Last Stand on a Train to Hell (Preview)

Chapter One

The forest burned around him, orange flames licking at bare branches like the devil’s own fingers. Mathias Birch ran hard as he could, boots slipping on ash and blood-soaked ground. Men screamed behind him—some his own, some Union blue—but the sounds all blended into one hellish chorus that followed him through the smoke.

These were the last days of the Civil War, and Mathias was on the losing side.

A bullet whined past his ear. Another kicked up dirt at his feet. He clutched his rifle tighter, though his hands shook so bad he couldn’t have hit a barn door if it was painted Confederate gray.

“Stand and fight, you yellow dogs!” 

Colonel Morrison’s voice cut through the chaos, but Mathias didn’t slow down. Officers all around him were yelling at fleeing rebels, ordering them to turn around and fight. But Mathias had seen too much horror; he was too scared. The colonel could go to hell—seemed like they were all headed there anyway.

These were the last days, everyone knew it. Lee would surrender soon, if he hadn’t already. The Confederacy was bleeding out in these Virginia woods, and Mathias had seen enough blood to last three lifetimes.

Union soldiers charged forward, eyes and hearts filled with blood lust, sensing the wounded animals that were the Confederates. They pressed their advantage, moving to finish them off.

A Union soldier burst through the smoke ahead, bayonet gleaming. Wild eyes, face streaked with soot and gore. Mathias swung his rifle up, pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber with a hollow click.

“Damn.”

He threw the rifle aside—it only slowed him down anyway—and dodged left as the soldier lunged. The bayonet scraped against a pine tree, and Mathias kept running. His lungs burned worse than the forest around him. Bullets flew past him as he ran by dead and wounded soldiers scattered in the ash and dirt.

This was hell on earth.

It was hard to breathe with all the smoke stinging his eyes and throat. Mathias had to take a break or he would pass out. Behind the cover of a thick oak, he pressed his back against the bark and tried to catch his breath. Smoke made his eyes water. Or maybe that wasn’t the smoke. Hard to tell anymore.

He pulled out his knife—a good Arkansas toothpick his daddy had given him—and held it ready. The sounds of battle seemed to fade for a moment, like the world was holding its breath.

When he stepped out from behind the tree, the bayonet punched through his back just below the ribs. Cold steel, then fire spreading through his guts. He looked down and saw the point emerge from his belly, slick with blood.

The Union soldier yanked the blade free and moved on without a word, like Mathias was nothing more than a fence post that needed clearing. Mathias dropped to his knees in the ash and dirt, watching his blood darken the ground.

The world went black.

***

“Mathias. Hey, Mathias.”

Someone was shaking his shoulder. Mathias jerked awake, hand going instinctively to where the bayonet had been. But there was no wound, no blood. Just the gentle rocking of the train car and John Fredericks standing over him with a concerned look.

“You were making some noise there, partner,” John said. “Bad one?”

Mathias sat up straighter in his seat and rubbed his face. The dream always felt real as Sunday morning, complete with the smell of smoke and the taste of fear. It was a recollection of the war that haunted him still. 

“I’m fine.”

John didn’t look convinced. He was a good man, John—steady and reliable, with graying hair and kind eyes that had seen their share of trouble. They’d been working together for the Missouri Pacific Railroad for near on eight months now, playing the part of ordinary passengers while keeping watch for the gangs that had been hitting the line regular.

“We’re pulling into Dodge City,” John said. “This is where I get off.”

Mathias looked out the window and saw the familiar collection of false-front buildings and dusty streets. Dodge City was growing fast with the railroad bringing in farmers and merchants. Still looked rough as a cob to him. The kind of place where a man could disappear if he wasn’t careful.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” John asked. “Next stretch to Denver’s where most of the trouble’s been happening. This is the most dangerous leg of the journey.”

“I’m ready,” Mathias assured him.

The truth was, Mathias wasn’t sure he was ready for anything anymore. The war had ended three years ago, but it continued in his head every night. Some days he wondered if that Union soldier had actually finished the job back in those burning woods, and everything since was just the fevered dream of a dying man.

