At Castle Rock a doctor came aboard with a black bag and a pair of town constables, and the constables looked first at the dead man and then at the wounded men and then, for a long time, at Gabriel Tolliver and the silver revolver that lay on the trunk beside him, and their hands drifted toward their belts. Louisa Kittredge stood up, the ledger held against her chest, and stepped in front of him.
"Gentlemen," she said, "this man saved the property of the Kittredge Western Railway at the risk of his life. I am a witness to it, and so is every soul aboard this train. You may telegraph my father, if you like. I would rather you telegraphed the clerk of the District Court in Denver."
The constables telegraphed both.
VI.
The Number Four came into Denver Union Depot at a quarter to seven in the evening, with half its last coach blown away and the stink of smoke still on every passenger, and the platform was full of policemen.
There were eight of them in blue coats with brass buttons, and with them a narrow, precise man in a fawn overcoat whom Louisa knew at once: Edmund Quarles, general superintendent of the Kittredge Western, who had taught her to play piquet when she was nine and had let her win until she was eleven. He came straight down the platform to her and took her hands, and then saw the state of them, and of her, and went pale.
"Thank God," he said. "Louisa. Thank God. Your father is beside himself. He's at the house, he's sent for Dr. Fairley—"
"Edmund," she said, "why are there policemen?"
Quarles glanced past her to the steps of the baggage car, where Gabriel Tolliver was coming down between two constables from Castle Rock, his hands wrapped in tea-brown linen, his coat burned along one skirt.
"We had a wire from Sedalia station," Quarles said carefully. "A colored man aboard with a revolver. An explosion. Passengers hurt. A man killed. Naturally—"
"Naturally," Louisa said.
The police sergeant had already stepped forward. He took Gabriel by the arm. Gabriel did not resist; he had been expecting it since Castle Rock, perhaps since Pueblo, perhaps for most of his life. He said only, "The revolver is in my left coat pocket. It has four rounds in it. I fired one, at a man who was firing on the train. The constables have the other man and Amos Snell. Ask them."
"You can tell it to the captain," the sergeant said.
And Quarles turned to Louisa with his hand out, kindly, the way he had held out his hand for her cards at piquet. "I'll take the book, Louisa. It's company property. It needs to go to the vault tonight. You've been very brave."