Plots and Plans

The dam had already broken – that was the problem. Once a dam bursts, you can't just put it back together again. Amanda had managed to keep her emotions in check while Tem and Jimmy were missing, but doing so always came with a price when the crisis was over, or appeared to be over. Now that she had her family back, the flood of emotions threatened to overwhelm her. But the crisis wasn't really over yet. She still had to get her younger brother back to the train safely and see to his injuries, and much to her dismay, she had to hope that Tem made it back without incident as well. She couldn't believe she was taking her eyes off of him so soon after finally being reunited with him. She felt like a bundle of raw nerves, and that was something she couldn't afford to be. So she struggled to keep her attention on the road as she roared the car back to Wanderer II while allowing herself only split-second sideways glances at her sibling wrapped in blankets in the seat beside her. He was going to be all right, she told herself, and so was Tem. They had to be. Focus, focus, focus! Easier said than done.

She barely paid attention to increasingly familiar landmarks of the area as the auto-mobile whizzed by them. Fortunately there was little traffic this early evening. It took every ounce of concentration she had left not to hit anything. At long last, the railyard siding where Wanderer II was parked came into view. The sight of the train made her want to cry with relief as she pulled up close to it rather faster than intended and then braked the vehicle to a halt in a cloud of dust. The auto-mobile had its own unique sound, and Daisy and Diamond began whinnying in recognition from the stable car as soon as they heard it. No doubt the engineers had heard their arrival as well, and probably saw it. Turning her attention back to Jimmy as soon as she turned the car off, she felt a momentary twinge of panic. He didn't appear to be conscious. She'd checked his vital signs as she and Tem had gotten him into the vehicle back at the cedar forest and they'd been strong enough then. A quick recheck told her they were still strong. But whatever had happened to him since his disappearance from Professor Niebhausen's lab had left him utterly spent. She tried to get him to wake up, but received only semiconscious responses at best. Now what? She knew she didn't have the strength to move him on her own.

"Mrs. Amanda?"

Amanda looked up and saw, gratefully, that the engineers had not only heard and seen her arrival, they'd come out to greet her as well. She didn't often consider herself to be less than the equal of any man – this was one occasion where she was more than ready to acknowledge the difference.

"He's hurt, Micah," she said, cradling her brother in her arms. "Can you . . . ?"

While the normally cranky Cole ran to get the medical kit without a word of complaint, his larger engineering colleague gently lifted the semiconscious teenager as if he were nothing more than a babe in arms and carried Jimmy on board and into his room, tarp, picnic blanket and all. It was just as well he brought in the tarp. With the engineers' help, Amanda got Jimmy out of his wet, filthy clothing and into a pair of pajamas, checking him for injuries as she did so. He had some bruises and scrapes that made her wince in sympathy, but fortunately no cuts large enough to require stitches. His wrists were a mauve mess from where he'd obviously been struggling against restraints. These and the other cuts, she and Cole salved and bandaged. It was odd to see how the proudly hostile McCreavey could act more like a mother hen than a misanthrope when the occasion called for it. Amanda was willing to bet that the gentler disposition wouldn't last. It gave her a pretty good idea of how much of a mask Cole's other behavior was though. Well, she'd let that remain his secret – it wasn't as if she didn't know a lot about putting on masks herself.

Jimmy didn't stir much during the whole proceeding, even when being lifted a couple of times as his wet clothes, the tarp and the picnic blanket were removed and he was tucked into bed under his regular blankets, weary, bruised head on his pillow. At sixteen, he might consider himself too old to receive any goodnight kisses, but Amanda gave him one anyway. Welcome back, little brother. She noticed with some amusement that he was keeping on his bedside table an old photograph of their father that Artemus Gordon had sent his partner as a gag gift during a brief period when they'd been on separate assignments for the Secret Service. Somehow, no doubt with some pretend melodrama, Uncle Jim had managed to bear parting with this precious memento so that now his godson had it. Almost as an afterthought, Amanda remembered to leave something else on the bedside table – the pair of Jimmy's eyeglasses that she and Tem had found in Niebhausen's lab. The spectacles made a slight clicking sound on the table as she set them down, and that, of all things, caused her brother to be just enough awake to blink muzzily and ask her a question.

