Trains can be as boring as stagecoaches, though a little more comfortable. And, as Allie had told Sheriff What’s-His-First-Name Donaldson, the food was horrible. But the train was the quickest way out of Denver and back home, so that’s the mode of transportation Ranger Summer used. That vacation McConnell promised her was sounding better and better every clackety-clacking mile. She didn’t especially like vacations, because she found them…as boring as a train ride. But she had an idea what she wanted to do this time, and it sounded interesting, so she thought she’d give it a shot. The up-in-the-mountains-trout-fishing thing Rob Conners had mentioned to her.
Allie was still 22 years old—it would be June before she turned 23—and she still enjoyed being a Ranger, every bit as much as she always had. As she was looking out the train window at the boring, repetitive, undulating grass-covered hills, her thoughts turned to getting married and having children, which they did from time to time. But it wasn’t her highest priority at the moment. She simply hadn’t found anybody that bowled her over yet—Rob Conners was the closest—but even he couldn’t pull her away from her first love—the Rangers. Not that he had even tried, she mused. Allie was a loner. She lived alone, she liked to operate alone, and men didn’t have much of a place in her life. Or women, either, for that matter. Allie smiled wryly at the thought that she really didn’t have any close friends; any friends, period. And the thought didn’t bother her in the least. I don’t like people and they don’t like me, and she chuckled inwardly at the thought. But something inside her had moved her to start going to church, and she wondered if that was partly because of some kind of longing in her for some human companionship. She even stayed occasionally for their afternoon potluck; better cooking that mine and nicer people than me. But she wouldn’t let anybody get too close, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She had been intimate with men before—in the ultimate sense—but only on the job, and once wholly involuntarily; Nicholas Backstrom and two of his men had raped her repeatedly one night. I never did kill those other two thugs who did that…Romance just…wasn’t that important to her.
I guess this is the kind of stuff you think about on a long, boring train ride. Why didn’t I bring a book? Well, maybe the next train station will have a newspaper or something to read….joy…
The next train station had something all right, but it wasn’t a newspaper or something for Allie to read on the trip…
She didn’t even know the name of the place; the sign at the station announcing the town’s name had fallen off and not been replaced yet. She figured she was in the Wyoming Territory, though. As the train began to slow in preparation for its stop, the conductor came through announcing, “We’ll have to take on some water and fuel, so we’re going to be here about an hour. You can go into town if you’d like, but be back by 1:30 sharp, because that’s when we’re going to leave.”
Might be worth finding a restaurant and getting a meal that doesn’t taste—and smell—like roast buzzard…
The train whistled and hissed to a stop and Allie hopped off. There was a station manager standing on the platform and she asked him, “Where’s the best place to eat in town?”
“German’s,” he said without hesitation—well, after looking Allie up and down, which almost every man did. Then he smiled. “They serve American food, though.” He pointed. “Two blocks, on your left.”
“Thanks.” Allie started to walk away, then paused and said, “Oh, what’s the name of this burg?”
“Crosby.”
“Never heard of it.” She looked past him into the town proper and said, “I see why you tore the sign down from the station roof.” The station man gave Allie a rather annoyed look, but she didn’t pay him any mind. Well, I HAVEN’T ever heard of it…don’t blame me if your rat hole town is nothing more than a speck on a map…She had been in Wyoming before, chasing some of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. They’d done a bank job just across the border. They’d split up, but she caught a couple of them. They decided they didn’t want to go back to Montana and stand trial…
As Allie walked the two blocks to the restaurant, she got some looks—at least from those who recognized that she was a woman. It wasn’t common, to say the least, for women to wear pants and carry a gun, tied down low, on their hip. Since she had her hair shoved up under her hat, a lot of people mistook her for a man unless they looked real closely. Allie didn’t wear real tight fitting clothes, but she wouldn’t fool a perceptive eye. And until they met her, everybody who had heard of her—like Donaldson and Grigsby in Denver—thought she was a man with a peculiar name. After all, the Rangers don’t hire women--everybody knows that—and there are some men with strange names everywhere. So Allie Summer must be a man. It always tickled her when they learned differently.
