The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Messinger Holly

Author:Messinger, Holly [Messinger, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Western, Historical
ISBN: 9781466834316
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2014-06-17T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“I count fourteen,” Charles said, flinging the last head into the smoldering remains of the stock car.

“Me too,” Boz agreed. “Not countin the three or four piles of ash, can’t tell what they were.”

“I can account for five piles of ash, personally,” Ferris said.

“That makes twenty even,” Trace said, kicking the canvas-wrapped bundle at his feet. He yawned and cocked his right arm back behind his head to stretch the shoulder. He was going to be damn sore in those muscles for the next few days, although at the moment all he felt was limp and weary in a glad-to-be-alive way. The sun was coming over the rise, sending golden fingers of light over the ground and the sleeping pile of emigrants—those that could sleep, anyway. Some of them had just plain lapsed into senselessness.

Trace sobered, looking over at them, their clothes smeared with soot and blood. He saw the conductor looking, too. The man’s gaze traveled from the little knot of survivors, over the butchered cattle, across the train standing like a gutted monument to the massacre. The conductor rubbed a hand across his face, paying extra attention to his eyes. He wiped away clean streaks on his cheeks.

Boz put a hand on his shoulder. “You did your duty, mister. You stayed with the train.”

“Thank you,” the conductor said in a shaky voice. He blinked several times, jabbed at his nose with a middle finger to push up spectacles that weren’t there. He wiped his hand on his pants and offered it to Boz. “Thank you, Mr.—?”

“Bosley. John Bosley.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” the conductor said.

Trace felt a touch on his hand and looked down to see Miss Eliza smiling at him. She looked remarkably pretty and fresh, with a dressing-gown thrown over her soiled nightdress, and her dark hair hanging loose in the wind.

“Brother Clark is awake,” she said, the corners of her lips twitching. “He doesn’t seem to remember how he fell senseless. He thinks perhaps he breathed too much smoke.”

“Funny, I would have said he was blowin it,” Trace said, and they chuckled together, until her eyes suddenly brightened with tears. She put her fingers to her lips and looked away.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” he said.

She managed a brave smile. “No greater love than this.”

“Yes,” he said gently.

She looked at her hands for a long moment, then gestured at the bundle under his boot. “You are taking that package back to St. Louis? To your employer?”

“Yeah.”

“This Miss Fairweather you work for must be a remarkable woman, to concern herself so with the welfare of strangers.”

“She’s, ah, dedicated, for sure.”

“Are you likewise … dedicated … to her cause?”

There were so many angles to that question that Trace looked at her, wondering if Eliza Kingsley was also more than she seemed.

But she was blushing. “I mean to say, with my brother gone … it would be a comfort to have a man like you in our number. At least until we reached Butte. Or if you needed to complete your business in St.

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