Fair Is the Rose (55 page)

"No." Cain walked to the rear door, his holstered guns swaying with every pump of the engine's driving rods. "He didn't leave by the front of the car. If he left, he left here." Cain touched the oak panel of the rear door.

Rollins watched him, concern furrowing his forehead. "What's wrong? Tell me what you're thinking."

"I don't know what it is . . . but something's wrong. Tell the conductor to stop the train. I'm going to check out the baggage car."

Rollins nodded.

Cain opened the door between the cars.

"How would you like your death?"

"You can't get away with this—they'll find me—they'll see I was murdered—" Numb with terror, Christal backed away from the fine Spanish dirk that Didier held elegantly in his hand.

"If I simply push you from this train, I could break your neck. The end would come quickly, mercifully." He turned sober. "But then you might only break a leg or an arm. You'd lie in the melting snow, every wind, every chill, sapping the warmth from your body while you lay helpless from your injury. It could take days to die.
Slow, terrible days.
And I'd never be sure you were dead. After all, someone could find you."

Her hands were trembling as she held them out in supplication. "And
he
will find me. You think Macaulay will believe the worst—but if he's confronted with a terrible truth, I know him, he'll go to his grave searching to disprove it. He'll ride every inch of these tracks. When he finds my body, he'll know you killed me."

"Then he must not find your body."

"How—?"

"When Cain jumps at Big Crimloe Creek, you will be dead, my dear. The creek runs into the Mississippi and
it's
fast enough to move a body well out of reach of this train. By the time they find you, no one will know who you are." He touched the pointed dagger to his thumb. To prove its razor edge, he pricked himself. A crimson droplet fell to the wooden floor. "Come here."

"No!" she gasped, backing away. She glanced at the baggage door. Didier blocked passage to the other cars, but if she could swing open the side door, perhaps a jump wouldn't be fatal. One thing she knew, Didier wouldn't jump after her; he was too much of a coward.

He walked toward her, the knife gleaming in the shafts of sunlight streaming through the holes in the roof. She ran to the side door and unlatched it. It swung open by the sheer forward force of the speeding train. The noise was deafening. Thousands of tons of black steel and wood propelled forward in tandem by the use of steam. The prairie whipped by, a white-and-gold blur.

"It's no use, Christal. Jump if you must. You know if you survive, I'll get you one day. You'll always have to watch your back. One day I'll be standing there. Your death is inevitable. Give it to me now!" He lunged forward. She screamed. The knife seemed to shoot for her heart.

Then suddenly, it fell. And Didier was thrust backward in the strong arms of her lover.

"Oh my God!" she cried out, tears streaming down her face as Cain took Didier into a headlock. The dirk was at her feet. She picked it up, just to make sure.

"Baldwin Didier?" Cain demanded through clenched teeth.

"Let me go, sir! This woman was trying to rob me. She was trying to escape the train when we prematurely pulled out of Abbeville."

"No," Christal whispered, shaking her head. She looked at Cain and knew he believed her.

"We have a passenger who can identify you as this girl's uncle. Christal claims you're responsible for the murder of the Van Alens, her parents."

"No! It's not true!" Didier choked through the iron headlock. "You have no proof! And where is this passenger you speak of? I know of no one on the train who can identify me!"

"You've done something with Henry Glassie. These are his clothes you're wearing. We'll get to the bottom of this. I'll have every lawman within fifty miles of here to search for evidence. So confess. We've come to the end of the line."

"Never!"
Didier reached inside his vest. Cain grappled with him for the weapon. It was a tiny Derringer, much like the muff pistol she had once held on Cain. The men struggled for possession of it, their shouts and grunts muffled by the violent noise of wind passing outside the open car door. Christal held her breath. Didier was able to point the small pistol at Cain, but Cain swiftly grabbed Didier's wrist. She heard a cry,
then
the pistol, too, fell to the ground.

"You'll never catch me, I tell you!" Didier backed away from Cain's menacing form. He turned and fled through the connecting door. Cain opened the door to follow,
then
paused as if he could not believe his eyes.

Christal ran to him. Beyond, her uncle was down between the cars, grappling with the coupler. He was not an agile man, nor was he slim. Baldwin Didier was used to servants and waiters, but when it came to his freedom, even he could lower himself to manual labor. He labored now to separate the car. Already he had worked the pin more than halfway.

"Don't do this!" Cain cried out, his face taut with shock. The train was moving full speed. Uncoupling the cars might cause a derailment.

