounted for, and knives were more often a woman’s weapon than a man’s. Moreover, this wasn’t even a weapon–it was a tool, something that might have been snatched up in the heat of an argument.

            “Anyone see that woman they call Mikey?” he said into the silence. “I know she was in Baker City earlier today, but it’s not that far a ride.”

            “You think she mighta done it?” a man asked in a clearly disbelieving voice. “She ain’t hardly big enough to see over this desk here. Don’t see her takin’ on a man the size of Mr. Bartlett.”

            “He was stabbed in the back,” Jim pointed out. “You don’t take something on if you don’t know it’s coming.”

            “I seed a woman goin’ down the street away from here,” the man said doubtfully. “Too tall to be Mikey, though. And I don’t know that she was in here. I just seed her walkin’ away.”

            “Could you see what color her hair was?”

            The man thought for a moment. “Don’t recollect seein’ her hair. She musta had a shawl or somethin’ over it.”

            It wasn’t much, but even if the woman had nothing to do with the crime, she might have seen something herself.

            “Might help if you put the word out for anyone who was near here,” Jim said to the sheriff. “Say you’re just wondering whether someone might have seen anything.”

            The sheriff gave him a look that said he didn’t need help with his job, but nodded. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

            “How about his papers and valuables?” Jim asked. “Did he have a safe? Looks to me like his desk was gone over pretty well.”

            “He kept anything related to land transactions in the vault at the courthouse in Baker City,” Taunton said. “But his desk looked like this most of the time.”

            There were nods around the room. “Looks like the ink got spilled when he was stabbed,” the sheriff said. “He coulda lunged after the man with the knife, and knocked the pot over.”

            That didn’t seem likely to Jim. Bartlett was lying behind the desk. Jim felt certain that he’d been surprised with his back turned, had twisted toward the killer, perhaps, and then gone straight down. That would account for him lying on his back. The ink pot was in front of the desk, as though it had been inadvertently knocked off as the killer rifled through papers. Small details, to be sure, but they told a story to anyone willing to listen.

            Had Bartlett known the killer? That was almost certain. He’d known the killer, and had trusted him enough to turn his back on the man—or woman. But why had he done that at all? There was nothing behind the desk but a blank wall with a single half-open window in it. Had someone called through the window, distracting Bartlett long enough for his killer to snatch up the letter opener and drive it into his back?

            Jim went out the the front door and around to the back of the building, looking carefully for footprints, something a person might have dropped, any clue at all. Below the window there were scuffed boot prints, but those could have been there for any length of time. He bent and measured them with his outstretched hand, two indentations from the heels of a pair of small boots. Mikey? No way to tell. But they looked like riding boots, not a child’s heavier shoes.

             But if Mikey had called to Bartlett through the window, who had stabbed him? Regardless of Taunton’s apparent distress, he couldn’t yet be ruled out as a suspect. Or was there some other player in this game, not yet identified? Jim straightened and stood for a moment, thinking. It wouldn’t do to let his imagination take him down some rabbit trail. He had to have more facts. He needed to talk to Artie, both to find out what Artie might have gleaned from Hollis and to bounce ideas and possibilities off that fertile brain. He needed to be with Artie, and he didn’t want to examine his motives too closely.

            He went around to the office door again, and told the sheriff where to find him if other information turned up, making his position as a federal agent as clear as he could without actually taking the investigation away from the sheriff. It was always possible that Bartlett’s murder was unrelated to the embezzlement, and he didn’t need to antagonize someone whose assistance might be vital. But that little prickle in the back of his neck, that said he was getting close to the center of a case, had begun to make itself known, and he had learned long ago to pay attention to it.

            Artie wasn’t in the parlor car when Jim returned to the train. He went through to the stable and before he was two steps inside, he saw the door of the lock-up standing open.

            “What the hell!–Artie??”

            “In here.” Artie’s voice came from the lab, and Jim whirled to see him sitting on a stool looking tired and old.

            “What happened? Where’s Hollis”

            “He got away, that’s what happened. I must be the biggest damn fool in the universe for letting him do it.” Artie stood up with a deep breath, and Jim held his tongue and his questions and let Artie tell him.

            “Little Toby came in to give me some message from Barney.” LittleToby was the fireman’s helper, and since the fireman’s name was also Toby, the older man had of course become Big Toby and the boy Little Toby. “He had some kitten he’d picked up off the street hanging around his neck, and Hollis called him over so he could pet it. I hollered at Toby not to get close to the cell, but it was too late. Hollis had him by the throat and said he’d throttle the boy if I didn’t open the door.” Artie gave Jim a grim look. “He’d have done it too. You could see it in his eyes.”

            “You had to let him go, then.” Jim said. “No choice. And that has to make me wonder about all his mewling over Althea Landry. I wanted to believe that he couldn’t have killed her, but

I think he took me for a fool too.”

            Artie nodded. “He was a good actor, no question. I never really quite believed him, but he had me half convinced, I have to admit.”

            “Where is Toby now?”

            “Up front with Barney. Hollis didn’t hurt him. He kept his arm around the boy’s throat until I handed over my gun, and then he shoved Toby into me hard enough that we both ended up on the floor. By the time we got disentangled and back on our feet, he was out of sight. Barney and Big Toby and I ran all through the yard looking for him, but either he found a good hiding place or he was just a lot faster than we were, because we never saw any sign of him at all.”

            “So he’s armed,” Jim said slowly, thinking out loud. “But no horse. He can’t go far without a horse, or help from someone.”

            “A horse and help, I would think. I left a message for the sheriff that he escaped, so he can’t show his face openly here, and Baker City isn’t safe for him either. He needs money and a horse, or he isn’t going to get very far. He wasn’t acting on his own, I’m sure of that. He had an accomplice, and I don’t think it was Althea Landry.”

            Artie’s mention of the sheriff reminded Jim of his own news. “Hell–almost forgot to tell you. Abner Bartlett, the land agent, is dead. Murdered. And someone with tiny feet left boot prints outside the window of his office.”

            “Mikey?” Artie asked instantly.

            “No good reason to assume it was her, but no reason to rule her out either. Bartlett was knifed, and I think someone might have called through that window to distract him from his killer. He was stabbed with what looked like the letter opener off his own desk.”

            “Crime of passion, or opportunity? But then why plan to have someone at the window?”

            Jim shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t mean to kill him unless it was necessary. And I don’t know why the letter opener was used, unless it was because a gun would have attracted attention. I thought at first that it might have meant a woman killed him. But Bartlett was a big man. That letter opener went through a suit coat, a weskit, a shirt, probably an undervest, and a lot of flesh. That took more force than I think Mikey could have managed.”

            Artie’s face changed suddenly. “My God, could Hollis have done it after he left here? When was Bartlett killed?”

            Jim thought for a moment. “Within the last hour. The wound was still oozing blood when I found him. And there was freshly spilled ink on the desk and floor. It couldn’t have happened more then five or ten minutes before I got there, and maybe not that long. When did Hollis get away?”

            “Five minutes after two,” Artie said, and the grim note was back in his voice. “He could have done it, Jim.”

            “But why? He couldn’t make it to Bartlett’s office without walking down the street in plain sight. Doesn’t make sense for him to take that chance.”

            “Unless he thought Bartlett was going to help him. Maybe Bartlett refused, and Hollis killed him to keep him quiet.”

            Jim hesitated, trying not to sound as though he was discounting Artie’s suggestion. “That’s possible, I guess. He might have grabbed the letter opener on impulse. But the way Bartlett was lying behind the desk suggested to me that he had turned toward the window before he was stabbed. That’s why I went around to see what I could find there.”

            Artie walked past him and shoved the cell door shut with a clang. “I hear what you’re saying. Too much conjecture.”

            Jim nodded in agreement. “We need to step back from this for a minute and look at all the facts. Even if Hollis does have someone’s help, he isn’t going anywhere until after dark. Let’s walk back down to the sheriff’s office and tell him we think Hollis might have killed Bartlett. That should give him some additional motivation to look for Hollis. Bartlett seems to have been well thought of here. It won’t hurt to stir people up a bit.”

            They closed up and locked both cars, and walked in tired companionship down the dusty street. Artie still looked gray and unwell, and Jim worried that he wasn’t owning up to something. “Did Hollis do anything else to you?” he asked finally. “Hit you, or something?”

            “Tried to clip me with my gun,” Artie said after a moment, not looking at him. “I jumped back, and all I got was a whack over my ear. That’s when he shoved Little Toby at me, and we both went down in a heap.”

            He leaned away from Jim. “Don’t fuss over me. All I got was a scratch. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

            Jim thought about that for a moment. He felt out of synch with Artie, as though they were on parallel but widely separated tracks, isolated from each other by differing needs and intentions. He didn’t like the feeling. “I’m not going to fuss,” he said finally. “Just wanted to know. You looked the way I’ve felt after someone gave me a knock on the head.”

            Artie stepped up onto the boards in front of Sheriff Walker’s office. “I’m fine,” he said shortly, and it was clear that was all Jim was going to get out of him. He sighed softly under his breath, and followed Artie up the steps into the building.

            The sheriff listened to their suspicions with the air of a man who’d had too much bad news in one day. “Trouble is,” he said, when they finished, “Hollis and Bartlett was good friends. I ain’t sayin’ Hollis couldn’t of killed him, but why?”

            “Bartlett could have refuted Hollis’s claim that the land payments were made,” Jim suggested, but Walker shook his head.

            “Jist as easy to find the Indians again and ask them. Chief Benjamin comes into town once a month, sometimes more.”

            “But it would have slowed us down in proving his guilt,” Jim persisted.

            “It ain’t a reason for murder. Specially not someone you’ve been seen with near every day Hollis was in town.”

            “You told me that Taunton and Bartlett were friends,” Artie said, with a sideways glance at Jim.

            “They was better friends before Hollis showed up,” Walker put in, saving Jim from asking the obvious question.

            Jim said slowly, “Was Mr. Taunton put out that Bartlett was spending so much time with Hollis?”

            Walker shrugged. “If he was, he didn’t never show it. I don’t know as he had any idea how much they was together. He’s out of the office working on the newspaper stories most of the time.”

            “But they spent enough time together that people noticed it,” Artie put in.

            The sheriff nodded. “That’s the truth. Abner wasn’t what you’d call a sociable man. He always had a polite word for everyone, and he did his job fair and square, went to church, put his money in the collection plate, never caused no trouble. But he wasn’t one to get invited to dinner. Joe Taunton was ‘bout the only one you’d ever see him having a drink with. So people did remark on it when Hollis turned up near every day in Abner’s office, and Abner started setting down to lunch and dinner with him.”

            He stood up heavily and stretched. “I wouldn’t say Abner was any special friend of mine neither, but he was a good respectable man. You could depend on him. I’m mighty sorry to see him dead, and if Hollis murdered him, I’ll be happy to put the man behind bars, and string him up too, once he’s had his say in court.”

            “Will you help us find him then?” Jim asked, and Artie added, “I can give you a good sketch of his face that you can post around town.”

            “No need of that,” Walker said, suddenly grim. “Everyone knows what he looks like.”

            “And the girl, Mikey,” Jim said. “Even if she’s not mixed up in this, she keeps turning up wherever there’s trouble. We need to talk to her.”

            “She lives over in Baker City,” Walker said, as though surprised that they hadn’t looked for her there. “At Miss Landry’s. Well—I suppose she might not live there any more now that Althea’s dead. Or work there, neither.”

            “We assume she doesn’t work there any more,” Jim said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to go back there and see what we can find out.”

            Artie nodded, and rose. “I’ll check with Barney and see whether we can move the train back there.” He left before Jim could say that it would be easier to just saddle up and ride back, and Jim held back a sigh as he took leave of the sheriff. It felt as though he and Artie were working at cross purposes, and he didn’t know how to change things.

            On impulse, since he had to walk past it anyway, he stepped into the newspaper office. Taunton sat at a tall table scribbling on a printed sheet. A younger man who looked amazingly like him was operating the press. Taunton didn’t look up when Jim came in, but the other man stopped his work and said quietly, “Dad?”

            So that was the reason for the strong resemblance. For some reason, Jim hadn’t thought of Taunton as being a family man. Taunton glanced up, and set the sheet of paper aside.

            “Come in here,” he said, tilting his head toward a closed office door. Jim followed him into the room, and Taunton shut the door behind them.

            “Don’t bother my boy with any of this,” he said. “He doesn’t know anything.”

            “About the embezzlement case?” Jim asked, not certain what Taunton was referring to. “I wouldn’t have expected him to. Or do you mean something else?”

            “That, or Abner Bartlett’s death. Or that bastard Hollis. And especially not Michaela O’Shaunessy.”

            “Why especially not Mikey?” Jim asked carefully.

            “Because he has some silly idea that she’s sweet on him. He isn’t very worldly, Mr. West. His mother died when he was a baby, and he’s never been away from here. He doesn’t know what women can do to a man.”

            That had an unexpected ring of bitter truthfulness to it. “Were you sweet on Mikey?”

            Taunton gave a sardonic snort. “No. I only loved one woman, and that was my wife. When she died, I had my boy to raise. I didn’t chase after anyone else. If I’d been going to, though, it wouldn’t have been a piece of work like Mikey.”

            Artie was the one who heard what people weren’t saying, and drew them out. But Artie wasn’t here, and Jim had the strong feeling that Taunton wanted to unburden himself.

            “Maybe you’d best tell me all of it,” he said, hoping he was right.

            Taunton jerked his head at a chair, and went around the big desk to his own. Jim seated himself, and waited while Taunton took out a cigar, neatly trimmed the end, lit it and drew a long breath. He held one out to Jim, but Jim shook his head. Smoking was a social activity for him, and this wasn’t a social occasion.

            “I didn’t want this to be true,” Taunton finally said, with a wreath of smoke rising around him. “I wanted to believe Abner, that everything was on the up and up. But I finally had to admit to myself that if he were someone other than my best friend, I’d already have been suspicious.”

            He blew out a long breath of smoke. “Hell, not suspicious. Convinced that Abner was mixed up in something he shouldn’t have been. But I wanted to believe him. He said Hollis was a government man with a big chunk of money for the Indians. I wanted to write a front page story about it, but he said wait. Wait until the deal was completed, so no one would know Hollis had that much money and perhaps rob him. That seemed reasonable, so I waited.”

            He knocked ash off the end of the cigar. “And I waited. And I waited some more. Every time I talked to Ab, he said Hollis had another land deal, and he wanted to conclude them all before there was any news of it.”

            Taunton’s face twisted with some memory. “What Ab didn’t know was that I ran into Chief Benjamin one day up in the hills. I told him I was glad to hear about the government buying the land, and he didn’t know anything about it. He said Hollis never showed up for the meeting I’d help him arrange, and he figured it was just another white man’s trick.”

            Taunton looked directly over at Jim. “I was wrong about Abner Bartlett. I thought he was my friend. And I don’t claim to be infallible about Chief Benjamin. But I’ve known him long enough to tell if he was lying. And he had no reason to lie about it. If he said Hollis didn’t meet him or pay him for any land, then he was telling the truth.”

            “Did you confront Hollis or Bartlett?” Jim asked

            “I spoke to Abner. I wouldn’t have known what to say to Hollis. I told Abner that I knew there hadn’t been any land deal with the Indians. I asked him what he was mixed up in, and I said I’d help any way I could if he’d just be honest with me.”

            “What did he say?”

            Taunton looked away, with the bitter memory of the conversation clear in his face. “He put his head in his hands and said he hadn’t wanted to do anything wrong. He’d just gotten into it a bit at a time, until he was in so deep he didn’t know how to get out.”

            “Hollis fed him some story,” Jim suggested, and Taunton nodded.

            “Told him the Indians wouldn’t know what to do with that much money. They’d spend it on rum, he said. He told Abner they’d give the tribes part of the money they were due, and invest the rest of it in a charity that would build schools for the Indian children. I can’t believe Ab fell for that.”

