Cutthroats

by William W. Johnstone

  “Wait,” Slash said.

  “What is it?”

  “Hold on.”

  Slash walked back into the office and into the examining room. Jay scowled at him, lifting her head from the table. “Slash, dammit, I told you to—”

  Slash doffed his hat, placed his hand on the back of her neck, crouched down, and kissed her smack on the lips. He kissed her hard, and he held it. When he pulled away, he narrowed his gaze commandingly and stared into her eyes. “You best be here when I get back or there’s gonna be hell to pay, woman!”

  Jay just stared at him, eyes wide with shock. So did Myra and Kettlemeyer, though Myra was smiling a little, too.

  Slash set his hat back on his head and left.

  CHAPTER 33

  “What’d you do in there?” Pecos asked as Slash stepped back onto the stairs fronting the doctor’s office.

  “Nothin’.”

  Slash stepped around him and strode down the stairs.

  “Nothin’?” Pecos exclaimed, following Slash down the steps. “You didn’t go back in there just to do nothin’. You had to do somethin’!”

  “Oh, shut up!” Slash carped as he gained the bottom of the steps.

  “Stop tellin’ me to shut up, dammit.” Pecos wagged a finger in Slash’s face. “I’m gettin’ damn tired o’ that.”

  “Shut up!”

  Pecos leaned close to Slash and wagged a finger in the shorter outlaw’s face. “You tell me that one more time, I’m gonna beat the snot out of you, and you know I can lick you in a fair fight!”

  “Yeah, but you know I wouldn’t fight fair.” Slash chuckled, then said, “Focus, now, dammit. If the Marauders really did go after the Denver and Rio Grande out of Silverton, where would they hit it?”

  Pecos stared thoughtfully across the busy street, thinking. “Wait, wait—didn’t we hit that train a time or two?”

  Slash frowned at his partner. “Did we?” Then it dawned on him. “Damn, you’re right!”

  Pecos wagged his head despondently. “Our memories ain’t what they used to be, Slash.”

  “Well, hell, we hit so many trains and stagecoaches over the years, we can’t be blamed for forgettin’ one or two.” Slash gestured with his hand. “I think . . . I think I remember hitting it one time just beneath a high ridge. A ridge with a name . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah—Thunder Ridge! And another time we hit it farther down the line, near . . . near a rapids, I think . . .”

  “Confederate Rapids! Near the first Confederate Boy Mine!”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s it!”

  “Some of the older salts in the gang will remember both those places—Dakota Todd, for instance, and Chico Gonzalez.”

  “All right, then.” Slash grabbed his reins off the hitch rack and swung up onto the Appy’s back. “Let’s head for Thunder Ridge first. We should reach the canyon before the train does. As I remember, it’s a slow mover and it follows one hell of a twisting route along the river. There’s an old Indian trail above that canyon—on the west side. A shortcut!”

  “Let’s get on it!” Pecos said, swung up onto his buckskin, and reined it into the street.

  The cutthroats put spurs to their horses and lunged down the street at nearly a full gallop, dangerously twisting their way through the heavy pedestrian, wagon, and horseback traffic, evoking more than a few curses, fist pumps, and all-out threats against life and limb.

  They headed south from the camp by the main stage and army trail. When another trail broke from the main one, they took the secondary trail up a steep, bald mountain ridge and out across a treeless bench. The air was cold up here, for they were at nearly ten thousand feet above sea level. The trees were scrubby, the grass almost nonexistent, and frost from a previous night’s freeze still furred the ground on the shady sides of boulders.

  They climbed a rocky pass and galloped out across another broad bench.

  Shortly, they could see the cut of the Animas River Canyon just ahead, appearing first as a slender, dark line against the base of pale, craggy peaks beyond it. Gradually, that dark line widened and gained definition until Slash and Pecos could see into the canyon itself as they rode up on it hard.

  They stopped in a fringe of stunted spruce and cedars stippling the rocky ridge, and swung down from their mounts. Slash grabbed a spyglass out of his saddlebags, and then he and Pecos crawled through the prickly brush and rocks until they were belly down along the lip of the ridge, the canyon yawning wide below them.

