I pity the poor soul who killed Boss’s brother. Boss don’t got kind plans for him.
“Murphy, I ain’t kidding!” Diaz growls.
I make a fist and smother it into my palm, clasp my fingers tight to quit the shaking. The chains still rattle, just not as much.
Diaz is prolly right. My worrying’s a waste. The others’ll come, but only ’cus of Boss. If he hadn’t been with us when we got brought in, we’d be goners. They were dumb enough to get themselves caught, so they don’t deserve to ride with me, Boss’d say if the tables were turned. Jones has told me stories ’bout men getting pinched and Boss just riding on out. Sacrifice one to save many.
I look at my chains. Four of us shackled here. Men standing in the street, all too eager to see our demise. They been standing there the last half hour or so, waiting on a telegraph from the capital and betting on our sentences. Odds seem to be on hanging, based on what I can overhear. Firing squad is a close second.
“Deputy Montgomery?”
My head snaps up. The train girl is chasing the lawman as he strides toward the gathered men, coattails flapping.
“Deputy!” she tries again.
I still ain’t sure what she’s doing up here, so far north of the line where we encountered her, but I’m again struck by how serious she looks, how far from meek and crying. Her brows are drawn ’bout as viciously as a poker player done calling a bluff, and though her cheeks are pinched with cold from the run, she ain’t breathing heavy. I’m starting to suspect that she had every intention of shooting me from the moment I shook that burlap sack in her face. She were just waiting for the right moment.
The deputy ignores the girl and instead addresses the men. “I just heard back from Prescott. They’re calling for a trial.”
“A trial?” she gasps out, nearly barreling into the deputy when he comes to a quick halt. “They’ll be found guilty. Why delay?”
“It ain’t my decision, Charlotte. Now I know you’re upset from what you witnessed on that train, and you want justice here and now, but word is we’re to make an example of these boys. A formal trial, a public hanging. Enough to scare the rest of the band into dismantling, and hopefully sending a clear message to any other gangs looking to target the rail. This criminal life won’t be tolerated.”
“I don’t imagine the trial will happen here, in Wickenburg?”
“We’ll move them to the capital tomorrow morning at first light. In a locked coach. Escorted by a half dozen men, myself included.” He looks over his posse. “I’ll need volunteers.”
A couple hands go up.
“Escorted!” the girl named Charlotte erupts. “Are you an idiot, Deputy?”
“Pardon?”
Diaz laughs beside me, and even I can’t help but smile. I’m surprised the lawman’s let her go on this long. He looks far from pleased.
“Where’s the rest of the gang, sir?” the girl continues. “You think your men are going to be able to best a handful of Rose Riders once you leave the safety of these streets? A locked coach and a few escorts will not protect you on those plains. The men you don’t have in custody will free the men you do, and then we’re right back where this all began.”
“The decision ain’t mine. I got folk above me saying to bring them to Prescott. I promise you we’re taking every precaution.”
She grunts in a very unladylike fashion and says, “Mark my words, Deputy, this plan will not unfold as you figure. And the blood will be on your hands.” Then she picks up her skirt and shoves past the men.
“Charlotte!” the deputy calls after her. She keeps marching. “Miss Vaughn, my hands are tied.”
“Ah, let her go,” one of the men says. “Girl don’t know her place.”
“She don’t,” Boss agrees. “But she’s right.”
The deputy and his posse are too far away to hear Boss’s comment, and they hurry off to discuss our transport and hanging, unaware of the wolflike smile he flashes at the mesquite’s branches.
“The boys’ll come, won’t they, Boss?” Hobbs asks.
“I reckon so. Tonight, since the townfolk are expecting it during the move.”
And if they don’t come? I wanna ask. If’n they turn their backs on us and leave us to hang?
“I thought I saw a red coat riding for the river when they chained us here,” Diaz adds.
Boss nods in agreement.
It makes the ghost of a noose I already been feeling ’round my neck loosen slightly. If Crawford’s left town with the others, it means the deputy ain’t aware how near the rest of our men truly are. They’ll be able to regroup, make a plan. We just might make it out alive.
“For yer lip,” Boss says, passing me his kerchief.
I grab it with my bound hands, touch the pale cotton to my mouth. It comes away bloody. Skin musta split when we were taken into custody. The posse sure weren’t careful with their elbows.
“Rest while you can, Murphy,” Boss adds. “There won’t be time for it later.”
Chapter Eight
* * *
Charlotte
I march off, silently cursing the deputy’s senseless plan, when the solution hits me. I know what to barter. I turn on my heel and race after Deputy Montgomery.
“Sir, I beg you to reconsider,” I call out to him. He has just set foot on the front porch of what I assume to be his residence. The step creaks beneath him as he pauses. When he turns to face me, expression weary, I do not miss how his eyes skirt over my shoulder, finding the Rose Riders across the way, still secured to the Jail Tree. There is worry in the deputy’s eyes. He knows there was truth in my earlier argument.
“I implore you,” I continue. “If you had the whole gang in custody, transporting them would be one thing. But this is a fool’s errand. You must consider alternate means.”
“Alternate means?” He leaves the steps for the street, staring down at me with his brows raised precariously high. What I wouldn’t give to be a foot taller, to look men in the eye. “I have five men in agreement to ride with me tomorrow, and a judge expecting the gang delivered by coach. You’re what, a girl of fifteen? Pardon me for not taking the advice of a child with such little worldly experience.”
“I’m sixteen,” I retort, “and I’m a journalist.”
“That so?”
I nod surely. “I was traveling to Prescott to report on the nearly completed Prescott and Arizona Central line, and I’ll be sure to cover this debacle, too, once it goes south. Then again, if you do anything unexpected—like moving the criminals tonight, or before dawn—maybe things won’t go south. Maybe there will be only successes to report.”