Family Lessons

A volley of sharp yells echoed across the clearing. After a loud clang, Holly saw the doors of the express car slide open and a pair of hands push Mr. Brooks down out of the car. He’d barely regained his footing from the leap when a large black box crashed to the ground at his feet. He was nearly crushed by the metal cabinet, which made a strange, chinging sound as it tumbled to settle heavily onto the ground. The safe. Mr. Brooks’s jacket was off. He looked as if he’d been roughed up, but he was remarkably calm.

“I told you it wouldn’t work!” The bandit leader’s voice pitched in frustration as he followed Mr. Brooks out of the express car, gun trained on the banker. “More n’ likely you’ve busted up the mechanism and we’ll never get it open now.”

The third and fourth bandits climbed from the car. “Do we go get the horses now? Time to take the safe and run?”

Holly was tempted to point out that one does not just take a safe and run, but kept her mouth shut in remembrance of the backhanding Liam had endured. Short of a wagon or a stick of dynamite, that safe was not going anywhere. Nor did it look as if it would open. Taking a step toward Mr. Brooks, Holly scanned the area and tried to think of where she would hide horses nearby.

“Time,” sneered the leader as he raised the gun to Mr. Brooks’s temple, “to up the ante. You’re making me wonder, bankerman, if you ain’t hiding the real key.”

“Stop it!” Holly cried before she could think better of interfering. “Give him our money, Mr. Brooks. Nothing is worth a life.”

“I assure you, Miss Sanders,” Mr. Brooks said, his voice winding tighter with every passing second, “I am doing my level best to do just that.” He held the key up to his captor. “Look at the numbers on this key.” He was trying to make the bandit see reason, but it only seemed to anger the man. “They match the markings on the safe. This is the right key, but it won’t work. Have sense, man. All your gun pointing can’t change the fact that this key will not unlock a damaged mechanism.”

Holly heard Mr. Arlington’s voice behind her. She turned to find him holding out a hat filled with watches, wallets and the fine beaded reticule she’d seen on Miss Sterling. “Take what we’ve got and let us be. There are children here, for goodness’ sake. We’ve no way to pursue you. Why don’t you just leave?”

Holly heard a horse’s whinny off to her right. Was it the robbers’ accomplice or had Liam been even faster than she’d hoped? Father, protect us!

The leader turned to Mr. Arlington, eyes blazing in fury. “Howsabout you just shut your mouth?” he yelled loudly. Then to Holly’s great horror, the bandit raised his pistol and fired.

She heard the terrible sound. She saw the dust rise up as the hat full of loot hit the ground. She felt the impact as if it sucked the air from her lungs. Someone screamed. A woman, a child, or perhaps it was both. It couldn’t have been her—she had no voice, no breath. The entire world boiled down to the smell of gunpowder and the red stain blossoming under Mr. Arlington’s hand as he clutched his chest. The look of shock in his eyes as he tilted forward turned Holly’s heart to ice.

Nothing. They’d shot him for nothing. Who would they shoot next and for what?

* * *

The sound of the gunshot pounded in Mason’s chest, and he urged Ace faster toward the spot on the railway line just east of town Liam had described. The boy had told him enough to chill his blood. If they were the clever kind, who knew what these men were capable of, what lengths they would go to succeed? “Give me a dim-witted thief any day,” he said to himself as he swung down off his saddle, glad to see townsfolk coming a half mile behind him.

“You might get your wish,” Liam commented as he slid off the saddle and they scrambled up the rock outcropping that gave both of them a view down onto the track clearing. “They didn’t seem too smart to— Oh, no!” Liam gasped, covering his mouth in horror as he saw what Mason saw: Holly Sanders and two other people crouched in panic over a bleeding man. “They shot Mr. Arlington!” His voice was a whispered yell, full of shock and fear. He looked up to Mason with panicked eyes. “How could they have shot Mr. Arlington like that? Mr. Brooks had the key to the safe. Mr. Arlington didn’t know nothin’!”

Mason didn’t know what to say. His brain was churning through options, working furiously to find some way out of this. One thing was clear from the chaos below: these men weren’t killing by plan, they were killing by panic. Panic was far more dangerous than clever, and from the looks of the safe dumped out on the packed earth just a few yards away, and the yelling going on between the bandits, things had gotten out of hand.