The train shuddered to a stop with a squeal of brakes and a hiss of steam. Through the window, Mathias watched passengers getting on and off—cowboys heading home after selling their herds, businessmen in store-bought suits, families moving out West for a fresh start. All of them trusting that the railroad would get them where they needed to go in one piece.

That was what he was here for. To make sure they arrived with all their fingers and toes, and hopefully their money, too.

“The company’s got three more security men scattered through the other cars,” John said, checking his pocket watch. “But you’re the only one on this leg who knows the real situation. Far as anyone else is concerned, you’re just another passenger.”

“Understood.”

John gathered his carpetbag and tipped his hat. “Watch yourself, Mathias. These gangs aren’t playing games.” John double-checked one more time. “You good to go?”

“I am.”

After John left, Mathias settled back in his seat and tried to pull himself together. The whiskey burned going down, but it helped quiet the ghosts in his head. He’d learned to drink just enough to keep the dreams at bay, but not so much that he couldn’t do his job when trouble came calling.

And trouble would come. It always did.

He studied the other passengers in his car without seeming to. An elderly couple near the front, the man reading a newspaper while his wife knitted. A young mother with two small children, trying to keep them from bouncing on the seats. A drummer in a checked suit, probably selling patent medicine or ladies’ undergarments.

The conductor called out “All aboard!” and the train lurched forward again, building speed as it left the town behind. Mathias checked his Colt Navy revolver, making sure it sat easy in the shoulder holster under his coat. The railroad didn’t much like their security men going armed, but they liked getting robbed even less. Mathias had learned in the war that it was better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

According to the reports, the gangs usually hit somewhere between Dodge City and Denver, in the empty country where help was a long way off.

He supposed everyone on this train had their reasons for heading west—some running toward something, others running away. In his experience, the ones running away usually had the better stories.

Miles and miles of grass and sky rolled by outside the window, broken only by the occasional farmhouse or creek bed lined with cottonwoods. Beautiful country, if you liked that sort of thing. Mathias preferred it to cities, where too many people meant too many ways for things to go wrong. Out here, trouble came at you straight on. You could see it coming and prepare accordingly.

The train swayed gently as it took a curve, and Mathias felt his eyelids getting heavy again. He fought the urge to sleep. The dreams always came when he slept, and he needed to stay alert. John was right—this was the dangerous part of the journey.

But the rocking motion of the car and the rhythmic clacking of wheels on rails was like a lullaby, and before long his chin was dropping toward his chest. Just a few minutes, he told himself. Just enough to rest his eyes.

The forest was waiting for him in the dark behind his eyelids, flames and smoke and the smell of death. Always waiting, like it was the only real place left in the world, and everything else was just shadows and pretense.

He jerked awake as the train whistle blew long and mournful across the prairie. The sun was lower now, painting the grass gold and throwing long shadows from the telegraph poles that marched alongside the tracks.

The train began to slow as they approached a water stop, and Mathias felt the familiar tightness in his chest that came whenever they had to pause in the middle of nowhere. These stops were when the gangs usually struck, when the train was vulnerable and help was nowhere to be found.

He slipped his hand inside his coat and loosened the Colt in its holster.

Outside, the sun was sinking toward the horizon like a blood-red coin, and the shadows were growing longer by the minute.

As the train pulled to a stop, Mathias reached into his coat and pulled out his silver flask. He took another drink, feeling the familiar burn of whiskey down his throat.

Chapter Two

Victoria Lawndale stuffed the last of her dresses into the carpetbag, her hands trembling as she tried to make everything fit. The carriage driver had arrived early, which should have been a blessing, but now she felt rushed and scattered. Three years of married life reduced to two bags and a trunk—it seemed like such a pitiful amount to show for all those dreams she and Ben had shared.

She carried the carpetbag outside and handed it up to the driver, a weathered man named Pete who’d known her family since she was knee-high to a grasshopper.

