The Five Dollar Mail Book 3: The Road Home

38: Mirage

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork of Rosie by Angela Taratuta. All graphics by me.

Book 1: The Green, Book 2: Lynch's Boys, Book 3: The Road Home, and the Riders & Kickers Anthology are available on Amazon under the name Regina Shelley. So if you hate waiting for chapter posts and/or want a more polished read, the finished product is available now.

"Luis, come on," Rosie said gently. "Sit down. You can do this."

It was late in the afternoon, and the long shafts of sunlight slanted through the windows and the open door. Rosie had been amazed at how quickly she'd come to find the place familiar, with its rough-hewn table and smoky iron stoves and heavy stone walls. She hadn't been here long, but the station felt more like home to her than any place she'd ever been.

Luis had stood up from where he had been seated beside her on the kitchen bench, the golden light glowing across his dusky skin and turning his tousled black locks to bronze. He was shuffling warily on his feet and holding his crossed arms tightly around himself, as if he expected Rosie's open textbook to leap off the table and bite him.

Forcing her thoughts away from the fluttering inside her chest, and back to the book that lay open on the table before her, Rosie tried again. "Luis."

"I can't believe I let him talk me into this, Miz Rosie." His brown eyes were wounded, fearful, and Rosie didn't understand why simply sitting down at the kitchen table and looking at a book should be such a traumatic experience for him. He sounded beaten. "I'm trying. I can't do it."

She drew in a deep breath. "We're going to do it together. I'm going to be right here with you. Please. Sit."

He gave the book another reproachful glare, saying nothing.

"Luis, you're a Pony Express rider. A Pony Express rider! Look at all the things you have to face just to do your job! You can't expect me to believe you're afraid of something like this."

"Señorita...it's not the same..."

"You're right," she said, smiling at him and cocking her head. "You're not going to get shot or ambushed or thrown off your horse doing this."

He sighed heavily, muttering unintelligibly to the ceiling in Spanish before fixing his eyes on her. "For you," he said, unfolding his arms and sitting back down beside her.

She watched him a moment, feeling her heart beating just a little faster. Hearing him speak Spanish...calling her 'señorita'...the exotic syllables rolling musically off his tongue thrilled her. She smiled, suddenly shy and self-conscious. She'd very nearly gotten accustomed to him, to being here at the station. But there were still moments when she was reminded that he was one of Old Man Lynch's riders, spoken about in town as if he were a character in a storybook. Every now and then, she remembered, and felt that delicious twinge of daring, that thrill of the impossible.

"For me?"

"Si, señorita. I wouldn't do this for anyone else."

Her heart was pounding in earnest now. Does he know how brown his eyes are? How sweet he looks when he smiles like that, all crooked with a dimple in his cheek? She wondered if the flush of heat she felt in her face meant that her cheeks were turning red.

"Alright." She pointed at the letters inside her book with a slightly trembling finger. "Here's the alphabet."

He was squinting, frowning at the page with an unhappy look on his face. "Wait...here?" His own finger wavered over the page as if her were pursuing a beetle clambering across the paper.

"There. Right..." she settled her hand over his, guiding him to the script before them. "...there." His hand was warm, and she held it just a bit longer than was necessary, unwilling to break contact just yet. A foreboding thought struck her. "Luis..." She looked up at his face, questioning. "Can you see it alright?"

A faint pink warmed the dusky brown of his face, and she wasn't sure, but he seemed to be studying the back of her hand as it held his.

"Luis?"

"Si." He seemed to startle awake. "¡Si! Yes, I can see it. It's just...it's hard to follow it."

She reluctantly pulled her hand back, dropping it into her lap and wishing she could have left it where it was. I could hold his hand all day long. Gladly. "What do you mean? It's...just letters printed on a page. It's not moving."

He stared at the book dubiously, clearly hesitant to agree with her.

What on earth...? What is he seeing? "Luis, are you seeing the letters...move?"

"I'm seeing how they shimmer on the paper. Like heat makes the air shimmer out in the desert, yes? The letters run together. I don't know how you can figure out what's what. I told you, Miz Rosie, I'm...kind of estúpido..."

"No!" Rosie shook her head firmly, chastising him. "You are not. I don't want to hear that from anyone, including you. Especially you." She leaned back in her seat, perplexed, thinking. Is he not seeing what I'm seeing? How is that possible? "Luis...is that how it looks to you?"

Luis looked genuinely stumped, a dawning realization breaking across his puckish features. He had the wary look of someone beginning to understand that he had been the victim of some cruel, running prank. "You mean it doesn't look that way to you, señorita?"

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