Everything had happened too quickly for the Kid to stop it. He was thrown off-balance for a second as the caboose suddenly lurched backward. He caught himself, peered through the open door, and saw that the dynamite had blown the whole back end off the next car.
The explosion had busted the coupling loose as well. The caboose was no longer attached to the rest of the train, and gravity began to take effect. The caboose’s weight pulled it back down the slope. It rolled faster and faster as its momentum built up.
“Well,” Haas said. “I didn’t think about that happen—”
Blood and brains flew in the air as a bullet sizzling in from somewhere blew off a good-sized chunk of his head. He stood there for a second, dead on his feet, before he pitched forward in a gory sprawl. The blood-splattered old conductor shrieked in horror as he quailed back against the safe that held the gold.
The two Mexican guards screamed curses and jerked their rifles toward the Kid. He knew that they somehow blamed him for what had happened to their boss, and in their panic, they opened fire on him.
Bullets whined around him. One of them struck him in the side and knocked him halfway around. He didn’t know how badly he was hit, but bad enough to make him drop his gun as he fell to one knee. He was about to lunge after the Colt, knowing that he wouldn’t reach it before the two guards killed him.
Before that could happen, shots slammed from the rear of the caboose. The Kid felt the wind-rip of slugs above his head. The bullets thudded into the chests of the guards and drove them back against the wall behind them. They still tried to bring their rifles to bear, but strength deserted them and they collapsed. The rifles clattered to the floor.
The Kid looked over his shoulder and saw Kern striding into the caboose with a Colt in his hand. Kern pivoted sharply and fired again. The wounded guard, who had been trying to struggle up from the sofa, fell back with a red-rimmed black hole in the middle of his forehead.
The Kid made a grab for his gun, but it had slid toward the rear of the caboose and Kern got to it first. He kicked it out of the Kid’s reach and leveled the still-smoking revolver at him.
“The only reason I killed them, you double-crosser, is so I can kill you myself.”
Chapter 27
The door at the rear of the caboose was still open. As the Kid looked past Kern, he saw the tracks and the telegraph poles and the hillsides rushing past the train. It looked that way from his perspective, anyway.
“You’d better hold off on pulling that trigger, Kern,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the wind. With open doors at both ends of the caboose, air gusted through the car with a rising roar as it went faster and faster. “It may take both of us to stop this runaway before it jumps the tracks!”
Kern grimaced, but he didn’t fire. One man might be able to turn the brake wheel on top of the caboose with enough force to slow it down, but there was a chance he couldn’t. The elderly conductor wasn’t likely to be of any help, either.
“The caboose will slow down once it’s out on the flats again,” Kern said.
“But will it stay on the tracks when it hits the bottom of this slope going full out?” the Kid countered. “You willing to bet your life on that, Kern?”
The gunman glowered darkly, but he gestured with his revolver and ordered, “Get out there on that front platform. Don’t make a try for any of those guns that got dropped, either, or I will shoot you and take my chances.”
The Kid nodded as he got to his feet. His lips pulled back from his teeth as pain rippled through him.
“I’m wounded, you know.”
“Just live long enough for me to put a bullet in your treacherous heart, that’s all I care about.”
“You don’t make me want to help you all that much,” the Kid said as he turned toward the front of the caboose.
“You’ll do it anyway or die sooner.”
That was a persuasive argument. And the Kid could already tell that he wasn’t badly hurt. The bullet had grazed along his right side, just below the ribs. It hurt like blazes and his shirt was wet and sticky with blood, but he wouldn’t die from it.
He stepped out onto the platform. The rest of the train was dwindling in the distance above him, where it had come to a stop. The explosion had derailed the last car, so the train wouldn’t be able to move again until that car was cut loose, too.
But that was somebody else’s worry. The Kid’s main concern right now was staying alive for the next few minutes.
All his plans had been derailed as much as that railroad car had. If he could get away from Kern, he might be able to find the buckskin and ride away from here. Unfortunately, the rest of Ramirez’s men would be headed back down the hill within minutes to find out what had happened. Dodging them on foot would be impossible. Even mounted, getting away would be very difficult.
The Kid wasn’t the sort to give up, though. Right now the very real danger of the caboose wrecking loomed over him and Kern and the conductor.
“Get up there,” Kern said, motioning to the grab irons on the caboose’s side. The Kid took hold of the crude ladder, swung out onto it, and began to climb.