            “He wanted Hollis to like him,” Jim said, surprised at his certainty of it. Bartlett had been a stolid, graceless man, but his homely face couldn’t conceal his intelligence. He’d have known he was accepted in his official role, but was never really part of local society. He might have been easy prey for someone like Hollis.

            Taunton nodded heavily. “I couldn’t believe that was all it was, but yes. I cursed him for a fool. Told him he’d been my best friend for twenty years, and wasn’t that enough?” He shook his head. “Ab said he knew people didn’t like him. He didn’t know what to say, how to make polite talk. He felt like people just tolerated him because they knew he was my friend. He said when Hollis took up with him, it proved to him that he wasn’t just a fat lunk with no family or friends. He was someone a natty fellow like Hollis could take a liking to, not just the man who happened to share a stage coach with me on our first trip out here.”

            “He thought you were his friend just because he was the first one you met out here, is that it?”

            “Evidently.” Taunton looked old. “I begged him to help me put Hollis behind bars. That’s when I sent the telegram to Washington. He said he would, but I’m sure Hollis gave him some story that I was jealous of their friendship.”

            He stopped, shaking his head. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more forthcoming earlier today, or the first time I talked to you and your partner. I was still trying to get Abner to cooperate. I thought if he’d tell you what he knew, he could stay out of legal trouble. I just about had him convinced to come clean. But then we had a big fire on one of the ranches, and a case of horse theft, and a murder up in Wilbursville,, and then that damn mudslide, and I was away for most of the last week, with Hollis here casting doubt on everything I’d said.”

            “Wait minute,” Jim said. Something Taunton had said didn’t make sense. “You sent the telegram to Washington? We were told that Bartlett had sent it.”

            “I sent it. I was up in Portland where I wasn’t generally known, nor Abner either, and I went to the telegraph office and signed his name to it. I thought that maybe, when I told him what I’d done, he’d realize he would have to get away from Hollis and help the government.”

            “What did he say when he found out?”

            “At first, he seemed relieved. He said he was just as glad it was over with. But then after a day or two, he started avoiding me, and I could see that Hollis had gotten to him again. After all, if the local land agent stood up for Hollis, the government wouldn’t have had much of a case. Hollis would just have accused the Indians of lying, and you know a lot of people would have believed him. But when you two arrived, Ab came to me in a panic and said Hollis had run off and he didn’t know what to do.”

            “We knew the deeds were invalid,” Jim said. “We had a copy of Chief Benjamin’s

signature, and Flying Arrow couldn’t write his name. He signed a previous land transfer with an X. So sticking up for Hollis would only have thrown suspicion on Bartlett. I suspect Hollis may have known that. And he’d have known that Bartlett wouldn’t hold up very long under questioning.”

            “So he killed him.”

            “We suspect that Bartlett refused to help him get away. So he acted honorably in the end.”

            Taunton put out the cigar in a big glass ashtray, and leaned back in his chair. “I can’t help thinking this is my fault as much as Abner’s.”

            “How is that?” Jim asked, wondering what he could be talking about. “You didn’t do anything wrong, not that I can see.” True, Taunton hadn’t told them everything he knew, not by a long shot, but he hadn’t been actively involved in the fraud.

            Taunton said slowly, “You and your partner… that’s what Ab wanted, I think.”

            “What do you mean?” Jim couldn’t imagine what Taunton was talking about.

            Taunton’s face had gone far away. “No one would ever have called Abner Bartlett handsome, but when we first came out here, he was a strong, tall, likeable fellow. I liked him, at any rate. We just took to each other right off, like I told you before. Spent hours together talking about everything in the world, ate all our meals together, even talked about living together. I’d found a little house to rent, and Abner had the idea that he should move in with Charlie and me.”

            He gave Jim a long glance. “I knew what he wanted, and it wasn’t that I had any objection. I’d been—” He stopped, and then went on, “Well… that way inclined, you know, long as I could remember. But my family wanted me to marry, and Alice was a sweet, pretty thing. I was as happy with her as any man like me could be, and when our son was born, I thought I had everything in the world.”

            Jim stuttered something, uncertain whether he was supposed to say. The conversation had turned down a path he couldn’t have anticipated, and the reference to “you and your partner” had him completely baffled. What could Taunton possibly be thinking about Artie and himself?

            Taunton went on, “Then she died, and left me with a two-year-old boy to raise. I had to get away from there. Just too many memories, good ones and bad. So I came out here. And at first everything was fine. Everyone thought I was wonderful to be raising my son by myself.” He stopped, with a sardonic snort. “Every girl and young widow in the territory was ready to throw herself at my feet to help me out. But I hadn’t ever wanted to marry to begin with, and I wasn’t about to tie myself down again.” He paused, then went on, “If I’d still been back east, I might have taken Abner up on what he wanted. In the city, it’s easier to be—different. But out here… out here, people know everything you do. How much you give at church, who you stepped out with on Saturday night, what kind of father you are. And though nobody might have said anything to my face, I was too proud to want them talking behind my back.”

            He picked up the stub of his cigar, looked at it, set it down again. Jim couldn’t think of a thing to say. Hollis was out there somewhere, hiding from them or fleeing from their grasp, and he was doing nothing useful to find the man, sitting here listening to Taunton confess a past that Jim would never have suspected and that he wasn’t sure he wanted to know about.

            “So I told him we couldn’t be—together,” Taunton finally said. “I told him I wasn’t like that. He knew better, but he let me lie about it. I told him we’d always be friends, but I couldn’t be any more than that.” His mouth compressed into a hard bitter expression. “I don’t know why he stayed here. There wasn’t anyone else like us, not that I knew of. Ab used to go off to Portland every so often, but he never took up with anyone else. It was like I was his last hope, and when I turned him down, he just gave up.”

            “Not your fault.” Jim finally managed to get out some kind of response.

            “Sometimes fault doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Taunton said. “People probably wouldn’t have talked much if Abner had moved in with me. There might have been some whispers, but most likely that’s all. I was just a coward about it, and I made Abner think he wasn’t worth anything. He wouldn’t have taken up with Hollis if we’d been together.”

            He stood up and turned to look out the window across the alley. With his back to Jim, he said, “Ab never spoke about it again until the day you and Mr. Gordon came to town. Then he said, ‘That’s what we could have been. We could have worked together, and lived together, and raised Charlie together.’”

            Jim sputtered something—he wasn’t certain what, just a general protest at Taunton’s assumptions.

            Taunton turned around and smiled slightly at him. “Don’t worry, Mr. West. I know you can’t say anything. But anyone can see it.” He came back to his chair and sank into it heavily. “Well—maybe not anyone. But people like us. We always know.”

            With a dry mouth, Jim asked, “Wha—what do you see? What is it about us?”

            Again, Taunton reassured him. “Really, Mr. West, it’s not anything that someone else would notice. You don’t need to worry about your bosses in Washington.”

            “But what do you see?” Suddenly Jim wanted very much to know. His and Artie’s relationship was close, certainly, but he couldn’t imagine anyone thinking it was more than that. What could they have been doing that would prompt Taunton’s error?

            Taunton shrugged. “You’re aware of each other. When you came into my office together, it was like—like you were one person instead of two. I could almost see the thoughts running from one of you to the other without you saying a word. And you don’t hold yourselves away from each other. Even good friends take care not to touch each other casually. You don’t do that.”

            Jim nodded slowly. That much was true. He and Artie had always been comfortable with each other. But it had never occurred to him that someone would think—would think they were—he didn’t know what words to use for what Taunton had implied.

            “We aren’t—“ he tried, but Taunton brushed him off.

            “Never mind. I can see you don’t want to talk about it. And it’s not important anyway. What matters is that Abner wouldn’t have taken up with Hollis if we’d been together.”

            “You can’t know that,” Jim protested, on safer ground now. “There are men who seem to

have a good character all their lives, and one day suddenly they do something you’d never expect.

Bartlett was one of them, that’s all.”

            Taunton nodded grimly. “He did something I never expected, that’s certain. And if I can’t blame myself for it, I can sure as hell blame Hollis. I’ll see that man swing.”

            Jim got up and walked across the office and back again, deliberately putting aside any thoughts of himself and Artie. He had to focus on Hollis.

            One thing came to him right away. Hollis was fast running out of helpers. Althea Landry was dead. Bartlett was dead. That left Mikey and … whom?

            “Did Hollis have any other special friends?” he asked. “Someone who’d be willing to hide him, or help him escape?”

            “Besides Mikey? None that I know of. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t anyone. But I’d say probably not. He wasn’t one of those men who made friends. He used people.”

            “So one of two things is happening right now. He’s gone to ground somewhere near by, or he’s hightailing it out of here as fast as he can go. We don’t think he has a horse. His own is still in our rolling stable.”

            “Mikey,” Taunton said, and Jim nodded.

            “Mikey. Did she have friends over here? I know she was living in Baker City, but she started out here, right?”

            Taunton considered the question for a moment. “Most of the rabble she rode in with is gone. But she’s been seen sometimes with a widow woman named Mrs. Deal. I don’t know whether they’re exactly friends, but you see them passing the time of day sometimes in the street. Mikey doesn’t talk to people, so it was something I noticed.”

            “Where does this widow live? In town?”

            “I think she stays at the hotel,” Taunton said. “There are a couple of rooms way at the top that she was renting when she first came here. You think Hollis and Mikey might be there?”

            “It’s worth checking out.” Jim turned to the door. “I’m going to get my partner.”

            “I’ll go with you,” Taunton said instantly.

            “Not to get Hollis.” Jim made his voice absolutely flat with authority. “You’re too close to this. But find the sheriff and tell him that Artie and I are going to check out the hotel. Tell him I said not to go in there without us.”

            Taunton raised an eyebrow, and Jim said, “We’re federal agents. This is a federal

investigation. If Hollis committed a murder, the sheriff will get his turn at prosecuting him.”

            Taunton nodded, and Jim went out through the front of the building, past young Charlie still feeding sheets of paper into the press, and down through the town to the rail yard. His thoughts were in such turmoil that he just shut out everything but the immediate needs of the case.

            Was Mrs. Deal an accomplice? Or was she likely to become a hostage? Would it be better to go straight to her door and demand admission, or try to sneak along the roof somehow and eavesdrop on whoever was with her? Could Artie come up with a disguise that would gain him entrance to her rooms? And would the sheriff wait for them? He’d taken a calculated risk in ordering Taunton to alert the sheriff. But it was the best way he could see to keep Taunton from barging in on Hollis and Mikey on his own, and either killing Hollis, or perhaps getting killed himself. Jim wanted to avoid both outcomes if at all possible. Charlie was young enough to still need his father, and the government needed Hollis alive in order to retrieve the missing money—not to mention the fact, of course, that killing was stupid and wasteful.

            He found Artie waiting with barely concealed impatience. “I thought you’d be back here a long time ago! Let me tell you what I’ve found out about Hollis and Mikey.”

            “I’ve got a lot to tell you too, but go ahead. What about them?”

            Artie said, “I ran into a couple of the girls from Althea Landry’s brothel at the station. No one knows what’s going to happen with the house, and the girls who had enough money to get out are leaving as fast as they can pack their things. So I asked one of them if she had any idea who Hollis might turn to if he needed help, and all of them instantly said, ‘Mikey!’ Turns out everyone but Althea knew that Hollis was carrying on with Mikey, and Althea suspected it.”

            “I wonder whether Althea knew about the money,” Jim said. “She might have threatened to expose him if he didn’t break off with Mikey.”

            Artie nodded. “And so he killed her. But she may have been part of the scheme herself. Remember that Hollis and her father were in business at some point. She probably knew Hollis before she and her father came out here. So she knew what kind of person he was, and she may well have been his partner in the crime.”

            “So Hollis is probably guilty of two murders. I hope to hell we can prevent any more of them.” Jim related what he’d learned about Bartlett, or at least some of it. The rest would have to wait for another time, if he told Artie about it at all. “We need to make sure this Mrs. Deal really is living in the hotel,” he finished, “and then see whether we can get into her rooms without setting off a gunfight.”

            He could see the wheels going around in Artie’s brain. “Do you know how old she is?”

            Jim shook his head. “Taunton called her a widow woman. I think he’d have remarked on it if she was really young, so probably middle-aged at least.”

            “Hmm. And Mikey has taken up with her. Wonder why. It sounds as though she’s old enough to be Mikey’s mother.”

            “Taunton said he didn’t know that they were friends, exactly. Just that Mikey didn’t talk to people, he said. So he noticed when he saw her and Mrs. Deal speaking to each other in the street.”

            “You know,” Artie said thoughtfully, “Mikey sounds like a female version of Bartlett, in a way. Bartlett was different. He was fat and friendless, even if he was respected for doing his job well.”

            For one wild moment, Jim thought that Artie must somehow have divined Bartlett’s other difference and was suggesting a similar inclination in Mikey. But Artie went on, “And Mikey’s different. All that curly red hair, and tiny as a child. The girls I was talking to said everyone treated her like she was about ten years old, though she was twice that, at least. They said she hated it, and she hated that she didn’t have pretty hair. But Hollis saw the woman in her, it sounds like.”

            “You’re saying Hollis befriended her, as he did Bartlett.”

            Artie nodded. “I’ve known men like that in the theatre. They’d see someone who was vulnerable to kindness, and use them to get whatever they wanted. So this Mrs. Deal may have been considerate to Mikey in some way, and Mikey responded to it by speaking with her when they met, even if she didn’t talk socially to other people.”

            He reached for his hat and gunbelt. “Enough philosophizing, don’t you think?”

            “Time for action,” Jim concurred. “I don’t want to just crash through Mrs. Deal’s door,

though. I’ve been thinking that if she is living in those attic rooms in the hotel, I could get up to the roof and listen through the chimney, or possibly a window. Make sure Hollis and Mikey are in there before we take any action.”

            “Good idea. I’ve been trying to think what kind of disguise I could use to get into her rooms, but without any more information than we have, I don’t know what would work.”

            Jim led the way to the end of the car. “You might be able to get her out of there with some kind of made-up yarn. Get her out of the line of fire.”

            “Hollis doesn’t seem to mind killing people, you mean,” Artie said. “But she’d be more value to him as a hostage, wouldn’t she?.”

            “I don’t know,” Jim said, thinking as he spoke. “Hollis seems to act on the moment. He hasn’t thought things out. Look at when he killed Althea. He galloped off hell-bent for leather in the middle of the night. And then he killed Bartlett, most likely. Killed him in the heat of the moment because Bartlett might give him away.”

            “So if he did use Mrs. Deal as a hostage, it would probably be the same sort of thing he did with Young Toby–just took advantage of the circumstances.”

            “That’s what I think, yes. And that kind of man is particularly dangerous, because you can’t guess what he might do.”

            They walked swiftly up into the town, but found the sheriff’s office locked. “Looks like we’ll have to ask at the hotel,” Artie said. They glanced at each other in mutual understanding—much more likelihood of being seen by Hollis or Mikey. But there wasn’t much choice, other than to waylay people in the street and ask, and that would draw even more attention.

            The hotel lobby was empty, not even a clerk in sight. It wasn’t the kind of grand hotel where gentlemen gathered to converse, obviously. It was clean, though, and there was none of the musty smell they’d found so often in other small establishments. The chairs and tables were plain, nothing upholstered, no fancy carving, but the room felt respectable. It was certainly a place where an older widow would be comfortable.

            “Let me ask about her,” Artie said quietly, and Jim eased toward the fireplace, turning his back to the counter. He heard Artie press the bell, and a moment later the clerk’s question. “Can I help you, sir?”

            “I’m looking for Mrs. Deal,” Artie said, with his most ingratiating manner. “I have some information for her, and I understand that she lives here.”

            There was a pause, and then the clerk said, “She does live here. But we don’t like our guests to be disturbed with salesmen.”

            “I’m an employee of the government, my dear sir,” Artie said, sounding insulted. “I’m not a salesman. I wouldn’t dream of disturbing the lady. Perhaps you could send up to her with a message?”

