“What I mean is, they’re liable to be watching for trouble. They might spot us down in that arroyo.”
Kern said, “That’s why we’re going to be under that trestle. They won’t be able to see us under there.”
The Kid nodded. The trestle was small enough that ten men on horseback might have a little trouble fitting under it, but he supposed they could manage.
“They’ll have a man on the rear platform of the caboose, more than likely,” Kern went on. “He’s the first one we’ll pick off.”
The first man they would murder, the Kid thought. That idea gnawed at him. He was going to try to prevent that, but it wouldn’t be easy.
He couldn’t stop all the killing, he told himself bleakly. Not without warning the train crew and the gold guards that the holdup was about to take place, and if he did that, Kern, Bracken, and the other men would blast him full of holes. He had to wait until they were distracted, then in the confusion of the robbery he would gun down as many of them as he could and hope the guards would do for the others.
Then he could head back to the hacienda as the only survivor of the failed raid and resume trying to figure out a way to rescue Frank. It wasn’t a bloodless solution, and he knew the general would be mighty suspicious of him, but he didn’t see any other way to prevent as much slaughter as possible and keep that gold out of Ramirez’s hands.
Now that Kern had split up the group of bandits, Bracken took his bunch and rode off up the railroad grade toward the top. Kern and the others let their horses pick their way down into the arroyo, which was about ten feet deep and maybe thirty feet wide. Flash floods had eroded the banks until they weren’t too steep or sheer.
Kern told the men to dismount, then said, “Lead the horses under the trestle. Oscar, you and Timms will be responsible for holding them. The rest of you can take it easy until the train is about to get here. I’ll keep watch.”
He took out his field glasses and trudged back to the top of the arroyo, where he sat down on a low slab of rock to peer into the east, where the gold train would come from.
“We’re lucky,” Sam Woodson said to the Kid with his characteristic grin. “We get to wait in the shade while Bracken and them other boys are up there a-laborin’ in the hot sun like poor farmers. I knowed the life of a desperado was for me.”
He had pulled the guitar around in front of him, and now his fingers strayed over the strings, plucking them and sending a cascade of musical notes into the air.
“Nobody asked for a serenade, Woodson,” Kern called down into the arroyo.
“Just passin’ the time,” Woodson replied. “If you want me to stop, Kern, just say so.”
Kern shook his head. “No, I reckon there are worse things than that racket you call music.”
“He likes it, really,” Woodson said quietly to the Kid. “He just won’t admit it.”
If he got the chance, the Kid told himself, he would wallop Woodson over the head and knock him out, rather than killing him. More than likely it would end just as badly for him if he was caught by the gold guards and turned over to the Rurales, but the Kid couldn’t take responsibility for the lawless life that had led Woodson to this juncture. He just didn’t want to blow the hombre’s lights out himself if he could avoid it.
An hour dragged by in the heat. Woodson got tired of playing the guitar and singing. He sat down in the shade underneath the trestle, leaned against one of the thick wooden pillars holding it up, tipped his hat down over his eyes, and went to sleep.
The Kid climbed up the bank to join Kern, who cast a suspicious glance at him and asked, “What do you want?”
“Just thought I’d help you watch for that train,” the Kid drawled. “Not that that’ll make it get here any sooner.”
Kern grunted. “I don’t need any help. But I guess you might as well wait up here as down there. Just don’t start talking my ear off the way Woodson always tries to.”
“Not likely.” The Kid gazed off to the east. “I am a mite curious, though. You don’t strike me as the sort of fella to get mixed up in a revolution. You’re no firebrand like Ramirez.”
“I’m not doing it out of any fondness for Mexico, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t care who runs that bunch of bean-eaters. The general pays well when he’s got money, though. And there’s Señorita Antonia—”
Kern stopped short, glared, and looked away, as if he’d realized that he had said too much.
“The señorita is a mighty fine looker,” the Kid said. He didn’t mention the pleasure she had taken in watching Kern whip Florita, which made her considerably less beautiful in his eyes.
