Free Sunset Trail by Wayne D. Overholser Page A

morning.
    The front screen slammed shut and he saw her run across the yard to the street. His heart began to pound. He couldn’t stand
     it if she bawled him out. They never had quarreled and he didn’t want to start now.
    She climbed into the seat beside him, not at all worried because her skirt flew up and exposed her trim ankles. She said:
     “Lead on, McDuff, or whoever it was I studied in school.”
    “Honey, I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I should have been here hours ago, but the town’s wild tonight and I couldn’t get away.”
    “And what’s more, you probably shouldn’t be here now,” she said gaily. “Go on. Let’s get out of here before you hear somebody
     shoot somebody else. Find a private little spot of beauty where you can kiss me properly without the neighbors watching us.”
    “You’re not mad at me for being so late?”
    “Of course not, silly. I was afraid you couldn’t make it at all. Just because you’ve got red hair and a hot temper aren’t
     reasons for me to get mad at the drop of the hat.”
    He took a long, sighing breath of relief. “Honey, I love you more every day.” He slapped the horse with the lines. “Come on,
     Napoleon. Haul us out of here.”

II
    Governor Benjamin Wyatt closed his eyes and relaxed, his head resting against the red plush cloth that covered the back of
     the seat. He listened absently to the rhythmic click-click of wheels on rails as the train thundered eastward across the Colorado plains. They were scheduled to pull into Burlington
     at midnight and it was nearly that now.
    He didn’t think he had ever been as tired as he was at this moment, but when you’re seventy years old with white hair and
     a white beard and you look like everybody’s grandfather, and when you’re making five or more campaign speeches a day, you
     have a right to feel tired.
    He thought about all the things he had tried in his lifetime. He’d been a farmer, a schoolteacher, a soldier during the Civil
     War, a merchant, a lawyer, and finally a newspaper editor. He had not been outstanding at any of them, and still he had been
     elected governor of Colorado at the age of sixty-eight on the Populist ticket. It was a sort of miracle any way he looked
     at it.
    Now, with six weeks to go until election day, he wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but he thought he had a chance of winning
     a second term in spite of the panic of the previous year, the vilification, the name calling, and the actual death threats
     that had been made against him. The women had been given the right to vote during his administration, and he expected their
     support in return for what he had done for them.
    His secretary, Tom Henry, came into the coach from the smoking car and sat down beside him. Wyatt opened his eyes to glance
     at Henry, then closed them again. Tom Henry was in his middle twenties, a crusader with the drive and zeal of a man who knows
     the world must be saved and there was very little time left.
    Wyatt was always amused when he thought about this. There had been a time when he had been as young and idealistic as Tom
     Henry and had been filled with the same zeal and the notion that time was rapidly running out. He had been an Abolitionist;
     he had even been a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Now, when he was close to the end of his life, he was very much
     aware that changing the world was a slow process indeed.
    “You thought about your speech tomorrow, Governor?” Henry asked.
    He patted his beard and sighed. “Yes, I’ve thought about it. It will, as Matt Dugan suggested, be nonpolitical. I’m sure that
     if I gave a rousing Populist speech in Amity, I would start a riot.”
    “I’m afraid you would,” Henry said. “You’ll have an audience of conservative farmers and ranchers who think any suggestion
     of change is treason.”
    “They do,” Wyatt agreed. “They do, indeed.”
    “Are you going to quote from Governor Lewelling’s address when he was