Within minutes, Bucky Wyler came up crouching behind Mason, rifle ready in his hand. “Aw criminey,” he muttered as he took in the scene, “what now?”

“Act fast. Too much longer, and things will go from bad to worse.” Mason looked over his shoulder at the four other men coming up the path, motioning for them to come closer but to keep down.

“Worse already, if you’re asking me.” Bucky settled onto his stomach and pulled his rifle up to rest on the rock. “What do we do? There’s too many of ’em down there to shoot.”

“You can’t shoot.” Mason grabbed Bucky’s arm. “There’s young’uns down there.”

Bucky palmed his hat off his head. “Kids?”

“Orphans. Handful of ’em. That’s one of the agents on the ground.”

“Mr. Arlington’s not dead, is he? We gotta get down there.” Liam looked as if he’d burst down into the clearing in two seconds if Mason didn’t do something. He scanned the scene again, grasping for any tactic.

“Bucky, can you shoot the safe?”

The man squinted through his gunsight. “Yep, but it’s not likely to do much.”

“It’ll be distraction enough.”

Just then, in the worst possible timing, the children came piling out of the car. There was an old woman trying to hold them back from the gruesome scene, but the orphans were too wild with panic for one old woman to keep them corralled. Mason swore under his breath. Even Bucky’s sharpshooting was too much of a risk with all those youngsters about.

“Get back in the car!” The woman with Holly Sanders stood up and waved the children off. When the youngsters only rushed at her, she moved as quickly as she could away from the injured man. Thankfully, they followed, putting a bit of distance between themselves and the bickering robbers, who were now circled around the safe.

It didn’t take long to figure out who was in charge. The other three were clearly muscle; only one of them seemed to be shouting commands. “There’s our man,” Mason said as he pointed to the leader. “If we could take him out...A shot in the leg ought to do the trick.”

Bucky settled in to line up his shot, following Mason’s thinking. “Then we can pick off the rest.”

“Just do something! Mr. Arlington’s bleeding bad.” Liam was growing frantic.

Mason was out of options. He looked at Bucky and gestured back toward the now dozen armed men behind them. “Give each of them a target—wounding only, no killing in front of those youngsters. Understood?”

As Mason started to move, Liam grabbed his leg. “What about me?”

“You stay here. You’ve been brave enough already.”

“No!”

Mason couldn’t say he was surprised, and he didn’t have time to argue. “Are you good at sneaking?”

“The best.”

Mason pointed to the most likely spot for some accomplice to be hiding horses. “Head on over there and look for horses.” He tossed the lad the bosun’s whistle from his vest pocket. He used it for shooing away stray dogs, and the thing always made Ace crazy. Maybe it would rile up the bandits’ horses if they had any. “Blow this all around to spook them and then run back here but be careful. Someone’s bound to be guarding them.”

The boy caught the whistle with one hand. “Got it.”

Mason picked his way down between the rocks toward the rail line, still unsure how he was going to draw the men. He was almost in range when the biggest of them said, “How about I go get the horses and we haul that safe outta here?”

Not a lot of brains there, Mason thought to himself as he imagined the robbers attempting a getaway while dragging a heavy safe through the Nebraska countryside. Their lack of speed would be compounded by the obvious tracks.

The leader surprised him by consenting. “Just go get the horses. Jake,” he shouted, pointing at another man, “get that hat full of loot, and fer Pete’s sake get Miss Prissy and them brats back in the car.”

Mason waited until the last possible moment, weighing every stride the big man took toward the horses—and Liam—with every child who stepped back onto the train. Bucky must have followed his thinking, for just as Mason cocked his pistol Bucky’s shot rang out, pinging loudly against the safe to ricochet into the woods over Mason’s left shoulder. From behind him the

bosun’s whistle sounded; Liam had found the horses. Run, kid. Mason sent him a mental message as shouts went up from all corners of the clearing and from other passengers who’d had enough sense to stay inside the railcars. The leader turned in the direction of the shot long enough for Mason to burst from behind the rock cropping, shouting himself.