“Just forget I said anything,” Kern grated. “The señorita’s going to be parading around the palace in Mexico City like a princess one of these days, and I’ll be either dead or long gone.”
“Maybe. You never know how things will play out.”
“I know how this will,” Kern snapped. “Leave it alone, Callahan.”
“Sure, amigo,” the Kid said easily. “I didn’t hear a damn thing . . . except maybe . . . a train whistle?”
“Damn it!” Kern jerked the field glasses to his eyes. “You got me distracted. That’s why I didn’t want anybody up here with me.”
That wasn’t what had distracted Kern, the Kid mused. Thinking about Antonia Ramirez had done that . . . and daring to hope that he might have a chance with her someday. The Kid didn’t believe that would ever happen . . . but every man’s dreams were his own private province, and no one else could set their boundaries.
“I don’t see anything,” Kern said after a moment of looking through the field glasses. “You must have imagined what you thought you heard—Wait. There’s . . . Yeah, it’s smoke from the locomotive.” He lowered the glasses. “Here it comes.”
He slid down the bank with the Kid right behind him and called to the other men, “Mount up! The train will be here in a few minutes.”
An air of excitement gripped them as they swung up into their saddles. Shafts of sunlight slanted down through the gaps in the trestle and painted men and horses with a checkerboard pattern. They were pressed close together as they waited tensely.
The rumble coming through the rails overhead grew steadily louder as the vibrations increased. The Kid could hear the chuff-chuff-chuff of the engine as well. He didn’t know why the engineer had blown the whistle a short time earlier—there wasn’t anything out here in the middle of nowhere to get in the train’s way—but the man was laying off it now.
The noise was tremendous as the locomotive reached the trestle and roared over it, blotting out those stray beams of sunlight. The earth itself shook underneath the horses’ hooves. Having those untold tons of metal passing directly overhead, only a few feet away, was a discomforting thing. The Kid had never experienced anything quite like it before.
Beside him, Sam Woodson made a face and said something, but with that deafening racket going on, the Kid couldn’t understand a word of it. He could tell that Woodson wasn’t happy, though. None of them were. Even when the locomotive had passed beyond the trestle and started up the grade, the noise of the railroad cars traversing it was still tooth-rattling and nerve-racking.
Finally, the caboose cleared the trestle. The assault on the Kid’s ears had been so fierce he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to hear correctly again. But to his surprise, he heard Kern fairly well when the bandit bellowed, “Let’s go!” and waved his men into motion.
The riders charged out from under the trestle, five to a side. Their horses lunged up the arroyo banks, and the chase was on.
Chapter 26
The Kid rode to the right of the tracks with Kern, Woodson, and a couple of Mexicans whose names he didn’t know. The horses’ hooves pounded on the hard-packed ground. The train had gotten about a fifty-yard lead along the tracks while the men were getting out of the arroyo. The train was still moving fast because the locomotive hadn’t quite reached the grade, which meant it was pulling away from the rid
ers.
That didn’t last long. The train slowed as soon as the engine started up the slope, and then the men on horseback began to gain on it.
As the Kid expected, a man stood guard on the platform at the back of the caboose. Smoke wreathed from the cigar he was smoking. He hadn’t noticed the pursuers right away, but now he did and he reacted violently. He threw the cigar away, raised a Winchester to his shoulder, and blazed away at the outlaws as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever.
The riders were close enough to return the fire with their handguns, although the range was fairly long for a revolver. Their shots came closer with each swift stride of the horses, though. The Kid saw sparks flying as bullets ricocheted from the rear end of the caboose and the railing around the platform.
The hurricane deck of a galloping horse was no place for accuracy, but the Kid had experience making such shots. The buckskin had an uncommonly smooth gait, too. Instead of firing wildly at the caboose, the Kid raised his Colt and drew a bead on the guard, aiming low. He squeezed off two rounds and saw the man fling the rifle away and twist around as he fell to the platform. The Kid was pretty sure he had drilled the man through the thigh, a serious wound but probably not fatal.
