Under Siege at Full Speed (Preview)

Chapter One

You need an eye for cheats, and it helps if you were once one yourself. 

That’s what Cole Brennan thought as he carefully scanned the floor of the Green Queen Casino and Parlor. The Parlor was polite code for a cathouse, which is what was housed on the floor above their heads: a place where the lucky, lonely, and heartbroken would go to spend their winnings.

“Last three!” shouted the banker at one of the faro tables.

“Ah, hell!” one of the least lucky men at the table said.

Cole rolled and lit another cigarette. When he struck the match, the flame illuminated the scar that ran from his left temple, down his cheek to his jaw. He wasn’t proud of it, but most of it became invisible as long as Cole kept the stubble on his face unshaven.

Cole took a drag of the cigarette, inhaling the sweet flavor of the tobacco deep into his lungs, holding it all there for a moment. He slowly exhaled, and the smoke formed a cloud above his black gambler’s hat.

He began his scan of the main gambling floor of the Green Queen again. His back against the bar, elbows up, he started at the door.

A fat man—likely a traveling snake oil salesman—stood nervously, dice in hand, at the Hazard table. He offered his pudgy fingers up for Miss Jeanie to blow on the dice for luck. She was one of the kinder ladies from upstairs. Cole liked the subtlety with which she painted on her makeup. She had fewer bruises and cuts to hide than most of the women upstairs.

“You sure do know your way around a Hazard table,” the fat man said.

“Comes with experience,” Miss Jeanie said; a large wink followed.

Moving right, an old man was nearly asleep, one hand on a bottle of whiskey and the other resting around tightly wrapped, earth-stained rags. They likely contained some prized nugget of silver or gold from a claim this old prospector had worked like the devil for months on end. He came to Denver today to celebrate his victory and had managed to drink himself into a stupor. He would have been an easy mark for the old Cole.

A mark was a hustler’s target. A cheat like Cole used to be could easily swindle a mark out of his entire week’s earnings or snatch off the man’s person without the slightest indication that he would not readily gamble it away.

Next was the poker table with five very different souls being dealt a fresh hand by old Slippery.

Slippery wasn’t his real name, of course, but that’s what every gambling regular to the Green Queen called him. Everyone had a different theory about Slippery’s story. Most claimed he was a prospector who made it big in California in ‘49, but spent most of his find and never made it back east. They say he just sort of settled on Denver. Others loved to paint the picture of old Slippery being the man who dealt the Dead Man’s Hand—aces and eights—to Wild Bill Hickock up in Deadwood before Jack McCall put a bullet in the back of Bill’s brain. That was a decade ago now, but the legend of Wild Bill had only grown since then. Still others claimed that old Slippery had been dealing poker at the Green Queen since Sam Buckner rebuilt after the fire of 1863.

Seated closest to the door at Slippery’s poker table was a farmer named Jacobson whose wife thought he was visiting his nephew in town.

Next to him was Gerald Hunter. He worked as a teller at the bank. He’d been the victim of three robberies in nine months at the Bank of Denver and had suffered from nervous shakes ever since.

Cole tried to contain a grin at the sight of Gerald’s hands shaking as he attempted to toss his chips into the kitty. In his worst days, Cole would have been just the type of thief that gave a man like Gerald the shakes.

Next to Gerald was Joshua, who wished more than anything that he was a gunslinger, the real McCoy. But Cole could read his type from a mile away. The leather on his belt was too tight and shiny. There were no visible signs that the pistol in his holster had ever been drawn, let alone loaded. Joshua was barely 17, if he were a day, Cole surmised. No sign of a five o’clock shadow on his face, and his eyes had the innocence of a child who never stared at a man’s face down the barrel of a gun and was forced to pull the trigger.

Helen Ambrosia—Hot Hands Helen—as she was known to most of the regulars at the Green Queen, lived on her own and was mostly a drifter. The stains on her clothes and the aroma of her breath were the clearest indications that Helen spent most nights sleeping behind the livery or piss drunk face down in a muddy ditch. She might have had a dozen teeth total remaining in her mouth. But she played poker like she was playing the devil for souls. Relentless. No outward signs of tells. And she shouted like she was being skinned, whether she won or lost the hand.