"M'home?"

"Yes," she said, looking around this already cluttered space at the photograph on the bedside table, the pinned-up pictures of Daisy, the books, papers and mechanical objects crammed into every available space. "Yes, brother. You're home."

Home is where your family is. This train, now more than ever, was home.

But not all of Amanda's family was here yet. After wishing her brother sweet dreams and turning out the light in his room, she went back outside Wanderer II to wait anxiously for her husband's return. The auto-mobile had made better time than any horse could, even if Baccarat was going at full gallop. Taking care of Jimmy had taken long enough that Amanda was worried, if not yet panicked. She didn't have long to wait, and when Tem and Baccarat came into view, it wasn't at a gallop but at barely more than a trot. She ran up to meet them, unable to hold her welling-over emotions in any longer. Tem was more conscious than Jimmy had been but not, she noticed with concern, by a whole lot. She walked the big black stallion with her husband on board back to the train and was astonished when, right on cue, Baccarat kneeled down so she could help Tem out of the saddle.

"M'all right," Tem groaned, as he leaned on her to stand.

"The hell you are," she answered back, assisting him onto the train. Once again, Cole came running with the medical kit, but it wasn't as badly needed in his case, and Tem made it clear he preferred being undressed by his wife in privacy without the engineer's help, thank you very much. That didn't mean he was fine. It meant that he would – reluctantly – allow the engineers to see to his horse, the 'most wonderful horse in the world' while Amanda saw to him. She wondered if he had a head injury. He claimed he didn't, but he had enough aches and pains, especially in his arms, to need his wife's help with removing his own wet, filthy clothing. More than bandages, he needed muscle salve and aspirin, and she made sure he got those, gently massaging his weary shoulders as he so often did for her. They said little, but Amanda saw a world of feeling in his eyes, his beautiful, sea green eyes. On other occasions when she and Tem had experienced life-or-death struggles, close scrapes like the earthquake in San Francisco or murder attempts that had come much too close for comfort, she'd seen that same look, and she was sure he saw it in her then and now. He alone knew how hard she would have disciplined herself to find them, and he alone knew how much that cost her. She opened her mouth to speak, but the emotions so overwhelmed her that no sound could come out. Instead, they settled for holding onto one another tight and being grateful that they still were. And at some point they fell asleep, still in each other's arms, no other thought but thanks.

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

Amanda slept deeply, dreamlessly as far as she could tell. She awoke with her miracle man wrapped around her and lay there, luxuriating in the feel and warmth of him. Thanks to the liniment rub they both smelled like giant cough lozenges. She didn't care. She had him back. Nothing else mattered but that.

At least until she smelled bacon . . . .

Her heart and mind longed for no other activity than to stay right where she was, snuggled in her husband's arms. Her tyrannical body reminded her that she'd had not much more to eat or drink yesterday than the half a sandwich and cup of coffee that Lucy Mapp had all but forced on her while they'd waited for Ratch to put in his appearance, and that the body had other needs as well. Lazily kissing Tem, she sighed and disentangled herself from him so she'd be able to see not just to her own needs, but his. If she wasn't the one cooking breakfast today, the least she could do was bring it to Tem in bed when he awoke. Given how sore his arms were, she might just help feed it to him as well. She almost didn't have the strength to tear herself away from the sight of him as he lay there asleep. Her husband. Her lover. Her best friend. Her partner. Her hero.

Feeling more lucky than anyone ever deserved to be, she encountered a very different sort of hero setting down trays of steaming hot food on folding tray tables near the partnership desk in the main car.

"Figured you all might rather eat in here than in that messy ol' galley," Micah smiled as she walked in.

