Longarm was a little embarrassed by what he had said earlier. He covered it by saying, “Well, hell, Billy, you didn’t have to go to speechifying. I knew better.”

  “Good.” Vail waved a hand. “Now get out of here, and go find that young woman before something bad happens to her.”

  Longarm nodded. “That’s just what I plan to do.”

  But as he turned away, he thought of all the dangers in the world and hoped that he wasn’t already too late.

  Chapter 6

  On his way back to the depot, Longarm stopped by his rented room and picked up his Winchester, his carpetbag with a couple of changes of clothes and a box of .44 cartridges in it, and his McClellan saddle. While he hoped that Nora Canady was still in Raton, it was always possible he would have to do some horsebacking before this job was over.

  The southbound was on time. It was early evening when the locomotive eased out of the depot and began building up speed. By the next morning it would be in Raton. Longarm was sitting up in one of the coaches, which was where he would be spending the night. All the other accommodations had already been booked.

  That was all right, he told himself as he sat and smoked and watched the twilight gathering over the plains outside the window of the coach. He had slept sitting up plenty of times before. In fact, he was just about to doze off when he felt someone sit down on the bench beside him.

  He looked around, tensing slightly because he hadn’t forgotten about the threat to his life represented by Badger Bob McGurk. The person sitting beside him was no crazy, murderous outlaw, however. Instead, she was a sweet-looking young woman with brunette curls peeking out from beneath her bonnet.

  Longarm reached up and tugged on the brim of his Stetson. “Ma’am,” he said politely.

  “Good evening to you, sir,” she replied. “I do so hope you are a gentleman.”

  Longarm couldn’t help but chuckle. “I try to be,” he said dryly.

  “Excellent. A young lady traveling alone can’t be too careful, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard. My name’s Custis Long.” Then, to ease her mind a little, he added, “I’m a U.S. deputy marshal.”

  “A marshal!” the woman exclaimed. “Then I really am safe in my choice of traveling companions, aren’t I?”

  Some would have disagreed with that, thought Longarm. In fact, under the circumstances, being around him might not be that safe at all. Someone had tried to kill him a couple of times the night before, after all.

  But he didn’t say that to this young woman, just reminded her, “You haven’t told me your name.”

  “Oh, of course. I apologize for my rudeness. I’m Miss Toplin, Emily Toplin.”

  Longarm touched the brim of his hat again. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Toplin.”

  “Where are you bound, Marshal, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Even in the shadows of the coach, which was lit only by a couple of lamps, Longarm could tell that her eyes were a luminous blue. “Don’t mind at all, ma’am,” he said. “I’m going down to Raton. What about you?”

  “I’m going to Santa Fe.” She paused, then added, “To join my fiancé.”

  “Oh,” said Longarm.

  Well, he hadn’t really figured on making any advances to her anyway, he told himself. She was about as wholesome as a week-old pup, and while he knew from experience that such innocent exteriors sometimes hid downright lustful interiors, he figured that wasn’t the case here. Besides, he was only going to be on the train for about twelve hours.

  “Is your trip to Raton for business or pleasure, Marshal?” she asked. “Are you going down there to arrest some desperado?”

  “Nope,” Longarm replied with a grin. “I don’t plan on arresting nobody.”

  “Then you’re traveling for pleasure.”

  “I hope so,” he said. It would be a pleasure to locate Nora Canady and find out what this whole affair was all about, he thought.

  Miss Emily Toplin was the talkative sort, Longarm discovered. She chattered on as the train rolled southward, requiring little from him other than an occasional muttered comment to show that he was still listening. After a while, though, she wound down and started yawning.

  “I wish I could have gotten a sleeping berth,” she said. “I’m not sure I can sleep sitting up like this.”

  “It’s an acquired skill,” Longarm told her as he leaned back and tipped his hat down over his eyes. “Luckily, I’ve had a lot of practice at it.”

  He had hoped his gesture would quiet her down, and sure enough, it did. In fact, she dozed off before he did, and as the train swung around a bend, she slid toward him, her head coming to rest against his shoulder as she snuggled next to him.

  Longarm sighed. Looked like he was going to sleep with this gal after all ... just not quite the way he had first thought.

  While he waited to fall asleep, he mulled over the case that had brought him here. He had realized that in concentrating on how Nora Canady could have disappeared and where she might have gone, he had neglected to think much about what he would do once he found her. Her father and Senator Palmer would be expecting him to bring her back to Denver. Billy Vail seemed to have taken that for granted too.

  But ducking out just before a wedding was no crime, and neither was running away from home. What he had told Emily Toplin was the truth: He didn’t expect to arrest anybody in Raton, even if he found Nora there.

  Maybe she’d had a good reason for leaving Denver. Bryce Canady hadn’t struck Longarm as a brutal man, but who knows what went on behind closed doors? The same was true of Jonas Palmer. Just because he was a senator with a good reputation didn’t mean he wasn’t a gold-plated son of a bitch in private. If any of that speculation turned out to be true, how could Longarm, in all good conscience, force Nora to go back to Denver?

