before.”
“Here!” one of the passengers in the coach called out. “You don’t intend to take those men on this stage with decent folk, do you?”
“We got no choice, mister. We can’t leave ’em out here,” Ben called back. “They’ll be ridin’ up on top of the coach. You’ll never see them.”
“I want you to know that I intend to make my protest known about this,” the passenger said.
Ben leaned over and spit out a quid in the general direction of the irate passenger. The passenger had to jerk his head in quickly to keep from being hit.
“You do that,” Ben said.
Working quickly, Pearlie put the shackles on the two would be road agents, then ordered them up onto the top of the coach. Once they were on top, he loosened their shackles just long enough to pass the chain through one of the luggage guards. Then he reconnected them before joining Ben on the driver’s seat.
“You ready?” Ben asked.
“I’m ready,” Pearlie replied.
Ben nodded, then whistled at the team, and the coach continued on its way.
It was late afternoon when the coach pulled into town. Because the coach was the town’s major physical connection with the outside world, it always garnered attention. That was partly because Ben made his arrivals, just as he made his departures, with the horses pulling the coach along at a rapid trot.
Today, though, the coach attracted even more attention as it was very obvious that there were two men shackled to the roof of the coach. And one of them the townspeople recognized right away.
“Hey! That’s Dempster!” someone shouted.
“Dempster, what are you doin’ up there?”
“You remember Dempster, don’t you? He used to be a guard for the stage. Now they got him shackled up there on top.”
Chapter Seven
Although the train ran through the night, it had neither Pullman cars nor pull-down berths; therefore, Smoke and Sally had to sleep as well as they could on the seats. Smoke, who could sleep almost anywhere, had a much easier time of it than Sally, who sat by the window, staring out into the darkness for most of the trip. After leaving Big Rock, they had to change trains in Como, then again in Denver, both changes made in the middle of the night. It was harder in Como, because they had to wait for one hour in the small depot with only hard, wooden, and backless benches to accommodate them.
The depot in Denver was much larger, and would have been considerably more accommodating if they had had to wait, but the train for Colorado Springs was on an adjacent track, already taking on passengers, even as they were arriving.
Sally finally fell asleep on this, the last leg of their trip, but it was more because of exhaustion than anything else. She woke up just as they were coming into Colorado Springs, and was surprised to see that it was now light outside.
“Ahh, good, you are awake, I see,” Smoke said.
“Barely,” Sally mumbled.
“If you want, I can just leave you on the train. Whenever you finally wake up, you can take the next train back,” Smoke teased.
“Ohh,” Sally groaned. “I don’t want to see another train, ever.”
“That’s interesting. You plan for us to walk back, do you?”
The couplings began rattling and the brakes squealing as the train slowed on its approach to the station.
“What do we do first?” Sally said. “And I truly hope it is find a hotel.”
“That’s what I plan to do, then I’ll look up Tom Murchison,” Smoke said.
“Who is Tom Murchison?”
“He is a lawyer here. Jim Robison recommended him to me. In fact, I would be surprised if Jim hadn’t contacted him already.”
Jim Robison was a lawyer back in Big Rock who was not only a friend, but who’d done some work for Smoke.
“Well, if Jim recommends him, that is good enough for me,” Sally said.
Finally, the train jerked to a halt and the other passengers in the car started securing their things, preparatory to exiting.
“Oh, what a handsome-looking train station,” Sally said as she and Smoke stepped down from the train.
The building that had caught Sally’s attention was the Denver and Rio Grande Depot. Built of brick, it was one of the more impressive-looking buildings in town. The depot had a red-tiled roof with dormers and a cupola on top from which the yardmaster could observe train traffic on the eight sets of tracks that made up the marshaling area.
Sally saw him first, a young man standing on the platform, holding up a sign.