"Micah, you are a holy blessed saint, as Aunt Kate would say!" she laughed. If the galley was a mess, it would be because their big engineer had cooked up enough breakfast for Paul Bunyan and his blue ox. In addition to a big pan of bacon, there were hotcakes, scrambled eggs, potatoes, sausages and a big bowl of steaming homemade applesauce with cinnamon on top. The sight of it all was enough to make her drool and feel weak in the knees. "This is a feast!"

"You could use it after the time you've had," Micah said with a shrug of his shoulders. "Appears you've been through a rough patch the past few days."

'Rough patch' the past few days? Amanda was pouring herself a cup of coffee as he said it, but if she'd been drinking it already, she'd have snorted some of the hot liquid. 'Rough patch' did not begin to cover it! And yet she was able to manage a small, vicious smile as she raised the cup to her lips. There was someone out there experiencing a rough patch, all right. There was indeed. She'd been grateful yesterday that Joseph Ratch had proved to be a coward when cornered and had given up his information without forcing her to do something more torturous to him that she might later regret. Now, after seeing the watery death trap that Tem had been forced to carry her brother out of, she reflected that she wouldn't regret doing violence to Ratch at all. Indeed, she'd be fantasizing about the things she'd like to do to him, given any excuse. But he was currently in the custody of Lucy Mapp and her 'girls' and she knew he wouldn't be enjoying the most comfortable accommodations or hospitality with them until she returned to haul the murderous little weasel into a more legal custody.

Rather than let thoughts of Ratch unspatchcocked spoil her appetite, Amanda drained her coffee in a couple of gulps, poured herself another cup, and then ate the biggest breakfast she could remember eating in a long time. Then she went around to all of the dishes and made up a tray for Tem that included plenty of everything, with slightly larger portions of the things she knew he liked best. He must have used up a ferocious amount of energy yesterday, and he'd be needing it all. She also poured him a big mug of the coffee, hoping the aroma of that and the bacon would awaken him more gently than any tap on the shoulder. Tem was still asleep as she carried in his breakfast, but the smells did indeed help arouse him, as did she, gently caressing him the rest of the way to consciousness. His arms were every bit as sore as she'd feared, and he was all too happy to let her feed him, including the most suggestive sharing of a strip of bacon they'd ever experienced. But alas, she'd have to content herself with giving him another rubdown and helping him to get dressed until he got his flexibility back along with his strength.

Tem was still groaningly trying to work the stiffness and kinks out of his upper body as Amanda went in to bring a tray to her brother. She wanted to let Jimmy sleep himself out as much as he needed, but she also didn't want to let his breakfast get cold, and she intended to make sure she got him to eat plenty of it after the ordeal he'd been through. She felt a moment of panic when she found not Jimmy but an empty bed.

"He's missing again!" she cried, running in to Tem. "He isn't in his room!"

Tem wasn't panicking yet.

"Did you check the stable car?" he yawned.

She felt relieved, and more than a little sheepish, when she went in to the stable car and found Jimmy there all right, still in his pajamas, hand feeding oats to his beloved Daisy and telling her what a smart and pretty and wonderful horse she was.

"The sweethearts have been reunited," she sighed to Tem, who chuckled and reminded her again how they'd been with their first horses. "That's different," she insisted. "That was us." She was just glad her brother was well enough to get out of bed on his own and didn't seem at all feverish. She was about to take his breakfast tray into the stable car for him when he returned to the main living car of his own volition, and proceeded to eat not only every item on his tray, but a large quantity of everything remaining in the serving trays Micah had set up. Amanda hoped Cole and Micah had reserved plenty for themselves in the galley beforehand, because between Jimmy's atypically huge appetite, and her and Tem both foraging, there wasn't going to be a scrap of the buffet left. Earlier, she'd had idle thoughts of taking the leftovers to Lucy and the other women. Now that it was apparent there weren't going to be any leftovers, she wondered if she could convince Micah to cater a meal for the whole Mapp crew. What the engineer might think of being asked to serve dinner for a dozen or so doxies, she didn't know, but she felt she owed those brave women a lot.

