Page 66 of Borrowed Time

That, he knew, was a question she’d asked only because the woman she was pretending to be wouldn’t have the foggiest clue about the towns of northern Arizona. Devynn, on the other hand, probably knew a good deal about Williams, even if she hadn’t talked about it much. Still, the little town was close enough to Flagstaff that he guessed she must have traveled there on multiple occasions, if only to get a change of scenery.

“Not too far,” he replied. “The train ride coming back is a little longer than the one going out, for some reason, but we should still be back by six.”

“Then that sounds like a good field trip,” she said. “Good thing we got moving early today.” She paused there, and her blue eyes twinkled in amusement. “Or was that part of your plan?”

“I had no part in how early you were ready this morning,” he said calmly, and she chuckled.

“Maybe not. I suppose we’ll have to chalk it up to fate.”

That was one way of looking at things, he supposed.

For himself, he was just pleased that he’d come up with a way for them to amuse themselves today. As far as he was concerned, a day spent away from Flagstaff — and the Wilcoxes — sounded like a very good day to him.

Seth had to admit that he experienced a thrill of trepidation as he stepped onto the train, but he knew it was probably just because he’d never been on a real train before. The summer before last, he’d ridden the ore train out to Perkinsville, a small hamlet located about fifteen miles roughly northeast of Jerome, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. An hour ride out and back to a place in the middle of nowhere wasn’t anything like being in a real railway car, one outfitted with plush seats and velvet curtains with little tassels that danced and swung as the locomotive slowly chugged its way westward.

A surprising number of people were on that train, more than he’d expected. Were they also just taking a day trip, or were they continuing to San Francisco, with Flagstaff just a stop for them on a very long journey?

Since the majority of their fellow riders were dressed as nicely as he and Devynn, he had to assume they must be tourists of some sort, or possibly people heading out to the West Coast for a new life. It was sort of fun to imagine what might be taking them to California, and he grew a bit wistful then, thinking of how much more freedom of movement regular people had than those born to witch clans.

But they don’t have any magic,he reminded himself.Everything’s a trade-off.

He supposed that was true. For now, it was enough to sit here next to Devynn and feel the way her exuberant skirts brushed against his knee, since the seats where they sat weren’t quite large enough to accommodate a full bustle. As much as he would have liked to reach out and take her hand, he understood that doing so wasn’t a very good idea. No one on this train probablyknew who they were — or, more to the point, who they were pretending to be — and yet they simply couldn’t take that risk.

Her gaze had been lively, interested, as they entered the train, and he guessed she’d been absorbing every detail as well, from the maroon horsehair upholstery on the seats to the rich mahogany paneling on the walls. Even though he had no idea what trains in her time were like…if they even still had them at all, since she hadn’t mentioned that form of transportation to him…he guessed they were nothing like this.

The landscape was beautiful, rolling and covered with more of the ponderosa pine forests that dominated this part of the state. Here, too, unmelted snow still lay in the more shadowy patches, although the day had turned out to be bright and clear again, with not even a hint of a cloud.

He had to hope their luck would hold and that any snowfall coming to the region wouldn’t arrive until they were long gone.

As the timetable in the depot had promised, the trip didn’t take very long. They disembarked at a depot much smaller than the one in Flagstaff, not much more than a shack with a man selling tickets and answering questions, rather than a large brick building with plenty of places to sit while you were waiting for your train to arrive.

The town itself had been built on a much smaller scale as well. Many of the buildings on Railroad Avenue looked brand-new, their pine-framed structures still raw and not yet mellowed from a few years of exposure to the weather. The reason for their newness became clear as they walked a little farther and saw the burned-out hulk of what he guessed had once been a hotel, with workmen busily tearing down the ruin.

“What happened here?” Devynn asked in an undertone.

Unfortunately, Seth knew all too well that fire was a major hazard in towns like this — Jerome had suffered several massivefires before he was born, causing the newer structures to be built with brick and stone rather than lumber.

“A big fire, I think,” he said, and pointed a little farther down the block, where a crew was building what he guessed would one day be a storefront on a vacant lot. “It happened in Jerome, too, but they rebuilt with more durable materials around the turn of the century.”

Devynn sent a worried glance around them, obviously scanning the vicinity for any eavesdroppers, but no one was close enough to really hear what they were saying. “You’d think they’d be using stone here, then, since it’s so much safer.”

Now he had to smile. “True, but when you’re surrounded by pine forests as far as the eye can see, I can understand why they might have decided to go with something a little easier — and cheaper — to get.”

She smiled, too, albeit with some reluctance. “I suppose you have a point there.”

Luckily, not so much of the town had burned that there still wasn’t plenty to see. They went into a trading post and looked at the Navajo jewelry and rugs, as well as the racks of furs and handwoven blankets, and amused themselves in the general store for a while, inspecting the various wares, some of which were familiar to Seth, and some that seemed just as foreign to him as they must to Devynn.

In fact, she bought a pair of earrings at the trading post, pretty dangles of silver and turquoise. “These don’t go with most of what I have here,” she said. “But still, I thought it would be nice to have a souvenir of our time here in northern Arizona.”

Did she have a lot of turquoise at home? He knew it had been a fad for a while — or at least, he assumed so, because he’d noticed how a lot of the female tourists who came into McAllister Mercantile were sporting turquoise brooches or bracelets orrings — but he had no idea whether the sky-hued jewelry was still in fashion in the twenty-first century.

Her entire time here she’d worn the same gold and garnet earrings and matching ring with pretty much every outfit, and he’d noticed that silver didn’t seem to be very popular in 1884. Well, even though he wouldn’t claim to know a lot about fashion, even he knew that certain pieces went in and out of style according to the whims of those who were the arbiters of such things.

The earrings were lovely, though, drops of a pure blue color that the man at the trading post said had come from the Sleeping Beauty mine near Globe, and Seth knew they’d be beautiful on her, would only enhance the clear sky hues of her eyes.

After they were done shopping, it was nearly one o’clock, definitely time to have some lunch. In their wanderings, they’d passed several saloons and restaurants, so they doubled back to the one that seemed the most appealing, a rare brick building in that row of wooden structures. Its façade had a few scorch marks, a testament to the way it had survived whatever fire had swept through the town.

And the fare seemed similar to what they’d been eating in Flagstaff — roast beef and pork chops and ham and sausage, livened a little with what the proprietor assured them was trout caught just that morning.

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