The Native Star (20 page)

“Come on,” she whispered, massaging his throat, willing him to swallow. “This is your last chance, Dreadnought Stanton. Otherwise I’m going to New York without you.”

She was answered with a little coughing choke from Stanton. A flicker of distaste passed across his face. He weakly lifted a hand as if to bat the cup away from his lips. Hope rose in Emily’s chest. She tipped more of the liquid down his throat.

“Not too much,” Rose admonished. “Just keep after him slow-like. Mam says too much Eye-Opener all at once can make a man’s heart explode.”

Emily kept administering small doses of the stimulant over the next couple of hours, happily noting its positive effects. Stanton even opened his eyes once, though they fell shut again abruptly after. Finally, as they were pulling into Ogden, he opened his eyes and they stayed open. He looked at Emily with slowly focusing recognition.

“All right,” he croaked. “What’s all this?”

Emily could have kissed him. Instead she explained the situation to him, speaking slowly, keeping her words small.

“We’re pulling in to Ogden. We have to switch trains. You have to wake up.”

“I’m very tired, Emily,” he mumbled, tucking his head against her shoulder. “Just let me sleep awhile longer.”

Emily glanced at Rose; the girl had her lower lip between her teeth and was making a great show of looking up at the ceiling.

“It’s Elmer, remember?” she hissed, jerking her shoulder up. Then she put her mouth closer to his ear. “Caul attacked you with some kind of spell. You have to shake it off!” She tipped a large dose of the stimulant down his throat, and he gagged, spluttering. He sat forward in the seat, coughing loudly. Emily thumped him on the back.

The train was slowing as it pulled in to the station at Ogden. Stanton was still coughing as it lurched to a halt.

“We’re here,” Emily said. “Come on. We have to go.”

With a great deal of effort, Stanton pulled himself to his feet.

“Food,” he said. “I need food.”

“Can you walk?” she said.

“Of course I can walk,” he said, falling to the ground with a thundering crash. All eyes in the car turned to them. Emily lifted a reassuring hand.

“He’s all right,” she squeaked, forgetting entirely to keep her voice low. She reached down and helped Stanton up.

They climbed down off the train into the bright sunshine. Stanton squinted hard, lifting a shaking-weak hand to shade his eyes. There were dozens of farm women selling merchandise on the platform. Stanton walked dazedly past each one, pointing out what he wished Emily to purchase.

“Butter. Eggs. Sugar. Milk.”

Emily purchased each of the items Stanton had indicated. Then, bundles in hand, they sat on a wooden bench on the platform. Emily watched in fascination and horror as Stanton (using his fingers) ate a tub of butter straight, in slow contemplative bites. This was followed by a dozen eggs broken directly down his throat and washed down with long gulps of milk from an earthenware jug. He took large bites from a cone of loaf sugar. After about ten minutes of this bizarre repast, he sat up straighter, taking a deep breath.

“Well, I’m in no shape to work any magic,” he said, dusting crumbs of sugar from his clothes. He looked a little better; the waxy pallor was fading from his face, but the hollow purple shadows under his eyes were still deep and sickly looking. “But I think I can make it to the train.”

“That’s all I require,” Emily sighed, feeling happier than she had in quite a while.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Aberrancy Hunters

It was close to noon, and Ogden was flooded with warm spring sunshine. It was the biggest and nicest station they’d yet stopped at—an elaborate profusion of peaks and gables and awnings, with a high clock tower rising up from the middle. The paint was so fresh it still reeked of linseed oil. Ogden was a hub of transcontinental rail traffic, and the station teemed with feverish activity. Bags and trunks whizzed by on carts, salesboys hawked snacks and supplies, travelers crowded in a churning mass.

The Central Pacific line, on which they’d ridden since Cutter’s Rise, ended at Ogden. Passengers continuing eastward had to transfer to the Union Pacific line, which would take them to Chicago. They arrived at the Union Pacific track with time to spare; trainmen were still swarming over the engine, loading fuel and putting on water.

They climbed onto a cramped car. Stanton sank into a seat with a groan. The carriage was smaller and older and shabbier than the Central Pacific cars had been, with lower ceilings and chipping varnish.

“No wonder I ache so badly, sleeping on a bench like this.” He looked at Emily. “How long was I out, anyway? If we’re already in Utah—”

“It’s been a day and a half now.”

“A day and a half?” Stanton eyed the yammering children, the women digging in baskets for treats to appease them. “And at least five more to look forward to. I wish I were still asleep.”

She dug into her pocket, handed him the purse of money Dag had given her.

“They were your horses,” she said. “I didn’t feel right throwing your money away on a Silver Palace car.”

He looked at the money, which must have seemed a damnably small amount. He tucked it into his pocket. “You’re probably right. Discretion is the better part of valor.”

“Oh, there you are!” The bright voice came from the aisle.