In the two seconds it took the leader to turn, Mason fired. The bullet tore into the man’s pant leg just above the knee, sending him to the ground. Half a dozen shots came from the ridge above, sending the place into a frenzy. Hoping Bucky was as good a shot as usual, Mason sprinted across the clearing to grab Holly Sanders by the waist and nearly haul her into the railcar behind the other woman and children. The fallen robbers managed a small volley of return fire, but even a sharpshooter would have a hard time hitting the men hid up in the rocks. When the bosun’s whistle echoed again from the safety of the rock outcropping, Mason let out the breath he’d been holding for the boy.

There was a moment of stunned stillness. The robbers had used up their ammunition. Bucky and the others were surely trained on each of the fallen men, ready to fire if one of them made a move. Mason left Miss Sanders at the railcar with the children—most of whom were screaming by now along with half the passengers—and rushed to crouch at the still body of Mr. Arlington.

One hand on the man’s bloody chest told Mason nothing could be done. “Rest in peace, Arlington.”

* * *

Holly watched in horror as Sheriff Wright took off his jacket and laid it carefully over Mr. Arlington’s face. The man was dead. Shot for the crime of trying to let the bandits go, for trying to save the children from harm. The cruelty of it seemed to pummel Holly’s lungs, and her steps wobbled as she made her way toward the sheriff.

“Lord have mercy on poor Mr. Arlington. Lord have mercy on all of us.” Even as she felt relief that the gunfight was over, sorrow made her tears hard to fight back.

One of the things Holly most admired about Sheriff Wright was his quiet passion for justice and safety. Today held no justice and precious little safety. She would not have thought it possible for Mason Wright to look more stoic, but he straightened from the body with such a weary, pained effort that she felt it constrict her heart. He felt the crime—the murder—as sharply as she, even though neither of them knew the slain man.

There was a selfish corner of her heart that insisted this could have been prevented if Mason Wright had accompanied her to Newfield. He’d raised a lukewarm objection, saying he wasn’t in favor of her going at all, but eventually consented to letting her travel alone. That hurt. A childish part of her wanted to think today wouldn’t have happened if Mason Wright had been her protector.

But today had happened, and while she heard the old woman and several others flutter in panicked concern over a crying Miss Sterling behind her, no one steadied her as she stood over the body. Now, as always, she was the last one anyone thought to protect. Quiet, competent, invisible—even in this. All yesterday’s sense of accomplishment evaporated just as quietly as Mr. Arlington’s blood seeped into the sod. No comfort would be coming her way. That meant that it was time—as usual—for her to look past herself and see to comforting others.

“You saved us,” she said, as she moved toward Sheriff Wright. Holly needed to keep speaking, to hear her voice fight the sense that she was evaporating into the sod herself.

He looked at her, his blue eyes brittle and hollow. She so rarely viewed those eyes—downcast as they often were or hidden in the shadow of his hat brim—that they never ceased to startle her when he stared. “No.” He raised the single syllable like a knight’s shield.

“But it is true.” The sheriff seemed so very tall as she ventured another step toward him. Mason Wright was the kind of man who would take Arlington’s loss as a personal failure, ignoring all the lives—including hers—he had just saved, and she hated that. Hated that she’d fail in this attempt just as she failed in every attempt to make him see his worth because he never looked at her long enough to notice.

He held her gaze just then, doubt icing his eyes until Holly felt a shiver run down her back. “No,” he repeated, but only a little softer. Holly hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath until Sheriff Wright broke his stare and looked down at the body shrouded in his own coat. Her practical nature wondered if his coat would be stained beyond repair, or if he would even care.

The shift in Sheriff Wright’s attitude was physically visible. Whatever emotion had bubbled to the surface was resolutely put down with a deep breath and squared shoulders. His attention spread out beyond her and the body to take in the whole of the clearing and the larger crisis at hand. Everything about him said “enough of that, now to business,” and Holly wondered if she would see that side of him up close ever again.

Even his voice changed. “Is she the other agent?” He nodded toward Rebecca Sterling and the upset children, now surrounded by the few other railcar passengers. “Liam mentioned a Miss...”

“Sterling, yes, that’s her. Liam!” Holly suddenly remembered the brave boy who’d run off to get help. “Is Liam all right?”

“Shaken, but fine. Clever boy.”

“I was so worried, sending him off.” She scanned the clearing for signs of his red hair. “How foolish of me to gamble dangerously with a boy’s life like that.”