She found the restaurant behind some dusty windows and went inside. She did a quick inspection; that was second nature to her now. She detected no danger. There were about 20 tables, most of them occupied, and some of the patrons glanced at her, but only briefly; they were busy eating their meals. She was hard to see clearly anyway because the daylight was to her back. The place smelled ok, so Allie thought she might get some decent food. Since McConnell is paying for it, I’m going to find the most expensive thing on the menu…She usually did that and he usually griped about her expense account—or at least he used to until she got tired of it and said to him one time, “Well, it would have been more, but some cowboy picked me up at a bar one night and bought me the best steak in town. Man, he was good-looking. You shoulda seen the pects on that guy…” McConnell never was quite sure when Allie was joking or not—and in this case, she was, because she never went into bars except to roust outlaws—but he never said anything about her expenses any more, either.
In the restaurant, she weaved her way between tables until she found an empty one at the back where she could see everybody and especially the front door. As noted earlier in this story, Allie didn’t like anybody behind her back. She didn’t take off her hat until she sat down, and then her straight, silky, shoulder-blade length, raven black hair fell, and she took a moment to push it back behind her ears and shoulders. Her hair, and the Indian headband she wore, did attract some attention—mainly from the male population of the restaurant—attention which, once again, Allie duly ignored. Some of the women were staring at her, too, most of them with unvarnished distaste.
The waitress came over. “Special today is chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Apple pie for dessert.”
Allie nodded, then played a hunch. “What’s the special tomorrow?”
“Chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Apple pie for dessert.”
“And day after tomorrow?”
“Chicken—
“—mashed potatoes, and green beans, apple pie for dessert,” Allie finished.
“Your steak any good?”
“You bet. We killed a horse just this morning.”
Allie made a face. She had a feeling the woman might have been telling the truth. “I’ll have the special. Milk to drink, unless you milked the donkey yesterday.”
“Nope, did that this morning myself,” the waitress said and then sauntered off, hollering the order loud enough to raise Lazarus again.
“She looks like the donkey’s mother,” Allie muttered to herself.
Allie studied the room and other customers a little more closely and saw nothing remarkable. Several older men, middle-aged, who looked like ranchers. A few merchant-types with their white shirts and string ties. A table full of fat biddies who kept glancing at Allie with disapproval. She stuck her tongue out at one of them, and laughed when the lady jumped in her chair with an “oh,” and then began jabbering to her friends like a monkey after a banana. Allie paid them no mind after that.
She did notice one younger man who kept surreptitiously glimpsing in her direction. She knew immediately what was going to happen when she saw him finish his coffee, wipe his lips with his napkin, and stand up. Allie watched him the whole time he walked over to her table. He was smiling at her, his hands in his pockets.
“Ah, the belle of the ball,” he said.
“Ah, the lord of the apes,” Allie responded, and he laughed.
He really wasn’t bad looking. Mid-30s, a businessman, wearing a gray suit, white shirt, and bolo tie. His hair was black and had some wave to it, his eyes were brown, and he had a black mustache that ran from one lip corner to the other and covered everything from nose to mouth. His head might have been a little too round for him to be truly handsome, but he displayed some confidence that Allie found acceptable.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked. “I’ll pay for your meal for the privilege of spending a few minutes in the presence of such beauty.”
Oh, get off it, Jungle Jim…Allie received compliments like that with some frequency and she could always tell when they were stuffed full of cow manure. Not that she wasn’t aware that she was an attractive woman; but there was a difference between sincerity and sincerity, and Allie had learned it a long time ago. But she’d give the guy another chance and see if he could recover. After all, I’m leaving town in less than an hour and probably never see the creep again.
She responded to his compliment with an equally insincere smile and “thank you,” and agreed to let him join her.
“Thank you,” he said, and sat down in the chair next to her. Allie didn’t miss the fact that his knee touched hers. She didn’t move hers—yet.
Allie started the conversation before the man had a chance to. “Didn’t I meet you in New Haven once before?”
The man made a thoughtful face. “No, I’ve never been to New Haven.”
“I haven’t, either. Must have been two other people.”
He gave her a curious smile, but let the matter pass. “Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Bruce Tompkins, and I’m a geologist for the Atwater Oil Company. We think there is some oil in this area, and I’m here to check it out.” He even handed Allie a card.
