Dreadnought

Mercy shook her head. “Lord knows what. Ain’t it enough that the thing’s a big ol’ Union machine? Can’t blame them if they want to take it down.”

“They can’t take it down,” he insisted. “They aren’t dogs chasing a wagon, though they wouldn’t know what to do if they caught it.”

“But if you know some of them raiders, can’t you ask them?”

He let go of the tiny waxed point of his mustache and asked, “How exactly would you recommend I go about doing that? I can’t just hold up the train for a few days and wait on ’em to catch up, now, can I?”

“I don’t know. If you were determined enough . . .”

“Oh, don’t go on like that. I need to get west of here, still-it’s my duty and my job to find out what’s going on for my own country. That doesn’t leave me a fat lot of time to be dickering around in Kansas, just to see what your grays think they require of a Union engine. All I can figure,” he continued, “is that there must be something on board that’s sparked their interest.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged and leaned back against the wall. “I was hoping maybe you had some idea. What do you know about what they’re carrying in those extra cars?”

“The one behind the caboose, you mean?”

“That one, sure. And the two behind the engine. Can’t be plain old fuel in those two; even a juggernaut like that damn engine don’t need half so much to propel it. No, I’m thinking they’re bringing something else along.”

A pair of sandwiches on hammered metal plates were slapped down in front of them, delaying Mercy’s response a few moments more. But when she spoke, after swallowing a mouthful of a very fine barbecue sandwich that was almost too spicy for her taste, she said, “Bodies.”

“What?”

“They’re carrying bodies-in that back car, anyhow.”

Horatio Korman licked his upper lip, which did not remove the full spectrum of sauce that was accumulating on the underside of his facial hair. “Well, sure,” he told her. “That’s the official story.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“No, I don’t believe it. And I don’t think your Rebs believe it, either-and I wonder what they know that makes them think chasing the Dreadnought’s worth their time and trouble.”

“Can’t help you there,” she told him, and took another bite.

“I don’t know why I thought you could,” he said with the same accusatory gleam in his eye that Miss Clay had been giving her all week, for exactly the opposite reason.

“Oh, leave it be,” she said with irritation and a half-full mouth. When she’d swallowed the whole thing down, she went on. “What do you want me to say? I told the captain the truth, same as I told you the truth-and I didn’t rat you out to nobody yet, and I’m hoping you’ll treat me the same. My reasons for heading west have nothing to do with the war, and I’m sick of it anyway. I don’t want a whole trainful of folks hating me because of where I worked and where I’m from.”

“So your sympathies lie not in Virginia?” he asked, with a veneer of false innocence.

“Don’t you go putting words in my mouth. I love my country same as you love yours, but I’m not running any mission for my country. I’m no spy, and I’m too tired to fight for anyone but myself right now. Sometimes, I think I don’t have the energy for that, either.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

“I didn’t ask you to,” she snapped. “Same as I didn’t ask you to pull me off the street and feed me. Just because you and me might be sort of on the same team, that’s no excuse for us to hang together.” She took another jab at her plate, knowing there was more to it than that. She mumbled, “You’re gonna get me in trouble, I swear.”

He asked, “And what if I do? What do you think’ll happen to you, if they all find out what you’re keeping quiet?”

She shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe they dump me off at the next stop, in the middle of noplace. I don’t have the money to pay the rest of the way out to Tacoma again. Maybe I get stuck a thousand miles away from where I need to be, with my daddy maybe dying out there. Or, Jesus,” she said suddenly, as it had just occurred to her. “Maybe they’ll arrest me, and say I’m a spy! I can’t prove I’m not.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They’d arrest me before they’d arrest you.”

“Why? Because you’re doing your job in someplace that ain’t Texas?”

“Something like that,” he said in a way that made her want to ask more questions. “Fact is, I think there is a spy on the train-but I’m not sure who yet. That coupler didn’t break all by its lonesome. Someone wants to sabotage the train so the Rebs can catch it, but it sure ain’t me. And I can’t prove it. But I probably look good for it.”

“So what are you doing on this train? Knowing that being here is asking for trouble?”

He took a deep breath and the last quarter of his sandwich in one bite, and took his time chewing before answering her. He also took a minute to glance around the room, checking the faces he saw for familiarity or malice. Then he asked, “How much do you keep up with the newspapers, Mrs. Lynch?”

“More lately than usually. They gave me something to read while I was coming west.”

“All right. Then maybe you’ve heard about a little problem Texas has right now, with some Mexican fellas who went missing all in a bunch.” He said this conspiratorially, but not so quietly that everyone would try to overhear whatever secret was being told.

“I’ve seen something about it, here and there. Mr. Cunningham aboard the Providence-he gave me the background on the situation.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not a damn thing. I imagine he’s got opinions on it, and I imagine they’re not altogether different from mine. But it’s my job, not my opinion, to sort out what became of the dirty brown bastards and what they’re up to. They went wandering north-”

“To help relocate-”

“They went wandering north,” he talked over her, as if he wasn’t really interested in political discussion. “And they went wandering right off the edge of the map. I’ve been chasing every rumor, snippet of gossip, and wild-eyed fable from every cowhand, cowpoke, rancher, settler, and Injun who’ll stand still long enough to talk to me, and none of it’s making any sense-not at all.”

Honestly curious, she asked, “What are they saying?”

He waved his hand as if to dismiss the whole of it, since none of it could be true. “Oh, they’re saying crazy things-completely crazy things. First off, if word can be believed, they went off course by a thousand miles or so. And I’ve got to tell you, Mrs. Lynch, I’ve known a backwards Mex or two in my time, but I’ve never heard of one dumb enough to go a thousand miles off course in the span of a few months.”

“That does sound unlikely.”

“It goes well beyond unlikely. And I don’t think Mexico knows what’s happened to ’em either-that’s what really gets me. Likewise-and I’m in a pretty secure position to know-the Republic didn’t touch ’em. Whatever happened happened somewhere out in the West Texas desert hill country, and then something sent those men on some other bizarre quest-”

“All the way to Utah?” she interjected.

Derailed, he stopped and said, “Utah? How’d you know that?”

“Because you told me that’s how far you were riding the other day. The Utah territory’s a long piece away from West Texas, I’d think.”

“Amazingly far,” he confessed. “But that’s what the intelligence is telling us. Something strange happened, and the group shifted direction, drifting north and west. The last reports of Mexican soldiers have come from the Mormon settlements out there-you know, them folks who have all the wives and whatnot. The Mormons may be swamp-rat crazy themselves, for all I know, but they’re scared to death.”

“Of a legion of soldiers? Can’t say as I blame them. Lord knows it’d give me a start to find them in my backyard.”