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Sergeant Pope said, “We were after your gold, and you were after the Chinamen out West. We had a fight between us, fair as can be. ”
“But we won’t get our Chinamen now,” said the lieutenant. “The deeds all went sucking out into the pass someplace when that crazy woman busted out the gold car’s window with a prybar. ” He pointed at Theodora Clay, who stood utterly unapologetic. “And the gold . . . I don’t know. I expect there are better uses for it. ”
Corporal Cunningham said, “And Lord knows we’re in no position to take it from you now. ” He gave a rueful little smile.
“We both had our reasons,” said the captain. “Civilized reasons. Disagreements between men. But those things . . . ”
“Those things” was repeated in muttering utterances around the car.
The Southern sergeant said, “I want all of y’all to know, we didn’t do that. Whatever was done to them . . . we didn’t do it. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, and I don’t mind telling you, I near shit myself when they started eating my soldiers. ”
“Us either,” said Lieutenant Hobbes.
And Captain MacGruder clarified, “They aren’t our work either. I’ll swear to it on my father’s grave. ”
General murmurs of agreement and reinforcement made the rounds.
“As a representative of the government that once . . . ” Inspector Galeano sought a word, and didn’t find it. So he tried again. “Those people—those things that aren’t people anymore—they were my countrymen. I can assure you that whatever became of them was no work of ours. ”
The ranger said, “Nor Texas, and that’s a goddamned fact. ”
Anyone could’ve argued, but nobody did.
But everyone’s innocence having been established, a great round of speculation got under way. If not the North, and if not the South, and if not Texas or Mexico . . . then who? Or, God help them all, what if it were a disease—and there was no one at fault, and no one they could demand an explanation from?
All the way to Salt Lake City, the passengers and crew of the Dreadnought huddled and whispered, periodically checking themselves in the lavatories for any signs of drying eyes, graying skin, or yellowing membranes.
And no one found any.
So Mercy told them everything she knew about the yellow sap, and Inspector Galeano told them about a northwestern dirigible that had crashed in West Tejas, carrying a load of poisonous gas.
Twenty-one
The next morning, the Dreadnought pulled what was left of its cargo and passengers into the station at Salt Lake City. Everyone on board looked and smelled like a war refugee.
All the occupants, including the conductor, his crew, and all the porters, stumbled down from the metal steps and onto terra firma in the Utah territory with a sense of relief that prompted several of the remaining civilians to burst into tears. Chilled beyond the bone, with many of them sporting injuries large and small that Mercy had done her best to patch, everyone was dazed. The train’s boilers cooled and clacked, but its hydrogen valves were all tightened into silence. Its interior was littered with broken glass, bullet casings, and blood. There it sat on the line, abandoned and silent, a husk that—for all its mighty power—looked forlorn.
Mercy sat on a bench inside the station’s great hall with Ranger Korman, Inspector Galeano, and the three Rebel soldiers. All in a row they watched the people bustle by, coming and going, taking notes and asking the inevitable questions.
Though they received a few strange glances, no one stopped them to ask why three Confederates had been aboard or why they were being permitted to simply leave; and no one demanded to know what a Mexican inspector was doing there; and no one wondered aloud why a Texas Ranger was this far north and west of his home turf.
This was not America, after all. Nor the Confederacy, or Texas, or Mexico either. So if anybody cared, nobody said anything. There was no war here, Utah’s or anybody else’s.
Paperwork was sorted.
New trains were offered.
All the rattled civilians were sent to their original destinations.
Theodora Clay and her aunt Norene vanished without a good-?bye. Mercy wondered if Horatio Korman ever got his gun back, but she didn’t ask. She was pretty sure that if he’d wanted it, he would’ve seen about retrieving it. Captain MacGruder and Lieutenant Hobbes were assigned to another train and other duties before Mercy ever got a chance to tell them how much she’d appreciated their presence. But she liked to think they knew, and understood.
In time, someone approached the three southern men and gave them envelopes with tickets, back east and south, Mercy assumed. The soldiers offered quiet parting salutations and tips of their hats and were gone. Inspector Galeano left next, taking his tickets and claiming his seat on a train that would eventually take him to his homeland, where he would have a most amazing story to tell.
Then it was the ranger’s turn. Horatio Korman stood, touched the rim of his hat, and said, “Ma’am. ” And that was all.
He, too, left her seated on the wide wooden bench, all alone and not quite certain if she was glad for the sudden privacy after so many weeks of being cooped up and crowded . . . or if she was very, very lonely.
But finally it was her turn, and the conductor of her own train was crying, “All aboard!” on the tracks outside. She squeezed her tickets, climbed to her feet, and met her train.