She was already bored, so she put the card on the table without glancing at it. “It’s nice to meet you,” she replied. Well, I’ve just told one lie, I might as well tell another…”My name is Agnes Flatbottom. I work for the NoSmell Fish Company and we think there are some fish in the area and I’m here to check it out.”
Tompkins chuckled. “Why do I think you’re pulling my leg?”
Speaking of legs…She moved hers and, in a seemingly natural move, picked up her foot and set it down—hard—on his. She saw him grimace and said, “Oh, excuse me.” She smiled the insincere smile again and even batted her eyelashes at him a few times.
Tompkins was losing big and he knew it, but he was a good loser so he said, “Oh, that’s all right. I didn’t mean to get my foot in the way of your boot.” Not bad…not good, but not bad…”Now, will you tell me who you really are?”
Allie raised her eyes as if thinking. “Uhhhh, would you believe me if I told you my name is Madame Gertrude Finklestein and I think there are some women in this area and I’m here to check that out?”
Tompkins laughed. “No, I don’t think I’d buy that one, either.”
“Well, how about if I said my name is Allie Summer and I work for the territorial Rangers?”
Tompkins rolled his eyes. “That’s the worst one yet.”
Allie’s food came at that moment. And it looked—and smelled—good.
But she never got to eat it—well, most of it.
There was some gunfire—four or five shots, so close together it was hard to count them. Everybody in the restaurant, including Bruce Tompkins and Allie, looked out the window. Then, a voice shouting, “The bank’s bein’ robbed! The bank’s bein’ robbed! They killed the marshal!” And then the scene turned grisly as the man who had been shouting spread his arms and cried out as he was shot in the back by someone on horseback—and this was something the whole restaurant witnessed from out the window. There were some expressions of horror from the people inside the café.
“Oh, crud,” Allie said, though I’ve cleaned up her language a bit. She grabbed a chicken leg from off her plate, picked up her hat, said to Tompkins, “You told me you’d pay,” and started towards the door in a rush, munching on the chicken as she went.
“Hey, where are you going?” he called after her.
“To catch some fish,” she replied, but he didn’t hear her.
Allie went outside and saw four men on horses heading out of town. People were shouting, screaming, running in circles—the mob without a clue. There was an older man standing near Allie with a rifle in his hands, but the look on his face was of total incomprehension, as if he didn’t know what was going on or what to do about it. Allie yelled at him, “Are you going to use that thing or not?”
He looked at her. “Huh?”
“The rifle!”
The man now stared at the rifle in his hands.
“Oh, good grief,” Allie said, stuck the chicken leg between her teeth, and yanked the rifle out of the man’s hands. A couple of the thieves were still in range. Allie leveled the rifle and fired twice. Both of the horsemen dropped to the ground. The other two outlaws had disappeared around a corner and made their escape.
“Good shooting,” Allie said to the man, sarcastically, as she handed him back his rifle. Now he stared at her. Then, a little disgusted, she headed back to the train. “My food is cold now anyway, I don’t want to talk to that Romeo, and I can’t stand donkey milk,” she muttered to herself. She finished the chicken leg she had been eating and tossed the bone to a nearby dog, who caught it on the fly and downed it in two bites and a gulp. Then hacked several times. Serves you right for not chewing your food, you mangy mutt….
A few of the townsfolk had figured out what was going on, but there was still mass confusion. Allie was gone before anybody could stop her. As she entered the train station, she noticed the time: 1:10. “Well, I probably wouldn’t have had time to finish my lunch anyway.” Talking to herself again.
She boarded the train, found her seat, leaned back, put her hat over her face, and prepared for a nap. It was interrupted a few minutes later.
“Uh…miss?”
Allie knew they were talking to her, but didn’t want any company. So she let out a couple of snores, hoping they’d get the hint and leave.
“She’s asleep, Steve,” she heard another man say.
She detected some angst in Steve’s voice as he said, “I know, but we really need to talk with her.”
Allie sighed inwardly. Might as well get this over with…She pulled her hat off her face and said, “I’m not asleep. What do you want?”
