Ironhorse

3

Virgil didn’t answer my question. He focused on the cigar in his hand and rolled it back and forth between his fingers and thumb. Then he looked out the window at the rocky terrain passing by.

Besides the rail we were riding — the St. Louis & San Fran — the Atchison/Topeka, Santa Fe/Burlington, Rock Island & Pacific, and the MK&T railways connected all the Five Civilized Tribes that made up the majority of the territories: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. The sixty-mile detour east had us crossing the river and entering the Indian Territories into the Choctaw Nation, as opposed to the Chickasaw Nation. Other than the additional sixty miles of travel, the only real notable difference for us taking the St. Louis instead of the MK&T and entering the Choctaw Nation was the wooded and rough terrain ahead. The rail leaving Texas and heading north was a treacherous winding rise up, up, and up, following the swift waters of the Kiamichi River.

“We’ve been gone a good while,” Virgil said.

“We have.”

“Just how long have we been gone?”

“Well, ’bout two months,” I said. “Give or take some days.”

Virgil turned his attention out the window again.

A swell of blackbirds appeared, traveling parallel with the train for a while. They dipped down out of sight behind a section of quartz cliffs. After some distance the birds drifted back up again, lifting above us and out of sight.

“Just because we have been away for a long while doesn’t mean Allie’s with Teagarden,” I said.

“Proof is in the pudding,” Virgil said.

“That’d be a matter of your sampling.”

“Normal circumstance, I’d be interested in that proposition,” Virgil said. “But at this very moment, I ain’t.”

“I can understand that.”

Virgil gave a sharp nod.

I didn’t say anything else. I understood Virgil well enough to know when a conversation had paused, lingered, or ended, and this one had ended.

Virgil looked back out the window. The lowering sun flickered behind a ridge of evergreens.

“I’m gonna tend to the horses,” Virgil said.

He took a long draw from his cigar and placed it in the silver-plated ashtray on the seat back in front of us.

“I’ll be right here.”

Virgil stepped out the back door as the train chugged slowly up a narrow pass of juniper, quartz, and sandstone. I looked out the window, thinking about how much weight the engine was pulling, thinking of my days of service in the area we were currently passing through. This was the edge of the Fourth Military District. I worked under General Adelbert Ames and had been stationed throughout the Indian Territories during the Reconstruction, following the war. Not real good memories to be conjuring up on such a beautiful sunny summer afternoon, but the territories were different now. Even though there were Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache living in the assigned Indian Territories, there was no longer any real threat of hostiles. Trains, or “little houses on wheels,” as the Indians called them, were as common in the Indian Territories as they were in most states.

The locomotive was chugging unusually slow now. I tipped my hat, shading my eyes from the flashing patches of sun, and started to feel slightly dozy. For some reason, the hot sun on my cheeks made my thoughts drift to Katie from Appaloosa — her sheets, her liquor, her long legs, her dark hair, her womanliness. I yawned, and when I did, I heard the front coach door open, followed by the back door, followed by, “Hands in the air! This is a robbery!”