Rose was carrying all her things, struggling to keep the lumpy, overstuffed carpetbag from slipping out from under her arm. Her hair wisped around her face, and her cheeks were red with hurrying. She slid into the seat across from Emily, smiling happily.

“I almost didn’t make it! I was in the mercantile, and you just can’t tell one train whistle from another, can you?” She withdrew a crumpled paper candy bag from her pocket and reached into it.

“I got this for you, Mr. Elmer.” She pulled out a bright silver safety pin. “For your collar. I thought you might like to stop having to hold it all the time. No, don’t thank me, it wasn’t anything. I went into the mercantile to buy some candy, and while I was standing there I got to talking with this old woman, she uses them for quilting, and I asked her could I have one. Didn’t charge me anything, just said I could have one for free! Can you imagine?”

Emily smiled at Rose. She took the pin and fastened her torn collar.

Rose fixed her gaze on Stanton, looking at him with an abundance of sweet sympathy. “And how are you feeling? Would you like a piece of candy?”

Stanton gave her a look that encompassed his entire opinion of being spoken to like a sick kitten.

“This is Miss Rose Hibble,” Emily hurried to explain. “She’s from Reno. She’s going to Chicago to work for her Aunt Kindy. It was her recipe for Mother Roscoe’s Eye-Opener that helped revive you.”

“Really.” Stanton stared at Rose for a long moment, a moment that took on a menacing quality due to Stanton’s general appearance of roughness. His face, usually clean-shaven, was stubbled and sunken, and there were still purple shadows around his eyes. Emily had the strangest apprehension that he was going to say something vile to her. But then he blinked, shook his head, and shrugged. “Well, thank you very much for your help, Miss Hibble.”

“Miss Hibble, this is Mr…. Smith,” Emily said. She remembered chiding Stanton for not making up a better name for her; now she found that it really wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

“Oh, Mr. Smith? There’s a Mr. Smith back in Reno, runs a blacksmith shop. I don’t suppose you’re related?” Rose tilted the bag of candy in Stanton’s direction, giving it a little shake.

“It’s highly unlikely,” Stanton said. After a moment, he reached into the bag and took out a piece.

“Probably so. He’s quite a strapping brute and you’re rather on the spindly side, aren’t you?”

“Indeed.” Stanton popped the candy into his mouth and struggled to his feet. “Will you excuse us for a moment, Miss Hibble?”

Stanton gestured to Emily and they walked into the vestibule. It was enclosed with a flexible leather curtain and it was much louder, the rattling of the steel wheels on the tracks loud enough to make her teeth vibrate.

“How are you feeling?” Emily said, trying not to yell.

“My head is killing me,” Stanton said, candy rattling in his mouth. “Caul got me with a
rigor rictus
. Lucky you were there to blunt it.”

“Dag promised to ditch him somewhere nice and remote,” Emily said. “I Sundered him, you scrambled him … will that take care of him long enough for us to get to New York?”

Stanton stroked his lower lip with his thumb. “Hansen told me Caul had about thirty men in Lost Pine. They’ll be looking for him. And just like my Jefferson Chair ring lets Mirabilis keep track of me, Army Warlocks have their own ways of locating lost comrades. He won’t quickly recover from the Sundering, but he only has to recover enough to order a general alert. There are dozens of Warlock units between here and New York. Soldiers could be waiting for us at any of the stations.”

Emily leaned heavily against the wall of the vestibule, rubbing her upper arms with her hands.

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” she muttered.

Stanton glared at her. “Why didn’t
you?”
He crunched the candy in his mouth, a peculiar emphasis. “His knife was right there. He was unconscious. It would have been the work of an instant.” He waited a long moment for an answer, his face painted with strange scorn. “Maybe, Miss Edwards, cutting throats isn’t as easy as you think.”

“I never said it was easy,” Emily returned hotly. “But what the hell are we going to do? Sit back and enjoy the ride until a bunch of Army Warlocks swarm the train and put us in handcuffs?”

“First, you’re going to listen for messages from Komé. She’s warned us of trouble before, and forewarned is forearmed. Second, I think it’s time to consider a change of disguise. If Caul doesn’t remember anything else, he’s certain to remember the fabric of that suit. And finally, this train must have a smoking car somewhere. I’m going to find it and see if there’s any food to be had. Care to join me … Elmer?”

Emily wasn’t quite ready to stop being mad, but after a moment she released her annoyance in a long breath. It
was
nice to have him back.

They exited the vestibule and went back through the car, past where Rose was sitting. The girl waved to them both.

“Save our seats?” Emily gave Rose a smile. Rose blushed prettily and looked coyly down at her Jack Two-Fist book.

“Come on,” Stanton growled, giving Emily a pointed shove.

“You know,” Emily said quietly, as they wended their way toward the back of the train, “I don’t think I anticipated all the difficulties that this suit would present.”