“You sure about this, Miss Victoria?” Pete asked, not for the first time that morning. “It’s a mighty big world out there for a lady traveling alone.”

“I’m sure, Pete. Thank you for—”

The sound of hoofbeats made her freeze. A rider was approaching fast from the east, kicking up a cloud of dust that caught the morning light. Victoria’s heart sank as she recognized the horse—a flashy chestnut gelding that cost more than most folks saw in a year.

Thomas Nowell.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” She hurried back toward the house. She still had one more bag to collect, plus Ben’s—

Ben’s satchel. How could she have nearly forgotten the most important thing?

She could hear Thomas’s horse getting closer, the hoofbeats drumming against the hard-packed earth like thunder. Victoria ran up the porch steps and through the front door, her bustle catching on the doorframe in her haste.

There, draped over the back of Ben’s chair at the kitchen table, was his old leather satchel. The one that had come back with his personal effects, along with that awful letter from Lieutenant Fontaine explaining how her husband had died serving his country in ways she could never speak of.

She grabbed the satchel and clutched it against her chest. Inside was Ben’s journal, the one he’d mailed to her just days before his death. She’d read it so many times she knew passages by heart, though she still didn’t fully understand what Ben had been involved in during those final months of the war.

“Victoria!”

Thomas’s voice boomed from outside. She heard his boots on the porch steps—expensive boots that had never seen an honest day’s work.

“Victoria, I know you’re in there. We need to talk.”

She tried to slip out the back door, but Thomas was too quick. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, blocking her path, his face flushed from the hard ride. He was a handsome enough man, she supposed—tall and well-dressed, with dark hair slicked back with pomade and a mustache waxed to sharp points. But there was something in his eyes that had always made her uncomfortable, even when Ben was alive.

“Thomas, I told you yesterday. I’m not interested in your proposal.”

“Now, Victoria, be reasonable.” He stepped into the kitchen, his voice taking on that patronizing tone she’d grown to hate. “You can’t just run off to California like some common pioneer woman. You’re a lady. You deserve better than that.”

“What I deserve is to make my own choices.”

Thomas laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Choices? What choices do you have? Your husband’s dead, God rest his soul. The bank owns this farm now. You’ve got no money, no family, no prospects. What exactly do you think you’re going to do out there in the wilderness?”

Victoria lifted her chin. “I’ll find work. I’m a qualified teacher.”

“Teaching what? To whom? Half-breed children in some godforsaken mining camp?” Thomas shook his head. “Marry me, Victoria. I can give you everything you need. Security, respectability, a place in proper society.”

“I don’t need rescuing, Thomas.”

“Don’t you?” He took another step closer, and Victoria instinctively backed toward the wall. “Because from where I stand, it looks like you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your life.”

The carriage driver’s voice drifted in from outside: “Miss Victoria? Train won’t wait forever.”

“I have to go.” Victoria tried to push past Thomas, but he caught her arm.

“You’re not going anywhere.” His grip was firm, just shy of painful. “We’re going to settle this right here, right now. You’re going to put down that bag, send the carriage away, and listen to reason.”

“Let go of me.”

“Victoria, I’m trying to help you. Can’t you see that? I’ve been patient, I’ve been understanding about your grief, but this foolishness has gone on long enough. You belong here. With me.”

His voice had changed, become harder. The mask of the concerned suitor was slipping, revealing something uglier underneath. Victoria had seen that look before, in the eyes of men who thought women were property to be bought and sold.

“I said let go.”

“You’re not thinking clearly. It’s the grief talking. But I can take care of you, Victoria. I can—”

She swung Ben’s satchel with all her strength, catching Thomas square in the face. The heavy leather and its contents made a satisfying thud, and Thomas stumbled backward, his hand flying to his nose.

“You little—”

Victoria didn’t wait to hear the rest. She ran for the front door, clutching the satchel tight against her chest. Behind her, Thomas was cursing and stumbling around the kitchen, probably bleeding all over his fancy shirt.

“Pete! Go, go now!”

