As Heyes and the doctor went to find seats together in the train, Heyes looked down most of the time. Dr. Leutze noticed that his new patient seemed suddenly terribly shy. He barely glanced up to see what seats were empty and to avoid running into people. The medical man realized that this first venture among large numbers of strangers away from the familiar poker table was a serious trial to his patient. He hoped the man's silent state would be temporary, but there was no way to be sure of that. Smith might have to deal with this disability for the rest of his life; this wasn't a promising beginning. Every new face they passed evoked from Smith a tight-lipped reaction that the doctor recognized as poorly hidden fear. Smith was not just uncertain and reluctant, but really afraid. Most people would not have recognized it, but the doctor had seen it too often from his patients. Fortunately, the pair soon found a pair of seats together. Heyes was relieved that they were not facing anyone – their seats gave them a fine view of the backs of two middle-aged men's heads and necks. Heyes insisted on taking the seat nearest the window, where he would be less exposed to the gazes of their fellow passengers.

"Are you alright?" asked the doctor his patient in a whisper, trying to avoid further embarrassing this proud man. Heyes nodded, but it was a silent lie. His anxiety was palpable. The doctor could smell his sweat, although it was cold and drafty in the train. Smith mostly looked out the window in a determined way, looking into the car only briefly to sneak surreptitious peeks at anyone who entered the train car. When he did look into the car, he kept one hand near his mouth, hiding the distinctive dimple that was described all too well on the latest wanted poster for Hannibal Heyes.

The doctor, unaware of his patient's real name and wanted status, was naturally puzzled by this behavior. "What's wrong, Smith?" Leutze asked softly, when no one else was near. "I know you don't like strangers to know you can't talk, but why are you so bothered about their seeing you? No one's going to hurt you – easterners are people, too!" Heyes gave the doctor a startled look – he hadn't realized his fears were so obvious. He tried to behave more normally, but it was hard.

From Heyes' point of view, of course, his avoidance of any interaction with people on the train made perfect sense. He was uneasy about meeting strangers for a number of reasons – sheer human embarrassment being the least of them. As a wanted man whose speaking companion didn't even know who he really was, he was in a terribly vulnerable position. Should any threat arise, there would be little Heyes could do and no one who would understand enough to help him. But there was no denying it, being unable to speak was unendingly embarrassing. Some people thought the silent man was merely shy, but others had much more insulting reactions.

When they had been riding for over an hour, Dr. Leutze said, "Pardon me, Smith. I'll go get us something to eat. There's a girl selling snacks a couple of cars along, I think." While he was gone, Heyes spotted a pretty blonde girl of perhaps twenty was sitting across the aisle from the doctor's seat. She was showing off a fashionable pink dress and an elegant hat. After they had ridden for a few minutes in silence, the girl across the aisle glanced in his direction. The reformed outlaw couldn't help trying out his famous smile on her. The girl smiled back fetchingly, but she didn't say a word. Heyes, being almost totally unused to polite society, was momentarily puzzled. Then, with a terrible sinking feeling, he realized why she wouldn't speak. He, as the man, had to speak first. A proper lady couldn't speak to a man who hadn't been introduced to her. Her flirting smile began to fade and she looked away. She knew no explanation for why this nice looking man wouldn't speak to her other than that he was rude or stupid. When she glanced in his direction, he pointed at his mouth and shook his head. The girl, naturally, looked puzzled. Then she looked away. Heyes didn't know if she had figured out his simple mimed statement or not. Whether she was nonplussed by communication that meant nothing to her, or simply uninterested in a severely handicapped man, she ignored him now.

Heyes sighed and went back to looking out the window, his heart in his shoes. Why had he ever thought he could communicate with any stranger now? He felt at least as rejected as if she had physically slapped his face. He felt even worse when another man, passing down the aisle, easily fell into conversation with the pretty blonde. It was as if a man who couldn't talk simply didn't exist. Considering how long Heyes had been trying in vain to elude the wrong kind of attention, it was terribly ironic how much total inattention bothered him. Sometimes Heyes felt excluded by the whole human race.