            “If you’ll write something out, I’ll send it up, certainly. Here’s a sheet of paper you can use.”

            Jim risked a glance over his shoulder. Artie was scratching something on the paper, and when he finished, he folded it up and handed it to the clerk. “If you’d be so good as to convey this to Mrs. Deal immediately, your government will be most grateful,” he said smoothly.

            Jim could hear the clerk’s “Hmmph!” all the way across the room, but the man did call out, “Junior? Junior, get down here!”

            A boy of about ten came scampering down from the second floor to the landing, leaped onto the stair rail, and slid the rest of the way, jumping off at the last possible moment before what would have been very uncomfortable contact with the newel post. “Yeah, Pa?”

            The clerk gave him a severe frown. “Take this message up to Mrs. Deal. Tell her there’s a gentleman here to see her. And don’t you go poundin’ on her door! Knock perlite!”

            “Yes, Pa!” The boy tore off up the stairs, and Jim moved over to the counter.

            “Nice young fellow you have there,” he said pleasantly to the clerk.

            “You two together?” the man asked suspiciously. “I suppose you’re both gov’mint employees.” He said it in a way that suggested he didn’t believe a word of Artie’s spiel.

            “Would you like to see my badge?” Jim asked, with no change from his previous expression.

            “You’re lawmen?” the clerk asked, and his expression shifted. “Mrs. Deal ain’t done nothing wrong.”

            Jim nodded. “No, my partner told you the truth. We do have information for Mrs. Deal. We’re not here to cause any problems for her.”

            The man regarded them both for a moment, and then relaxed. “She’s a nice lady. Pays her bill on time and don’t cause trouble.”

            The boy came flying back, calling out, “She’s comin’ down, Pa!” and Jim gestured to Artie to move into the alcove at the end of the counter.

            He said softly to the clerk, “We don’t mean Mrs. Deal any trouble, but we are looking for a man who might be up there with her. We’re going to stay out of sight until she comes down and we’re sure no one is with her. Safer for her that way.”

            The clerk nodded, looking both suspicious again, and troubled. Jim came around to the other side of the counter and crouched down out of sight. He could see Artie, and Artie could see the staircase, but neither of them was visible.

            There was the sound of footsteps tapping on the wooden stairs, and then a woman’s voice. “Where’s this fellow that wants to talk about an inheritance? I don’t know anthing about no inheritance.”

            Artie’s hand moved in the Everything’s all right signal, and Jim stood up and smiled at an older no-nonsense face on a tall woman. “Mrs. Deal? We wanted to talk to you about Michaela. We’re worried about her. Could we step over here for a moment?”

            He’d decided the moment he saw her that an appeal to maternal instincts would be the best approach, and as always before, in spite of their recent differences, Artie was instantly in tune with him. “We think she may be in danger,” Artie said. “You seem to know her better than anyone else. We hoped you might help us.”

            Jim indicated a settee at the other end of the room from the clerk and the staircase, and Mrs. Deal walked over to it with obvious reluctance and suspicion. “Won’t you sit down?” Jim asked, but she folded her arms over her chest and gave him a long assessing stare.

            “Not ‘til you tell me what this is all about,” she said finally. “Why’re you so interested in Mikey? And what’s all this about an inheritance? Is it for me, or for her?”

            “It’s not a large amount,” Artie said. “Just a token, really. The government provides it for people when they’ve rendered some assistance.”

            “For you,” Jim said, guessing that she didn’t have any large source of funds. Her dress was clean, but old and no longer fashionable. The lines in her face suggested a life of hard work and emotional stress, and though she was probably not more than forty, silver was creeping into her hair.

            “Sounds to me more like a bribe,” she said, with unexpected perception.

            Artie shook his head. “We aren’t allowed to bribe anyone, ma’am. And I wouldn’t do it even we were. It’s just a way to say thank you when someone’s been helpful to us.”

            “I still don’t see why you’re interested in Mikey,” she said stubbornly. “She ain’t done nothing wrong.”

            “We don’t know that she has done,” Artie said. “We’re not accusing her of anything. But the man she’s been seeing, George Hollis, we believe he’s stolen a large sum of money. He may even be guilty of murder. We wouldn’t like to see Mikey mixed up in that. And if she’s hiding him, both of you may be in danger.”

            Mrs. Deal sat down quite suddenly, looking older than when she had first come down the steps. “That man!” she said. “I never liked him. There was always something slippery about him. Mikey thinks he’s in love with her, but I never believed it.” Her face turned fearful. “Murder? You mean Mr. Bartlett?”

            Artie nodded. “Yes, and perhaps Althea Landry over in Baker City. I don’t know whether you’ve heard about that.”

            Mrs. Deal’s mouth pursed up. “Oh yes, we’ve all heard of that. I won’t speak ill of the dead, ‘specially not when Mikey was workin’ for her, but no one’s sorry about that, not with her sharp tongue and sharper ways. Mr. Bartlett, though, he was a decent respectable man.”

            “Is Mr. Hollis in your rooms?” Artie asked. “We don’t want you or Mikey to be in danger when we capture him.”

            Mrs. Deal shook her head. “He isn’t there now, but he was a bit earlier. He and Mikey went out to try to buy a horse. He said his had gotten away from him and run off.”

            “Is there some way into your rooms besides these stairs?” Jim asked.

            “Yes, there’s a back staircase, outside. It goes up to the second floor, and then you go up the attic stairs to get to my rooms.”

            That’s what he’d been hoping for, of course. There was no cover inside the lobby, no way to wait for Hollis and Mikey without being seen. But outside, especially after dark fell, he and Artie could find some concealment. But what if Hollis didn’t come back?

            Again, he and Artie were thinking along the same lines. “Mrs. Deal,” Artie said, his face serious, “did Hollis say they’d be returning here? We don’t want you to be in the line of fire if we have to capture him in your rooms.”

            She nodded. “Yes, he left some packages here. He said they were too heavy to carry with him while he was buyin’ a horse, so he was gonna leave them with me, but he’d be back for them tonight.”

            Jim and Artie exchanged glances over her head. Could Hollis have left the money? It hardly seemed possible. But he’d left something important enough to come back for.

            “We don’t think you ought to go back to your rooms just now,” Jim said to her. “Would you wait here in the lobby until we’re sure you’ll be safe? I don’t think it will be very long. Hollis wants to get out of here, and I don’t think he’s going to wait around. He’s going to get his hands on a horse one way or another, and then, if we don’t stop him, he’ll be gone.”

            “And Mikey too, most likely,” Artie said.

            “I don’t want Mikey to get hurt,” Mrs. Deal said fearfully. “I never had no children. She’s like a daughter to me.”

            “We’ll do the very best we can to make sure nothing happens to her,” Artie assured her.

            Mrs. Deal didn’t look as though she felt very assured, but she did agree to wait in the lobby until one of them returned for her. They left the hotel in the darkening evening, and walked around the building to reconnoiter.

            “There are the stairs,” Artie said softly. “They look pretty flimsy, though. I don’t imagine Mrs. Deal ever goes in—.”

            He broke off, and Jim said, “Uh-oh.”

            A horse was tied behind the stairs. The conclusion was all too obvious. Hollis and Mikey had returned while they were speaking with Mrs. Deal in the lobby.

            “Think they know we’re here?” Artie asked, but Jim shook his head.

            “They wouldn’t have left the horse where we could see it if they did. Looks like they went straight up to her rooms. Come on—we probably don’t have much time. Stay a few steps back, though, so we don’t put too much weight on one area.”

            He led the way up the rickety stairs lightly and swiftly, hearing Artie’s steps below him. As Mrs. Deal had said, there was a door at the second level. But it was locked. An oversight? A way to discourage visitors, perhaps.

            “Wait a minute,” Jim called down to Artie. He leaned back and looked up toward the attic windows. A pipe, probably from a roof-mounted water tank, led down the wall about four feet out from the top step where he stood. Could he reach it? And even more important, would it hold his weight? He stretched out with one hand gripping the door knob and managed to get his other hand around the pipe. It seemed to be firmly attached, and he decided to take the chance.

            “Door’s locked,” he hissed at Artie. “You’ll have to get it open. I’m going up to that ledge under the attic window—see it?”

            Artie said, “Hm,” which meant he could see it perfectly well and didn’t like the idea. But he reached under his collar for his little case of lockpicking tools, and came up next to Jim on the landing.

            “I’ll check the windows,” Jim said. “Stay here after you get the door open. If I see them in there, I’ll signal you. You wait a couple of minutes, and then knock on the door in the hallway. Bang on it good and loud so it distracts them from this side of the room. As soon as I hear that, I’ll come through the window. It’s half open already, so I shouldn’t have any trouble with it.”

            “And what if either of us runs into something unexpected?” Artie wanted to know. “They aren’t in there after all, or they’ve got someone else with them? Or I have some problem between the second floor and the attic?”

            “I won’t make a move until I hear you bang on the door. If they aren’t there, I’ll come through the window and open the door for you. If they’ve got someone else with them—“ He stopped, because there was no good answer to that one. “I don’t see how they could,” he said finally. “Mrs. Deal is in the lobby, and we don’t have any reason to think anyone else is involved

in this.”

            “In other words,” Artie said, “we’re going to hope for the best. But what am I doing while you burst through the window? Assuming the hall door is locked, which it probably is.”

            Jim just grinned at him. “I’ve never known a locked door to stop you before.”

            He hooked the fingers of one hand into Artie’s belt, leaned over the two-story drop to the ground below and leaped easily out to the pipe. It quivered as it took his weight, but didn’t give way, and he went hand over hand as quietly as possible up the side of the wall. The ledge gave him a moment’s problem, because the pipe went off horizontally along its edge so he didn’t have anything to pull himself up with, and the ledge itself was narrow and greasy with what he guessed was bird droppings. He hung there for a moment, considering, and then swung back and forth sideways until he got one leg up over the parapet, with the momentum from his last swing still carrying him upward. He let go of the pipe, grabbed the window frame with one hand, and got his other hand under his body on the ledge. It was touch and go for a moment, but then he was safely balanced on one knee. He got carefully to his feet, back to the wall, and edged to the open window. Hollis’s voice came clearly into the night air, something about hurrying up, damn it! Jim couldn’t see Mikey from where he was standing, but it was clear who Hollis must be speaking to, and he signalled to Artie to go on up.

            He shifted over a bit to get a better view into the room, and what he saw made his blood run cold. It was the worst possible scenario. Mrs. Deal stood in the doorway to an adjoining room, a sewing basket in her hand. What the hell was she doing there, he wondered. She must have decided to run upstairs for something to occupy herself with while she waited in the lobby, assuming that Hollis and Mikey wouldn’t have returned yet. He looked back down to the landing, but it was too late, of course. Artie was already on the way up to the room. He could only pray that Artie would hear Mrs. Deal’s voice and realize that she was in the room.

            Hollis was rummaging in a bureau drawer, pulling out flat packages that he stacked on the top. It was the money, then, wrapped just as the bank officer in Baker City had described. Mikey stood in the middle of the floor, looking a bit lost. It was the first time Jim had seen her, and he could understand why she was often mistaken for a child. The red hair was pulled back severely with combs and pins, but it still escaped to curl wildly around her face. She couldn’t have been five feet tall, certainly no more than that. Few children would have looked as world-weary and bitter as she did, but except for her expression, she could easily be taken for a precocious twelve-year-old.

            “Mikey, you don’t want to leave, now, surely you don’t!” Mrs. Deal was saying, looking miserable and frightened.

            “I’m goin’ with George, Miz Deal. He loves me. We’re gonna get married.” Mikey didn’t look as certain as she sounded.

            “How’re you going to do it, without a horse of yer own? You can’t take the train, with every lawman in the territory lookin’ for—“

            She stopped, turning pale.

            Hollis swiveled around to stare at her. “What did you say? Where did you hear that?”

            “It’s—it’s what everyone’s sayin.’”

            “What are they saying?” he demanded, striding over to grip her arm. He shook her hard. “Who’s been talking to you?”

            “Georgie, don’t hurt her!” Mikey cried, running to Mrs. Deal’s side. “She don’t know nothing! Leave her alone!”

            Hollis ignored her. “You’ve been talking to those two from the train, haven’t you?” He shook her again. “What did they say?”

            “I don’t know no one from no train!” Mrs. Deal yanked her arm away. “I told you the truth. It’s what they’re sayin’ in the street and the shops, that you stole some money. Maybe you even killed Mr. Bartlett. That’s what everyone’s saying.’”

            She sounded convincing, Jim thought, with admiration for her courage and quick thinking. Hollis was obviously still suspicious, but after a long hard stare into her face, he thrust her away and began stuffing the packets of money into a pair of leather saddlebags.

            “You don’t know anything,” he said emphatically, without looking at her. “You didn’t see me, understand?”

            “I ain’t looking for trouble. I’ll just take my sewing and go back down. I was settin’ there talking to Mrs. Cotton. She’s waiting for me to come back.”

            “You aren’t going anywhere until I leave,” Hollis told her, with a hard voice. “You and Mikey are staying right here until I’m gone.”

            “No!” Mikey wailed. “You promised! You said I could come with you, and we’d get married, and I could have a beautiful weddin’ dress! I helped you, and you promised!”

            Three things happened at once.

            Mrs. Deal said, “I tried to tell you he wasn’t no good, Mikey.”

            Mikey grabbed Hollis’s arm, and several of the packets of money slipped from his hand and hit the floor, breaking open to scatter wrapped bills everywhere.

            And Artie knocked loudly on the hall door. A second later, he threw it open and charged into the room, gun in hand.

            Before Jim could leap through the window, Hollis had Mikey in a choke hold, his arm across her throat..

            “Don’t move a step, Gordon,” he said. “I could break her neck in a second.”

            “Georgie!” Mikey tried to squirm away, her face running with tears. “I thought you loved me! You’re hurting me!”

            Hollis ignored her. “Throw your gun down,” he ordered Artie. “Get over there with Mrs. Deal.”

            Jim stood helpless outside the window, watching for some moment when he could get into the room without Hollis seeing him. Hollis was turned half toward him, but there was enough light in the room that he wasn’t visible outside the window. He knew that Artie, given the option, would have placed himself so that Hollis would have to turn his back to the window in order to keep an eye on him. But with Mrs. Deal there, Artie couldn’t risk the likelihood that she would react when she saw Jim.

            “Throw your gun down!” Hollis yelled again. “Don’t think I won’t kill her.”

            He had forgotten the red hair. “You bastard!” Mikey screamed. One booted foot came up and then back, thrusting violently between Hollis’s legs. At the same time, she reached over her head and raked his face from brow to chin.

            Hollis staggered back, roaring incoherently, but instead of releasing her, he yanked her up off her feet, holding her entire weight with the arm across her throat. Mikey’s eyes bulged out and she went completely limp, but Jim was through the window and across the room before Hollis could do more than drop her body. He gave Hollis such a blow on the jaw that he was certain it would knock the man unconscious.

            To his amazement, though Hollis went flying backward into a small table and then onto the floor, he rolled drunkenly away from Jim and tried to get to his feet. Jim hauled him up by the collar and was ready to punch him again when someone plunged against him from behind. He heard Mrs. Deal’s hysterical, “Mikey!” and Artie’s wordless shout of warning, and then Hollis somehow managed to swing a wild roundhouse punch that hit the side of his head. Jim was off balance already, and although he didn’t fall, he couldn’t get enough energy behind his fist to do more than push Hollis away. Hollis went reeling toward the window, blood streaming from the scratches on his face. Artie was there suddenly, his revolver in his hand, and if Mrs. Deal hadn’t straightened up with Mikey in her arms, Artie would have knocked Hollis unconscious with the butt of the gun in another second. But he had to step sideways to avoid Mrs. Deal, and in that second, Hollis turned and went straight through the window, smashing glass and frame with his passage. Jim flung himself after Hollis, hanging far out of the window to try to see him on the ground below, but the light had gone and he couldn’t tell whether Hollis was lying dead, trying to crawl away, or—though it seemed impossible—uninjured and escaping. The man had a dozen lives, he thought savagely.