  The river lay at the bottom, a couple of hundred feet below, like a dark green snake with the sun glistening off its scaly hide. Slash could see occasional beaver dams and the white stitches of water tossed up by rocks and boulders. The wind blew up from the canyon, cool and fragrant with the smell of wild water, sage, rock, and pine.

  Directly across the canyon from the two men, Thunder Ridge jutted its craggy head straight up to tickle the dark blue belly of the faultless blue sky. From this vantage, there didn’t appear any way down that side of the canyon, but Slash knew of a trail that dropped down around the north shoulder of Thunder Ridge. It was a perilous ride, and you had to be young and foolhardy, not to mention dead set on acquiring the gold and/or silver bullion riding the Denver & Rio Grande narrow-gauge flyer from Silverton, to go after it.

  From what Slash and Pecos had learned about Billy Pinto, to their astonishment, the kid was foolhardy enough to take that ride. And commanding enough to get the others to take it with him.

  Slash raised the glass to his right eye and adjusted the focus, bringing into view the shelf that the Denver & Rio Grande tracks had been laid upon, about halfway up the limestone wall on the canyon’s far side, roughly a quarter mile straight out from his and Pecos’s position. He closely glassed that shelf, looking for any sign of impediments—rock dynamited out of the side of the canyon, or cut-down trees blocking the tracks, for tall, slender spruces and firs grew out of the rocks of that steep ridge.

  “Nothing,” Slash said.

  “Let me see.”

  Slash handed the glass to Pecos, who studied the shelf.

  “Nothing.”

  “Told you.”

  “Maybe it’s still to come. No sign of the train yet.”

  “Unless it’s already passed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If it hasn’t come yet, I doubt they’re planning to hit it here. If they were, they already would have blocked the tracks.”

  “Yep,” Pecos agreed. “I remember—you gotta block the tracks early because the conductor has to see it right when he comes around that bend to the north, or he’ll hit it and probably roll right off the shelf and into the canyon. Gone, gold, gone!”

  “Yeah,” Slash said wryly. “To say nothin’ of the passengers.”

  He patted Pecos’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s head for the rapids.”

  “Hold on.”

  “What is it?”

  “The train.”

  Slash heard the distant chuffah-chuffah-chuffah just before the locomotive poked its blunt snout out from behind a bend on the other side of the canyon and upstream a quarter mile or so, though it was hard to judge distance because of the canyon’s meandering nature. The locomotive crawled into fuller view, issuing puffs of black smoke from its stack, dragging the red tender car, with its stacked split firewood.

  Behind the tender car clacked several passenger coaches and the little red caboose.

  Slash grabbed the spyglass out of Pecos’s hands. “Let me take a look.”

  “Say ‘please’ next time!”

  “Shut up!”

  Pecos gritted his teeth and punched Slash’s shoulder, like an indignant brother acting up in church. Ignoring him, Slash glassed the train.

  Behind the dining car was a sleek black car with only two windows. As the train drew nearer, still curving along the bulging belly of the canyon wall, drawing nearer Slash and Pecos—the chuffah, chuffah, chuffahs growing louder with each second—Slash could read the words WELLS, FARGO & C
OMPANY EXPRESS in large gold letters blazed on the side of the glistening black panel, right of the large, closed door that was likely reinforced and barred from inside with stout iron.

  Most of those doors were. That’s why the two cutthroats had gotten so friendly with dynamite over the years....

  Pecos tapped Slash’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s mount up and try to stay ahead of it.”

  “All right.” But just as Slash began to lower the glass, he spied movement out of the corner of his left eye. “Hold on.”

  He raised the glass to his eye again.

  “What is it?”

  Slash stared through the sphere of magnified vision, raking the glass across the train, which was maybe a hundred yards upstream now, wending its way along the opposite ridge wall. “I don’t know. Thought I saw somethin’.”

  “What?”

  “I said I don’t—wait.” Slash had just spied movement again—something or someone stepping off the wall just above the train and settling onto the roof of one of the passenger coaches.