Dr. Leutze was still away from his seat, taking far longer than made any sense for simply buying snacks. Heyes began to worry. The conductor came around checking tickets. Heyes looked for his ticket, but quickly realized that Dr. Leutze had inadvertently taken both tickets with him. "May I see your ticket, please sir?" the tall, haughty man in the blue uniform asked Heyes. The former outlaw made a show of looking for his ticket and being unable to find it. He shook his head.

"Then where are you bound, sir?" asked the conductor. Heyes was helpless – he couldn't say the words he needed, he couldn't write them, and he didn't have anything printed that he could even hold up that said New York. He just shook his head, then stared at the conductor and blinked. The ex-law's usual easy aplomb had completely deserted him.

The conductor impatiently asked again, "Where are you going! Where's your ticket." Heyes shook his head and turned away to avoid the angry man's eyes. The conductor touched him on the shoulder and asked him again, now more slowly and loudly. He repeated the question again, yet more slowly and loudly. Heyes tried to get up to see if he could find the doctor and get out of this predicament, but the conductor grabbed his shoulder and forced him back into his seat. People around the car were starting to stare and murmur, the blonde girl among them.

"God damn it!" thought Heyes, starting to panic "Where's the doctor? I feel like a total idiot! What if that stupid conductor thinks I'm a stowaway and calls the law on me?"

"Are you deaf?" shouted the conductor, uselessly. After all, a deaf man would have been unable to hear him. Heyes shook his head and stared at the man, holding out his hands to indicate that he was helpless. "Do you speak English?" asked the ever more furious conductor insultingly slowly and loudly. Heyes nodded.

"Do you understand me?" Heyes nodded more emphatically.

"Then why won't you answer me, you idiot?" The word "idiot" seemed to echo around the train car as riders repeated it, sure it was true. The humiliated Heyes moved to the seat by the aisle and began to stand up. As he was drawing back his fist, Dr. Leutze came back, dashing down the train aisle just in time to put out his hand to stop Heyes from punching the train conductor.

Leutze was embarrassingly apologetic, "I'm so sorry, Joshua. I met an old friend, a fellow doctor, and we got to talking. I'm sorry to leave you along for so long."

Dr. Leutze addressed the conductor, "How can I help you sir?"

"Where are you and this damn idiot going? Where are your tickets!" asked the conductor in rude, jeering tones.

"Here are our tickets. Will you please apologize to my friend Mr. Smith?!" The doctor was really angry now, and the conductor was taken aback. "He's nearer a genius than an idiot – he just happens to be unable to speak because of a severe injury. Please apologize to him! You are very rude and insulting and I will report this to your superiors!" Heyes wished he could vanish into thin air – this was almost as bad as being taken for an idiot.

"I'll not apologize to any idiot!" exclaimed the conductor and stroke away out of the train car.

"Joshua, I can't tell you how sorry I am!" said the Doctor softly. "I'm mortified that you were exposed to that verbal assault. I don't blame you for wanting to hit him! Here, let me give you something that might help. I know it's embarrassing to use, but it's better than nothing, if this happens again."

Leutze sorted through his bag and found a little silver box of cards the size of calling cards. He sorted through them to find the one he wanted, which he handed to Joshua to keep. It read: "I have been injured and am unable to speak or write. I can hear and I understand English." Heyes looked at the card with horror, but he accepted it. It was humiliating, but it might help him out of hard situations. He tucked the awful card away in his coat pocket and hoped he wouldn't need it. But he knew that he would.

Yet even this confrontation with a rude stranger was nothing compared to what worried Heyes the most. His greatest fear was the very real possibility of meeting someone who knew him. He had ridden all over the West and met countless people. It would be deeply embarrassing to meet a casual friend, a former lover, even an old friend. It could be disastrous, even fatal for him to meet a sheriff, deputy, bounty hunter, detective, or rival outlaw – anyone who recognized him and was willing to use their knowledge against him. Even if such a person failed to kill or arrest Heyes, he could cost the mute man any chance of ever speaking more than a word or two ever again by revealing his true identity to the doctor. Now that Heyes was away from the security of Christy's place and the Kid's protective presence, he no longer felt at all sure that Dr. Leutze would be willing to treat a notorious outlaw for aphasia. He surely was glad that the Kid had refused to tell Leutze who his partner was.