            He dodged around Artie and Mrs. Deal and went down the steps three at a time. At the first floor landing, he leaped over the rail, landed with a crash that brought the clerk running out of his corner, and flew through the door and around the side of the building. The sound of pounding hoofbeats was all that met him. Hollis was gone.

            A moment later, Artie came running around the corner of the building, breathing hard. “Don’t tell me he got away!” he said in obvious disbelief. “He should be dead after that fall!”

            “He’s like some kind of demon,” Jim said wearily, beginning to feel the sting of bruises and scrapes. “He fought like that when I caught him the other night. I almost didn’t stop him then.”

            “Like a panther,” Artie observed. He caught Jim’s arm and pulled him around the side of the building where there was a bit of light. “Come here and let me see your hand. It’s bleeding all over the place.”

            “Never mind me. What happened to Mikey? Is she badly hurt?”

            “I’m not sure,” Artie said. “I came running down after you. But the one glimpse I got of her didn’t look good. Guess we’d better get back up there.”

            “No, tell the clerk to get the doctor over here,” Jim instructed him. “And then find the sheriff, if you can. I don’t know why he and Taunton haven’t turned up yet, though they wouldn’t have been much help anyway. I’m going to saddle Dusty and see whether I can catch up with Hollis.”

            Artie nodded and disappeared, and Jim ran for the rail yard and their train. His right hand hurt abominably where he’d hit Hollis with it. The man must have a steel jaw, he thought. He had to use his left hand to let the ramp down, and to throw the blanket and saddle over Dusty’s back. He was going to be really aggravated if he’d broken one or more fingers—and on his gun hand, too, dammit!—but he had to put that worry aside and just get on with the job. He left the stable car wide open—risky, but Artie’s laboratory was locked and the other two horses weren’t worth the time it would take to secure the car again.

            Beyond the faint glow of lights in the town, just as the night before, he had to slow down and look for hoof prints. Unfortunately, the horse Hollis was riding this time wasn’t leaving a convenient trail for him to follow. He persevered until it was clear that he couldn’t tell Hollis’s mount from all the others that had ridden the dirt road recently. Hollis could be pounding on recklessly in the dark, or he could be hidden off the trail lying in wait for Jim to come after him. With great reluctance, Jim turned Dusty back toward town. Patience, especially when it meant giving up, wasn’t one of his strong points, but the war had taught him that there was a time for everything. The time to catch Hollis was tomorrow, in the daylight, with assistance from local law enforcement. After all, they had the money back. That wasn’t all he wanted Hollis for, by a long shot, but retrieving the money had been part of their assignment. Regardless of what he’d told Taunton, the likelihood was that the Secret Service would be happy to allow the local authorities to pursue Hollis for the murders. He and Artie would almost certainly be told to return to Washington with the government’s funds, and—like it or not—that would be the end of their involvement with George Hollis.

            What he found at the hotel changed his mind. A crowd of townspeople filled the small lobby, and Mrs. Deal sat on the settee at the end of the room, sobbing loudly, her apron over her face. Artie was coming down the stairs, and walked swiftly over to meet him. “Mikey’s dead,” he said somberly. “The doctor is upstairs, and the sheriff is getting up a posse. They want us to ride out with them in the morning.”

            Jim nodded. It was not unexpected, and it was what he was inclined to do anyway. Mikey’s death saddened him, though it was her own involvement that had brought it down on her. Still, she’d been very young, and the young made mistakes. Her callous murder roused even more anger toward Hollis. “Where is the money?” he asked, trying to keep his priorities straight. “We need to get it secured on the train.”

            “It’s in the hotel safe. The clerk doesn’t know what it is. I stuffed it all into the saddlebags and buckled them up.”

            “Good.” He wiped his brow with his right hand, wincing. “Does anyone need us right now?”

            “I don’t see why they should. Mrs. Deal’s friends are patting her back, Joe Taunton is writing everything down for posterity, and the sheriff doesn’t want us until daybreak.” He squeezed Jim’s shoulder. “You look like hell. Why don’t you go on back and fix yourself a drink. I’ll tie up whatever loose ends there are here and join you as soon as I can.”

            “Let me take the saddlebags with me, so you don’t have to walk through the streets with that much money. No sense in tempting fate.”

            “Good idea.” Artie turned toward the desk, beckoned to the clerk, and in a moment, came back to where Jim was standing, with the saddlebags over his arm. “I haven’t counted it,” he said. “I can’t swear it’s all there. But I grabbed all the money that was scattered around the floor, and I found two more packets in the bureau that Hollis hadn’t taken out yet.”

            Jim nodded. “We’ll count it later. Finding Hollis is the most important thing now.” He hesitated, not wanting to leave Artie. “Come on with me. Dusty can carry us both, or we can both walk.”

            Artie regarded him for a moment, then laid a hand on his arm briefly. “Let me tell the clerk we’re going back to the train. He can pass that on if anyone asks for us.”

            Jim watched while Artie went across the lobby and spoke to the clerk. He wasn’t certain why he didn’t want Artie out of his sight. Hollis was like a cornered animal, no telling what he might do. He could have circled around and come back into town. He could be hiding near the train, lying in wait for them, asuming they would have the money he had killed for. Jim didn’t want Artie walking alone through the dark streets, and he was too tired to search for justification for his feelings. He just wanted Artie near him, and safe.

            It struck him, as he stood there waiting for Artie to return, that he’d had no problem assigning Artie a risky part in the attempted capture. There seemed to be some fundamental difference between an action in which they both took part, and the thought of Artie walking alone into possible danger, though that made no logical sense. He didn’t normally watch over his shoulder to make sure Artie was all right, and he knew what kind of reaction he’d get from Artie if he started doing it now. It was too confusing for his bruised body and tired mind to figure out at the moment. In the morning, in the light—especially if they caught Hollis—he could make sense of his chaotic thoughts.

            Artie rejoined him, and they walked together through the town, leading Dusty and not talking much. “Mrs. Deal’s taking it pretty hard,” Artie said at one point. “I think I was right about Mikey. Hollis saw an unhappy girl and took advantage of her. She certainly aided and abetted him, but I don’t know that I’d call her a criminal.”

            “That makes it worse, doesn’t it?” Jim said, with a sigh. “If she hadn’t fought him, she’d probably still be alive.”

            Artie was silent for a moment. “She made her own decision.”

            “True. It just feels as though everyone Hollis has touched is dead, and all of them by his own hand. One knifed, one strangled–what happened to Mikey? A broken neck? He has a lot to answer for.”

            Artie said grimly, “No argument with you there.”

            They were back at the train, and to Jim, it looked just as he’d left it. He walked around the perimeter regardless, looking for any anomaly, anything out of place. But nothing seemed wrong, and when Barney and Big Toby came noisily up from the engine wanting to know if they could help, he relaxed and let them assist in getting the ramp up. The booby-trapped door to the parlor car was obviously undisturbed, and Artie went ahead of him to put the money away in their very secure safe.

            “Thanks, fellows, I appreciate it,” he said to the others, and bade them good night. He watched for a moment as they walked away together, laughing at something Big Toby said. Their casual friendship, on the surface, seemed like his and Artie’s own, a professional partnership that depended on skill and teamwork and good will toward each other. Yet there was so much more to his feelings about Artie that he didn’t know how to characterize their relationship. Even worse, the only person he would ordinarily have talked to about personal things was the one person whom he couldn’t speak to at all about these—Artie himself.

            He patted Dusty good night, took a swift glance into the other two stalls to make sure their occupants were all right, and went forward. Artie had lit a fire, and its small flame and cheery ambiance eased Jim’s tension a bit. He hung up his gunbelt, realized he had no idea what had happened to his hat, and sat down on the sofa to pull off his boots. He was normally too much of a gentlemen to remove his shoes in the parlor, but he’d jammed a toe inside one of the boots when he leaped from the landing in the hotel lobby, and he wanted to have a look at in better light than the small hanging lamp in his cabin.

            Artie brought him a tumbler of whiskey, neat, just as he liked it. “Drink that,” he told Jim firmly, “and then let me have a look at your hand. What did you do to your foot?”

            “Nothing serious.” Jim downed the whiskey and held out the glass. “Fix me another one?”

            Artie gave him a brief frown, but did as Jim asked. When he came back, he said mildly, “Not like you to swill it down like that. Where does it hurt?”

            “All over,” Jim said, with a small laugh. “Seriously, just my hand, and the toes on this foot.” His stocking was torn, and blood oozed from under the nail of his big toe. “I landed wrong when I jumped off the stairs. It’s nothing, though.”

            “Not as bad as your hand, certainly,” Artie observed. He carefully straightened out the curled fingers, nodding when Jim winced. “Looks like you cracked the knuckle on your middle finger. Maybe the ring finger too, hard to say for sure. I’ll walk up to the saloon and see if they have any ice. It’s going to swell pretty bad as it is.”

            “No—“ Jim began, but he couldn’t finish the sentence. He no longer knew where common sense ended and over-protectiveness began. “Pull the bell and get Barney or one of the others to go with you,” he said finally. “Or send one of them instead. They said to let them know if we needed anything.”

            Artie squatted down to look him fully in the face. “You’re not telling me something,” he said. “You think Hollis is likely to be out there?”

            “I think it’s possible. It was the money he was after all along. He didn’t care how many people he killed if they got in his way. Now we have the money.”

            Artie nodded soberly. “Then we’re all in danger, the crew as well. And you, particularly. So I’m not going off and leaving you alone. I’ll just wrap the hand tightly. If we can get some ice in the morning, we’ll soak it then.”

            He stood and walked over to the table, where he had put his little bag of first aid supplies. “I don’t know whether to holler at you or not,” he said, with his back to Jim. “It feels like you’re coddling me again, but you may have good reason for it. You’ve got to tell me why if you don’t want me to do something that seems completely innocuous to me.”

            He came back with a roll of bandage, a short piece of wood and a couple of pins. “Let me have your hand.”

            Jim had been rebuked, and rightfully so, and he still didn’t know what to say to Artie. He settled for a muttered, “Sorry,” and then, as Artie bent over his hand, he added, “I hadn’t thought it out yet when I told you not to go out. I just knew I didn’t like the idea of it.” He added, “Ow!” as Artie pulled the two middle fingers out straight and secured them to the stick he was using for a splint.

            “Sorry. You’ll live, though you won’t be punching anyone with that hand for a while.”

            “Or shooting them, either,” Jim said morosely.

            “Then you may have to depend on me a bit more,” Artie said, without looking up.

            Jim studied his bent head, the glossy brown waves of hair that he had always admired, the sturdy neck and strong shoulders. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he reached out to touch Artie’s hair. Waves of heat flooded over him, and he snatched his hand back. A gesture that would have been merely friendly in the past suddenly had overtones of greater intimacy than he was ready to contemplate.

            Artie didn’t seemed to notice. He checked to make sure the end of the splint wouldn’t irritate Jim’s palm, and then criss-crossed the bandage tightly around the hand and up Jim’s wrist “How does that feel?” he asked. “Too tight? I don’t want to cut off the blood.”

            “It’s—“ Jim cleared his throat and tried again. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”

            “You’re not fine at all,” Artie said softly. “Come on, buddy, time to get you in bed and off your feet.” He took Jim’s left elbow and pulled up gently. “No arguments, now. Listen to your Uncle Artie and do what you’re told for a change.”

            Jim normally hated to be the object of that kind of solicitude, but he had to admit it felt good at the moment. But he didn’t want to go to bed, even though he was exhausted and muzzy. He didn’t want even the thin panel of their cabin wall between them right now.

            “Not yet,” he said, resisting Artie’s urging. “Sit down here for a minute. You’ve got to be wiped out too.”

            Artie hesitated, but then put the roll of bandage aside and sat next to him on the sofa. “I’m not that tired,” he said. “You had the worst of it today. I was on the train most of the time that you were running back and forth. And I never really got into the fight at Mrs. Deal’s. I would have, but she kept jumping in front of me trying to get to Mikey.”

            “I know,” Jim said. “Just as well you didn’t. You might have a broken hand too. Or a broken head.”

            “Yes, well—“ Artie stopped, then said lightly, “Not as though it hasn’t happened before.”

            “Don’t want you to break your hand,” Jim insisted drowsily, full of whiskey and the heat of the fireplace and Artie’s presence. “You might not be able to play any more. I like to hear you play.”

            Artie reached over and took his bandaged hand, holding it lightly. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

            Jim couldn’t feel Artie’s fingers through the layers of cloth. It made the gesture less intimate, but at the same time frustrating, because he suddenly did very much want the sensation of those warm fingers on his hand.

            “That’s good,” he said huskily, and then, “I want to tell you something.” He’d made no conscious decision to tell Artie about Taunton and Bartlett. It just felt like the right time.

            “You’re hardly awake,” Artie said, laughing softly. “What is it?”

            “Bartlett… “ Jim said, uncertain how to begin. “And Taunton—they were… “ He stopped again, because they hadn’t ever really been… whatever the right word was.

            After a long moment, Artie said, with no inflection at all, “Lovers?”

            Jim blinked and came more fully awake. “What made you think that?”

            “No particular reason. Just something about your hesitation, perhaps. Because it seemed significant to you, yet you were reluctant to talk about it.”

            “They never were… lovers. Taunton said that Bartlett wanted it, but he was afraid people would talk. He felt guilty about it, though. Said that Bartlett wouldn’t have taken up with Hollis if he hadn’t made him feel… unloved.”

            Artie slid his hand down to where his fingertips and Jim’s were touching. “Did it upset you to know that about them?”

            “I don’t know,” Jim said honestly. “They didn’t seem like the kind of men—“ He stopped and shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

            “Like the men on street corners in some parts of Washington? Not all inverts are like that.”

            “Inverts,” Jim said slowly, testing the word. “Is that what they’re called?”

            Artie laughed lightly. “That’s one of the more polite terms. Or ‘deviants.’ You know the other words for them.”

            “Taunton and Bartlett weren’t like that. Taunton raised his son after his wife died. He was a good father, by the looks of the boy. I saw him in the newspaper office.”

            “Did he say he’d ever been … with men?”

            Jim nodded, slipping back to the warm twilight again. “Yes.”

            Artie’s hand stroked his fingertips gently. It wasn’t erotic, not with the pain in his hand, but it was a gesture of love. Was that what Bartlett had wanted? Not just sex, but love?

            “Does it bother you, what Taunton told you?” Artie persisted, and Jim took a deep breath and looked him in the face. Nothing was there but simple curiosity.

            “No. I suppose it ought to, but—no. They were both good respectable men, at least until Hollis showed up. Taunton blamed himself for Bartlett’s failure, but I think that was guilt and self-pity.”

            “I think you’re right,” Artie said quietly. “Thank you for telling me about them. It probably doesn’t make any difference now, but thank you anyway.

            Jim nodded and closed his eyes.

            “C’mon, James,” Artie said, his voice full of love, “you’re falling asleep. Time for bed.”

            He let Artie help him up, guide him to his cabin, undress him like a child, and press him down to the bed. Later, there was a vague notion that Artie had stroked his hair until he fell asleep, but he wasn’t certain enough of it to be sure he hadn’t dreamed it.

            At daylight, Artie shook him awake. “Jim! Wake up, the posse is getting ready to ride out.”

            He pulled himself up from a dream in which he and Artie had been lying close together in the same bed. The details of the dream fled away the moment he opened his eyes and saw Artie’s concerned face. “Wha—?”

            “I’ve called you twice, and the second time you said you were awake and getting up. Are you all right?”

            Jim pushed himself up blearily. “Yeah. I will be with some coffee in me, at any rate.” He could smell it brewing. His hand hurt, but not enough to stop him from riding with the posse.

            “All right, I’ll bring you a cup. We need to get going, or they may leave us behind.”

            Jim stood, staggering a bit, but on his feet. Getting dressed quickly wasn’t possible with his hand in the splint, and Artie, coming in with a cup of coffee, set it down on the nightstand and took the shirt out of his fumbling hand. “Stick your arm in—no, don’t argue. You’d help me if it was the other way around. Stand still and let me get your trouser buttons and belt.”

