Silver Creek - G.L. Snodgrass Page 0,68
alive for letting you go that way.”
Luke shook his head. “Brother, I might be an idiot at times but even I ain’t that stupid.”
Jake laughed as he went to do what he’d been asked.
Luke sighed as he thought about Becky. When he stepped into the restaurant he froze. She had her back to him. Her blond hair up, exposing a long, graceful neck and curvy hips that pulled at something inside of him.
She glanced over her shoulder to find him there staring at her. She smiled, her eyes lighting up with pleasure.
“Here,” she said as she hurried into the kitchen and returned with a burlap bag. “It should hold up until you get to Peabody and the stage.”
Luke accepted the bag of food from her and stared into her eyes until he realized they were being observed by a dozen customers. Men fascinated by the couple in front of them.
“Come here,” he said as he took her elbow and pulled her through the kitchen and out the back door to the alley behind the restaurant. Helen shot them a knowing smile then returned to her fry pan.
“I should be gone about a week. Ten days at the most,” he told Becky.
She bit her lip and nodded. “And then we can leave?”
His gut tightened. God, how he hated disappointing her. “Maybe,” he said. “But I saw Red Hawk last night. He gave me some information I need to check in Carson City. If it pans out. It might lead me to your uncle’s killer.”
Her shoulders slumped as she studied him. “You have to do what you have to do. But, while I want justice for Uncle Tom. Not if it means risking you. We are so close.” she sighed heavily. Then said, “you do what you have to do.”
He pulled her into a kiss, a kiss to seal his love for her. A kiss to tell her and the world that she was the only woman he would ever love.
“You will be all right,” he said after he pulled back and looked down into her eyes. “Jake is here.”
She laid her head against his chest then said sarcastically, “This town? You know nothing bad ever happens here.”
They both laughed and held onto each other as if they were the only thing worth having in this world.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Felton’s shackles rattled as Luke reached over to halt the prisoner’s horse at the top of the ridge. They’d followed Silver Creek down to Mary’s River, then to the Humboldt before they caught the stage out of Peabody. It’d been four long days since then.
Now, after hiring horses in Reno, they pulled up on a ridge and stopped to see a rail laying crew below them.
Felton said with a touch of awe, “Before you know it, they’ll hook up with the Union Pacific tracks. And then what will that do to this country?”
Luke laughed, “If you’re lucky, you might be getting out just in time. Just think on it. What took me and mine six months of walking could be done in a few days.”
Felton shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing. The place is going to fill up with more people than we want. You’ll see. We’ll get right crowded.”
The two men sat their horses and looked down at the activity before them, neither of them able to fully take in the bustling activity below. Men were out ahead of the tracks, grading and leveling the ground. Men behind them were placing timbers. Another two sets of men followed them immediately, using cross carriers to haul a pair of twelve-foot sections of iron track. No sooner had they dropped them in place than a new set of men appeared in groups of four hammering in the huge spikes to hold the track in place.
Then, once again, it was all repeated, a constant machine.
“Come on,” Luke said as he pulled his horse to start down the ridge.
Felton laughed, “I ain’t the one in a hurry. I wouldn’t mind taking a few extra days getting to prison. But then, I ain’t the one got a pretty woman waiting for me at home.”
Luke ignored him as he led the way down off the ridge. The two men passed over the Truckee River at a ford and started following the trail for Carson City.
“Don’t envy them laying track across that forty-mile gap,” Felton said with a shake of his head, referring to that part of the Nevada desert barren of any water.”
“I hear that