The noon train screamed into Mercy Hollow with steam coughing over the platform and grit blowing hard enough to sting.
Coal smoke hung under a pale Colorado sky.
The iron steps were still trembling when Mara Bell appeared in the passenger car doorway with blood drying on one sleeve.
She carried no trunk.
No carpetbag.
No husband.
Only a small leather satchel and a revolver hanging from her belt.
The stationmaster saw her first.
Then the telegraph clerk.
Then everyone else.
Because women did not usually step off trains looking like they had walked through a war.
She paused at the top of the steps and looked over the town.
Mercy Hollow was little more than a cluster of wooden buildings between the mountains.
A church.
A hotel.
A blacksmith.
A saloon.
And a hundred curious eyes.
The conductor cleared his throat.
“Miss?”
She looked at him.
“You all right?”
She glanced at the blood on her sleeve.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether the man I shot stayed dead.”
Silence fell across the platform.
The conductor blinked twice.
Mara stepped down onto the boards as if she had merely discussed the weather.
The stationmaster nearly dropped his pocket watch.
A little boy gasped.
Someone whispered.
The woman had shot a man.
Mara ignored them.
She scanned the street.