            He dressed Jim rapidly and efficiently. “Where are your boots? Never mind, they’re still in the parlor. Did you put stockings on? Yes, I see you did. Drink your coffee and I’ll get the boots.”

            By the time Artie returned, Jim had drunk most of the cup, hot though it was. He took the boots from Artie and donned them himself, and then led the way to the door.

            “Here’s your gun belt,” Artie said, lifting it down from its nail, and Jim saw with astonishment that Artie had remounted his holster on the left side. Artie waved away his thanks, told him to lift his arms so Artie could buckle it around him, and tossed his hat to him from the side table.

            “Where’d you find my hat?” Jim demanded, inordinately pleased to see it.

            “Joe Taunton brought it this morning. He found it in Mrs. Deal’s rooms. Come on, let’s go.”

            Artie had even saddled the horses and led them out. Jim blinked—he must have been a lot more deeply asleep than he had thought, to have let all this go on without waking up. Artie’s words from the night before, about depending more on his partner, came back to him, and he smiled ruefully to himself. It didn’t look as though he was going to have much choice about it.

            The rest of the posse, with the sheriff at its head, had gathered in front of the largest saloon. “You two ready, then?” Walker called, as they rode up. “We’re going to break up into two groups. I’ll lead one, and West, can you take the other one? You know Hollis, and what he’s likely to do.”

            Jim nodded. “Sure. We’ll go back toward Baker City, since he had connections there too.”

            “Fine. Gordon, you ride with me. That way both groups will have one of you federal men.”

            Jim had his mouth open to object, saw Artie looking at him, and shut it again. The sheriff’s reasoning was perfectly logical. In the past, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to keep Artie with him. “All right. When are we meeting back here?”

            Walker considered that. “For this first day, let’s plan on coming back here by nightfall. If we don’t find anything, we’ll talk about whether to stay out overnight.” He pointed at his men. “Johnson, Simmons, Taylor, you go with West. Donny, too, but let your brother come with me.”

            A fair tow-headed boy kicked his horse’s side and urged it sideways toward Jim. He looked too young for the job, but handled his horse expertly, and Jim stifled whatever objection he might have made to the boy’s youth. They all had to learn at some point.

            “Let’s head out, then,” he said. “We’ll follow the railroad until we get to that long gorge between here and Baker City. That’s a good hiding place, so we’ll check it out thoroughly.”

            “Lionel Gorge,” someone said. “That’s what they call it around here.”

            Whatever it was called, Hollis wasn’t there. There was no sign of him anywhere between North Powder and Baker City, and no one in Baker City itself would admit to having seen him. As Althea Landry’s presumed murderer, he probably didn’t have many friends there anyway. Jim called a halt to the search as the sun began to slip behind the hills. They would have just enough time to return to North Powder before full dark.

            In North Powder, the story was the same, no sign of Hollis whatsoever. The sheriff and his group had ridden up the rail line to Crooks, spreading out as far on each side of the tracks as possible, just as Jim’s group had done between North Powder and Baker City. Hollis could certainly have headed off away from the tracks, but the rail line passed between wide and open fields of tall prairie grass where a rider would have left a clear trail. Hollis could have abandoned the horse and struck off on foot, but no one thought he was going to do that.

            “Spoil his pretty clothes,” said one of the men with barely veiled contempt, and everyone nodded.

            Unease had been growing in Jim all day. Hollis wasn’t one to depend on his own resources. As Taunton had said of him, he used people. Only desperation would prompt him to take off on his own, as he had done after killing Althea Landry. He might well have ridden several miles out of town after that leap from Mrs. Deal’s window, but Jim was convinced, after neither party found any sign of him, that he hadn’t traveled very far. He’d gone to ground somewhere nearby, perhaps even in North Powder itself. Whether he was planning another attempt on the money, or meant to force someone to help him escape, Jim couldn’t decide, but it had to be one of the two.

            At the train, Jim put their horses up while Artie went forward to telegraph Washington about the day’s events. A dark mood had overtaken him, and he did the chores with half his mind, the other half flitting between Hollis and his victims: Bartlett, fat and unloved; little Mikey, who hated her red hair and just wanted a pretty wedding dress; Althea Landry, denied a respectable marriage by her father’s debts (and were those, Jim wondered, caused by Hollis?). How many had there been before these three? He thought grimly that he was going to make sure there weren’t any more.

            But when he finished in the stable and hung up his hat and gun in the parlor, Artie handed him a decoded telegraph. As he had feared, Washington wanted no more part of Hollis. Return immediately with the money, new assignment awaiting.

            “I asked for clarification,” Artie said, sounding irritated. “They said Hollis was now a ‘local problem.’”

            Jim sighed. “No arguing with them, I suppose.”

            “Appears not. I did say that Hollis was certain to cause trouble again if he wasn’t caught

now, but they insisted that was a local problem too.”

            “Damn.”

            “I told Barney we’d need to head out in the morning. He’s working with the stationmaster

to get a route for us.”

            Jim poured a sizable slug of whiskey into a glass and downed it in a couple of swallows, dissatisfaction eating at him. He hated to leave loose ends, and Hollis was a huge one. And he had to admit that he wanted to see the man dead. He seldom felt so strongly about the men they pursued, even some of the other murderers. But Hollis’s crimes had been personal ones. He’d intended to hurt his victims, to defraud them, to make them miserable. He deserved to suffer a similar fate, and they were not going to be allowed to bring him to it.

            “Damn,” he said again, but under his breath. No point in troubling Artie with his ill temper. Yet discontent nagged at him all evening, and kept him awake half the night. Between that and the pain in his hand, he hardly slept, and woke in the morning with premonitions of trouble.

            The day began well, from an official point of view, at least. Barney came back to tell them that the train had clearance to Portland, and would have a full head of steam within an hour. Artie went shopping in the town’s one small general store and mill, returning with apples, cabbages and potatoes, and a pair of freshly butchered chickens. Jim arranged for Hollis’s horse, which was still in their stable car, to be sold. “Give the money to Mrs. Deal,” he told Taunton, who had agreed to handle the sale. “It won’t make up for losing Mikey, but it should make life a bit easier for her.”

            They pulled out at ten o’clock on the dot, and by evening, they were in Pendleton, on the Umatilla River. The intention had been to go on to Boardman before stopping, so they were surprised to feel the train slow and then stop at the small station. Artie was reaching for the speaking tube when there was a knock at the front passage door, and Jim opened it to find Little Toby on the landing.

            “Mr. Dawson says there’s a yellow signal ahead,” he said, breathless from his climb across

the coal car and water tender. “He’s got to find out why before we go on.” Barney was “Mr. Dawson” to Little Toby.

            Jim thanked him and closed the door. “Artie,” he called, “I’m going to check on the horses while we’re stopped. It probably won’t be long—Barney’s asking about the signals.”

            Artie stuck his head out of the galley, wiped a streak of chicken gravy off his chin, and nodded. “Good idea. And if you see anyone selling onions, we’re out. I couldn’t get any in North Powder.”

            Jim grinned at him, touched his arm briefly as he passed, and went on through to the stable. They were back to being comfortable with each other, and if Artie featured in his dreams more than before, it was something he could live with.

            The horses were restless. Even Dusty, normally the most even-tempered horse Jim had ever owned, whickered anxiously when he entered, and Artie’s roan mare was pawing the door of the loose box. There seemed no reason for their state of nerves, but Jim had learned to trust Dusty. He glanced around the car, trying to find anything that might have spooked them. A rat, lured in by the grain? Perhaps a snake, chasing a rat or mouse. The only thing he could see was that the bales of hay at the end of the car, secured with straps in a wooden enclosure, seemed oddly jumbled. He knew they had been neatly stacked before. He took one step toward them, heard a whisper of noise behind him, and blinding pain swept over him for just an instant before he fell into dark.

            He woke lying on the sofa in the parlor car, disoriented and with a roaring headache. The train was moving slowly, and by the fading light, it must be mid evening. What the hell had happened to him? He tried to sit up, and found, to his astonishment, that his hands were tied—no, cuffed—behind him. He pulled on them and felt the rigid grip of steel.

            “Stay there,” said an all-too-familiar voice. Hollis. “I’ll fasten you to the legs of the sofa if you try to get up again.”

            “Artie,” Jim croaked. Where was Artie? He twisted around to look, and found Artie sitting at the table, his face wiped of all expression. This was bad, then. Hollis stood across the room, holding Jim’s gun.

            “Your partner is fine,” Hollis said. “You’ll be fine too, as long as you don’t cause any trouble. We’re going to Portland, just as you intended. I’ll be leaving your company there. Until

we arrive, you’re staying in the handcuffs. You’re too dangerous to have your freedom. Gordon has already proven he’ll do whatever I tell him as long as I don’t hurt you. When we get to Portland, I’ll cuff him too, and then I’ll leave. You can get yourselves out of them, I’m sure. But

it will take you long enough that you won’t ever find me again.”

            Jim wasn’t tempted to any of the usual cliches. You’ll never get away with this wouldn’t cut any butter with Hollis anyway, and the heck of it was that Hollis might very well get away with it. Portland wasn’t as large a town as, say, San Francisco, but convincing a probably overworked police department to search it for a man who hadn’t yet done anything wrong there wasn’t going to be easy. Add that to that the fact that Washington wasn’t really interested any more in Hollis, and he could disappear into the city without much trouble.

            Before he could say anything, though, the train slowed to a stop. “What the hell—“ Hollis growled. He gestured at Artie. “Get on the speaking tube and find out why we’ve stopped.

            Artie stood obediently, pulled the wire to get the crew’s attention, and took down the tube. “Donald?” he said. “Why have we stopped?”

            They’d had one or two engineers in the past who were intelligent enough to know something was wrong if they were addressed by an obviously incorrect name. Barney probably wasn’t one of them, no matter how skilled he was in his job. But it was worth a try.

            Artie listened for a moment. Then, “Thank you, Donald. I guess we’ll just have to wait.”

            He put the tube back into its holder. “The engineer says the track ahead has water over it. He’s sending the fireman ahead to see whether the bridge is safe. He says he doesn’t think the water is too deep on the tracks, but we can’t go ahead until we know the bridge hasn’t been washed out, or weakened by the flood waters.”

            “Rot!” Hollis exclaimed. “The Umatilla never floods this time of year. It’s too late. You’re playing some kind of trick.”

            Artie shrugged, and gestured toward the speaking tube. “Ask him yourself.” His left eye closed slowly and re-opened.

            It was true, then. Jim blinked twice to show that he’d understood. They were trapped here with Hollis, who had already demonstrated how poorly he dealt with being thwarted or confined. On the other hand, the longer they were stopped here, the better chance they had of overcoming him one way or another.

            “I’m hungry,” Jim said. “Weren’t you fixing lunch, Artie?”

            “Hours ago,” Artie said, with an ironic edge to his voice. “Hollis ate yours.”

            “Bastard,” Jim said conversationally to Hollis. “You might have left me some.”

            He’d noticed before that Hollis liked to talk. He liked to brag, and Jim hoped that if he was concentrating on himself, he might pay less attention to them.

            Hollis just laughed. “Your partner is a good cook. I’ll have him fix us some dinner before long.”

            “I want something now,” Jim complained. “My stomach is rumbling.”

            “Too bad,” Hollis said unsympathetically. “And sit down, Gordon. I don’t want either of you out of my sight. That’s why I didn’t lock you in the cell in the stable, West. You’re too likely to have some secret way of getting out.”

            Jim had been wondering about that. The cell would have been a lot more secure than these handcuffs. He already had one hand nearly free. Hiding something to get them out of their own cell was a good idea, too, though he wasn’t going to let Hollis know they hadn’t thought of it themselves.

            Artie obviously was thinking along the same lines—encourage Hollis to talk. “Pretty smart,” he said to Hollis. “Of course we can get out of the cell. But most people wouldn’t expect us to have fixed it so we could.”

            Hollis smirked at them, and the gun he was holding wavered a bit. Jim wasn’t quite free of the cuff yet, and he wasn’t going to take a chance on anything until he was fully ready. He bided his time.

            “We could do with more coffee,” Artie said. “Jim isn’t going anywhere. He’ll be weak as a baby for a while, after that crack on the head. You could stand in the corridor and watch us both while I make some.”

            Jim had in fact been concerned about his ability to fight Hollis. His head hurt abominably, his right hand throbbed, and with the heavy bandage on it, he couldn’t get it out of the cuff. So he would have only his left hand to fight with. He could still kick, though, and he could swing the cuff on his right hand with effectiveness. If he could stand up, of course, with his head whirling and red spots still dancing before his eyes.

            Hollis shrugged and waved the gun at Artie. “Go ahead, then. I wouldn’t mind some more myself. But don’t try anything. I’d just as soon shoot you as not.”

            Oddly, that sounded less threatening than anything he’d said so far, and Jim reflected again on the fact that all of Hollis’s victims had been killed up close. Killed with Hollis’s hands, or with something in his hands, like the letter opener with which he’d stabbed Bartlett. He didn’t seem as comfortable with a gun as most men in the west. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it if he felt threatened and it was the only weapon available to him. But his preference for hand-to-hand violence was a potential weakness that Jim could exploit against him.

            Artie stood carefully, keeping an eye on the gun, and moved into the corridor leading to the galley. His gaze swept back over Jim for just a second, but Jim shook his head very slightly. He didn’t quite have his left hand free, and he didn’t yet trust his balance. They could wait another few minutes.

            Just as Hollis stepped into the corridor behind Artie, the train jerked into motion, and then just as suddenly stopped again. Hollis swayed and threw out his gun hand for balance, and Artie instantly took advantage of the situation. He snatched up the kettle of hot water on the stove and threw it into Hollis’s face. If Jim hadn’t gotten his hand free at just that moment, Hollis might well have killed Artie. He staggered back, screaming in rage, and then swept the gun over his head and down at Artie. As Jim had suspected he might, he was using the gun as a bludgeon rather than for its intended purpose. But Jim had ripped his hand free from the cuff, leaving flesh and blood behind, and he flung himself the best he could at Hollis. The gun went off, and he heard Artie cry out, but he was oblivious to anything but Hollis.

            Again, the man fought as though possessed, and this time, Jim was no match for him. Hollis knocked him back against the couch and in an another instant had his hands around Jim’s throat. Jim scrabbled at him, but Hollis’s fingers were amazingly strong. In a last desperate attempt to save himself, Jim swung the handcuffs hanging from his right hand in a long arc against Hollis’s head. Hollis blinked and jerked his head, but didn’t release him. Jim’s vision was fading into red, when the pressure against his jugular and windpipe suddenly gave way. He gasped, saw Hollis falling and then leaping up again, and saw Artie with the kettle and a poker from the fireplace. It wasn’t clear which one he had hit Hollis with, but he raised the poker with the clear intent to smash Hollis again, and Hollis scuttled away from him and ran for the end of the car.

            By the time Jim was on his feet, with Artie’s assistance, Hollis had disappeared into the fading light of nightfall. But Jim was determined to find him this time. Washington might not want him any more, but Jim did. “Come on,” he yelled at Artie. “He can’t be far ahead of us.”

            He staggered out into the twilight, looking on either side of the tracks for any sign of Hollis. On one side, barely visible, were two houses. If Hollis had gone into either of them, the occupants were in danger. He chose the first, but it had clearly been abandoned long ago. There was only one empty room and the remnants of a staircase.

            He turned on a heel, ran past Artie and out into the night again. The other house was dark, but looked as thought it was in use. Flower pots sat on the porch and in the fitful gusts of wind, he could see curtains blowing at the windows. The front door stood open, and Hollis had almost certainly gone inside. Jim stepped cautiously up onto the porch. To his surprise, the whole structure shook.

            Behind him somewhere, Artie called urgently, “Jim! The house is right on the edge of the water!”