  The answer was simple. He couldn’t.

  He sighed. Further along he’d know more about it, as the old hymn went. Until then, he would just do the job he had been given, which was to find Nora Canady.

  Emily Toplin shifted slightly, and so did Longarm, thinking that the young woman was uncomfortable. Something tugged at his coat. He heard a soft noise.

  He looked down and saw the small, sharp knife blade that had cut right through his coat and pinned the material to the wooden seat back.

  A yell of surprise was jolted out of him by the realization that Emily had just tried to kill him. She exploded into motion, demonstrating clearly that she hadn’t been asleep at all, only shamming. The heel of her left hand cracked against Longarm’s jaw, jerking his head back. Emily’s other hand dove into her reticule and came out with a little pistol.

  Longarm lunged, trying to grab her wrist before she could fire, but the way his coat was stuck to the seat by the knife hampered his movements. He managed to bat the gun to the side as she pulled the trigger. The pistol gave a wicked little crack, and the bullet whipped past Longarm’s head and smacked through the window beside him.

  By now the struggle and the gunshot had attracted a lot of attention from the other occupants of the crowded coach. Emily screamed, “Help me! Someone help me!” as she tried to bring the gun to bear on Longarm again.

  He ripped his coat loose and grabbed her wrist, forcing the gun toward the floor. Emily screeched like he was killing her. “He’s a monster!” she howled. “He tried to molest me!”

  A man who had been sitting behind them leaned over the seat and grabbed Longarm’s shoulder. “Hold on there, fella!” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing to that young lady?”

  Trying to keep her from killing me, thought Longarm, but he didn’t waste any breath putting it into words. He saw the look in Emily’s eyes as she panted and struggled with him. She wanted to see him dead. He shook off the grip of the man behind him and gave Emily a hard shove, sending her sliding off the bench seat. She sat down hard in the aisle. Longarm loomed over her as he wrested the pistol from her fingers.

  “Look out!” somebody yelled. “He’s got a gun!”

  Damn it, now one of these pilgrims was liable to panic and start shooting at him. He straightened, holding his hands up in plain sight, and bellowed, “Everybody shut up! I’m a U.S. marshal!”

  Emily, who was lying in the aisle at his feet, kicked him in the groin as hard as she could.

  It felt like a cannon going off between Longarm’s legs. He bit back a curse and bent almost double, curling around the pain that suddenly filled him. His right hand caught hold of a seat back, and that was all that held him up. He was vaguely aware of hands clutching at him, probably belonging to the passengers who thought he was somehow to blame for all this. He wanted to shake them off, but at the moment, he just didn’t have the strength.

  Emily rolled over onto her hands and knees, then came up on her feet. She was facing away from him, and she broke into a run, pushing through the crowd that had gathered around them. People got out of her way, most likely because they thought she was running away from the man who had threatened her. Longarm lifted his head and stared blearily after her, seeing her disappear through the door at the rear of the coach.

  The agony in his crotch was subsiding a little now, and he was able to straighten up and reach inside his coat for the leather folder that contained his badge and bona fides. He opened it and held it up so that the angry passengers could see the lamplight reflect off the badge. “I’m a lawman, damn it!” he grated as he started trying to shove his way through the press of people. “Let me by!”

  The crowd finally began to part again, and he stumbled through the path that created toward the back of the coach. He became aware that the train was slowing down. Had they reached a scheduled stop already?

  The door through which Emily had vanished opened again just before Longarm could reach it. The blue-suited conductor stepped through, calling, “Castle Rock! Castle Rock!” He was obviously unaware of the disturbance that had taken place in this car, but he stopped short, a look of surprise on his pudgy face, when he saw the passengers standing in the aisle and the big, grim-faced lawman coming toward him.

  “Did you see her?” snapped Longarm.

  “See who?” the conductor asked, wide-eyed.

  “A young woman. She just ran out of here.”

  “Sorry, mister. I didn’t see anybody like that.”

  With a jolt and a hiss of brakes, the train came to a halt. Longarm looked out at a long station platform beside the tracks. The train had been going slowly enough as it eased into the station that Emily could have jumped off without risking an injury. Longarm stepped out onto the small platform at the rear of the coach and gripped the railing that ran around it. The hour was late, and the town of Castle Rock was dark for the most part. Emily could have been anywhere. He would be wasting his time trying to find her.

  “Say, I know you,” the conductor said. “You’re the one they call Longarm.”

  “Yeah,” admitted Longarm.

  Some of the passengers had come to the door of the coach. One of them pointed a finger at Longarm and said to the conductor, “That man tried to molest a young woman!”

  “That’s a damned lie,” Longarm said. “She was trying to kill me.”

  “After you took liberties with her.” The passenger, who wore the tweed suit and bowler hat of a drummer of some kind, sneered at Longarm. “We all saw it.”

  Longarm swung sharply toward the man, trying not to wince as the movement made fresh pain cascade through his groin. “You didn’t see anything of the sort, mister. Come on.”

