The Trainmasters Read online

  “Oh, look,” she said, glancing about. “We’re the first outside of the train. We can be first to have our daguerreotypes taken.”

  They were not, however, completely alone, for Mr. Brady and an assistant were setting up the photographic apparatus in a field along the side of the track.

  “You heard your father,” he said, correcting her. “Mr. Brady won’t be taking us one at a time. It will be the whole group.”

  “Oh, drat,” she said. “I don’t want to be one of a crowd.”

  “But I do,” he said, “in a photograph, at any rate. There’s safety in numbers.”

  “You’re just being difficult, John,” she said with a laugh, “because you didn’t like that reporter.”

  “I’m never difficult with you, Kitty. You know that.”

  “Playing the innocent yet again, Mr. Carlysle?” she said with a roguish twinkle in her eye.

  But then her roving eye caught the locomotive, with its flags and pennants and banners. “Come on,” she ordered, taking his hand and leading him toward the locomotive.

  “You have an idea,” he said. “I don’t trust you when you have ideas.”

  “Come on. 1 do have an idea…an inspiration!” A few moments later she reached the front of the locomotive.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Carlysle, Mr. Carlysle,” the locomotive driver called out, recognizing them.

  “Hello, Gillon.”! should congratulate him, John thought, for the job he is doing. “It’s been an especially smooth ride.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kitty, meanwhile, had scrambled up on top of the pilot. “There,” she cried. “Yes! It’s wonderful here! Just the way I remember it!”

  “You’re mad, Kitty, my love,” John said.

  “Not at all, John Carlysle. This is how I met you. I think it’s how I should like to be immortalized. But this time I won’t be alone. I’ll entice you up here with me. For you must join me. And when the daguerreotype is taken, here we will be together. Forever.”

  “Kitty!” he said. “I have a position to maintain. I stopped acting like a child fifty years ago.”

  “You weren’t born fifty years ago.”

  “Which is exactly my meaning.”

  “I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t come up here,” she said, grinning like a gargoyle.

  But at that moment Mathew Brady came scurrying up. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Excuse me, but I like very much the look of the lady there on the pilot. I’d be delighted to take her picture there before the others take their places.” He waved an arm at the relatively empty space beside the train. “They seem to be taking their time disembarking.” He looked at John. “Or I could even take both of you together up there, if you’d care to join her.”

  “Come on,” she implored.

  John stared at her, deciding whether to indulge her in her whim.

  “All right, my lady Kitty,” he said finally. “I’ll do it. I’m coming up.”

  “I knew you would,” she said, laughing gaily.

  And while Brady and his assistant rearranged their equipment, John and Kitty—at her instigation and his reluctant acquiescence—struck a comic-heroic pose on the pilot at the front of the locomotive.

  A few seconds later, Brady scurried back to them. “I’ll be using a magnesium flare as a light source to supplement the sun,” he said. “So don’t be frightened when the light breaks.” He turned to go back to his machinery. But before he vanished beneath the black hood behind it, he looked at John and Kitty and called out, “And I’m delighted with your pose. Most men and women are much too solemn when they are photographed. They always look like they are about to be robbed.” He slipped under the cloak.

  And then for a brilliant instant, stunning white light dazzled and enveloped and captured them in a blazing and splendid flash.

  The Colorado Trilogy

  from DOROTHY GARLOCK …

  ___RESTLESS WIND (D20–173, $3.95, U.S.A)

  (D20–174, $4.95, Canada)

  Rosalee challenged the dangers of the rugged Colorado mountains with her courage, her rifle, and her heart. Then one starless night, a rough-riding frontiersman came to her cabin door-an outcast she would dely the world to love.

  ___WAYWARD WIND (D20–214, $3.95, U.S.A)

  (D-20–215, $4.95, Canada)

  Lorna rode fast and free over the Colorado range that was her birthright and where she feared no one. Then Cooper Parnell strode into her life, gun in hand and passion in his eyes-and she had no weapon against her desire.

  ___WIND OF PROMISE (D20–368, $3.95, U.S.A.)

  (D20–369, $4.95, Canada)

  Vanessa was determined to reach Colorado till a tall Stranger took her in his arms. She knew kain Denolt’s gun and fists could protect her from the outlaws waiting on the frontier but his secrets could prove dangerous to a woman in love.

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  A BRAND-NEW EPIC ADVENTURE FILLED WITH TOWERING STRENGTH AND COURAGE OF THOSE WHO ROARED ACROSS A NATION WITH STEEL AND BRAZEN DREAMS

  The way to future lay through the verdant Appalachians and lush valleys of rugged Pennsylvania. Here, stout-hearted work crews and railroad builders like John Carlysle pushed steel rails westward to open up a continent. But even as they blasted their way through the wilderness, a deadly new threat arose… that of the financiers and their hired thugs who would stop at nothing to destroy them. Now, John Carlysle, torn between his passions for a beautiful women and his burgeoning railroad empire, would find himself in an explosive battle for his life and his love, one that could only end in heartbreak or magnificent triumph.

  “A master storyteller… his novel is full of exciting action, intrigue, and vivid characters. It’s a superior historical adventure—and a thundering good read.”

  —W.E.B. Griffin, author of Brotherhood of War and The Crops