The caboose’s rear door opened and arms reached out. Hands caught hold of the guard’s clothes and dragged him inside. The door slammed.
“Come on!” Kern bellowed as he urged his horse to greater speed. Now that they were no longer charging into a hail of bullets, they could close in on the train even faster.
By now the men in the caboose would have signaled the engineer to pour on the steam. Huge gouts of smoke billowed from the locomotive’s diamond-shaped stack. But with the slope the train was climbing, it could go only so fast, no matter how hard the engineer pushed it.
Rifle muzzles poked through open windows in the caboose. Flame spurted from the muzzles. But the angle was bad and made it difficult for the men inside the train to get a good shot at the outlaws chasing it.
The Kid and the others were climbing now, too, riding single file at the edge of the roadbed while the hill crowded in close on the other side. Kern was in the lead, with the Kid right behind him, then the two Mexicans, and finally Sam Woodson bringing up the rear. The horses had to slow down because they were going uphill, too, but they still moved faster than the train.
Kern reached the caboose and drew even with the platform. He forced his horse even closer and leaned far to his left in the saddle as he reached for the railing. He caught hold of it, kicked his feet free of the stirrups, and leaped from the saddle as he grabbed for the railing with his other hand, too. He snagged it and was able to swing onto the platform with surprising agility considering his stocky build.
Kern’s horse kept running and pulled ahead, which gave the Kid room to maneuver the buckskin alongside the platform. He repeated Kern’s daring move, grasping the railing and plunging from horseback to railroad car. His heart seemed to catch in his throat during that split second when he hung in midair between the two.
Then his boots hit the platform and he stumbled a little as he caught his balance. He had holstered his gun to make the transfer, as had Kern. Both of them pulled their irons now. Kern waved the other men on. It would be their job to take control of the next few cars in line.
“I’ll kick the door open,” Kern said over the train’s clatter. “You go in low and fast.”
The Kid nodded, but he had no intention of following that order. Instead, when Kern stepped in front of the door and lifted his right leg to kick it in, the Kid struck first, slamming the gun in his hand against Kern’s head. The other riders had galloped on past the caboose, so none of them saw what happened.
Kern’s knees buckled from the unexpected blow. He sagged forward against the door and held himself up with one hand while the other tried to swing the gun around toward the Kid. He gasped, “You bas—”
The Kid batted Kern’s gun aside and struck again with his own before the outlaw could finish the oath. Kern went down to the platform, out cold.
The Kid dragged Kern over to one side, then rapped on the door with his gun barrel and raised his voice.
“Listen to me in there! Hold your fire! I’m not an outlaw! Don’t shoot when I open this door!”
Leaning over, he grasped the knob with his left hand, twisted it, and gave the door a hard shove. Just as he expected, despite his shout, as soon as the door flew open the men inside the caboose started shooting. Guns roared and lead stormed through the doorway. The Kid waited with his back pressed against the caboose’s rear wall, feeling the train rocking along as it continued up the grade.
The guns fell silent. The Kid called again, “Hold your fire! You’re in no danger!”
An American voice replied, “Mister, I don’t know who you are, but if you think we’re gonna let you waltz in here and kill us, you’re crazy.”
“They call me Kid Morgan,” the Kid said. He didn’t know if that would mean anything to any of them or not. “Those men with me are part of Diego Ramirez’s bunch, but I’m not one of them. I’ve just been pretending to be. I’m trying to stop this holdup.”
“Ramirez!” the man inside the caboose exclaimed. “He’s after the gold!”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so. I know it was supposed to be a secret, but it wasn’t a very good one. If you’ll let me in there without ventilating me, we’ll figure out some way to stop them.”
“Throw your guns in here first, then step in!”
“And have you boys get spooked and shoot me full of holes?” The Kid laughed. “I don’t reckon so, fella. I’m coming in, and if any lead comes my way, I’ll answer it in kind.”
