Chapter 23
Seventeen-year-old George Bonsall shook his father’s hand and looked him in the eyes. “We’ll bring Mary home, Pa.”
Pa said nothing but seemed dubious.
Which was irritating. Didn’t George work hard? Didn’t he always keep his word? And yet Pa still didn’t treat him like a man.
“See you soon, Pa,” James said, shaking their father’s hand.
Then it was time to go.
Pa had insisted they each take a carpetbag with extra clothing and such, a ridiculous precaution since they were just grabbing Mary and bringing her home, but the boys lugged their bags onto the train and sat at the front of the passenger car, both of them excited for the ride to Fairplay.
It was a rare thing to ride a train. They saw them come and go whenever they came to town and dreamed of all the different places folks were headed, but George had only been on a train a couple of times before, so this was exciting.
James said as much.
Normally, George, being two years older than James, would have downplayed his excitement, but that wasn’t possible today. He nodded and grinned at his brother, who looked out the window and got suddenly serious.
“You think Pa will be all right without us?”
“Sure,” George said. “The farm’s in good shape. Most of the harvest is in. Besides, we’ll only be gone a short bit. I don’t know what all Mary has to see to in town, but we’ll have her home in no time. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we come back on tomorrow’s train.”
James said nothing but glanced at the big carpetbag on his lap.
“Pa’s only being cautious is all. We might get delayed. You never know. Rail trouble, weather. Or like I say, maybe Mary will have things in town to see to.”
“What sort of things?”
“I don’t know. Town things. Lawyers, that sort of thing. Or maybe she’ll have to stay put for court or something. Seems like the law would have caught those men by now.”
“I sure hope so,” James said. He shook his head. “It’s a shame about Cole. I really liked him.”
“Me, too. He was perfect for Mary.”
James nodded sadly.
George knew his little brother had really looked up to Cole. Heck, George looked up to him, too.
For James, however, it had been more than just looking up to him. Cole had been larger than life in James’s eyes, heroic.
But that was all over now.
Those men had killed Cole and burned the house, and now poor Mary would have to come home and start over.
One part of George was excited. He felt bad for that and wouldn’t tell anyone, not even James, whom he normally told almost everything.It felt wrong to be excited in the wake of such a tragedy, but he loved his sister and was happy that she would be home with them again.
Mary was the best person he had ever known.
Sure, she could be a little bossy at times, but that was just because she worked hard and saw things clearly and wanted the best for everyone.
Besides, George was older now. He’d only been sixteen when she’d left the farm. Now, he was seventeen, and he’d worked hard, showing Pa what he was made of.
Things between him and Mary would be different now. Oh, she might try to boss him here and there, but she’d soon learn that her little brother wasn’t so little anymore. He’d become a man.
This trip, going to get Mary, was a real opportunity to show her that. His new maturity would comfort her. She’d be pleased by James, too, who had also grown up a lot.
Things were going to be all right.
At that moment, a man in a nice black coat entered the train and seized George’s attention. The man was a little over average height and very lean, perhaps thirty years old, with a dark mustache, which like everything else about the man, looked neat and precise.
But what really drew George’s attention as the man walked past them to take a seat at the back of the train, was the silver badge on the black coat—and the words printed on that badge: U.S. Marshal.
James had seen it, too. “You know who that is?” he asked excitedly.
George nodded, grinning again. “Marshal Mayfield.”
U.S. Marshal Clayton Mayfield was very famous. He hunted down the worst criminals. No outlaw stood a chance against him.
A bunch of men had tried Mayfield, and he’d put them all down in the dirt.
He was George’s biggest hero. James’s, too.
And here he was on the very same train they were riding.
The boys turned and craned their necks with excitement.
Mayfield looked at them, and they whipped back around and hunched there, whispering together.
“What’s he even doing here?” James wondered.
“He goes where he pleases,” George said. “Where he’s needed. And woe to any man he gets after.”
James nodded. “You reckon…”
“What?”
“You reckon he’s after the men who killed Cole?”
George had been so surprised to see the famous marshal that thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. “You know, he might be.”
“Should we say something to him?”
George made a face. “What would you say?”
“I don’t know. We could tell him who we were.”
“You just want to talk to him.”
“Yeah, but it makes sense.”
George shook his head. “No, we won’t bother him. We don’t know anything that could help him.”
“All right,” James said, and they whispered, sharing stories they’d heard about the marshal. They both knew all the stories by heart. That didn’t matter. They were celebrating being in the great man’s presence.
It added a lot to the trip and the excitement never wore out, even after they stopped in Buena Vista, where the car filled up, and a pair of women sat behind them talking non-stop about an upcoming wedding.
Then, at the next stop, a red-faced man in a tweed coat and bowler cap struggled onto the train with a big drummer’s case and went back and sat close to the marshal and recognized him and got so excited that George and James could hear him talking at the marshal all the way up where they were seated.
“You’re him!” the man exclaimed. “You’re the famous Marshal Mayfield!”
They couldn’t hear the marshal’s response, but they, like everyone else, took the opportunity to turn in their seats and stare back toward the exchange.
George felt a little surge of pride then, understanding that he and James had been the only other passengers to recognize Mayfield until the drummer had started blatting.
Then George felt prouder still when the drummer embarrassed himself, going on and on, trying to start a conversation, but the stone-faced marshal barely replied.
“See,” George told his brother. “We did the right thing not bothering the marshal. We handled that like men.”
James nodded. “You were right, George. I sure would hate for the marshal to think us fools.”
The rest of the trip was uneventful. They pulled into Fairplay and got off the train and sort of lingered there as others exited the car.
