this berth and it would be unseemly for me to stick my head in. I wonder could you do it for me?”
“Yes, of course,” the woman replied with a smile.
Troy stood back to offer as much privacy as he could while the female passenger checked on the berth for him. She stuck her head in, pulled it back out almost immediately and looked over at Troy.
“There’s no one in the berth,” she said.
“Ma’am?” Troy responded, surprised by the announcement.
“Here, have a look for yourself,” the woman invited. “There’s no one in the berth.”
Troy looked in the berth and saw only the empty sheets. Pulling back from the berth, he lay his hand alongside his cheek.
“Oh, Lord have mercy,” he said. “Where did she go?”
As soon as Troy reported to the conductor that one of his passengers was missing, the conductor turned out all the porters for a thorough search of the train. Every car was searched, to no avail.
“Are you sure you did not see Miss Dorchester leave the train at one of the stops?” the conductor asked.
“Yes, sir, I’m sure. I stood in the door at ever’ stop, just like I’m s’pose to.”
“What about during the water stops? Maybe she got off to stretch her legs and didn’t get back on the train before it left.”
“Maybe that could be. I don’t stand in the door at the water stops,” Troy said. “Ain’ nobody ever told me to do that.”
“I’m not blaming you, Troy,” the conductor said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to her.”
The conductor sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. “We’re goin’ to have to send out telegrams to every station back along the way telling the trains to be on the lookout. Lord have mercy on her if she’s wandering around out there.”
“Extra! Extra! Woman disappears from train!” the newsboy shouted, hawking his papers in the cafe of the Cheyenne depot.
“Big mystery!” the boy shouted. “Her sleeping berth found empty! Extra, extra!”
“Boy, I’ll have one of those!” a woman called.
The boy reached down into his bag to pull out one of his papers.
“Yes, ma’am, that’ll be—” he started to say, but paused in mid-sentence, staring at the woman.
She was only four feet tall. He had never seen a full-grown woman this small, and he stared at her with his mouth open.
“You’re going to catch flies if you leave your mouth open like that,” the woman said. It was obvious that she was used to such stares.
“Yes, ma’am,” the paperboy replied.
“Well, are you going to bring me the paper?”
“Oh, uh, yes, ma’am,” he said. He took the paper over to her. “That’ll be two cents, ma’am,” he said.
“Pay him, would you, please, Mr. Dancer?”
The boy had been so mesmerized by the small woman that he hadn’t even noticed the other person at her table until the man dropped two pennies in his hand. That was when he saw that the man had a terribly scarred face. But it wasn’t the disfiguring scar that caused the boy to stare. It was the fact that the boy knew who he was, and that he was standing so close to a famous gunfighter.
“You’re…you’re Ethan Dancer, ain’t you?” the boy asked.
Dancer didn’t answer.
“You’re Ethan Dancer. I know you are, ’cause I’ve read about you in the penny dreadfuls. You’re a real famous gunfighter. What are you doin’ in Cheyenne? Are you going to kill somebody?”
“Yes.”
“You are? Who?” the boy asked excitedly.
“You if you don’t leave,” Dancer said with a growl.
The boy’s eyes grew large and he turned and ran from the cafe, followed by Dancer’s laughter.
“Ethan, shame on you,” the woman said, though she allowed a smile to play across her lips.
With the boy gone, the woman and her dining companion returned to their breakfast.
Although very small, Bailey McPherson was well-proportioned for her height, and at first glance one might have compared her to a Dresden doll. But upon closer examination there was something awry about her, like an imperfection in fine crystal. One could see a disquieting edge, a hardness to the set of her mouth, and a malevolent glint in her eyes.
Individually, Bailey and Dancer drew stares. Together, they were often the subject of intense scrutiny, what with her small stature and his disfigured countenance.
“He gives me the creeps just to look at him,” one of Bailey’s acquaintances had told her.
What that person didn’t realize was that it was exactly why she’d hired him. Because of her diminutive size, Bailey had the idea that she wasn’t always taken seriously. Having Ethan Dancer as her personal bodyguard did ensure a degree of respect.
Dancer continued eating his breakfast, while Bailey read the newspaper she’d bought from the boy.
NO LEADS ON MISSING WOMAN
The fate of Miss Pamela Dorchester, daughter of a prominent Green River rancher, is still unknown. The porter on the Chicago Limited reported making her bed for her at approximately ten o’clock on the night of the 7th Instant, and then provided her with a ladder to enable her to go to bed. The next morning, when all the other berths were made and hers was still closed, he looked inside and discovered she was missing. A subsequent search of the train was conducted, but to no avail.
“We’ve done all we can do,” Mr. Perkins, the local ticket agent, told this newspaper. “All the stations along the line have been notified and we are asking that anyone who has any information on Miss Dorchester’s whereabouts to please contact my office.”
“They are carrying a story in the paper about the disappearance of Pamela Dorchester,” Bailey said. “That should certainly get her father’s attention.”
“Yes,” Dancer answered as he spread jam on his biscuit.
“Wait here. I’m going to check and see if the train is on time,” Bailey said, setting her newspaper aside.
“Are you going to eat your biscuit?” Dancer asked.
“No, you can have it.”
Leaving the cafe, Bailey saw the sheriff standing in the waiting room, just beyond the door of the cafe.
“Good morning, Sheriff,” Bailey said.
“Ma’am,” the sheriff said, touching the brim of his hat. He nodded toward the dining room. “Would that be Ethan Dancer you’re sittin’ with?”
“It would be. Is there a problem?”
The sheriff pulled out a telegram. “I just got a telegram here, sayin’ that he shot and killed two men back in Bitter Creek.”
“When was that supposed to have happened?”
“According to what they say in the telegram, it happened two days ago.”
Bailey shook her head. “No, that’s impossible. We were on the train two days ago.”
“Did that train stop for repairs in Bitter Creek?”
“Oh,” Bailey gasped, putting her hand to her lips. “Oh, yes. Yes, it did, but he couldn’t have—”
“Did he get off the train?”
“Yes, but only for a little while. He couldn’t have been gone more than half an hour.”
“That’s all the time it took, ma’am. And it happened while the train was stopped for repairs.”
“Oh, my. What happened?”
“Accordin’ to the telegram, the two men drew on him. They’re sayin’ it was a fair fight.”
“It was a fair fight?”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“I see. Do you intend to arrest him?”
“That is my intention, yes, ma’am,” the sheriff answered.
“Why?”
