It all went to hell after the girl’s pistol discharged. Boss toppling into me. Hobbs just behind him, firing like mad with the cash slung over his shoulder. Jones shouting for us to get a move on from the front of the train.
It’s moments like this—fleeing a train job gone wrong, with my cheeks chapped from the cold and every bone in my body bracing for Boss’s rage when we stop—that I wonder what in tarnation I’m doing.
I truly believe he’ll let me go if’n I find that cowboy for him. He’s vicious, but he’s still a man of his word. A handshake means something among men, even outlaws, and over the years the small promises Boss’s made me, he’s kept. Like getting me new boots when I outgrew mine, and other small decencies. It ain’t him keeping his promise that worries me. It’s the cowboy. He’s starting to feel like a ghost, an impossible whisper of a man.
I ain’t never gonna find him. I’m gonna be stuck riding with these boys forever.
I almost wish that girl’d managed to shoot me.
We ride hard all day, and when we stop at dusk, Boss damn near falls from his saddle. He’s lost a good amount of blood, but he don’t check the wound or even if we got the payload out safe. (We did.) He just stumbles straight for me and delivers a blow to my chin that sends me sprawling.
“Goddammit, Murphy! You got air between those ears? You don’t let no one reach into their jacket like that, not even some shaken, near-blubbering lady. Yer gonna get us all killed, kid!”
He kicks me in the side, and I don’t even bother trying to shield myself from the blow. He took a bullet for me.
Boss turns toward Hobbs. “The damage?”
“None. We got all the cash out.”
“And the lawman?”
“Got him taken care of, too.”
It’s good news for us, but Boss don’t look none the more relieved.
“Rest while you can,” he announces. “Word of that robbery’ll be telegraphed ’cross the Territory. With luck, there’ll be reports of unidentified men attacking, nothing more, but we’re riding hard for a while. The farther we get from the Southern Pacific, the better.”
As the others start seeing to their bedrolls, Boss crouches down beside me. The tang of sweat and blood drips off him. If fury’s got a scent, he’s wearing that too.
“You do something that dumb again, and I’ll finish that rose on yer forearm, Murphy. I swear it on my brother’s grave.”
The little I know ’bout Waylan’s death suggests he died in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix and were left there to rot, not buried. There ain’t no grave to swear on. But I keep quiet.
“It ain’t like I want to,” Boss adds as he straightens. “It’s just I can’t have you dying on me, son. You got that?”
I know it’s less ’bout me meaning something to him and all ’bout him wanting answers—’bout tracking down who killed his brother, which starts with questioning the cowboy only I can identify. But when he leaves to tend to his shoulder, I say a prayer that the cowboy wanders ’cross my path soon. I’ll gladly give up one more soul to cut free. I can deal with that last bit of blood on my hands.
Since running from home, I’ve spent more time in this gang than not, and while I know everything we do is wrong and wretched and cursed, it’s starting to feel normal. It’s starting to be all I know. I barely trust my own two hands these days, so I gotta find that cowboy before I start feeling like this is where I belong. I gotta walk away from the Rose Riders before I start liking the way it sounds to hear Boss call me “son.”
Chapter Four
* * *
Charlotte
“Is there a doctor onboard?”
The passengers are in an uproar, some sobbing while others rant about stolen purses and lost jewelry.
“Dammit, is there a doctor onboard?” I shout.
An elderly woman twists around to face me. She’s pinching a set of rosary beads, her lips still curled around a prayer. I think she might scold me for such foul language, but then she notices my bloody hands gripping her headrest. I’ve stained the wood, left red smears on the velvet upholstery.
“Leonard,” she says, turning to the man with her. “Leonard, I do think your assistance is needed.”
Leonard leans on a cane as he moves up the aisle, a medical bag hanging heavy from his free hand. He kneels beside our seat, observing the lawman over the rim of thin wire spectacles.
I didn’t even know his name. He’d made a bit of small talk, shining the badge on his vest when I sat down beside him. I told him I was a journalist with the Prescott Morning Courier. A half-truth. I don’t write for the paper in any official capacity, but the lie made me appear older than my sixteen years, and the last thing I desired was for him to question why I was traveling without a chaperone and insist on escorting me home.
The doctor feels for the man’s pulse. I don’t need to watch more than a minute to know there’s nothing he can do for the lawman. I see the verdict on his face. One side of his mouth pulls down; then he licks his lips and swallows, glances at me quickly. He hasn’t even opened his medical bag.
“Are you traveling with anyone else, miss?”
My bloody hands are resting on the skirt of my dress, its fabric wet in places.
“Miss?”
I glance up. “No, sir.”
“A young lady like yourself shouldn’t be traveling alone,” his wife says. Then, almost in afterthought, her gaze jerks back to the deceased man and she adds, “God rest his soul.”
“I’m sorry to say there wasn’t much I—or anyone—could have done,” the doctor says. “He passed on almost immediately.”
My head bobs in a bit of a trance.
He’s dead. Those outlaws killed him.
The car lurches. I hear someone mutter, “There was a disengaged beam, but the crew fixed it.” The engine starts chugging, the wheels and rods rolling faster and faster until the scenery outside begins to blur.
I glance at the lawman.
His eyes are closed—the doctor’s doing—and if it weren’t for the blood all over his front, he almost appears to be sleeping again.
See it through for me. Please.
I flip open my journal and began scribbling down everything I can remember about the gang. Murphy’s hat and blue bandanna. His companion’s stockier build. The boss’s graying hair and sunken eyes.
I’ll see it through. I’ll see the Law gets the cleanest description possible and that the hounds are sent after those devils.
When the locomotive chugs into Gila Bend, a flurry of activity awaits us. Word of the robbery was sent ahead by telegraph, and a posse is being rounded up to go after the gang.
The train is held at the depot while a deputy sheriff asks to speak with anyone who might be able to give a description of the robbers. I provide all I can remember, and the man taking down my description startles at the details of Murphy’s hat. He moves on to another passenger before I can ask him if they’ve had trouble with these characters before. It’s only after they’ve departed and the train is moving east again that I overhear Leonard and his wife conspiring; the young man named Murphy is actually Reece Murphy. The Rose Kid.