Without the Kid at his side or his gun on his hip, it was very unlikely, Heyes hoped, that anyone who didn't actually know him would spot him just from the wanted dead or alive posters. But anyone who actually did recognize him would certainly be a real problem.

The Kid had always thought that his partner tended to look on the bright side of everything even when they were in the greatest danger. Heyes did tend to literally smile in the face of peril. The Kid said that having things go well made Heyes nervous. Actually, having things go well just bored Heyes and got on his nerves. The safe-cracking outlaw tended to look on the dark side of things – and to take a fiendish delight in it. The greater the problems facing him, the greater the high Heyes got from successfully defeating them. He had nearly complete confidence in his gifts and loved putting them to the test. Be it blowing a safe or conning a sheriff, the heart-pounding sense of danger and the dizzying relief of defeating it was a familiar emotional roller coaster ride. It gave Heyes a gambler's rush that was addicting. But now, with so many of his normal advantages cancelled out, and the Kid more miles behind all the time, Heyes felt utterly incapable of dealing with danger or even minor challenges. The thrill wasn't working anymore. His old habit of counting up problems to be surmounted left him feeling not excited but hopeless and vulnerable to countless fears.

Heyes dodged people as well as he could, getting the doctor to buy food for him and to deal with conductors – especially the one who had been so offensive. But some things Heyes had to do for himself. Later that day, during a stop at a station, Heyes was standing in line to get to the wash room. The man behind him, growing bored, asked, "Where are you from?"

Heyes turned to look at the man and shook his head.

The smiling blonde stranger behind him chuckled, "Come on, brother, you must be from someplace."

Heyes' eyes fell. He reached for the first time into his breast pocket and produced the awful card that explained his condition – that he was injured and unable to speak or write. He gestured to the still ugly scar on his left temple.

The blonde man's smile faded. "Oh, sorry Mister. That's too bad. Must be hard to get along."

Heyes nodded and turned away. The pity in the stranger's eyes cut worse than any knife. Heyes had never been so relieved to get to the head of a line.

Heyes settled down some as the train went east, moving away from the areas where the reformed outlaw felt he was most likely to meet people who would recognize him. But even as the train left Chicago to the west, Heyes looked up and straight into the angry sneer of One-ear Carver, the notorious Montana outlaw. Carver and Heyes had had more than one very nasty run-in years before in Wyoming. They absolutely did not like each other. The hideously disfigured Carver was making his way down the train aisle, coming closer and closer to Heyes. The unshaven murderer's right hand started to move toward the gun on his hip as he recognized his old rival. Carver was the kind of man who would not hesitate to shoot a man dead and then jump off the train to avoid arrest. In fact, Heyes had seen him do it. When Heyes looked up and saw Carver he nearly panicked. He surely wished that the Kid rather than Dr. Leutze was sitting next to him. But it suddenly occurred to Heyes that Carver would assume that the Kid was actually nearby, as he always had been.

Heyes glared malevolently at his old rival, who glowered evilly back. Then Heyes, without losing eye contact with Carver, used his left hand under his coat to make the tongue of his belt click against his buckle. Heyes saw Carver jump at the tiny, metallic sound. To the suggestive mind, it sounded amazingly like a gun being cocked. Heyes looked up and past Carver and allowed a slight relieved smile to cross his features. Carver's eyes shifted to the side, but he didn't dare to turn around to check whether the deadly gunman Kid Curry was in fact standing behind him with a cocked gun. He just hurried out of the train car and didn't return. Heyes exhaled in relief, hoping his old rival had jumped off the train. "You saved me again, Kid!" thought the Kid's partner in his enforced silence.

Dr. Leutze, who had observed this tense, silent exchange in wordless horror, quietly asked his new patient, "Was that an outlaw, a murderer?" Heyes nodded distractedly, trying to go back to looking out the window.

But Leutze wouldn't let him alone. He touched Heyes on the shoulder and asked in an uneasy whisper, "Do you know many men as dangerous as that one?"

