Free Sudden Country by Loren D. Estleman

with the likes of Quantrill and Anderson, I'd of run him out before he ever threw a lip over any glass of mine."
    "I'm glad. I don't like what I saw of that border trash."
    "Someday when you trust me, I'd hear how that came about."
    I hesitated. "It is not that I don't trust you."
    "Course you don't. It's the eye. It was a leg or an arm or even what makes a man a man, you'd call me cripple and pay me what's due. When folks look at me all they see's the eye. You'll get used to it. They all do. I did."
    His turn came and he mounted the ramp with the sorrel's bit in hand. He handed the reins to a railroad worker sweating in the car and together they struggled against the determined might of the horse, which had set its hoofs and refused to proceed. The railroad man cursed.
    "Will I see you in the Pullman?" I called.
    "I'd best stay with Nicodemus this trip." Wedlock's voice was strained. "He don't take to travel that ain't his own doing."
    Disappointed, I walked down the platform past Marshal Honyocker and two of his deputies, who had evidently been informed that a number of heavily armed men were gathered at the station. The marshal's men were perspiring freely, but in his tight waistcoat and level hat he looked contained in the dry heat. Whatever Mr. Knox and Judge Blod had told him, he seemed satisfied that the situation was moving out of his jurisdiction.
    At length the animals were secured, seats taken, and with the conductor's cry of "Board!" the train whistled and slid out of the station. I had a window seat next to Mr. Knox facing Judge Blod, who had begun a log of our journey and was filling pages of foolscap on the tilted surface of an ingenious collapsible writing desk provided by the railroad. His afflicted foot rested in the aisle. I wondered if it would prove a hindrance on the trail.
    "Who is meeting us in Cheyenne?" Mr. Knox asked the Judge.
    "Major Alonzo Rudeen, the acting commander at Fort Laramie. He has offered us the escort of a patrol as far as the Dakota border. I wrote about him in Rudeen of Raton Pass. It played no small role in his promotion."
    "Is there anyone out here whom you do not know?"
    "We have not met. I based the book upon newspaper reports and information supplied by the War Department. He wrote to thank me. We have been in correspondence since that time."
    The train racketed through countryside that remained constant through that part of the Nations that extends north of Texas, and which has since been renamed the Oklahoma Panhandle; flat yellow earth like crinkled paper, pocked with mesquite and bunch grass, each clump casting a small crescent-shaped shadow looking like the holes that horned toads scoop in the sand just before they vanish beneath the surface. As the day wore on, however, the scenery began to change, subtly at first, then dramatically, becoming green and grassy, the horizon less a straight line as mountains began to take on a deep blue form. I knew then that we were in Colorado. I was now farther from home than I had ever been. Even the air smelled different.
    We had an excellent supper in the dining car and retired to our berths for the night. Lying there between the curtains and the curving varnished wall of my wooden womb, I let the car's swaying motion and the mesmeric chattering of the wheels pull me into darkness. This time there were no nightmares, only oblivion.
    In Denver the next day, the train stopped for passengers, and we alighted to stretch our legs. I saw Ben Wedlock leading his sorrel down the ramp from the stock car for the same purpose, but as he was deep in conversation with one of the men he had signed in Amarillo, I passed by them after an exchange of greetings. Wedlock seemed refreshed and not at all stiff from what must have been an uncomfortable night in the company of beasts. I saw Christopher Agnes prowling the cinderbed with his stick in one hand and the ubiquitous sack in the other, apparently in vain, for he returned to the Pullman with a