“Not at all.” He looked at her again, this time with something she could almost fool herself into thinking was admiration. “It was quick and clever. If anyone saved the day here, it was you.”

Holly blinked. From Mason Wright, that was akin to a complimentary gush. “It was the only thing I could think of to do.” A murderous crisis was no time to get flustered, but she felt her blood rush to her cheeks just the same. She hadn’t realized just how much she needed someone to affirm she’d done the right thing. The relief threatened a new wave of tears, and she fought them off with a deep breath.

A child’s cry turned them both toward the bedlam surrounding Miss Sterling. The children were understandably out of control with fear and shock, and Miss Sterling didn’t seem to be in any shape to take things in hand. Who would be in such a situation?

She would, that’s who. Holly was an excellent teacher with a full bag of tricks at her disposal to wrangle unruly children. With one more deep breath, she strode off to save the day a second time.

* * *

Mason wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Usually, when Holly Sanders’s eyes tripped him up, he kept his mouth shut and steered clear. Sure, he’d worried about her in Newfield, but he’d worried more about how her wide eyes and meek smile would force him to get all close and protective of her if he went along on the trip. Mason always fought an urge to protect the tiny schoolteacher, and that urge could not be allowed. Ordinarily, Miss Sanders kept to the sideline of things, so it was easier to fight the urge, to not let himself be drawn in by her admiration. Staying away from Holly Sanders ensured he’d never again risk the kind of failure he’d already known.

Only that strategy had blown up in his face, for today she’d been stronger than he knew. Far stronger, and that truth was mighty hard to swallow. As a matter of fact, the shock of her strength had turned him stupid. If anyone saved the day here it was you? What kind of fool remark was that? He’d lost his control. Only for a moment, but land sakes that was enough, wasn’t it?

The way he’d figured her, Miss Sanders should be as undone as the pretty blonde crying on the rocks over there. And he had seen tears come up behind her eyes—despite doing his best to ignore them. So how was it she was trotting across the clearing with her hands on her hips, all teacher in command? Where’d a woman so quiet and tiny get such a core of steel?

His eyebrow shot up as Miss Sanders began to clap softly as she walked toward the children. She stopped about six yards out, speaking just soft enough to be heard. “Clap once if you can hear me.”

He thought the tactic crazy until one little girl’s eyes widened and looked up. Miss Sanders repeated herself, still clapping. “That’s right, clap once if you can hear me.” Startled out of her crying fit, the little girl clapped. A second girl next to her also looked up, sniffled, and clapped. Mason scratched his head, amazed.

“There you go. Now come over here and clap twice if you can hear me.” By now all three of the little girls were clapping and moving toward Holly. Even a few of the adults looked up from tending to Miss Sterling, their attention drawn by the change in the children.

“Clap three times if you can hear me,” Holly went on, garnering the attention of the two youngest boys. “Now four.” Miss Sanders’s voice steadied with every call, so that now she sounded as if this had been an ordinary school day. “Now five.” The whole clearing was looking at her as the children quietly gathered around her and she kneeled down to their level. Mason realized his mouth was open, and shut it promptly, his own hands on his hips. He’d never seen anything so oddly effective in all his days.

“It’s time to be calm and quiet. We’re safe, and things will be all right from here. Everyone have all their fingers and toes?” The voice was sensible and cheerful, as if it didn’t belong to the same woman who’d just stood over Arlington’s body. The smallest girl—a tot of four or five from the looks of it—actually bent down to inspect her shoes, no doubt wiggling her toes inside.

“Da,” the little girl said, dark braids bobbing. One of the older boys laughed, and a sliver of tension left the small sets of shoulders. Mason shook his head, befuddled.

“We’re going to walk over here,” Miss Sanders instructed, pointing to a spot that would shield the children from both Miss Sterling and the shrouded body of Mr. Arlington. “We’ll sit down by age. Can you do that for me?” She pointed to the second largest boy, placing him in charge of the task. “And you,” she said, pointing to the largest, “will go into the railcar and get everyone’s bags so we can make sure everyone has what they need. My town is just over that hill and you’ll all get to visit tonight. You’ll get some supper, too. But we’ve lots to do to make that happen so I’ll need everyone’s help.”

As Mason stood watching this small woman accomplish this very large feat, the train conductor came up with an equally stunned look on his face.