Would the marshal get off here, too?
The flibbertigibbet women, whose non-stop chattering probably could have powered the train, emerged and waited, too.
A short time later, when the great man did indeed come off the train, the women stepped right up and asked if he really was Marshal Mayfield.
The man swept his black hat from his head and smiled and said yes, he was, and immediately apologized, explaining that he had an appointment in town.
He wished them a good day and excused himself, and just like that, he was on his way down the street, leaving George and James amazed and the women chattering like a couple of excited squirrels.
“Well, that was something,” James said. “I can’t believe we actually met Marshal Mayfield.”
George gave his brother a light shove. “Don’t exaggerate, James. We didn’t meet him. But we got close enough to read his badge. That’s something. Now, come on, let’s find Mary.”
“Maybe she’s here,” the younger brother said. “Maybe she was waiting on the train.”
It was possible, and George felt a surge of hope, but one quick glance put an end to that. There was no sight of Mary anywhere.
Which came as no surprise. After all, they hadn’t bothered to tell her they were coming. They’d just come.
“She’s probably at the hotel,” he said soberly, and the pair started in that direction.
Mary wasn’t at the hotel, but the clerk was expecting them and shared the message Mary had left in case they showed up on the train.
“Mrs. Sullivan would have met you at the train had she known you were coming today,” the clerk told them. “She said that. But she didn’t want to waste time if, indeed, you were not coming today, so she went shopping.”
George grinned. That sounded like Mary, who never wasted a minute. “Any idea where she might be shopping?”
“She said to look for her at the mercantile first and if you didn’t find her there, to check the hardware store.”
That knocked the smile off George’s face.
Hardware store? What could Mary possibly want at a hardware store?
He felt a nameless misgiving but dismissed it immediately.
Regardless of what Mary was up to, he would track her down and talk some sense into her.
She was a very strong person. Smart, too. Smart as a whip.
But she must be reeling in the wake of this terrible tragedy and likely not thinking very clearly.
Luckily, he was a man now, and he was here for her. This would likely be a major turning point in their lives, the moment where he stepped up and became the dominant sibling, the man Mary would look up to for the rest of their lives.
He thanked the clerk, and they left and went to the mercantile, where they learned that they had missed Mary. She’d finished her mercantile shopping an hour earlier and gone to the hardware store.
At the hardware store, they discovered that they had missed her again. Only fifteen minutes earlier, she’d finished her shopping and gone down the street to the livery.
“We’d better hurry,” George said, walking rapidly in that direction.
“Why?” James asked hurrying after him.
“I’m thinking maybe Mary grew impatient and is buying a horse to ride home.”
“You think she would really do that?”
“Don’t you?”
James thought for a second then nodded. “Let’s run.”
They jogged the rest of the way.
When they reached the livery, their sister stood in front of the place, wearing pants and boots and a man’s work shirt, haggling with the hostler.
As they walked up, the hostler shook his head and raised his hands, looking worn out. “All right, ma’am, all right. You win. Never let it be said that I’m not a sympathetic man. In light of your recent tragedy, I will let you have them both for one hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
Mary extended her hand, and she and the hostler shook hands firmly like a couple of men. “Thank you, sir.”
Then, seeing George and James, her whole face transformed instantly, seeming to fill with light as an enormous smile stretched across her face. “Oh, Georgie! Jimmy! You came!”
She rushed forward and threw her arms around George, who wished she hadn’t called him by that old name. But that mild irritation vanished immediately as he wrapped his arms around the sister he loved and pitied and had come to rescue.
He was a few inches taller than her now. He leaned over her and held her tight.
She hugged him fiercely.
Then she stepped back and grabbed him by the shoulders and smiled up at him, studying him like a mother might study a child. “You’re growing up, George. Look how tall you’ve gotten.”
George nodded, feeling a little off-balance. Suddenly, he suspected he was going to have to make her see that he really was grown up. This wouldn’t be as easy as he was expecting.
At least she’d called him George this time, not Georgie.
Mary turned her attention to James, pretending not to know him. “And who is this gigantic boy you’ve brought with you?”
“It’s me, Mary!” James laughed. “It’s Jimmy!”
“Not my little brother, Jimmy Bonsall?” Mary said, kidding him.
“Yeah, it’s me!” James said, wallowing in her joke, seeming younger, seeming like Jimmy instead of James.
Well, that was fine for him, but George was older now. He was a man.
He placed a hand soberly on his sister’s shoulder. “Mary, we’re so sorry about Cole. He was a good man.”
The light went out of Mary’s eyes then. She held onto a little of her smile and nodded. “Yes, he was. Thank you, George. And thank you both for coming. I knew I could count on you.”
“Always and forever!” James declared.
“Good,” Mary said. “Come with me, then. I made some purchases at the hardware store and the mercantile. Now that I have a cart to load them into, let’s go get everything.”
“But Mary…” George started.
“Then we’ll have to go to the gun shop,” Mary said.
“You gonna buy some guns?” James asked.
“No. I already have guns. They’re back at the hotel. I have to pick up my new dog.”
“Wait,” George said with a sinking feeling. “What are you talking about? Why are you buying all these things? You won’t need them at home.”
“Oh, Georgie,” Mary said, and smiled at him.
It was a smile he recognized from childhood, a patient smile Mary used when he was slow to understand something.
He felt a twinge of irritation and something else, something like desperation, at the sight of that smile. He was no longer a boy. He was a man. He needed her to understand that.
“I appreciate you boys coming to see me,” Mary said. “It’s been a very hard time, but I’m not coming home with you. I’m staying here. George, James, I need your help now. Will you help me?”