The old driver didn’t need to be told twice. He cracked the whip and the horses lurched forward just as Victoria threw herself into the carriage. She didn’t look back until they were well down the road, and when she did, she saw Thomas standing on the porch, holding a bloody handkerchief to his face and shouting words that no lady should have to hear.

“Told you that one was trouble,” Pete said, glancing back at the receding farmhouse. “Been sniffing around ever since word came about Mister Ben.”

Victoria clutched the satchel tighter. “He’s not going to follow us, is he?”

“Don’t reckon so. Takes him a while to get that fancy horse saddled proper. We’ll be at the station long before he can catch up.”

The ride to town passed in a blur of dust and worry. Victoria kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see Thomas thundering after them at any moment. But the road behind them remained empty, and gradually her heart stopped racing quite so hard.

Dodge City was bustling with its usual mix of cowboys, merchants, and travelers when they arrived at the train station. Pete helped her down from the carriage and unloaded her bags, refusing her offer of extra payment.

“Mister Ben was a good man,” he said simply. “You take care of yourself out there, Miss Victoria.”

The station platform was crowded with passengers waiting for the westbound train. Victoria got in line behind a young Black man who looked nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He kept glancing around like he expected trouble, and Victoria didn’t blame him. Kansas might be a free state, but that didn’t mean folks were always friendly to his kind.

The man in front of her—Obie, she’d heard someone call him—was tall and lean, with intelligent eyes and clothes that had seen better days. He carried a single canvas bag and clutched a worn piece of paper that looked like it might be a letter or advertisement of some kind.

As they waited, Victoria noticed a distinguished-looking gentleman with graying hair pass by them toward the front of the line. He moved with the easy confidence of someone used to being in charge, and she caught a glimpse of something that might have been a badge under his coat. Railroad security, perhaps, or maybe a U.S. Marshal.

When the train finally pulled into the station with a great hiss of steam and screech of brakes, Victoria felt a mixture of relief and anxiety. This was it—her last chance to change her mind and go crawling back to the life everyone expected her to live.

But no. Ben’s journal had made one thing clear: There were secrets in her past that needed to be confronted, truths that could only be found by following the path he’d started. Whatever he’d been involved in during the war, whatever he’d hidden away before his death, she owed it to his memory to see it through.

The conductor called “All aboard!” and Victoria climbed into the passenger car, her bags in tow. She found a seat near the window and arranged her belongings carefully, keeping Ben’s satchel close to her side.

As she settled into her seat, Victoria became aware of being watched. Not the casual glances that passengers often exchanged, but something more deliberate. She looked around the car and noticed a man sitting three rows back on the opposite side. 

He had the weathered look of someone who’d seen his share of hardship, with intelligent dark eyes and a face that seemed carved from the same hard country they were traveling through. There was something about the way he held himself—alert but trying not to appear so—that reminded her of Ben during those last few months before he left for the war.

When their eyes met briefly, he quickly looked away, as if he’d been caught at something. But not before she noticed the careful way he studied the other passengers, the slight bulge under his coat that might have been a weapon, the way his hand rested casually near what she suspected was a hip flask. This was a man who expected trouble, or perhaps went looking for it.

She turned her attention back to the window, but remained aware of his presence. There was something familiar about his bearing that she couldn’t quite place—not his face, but the way he carried himself. Like a soldier trying to blend in with civilians, but not quite managing to shed the habits that had kept him alive.

Victoria found herself stealing occasional glances in his direction as the train pulled away from the station. He had an interesting face—not handsome in the conventional way that Thomas Nowell was handsome, but compelling in a more dangerous fashion. The kind of man her mother would have warned her about, if her mother were still alive to offer warnings.

She watched the platform sliding past her window, scanning for any sign of Thomas Nowell. Her heart jumped every time she saw a man in a dark coat, but none of them turned out to be her unwanted suitor.

The train whistle blew, long and mournful, and Victoria felt the car lurch as they began to move. Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, the platform slid past her window. She watched Dodge City fall away behind them, taking with it everything she’d ever known.