"Good-bye, Christal.
Until we meet again!"
Didier unpinned the coupler. He grasped it in his black, greasy palm and laughed. Then he lost his balance. He clung to the railing on the other side of the train, but it was just wire beneath his weight. It bent and bent, until he lost his grip. Though the baggage car was separated from the engine, it still moved at a quick clip on its own momentum. As if in slow motion, Christal saw Didier fall to the tracks. He screamed and she buried her head in Cain's chest. There was a loud, grisly bump, then silence as the car rolled to a halt, and the body of the train sped on, the conductor not yet notified by Rollins to halt.

"Shit."

The silence of the prairie was awesome after the thunderous noise of the train. The boxcar sat like a house on the tracks, immovable. Cain pulled her from his chest and repeated his curse. "Shit."

"What is it?" she asked, wiping the tears from her cheeks. She couldn't believe Didier was dead. But he was. Behind the car, he lay like a gray pinstriped boulder wedged to the side of the tracks.

"We got no confession, no proof. I knew something like this would happen. I should have tried to save him."

"You would have been killed yourself."

"C'mon. We gotta go. When Rollins stops that train and comes looking for us, I want to be gone from here. Without a confession they'll take you to New York and take you away from me—"

"What's that noise?" Christal turned worried eyes to the comer of the car. The mound of mail bags was moving up and down, like a cat under a comforter.

Cain began throwing off bags. Underneath lay Mr. Henry Glassie, of the Paterson Furniture Company, tied and gagged, and looking embarrassed, because for the second time in his entire life he was once more caught by the same lady, clad only in his union suit.

"Thank God you weren't killed," Christal whispered as she went to him. She helped Cain untie the bonds. When the gag was off, he let loose several expletives.

"So sorry, Miss Van Alen.
Your uncle is a devil.
Worse than that Kineson fellow."

"Henry, they'll be back for you. But we gotta go." Cain helped him stand,
then
he took ChristaPs hand. Peering out of the car, he saw, miles in the distance, the train stop just before the rise across Big Crimloe Creek.

"So you're taking up the life of an outlaw after all, eh, Cain?
And all for Miss Van Alen?"

"Where's the choice?" Cain snapped, eyeing the prairie as if scouting the escape route.

"Oh,
there's
a great number of choices." Mr. Glassie chuckled. "And I would suggest starting them all with some marriage vows. You've treated this girl much too casually, for all her position in society."

"She won't have much position in society when they lock her back up in that asylum. Sorry, Glassie, but we gotta run."

Christal felt Cain's pull. She looked back at Mr. Glassie, her eyes giving a silent farewell.

Henry Glassie only laughed. "I don't think this woman's brother-in-law is going to appreciate your galloping off to live like a renegade. I want to tell you, Cain, you've no reason to do it. I was awake most of the time I was underneath those bags. You say you haven't a confession from Didier—but that's false, because you do have a confession. J heard him confess his crimes, every word, and I will testify as such. From this moment onward, consider Christabel Van Alen a free woman."

Cain stood rigidly still, as if he needed time to absorb what Glassie was saying. Then suddenly he let out a loud Rebel yell and picked her up like a rag doll.

Her mind and body were numb with shock. She was free.

She was free.

Manhattan. It had changed in four years. Christal had left the city when the tallest structures were church steeples. Now there were office buildings and stores, some higher than six stories. And there was an elevated train being built to circumvent the knots of carriages and public omnibuses on the street. The farmland north of Central Park had been graded for town houses. There was even talk of building—of all things—an apartment house for the wealthy, and the plans were to put it on the west side of the park, in an area still so desolate, people jokingly referred to it as Dakota Territory.

The city had changed.
She
had changed. Christabel Van Alen had returned, yet not entirely. She was not the girl she once had been. But then . . . her gaze trailed to Macaulay, who sat silently beside her in the rented hack. She didn't really want to be that girl again. The pain she never wanted repeated, but now she knew if she had not run from her uncle, she never would have met Macaulay Cain.
Her love.
Her salvation.

"You're very quiet, my love," she whispered to him as she squeezed his hand.

"Are you excited? It's been a long time since you've been home." He smiled down at her, but his eyes were shuttered. He was holding back something, she knew it. Ever since they'd arrived at the Grand Central Depot, he seemed as quiet as if he were attending a funeral. She wished he would tell her what was bothering him.

"Everything is very different. The city has grown so rapidly, I can't quite get my bearings." She looked out the window. Telegraph wires etched the sky like tangles of clotheslines, the sidewalks were dotted with the iron covers of coal chutes,
even
the alleys were now paved. It was a modern city in every sense of the word.