A debonair man with silver streaks in his hair sat next to Helen. He was neatly dressed, and his boots were spit-shined. He wore wool pants as black as the night. Not a stain on them. His cuffs were pinned with silver and emerald cufflinks, if the gems were real. The man rarely smiled. He maintained the same stoic look on his face whether he was up or down—and right now he was up. On his left knee, Ginger Valentine was perched daintily in a cream corset, green stockings, and a pair of skin-tight bloomers that left little to the imagination. She sipped in a glass of Brandy—no doubt supplied by the man on whose knee she sat. She laughed in his ear from time to time and allowed her fingers to linger in places it wasn’t polite to mention.

Cole knew this because it was his job to watch everything in the Green Queen to keep the players honest. He watched them all closely for signs of cheats. No hidden cards. No marking decks. It was also Cole’s job to keep the players in line, especially the men who would inevitably have too much to drink and begin taking their losses out on the women and the dealers.

For the past hour, Cole had been watching closely three cowboys who had arrived and played together the entire night. By his count, they were six whiskeys in, and they were getting sloppy. Their pockets were getting emptier as the night wore on, and it seemed they were not too shy about blaming their bad luck on the dealers at the faro table.

These men would have been the easiest targets of all the men in the hall for the Cole of five years ago. Hell, six months ago. He would have emptied their pockets cheating at cards. And what he couldn’t win at the table, he would have picked himself. The drunker they got, the easier it was, and he had a light touch for picking pockets. At least, he used to. Those days were avowedly behind him now. Now he was paid by the owner to stop the cheats and keep the peace.

The three cowboys were getting louder. Heads were turning at their angry outbursts at Victor, the current faro dealer. Faro was the most popular game in these parts. It required much less skill than poker and a bit more dumb luck.

“You sombitch! You’re rigging the deck!” shouted one of the cowboys.

The piano playing stopped, and quickly the chatter in the hall followed suit.

“I did no such thing,” Victor replied, eyes wide.

“You moved my copper. I saws it!” shouted the cowboy in return. “Didn’t he, Slick?”

“Sure as shit!” said another of the cowboys, slurring every word.

Victor grew impatient with the accusations and cast a glance at Cole.

Cole watched as one of the men moved his hands a little too deliberately toward the gun he wore on his hip.

Cole snuffed out his cigarette and moved toward them. His movements were fluid and seemingly effortless. He approached them from the rear so as to maintain an element of surprise in his assault. They never saw Cole coming.

The tallest of the cowboys went for his gun first. He intended to draw it on poor Vince, but Cole’s lightning-fast draw put an end to that. Cole had fired off a round into the cowboy’s hand before the man ever got the iron out of the holster. He howled in agony.

The gunshot caused the other two men to turn to Cole to repel his attack. Cole raised his boot, crashing it into the chest of the second cowboy. The force of the kick sent the man tumbling backwards into the wall, his Colt spilled harmlessly onto the wood floor. The force of the kick knocked a framed picture of President Lincoln off the wall. The glass of the frame shattered over the cowboy’s head.

Pistol still in hand, Cole raised it to the temple of the third cowboy, who had been too drunk and too slow to draw his weapon.

“You might want to think nice and careful about that, compadre,” Cole said. He placed the warm barrel of his Colt revolver to the man’s head, pushing his head sideways in such a fashion that the man took a step backward and lifted his hands to his sides, palms out to show Cole he got the message.

Less than a minute later, he had the man with the hole in his hand by the scruff of his shirt and his gun belt and tossed him into the street. The two other men were likewise tossed like swill into the muddy street of Denver.

“You can’t treat us this way. We’s payin customers,” said the man who was the least injured among the three.

“I thought my message was clear back there,” Cole said, gruff and quiet so only they could hear.

“You shot a damn hole in my hand!” the man shouted.

Cole went back to the bar and picked up a bucket of cold water that Lucky kept for rinsing glasses. Cole returned with it to the doors of the Green Queen. He pushed the door open and doused the three men, piled in a heap in the mud, with cold water. He tossed a dirty strip of cloth to the man with the bullet wound.

“Get on your way now before I change my mind,” Cole said. He stared coldly at the three men until they climbed to their feet, slipping and sliding in the mud. Eventually, they were on their way down the street and far away from the Green Queen.

“Thanks, Cole,” Vince said upon Cole’s return to his station at the edge of the bar.