Food and about a quart of coffee kick-started Jimmy's brain into its more normal mode, which was to say hyperactive. Amanda and Tem listened in fascinated, stunned belief as Jimmy, scribbling out notes all the while, told them of his entire kidnapping ordeal from the struggle with Ratch in Professor Niebhausen's lab, to his nocturnal explorations of the enemy's lair, to thinking Tem was dead and blowing up the generator, to being quite certain he was going to drown to death when he heard Tem's voice calling out for him in the woods above. He nearly hadn't answered, thinking he was just hearing a wistful hallucination. Then he waxed enthusiastically about how well the artificial lung device had worked in a real field test. Amanda's hands were shaking around the coffee cup she was sipping from as she listened to the story in horrified silence and anger at their enemies.

Mom, if I ever felt any annoyance or impatience with you ever, or ever gave you a single unhappy moment, I deeply, deeply apologize!

As if she wasn't feeling enough kinship and sympathy for the late Lily Fortune Gordon in that moment, she then got to hear her husband's account of his own capture, and of nearly being fed to the man in the red hat's pet alligators, along with his and Marshal Jeffers' rescue by the last person in the world she would ever have expected to be their hero.

"Charlie?" she croaked. "Charlie Murphy saved you?"

Tem repeated his account of the brave butcher's valiant deed – and of Charlie's plea not to tell his mother about said brave deed. So Tem and the Marshal had been saved, not only by the distraction Jimmy had created with exploding the generator, but by a courageous man with a guilty conscience.

"When you think about it," Tem said, "if we hadn't run in to Charlie down here . . . ."

Amanda didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think about her true love being devoured by hungry alligators and her brother drowning because Tem wasn't there to save him and . . . and . . . . She just wanted to hold Tem and Jimmy both and hug them even harder than she had in the woods yesterday until her shivering stopped. And she wanted to give Charlie Murphy a hero's parade and a Presidential Medal of Valor. She must have said it aloud as she had her arms wrapped around Tem and Jimmy both, sobbing all over again at the conclusion of Tem's story.

"We can't do that," Jimmy pointed out, returning her hug reassuringly. "Then his mother would find out!"

They all stared at one another for a second after he said it, and then burst out laughing, the slightly hysterical laughter of three shocked survivors who had come through the worst, most arduous ordeal of their young lives and were supremely grateful to be together again. Amanda could recall Grandma Prudence complaining to her mother that Amanda would never have a stylishly pale complexion if Lily kept letting her daughter play outdoors like that. Amanda was feeling decidedly fashionable now though. She wasn't the only one whose skin was a tad whiter as she described for Tem and Jimmy her own activities during their absence, and her capture of the hated Ratch.

"He isn't nearly as good a knife fighter as he thinks he is," she commented calmly. She hadn't felt the least bit afraid of Ratch while she was fighting him. Of course, that was because she hadn't been letting herself feel much of anything at the time, except concern for her missing loved ones. On the whole, she'd had the least harrying experience of all three of them, she thought. But Tem hugged her just a bit tighter anyway.

Explanations and every available morsel of food and drink concluded, it was time to pull themselves together again and make their plan of action. The enemy was still out there, but Jimmy, Tem and Amanda were all still alive and together. They intended to make sure the enemy would regret that biggest mistake. Tem had already gotten off a quick message to Washington while they were having breakfast, hoping that the bureau had already received another report via Bill Jeffers as well. Jimmy kept on scribbling down diagrams of the hideout that he'd kept in his remarkable memory, along with any details of conversations he'd overheard. Tem described for Jimmy and Amanda the location he and Jeffers had been held in. But their first order of business would have to be a trip into Murfreesboro to make sure Jeffers and Charlie had gotten back to town safely, and then to collect Lucy Mapp's special prisoner. So soon after their escape, it seemed a risky mission, but concern for Bill and Charlie's welfare had to be paramount, and they'd need any and all allies they could get while waiting for Washington to send reinforcements. With any luck, Jimmy's sabotage of the gang's main electrical supply and communications systems would still be throwing their headquarters for a loop, and Tem had made sure in his emergency message to Washington that if the gang expected to clear out using the rail line that ran in front of Hazen's Monument they'd be in for a surprise. Moving fast was going to be key. The gang could not be given weeks to clear themselves out of this location as they had in Chicago.

