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.
“If you’re the sheriff, why aren’t you with the robbers?” the boy named Patrick called as Ned’s wagon went on by toward the rail line, and Sheriff Wright pulled up to the weary band of travelers.
“Doc Simpson’s tending to their wounds while Bucky keeps watch. Besides, with wounds in their legs and their arms tied up, they’re not much trouble to anyone at the moment. I’m more worried about your lot than those sorry souls, anyhow.” He climbed down off the driver’s bench and motioned toward the wagon’s payload. “Nothing fancy, but it sure beats walking the rest of the way into town.”
“By a mile,” Tom wheezed, climbing in. He called out to Miss Sterling. “Here, ma’am, this corner seat oughta be for you.”
Holly frowned.