Cole said nothing and tipped his hat in the most subtle way. He gave Vince a wink.

The piano player returned to playing a song that Cole could not name, though he had heard Gus play it a hundred times in six months.

Cole pinched tobacco into a wrapper, licked the seam of a new cigarette, and placed the tip between his lips. He struck a match and lit the cigarette until the end burned red hot like a brand. He took a nice, calming draw and blew out the smoke.

Cole’s thoughts drifted to the man who had taken him in, raised him like a son when the rest of the world had turned its back on him—Jack Dalton. Jack wouldn’t have let those men off so easily. He would have lined them up in the street, bound their hands with rope, and shot them one by one on their knees. The last one would have likely gotten up, tried to run, and Jack would have shot him in the back. He would have let the body lie in the street all night as a warning to others.

Six months ago, Cole might have done the same. But he was a changed man now. He had sworn himself to a new path. Cast off the stealing and the murdering for a more respectable line of work. And that had to count for something.

Chapter Two

Cole sat in the empty hall of the Green Queen, reading the Denver Post and sipping on a cup of piping hot coffee. This was just how he loved to begin his day: peace and coffee.

But any fleeting existence of peace was abruptly disrupted when a thin man walked through the front door of the Queen.

“Howdy,” said the thin man, tipping his hat. “Mind if I join ya?”

Cole nodded at the empty chair. “Free country,” he said, turning the page of the newspaper.

The man removed his hat, revealing a mop of straight gray hair atop his head, matching the mustache, which grew down almost entirely over his lips, especially at the corners. He had a weathered face that was a map of years of frontier work. Cole noticed the man’s black pinstripe suit was once fine and respectable but was now shiny at the elbows and frayed at the cuff on his right arm. A massive gap had formed between the collar and the man’s leathery neck, indicating he had bought the shirt when he was forty or fifty pounds heavier.

“Heard about your exploits last night. Handling them cowboys up to no good,” the man said.

“Didn’t catch your name,” Cole said over the pages of the Post.

“Cause I didn’t offer it,” the man said.

“If you want someone to pester, go find Chen in the livery. He loves puzzles, mister,” Cole said.

“The way you handled them cowboys gives me every indication I need that you’re the right man to handle my little predicament,” the thin man said. “I’ve got a package…” The man started to cough. It was at first a dry cough that seemed to suck all the air from his lungs. When the spasms began, he doubled over in pain. Cole realized this was far worse than a late-spring chill. The man removed a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his mouth. Cole peered over the edge of his paper and then saw what he was looking for. Blood stains on the handkerchief. These were the telltale signs of tuberculosis that so many folks traveled to the arid lands of the West searching for a cure.

The man’s coughing continued. His face went from red to purple until his body allowed the fit to pass. Cole folded up the paper. He stood slowly, walked to the bar, poured a pitcher of water into a glass, and brought it back to the table. He set it in front of the old stranger.

“Sorry about that,” the man said.

“Don’t apologize,” Cole said.

“Goddamn this consumption!” the thin man said. “Killing me from the insides out.”

“There are worse ways,” Cole said.

“Really? Name one,” the stranger said.

“Buried neck-deep in a fire ant hill for starters,” Cole said.

The old man chuckled. “Perhaps, but quicker.”

Cole raised his tin mug as if to toast the thin man’s courage, then took a sip of the still-warm brew.

“Anyway, I was saying I have this package—”

“What sort of package?” Cole asked.

The thin man gave him a slow look through thinning eyes. “Locked trunk. Six foot long. Three foot high.”

Cole nodded. “Proceed.”

“This package is of the utmost importance to me. It is the culmination of nearly twenty years of work. That trunk must find its way to Silver Stone to Judge Blackwood’s courtroom in five days.”

“Or what?” Cole asked.

“Or the last eighteen years of my life will have been for nothing,” the stranger said.

“Silver Stone, eh?” Cole considered it, rolling a cigarette carefully in his calloused fingers. “Gonna need to take Monday’s train out of Denver to reach Silver Stone by Wednesday.”

The stranger nodded slowly. Cole licked the wrapper on his cigarette and folded it over tightly.

“What’s it pay?” Cole asked.

“Two-fifty,” the thin man said.

Cole scoffed. “A treasure such as that ought to pay seven-fifty.”

“Three,” the thin man said.

“Six-fifty,” Cole replied.