“All right,” the man said with obvious reluctance. “Hold your fire, men.”
He might be saying that while motioning for the men with him to do just the opposite, but the Kid had to take that chance. With his Colt ready, he stepped through the doorway and took a long stride into the caboose.
Five men were in there, counting the wounded man who was lying on an old sofa and had a bloody rag tied around his leg. An elderly, blue-uniformed Mexican conductor with a stiff-billed black cap on his head stood next to a squat safe, looking scared. A burly, middle-aged American in a gray suit and cream-colored Stetson held a shotgun pointed toward the Kid. Flanking him were two Mexicans with rifles.
The American said, “Damn, son, for somebody who claims not to be an outlaw, you’re doing a mighty good imitation of one.”
“I had to play along with that bunch or get killed,” the Kid said. “Why don’t we all lower our weapons?” The Colt in his hand was leveled at the American.
The man shrugged and said, “Considering the odds, I suppose we can give it a try. I doubt you can kill more than one of us before the others blow you to hell.”
The Kid wasn’t so sure about that—he believed he could get at least two of them—but he wasn’t going to argue the point. He lowered the Colt until it pointed at the floor. The other men did likewise with their weapons.
The wounded man, another American, said, “Colonel, I think he’s the one who shot me!”
The colonel asked, “Is that true?”
“I figured he’d rather have a bullet through the leg than half a dozen in his guts and heart and head,” the Kid said. “I was trying to save his life.”
The colonel grunted, then said, “Odd way of doing it . . . but I reckon it worked. You mind telling me what’s going on here?”
“Like I said, those men ride for Diego Ramirez. Since the Rurales chased him out of Mexico, he’s found himself a stronghold not far over the border in Arizona Territory.”
The colonel nodded. “I’m familiar with Ramirez. He’s the main reason we have guards on this train. The men I work for were worried that he might come after their gold. My name’s Haas, by the way. George Haas.”
“That other fella called you Colonel?”
“Retired,” Haas said with a slight smile. “I had my fill of the military.”
&n
bsp; “So now you work for Mexican aristocrats.”
“I work for whoever pays my wages. How about you? If you’re not an outlaw, how’d you get mixed up with that bunch of bandidos?”
“It’s a long story,” the Kid said. “The important thing is, this train is coming to a stop pretty soon. Do you have enough men to hold off Ramirez’s bunch?”
“I’ve got what you see.”
The Kid caught his breath in surprise. “Just three of you?”
“There were four, until you shot one of ’em,” Haas said dryly. “The gold shipment was supposed to be a secret, remember? We didn’t want to draw attention to it.”
His eyes darted over toward the safe. The Kid saw that and said, “You mean that’s where it is, not in an express car or something like that?”
“It’s just as safe here as it would be anywhere on this train. The walls of this caboose are nice and thick.”
“Thick enough to hold off an army?”
“I reckon we’ll find out, because those bandits aren’t getting that gold.”
A shudder went through the floor under the Kid’s feet. That was the brakes being applied, he thought. The train began to slow, and he knew the locomotive had reached the barrier at the top of the grade.
“You’d better get ready,” he said. “You’re about to be under attack.”
“I don’t think so.” Haas turned toward the door at the front of the caboose. He reached under his coat to take something out of his pocket. The Kid caught a glimpse of a paper-wrapped cylinder.
“What the hell!” he said. “Is that dynamite?”
“Thought it might come in handy,” Haas said as he opened the door. Shots immediately blasted from outside, coming from the platform of the next car in line. The Kid knew Ramirez’s men must have captured it and were ready for the guards to try to defend the gold.
They probably weren’t expecting dynamite, though. As bullets chewed at the doorjamb, flew into the caboose, and started ricocheting around, Haas calmly struck a match and lit the short fuse attached to the cylinder. With a quick, underhand flip, he threw the dynamite across the space between the cars and through the open door on the other side. The Kid heard shouts of alarm, then a blast shook the train as smoke and fire filled the space above the coupling.
The Morgans Page 19