  He shouldered past the passengers and stalked down the aisle toward the bench where he and Emily had been sitting. The knife was still there, its point buried in the wood of the seat back.

  Longarm pointed at the weapon and said, “That gal was pretending to be asleep; then she tried to put that pigsticker between my ribs.”

  The knife still had a small, torn piece of fabric from Longarm’s coat pinned to the wood. The conductor bent over, studied it, then straightened and nodded to Longarm. “Looks like she tried to stick you, all right. But what were you doin’ to her at the time?”

  “Nothing!” Longarm ground his teeth in exasperation. “I thought she was asleep. I damned near was too. It was just luck that made me shift a mite, so that she missed with the knife.”

  The conductor rubbed his jaw. “Hard to believe a young woman would try to kill a man for no reason.”

  “Maybe ...” Longarm’s brain worked furiously. “Maybe she was dreaming, having a nightmare. She thought somebody was trying to hurt her, so she lashed out at the fella who happened to be closest to her at the time—me.”

  It was a plausible explanation, Longarm supposed, but he didn’t really believe it. He had seen the look in Emily’s eyes. There was something more to this attempt on his life. Longarm was sure of it.

  The conductor seemed to have bought the line of bull Longarm had handed him, however. “In that case, I reckon you’re lucky you weren’t hurt, Marshal. But why did the young lady run off, and where did she go?”

  Longarm could only shake his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’ll have a word with the town marshal while we’re stopped here and tell him to be watching for her. We can’t wait until she comes to her senses. That would throw us off schedule.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” Longarm said sincerely.

  And thank goodness for the almighty schedule of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, he added to himself. When the train pulled out again in a few minutes, the mysterious and murderous Emily Toplin wouldn’t be on it, so that would be one less threat Longarm would have to worry about tonight.

  He pulled the knife out of the seat back and gave it to the conductor, then sat down and pulled his coat around so that he could look at the hole torn in it. He sighed. The past couple of days had been hard on his coats, that was for damned sure. He didn’t have an extra one with him, so he’d just have to wear this one with a rip in it.

  Longarm took out a cheroot, lit it, sat back, and frowned. The other passengers had all returned to their seats, but some of them were still casting hostile, suspicious glances in his direction. The pain in his balls had faded to a dull ache, but he figured it would be with him for a few days. He sure as hell wouldn’t be up to any tomcatting around ... not that he’d have time for such activities anyway.

  Three attempts on his life in twenty-four hours. That was a lot, even for him. The two by the bearded man called Ross could be explained away by Ross’s connection with Badger Bob McGurk. But what was he to make of Emily Toplin? Longarm didn’t believe she had roused from the depths of a nightmare and, thinking it was real, struck out at the handiest target. No, she had known exactly what she was doing, he decided. She had wanted him dead, no two ways about it.

  But why?

  He sighed and chewed on the cheroot, knowing that he was facing another night of unanswered questions and long-delayed slumber.

  Chapter 7

  The sun had been up for about an hour when the train came through the pass in the mountains that marked the border between Colorado and New Mexico Territory and slid down the long grade into the town of Raton. The settlement was, by and large, a cattle town, serving the vast ranches here in the northeast comer of the territory. Longarm had visited Raton many times before, and when he swung down from the train car, his long-legged strides carried him through the depot and down the street toward the local office of the Richter, Gramlich & Burke Stagecoach Company.

  He stepped from the boardwalk into the frame building and saw a tall man with a rust-colored beard standing behind a counter. “You the ticket agent?” asked Longarm.

  “I’m Burke,” replied the man, who wore a leather vest and a string tie. “What can I do for you?”

  Longarm frowned slightly. “You run this station yourself?”

  “When I have to. And for the past week, my regular man’s been down with a fever. You need to buy a ticket, mister?” Burke’s attitude was brisk and all business, as befitted a co-owner of the stage line.

  “The first thing I need is some information.” Longarm took both his identification and the photograph of Nora Canady from inside his coat. He flipped open the leather folder so that Burke could see the badge, then laid the picture of Nora on the counter. “Ever seen her before?”

  Burke looked at the photograph, lines of puzzlement appearing on his forehead. They cleared up almost immediately as he said, “Sure, I remember this woman, Marshal. She came through here sometime in the past couple of days, I’m certain of that.”

  “She probably came in on the stage from Denver on Tuesday evening.”

  Burke nodded. “Yes, that sounds right.”

  “Did she get off the stage? Do you know where she went?”

  Instead of answering right away, Burke scratched his beard and said, “Why are you looking for her? Did she do something wrong?”

  “That’s sort of hard to say right now,” Longarm answered truthfully. “What I really want to do is ask her some questions.”

  “Well, she didn’t get off the stage, I remember that now. Or rather, she did, but she got right back on after she came in here and bought a ticket to Tucumcari.”

  Longarm suppressed a groan. He had really hoped that he would find Nora here in Raton, but it looked as if the chase was going to continue.

  “So she was on the stage when it pulled out?”

  Burke nodded. “Sure was. I saw her leave.”

  “What’s the quickest way from here to Tucumcari?”