This time, the thin man scoffed. “Do I look like Western Union to you?”

“More like Luther Hayes,” Cole replied.

The thin man sat back in his chair, containing another bout of debilitating coughs.

“Former federal marshal out of Denver when Colorado was as wild a territory as Utah and Wyoming. You had jurisdiction over all three. Rumor has it you still wear the badge even though you ain’t no lawman no more on account of your illness.”

The man opened his coat slowly, revealing a Colt Peacemaker on his hip and a silver badge pinned on his vest.

Cole nodded. “So what does Luther Hayes want with me?”

“I’m curious how Jack Dalton’s adopted son—Cole Brennan—went from being suckled at the breast of a succubus, trained to kill by one of the territory’s most vile outlaws, to now land himself a job guarding the faro tables at a second-rate gambling hall with a third-rate cathouse upstairs?”

The mention of Jack’s name put Cole on edge. He had made a mistake by allowing this ex-lawman to join him so casually at this breakfast table. He was going soft in his new vocation, and this time it might have caught up to him. Cole’s muscles tightened as he prepared himself for having to make a move for his pistols. Outdrawing this old man wouldn’t be hard, but Luther may already have a pistol pointed at him under the table.

“Don’t get any funny ideas, Cole. I see your muscles gettin’ all twitchy now. I ain’t here to arrest ya. I want to hire ya!”

Cole took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out of his nose, waiting to hear the rest.

“I want to hire the man who rode with Jack Dalton for fifteen years. Learned to think just like Jack Dalton. Acted just like Jack Dalton. Killed just like Jack Dalton. That is, until you sobered up six months ago.”

Cole took another deep drag of his cigarette and listened to Luther through the smoke.

“I heard you refused to blow the head off a witness. Even when Dalton put a gun to your head and told you to do it or die.”

The images of that bank robbery gone sideways still haunted Cole’s dreams. He pictured the woman pleading for her life again in his mind.

“I killed plenty of folk. Perhaps too many. I wasn’t about to kill a woman just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was a mother,” Cole said.

“Dalton shot her himself, didn’t he?” Luther asked.

Cole looked down at the cup of coffee and nodded slowly.

“I recognize you did wrong in your life, but the only justice I seek now is that which will be brought by the delivery of that chest. I need a man who knows how to handle himself in a gunfight.”

“You think there will be trouble with the train?”

Luther nodded. “Certain there’ll be.”

“Plenty of gunmen looking for work in these parts,” Cole said.

“None of them are former outlaws gone straight. None of them knows how to think like an outlaw.”

“Sometimes there ain’t any thinkin’ about it,” Cole said.

Luther slapped his hand on the table and snapped his fingers. He pointed at Cole. “Exactly. I need a man who comes locked and loaded with enough firepower to counter what’s coming. I’m traveling with the trunk, and I can do my part, but if the fire starts flying, I need a youthful spirit as backup.”

Cole considered the mystery and the danger of the assignment. He searched the man’s eyes for some catch but found nothing but sincerity there.

“Means a lot to you, this trunk?”

“The world,” Luther said.

Cole snuffed out his cigarette, waiting for the man to make his best and final offer. He did not have to wait long.

“Five hundred is as high as I can possibly go. Take or leave it.” Luther stood, placing his wide-brimmed hat back atop his grey mop.

“What’s in it?” Cole asked.

“Son, it’s better for everyone if the contents of that trunk remain locked away in here.” Luther tapped the side of his head with a crooked finger.

Cole extended his hand. “Five hundred then.”

Luther looked at him sideways and then took his hand in his, shaking it firmly. “Deal, Cole Brennan.”

Luther turned in the dusty morning light of the Green Queen and made for the door. He was nearly out and onto the street when Cole called after him.

“Drawn and quartered!” Cole shouted.

Luther turned back and delivered a puzzled look.

“That’s a worse way to go than consumption, Marshal. Drawn and quartered.”

A slight smile emerged under the bushy mustache, and Luther Hayes turned and walked out into the morning light.

Chapter Three

The blast of the steam whistle pierced the hot evening air. It was the final call for passengers to climb aboard before this train, destined for Silver Stone, Wyoming, before it pulled out of the Denver station and headed north.

