“What on earth?” she whispered, rushing from her bed. When she got to the window, she could see a great reflection of fire in the sky not all that far away. “An explosion. Something has exploded.”
Mentally tracing the direction of the fire, and what lay in its wake, and quickly realizing that the railroad made a turn into Gallup at that exact spot, she stifled a gasp be
hind her hand.
The private spur. Someone had dynamited the private spur.
Or worse yet, it could be just beyond the private spur, where trains carrying passengers traveled. At present, the end of the regular line was Gallup.
A pounding on her door drew Stephanie’s eyes away from the fire. Knowing that Adam had probably also been awakened by the blast, and was there to make sure that she knew what had happened, she stiffened. No matter the cause for him to come to her private car this time of day, when dawn was just breaking over the horizon, he had some nerve. Because of him she may have lost the only man that she could ever love. And she had told him that she never wanted to see him again.
Sighing heavily, knowing that he would knock until he dropped if she didn’t go to the door, she swung it open. “Adam, I heard the explosion and saw the fire and I am leaving soon to see what caused it, and to see if anyone was hurt,” she said in a deliberate rush of words to be rid of him. “And I do plan to take my camera and equipment—that is, what is left of it, no thanks to you. My extra camera will have to do. Now leave me be, Adam. I don’t need you to escort me to the fire.”
With that, and before she gave him a chance to say anything to her, she slammed the door in his face. She knew that she had covered all that he would be asking about, so didn’t expect he would be troubling her again this morning. She had seen a sheepishness in his eyes and knew that he understood her feelings. She would never allow his boyish innocence to work with her again. She had learned long ago that it was all pretense and used only to cater to his own whims, not hers.
Although she was still numb from the long ride from Canyon de Chelley, and from Runner’s continued rejection of her, Stephanie quickly dressed in a fresh skirt and blouse and yanked on her boots. She took only a few strokes through her hair with her brush, then slapped the holstered derringer around her waist. Where there was an explosion, danger could be lurking. These sorts of explosions set off at railroads were usually deliberate.
A thought came to her that made a shudder course through her veins. “The Navaho hate the railroad,” she said, stopping in midstep as she walked toward her darkroom. She paled. “Lord, don’t let it be Sage or any of his people. Haven’t they had enough to contend with without the law breathing down their necks?”
Shaking off the dread, she hurried and packed up her supplies, grabbed up her one last tripod, and stepped outside into a beautiful dawn. Only one thing scarred the loveliness of the morning: the stench that came with the black smoke from the train proved to Stephanie the extent of the fire.
“It might be a whole train,” she whispered as she secured her supplies on the back of her pack mule. Having been too tired to remove the saddle from her horse the previous evening, it was readily available for her. She ignored Adam as he arrived in a mad run from his private car, slipping his shirt on as he rushed toward her.
“Wait up, sis,” Adam shouted as Stephanie wheeled her horse around and started riding away. “Damn it, Stephanie, now is not the time to stay angry at me. We need to investigate this together!”
He stumbled into his own saddle and was soon riding at Stephanie’s side. “Sis, I’m sorry for what I did,” he said. “But I did it for you. You deserve someone better than Runner. Back home, in Wichita, you can have your choice of men. Men of means, Stephanie. Not a man who’ll be playing Indian for the rest of his life.”
Up to this point, Stephanie had stubbornly ignored him. But his last statement burned into her very soul.
She turned angry eyes toward Adam. But still she didn’t say anything to him. He deserved nothing from her. His apologies meant nothing to her now. The only way they might would be if he would go and tell Runner that he had lied.
But she knew Adam well enough to realize that he would never humble himself in such a manner. He had only apologized to her because of what he wanted from her. He would never give up on her, it seemed.
She sank her heels into the flanks of her horse and rode on away from Adam, her thoughts centered now only on the devastation that lay ahead of her. She was close enough to be able to see that a whole train had been involved in the explosion. The train was still ablaze, pressed together like logs on a fire.
One thing that made her sigh with relief was that the train had been placed at the end of the line, just outside of Gallup, until its usual run the next day. This time of morning, not even an engineer would have been in the train. At least whoever had placed what surely had been dynamite beneath it had made sure to spare human lives.
Again her thoughts flashed to Sage, and the rage he felt toward railroads. She shook her head, to clear it of such thoughts. She did not want to think that Sage was responsible.
Another thought dug deeply into her heart: Runner.
He could be a good candidate for this if a judge had anything to say about it after an investigation. If it became common knowledge about Runner’s hatred of Adam, and why, he could be accused of having a good reason for blowing up the train.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, as she thought of something else. “There were many witnesses at the ‘Big Tent’ who saw Runner mixed up in a brawl. That could be held against him.”
Not wanting to think about Runner in this manner, not wanting to give herself cause to think it might have been his own vengeful act this morning, she centered her thoughts on taking photographs of the wreckage to take back to Wichita. She would guard them with her life, so that no judge or sheriff could get hold of them. She would take her photographs and hurry back to the train. She would develop, then hide them.
Adam drew a tight rein alongside her. They dismounted at the same time. And although Stephanie didn’t want him anywhere near her, she said nothing when he set the tripod up for her, then stood back as she attached her camera to it and began taking photographs.
She tried to ignore the throngs of people who were rushing from Gallup on foot, and on horseback, to see the wrecked train. She could feel them gathering around her and Adam, and behind them.
Through the black billows of smoke, she could see them on the other side of the train.
She would take only a couple more pictures, then she would flee with them to the privacy of her car.
“It took many sticks of dynamite to do this much damage,” Adam said, his voice loud enough to carry far through the milling crowd. He looked around himself and smiled smugly, glad for the audience.
He clasped his hands behind him as he again studied the wreckage from this distance. “I wonder how the damn Indians got their hands on dynamite?” he asked in a half shout.