Free Anita Mills by Dangerous Page B

you tell us where in the hell she is.”
    “She’s on the train.”
    “And I suppose that makes the both of us blind,” Lee muttered. “Well, since you got all the brains and two good eyes, why don’t you find ’er?”
    “Look, it doesn’t do much good to fight among ourselves, does it?” Hannah said tiredly. “All right, you looked over the passengers, and—”
    “And saw nobody as could be Verena Howard,” Charley Pierce finished for him. “There wasn’t any women but a farmer’s wife with a passel of kids hanging on ’er and—”
    “And what?”
    “The only halfway young one had a husband with her.”
    “Did you get a good look at her?”
    Pierce shook his head. “Couldn’t. The poor little thing was so sick she couldn’t hold her head up, and her husband was having a time of taking care of her. She’s having a baby, he said.”
    “Maybe she got off before we caught up,” Simmons ventured slowly. “Maybe she got fed up with the company.”
    “And went where?”
    “I dunno.”
    “No, she’s on that train,” Hannah declared positively.
    “Well, if she is, she’s passing herself off as a cowboy and doin’ a damned good job of it,” Jackson muttered. “Ain’t nothin’ but cowpunchers and Mexicans on the whole damned thing.”
    “She wouldn’t have any reason to disguise herself,” Bob Simmons pointed out.
    “Unless she knows about the gold.”
    The other three looked at Gib Hannah. Then Charley Pierce found his voice again. “How the hell would she know that? You said the Hamer fellow didn’t even know.”
    “Jack left everything to her. Everything,” Gib repeated for emphasis. “It’s not impossible that he might have written to her before he died. Or that he could have left something to be mailed to her afterward.”
    “But I’m telling you there wasn’t no—”
    “Charley, did you get a good look at the husband?” Hannah asked suddenly.
    “Yeah.” Pierce sucked in his breath, then let it go. “He was a real good-looking Reb from Arkansas. Fought with something called the Hell Brigade, he said. Got black hair—brown eyes, I think—real nice clothes, too. Looked like he could be a lawyer or something.”
    “Or a sharp. Anything else?”
    “He was sitting down, so I couldn’t say for sure how tall he was, but he looked like maybe he was a little taller than you, Gib.”
    “What about the wife?”
    “Hard to tell. Like I said, I couldn’t see her face, but she looked pretty well-dressed to me.” Charley’s forehead furrowed as he tried to remember. “She was sick, real sick, Gib. And he called her Bess. Yeah, that’s about all, I’d say. Oh, yeah, she had a wedding ring. Guess that lets her out, don’t it?”
    “Maybe. Maybe not.”
    “I think mebbe we oughta go back to San Angelo and wait,” Lee Jackson murmured. “Make a whole lot more sense. She’ll be showing up for probate, anyway.”
    “We already know what you think,” Hannah snapped. “No, I still think she’s somewhere on that train, and I aim to find out for sure.”
    “How you going to do that, Gib?”
    “The way the train’s running, having to stop every few miles to clear the tracks, we’ll keep up with it. Every time the passengers get off to eat, I figure there’ll be one of us there watching.”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “And if she knows, sooner or later she’s going to make a mistake that’ll give her away.”
    “It’ll be dark when they change at Harrisburg. Can’t see much in the dark, Gib,” Bob pointed out.
    “To make the stage connection for San Antonio, she’ll be going on to Columbus. What’re the stops after Harrisburg?”
    Unfolding the timetable, Bob Simmons smoothed it with his hand, then read the list aloud. When he was finished, Gib Hannah nodded. “All right, I figure we ought to catch up somewhere past Harrisburg. After that—”
    “Ain’t they gonna wonder how come the same strangers is showing up everywhere?”
    “They won’t question a