But also everything that had held her back.

As the prairie opened up before them, endless and full of possibility, Victoria allowed herself a small smile. For the first time since Ben’s death, she felt something that might have been hope.

The satchel rested heavy against her hip. But whatever lay ahead in California, whatever Ben had left for her to find, she would face it on her own terms.

She was no longer the helpless widow that Thomas Nowell imagined her to be. She was Victoria Lawndale, and she was finally free.

And if the watchful stranger across the aisle turned out to be more than he seemed, well—she’d dealt with one dangerous man already today. She could handle another if she had to.

Chapter Three

Victoria settled deeper into her window seat, the gentle rocking of the train car creating a rhythm that should have been soothing. The Kansas prairie stretched endlessly beyond the glass, golden grass swaying in waves beneath an impossibly wide sky. She had chosen this third car for its quieter atmosphere, fewer passengers than the crowded cars she’d glimpsed near the front of the train.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she opened the worn brass clasps of Ben’s leather satchel. The familiar scent of his cologne still lingered faintly in the leather—bay rum and tobacco, mixed with something uniquely him that made her throat tighten with grief. She had carried this bag like a lifeline since leaving the farm, clutching it against her chest when Thomas Nowell had tried to force his unwanted proposal upon her.

The first thing her fingers found was the small wooden frame nestled in the bottom corner. Victoria lifted it carefully, as if it were made of spun glass rather than sturdy oak. The photograph inside was slightly faded now, the edges beginning to curl despite her careful preservation. Ben had insisted on having it taken just before he left for the war—had set up the whole elaborate affair himself with the traveling photographer who’d come through town that spring.

She remembered how he’d fussed over every detail. The way he’d adjusted her dress three times, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from the blue silk that had been her wedding gown. How he’d stood behind the photographer’s shoulder, directing her to tilt her chin just so, to let her hands rest naturally in her lap. “I want to remember you exactly like this,” he’d said, his voice thick with emotion he was trying to hide. “When things get bad out there, I’ll look at this and remember what I’m fighting to come home to.”

In the photograph, they stood side by side in front of their little farmhouse, Ben’s hand resting protectively on her shoulder. He looked so young in his crisp uniform, so confident and eager for the adventure that awaited him. His smile was the one she’d fallen in love with—boyish and mischievous, full of dreams about the life they’d build together when he returned.

Victoria traced the outline of his face with her fingertip, feeling the familiar sting of tears threatening. Would she ever get over this loss? The ache in her chest seemed to grow stronger rather than weaker with each passing day, as if grief were a living thing that fed on her memories and grew fat on her sorrow.

She became aware of eyes watching her from across the aisle. The man she’d noticed earlier—the one with the weathered face and soldier’s bearing—was looking in her direction. Not staring exactly, but observing with the kind of careful attention that suggested he was cataloging details, filing away information for future use. When their eyes met briefly, she saw something flicker in his expression. Recognition, perhaps, or maybe just the understanding that came from shared experience with loss.

Quickly, she wiped away the tears that had escaped despite her efforts at composure and tucked the photograph back into the satchel. The stranger’s gaze lingered for a moment longer, then he turned his attention back to the window with practiced casualness. But Victoria had seen enough to know he was the sort of man who noticed everything, even when he pretended not to be looking.

Her fingers found Ben’s journal next—a leather-bound book with pages worn soft from handling. She had read every entry countless times since it arrived in the mail just days after the telegram announcing his death. His handwriting was familiar as her own heartbeat, the careful script he’d learned in the one-room schoolhouse where they’d first met as children.

The journal fell open to an entry dated March 15th, 1865—just weeks before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Ben had been in Richmond then, attending some sort of gathering among Confederate leadership. His words painted a vivid picture of a society determined to maintain its illusions even as the world crumbled around them.

