Kindy is a good old soul, a godly woman, not too strong in the head, especially with her multiplication, and Heaven knows, you have to have your multiplication if you’re going to run a business …”
The river of thought continued from this gushing fount of information. Rose exhaustively elaborated on the theme of Aunt Kindy’s lack of mathematical skill before progressing through the life history of every member of her family, footnoted with her opinions on everything from the price of cornmeal to the proper way to iron sheets. Mostly, however, she talked about her dime novels.
“I brought some doozies with me!” She opened her heavy, lumpy carpetbag to reveal a rainbow galaxy of excitement and adventure. She showed them to Emily one after another, offering a precise and detailed description of each. Emily wondered why Rose didn’t notice that they were all the same story, just with different names.
“… and then Tom, the Straight-Shooting Outlaw, rides into the gulch and unties her, and pulls her up on his white horse, and they ride off into the sunset,” Rose exhaled at the end of another one of these recountings, closing her eyes.
“And the corrupt Sheriff Black and his posse of thugs get killed in a rock slide, right?”
“No, they get scalped by redskins. There’s this chief who owes Tom a favor because he saved his daughter, a beautiful Indian princess, from a raging grassfire.” Rose gave Emily a scornful frown. “Rock slide, phooey!”
Emily chewed her lip as Rose pulled another book out of her bag and began describing it. So many of the books featured noble outlaws, flamboyant and reckless, the kind that signed their names in bullets but never really killed anyone.
Well, being an outlaw was nothing like that at all. It was frightening and uncomfortable. You didn’t get to change your clothes, you had to use filthy bathrooms, you had to watch your friends die …
Emily’s heart jumped and she had to swallow to shove it back down her throat. She glanced over at Stanton. He looked worse than ever. What on earth was she going to do?
The afternoon wore on. Rose kept talking. They entered the desert, cutting across the ghostly alkali plains that rolled out before and behind them, a smooth blank sheet. And Rose kept talking. At least she didn’t seem to require much response. Her nonstop patter quickly became as much a part of the background hum of the train as the clack of the wheels.
As afternoon became evening and Stanton still hadn’t woken up, Emily knew she had to do something. The other passengers were beginning to comment. There were murmurs about “the sick man in the corner.” People held handkerchiefs over their mouths as they passed, and everyone gave Emily and Stanton a wide berth. Everyone except Rose.
“If you’re going through to New York, you’ll have to change trains in Ogden,” Rose observed. “I guess you’ll have to carry him, huh?”
“Yep,” Emily replied, as if she had to tote drunken associates all the time.
She had to wake him up before Ogden, before they had to switch trains. She couldn’t drag a full-grown man around without attracting attention she couldn’t afford to attract.
That night, when the conductor came by to fold the seats down into beds, Emily didn’t know what to say.
“It’s all right.” Rose smiled at the conductor, nodding toward Stanton. “The poor man needs his rest. I can lay my head against the window.”
Emily laid her head down and slept, hoping that Stanton would surprise her the next morning with one of his ill-tempered quips.
But he did not. He was still bleakly unconscious as they approached Promontory early the next morning.
She knew she was licked. She had to get him to a doctor. If he didn’t wake up before Ogden, she’d drag him off the train and have him carried to one. And then …?
And then, well, she’d get back on the train. She had to get to New York. That’s what Stanton would want her to do, and she certainly owed it to him to make the right choice.
When the train stopped for breakfast, Rose got off. She was gone for quite some time—long enough, indeed, that Emily worried she might not make it back. But as the train gave its final whistle, Rose dropped into the seat across, her face flushed and her blond hair wisping around her face. She gave Emily a knowing grin.
“I figured it was time we got some help from Mother Roscoe!” she said. She