The journey would be short—just a day-and-a-half ride—but that did not mean it would be easy. Leaving the safety of the State of Colorado for the wilderness of Wyoming Territory brought with it a hair-raising list of potential complications.

Once home to mighty tribes of Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Shoshone, most had now been forcibly removed to reservations. Only small bands of Crow and Kiowa still roamed as far east as the tracks of this train would travel. But those who did remain were steadfast in their beliefs that the land belonged to no one but the Great Father. They were prepared to fight to the death for their right to roam the land as they had done for ten generations.

The lack of large, warring Native tribes gave rise to stronger and more brazen bands of outlaws that preyed upon poorly defended trains traveling between Denver, Cheyenne, and Billings. Typically, they waited for trains they knew to be carrying the wages for a mining town or deposits for a bank. There was little reason to waste time and risk the lives of the gang robbing simply passengers.

Sarah Moreau was sure she had picked a train without any tantalizing cargo. Her goal was to get as far, and as safely, away from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as American rails could carry her.

In Philadelphia, Sarah had been a prisoner of involuntary servitude at the hands of her Great Uncle, who was anything but great. For eighteen years, she was treated as a servant, not a niece or cousin. Her living quarters had been a drafty, sparsely furnished corner of the attic. They abhorred her reading, teasing her so scornfully that Sarah took to hiding books she borrowed in sacks of laundry.

But the greatest crime of all and the reason for her flight had finally been her uncle’s disgusting and unforgivable use of her as currency. When he could not cover massive gambling debts that he had run up with Chester Moorehouse, her uncle traded her hand as payment for those debts. That had been the last straw. She packed her things, stole every bill and coin from Chester’s safe in his study, and lit out for her original home in the west. She planned to get back to Red Creek and piece together how her life had been turned upside down eighteen years ago. She’d get to the bottom of things one way or another.

The carpetbag stuffed with cash and silver coins would surely make things easier.

After two weeks hopscotching between train stations since boarding in Philadelphia, she had seen the dark, sooty skies of Pittsburgh, the shimmering lake outside Chicago, and the relentless miles and miles of plains from Iowa to Colorado.

Denver had been a welcome pit stop. It gave Sarah a few days’ rest from the uncomfortable seats and worse bunks on the Union Pacific Trains. Denver was a city on the edge of the American frontier, surrounded on the north and west by territories not yet entirely organized. She walked its streets, gazed at the snowcapped mountains. They were just as splendid as she remembered them.

Ever mindful that Pinkerton agents hired by Mr. Moorehead could be lurking at every stop, Sarah remained vigilant. When the hour arrived for the train’s departure to Silver Stone, which was the closest remaining town near the ashes of Red Creek, Sarah waited as long as she could in the alley nearest the station.

With only minutes before last call, Sarah booked a single ticket one way under the name Sarah Miller and then raced from the ticketing booth to her assigned car, shielding her face with a lace shawl despite the heat to avoid recognition.

Sarah walked cautiously down the train aisle, taking a seat near a woman. Sarah felt she was likely a widow traveling with a young lady with brilliantly curly hair, no older than eight or nine. After carefully folding her shawl and placing it in her carpetbag, Sarah noticed a finely dressed man with a silver streak in his dark hair. He wore spit-shined black boots, impeccably pressed black pants, a pinstriped vest, and a brilliantly white shirt adorned with silver and emerald cuff links.

In his seat, the man’s hands were endlessly at work on a deck of cards. With a single hand, he flipped the cards this way and that, shuffling them as if by some form of unseeable magic. When he was bored with that, he’d cut them into two evenly matched stacks, then shuffle them down, and then curl them upward again. It was something Sarah had never seen in person, and it mesmerized her.

The train car continued to fill with merchants, farmers, and tradesmen, all heading to Cheyenne or Billings for work, mostly. Only a handful on the train appeared to have the means to travel for pleasure.

The whistle blew loudly, announcing their departure. The train leaped forward, lurching slowly along the rails, smoothly as if gliding on water, slowly building speed.