“Attended a reception at the Spotswood Hotel tonight,” he had written. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were winning this war instead of bleeding to death in the trenches. The ladies were done up in dresses so wide they could barely fit through the doorways—great billowing affairs with enough fabric to outfit a regiment. Watching them navigate the ballroom was like watching ships attempting to dock in a harbor built for rowboats.”

Despite her melancholy, Victoria found herself smiling at his observations. Ben had always possessed a wicked sense of humor, particularly when it came to the pretensions of the wealthy. She could almost hear his voice in the words, the way he would have whispered these same observations in her ear if she’d been there beside him.

“Colonel Pemberton held court near the punch bowl, regaling anyone who would listen with tales of his strategic brilliance at Vicksburg. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that his ‘brilliant’ strategy resulted in thirty thousand of our boys marching off to prison camps. The man has reinvented history so thoroughly that I suspect he actually believes his own stories now.

“The gentlemen were no better than their wives, primping and preening like peacocks in a barnyard. Major Whitman spent the entire evening adjusting his mustache and checking his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. His uniform had been pressed so many times it could probably stand up on its own. I watched him salute his own reflection twice before realizing what he was doing.”

Victoria’s quiet laughter died in her throat as someone settled into the seat directly beside her. She looked up to find a young woman with dark hair pinned back carelessly and a dress that had seen considerably better days. The newcomer was sucking loudly on a peppermint stick, the candy clicking against what appeared to be a mouth full of damaged teeth.

“Well hello there, sugar,” the woman said, her voice thick with the accent of Louisiana bayou country. “I’m Annabelle. Annabelle LaRue.”

Victoria felt her spine stiffen instinctively. There was something immediately unsettling about this woman—something that made her think of a child playing dress-up in adult clothes, but with predatory eyes that belonged to someone much older and more dangerous.

“Victoria,” she replied carefully. “Victoria Lawndale.”

“Ain’t that just pretty as a picture,” Annabelle said, settling herself more comfortably in the seat with the air of someone who had no intention of moving. “Like a queen or something fancy.” She giggled, a sound that managed to be both childish and deeply troubling. “What you reading there, honey? Looks mighty interesting the way you was smiling and all.”

Victoria’s hands instinctively moved to close the journal, but Annabelle had already leaned closer, her breath sweet with peppermint but underneath carrying something rotten that made Victoria’s stomach turn.

“Oh, it’s just a book,” Victoria said quickly, closing the journal and sliding it back into Ben’s satchel. “Nothing particularly interesting.”

Annabelle’s head tilted like a curious bird, studying Victoria with dark eyes that seemed far too knowing. “A book, huh? That’s nice. Real nice.” She paused to crunch down on her peppermint stick, the sound sharp and final in the relative quiet of the car. “I never learned to read myself. My daddy always said there wasn’t no need for a girl like me to fill her head with book learning.”

The way she said it made Victoria’s skin crawl—not with pity for the woman’s lack of education, but with the sense that Annabelle was testing her somehow, probing for weaknesses or lies.

“My brother, he agreed with Daddy,” Annabelle continued, her voice taking on a dreamy quality that didn’t match the calculating look in her eyes. “Said I was pretty, and what else would a woman need? Pretty’s enough to get by in this world, long as a girl knows how to use it right.”

She leaned back in her seat, making herself at home with the casual confidence of someone accustomed to taking what she wanted. Her presence seemed to fill the space around them, making the air feel thick and oppressive despite the gentle breeze coming through the partially open window.

“You traveling far?” Annabelle asked, though her tone suggested she already knew more than she was letting on. “All by your lonesome?”

Victoria forced herself to look out the window, watching the endless prairie roll past. Miles and miles of grass and sky, broken only by the occasional farmhouse or creek bed lined with cottonwoods. Beautiful country, but suddenly it felt vast and empty—full of places where someone could disappear without a trace.

“California,” she answered reluctantly. “To visit family.”

“California! My stars, that’s a long way to travel. Dangerous, too, from what I hear.” Annabelle’s smile was all gaps and stained teeth, but her eyes remained sharp and calculating. “Ain’t you scared, traveling all alone like that with nobody to protect you?”