Ike watched as five men followed the winding path between piles of crates back in the direction he’d come. Just lying about and listening, he was discovering more about the men working for the STC Rail Company than he ever wanted to know. The sooner he cleared out, the better. There wasn’t a one of them who would give him a break.
It was bad enough running afoul of Kinchloe and Smitty. Herkimer and the man who sounded like the big boss, Schofield, weren’t sounding likable enough to meet. He touched his throat as if feeling a wire noose cutting into his flesh. Herkimer might be a drunk, but Schofield sent ripples of fear through the vicious railroad bulls. That was definitely a man to avoid.
He came to his knees, then stood, testing his balance atop the pile of crates. He wobbled as he jumped from one stack to the next, but that came from his head threatening to split apart at any instant. The gunshot to his forehead had left him woozy and more than a little giddy. The crates were stable enough, if only he chose the biggest of them to use as his aerial highway.
Making his way toward streaming daylight at the far end of the warehouse, Ike began jumping faster and faster from one precarious perch to the next. Fresh air, or as fresh as air in a rail yard could be, laden with coal dust and noxious sulfur fumes, blew into his face. As he approached the far end of the building, he saw the huge barnlike doors swung wide open to let in the breeze. Outside along the tracks, a man pumped hard to make a handcar almost sail along a spur line. If Ike reached that set of tracks and another handcar, he’d pump like there was no tomorrow and get away before Kinchloe or the marshal or anyone meaning to ventilate his hide knew he was gone.
It didn’t even matter where he headed. North would be good, or south. Retracing his route to Houston wasn’t a good idea, but maybe Penrose had moved on to tormenting other people. There wasn’t any reason to keep hunting for Isaac Scott more than a day or two. For the piddling amount owed him, that’d divert up too much of his small army of cutthroats and thieves to be profitable. Ike had heard Penrose say more than once that time was the only commodity—and that it had to be used wisely to collect even more money.
Ike made a final jump to the top of a crate but landed crooked. He twisted his leg under him and sank down. Rubbing the strained leg helped, but it also gave him a chance to see what lay below. The crates had been moved around to form a small alcove. Two women secured in the makeshift prison rattled their chains and bickered.
He wondered if everyone in San Antonio argued incessantly or if he had blundered onto a pocket of humanity that delighted in it.
“You should never have trusted him,” the older one declared. She made a dramatic motion with her arm, as if ready to launch into a soliloquy. “His eyes were teensy. Hidden in pits like a pig. Never trust anyone who squints all the time when they aren’t in the bright sun, though the Texas sun is especially bright and might cause permanent squinting.”
“Mama, be quiet. What’s done is done. He offered a big enough reward and here we are.” She held up a slender wrist to show off the chain binding her.
Even if she hadn’t called the older woman “mama,” Ike would have guessed they were related. Both had auburn hair. The sunlight sneaking past the crates caught the daughter’s tresses and turned it into spun copper. They wore similar clothing, as if they belonged to some group. Light green dresses with pert white linen aprons shifted as they moved, making whispering sounds that reminded him of wind in the pines.
The daughter pushed her hair back with both hands in frustration and looked up. Eyes as green as a new spring locked with his. Ike felt inferior. He knew his muddy brown eyes carried no sparkle, no shimmer of merriment or even intelligence. Worse, his clothing was as decrepit as the meanest vagrant. He had to smile just a little at that. He was that vagrant. He had ridden the rails to get here and was filthy from the knocking about.
The younger woman had a pale oval face that tugged at his heartstrings. She reminded him of a love lost too long ago to another man, but this wasn’t Philomena. If anything, she was prettier. Her bow-shaped lips parted slightly, then she waved frantically to him and called, “Mister, Mister! Please help us! They’re holding us against our will.”
“Who?” Ike felt silly. He sounded like a barn owl, but taking in the two women while listening with half an ear for Kinchloe and his thugs to show up divided his attention.
“That terrible man at the Grand Palace over on Alamo Street, that’s who. He—”
“Oh, be quiet, daughter.” The older woman shushed her and stood. She held out her arms. Both wrists were secured with the chains. “We only wanted our money.”
“We took what was ours!”
“I told you to hush, girl,” the mother said harshly. “Let me talk to him.”
“Keep your voices down. There are railroad bulls everywhere.” Ike grew increasingly uneasy at this exchange. Neither woman seemed to care if their captors overheard.
The two exchanged a quick glance, then the young one said cagily, “Looking for you, are they?”
“At least I’m not chained up.” Ike grinned now. “It might be interesting being chained with the two of you.”
“No!” they both blurted. Then the daughter recovered. “You’re joshing us, aren’t you? Get us free.”
“It sounds as if you stole money from the owner of the Grand Palace.”
“Mr. Zachary refused to pay us what he had promised. We packed the house night after night. He owed us what we took from the till.” The young girl saw nothing wrong with this bit of frontier justice. Truth to tell, Ike agreed. The law seldom saw things in terms of what was right as often as it did according to who paid the biggest bribes.
Ike moved around, hung over the edge of the crate and balanced for a moment. He tried to find a secure place to wedge his toes between the lower crates and failed. He thrashed about and then dropped hard. He landed in a crouch, looking up at the two women.
From this angle, their hair turned fiery red. Both sets of emerald eyes fixed imploringly on him. There wasn’t any way he could deny them their freedom.
He duckwalked to the post where they were secured. The railroad tie had been driven into the floor and metal bolts screwed into the wood to hold the ends of the chains.
“Did the saloon owner chain you up?”
“We were stopped from loading our stage equipment on a train bound out of town. He had warned the ticket agent we’d try to get away and had offered a hefty reward. Two of the most obnoxious railroad employees aboard the train—”
“One was the conductor,” cut in the older woman.
“They bodily threw us off the train, unloaded our scenery and costumes and brought us here.” The daughter crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her foot as she remembered with increasing anger how they had been mistreated.
“The conductor went on and on about how a huge reward had been offered. I doubt that. He said it only as a salve for his conscience that he turned two fine, upstanding ladies over to the likes of that swine! Mr. Zachary is far too stingy a man to offer much of a reward.”
“He wants to sell us to Mexican slavers,” declared the daughter. “They’ll steal us away into Mexico, and we’ll never be seen again.” She made a face. “And I don’t even like tequila.”
Ike had to laugh at that. If what the redhead said was true, being forced to drink tequila instead of Kentucky bourbon was the least of their worries.
He put both hands atop the railroad tie and leaned on it, thinking what to do.
“So? Are you going to save us?” The mother’s tone told where her daughter had gotten her crazy notions. But then they said they were actresses with scenery and costumes and a show to entertain a rowdy saloon crowd. That explained their every quirk.