“Who is that?” he asked Mason as both men stared.

“That,” Mason said, not bothering to hide the respect in his voice, “is Holly Sanders.”

Chapter Three

Holly had walked the four miles from the railroad track to town hundreds of times, but none so tiresome as the trek felt today. As the slanted afternoon sun spread heat across the scrubby spring landscape, home and safety felt far away. She couldn’t tell if she was too shaken to feel the long walk, or too numb to feel anything but her feet inside her tight, pinching boots.

The many small feet making the journey beside her surely lengthened the miles. Some of the children wore their trauma outright, crying and clutching to Miss Sterling and herself. Others, like Liam, were so silent Holly couldn’t help but worry. Bucky and the other townsmen had taken the wounded bandits back to the Evans Grove jail while Mason laid Mr. Arlington’s body over his own horse after seeing the train back on its route. None of that changed the awful truth that no child should have to witness men gunned down.

Certainly not orphans. Why add this to the burden of their lives, Lord? Holly understood the charitable sentiment of the Orphan Salvation Society. Better lives awaited these children out here than the parentless squalor they knew in eastern cities. Still, to be hauled out of the place one knew, plunked onto a train and displayed before prospective families in town after town for placement—how could that be anything but traumatic? Even if many of them found spots in loving homes, her heart ached for the grueling process, the rejection of being “passed over.” Some of them were so heartbreakingly small and the train had made so many stops already.

“I’m glad you’re staying,” Holly offered to Miss Sterling. The woman had said next to nothing as she carried Galina, one of the smaller orphan girls, against her hip while holding the hand of a shy girl named Heidi. Miss Sterling had introduced each of the children on the train, and Holly was struggling against her fatigue to remember all their names. The three other boys—Tom, Patrick and some other German-sounding name she couldn’t recall at the moment—had been boisterous and quiet by turns, unsure how to handle the experience. Who could blame them? Holly herself was anxious one minute, exhausted the next. Heidi, the very quiet girl who had sat next to Miss Sterling on the train, hadn’t said a word since the shooting. Even though she mostly hid in the agent’s skirts, Holly had spied gruesome scars on the girl’s face. How cruel for a girl to have known so much pain so young. “I think the children couldn’t go on, and, Miss Sterling, nor should you.”

“Please call me Rebecca. We’ll have to stay. I’ll need to make...arrangements.” Her voice caught on the word. “I’ve no idea how to proceed under the circumstances. I’ve...” Her voice fell off in a wobbly sigh.

“Call me Holly. Try not to think about that. I’ll help you send some wires when we get into town. We’ll sort it all out in the morning.”

“You were awful brave, ma’am,” Liam offered to Rebecca. “You, too, Miss Sanders.” It was the first time Liam had spoken of his own accord, only piping up to answer questions before this.

His attempt at morale boosting warmed Holly’s heart. “As were you. I’d have been afraid to sneak off to where those robbers hid their horses, but Sheriff Wright says you were a right clever deputy today.”

“Me, a deputy.” The thought brought the first smile to Liam’s face since the incident.

“How long ’til that man gets here?” whined young Lizzie in Holly’s arms, fussing with her shirt collar.

Tom, a thin, sickly-looking lad, coughed and wiped his forehead. “Why didn’t we get to ride the horses? Those robbers should’a been the ones that had to walk!”

“Sheriff Wright will be back with the wagons soon,” Holly replied. “The robbers can’t walk because we hurt them.”

“Bobbins isn’t hurt, but I am,” Lizzie offered, nodding toward the raggedy bunny doll in one hand while holding up her other hand to Holly. “I gots an ow right here.”

Holly dutifully offered a medicinal kiss to the pudgy pink thumb. “Which is exactly why I’m carrying both of you.” She caught Rebecca’s tight, drawn face out of the corner of her eye. All of us hurt today.

Liam stepped up to walk beside Heidi, taking her hand from Rebecca’s. He pointed toward town with his other hand. “One wagon will go back to the train and get our things. And the banker, and the safe, too. The other wagon’s comin’ to fetch us. We won’t have to walk much farther. I been there and back already, remember?”

As if on cue, two wagons pulled into view half a minute later. Ned Minor was driving the wagon from Gavin’s General Store while Mason Wright brought up one with crates lined up as seats along either side.