One major bone of contention remained. Amanda, as the only uninjured party of the three, thought it impeccably logical that she be the one to undertake this mission while Tem and Jimmy rested and recovered on the train. Once again, she found herself outvoted by her husband and brother.

"No way!" Tem said at the very suggestion. His arms might still be sore, but not too sore to wrap around her protectively. "Whether he's unarmed or not, you aren't facing Ratch alone again if I can help it!"

She should have expected that, but she was aghast that Jimmy insisted upon coming along with her and Tem as well. He might be displaying the blessed physical resilience of a teenager, but Amanda sensed there was more to it than that. He wasn't just acting shocky or afraid to stay on the train by himself. When she looked closely, Amanda could sense something different about her little brother. Something had changed within him. As terrifying and nearly fatal as his experience had been, it had hardened rather than softened his resolve. Amanda thought that yesterday she had still glimpsed an exhausted and frightened boy, but it seemed to be a man who was staring back at her from behind his eyes now.

It had happened. Their mother often lamented that her daughter had 'been bitten by the Artemus Gordon bug' when Amanda had joined the Secret Service. Now, for better or worse, so was Jimmy. It was a hard job, a difficult, dangerous and uncomfortable job before them. But Artemus Gordon, who certainly had no death wish, had been determined to do his duty and do that job for the sake of his country and everything he believed in, no matter the risk. Uncle Jim had been the same. Amanda knew that determination for herself and Tem. She saw it now in her brother. She'd heard it in the story of how he'd been willing to risk recapture and death to create the explosion in the enemy's stronghold. For Jimmy, as well as for her, there really was no going back.

It was three still-weary but well-armed and determined riders who set out from Wanderer II in the afternoon. The auto-mobile, pushed past its regular limits the past few days, wasn't as prepared to start up again this day, so Diamond had no need to fear the competition for Amanda's attention.

"Told you that thing would never replace horses," Tem whispered to her with the trace of a snicker. They'd both been grateful for it yesterday. What astonished Amanda was how, suddenly, Tem and Baccarat were functioning together like two parts of a well-oiled machine. There was more of a story there, she was sure, but she wasn't going to ask for it today.

Keeping the horses to a brisk but not exhausting pace, they made it into town in little time. It had been Tem's desire to locate Marshal Jeffers first, but they quickly realized their route would be taking them past the 'Murphy & Son' butcher shop before they got to the Marshal's office.

Had Charlie Murphy made it back into town okay? Or had he paid a price for turning on the gang that tried to recruit him into their ranks? Regardless of their plans, they made a cautious, detoured approach via a side street to get a closer look at the butcher shop. The sign on the hop's door pronounced it open, and with a tinkling ring of the little bell, a customer exited from the shop carrying a brown paper-wrapped, roast-sized parcel. The trio of Secret Service agents nodded to one another, took a minute to scope the surrounding area, and took the chance to dismount and enter the butcher shop. There, wiping some meat gristle off of his hands and the back countertop as if nothing at all had unsettled his routine these past few days, stood their former foe turned savior. Charlie Murphy mustn't have heard the ringing of the bell for a change, because he didn't notice at first that he had a new set of customers, but as soon as he turned around and saw Tem and Jimmy both standing there, his reaction could not have been more dramatic. He let out a glad whoop and came scurrying around the counter to give them a welcoming clap on the shoulders strong enough to make Tem wince inwardly, since he wasn't going to show it outwardly. The big butcher was grinning ear to ear at seeing that they'd made it out alive – and then he saw Amanda standing behind them and remembered who exactly he was dealing with. That reaction was equally dramatic as Charlie scurried back behind his counter and sank down like a deflating balloon. Amanda, rather than Tem, walked around the counter this time, and Charlie held his hands up defensively as if expecting to get a whack of her parasol any second. He was trembling just a little and had his eyes almost squinched shut as she came over, leaned down, and gave the crouched man a quick kiss on the top of his bald head.