Heyes looked at his dapper, eastern, doctor thoughtfully. Then he put his hands together and pointed them at the doctor like he was praying, then he held up five fingers. Heyes kept his face blank and watched the doctor carefully to see if he would get what was meant. The doctor took a few moments to solve this visual puzzle.

As he got it, he smiled and saw the answering sparkle in his patient's eyes, "Oh, I get it. You plead the fifth! Oh, very good!"

Heyes nodded and they both laughed aloud. But Heyes caught the Doctor looking at him cautiously after that, as if wondering exactly what kind of patient he had taken on.

Later that day when the doctor was off talking to his fellow doctor friend, Heyes lay down across their two seats. It was as relief to be able to change positions for a while. As he lay, Heyes began to doze. He woke suddenly when he felt something touch his foot and heard a voice say "Pardon me, sir." Heyes pulled himself up suddenly to take his feet out of the way of a woman who had been trying to walk down the aisle. Heyes tipped his old black hat apologetically.

The young brunette woman smiled at Heyes. "I'm sorry to wake you, sir. The journey does get long."

Heyes nodded. There was no one behind the young lady in the aisle, so she paused a moment to talk to the nice young man she had woken. "It gets lonely, too. Where are you bound, sir?"

Heyes had been trying desperately to avoid it, but he now felt that he had to pull out that awful card again. The young woman looked at it in dismay. "I'm very sorry for your trouble, sir. How long have you been without speech? Years?" Heyes shook his head.

"Months?" she asked. Heyes nodded and held up his index finger.

The friendly young lady was aghast. She carefully kept her voice low to avoid drawing attention to the wounded man. "Only one month? You could speak normally only a month ago?" Heyes nodded and pointed to the nasty scar on the left temple. He hated to be pitied, but at least the woman was willing to be flexible enough to have something approaching a conversation with him. The former outlaw was achingly hungry for communication with someone besides his sometimes tediously analytical doctor. This young woman might not be as pretty or as fashionably dressed as the arrogant blonde, but Heyes found her far more attractive.

"That must be a terribly difficult change to adjust to," said the young lady, looking with empathetic anguish into Heyes' eyes. Heyes shrugged, but then he nodded. Yes, now that he was having to be in public, the difficulties were harder for him by the day, not easier.

"Why do I get the impression that you weren't one of those famously terse western men?" The brunette gave the silent man an engaging smile. Heyes shook his head with a self-conscious grin. No, Hannibal Heyes had certainly never been accused of being terse. The famous silver tongue seemed gone forever. The young woman recognized his pain. "No. You enjoyed a good conservation. I'm sorry to have to dominate this one."

"Is there any chance that you might be able to regain your speech or writing or both?" asked the woman. Heyes nodded. At that point, a man was trying to go down the aisle, so Heyes' new friend had to move away. But she waved back at him. Heyes waved at her sadly. Heyes hoped to see the woman again, but he guessed that she had gotten to her destination. He did not see her pass by gain.

The next day, Dr. Leutze saw another side of Heyes. A little boy, maybe six years old, who had been sitting with his parents on the opposite side of the train aisle came over to the dark, quiet man who had just woken up from a long nap under his old black hat. "What did you lose, Mr.?" Heyes looked at him with puzzlement. "Was it your words?" Heyes took a deep breath and nodded. The boy, he realized, had seen the look of loss in his eyes, and somehow understood, as no one else did. "I hope you get your words back soon, Mister. Bye-bye!" Then the boy went back to his seat, as Heyes waved to him. When the little boy and his parents got off the train at the next stop. Heyes waved out the window to the child. He sure hoped the boy would get his wish very soon.

When he wasn't dealing with fellow passengers, Heyes looked out the train window for other reasons than to avoid having people see him. He was headed to a place that had, in fact, always interested him. He was honestly curious about the country and towns they passed through. The long bridge over the massive, busy Mississippi river was a symbolic thrill – he was finally in the east, for the first time. Then they were back on a train, head into the rising sun. Heyes was fascinated by the green hills and the ever larger towns the train passed, every one new to the ex-outlaw. It seemed to him that the sky was getting smaller and the buildings were getting bigger.