There were two men standing in the aisle of the train; well, the conductor was standing there, too. Both of the men were well-dressed and obviously from town. One of them was tall, 30ish, dark hair, blue eyes, elongated fact, big ears, but had a pleasant face. The other man was short, fat, balding, and perspiring, even though it certainly wasn’t hot. The tall man introduced them.
“I’m Steve Haley,” he said, “and this is Roscoe Hamilton. We’re councilmen from Crosby.” He seemed a little hesitant; Allie’s demeanor probably didn’t help.
Should I tell another lie?... ”Nice to meet you,” is all she replied. Yeah, I did…
“May we…sit down?”
“I think the train is fixing to leave.” Like I wish you would…
“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Haley said.
The conductor rushed in with, “We’ll hold off leavin’ till they’re finished.”
Allie gave him an irritated glance, but waved the men to the seats across from her. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
The two councilmen seemed a little perplexed at her attitude. “Well, we understand that you are the…young lady…who shot the two robbers.”
“I just did what any other manure spreader would have done.”
“Maybe so, but we still appreciate very much what you did. One of the men you shot was carrying the money so all of it was retrieved.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Now may I get back to my nap?... But there was something more to this, Allie noted. They were more uncomfortable than they should have been around an annoyed young woman.
“May we ask your name?” Hamilton said.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
They both stared at her a moment, not quite comprehending. Allie figured they weren’t going to go away until they’d finished their business, and the sooner the better, so she said, “My name is Allie Summer.” She waited for the inevitable, “Allie Summer? We thought you were a man…”
But this time her arrogance was deflated. It was obvious her name meant nothing to either man. “You shoot very well, Miss Summer,” Haley said. “Not many men—people—could have done what you did. It was a terrible situation. Those robbers killed three people, including our marshal, wounded another, and two of them escaped. But, as I said, we did get the money back, thanks to your quick action.”
“Are you going to form a posse and go after the other two?” Allie asked, and the expressions on their faces answered her question.
“Well, Deputy Cannon might do that, but…” Haley sighed. “Miss Summer, do you know who you killed?”
Allie shook her head. “Two men who needed killing is all I know.”
“One of them was Twain Tolliver. Have you heard of the Tolliver gang?”
Yes, Allie had, and knew that the Rangers had been trying to capture them for years; the reader might remember the conversation, recorded earlier, between her and Captain McConnell regarding the Tollivers. She’d never gotten the assignment to go after them because she’d had plenty of other work to do; the Tollivers weren’t the only outlaws in the territory, and again, they weren’t wanted for anything within Allie’s jurisdiction anyway. Still, they were among the worst—probably the worst now that the Buckner gang had been eliminated. She was glad she was able to dispose of one of them.
“I’ve heard of them. Bad lot.”
“Yes, they are. Trent’s not going to be happy when he hears Twain was killed here.”
Allie caught on. “Ah. So you fear he’ll bring his army of miscreants to Crosby and burn the town down.”
Haley smiled painfully. Hamilton was gazing out the window, not wanting to look at Allie. “We’re businessmen, farmers, ranchers, Miss Summer, not gunfighters.”
“I see,” Allie responded. “So when Trent shows up, to save your own hides you’re going to draw him a map to my house.”
Haley winced, and said, “Well, not quite…”
Allie was finished with this conversation. She leaned back and put her hat over her eyes again. “Warn him that if he gets within 200 yards of my place I’ll blow him to the far side of hell where he belongs. Good day, gentlemen.”
They weren’t quite through. “Uh, Miss Summer…there’s a reward for Twain Tolliver and the town would like to give you something for saving the bank.”
Allie lifted her hat, looked at him, and actually smiled. “The only thing I want, Mr. Haley, is a nap.” Down went the hat again.
She heard Haley and Hamilton rise. “Who are you, Miss Summer? You’re not…like most people.”
“Go check your wanted posters.”
They finally took the hint, but at the back of the cabin she overheard this whispered conversation:
Conductor: “Don’t you know who that is? That’s Allie Summer, the Ranger.”
Haley: “Allie Summer? The Allie Summer? We thought he—she—was a man…”
Allie rolled her eyes.
What Allie didn’t hear, though, was Haley’s comment after deboarding the train: “I’d sure hate to be Allie Summer when Trent Tolliver hears that she killed his brother…”