"Thank you for saving my husband, Charlie," she said, in her softest voice possible.

She drew back so the big man could stand up straight again, and was amused to see Charlie blushing so hard it almost obscured his birthmark.

"Are – are we okay, now?" he asked with a quaver.

"We are more than okay," she told him. Then, with a smile, she added, "and I too promise not to tell your mother!"

Tem cleared his throat, and not from jealousy.

"We really owe you, Charlie," he said. "But in at least one sense of the word we are all not okay yet. That gang of heavily armed nasties is still running loose in Murfreesboro, and while that's the case we all could be in danger. We came here to make sure you were all right."

Charlie nodded somberly.

"The Marshal already came by this morning," he said. "I know I might be in a fix with them, but they're bad people, Mr. West. It wouldn't be right if I hadn't . . . done what I done. But you and the Marshal and the folks he was contacting are going to take care of them, aren't you?"

"We're sure as heck going to, but we still want you to be careful, okay?" Tem nodded, and Amanda was watching to make sure the words sunk in. If Charlie hadn't noticed their entrance into the shop, he might not notice someone else's either. Hard to think of such a big, strong man as needing protection, but no amount of strength would be a match for a bullet or a knife between the shoulder blades. What were they to do, though? Ask Charlie to close his shop and go into hiding? This was how the man made a living, and it wasn't as if he dealt in the kind of goods that could be stored indefinitely. For Charlie's sake and their own and everyone else's, they would have to strike against the enemy hard and fast.

After Jimmy too had a chance to thank Charlie for saving the man who had saved him, the three agents left for their original intended destination. Bill Jeffers was just as happy, and just as effusive, to see them alive and well as Charlie had been. Amanda noticed with some amusement how flabbergasted the Marshal was on being introduced to her brother.

"You're Agent Gordon?" he gaped at the not-yet-stubble-faced teenager.

"I'm mature for my age," Jimmy said, drawing himself up with all the dignity he could muster and only a slight blush.

Amanda wouldn't have blamed the Marshal for being a bit dismayed to find that his partners in the fight against the criminals who'd nearly killed him consisted of one other man plus a woman and a minor. But it turned out that Jeffers had been pretty busy since his escape. Not only had he contacted Washington as Tem had hoped – and learned that help was indeed on the way and plenty of it – but he'd put the word out to some of his fellow law enforcement colleagues, and several of them were on their way to Murfreesboro by any means possible to give backup.

"Nobody tries to make a meal out of me and gets away with it," Jeffers smiled grimly. The weapon smugglers were about to get a whole load of lawman in the teeth, but not the way they'd intended.

"Well, however they try to get themselves or their stuff out of town, it isn't going to be by train." Tem repeated the emergency message he'd sent Washington. "The Murfreesboro rail lines are going to be conveniently shut down for some important maintenance while a certain historic battlefield gets fumigated."

"Fumigated is right," Jeffers grimaced. "They're tunneled in like termites! How do we get rid of 'em?"

"Maybe we can fumigate them," Jimmy suggested. "I've already drawn a map of part of their hideout, and Tem is helping me with some more of it. I'll bet Charlie saw some things too. If we can find their exit points and where the ventilation shafts are, and get the right ingredients, I can mix up some fumes that will get them out of those tunnels in a hurry!"

"You really think we can do that?" The Marshal gave them a skeptical expression. "Sounds like a mighty tall order."

Now it was Amanda's turn to clear her throat.

"If I may suggest, gentleman," she smiled politely, "I just happen to know where we can locate an individual who knows a great deal about the gang's headquarters and is probably more than ready to talk . . . ."