About five or ten minutes outside of Denver, the connecting door at the front of the car slammed open, causing several passengers to jump. A strange character entered. He wore a black gambler’s hat with a band of rattlesnake skin. A heavy black duster hung from his broad shoulders despite the sweltering heat, its hem caked with trail dust. His face was half-hidden beneath a two-week-old beard. When he got closer, Sarah could see out of the corner of her eye a scar that stretched from the man’s left eye to his jaw. He stopped at the row she was seated in and turned to tip his hat to her, revealing eyes the cold gray of a winter sky. Everything about him screamed danger. When he turned to resume his walk along the aisle, his duster parted, and that’s when Sarah got a glimpse of the two revolvers tied low to the man’s thick, muscular thighs—pearl-handled with the letters “CH” carved into their grips.

She looked back at him as he passed, and at the exact moment, he looked at her. Their eyes met just briefly before a chill ran up her neck like icy fingers, and she looked away.

Sarah reached for her totem. Her sacred security piece. It was her father’s silver pocket watch, which she wore like an amulet on a silver chain around her neck, hidden beneath the high collar of her cornflower blue traveling dress. The cool metal against her fingertips calmed her racing heart as she traced the intricate elk engraving on its cover.

She breathed deeply through her nose, held it for a brief moment, and exhaled through her mouth. It was a calming exercise her father had once taught her as a small child and it never failed to steady her nerves, especially in her escape from Philadelphia.

Her deep breaths finally gave her the awareness of the scent flooding through the windows. It carried memories—sage and wildflowers, sunbaked earth and distant rain—a perfume no city parlor could ever capture or contain.

Each breath brought the mingled aromas of dust and wild prairie roses, horse sweat from the nearby station, and the distinct mineral tang of Wyoming soil that had been part of her very bones since childhood.

The wind carried whispers of home to her: crushed grass and wild yarrow. These were scents that spoke of wide-open spaces and endless possibilities. No such aromas existed in the stench of Philadelphia.

Her mind slipped back to the scarred man with the pearl-handled revolvers. His eyes had searched each passenger with the practiced calculation of a predator. Was he a Pinkerton—one of Moorehead’s hired hunters? She clutched the watch tighter, her newfound freedom suddenly feeling as fragile as spun glass. No, she wouldn’t surrender to fear now, not after everything she’d sacrificed to escape. Yet even as she commanded herself to breathe, to savor this taste of independence, her gaze kept darting to the door through which he’d disappeared.

Chapter Four

The steam whistle split the evening with its iron scream, cutting through the heat that still clung to the platform like wet wool. It was the suddenness of the shriek that sent Cole nearly jumping out of his skin. It was the final call for passengers to climb aboard before the train headed for Silver Stone, Wyoming. In just a moment, it would pull out of the Denver station and head north.

At least the journey would be short. It was just a day-and-a-half ride to Silver Stone if the weather held, which he expected it to do. No smell of rain in the air. Too early in the year for dust storms or blizzards. But that didn’t mean Cole Brennan expected the trip to be easy. Leaving the State of Colorado for the untamed lands of the Wyoming Territory brought with it more challenges than Cole cared to name. However, Luther Hayes had been pretty clear about the only one he expected to complicate things for them on this train: outlaws.

Cole climbed aboard the baggage car, holding this duster down over his thighs to conceal the tightly tied holsters containing two Colt Peacemakers on either leg. Luther was already there, standing among dozens of trunks, valises, and baskets. Luther stepped aside, revealing a massive trunk on the floor of the car behind him. Cole circled it. It was perhaps the finest trunk in terms of craftsmanship that Cole had ever laid eyes on. Two brass locks, each the size of a miner’s fist, hung from the front of the container. The entire chest was wrapped in thick chains to ensure no one could get in without considerable effort, or to prevent whatever was inside from getting out.

“You mind telling me how on earth you managed to get that rascal on here?” Cole asked.

“I’ve got fourteen men working for me—besides you—on this train,” Luther said.

“Then why do you need me?” Cole huffed.

“If you like, you can do it for free, or you can take the five hundred dollars and stop asking so many foolish questions.”

“Don’t take offense. I know why I’m here. You need an outlaw’s eye. Loud and clear.”

A faded red valise was jostled off a rack by a careless conductor. It slammed to the floor behind Luther, who drew his Colt quickly and had it already aimed at the location of the loud sound, ready to fire.

Cole reached over and pushed the barrel of the pistol toward the ground. “Easy now, gramps. Ain’t no use in drawin attention to us by shooting up braziers.”

Luther relaxed, returning his revolver to its holster.

