The marshals kicked open the door to the coach car, startling some of the passengers out of their hibernation. Just a few hours before, the coal had dwindled for the coach cars, and the porters were being forced to use coal dust to keep the fires fed. But it wasn’t enough, and as the fire had starved, the blizzard had drilled its way through every crack in the car. And so it wasn’t long before heavy curtains of cold had been draped everywhere.
At first, the people in the coach cars shook like mad. And then, all of the sudden, they couldn’t feel the shaking in their hands. Their fingers were heavy and limp, as if they were sweating anchors. The paralysis was being poured into them, and it wouldn’t be long before the stillness touched their hearts.
When the two marshals had entered, a few of the passengers picked their heads up to look at the disturbance. But then the curiosity had flickered out in their eyes, and the passengers had gone back to sleep, thinking that they were just dreaming. But for the marshals, everything in the car felt very real to them. Even the shadows felt solid enough, and Haley expected any moment for a silhouette to jump out and plunge a dark dagger into him. The pneumonic wheeze of the storm outside sounded like Ian’s breath, just inches away in the darkness. The marshals knew that a life was going to suddenly scream to a stop any moment – they just didn’t know if it was going to be theirs or Ian’s.
As the two marshals made their way down the aisle, ready to draw their revolvers, they passed by a man who was sleeping too comfortably on the wooden bench. The man’s hair was slicked to the side, and his beard was black and greasy. He wore a black eye that had flecks of red across it and a long jacket that was the color of wet sand. Bowman looked at him curiously for a moment, not recalling seeing the man before, when he heard Haley hiss, “Whitaker!”
Bowman looked away from the man and down the aisle, where Haley stood. Haley gestured with his lantern towards the end of the car like a lighthouse. “Stay with me,” the young marshal said.
Bowman grunted and continued walking with Haley. As he did, he pulled out his revolver and cocked back the hammer. There was only so much more train left, and a cornered man becomes desperate. But one way or another, they were going to get their man, like they always did – whether or not their man was actually guilty was another question entirely.
The marshals made their way to the end of the car, opened the door, and stepped out into the vestibule. They had barely closed the door behind them when the door at the front of the coach car opened. Nellie stepped into the car, looking around wildly for any sign of her fugitive friend. As she walked down the aisle, she suddenly stopped and stared at the man sitting on the bench to her left, the same man who Bowman had looked at just seconds before. Her eyes narrowed, Nellie tapped the man on the shoulder.
The man’s eyes opened as Nellie whispered, “As a woman, I’m supposed to know when makeup has been applied wrong.”
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t have much time to apply a foundation,” Ian said. When he was running out of the dining car, he took a moment to dip his hand into the coal box and take out a handful of dust. He wiped his hand in his beard to make it darker and ran his hair to the side. For an additional touch, he rubbed some of the dust around his eye. He realized that he still had some of the victim’s blood on his other hand, and so he mixed it in with the coal dust to give the impression of a black eye. He then turned his coat inside-out to complete the ensemble. “Besides,” Ian added, “it was enough to convince the marshals, and that was all that mattered.”
Nellie squeezed in between Ian and an elderly gentleman on the bench. She leaned over and said quietly to Ian, “Right after you made your exit – pursued by a bear as Shakespeare once put it – someone in the crowd identified the body.”
“And?”
“His name was Ethan Vaughn. He was a bodyguard for one of the ranchers traveling in our car.”
Ian frowned. “So it was political then.”
“You think it was political?”
Ian nodded. “The bodyguard for a rich rancher, who was found attacked from behind and stabbed repeatedly? I’d say so. Is the rancher still safe?”
“For now – I saw his other bodyguard hustling the rancher and his wife into their sleeping compartment.”
“So first Mr. McKenna dies, and now this Vaughn fellow. This is only going to escalate.”
“I thought you said that McKenna died from natural causes? That is, if we assume that dying from chloroethane poisoning in a refrigerated car is perfectly natural.”
“We know that, but no one else does. All it takes is a spark to start a fire, and McKenna was a lightning strike. All it would take…” Ian paused and lowered his voice even more. “All it would take is a poor rancher in a coach car like this finding out that one of the villains from the range war has been found dead under mysterious circumstances. A small-time rancher with a grudge hears something like that, they can get inspired. And I imagine it’d be easy to take care of a bodyguard – they’re so used to protecting their employer that they don’t think to protect themselves.”
Nellie was afraid to ask how he knew that last bit of information. Instead, she asked, “So, what do you think is going to happen next?”
Ian’s face was stone. “I think we both know what’s going to happen next.”