Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel Lily Nevada by Cecelia Holland (©1999 by Cecelia Holland).

By the time Brand got to the train station the Atlantic Mail was long gone. Brand stood staring up the empty tracks. The ordinary city noise of Reno settled around him, the wagons on the street, somebody whistling over by the livery stable. Turning, he went back across the platform and into the station house.

The agent was a fuzz-faced kid. Half a dozen locals sat along the benches be the woodstove; when Brand came into the waiting room they stirred, and he heard his name spoken. He leaned against the sill of the ticket window and said, “When’s the next westbound train?”

The agent didn’t bother to lift his gaze to Brand. “The next westbound passenger train will leave at five tonight.”

“I said when’s the next train,” Brand said, in a monotone.

The fuzzy face turned toward him, alerted, “There‘s an express freight through in thirsty minutes.”

Brand said, “I’ll take that.”

“I can’t sell tickets on a freight.”

“I’m not buying a ticket,” Brand said. He took the billfold from the inner pocket of his coat and hung his badge out in front of the kid’s nose.

“Yes, sir,” the agent said briskly. “Thirty minutes.”

Brand turned his head toward the woodstove. The men there were watching him mutely. He said, “Who wants to make a buck?”

Immediately one stepped out from the middle of them. This was a pudgy man with thinning hair. “I’ll do it, Mr. Brand,” he said.

“Go down to the telegraph office, have them wire the SP office in Truckee and bold the mail for me. Sign it, ‘Brand.’”

The pudgy man meshed off. the ticket agent said, “They don’t hold the Mail for anything.”

Brand did not bother to answer. He went across the waiting room toward the stove. The other men watched him owlishly and he ignored them, pulled off his glove between his left arm and his side, and held out his hand to warm in the heat of the stove. With the stump of his left arm he tucked the glove into his pocket, and the stump after.

“Cold, for March,” said one of the man tentatively.

Brand said nothing, it was bad enough to be recognized, it made him edgy when people knew him but he didn’t know them. The pudgy man came back in, puffing. With a broad and sunny smile he hold out the receipt for the telegram, and when Brand went to give him a dollar he shook his head.

“No, thanks,” he said. “Glad to have the chance to help.”

Brand look him over again. The man wore miner’s clothes, denim pants and a flannel shirt and heavy workshoes. His thinning hair made him look old but he was not, younger than Brand, likely, who was thirty-two.

“My name’s Billy Patch. If there‘s anything else I can do, I’d take it as a privilege, Mr. Brand.”

Brand gave him a sharp sideways look. He could not penetrate the man’s eager smiling mask; maybe it wasn’t a mask. He said, “I’ll remember that.”

The man crept around to the side, so that he was talking to Brand’s face again. “I sort of follow your career, in the papers, you know.”

The men on the bench, who were listening with keen ears, rumbled up a burst of muted hilarity. Brand said, “I didn’t know I had a career in the papers.”

“Well, you know, the police reports.” The pudgy man bobbed a little; his eyes shone. "I want to be a peace officer.”

Brand gave a laugh and lifted his gaze to the other man’s face. “What for?”

“Well, you know—.” Bill Patch was rocking on his heels now, as if the inner urge to serve the law would not let him rest.

“Show it to him, Billy boy,” one of the men on the bench bawled. “Go on.”

The round face before Brand flushed red. With a murmur, the pudgy man took a folded magazine from his pocket.

“Ned Buntline,” Brand said, recognizing the style of the cover even before he could see the title. “What do you read that garbage for? That’s not about anything-real.”

The men by the stove bellowed with laughter. The pudgy man seemed to melt, his hand still stretched out toward Brand with the magazine. The hoots and jeers washed over him; he lowered his gaze toward the floor. Brand watched steadily. It seemed like him standing there, and the other boys jeering, “Stumpy!”

“I need a deputy, maybe, on this case I’m on now. Want the job? Just for a day or so.”

The pudgy man’s gaze snapped back up. The color faded out of his cheeks. The raucous voices of the other men died away. The pudgy man said, “Would I!”

“Just come along. Give me a hand if I need it. This is probably a wild-goose chase anyway.”

“Yes, sir!”

Brand turned away a little now, too late, wishing he had kept his mouth shut. He wondered why he had saddled himself with this stranger. “Well,” he said. “Come on, then.”