  Then he saw it again, clearer now.

  A man stepped out away from the wall, dropping off a slight ledge maybe fifteen feet above the train. He held a rifle in one hand. He held his hat on his head with his other hand. The flaps of his long duster rose like the wings of a giant bird up around his shoulders. Dropping straight down the wall, he bent his knees and crouched and lighted on the tin roof of the second passenger coach.

  Slash’s heartbeat quickened. “Holy bullheads in hell!”

  “What is it?”

  “They’re dropping onto the train like buzzards on carrion!”

  As Slash watched, another man and then another and still another stepped out from a niche in the canyon wall to drop onto the train. He handed the glasses to Pecos but now the train was directly in front of him, straight out across the canyon, and he saw with his naked eyes two more men step out from the side of the canyon wall and drop, crouching, atop the roof of the express car.

  One of those men was carrying what appeared a gunnysack.

  Dynamite.

  Pecos lowered the glass and stared wide-eyed up at Slash. “Holy moly, partner. No wonder they wanted us old mossyhorns out. Them fellas under Billy Pinto’s command has upped their game!”

  Slash lowered the glass. “Come on. Let’s get after that train!”

  He and Pecos crawled back out of the brush. They mounted their horses and raced off along the lip of the ridge, following the canyon’s twisting course generally southwest. As they rode, Slash peered over the canyon lip to see the train still chugging along the shelf halfway down the opposite ridge. The train was to the south of Thunder Ridge now, and several of the men milling atop the train, looking little larger than ants from this distance, dropped down onto the platforms between the cars. Several others converged on the roof of the express car.

  As the train turned a bend and swerved away from Slash and Pecos, the two cutthroats got ahead of it.

  “Hold up!” Slash said.

  He stopped the Appy and reached back into his saddlebags for his spyglass again.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Pecos asked, stopping his buckskin beside Slash.

  Slash raised the glass to his eye and adjusted the focus.

  Four men remained atop the train, which was following a shallow inner bend in the canyon wall. Now as the train began angling straight south again, Slash could see that the four men were atop the express car. He could tell that one was Billy Pinto, for he was the shortest and he wore a long, ragged, tan duster and low-crowned black sombrero with a beaded band.

  Billy and one other man, who appeared to be the bulky half-breed Floyd Three Eagles, were kneeling atop the express car, the gunnysack resting on the roof beside Billy. They were fiddling with something atop the car. Slash knew what it was even before the men drew back toward both ends of the car and poked their fingers into their ears.

  There was a bright orange flash and a thick puff of roiling, black smoke where they’d been standing a moment before. As the smoke quickly cleared, Slash could see that the dynamite—two or three sticks, probably—had blown a hole roughly the size of a wagon wheel in the center of the shake-shingled roof.

  Now all four cutthroats cocked their rifles and converged on the hole. Even from this distance, Slash could hear one of them whooping and hollering like a moon-crazed coyote. Through the glass he could see that the one yelling was Billy Pinto, who pressed the butt of his Henry repeater to his shoulder and angled the barrel down into the car.

  The blasts of the rifles reached Slash’s ears nearly a full two seconds after he’d seen the flames lick from the barrels of the four robbers’ rifles.

  “Christ Almighty,” Slash said, handing the spyglass over to Pecos. “They’re shootin’ the express guards like ducks on a millpond!”

  “Holy . . .” Pecos said in awe, staring through the glass.

  With his naked eyes, Slash saw the express car’s door slide open. A man clad in what appeared the blue wool uniform of a Wells Fargo guard tumbled out, his body engulfed in flames from the explosion. Smoke billowed out behind him. Another guard stumbled out, clutching himself, turning a forward somersault, arms and legs akimbo, as he plummeted toward the bottom of the canyon.

  Another guard followed. Slash could hear the man’s shrill screams as he too dropped toward the river.

  A fourth guard fell in the doorway, arms dangling over the edge of the car toward the canyon, his leather-billed cap blowing off his head in the wind to smack against the side of the car following the express car. The cap caromed out over the canyon and hung there, dropping slowly, like a bird riding the thermals.