“Whatever is in that trunk must be valuable if you’re willing to gun people down to protect it,” Cole said, fishing for a reaction. Luther gave him nothing, just stepped over the spilled case and walked toward the door of the baggage car, heading toward the rear of the train.

Cole trailed slightly behind, eyeing up the women and men as he walked down the aisle. Lots of familiar faces from Denver in this car, but no one he knew personally. Just faces he recollected were all.

Coming from the rear of the train was the engineer. He was a grizzled bear of a man with a round face covered in coal dust that came with the duties of keeping the boiler blazing red hot.

“Shouldn’t you be minding the engine?” Luther asked, pointing over his shoulder in the direction they had just come.

“Nonsense. I heard we had a legend aboard. I came back to pay my respects,” the engineer said. “Glad I found you.”

Luther blushed slightly, Cole thought. At least he supposed he did. Wasn’t every day that the law was regarded as a heralded company in these parts.

“Sergeant Augustus Holloway,” the burly man said, extending his broad, coal-stained hand into a salute. Luther saluted back with less flair, offering his hand to Augustus. “Friends call me Gus.”

“Unionist?” Luther asked.

“Proudly,” Gus said in reply. “I cut my teeth killing Johnny Rebs at the Battle of Shiloh. It went up and down hill from there.”

“Now you’re in command of a locomotive?” Luther asked.

“Steam engines are my one true love. Been running engines since before the war and have spent the twenty years since perfecting my command of these steel beasts. Just something certain and calm about piloting this machine along such hastily laid tracks through pristine wilderness.”

“Run this route before?” Cole asked, looking cautiously at the arriving passengers now filling the seats and benches.

“We’re making an inaugural run on a new stretch of track. They say it will cut down six hours of the journey by traversing a monster of a gully over the Wyoming Territory line,” Gus said proudly.

“That’s welcome news,” Luther said.

“Sadly, this here is my final journey,” Gus said. “Forty years is long enough for engineering. I have plans to settle down on a stretch of land west of Denver. Going to herd sheep and drink whiskey until I’m ashes and dust.”

Cole grimaced as the car in which they stood became so crowded that two men began to push and jostle for the same seat.

“Don’t you worry none, mister. I ain’t lost my touch any. Just as sharp filling that furnace and keeping that pace as I was on my 20th trip,” Gus said.

A man was pushed into Cole, nearly knocking the gunman back into an old woman. Cole stood up and pushed the man hard in the back, making the man fall onto the floor of the car face-first.

The man stood, angry and ready to fight. Cole reached for his pistol, but Luther put out his hand, seeking restraint from Cole.

“Stop clowning like a schoolboy, and get your ass in another seat,” Luther growled at the man. The man quickly retreated when he saw the marshal’s badge flash under Luther’s coat.

“Come on up to the engine, men. I’ll give you a tour,” Gus said. He stepped out of the car and walked along the platform, followed by Luther. Cole said that he would prefer to continue to size up the train’s occupants.

Cole thrust open the door of the next car, causing the door to crash open faster than he intended. It seemed to startle the guests in the car. As Cole walked up the aisle, he saw the man in the dapper outfit with the silver hair that had been routing the gamblers at poker the previous evening. He was fiddling with a deck of cards in his hand, flipping the cards over and under in just his right hand.

Cole walked further and saw a plain-looking woman with dry hair and deep lines across her face, seated next to a fidgety young girl.

Across from them was a woman so beautiful that Cole unexpectedly stopped walking for a moment. She had auburn hair tucked neatly in a practical bun, though a few strands had escaped and framed her face. She looked up at him. Her sharp hazel eyes cut through him so sharply that he looked away. He saw she had callused hands, likely from many years of hard work as a maid or housewife. She was wearing a simple but well-made deep blue dress with a carpet bag tucked securely under her arms on her lap.

Probably every dollar and coin she ever earned tucked away in there, he thought.

Cole managed to make his way past her and toward the door to the next car when he felt eyes on him. He turned and caught her staring at him. Their eyes locked for a brief moment in a burst of current like lightning striking a lone elm. There was something peacefully familiar about her, but obviously, he had never seen her before in his life. A woman that beautiful would have been simply unforgettable to a man like Cole Brennan.

Cole forced himself to look away. She was probably running from her troubles, hopefully not of her own making. He knew that feeling all too well, and the problem was, they always seemed to find you no matter how far or fast you ran.