            He heard Artie, but he also heard Hollis’s footsteps inside. All right, the house was on the edge of the water, but it wasn’t yet in the water. He’d had enough of Hollis. Enough of the mindless killing, enough of the arrogance. If this was Hollis’s last stand, Jim was going to make sure he didn’t come out of it alive. There had been few times in his life when he pursued a criminal with the conscious intent to kill him, but this was one of them.

            He stood still for a moment in the middle of the parlor, listening. There were creaking sounds from his left, but that could be from the house shifting on its foundation. Then he heard footsteps going up the stairs.

            Before he could move, Artie grabbed his arm. “The house isn’t safe. Come on!”

            Jim shook him off. “I’m going to finish this bastard off once and for all. Go on back to the train and get Barney and Big Toby.”

            Artie hesitated, and Jim ran out of the room into an adjacent hallway. Steps led upward, and he took them two at a time. Almost to the top, he felt the house tremble mightily. The steps moved sideways, throwing him against the bannister. Thankfully, it didn’t give way. This time common sense prevailed, and he pulled himself upright and began a careful descent toward the first floor. To his dismay, he felt Artie’s hand on his back. “Come on,” Artie said, almost in his ear. “I’ve got you.”

            “Go on, get out!” he shouted, but it was too late. The house gave one last huge shudder and collapsed around them. In the chaos, he heard a thin scream that sounded like Hollis, but he was more concerned about keeping his balance than anything else. In the end, his feet went out from under him and he slid sideways into a screeching, groaning nightmare that seemed to go on forever and ever.

            He was dead. He had to be dead. He couldn’t feel his feet, though he was certain he was upright. His right arm was pinned—it wouldn’t move at all. Something pressed against the back of his head, pushing it down to an uncomfortable angle, and he could feel a flowing warmth down one leg that was almost certainly blood. If he wasn’t dead, he was probably going to be before long.

            Artie! Oh, God, where was Artie?

            “Ar—“ he tried, but his mouth was full of dust and grit. He coughed, rinsed his mouth with saliva, tried again. “Artie, where are you?”

            There was no answer, and he couldn’t see a thing, but just below him, he heard a sudden raspy intake of air, and then another and another. Something moved against his shoulder, moved in synch with the breathing, and he realized suddenly that Artie was right there, pressed against him. “Artie?” He reached out with his left hand, pretty much the only part of him that he could move, and found Artie’s face. “Artie! Artie, can you hear me?”

            Artie took two more choking breaths, jerking his head upward each time, and exploring further, Jim realized why. Though Artie’s back seemed to be resting on something, there was a complete void under his head. He levered Artie’s head upward with his arm, scrabbling for something he could grab and hold on to, and found a narrow ledge almost at arm’s length, barely deep enough to get his fingers into. He didn’t know how long he could hold his arm there, but for now, at least, he could keep Artie’s head in a more normal position.

            With his head supported, Artie breathed much more easily, though he was still unconscious. His face was almost against Jim’s, and the faint warmth of his breath fanned Jim’s lips every time he exhaled. Jim took a long shuddering breath himself, and assessed their situation. The house was clearly not stable. It creaked and groaned and vibrated. Somewhere beyond them, rushing water hissed and burbled, and it was probably only a matter of time before what remained of the structure was swept away into the fast moving river.

            Above and around them he could see nothing. It was only two days past the full moon, and the sky had been clear, so if there were any openings to the outside, there should have been some light, however dim. So they were well and truly trapped this time, with little likelihood of a quick rescue.

            “Artie,” he said again softly. Waking up into this horror wasn’t something he would wish on anyone. But if there was any possible way to get out, he needed his partner conscious.

            Artie said, “Mmph,” though it wasn’t clear whether he was speaking or just moaning.

            “Can you hear me, Artie?”

            Artie exhaled, coughed, and then suddenly began to thrash and struggle. Something shifted and Jim’s head was no longer pressed down, but Artie screamed and went rigid.

            “Hold still, Artie! Don’t move!”

            Artie gasped, held his breath, gasped again, clearly in severe pain. “Jim?” His voice was barely recognizable.

            “Right here. Don’t move.”

            “Don’t—think—I can.” Every word was obviously an effort. “Where—?”

            “Somewhere in the house. It fell down on us. I can’t tell where we are.”

            “You—all right?”

            “I can’t move, and I’m bleeding somewhere, but that’s all.”

            There was a long silence, punctuated only by Artie’s strained and erratic breathing. Then Artie said, his voice under better control, “Doesn’t look good, hm?”

            “No,” Jim said bleakly. “Not right now, anyway..” He wanted to say, “I’ll get us out,” but he’d be lying, and Artie would know it. “I’m sorry, Artie.”

            “Sorry?”

            “You warned me the house wasn’t safe. If I hadn’t kept going after Hollis, we wouldn’t be

here now. You wouldn’t be here now.”

            He felt Artie’s head turn toward him. Artie’s lips were almost touching his. “My decision, James,” Artie said very softly. “I didn’t have to run into the house after you.”

            “Wish you hadn’t.”

            “Well—I wish I hadn’t too, because if I wasn’t stuck in here, I could be going after help to get you out. I should have listened and done what you said.”

            “Couldn’t do anything before morning, and someone will turn up then anyway.” Jim wasn’t going to have Artie blaming himself for this.

            Artie let out a long breath. “So, what do we do now?”

            “I’m afraid to move,” Jim said. “Something fell on you a minute ago, didn’t it?”

            “Feels that way. My right leg hurts like hell.”

            He felt Artie wriggle a bit. “Be careful!”

            “Just seeing what’s still working.” After a moment, he added, “My right arm is completely trapped, can’t move it at all. I can move my left hand but something’s on my elbow. Doesn’t hurt—just won’t let me move my arm. And my hips seem to be pinned under something too.”

            “How about your left leg?”

            “Can’t move it, but there’s not a lot of pain. Whatever is on my hips probably has it

trapped too. I seem to be lying more or less horizontal.”

            They were essentially at right angles to each other, Jim realized. He was standing—and he could definitely feel his feet now, tingling and twitching like the devil. Artie was lying in a pocket of debris, roughly at his shoulder level.

            “What is my head on?” Artie asked suddenly.

            “My arm.“

            “Oh. I thought it felt softer than the rest of what I’m lying on.”

            They were silent for a moment, and then Artie asked, ‘You have any idea what happened to Hollis?”

            “No. I thought I heard him yell when the house came down, but I can’t be sure.”

            Artie said, “They’ll realize we aren’t on the train. They’ll come looking for us.”

            “Or the owners of the house will come back. Someone will come. Barney will worry if he can’t get us on the speaking tube, especially after you called him by the wrong name.”

            He could feel Artie shrug slightly. “I didn’t know whether he would notice that, or just think I’d forgotten his name. Figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

            “How’s your leg now?” Jim asked, trying to change the subject.

            “Hurts,” Artie said shortly.

            There didn’t seem to be much to say, and for a long while, there was no sound but their breathing. Then, “What was that?” Artie asked suddenly. “I thought I heard a voice.”

            “I did too,” Jim said. “Hallooo! Anyone out there?”

            From over their heads came a long groan. “Oh, God, help me!”

            “It’s Hollis!” Artie said incredulously. “Won’t the bastard ever just die?”

            Jim was thinking pretty much the same. “The only thing worse than being trapped here is being trapped here with Hollis.”

            Hollis yelled, “Someone help me, I can’t hold on much longer!”

            “Feel free to let go then,” Artie shot back. “Hope you can swim!”

            “Gordon? Get me out of here!”

            “Not a chance! You got yourself in, you can get yourself out.” Jim noticed that Artie wasn’t admitting they were trapped too. Just as well. They didn’t need Hollis gloating over their shared fate.

            A scuffling noise sounded above them, and timbers shifted again. “Jesus!” Artie whispered. “He’s going to put us all in the river.”

            But nothing more moved, and a moment later, Hollis called, “You’re stuck in here too, aren’t you! Well, you won’t get me now. I see how to get out, and when I do, I’m going to make sure what’s left goes straight into the water. Let’s see you get out of that, hahahaha!”

            They could hear him scrambling around overhead.

            “Wait a minute,” Artie yelled. “You could at least tell us a couple of things. Things we couldn’t figure out. It won’t matter now if we know.”

            There was a brief moment of silence, and then Hollis’s voice again. “I haven’t got time to run my mouth.”

            “Just tell us about Bartlett then,” Artie called back to him. “Did you kill him? Did Mikey help you?”

            They could almost see Hollis amused negation. “Hell, no. I mean yes, I killed him, but Mikey didn’t do anything besides look in the back window and distract him, and she didn’t do that on purpose. She was trying to get my attention without Bartlett knowing she was there. He didn’t like her.”

            “He was jealous of her, wasn’t he?” Jim put in.

            “How do I know!” Hollis sounded annoyed. “He didn’t need to be. She wasn’t anything to me.”

            “And Althea Landry? Did she threaten to expose you?”

            “The stupid bitch ordered me to give her half the money. Said I owed it to her for the money her father lost.” They could hear him moving around above them. Bits of small debris fell around them, but the structure held. “But I don’t share, so don’t you two get any ideas of trying to make a deal with me.”

            “You won’t get any money at all without a deal with us,” Artie said, but as much as Hollis obviously valued the money, it was clear that he would give up money for freedom any day.

            “I’m almost out of here,” Hollis yelled. “Good-bye—“ His voice broke off. “No, no!”

            There was a strangled scream, muffled thudding noises, and a horrible splashing crunch. And then only silence. After a long moment, Artie said, “That may have been the end of him at last.”

            Jim was thinking, Well, you got what you wanted, and look what you traded for it.

            “Jim?”

            Jim said heavily, “I wouldn’t have paid this price for it.”

            Sounding puzzled, Artie asked, “Then why did you run into the house after him?”

            “Not my life, Artie. Yours.”

            Artie grew very still. Then he turned his head toward Jim’s, so that they were almost touching. “Wouldn’t be much fun without you,” he said. “Remember what you said after the cave-in? That we’d be together?”

            Jim mumbled, “Didn’t count on it being my fault.”

            “Hush. I made my choices a long time ago. I could have walked away the first time you risked your life with some crazy stunt. I chose to stay.” He paused, then added, “We’ve been through a lot together, James, some good, some bad. We’ll be together for this too.”

            There was such finality in his voice that Jim wanted to weep. After the cave-in, to reassure Artie about the future, he’d said, I’d get us out of it. He’d promised Artie. And now, unless some miracle occurred, he wasn’t going to keep that promise.

            He said thickly, “I can’t move anything but my left hand. I can’t get you out.”

            Artie pressed his cheek against Jim’s. “Stop. Don’t ruin this time with self-recrimination.”

            Jim took a deep breath. “You’re right.” He attempted a laugh. “I’ll have to let someone else rescue us, darn it. Can’t be a hero after all.” It was a poor effort at humor, and Artie didn’t reply. A little hesitant because he wasn’t sure he should bring this up, Jim asked, “You’re not upset about being trapped… I mean—“

            ”I know what you mean. Upset, sure. Scared shitless? Not with you here.” After a moment, Artie added, “It’s not that I want you here, you understand.”

            “Yeah.”

            “I—depend on your strength,” Artie said, surprising him a bit. “I know it’s going to get you out of whatever pickle you’re in, but I depend on it for me too.”

            Jim hardly knew what to say. He depended on Artie for such a multitude of things that he could no longer imagine doing this job without him. It hadn’t occurred to him that Artie might have similar feelings. “I depend on you too, you know,” he said huskily. “You’re always right there with whatever I need, whether it’s food, or the right thing to say to someone, or just another fist in a brawl. I don’t know what I’d do if—“ He stopped, because he didn’t want to say, “If you weren’t there some day.”

            Artie said softly, “I know.” He turned his head against Jim’s shoulder. “You have the strongest arms of anyone I’ve ever known. You pulled me right out of that cave the other day. I won’t ever tease you about body building again.”

            “Brains and brawn, that’s us,” Jim said, knowing it for the inane comment it was but unable to come up with anything more. Artie’s words touched him deeply, and he didn’t have words for what he was feeling—protective and helpless all at once, filled with the need to get Artie safely out of here, and profoundly frustrated at his inability to do so.

            “Don’t sell yourself short,” Artie said. “You’ve got brains too, when you choose to use them. But I’m damn grateful for the brawn most of the time. And don’t kick yourself for not being able to use it now. Whatever happens… “ He paused, and then added, “I feel safe. Crazy, maybe, but that’s how I feel. Because of your strength.

            “Crazy, yeah,” Jim said thickly, because there was nothing at all he could say to that.

            Neither of them spoke for a while. The air was close with their exhalations, though they were clearly not going to suffocate. Jim’s right arm was losing its sensation from the weight on it, and his left arm was beginning to feel the strain of supporting Artie’s head. It seemed to him that the bleeding from his leg had stopped, which was a relief.

            Because he needed to keep the silence and the dark and the possible future at bay, Jim said, “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you… Taunton said something about us. When he was talking about Bartlett.”

            “What was that?”

            “He said—he said he thought we were… lovers.”

            Artie chuckled very softly. “Did he, now. Did you ask him why he thought that?”

            “He said we didn’t—I don’t know if I recall his exact words. That we weren’t careful not to touch each other.”

            “Very observant man, that Taunton.” After a moment, Artie added, “It was really disconcerting at first, you know. Your touching.”

            “Was it? You never said anything.”

            Artie chuckled again. “You might have stopped if I had.”

            “Why was it disconcerting?” He was unreasonably pleased that Artie wouldn’t have wanted him to stop.

            There was a little pause, as though Artie was deciding how to answer the question. Then he said, “Perhaps my family was just more formal than some. My father used to shake my hand—he never hugged me.”

            Jim laughed. “Believe me, my father never hugged me either. Though it would have been nice if he had.” He stopped for a moment. “I never really gave it any thought. It just seemed natural to touch your arm or your shoulder when we were talking, or walking along together. You never seemed to mind so I just—kept doing it.”

            He’d done more than that, he knew. He’d laid his arm across the back of the sofa when they sat together, letting it rest lightly against the fabric of Artie’s jacket. He’d touched Artie’s hand, or sometimes his knee, to draw his attention to something. They had walked along with Jim’s arm slung over Artie’s shoulder, touching all the way from shoulder to hip. And they had hugged many times, in greeting, in relief at finding the other alive, in the simple joy of some shared pleasure.

            My God! he thought. No wonder Taunton made assumptions about us.

            And what on earth must Artie have thought, Jim wondered suddenly. Was he uncomfortable with the touching because he was simply unused to it, or because he thought Jim was—making advances? And what did it mean that he’d had no objection to it? Not once could he recall Artie ever showing displeasure at his touch. It slowly came to him that if Artie had thought he was soliciting some kind of intimacy, and that if Artie had not wanted it as well, he’d have had no trouble whatever letting Jim know that fact.

            The realization left him a bit breathless at first. He was gradually coming to accept his intensified feelings for Artie, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Artie might share them. Yet once acknowledged, it seemed almost inevitable that this should be true. He still didn’t know what to do or say. For now, he thought, it was something to treasure in his heart. If he could find some way later to tell Artie what he’d been thinking—well, that could come in its own good time. First, they had to get out of here.

            He refused to accept any possibility that they wouldn’t escape. Perhaps he personally couldn’t manage it this time, but someone would come. If nothing else, the owners of the house would return.The house had every sign of having been occupied before it fell down around their ears. Or curious sightseers would turn up. Every tragedy brought those out. Someone would come.

            Artie’s breathing sounded strained again. He’d murmured some barely audible reply to Jim;s last remark, and then fallen into a silence that Jim didn’t know how to break. It was so unlike Artie to have nothing to say that Jim suspected he was hurting badly again. He wanted Artie to talk to him, even if it was only to complain about the pain, but asking him whether his leg hurt was such an inane question that Jim hesitated to voice it.