  Pecos turned to Slash, eyes wide in shock. “It’s a massacre,” he said. “That’s all you can call it.”

  “Come on,” Slash said, reining the Appy out away from the canyon wall. “Time to put those rabid dogs down!”

  CHAPTER 34

  Slash and Pecos cut across a sharp horseshoe curve in the canyon wall.

  As they rode, crouched low over the billowing manes of their galloping mounts, they could hear the chugging of the train in the canyon as the Denver & Rio Grande flyer continued to make its way downstream along the Animas, its staid, purposeful chuffs likely belying the murderous chaos that was no doubt occurring inside those coaches as the gang plundered the Wells Fargo car and robbed the men and women in the three passenger coaches.

  Robbed them and did God only knew what else to them...

  “What you got in mind, Slash?” Pecos asked, the wind basting the brim of his hat against his forehead.

  “I’m open to suggestions!”

  “Well, it’s a dozen-plus against two!”

  “Yeah, an’ the odds aren’t likely to get any shorter!”

  As they fogged the sage and buck brush of the canyon rim, the canyon occasionally edged close enough to the riders that Slash could peer partway into it. The canyon wall was dropping gradually, putting Slash and Pecos closer to the canyon bottom as well as to the train that continued to snake along the cut of the opposite ridge.

  As the ridge continued to drop, the two cutthroats now galloping downhill beside it, Slash saw a bridge inside the canyon—a bridge spanning the Animas that would bring the train over to his and Pecos’s side of the canyon.

  A plan began to solidify and clarify in his racing mind.

  He watched the train curve out away from the opposite canyon wall and head for the bridge. The flyer was roughly a hundred yards ahead and left of Slash and Pecos now. As the train crossed the bridge, its rumbling and chugging reverberating off the bridge’s stout timbers, Flash looked for a way into the canyon. After a few more of his tiring horse’s strides, he saw what appeared a game trail angling down the canyon wall, the rim of which was now only about a hundred feet above the canyon floor.

  “This way!” Slash yelled as he reined the Appy sharply left.

  He and Pecos dropped down along the narrow, switchbacking game trail littered with deer scat
. Fifty feet ahead was a nest of boulders to the right of the trail. The riders stopped in the boulder nest, and Slash swung down from the Appy’s back.

  He was sweaty, sunburned, and wind-burned, his heart racing.

  “What’s on your pea-pickin’ mind, pard?” Pecos asked.

  They could hear the train chugging toward them, from their left, along the same ridge they were on now, but maybe twenty feet below them and around a slight curve in the canyon wall. They couldn’t yet see it below the rocky bulge in the ridge’s shoulder.

  Slash tossed Pecos the reins. “You take the horses. Head for the rapids. That’s likely where they intend to get off.” He stared ahead along the canyon. He could see the white of the rapids maybe a mile ahead, where the stony walls on both sides of the canyon jutted skyward once more.

  Pecos eyed his partner uneasily. “What the hell are you gonna do?”

  The train was huffing and puffing, iron wheels clacking on the rail seams. Slash could feel the reverberations through his boot soles. The big, black locomotive came into view nearly straight down the slope from Slash and Pecos, drawing the tender car behind it. It was moving maybe fifteen, twenty miles per hour, the steam and smoke filling the air with the smell of brimstone.

  At his angle, he couldn’t see the engineer or the fireman inside the engine’s black iron housing. The gang might have already taken them out.

  Slash looked at Pecos and grinned. “I’m gonna hitch a ride. Hope the conductor don’t mind I didn’t buy a ticket!”

  “You’re loco!”

  “Shut up!”

  Slash stepped closer to the lip of the ridge they were on. He could see the gray tin roof of the second coach directly beneath him. In one of the cars below, a gun popped. A woman screamed. A man cursed loudly. Another shot followed, and another woman screamed.

  “Stop tellin’ me to shut up, or I’ll pound your scrawny butt!”

  “See you at the rapids, partner!” Slash stepped forward off the ridge, into thin air, stretching his Winchester out to one side and his free hand out to the other side for balance.