“Believe me,” Stanton said, grasping at the overhead rails to keep his balance, “I will be pleased to provide you with a proper dress at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Emily hoped no one had heard that comment.

They found the smoking car but they didn’t find food until the train stopped for dinner. And even then there was little more to be had than thin, mingy sandwiches. Stanton bought two dozen of them and spent the afternoon eating, ignoring Rose’s attempts to catch him up on the plots of all the dime novels in her carpetbag.

Later, as twilight painted the sky with delicious hues of pumpkin and lemon, someone pulled a violin from his luggage and began to play old tunes that resounded through the rattling compartment. The music was plaintive and sweet. It lulled Rose into a welcome reverie, and she drowsed against the glass, her little white finger holding her place in the Jack Two-Fist book.

The conductor strolled through the car, lighting lanterns and folding down seats. Stanton elbowed Emily.

“Come on, Elmer,” he said. “It’s the floor for us.”

“Huh?”

“We shall allow Miss Hibble to sleep on the seats, of course.” Stanton looked at Emily meaningfully. “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Oh,” Emily said. “Right.”

They, along with a few other single men, hurried to find places on the floor. Emily and Stanton were stuck with a place up near the coal stove. Well, at least they would be warm, but it was a small comfort when weighed against the fact that they would be sleeping right next to the gent’s saloon—near enough to smell the stench and be bothered all night by people climbing over them.

“Mind the spittoon,” Stanton said, wadding up his coat for a pillow and tipping his hat down over his eyes. Emily stared up at the pressed-tin ceiling, the patterns shifting mysteriously in the half-light of the swinging lanterns. The fiddler was playing one last song. Emily felt a twinge when she recognized it.

“Sweet, Sweet Spring.”

“Beg pardon,” mumbled a man as he climbed over her.

Even though the next couple of days were uneventful, every day was more tension-charged than the last. Whenever they stopped, Emily scrutinized the passengers getting on, anxiously scanning the platform, playing a grim game of Guess the Maelstrom. It was an odd conundrum: putting miles of distance between themselves and Captain Caul should have made them safer—but with each mile, each moment that passed, the danger grew and grew.

Only while the train was under way could Emily relax, watch scraggy mountains dip and recede, and breathe the cool air that smelled of new-grown sage and rain.

Stanton spent most of his time in the smoking car, away from Rose’s nonstop chatter. Emily was worried about him. He’d woken up from Caul’s spell, but it didn’t seem that he had entirely recovered. He was tense, constantly frowning, and the small muscles of his face jumped and spasmed at odd intervals. And while he wasn’t the sweetest-tempered individual in the best of times, he was now positively snappish. She wondered if the attack hadn’t done more damage than he wanted to admit. He wouldn’t discuss it, of course. He just assured her curtly that everything was fine.

Insufferable.

But still, he didn’t deserve any of this misery, just as Dag didn’t deserve to have his heart broken, just as Pap didn’t deserve to have to huddle in hiding from blood sorcerors tearing up Lost Pine to find her.

Three times what thou givest returns to thee
…

Emily sighed, understanding for the first time the true seriousness of the rede.

It doesn’t just return to you
, she thought.
It returns to the people you care about. The people you love
…

“… And his guns had pearl handles. Have you ever heard of such a thing, Mr. Elmer?”

Rose’s words scattered Emily’s thoughts. Emily shook herself.

“Pearl handles?” she said vaguely. She’d long since stopped listening to Rose’s recap of some fictitious outlaw’s exploits.

“Hand-carved mother-of-pearl handles on his revolvers, and with ’em he could shoot any walnut out of any walnut tree, just for the pointing! Can you imagine?”

“Whoever he is, I bet he doesn’t carry those revolvers around to shoot walnuts with,” Emily muttered. At the words, Rose’s face became a picture of sweet pleading.

“Oh, but the Brushfork Bandito doesn’t hurt people! When he held up that bank in Austin, he just tied everybody up. He even gave the doll back to the little girl who was crying! He’s not mean, he’s just … tormented.”

“Tormented by not having enough of other people’s money, I guess.”

This made the girl smile, a pink blush creeping over her cheeks. She ducked her head and lowered her eyes.

“You seem tormented sometimes, too,” Rose ventured, looking at Emily from under her eyelashes.

Emily couldn’t help giving a loud laugh—a laugh that was entirely too high-pitched. She pressed her lips together quickly. From ruthless to tormented. It really was too amusing.

After a moment, Rose’s smile faded. Her face clouded slightly. She chewed her lip.

“Your friend doesn’t like me much,” she said.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Emily said. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”

Rose was silent for a long time. Lifting her heavy, lumpy carpetbag onto her lap, she wrapped her arms around it, hugging it to her chest.

“I don’t like mean people,” Rose said, finally. And then, surprisingly, she did not speak again for a long time.