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Moses noticed and yelled to Apollo, who pointed my way and caused the others to look. Action ceased.
An eerie stillness fell over us, and for a moment we posed like a circus tableau—a battle from history, frozen in the silver light that precedes the sun.
Some of Mink’s men were long gone—this task had presented too much work for the lazy vagrants. A few lay on the ground, out cold or broken in some way. The drunk still hung helpless from a tree. Bonfiglio hadn’t moved since he’d fallen; maybe he’d broken his neck. The remains of Ceecee lay heels over rump like a dropped puppet. The tramps still standing peered around with shifty, anxious eyes. Billy Sweet moaned on the ground. “Fer Christ’s sake, someone untie me.”
“You children,” Mink shrilled. “Get yourselves to my wagon, or I’ll kill this bedchamber sneak.”
Moses put his arm around Bertha. Mr. Northstar reached for his son.
“You lot”—Mink pointed at his men with his free hand— “back my wagon up to the road. Unhitch the horses and push if you have to. Get moving!” The barrel of the gun shook with his rage. I prayed the trigger wasn’t sensitive.
A scream sounded closer and closer, across the fields. Was this my death? Tauseret, atop the camel, leaped the bushes. Her hair flew, her eyes blazed, and she kept her seat like a desert chief as the camel hurtled over Earle. She was magnificent. “Release him,” she cried. She thundered toward us, using a stick to whip the beast she had mastered. Friend and enemy alike dived out of her path.
My Lord. She wouldn’t recognize a pistol. He’d kill her.
I had but a second while Mink was distracted. I slid out a knife and plunged it under my arm. A squeak and a whoosh of air came from Mink before he fell into me and slid to the ground. His pistol thudded at my feet.
Tauseret reached me and flung herself off the camel and into my arms. “You are safe,” she proclaimed. “He faints at my rage. This time I saved you.”
I held her tight. “Three times,” I said. “Once from Ceecee, once from Mink, and once from loneliness. You have more than balanced the past.”
Cries rang through the morning as camel and horse galloped back down the lane. A crowd of farmers bearing pitchforks and scythes followed behind.
All tramps and rogues who could run did so.
The mound on the path stirred. “What? Huh? Darn if my head don’t hurt,” groaned Earle.
The sun rose.
30
MOST OF THE BRIGANDS ESCAPED, except for those felled by injuries. When he arrived, the sheriff said the scene reminded him of the Spanish War. He ordered us all to the milk stop down the track, where he would sort out what had happened. The milk stop was a new little train station, Archie Crum told me. The farmers had been waiting there to load the morning’s shipment when the colonel galloped up and enlisted their aid.
Tauseret and I helped round up the horses. Two farmers loaded Mink’s wagon with the afflicted, including Mink. They almost left Mink for the undertaker at first, since he looked nearly as much like a corpse as Ceecee, but Mr. Ginger set them straight. I shivered as they carried him by. Amazingly, not one of my friends had sustained a wound except Earle.
We set the villains’ covered wagon to rights, and I rehitched the horses, but we had to remove the canopy to get Earle aboard. He clutched his head and moaned, blessedly alive. I drove our own paneled wagon, Tauseret on the seat beside me, looking proud and fierce.
“And who is this young lady?” the colonel asked.
“Would you like the unbelievable truth or a digestible tale?” I asked.
“The one that makes the best story, of course,” he said.
“Then, you’ll have to wait until we have more time,” I told him.
A doctor had been sent for and arrived at the station in his buggy soon after us. “You’d better hope that wound on the skeleton man ain’t mortal,” said the sheriff to me, “else I’ll have to do my duty.” A shock of fear shot through me. Did he mean arrest me for murder? I had acted in self-defense, surely.
Apollo and the children clustered around the camels at the side of the little redbrick station building where Earle was parked, and pestered the Arabian brothers with questions. The rest of us huddled in small groups on the dusty platform of the train station, exchanging few words and many glances, as the sheriff called us each aside to be interviewed. Tauseret clung to my hand, and I hated to think what she might do if the sheriff tried to take me away.
Only our recent host, Mr. Webster, was in a good mood. He pointed to a newly painted sign above the train station. “They changed his name,” he chortled with delight. “Tompson paid off the railway so’s they’d stop nearest his farm, and they shortened the station name anyway.”
I gulped. The sign read TOMS JUNCTION, just like the one Minnie had seen.
“I sent the truth to your friends, did I not?” said Tauseret. She looked so satisfied that I imagined her licking cream from her lips. I grinned. I wanted to lick those lips too.
At last, a bespectacled head rounded the heavy station door. “He’ll live,” the doctor called.
The crowd of show folk and locals sent up a cheer—not for his sake, but for mine, I realized as Mr. Webster and his fellow farmers pumped my hand in sturdy congratulations. Their support flustered and warmed me. Then Tauseret kissed me most inappropriately, and they cheered again, which flustered me more.