            He had no notion of how long they’d been trapped. After his eyes had become used to the dark, he could discern a very faint deepening and lightening of the shadows surrounding them. But it was not enough to tell the passage of the moon across the sky. His watch was in his right trouser pocket, completely inaccessible to him, and quite possibly broken anyway. But it seemed as though it must have been an hour, at least. Only an hour. It couldn’t be later than nine o’clock. They could easily be here all night, another ten hours perhaps. He didn’t know how he could hold Artie’s head up that long. His fingers were already painfully cramped, and every time Artie moved, the muscles in his arm quivered. 

            The river was a never-ending rumble and rushing sound beyond their prison. Jim hoped it was receding from its flood stage, but that was wishful thinking, and he knew it. Every so often, they could hear the thud and crunch of floating debris over the noise of the water, and once the house vibrated as it was struck. Jim tried not to speculate about how long they might have before it all came down into the river. They might not still be here in the morning after all—but he wouldn’t let himself think that.

            He realized suddenly that Artie was holding his breath—breathing in shallow little gasps, with a long held breath in between each one.

            “Artie, what’s wrong?”

            “Nothing, not really.” The words were forced.

            “Artie.”

            “My leg hurts a bit, that’s all.”

            “Seems to me it’s more than a bit.”

            “Hurts like hell, then,” Artie ground out. But then his voice softened. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

            “I wish there was something I could do,” Jim said helplessly.

            “Mm.” Artie was silent again for a while, but then he said, “I don’t know what you’d think of it, but perhaps… It might help… “

            ”Anything, Artie. You know that.”

            When Artie didn’t reply immediately, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

            Artie turned his head so their faces were almost touching. “Could you—“ he began. Then, “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but perhaps, just as a distraction, it wouldn’t really mean anything… “

            Before Jim could say anything, he pressed his lips very lightly to Jim’s. “I’ll stop if you want. It’s nothing, truly, just to keep my mind off the pain, that’s all.”

            Jim found that he was holding his own breath, and let it out shakily. “I’d do anything you needed. Anything I could do.” He proved that by returning the pressure of Artie’s mouth, learning the shape of the soft lips with his own.

            It wasn’t at all erotic. It couldn’t be, in their present circumstances. But it was certainly a distraction. It soothed Jim’s tired legs, and eased the muscle cramps he’d felt coming on. It silenced the nasty voice in the back of his head that told him this house was going to be their coffin. And Artie’s breathing evened out and relaxed. Jim would have done a lot more than kiss him to accomplish that.

            They murmured softly together between kisses, recalling the good times and the bad. Mutual friends, particularly memorable villains and rogues, a shared history that they had never really talked over before.

            “We’ve taken it all for granted,” Jim said at one point. “All the things we’ve done together. Like each day was just one more sunrise and sunset, and nothing special.”

            It occurred to him suddenly to wonder if that was how a father felt. One day the infant son was a red and wrinkled baby, and the next day, he was off to college. Or to war, perhaps. His own father had not been a man to notice such things, but he’d heard other parents lament over the lost days between infancy and adulthood. He wanted to verbalize this somehow, but it seemed too fanciful an idea.

            But Artie must have been thinking along the same lines. “Hardly seems like five years,” he said. “The time has gone by in an eyeblink. I ought to write it all down one of these days. Except nobody would believe some of it.”

            “Green women.”

            “And force fields.”

            “Killer houses,” Jim added. “And boats that come all by themselves when they’re called.”

            Artie nodded slightly. “It’s been a hell of a good time, Jim.”

            That was too much like farewell, and Jim stopped any further comment by turning his mouth to Artie’s again. Kissing Artie could become an addiction, he thought. It would be nice to lie in bed with him like this, talking comfortably, kissing when they wanted to. He felt his face heat suddenly at the realization of what kissing often led to. There was no revulsion at the idea, but it wasn’t part of this time, this experience, and without much regret, he let the thought slide away.

            Artie drew away from him, though, after a moment. “Got a bit of a problem,” he said.

            “What is it, Artie?”

            Artie laughed softly. “Don’t sound so worried. I just have to piss.”

            “Oh!”Jim had been fighting the urge himself for a while. He had already realized that he was going to lose the battle before morning. The idea of being rescued with his trousers wet wasn’t particularly attractive, though it was certainly better than not being rescued at all. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to him that Artie was likely to be in the same boat as himself. “Guess we’d better just let fly,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I don’t.”

            “Let’s do it then. One, two—“

            Jim couldn’t keep from laughing. He’d been afraid that even with a will to relieve himself, his body wouldn’t cooperate, knowing the consequences. But Artie took all the present and potential embarrassment out of it. “Three!” Artie finished, and a musty odor rose into their small space.

            “Ecchh!” Artie said. “Not too bad now, but it’s going to stink by morning.”

            “The wind will blow it away,” Jim said hopefully. “We can bathe as soon as we’re out of here.”

            “Damn right! I’ve got things stuck to me all over. Some of them are crawling, too.”

            “Same here. Though it might be nice to be a bug right now, crawl right out of here.”

            Artie didn’t answer him, and he damned himself for reminding Artie of their predicament. He urged Artie to turn his head again, and kissed him with a bit more feeling than before. It was still not at all erotic, but he could no longer justify it as mere distraction either.

            Artie said “Mmm,” softly when they parted, and then, “When we get out of here… “

            There was no mistaking what he meant. Jim said simply, “Yes.” He wasn’t certain yet exactly what he wanted, or what it might mean for their future, but some threshold had been crossed, some essential shift had occurred—not just in their relationship, but in himself. He felt like a different person, someone he wasn’t quite familiar with yet. It was strange and odd and—what had Artie said? Disconcerting. But it wasn’t threatening, just something new waiting for them to explore it together, as they had done with so many other new things in their lives.

            They were silent for a longer period this time, and after a while Artie seemed to have relaxed into a fitful sleep. He would snore softly, and then quiver all over, and then subside, only to tremble again a few moments later. Jim wasn’t certain whether it was due to pain, or if he was dreaming of being trapped, or some of both. He let his lips rest against Artie’s cheek and tried not to think about the hours ahead.

            Somehow, between the cramps in his legs, the itching in various unreachable places, the aches and stings from three days of fighting and hard riding, and the fear for their immediate future that he couldn’t fight off, he managed to stay awake. Only once, after what seemed like not just a night, but an eternity, did weariness overtake him. His arm dropped, of course, and Artie was instantly awake, crying out.

            “God, I’m sorry, Artie! I fell asleep. Put your head back down, I’ve got you.”

            “Asleep… “ Artie said, sounding puzzled. And then, incredulously,“Have you been holding my head up all this time? My God, Jim! I thought your arm was resting on something.”

            “You couldn’t hold it up. You were choking.” He could feel the muscles tense up in Artie’s neck as Artie tried to ease the weight on his arm. “Don’t, Artie. You can’t. It’ll just make your neck hurt. I’m all right.”

            Artie pulled in a long shaky breath, and then relaxed back onto Jim’s arm. “My God,” he said again. “You may not have gotten us out of here, but you kept me alive. You know that, don’t you?”

            “Who was going to cook if I didn’t?” Jim asked, a lame attempt at humor.

            Artie turned his head and kissed him with real passion. When they parted, Artie said, “I didn’t think… “ He stopped.

            “Didn’t think what?”

            “That you’d ever want… “ Oddly for Artie, he seemed to be having trouble with the

words.

            “That I’d ever want to do this? I don’t think I ever did.” Jim paused, realized that his statement could be taken more than one way. “I don’t mean I didn’t want to. Just never thought of it.” It dawned on him suddenly what Artie was saying–or rather, was not saying. “You did want to.”

            Artie said, “Yes,” with the same weight of meaning that Jim had invested the word with earlier. He added “When we’re out of here, you don’t have to—I mean, not anything more… “

            ”I’m not a child, Artie. I know what people do together.”

            There was a breath of amused laughter from Artie. “All right. No more fumbling attempts to give you an out. I intend to pursue you with all the resources at my disposal.”

            “Just keep cooking,” Jim said, immoderately pleased at Artie’s declaration. “I’m an easy

conquest.”

            “The road to a man’s stomach,” Artie murmured. But then he added, sounding surprised, “Is it getting lighter? I can almost see you. Is it morning?”

            “It must be,” Jim said wonderingly. “I hear birds too.” The long night, that he hadn’t been

certain they would survive, was suddenly behind them, and with the light came the prospect of rescue. “Someone will be here before long.”

            The noise of the river had lessened too, he realized. He wouldn’t have been able to hear birds the evening before. In the distance a cock crowed, such a mundane ordinary sound that it seemed impossible they should still be trapped here. “Someone will come soon,” he repeated.

            They did hear muffled voices once, or thought they did, and called and halloed until they were hoarse. But the voices faded, and Artie said, “Perhaps it was a trick of the water. We didn’t really hear anyone.” Jim could tell that he was trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

            “Might have been someone on the other side of the river,” he said. “Wouldn’t have been any help to us anyway.”

            The light grew stronger, and the air warmer. Between the lack of sleep, the continued strain of holding Artie’s head up, and the fact that he’d been standing on his feet for at least twelve hours, Jim was at the point of utter exhaustion. He wasn’t going to stay awake much longer, no matter how important it was that he do so. “Artie… “ he began, wondering whether Artie could move his head far enough to rest it on Jim’s shoulder.

            “Hush!” Artie said, “What was that? I hear someone.”

            And indeed, there were voices. Clear, distinct, men’s voices. “Oh my,” one said. “Lookit that. Won’t be long before the bank gives way and that one goes down river.”

            “Heeeelp!” Artie yelled, so loud that it startled Jim. “Hallooo out there, we’re trapped in here.”

            There was a brief startled silence, and then, “Mr. Gordon? Mr. West? You in there? In the house?”

            “We’re trapped in the wreckage,” Jim yelled. “We’re all right, but we can’t get out by ourselves.”

            He could discern Barney’s deep voice now. “We’ll have to secure it somehow, Mr. West. If we jest start pulling pieces loose, the whole thing’s gonna be in the water, with you inside. It’s nigh on to that already.”

            “Just hurry!” Artie bawled.

            They could hear Barney in consultation with Big Toby, and then another man whose voice they didn’t recognize. “Find out where they are in the house,” said the voice.

            “We’re in the staircase,” Jim yelled. “It feels pretty solid underneath.”

            “That’s my house,” the man called back to him. “I built it. You’ll be all right there if we can get the rafters and the second floor off you.”

            “Hope he knows what he’s talking about,” Artie muttered.

            “Barney,” Jim yelled, “Mr. Gordon has something heavy on him. Maybe one of the floor beams from the second floor. You’ll have to be careful lifting things off so he isn’t injured.”

            “Yes, sir, we surely will. You just hold on now–we’ll have you out of there as quick as ever we can.”

            It wasn’t quick. It went agonizingly slowly. The owner of the house, whose name turned out to be Gibson, was certainly a help, but it became clear, over the course of several hours, that he was as concerned with rescuing his own possession as with getting Jim and Artie out. They couldn’t blame him for that, but it was frustrating to hear his nasal voice repeatedly scolding one of the helpers for taking insufficient care with what remained of the furniture. When he found Hollis’s body in his root cellar, floating among the broken remains of his wife’s pickle crocks, his indignation was almost funny.

            “Won’t be long now, Mr. West,” came Barney’s voice after an extended period of delicate maneuvering. “We’ve got to reinforce the chimbley so it don’t fall over, and then there’s just one more big piece of timber to move before we can git to you.”

            His voice was much closer than at any time before, and the creak and vibration of the men’s movements was much stronger. Their little space no longer felt solid and enclosed, and though that was a promise of rescue, it was also a potential threat. Jim pressed his lips to Artie’s cheek and prayed silently that the house would hold until they were out.

            “Better kiss me one last time,” Artie said softly. “Looks like they’re going to have the small stuff cleared away pretty soon. We won’t be able to do this any more for a while.”

            He turned his head into Jim’s and this time, in spite of their circumstances, the kiss was not just a comfort, but a promise of more. “This could have been worse, you know,” he said when they parted, with a grin of pure Artie mischief. “You could have been just out of reach.”

            “Definitely made the time go faster,” Jim said, with the best attempt he could manage at deadpan humor. “You always do a great job of arranging these things.”

            Artie gave him one last peck on his chin. “Next time I’ll arrange for the house not to fall on us.”

            And then there was a scrape and a rattle and bright daylight above them, and Barney’s delighted face looking down from a hole about four feet over Jim’s head.

            “Mr. West! Mr. Gordon! We’ll have you out in a jiffy. Nothing left but these bits and pieces, and the one beam lying across you there.” He moved away for a moment, and then came back holding a heavy cable with a hook on one end. “Mr. West, if I hand this down to you, can you hook it on to anything?”

            Jim looked around their confined space. “What do you think, Artie? That piece of wood across your arm? I think I can get the hook under that if you can hold your head up for a moment.”

            Artie nodded. “Go ahead and try.”

            He lifted his head off Jim’s arm, and Jim reached up the best he could with stiff and painful muscles, and grasped the hook. He pulled the cable down far enough to allow him to slip a loop of it around the heavy length of wood that was trapping Artie’s arm. Another moment of maneuvering, and he had the hook secured. “That’s got it,” he called up to Barney. “Don’t pull it up until the rest of the stuff above us is moved, though, or it’s all going to fall on our heads.”

            “Right you are,” Barney said, and then yelled, “We’ve got the cable hooked on, Gibson, but don’t pull nothin’ yet. Jest put a bit of tension on it to keep it from floppin’ back down on them.”

            The cable straightened out as Jim watched nervously. But the movement stopped after a moment, and then Artie said, “My arm is free! It’s pretty numb, but I can move it.”

            “What?” Barney called down, and when Artie repeated that he was able to move his arm, Barney gave a whoop of joy. “Glory be!”

            The hook moved jerkily upwards, dragging the heavy board with it, and Barney’s voice changed to alarm. “Stop! Gibson, don’t pull no more!” But the board continued to move, now tilting upward nearly to vertical, and whatever it had been supporting shifted and fell away. The whole construction that had both trapped and protected them gave up its structural integrity and dissolved around them. Jim’s feet were still held tight at first, and when Artie slid sideways away from him, he could only grab for Artie’s sleeve, crying Artie’s name with gut-wrenching desperation. He couldn’t believe this was happening, when they’d been so close to rescue.

            Artie screamed, his face contorted in agony, and then they were both falling down, down and down into the black river, with debris striking them and wrenching Artie from Jim’s grasp. Jim went deep into the water, feet first, and struck the bottom. He gave a mighty shove, and popped up to the surface in a spray of froth and bubbles. At first, with water streaming down his face, he could see nothing but the debris around him: tree branches, lumber, a wagon, a dead cow, all rushing past the river bank at a terrifying speed, westward toward the Umatilla’s junction with the Columbia. There was no sign of Artie. And then, struggling to stay above water, he saw a brief flash of blue–Artie’s vest. It disappeared, came back into view, and went under again, and he realized it was Artie’s body tumbling over and over in the chaotic water. He thrashed through the waves between them, but a tree bore down on him and caught him up in its branches, and then turned sideways into what looked like the remains of the railroad bridge. It stopped there, caught between the stone pillars, and the speck of blue kept going down the river as Jim struggled to free himself.

            He screamed Artie’s name in helpless despair, knowing that every second took Artie farther and farther from him, and when Barney and Big Toby and Gibson came running down the bank to pull him from the water, he shook them off and tried to plunge back into the stream.

            “Mr. West, you cain’t git to him that way!” Barney’s roar finally penetrated and shook him back to reality.

            “Help me find him,” Jim said thickly. “I’ve got to find him.”

            “Ain’t nothin’ gonna live long in there,” Barney said, not unkindly. “He’s most likely already gone, Mr. West. It’s a miracle you came out of it.”

            “No, I’m going to find him!” They stood with hands ready to stop him if it looked as though he was going back into the river, but he shook his dripping head and wiped the water from his face, struggling to stand on quivering feet. He had to think, and neither mind nor body was working well. “Where’s the train? On this side?”

            “Yessir. The bridge gave way just as we got back to it from Stanfield. That’s where we realized you wasn’t on the train. I sent Little Toby back when no one answered my signal, and he said both cars was empty, save for the horses.”

            Jim nodded, trying to force his exhausted mind to sift through the possibilities and come up with the best course of action.

            “We started back,” Barney continued, “but it was nearly dark by then. Big Toby hung off the gallery on the back with a lantern, and said he’d wave it up and down if he saw you. But when he started in to wave it, and I stopped the train, Little Toby come running back to the engine saying the track was washed out. So we had t’stop, and then we heard the bridge give way with a crash and a roar like the end of the world. We didn’t know what to do, but it was only an hour to light, so we decided we’d jest stop here until the sun came up, and then we’d see if we could find any sign of you.”

            “Where are we? I know we’re west of Pendleton, but how far?”

            Barney thought about that for a moment. “The bridge is about ten miles east of Echo,” he said finally. “We’re twenty-five miles west of Pendleton, give or take a mile or two.”

            “Is there a telegraph in Echo?” Jim asked. He wasn’t certain he could climb a telegraph pole in his current condition to hook up their key, as they normally did between stations.

            “In Stanfield there is, but not Echo. There’s a switching yard and a station in Stanfield, but Echo only has a water tower and a coal bin.”

            “There’s the fort,” Big Toby put in, but Barney shook his head.

            “They don’t have no telegraph there. It ain’t nothin’ but a stockade now, and not much of one at that.” He gave Jim a sharp look. “You want to let them know in Washington, is that right?”

            Jim hadn’t even thought about that. “No, I want to tell people downstream to watch out for Mr. Gordon! He’s got to be injured. He might not even know who he is if he’s gotten banged on the head.”

            Barney and Big Toby exchanged looks. “Mr. West,” Barney began, “there ain’t no point in—“

            ”I’m going to find him,” Jim said flatly. “Don’t tell me I can’t. I’m going to find him.”

            He took a good look around him for the first time. The train sat about one hundred feet away, with the rear platform of their parlor car almost at the jagged end of the track. As far as Jim could see in the distance, the tracks, the river, and a rough rutted road paralleled each other.

            “Do the railroad and the river run along together all the way to the Columbia?” he asked.

            “Nossir, only as far as Stanfield. The railroad turns west there, but the river runs north to Umatilla. That’s where it empties into the Columbia.”

            Jim made a fast decision. “You go back to Stanfield, then,” he said. “Send a telegraph to the station in Umatilla, and let them know to watch out for Mr. Gordon. I’m going to saddle my horse and ride along the river between here and Stanfield. “You wait for me there.” A thought occurred to him. “No, if you find him, come back here and pick me up. If he made it out of the water between here and Stanfield, you’re likely to see him before I do.”

            Barney looked doubtful, but Big Toby touched his arm and whispered something to him. Barney turned back to Jim with a look that said he thought Jim was mad.

            “I don’t see no way he coulda lived through what we saw,” he said. “But I ain’t going to say he couldn’t. The good Lord has His own ways that we don’t know nothin’ of. We’ll watch out for him, and wait for you in Stanfield, and if we find out somethin’ you oughter know… well, we’ll come back for you.” His wording made it plain that he thought Artie’s body was all he was ever likely to see again, but Jim ignored that.

            “I’ll get my horse,” he said, turning toward the train.

            “You oughter have somethin’ to eat,” Big Toby said. “Was you stuck in that house all night? You oughter take something’ to eat with you, and a jug of water too.” He hesitated, then added, “If you was to find Mr. Gordon, you might need to have some water.”

            He was saying that Artie might be injured, Jim realized. And in fact, though he didn’t want to think about the possibility, it was good advice.

            “There’s a water butt in the galley,” he said. “Would one of you fill a jug for me? I won’t take time to fix food, but you’re right—I ought to have some water with me.”

            “I’ll do it,” Barney offered. “You go on and saddle up.” He hesitated, and then added, “You do know you got a handcuff hangin’ off yer wrist, dontcha?”

            Jim nodded, and stumbled on still unreliable legs toward the stable car. “Hollis knocked me out and cuffed me,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got a spare key.” He could feel his feet squishing inside his boots and his dripping trousers were already chafing his legs. In spite of the time it would take, he knew he was going to have to shift into something else. He would grab something dry for Artie to wear as well, to justify the delay.

            The stocky man who’d been standing with Barney and Big Toby followed him, and climbed up into the car after him, looking around curiously.

            “I’m Gibson,” he said. “That was my house. How’d you come to be in there?”

            Jim thought in amazement that he sounded suspicious. “We were following that man you found in the cellar,” he said shortly. “He got away from us and ran into your house.”

            He hefted the saddle down from its rack and took Dusty’s bridle off its peg. Dusty sniffed at him and wrinkled his nose. The men might have been polite enough not to comment on his condition, but Dusty had no such inhibitions. “Sorry, boy,” he murmured. “I’ll clean up in a minute.”

            “You fellers had pretty fancy accommodations,” Gibson remarked. “What you got in here?” He rattled the locked door to Artie’s lab.

            “Don’t touch anything,” Jim ordered, losing patience fast with the man. He’d thought Gibson meant to apologize for pulling on the cable and dumping him and Artie into the river. Evidently, Gibson was still annoyed with them for being in his house to begin with. “This is government property,” Jim added. Gibson didn’t look impressed.

            Barney clambered up into the car and lowered the ramp as Jim finished saddling Dusty. He handed Jim a sack tied up with a cord. “There’s a couple of jugs of water in there,” he said, “and some apples and some bread that I found in the galley. And a flask of whiskey too, jest in case you need it.”

            Jim stuffed the sack into one of the saddlebags and led Dusty down the ramp. “I appreciate it, Barney.” He lowered his voice and tilted his head at Gibson. “Make sure the cars are secured after I leave. He’s just a little too nosy to suit me.”

            Barney nodded, with a hard look at Gibson. “Don’t you worry, Mr. West. I’ll see he don’t get into nothing.”

            Jim went back swiftly to the parlor car, removed the handcuff, stripped and struggled into dry clothes—hampered both by the injured right hand and his still damp flesh—and rummaged in Artie’s wardrobe for clean trousers and a shirt. It had to be done, but he hated the time slipping away. It had probably taken him less than ten minutes for everything, but in those ten minutes, Artie would be miles farther downriver, if he hadn’t managed to get himself out, and if he was injured, he could be fading away toward death. Every second counted now. Jim dragged himself into the saddle, too physically battered for his usual lithe mount, and turned Dusty up the track that led along the river. Behind him, he heard the ramp being winched up, but his mind was on Artie now and not much else. Even when the train began to chug-chug slowly backward toward Stanfield, the sound barely registered with him.

            He had hoped the riverbank would be clear and open, but of course it was not. Portions had washed away into the rushing water, leaving muddy pools where debris was collecting. Every one of those had to be examined to be certain Artie wasn’t trapped somewhere. Other sections of the river’s edge were heavily lined with trees and brush, and with small items caught up in them as the flood water receded. By the time he’d gotten two miles down the road, his boots and trousers were muddy again, his face was covered with scratches from pushing through the brush and his mind was fast sinking into despair. Could Artie possibly have survived? Jim had seen flooded rivers before, but this was truly dreadful. Whole houses went rushing by, more or less intact. Railroad ties, bits of fencing, dead animals, trees, furniture, anything that would float, and many things that wouldn’t have floated if they hadn’t been caught up in something else. There had been bodies as well, and there would surely be more. Jim violently suppressed the thought of Artie’s body drifting out into the Pacific. Not the hands that had prepared his meals, bandaged his wounds, created music, art and scientific marvels. Not the smile that had crept into his heart and won it. Not the marvelous mind behind that smile, and–oh God, not the lips he had so recently kissed. Could fate have been so cruel as to reveal their feelings for each other and then tear them apart?

            He thrust those thoughts away and doggedly continued to check the river bank and surrounding areas. Artie might have managed to drag himself out, and been so injured or exhausted that he collapsed into the brush, hidden from the road. There were sections where the river curved away from the road, and those had to be checked on foot. He thanked Providence that Dusty was trained to come at a whistle, because that meant he didn’t have to be tethered and then retrieved. Jim dismounted, secured the reins so Dusty couldn’t trip over them, and told him to stay, and like a trusted canine companion, Dusty wouldn’t budge until he heard that whistle.

            It seemed to him that hours must have gone by, though the sun was still well up in the sky. He hadn’t bothered with a hat, and his neck was sunburned and itching. Blisters were forming on his feet and he was wracked with weariness. He was so exhausted, in fact, that he was afraid he might just sit down and go to sleep. He called Dusty to him again, and clambered wearily into the saddle. The bank of the river was clear along this section of road, so he could see it without having to walk along the edge, and Dusty was sure-footed enough that Jim could ride close to the water without worrying that his horse might slip. On horseback, he thought he was less likely to go to sleep, and if he did, he’d fall off and wake himself up. There was something wrong with that reasoning, he knew, but his mind was barely functioning.

            In the distance something moved. An animal, perhaps a dog. Jim swayed in the saddle, forcing his eyes to remain open. Not a dog. Too large for a dog. A person, then, walking. Jim’s eyes drifted shut in spite of his determination to stay awake. He shook his head and peered up the road. Yes, a man leaning on a stick, still perhaps a hundred yards away. The man staggered sideways and nearly fell. Was he drunk? He recovered and came on with painful slowness, one step after another, head bowed. It wasn’t until Dusty whickered softly, looking back over his shoulder, that something about the man’s outline finally filtered through to Jim. And then the dark hair and the shape of his strong shoulders filled Jim’s vision and almost stopped his breathing. He felt his throat choke up and there was such a jolt in his chest that he wasn’t certain his heart was still beating.

            Artie! He didn’t know whether he had cried out Artie’s name or not, but Artie straightened up and stood there looking at him like an apparition had appeared out of nowhere. Jim spurred Dusty and covered the distance between them at an all-out gallop, pulling Dusty up hard and sliding out of the saddle at Artie’s side. Artie collapsed into his arms, and Jim grabbed the stirrup leather and eased them to the grass at the side of the road, knowing he couldn’t hold them both up.

            “Jim, my God, my God, I was afraid you were dead!” Artie was hardly coherent, babbling his name and clinging to him.

            “I thought for sure you were,” Jim told him, his voice shaking with emotion. “I saw you tumbling over and over in the water. I didn’t see how you could have survived it.”

            Artie twisted in Jim’s arms and turned his mouth to Jim’s. It was still not erotic, not in their current state of exhaustion, but it was passionate, all their joy and relief rolled into one trembling gesture. Jim murmured, “Artie… “ as they drew back a little, kissed him again, and then just held him tightly, rubbing his face against Artie’s hair.

            After a long moment, Artie eased back a little. “Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes searching Jim’s face. “You weren’t injured? I see some scratches.”

            Jim snorted. “I got most of those scrambling through the bushes along the side of the river looking for you,” he said. “Yeah, I’m banged up a little, but considering how bad it could have been, I’m damn lucky. Barney and Toby hauled me out almost right away.” He let Artie sit up away from him, and saw Artie wince as he took his own weight. “What is it?”

            “Cracked rib, I think. Not too serious.” He gave Jim one of his own inimitable smiles. “Only hurts when I laugh.”

            Jim laughed and leaned into another kiss. “What about your leg? The one the floor beam was lying on?”

            “I’ve been walking on it, so I guess it’s not broken. Hurts like hell. And I banged my head on something. It was bleeding pretty good there for a while, but I think it’s stopped now.”

            “Let me see. Here, in the back?” He parted Artie’s hair and found a lump and a long gash. “Doesn’t look too bad. Needs to be cleaned, but that’s probably all.”

            Artie leaned against him with a long sigh. “I just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “So close to rescue, and then I thought I’d lost you.”

            Jim held him tight, kissed him again, and whispered his own remembered fear. “I thought how damned unfair it was that we’d come to this, and then—“ He shuddered. “I felt like I was dying. Every time I searched another section of the river and didn’t find any sign of you, it was like I was sinking farther and farther down into the water myself.”

            “I know,” Artie murmured. “I felt the same way. I didn’t have the strength to walk

through the bushes and brambles along the bank. All I could think of was to get back to where we’d gone in.” He gave Jim a rueful glance. “Not very logical, since the odds were that you’d have been swept down river too. I just had this driving need to get back there.”

            “Guess someone was steering you in the right direction,” Jim said with a flick of his eyes at the heavens. “But how did you get out of the river?”

            “Once I finally got my head above water, I grabbed the nearest floating object—some piece of broken lumber. I hung on to it all the way to the next town. All the debris is piling up against the bridge there. It’s not going to last long, if it hasn’t gone already. But when I got to it, there was a huge mound of all the things that had floated down so far, and I climbed up over them until I got to the top, right even with the road.” He shrugged slightly. “And then I just walked out.”

            No matter how offhand that sounded, Jim knew the experience had to have been a horrific one. He’d been in the water mere minutes, and he still didn’t want to think about it.

            “I’ve got some dry clothes for you,” he said. Artie was only damp by now, but something clean and dry would certainly make him feel better.

            Artie stared at him. “You really were convinced that you’d find me.”

            Jim closed his eyes. “No,” he said, his voice shaking. “I wasn’t. I just knew I had to bring them, same way you knew you had to come back here.”

            He felt Artie’s lips on his cheek. “Someone’s watching out for us, I guess.” He laughed softly. “A clean shirt! I don’t know how to tell you how good that would feel right now.”

            Jim helped him get out of the filthy trousers and shirt. His boots were gone and his

stockings irrepairable. In fact, he threw what he’d been wearing behind the nearest bush. “I’d

never get all the mud out of them,” he said. “Or I’d never believe I had.”

            In dry clothes, even barefoot, he looked much more like his old self. “You didn’t bring my horse,” he said, half-accusingly.

            “I didn’t know whether you’d be injured too badly to ride,” Jim explained. “If we needed to ride double, I didn’t want to be leading another horse.”

            Artie nodded. “Good thinking. Can Dusty carry us both? I’m not going to ride while you walk.”

            Jim had to laugh at that. “I’m not sure I could walk any farther. I was about to drop when you came into sight. Yeah, if we can get on his back, he’ll carry us both. It’s not that far to the train.”

            He gave Artie a hand up into the saddle, but it wasn’t going to be possible for him to vault onto Dusty’s back as he would have at any other time. “There’s a tree trunk I can climb up on, back up the road just a bit,” he said. “I can walk that far.”

            They found the tree, he managed to clamber up behind Artie, and he turned Dusty to continue on up the road toward Stanfield.

            “Aren’t you going the wrong way?” Artie mumbled. He was half asleep already, leaning back against Jim.

            “No, the train’s in Stanfield. That town where you climbed up on the bridge.”

            Artie sat up straight and twisted around, the old comical Artie back in full force. “You mean I walked all the way here–wherever the hell this is–when I could have been sitting in comfort in our own parlor? There’s no justice in the universe, no justice at all!”

            He settled back against Jim with a sigh. “Let’s go home, James.”

            Jim hugged him, kicked Dusty gently, and prayed that he wouldn’t fall asleep before they got there.

            I think I’m in love went through his mind, though he wasn’t yet ready to say it. But he could hear himself saying it, could see Artie’s mouth curve up into that sweet smile of his. The feel of Artie’s body under his hands, solid, breathing, alive, was like a promise. They’d made it through this. They would be together through whatever else came to them.

            Home, yes. Safety, comfort, healing… and more. He could feel his face heat, but he said the words to himself anyway. To lie next to Artie in bed, to kiss him, to touch him, to make him cry out with desire and fulfillment, to accept Artie’s loving. There was home, wherever they might be, all the safety and comfort he would ever need. And presently, in the distance, Stanfield came into view, and there, just visible at the station, was the train. The long nightmare was over, the next phase of their lives just beginning.

            He nuzzled Artie’s hair and kissed his ear. “Wake up, sweetheart,” he murmured. “We’re home.”