Here on the outside of the car, the wind created by its runaway journey down the long hill was even stronger. It slammed at the Kid and threatened to tear him loose from his precarious position. He pulled himself up by the grab irons as quickly and carefully as he could and when he reached the top, he sprawled on it and spread his arms and legs for stability.
Kern poked his head and the gun above the level of the caboose’s roof. “Get down there to that brake wheel!” he shouted.
The Kid lifted his head and saw the wheel sticking up on a metal post at the caboose’s rear end. Still spreadeagled, he worked his way to the center of the car and then was able to get up on hands and knees and crawl. After a few feet, he trusted his balance to stand up and trot toward the brake. He hoped the caboose wouldn’t give a particularly violent lurch and throw him off before he got there.
He reached his objective and grasped the wheel, feeling a little better once he had something to hang on to. By now, Kern had holstered his gun and climbed on top of the caboose, too. The Kid turned the wheel, putting his strength and weight into the effort, and he heard an unholy squealing like a million demons in the pits of hell as the shaft turned and forced the brake pads against the wheels.
The caboose slowed, but only barely. Kern reached the wheel, grabbed it, and threw his strength into the effort, too. The caboose slowed more. The bottom of the grade was coming up quickly. The Kid and Kern both grunted as they renewed their struggle with the wheel.
The caboose was still going fast enough when it reached the bottom that it thumped heavily, but it didn’t come loose from the rails and crash. And Kern had been right: once on the level again, it began to slow down even more.
Now that they were safe, Kern’s hand flashed toward his holstered gun, but the Kid moved first by a heartbeat. He tackled Kern around the waist, and both of them sprawled on the caboose’s roof as it continued to roll along the tracks.
Kern smashed a fist into the Kid’s wounded side. For a second, the pain was blinding. The Kid did his best to ignore it and rammed the heel of his hand under Kern’s jaw, forcing the gunman’s head back. Kern hit him in the side again. The Kid rolled so the wound would be out of Kern’s reach and tried to bring a kick around.
Kern grabbed his leg and heaved up. The Kid had no choice but to go with it, but as he twisted, he looped an arm around Kern’s neck and dragged him along, too. Both of them rolled toward the roof’s edge.
The Kid slapped his other hand against the roof and pressed hard, trying to slow himself. He fought for any sort of purchase. But while he was doing that, Kern rammed an elbow into his solar plexus and forced all the air out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, the Kid slid off the roof and plummeted toward the ground. Kern was right beside him.
Luckily for them, the caboose had almost come to a stop, so they didn’t have much mo
mentum. They landed on the sandy ground beside the roadbed and each rolled over a couple of times. The fall was enough to stun the Kid. He lay there on his belly and tried to force his brain and muscles to obey his commands.
His ears worked all right. He heard a swift rataplan of hoofbeats thudding closer, then stopping, and when he was finally able to lift his head and look around, he saw Carl Bracken, Sam Woodson, and a couple more of Ramirez’s men sitting on horseback beside the railroad tracks. Woodson was leading the Kid’s buckskin.
“Kern, what the hell happened?” Bracken demanded. “We heard some sort of explosion, and then the caboose was flying back down the hill.”
Kern was breathless, too. He gasped for air and said, “Cover . . . cover him! Callahan! Damn . . . traitor!”
That was enough for Bracken. He whipped his gun out, and the lust to kill was bright in his eyes.
“Double-crossed us, did he? I’ll take care of him, Kern—”
“Wait just a damn minute!” Woodson’s gun was out, too, but it pointed at Bracken. “Don’t go pullin’ that trigger until we know for sure what’s goin’ on here.”
Bracken snarled. “You don’t want to do that, you damn ridge runner—”
Kern pushed himself up into a sitting position and said, “Both of you . . . take it easy. Keep Callahan . . . covered. What about . . . the rest of the train?”
“Nobody’s going to give us any more trouble,” Bracken replied. “We had to shoot the fireman and a couple of passengers, and that was enough to convince everybody else they’d better cooperate. I left enough men up there to keep an eye on things. We need to get back and look for that gold, though. Funny thing, we didn’t run into any guards.”
Kern pointed to the caboose, which had come to a stop about twenty-five yards to the east. He said, “It’s in there. They put it in a safe in the caboose and tried not to draw attention to it by not sending along a bunch of guards. Damn fools.”
He motioned to one of the other men, who dismounted and helped him to his feet.
“I heard them talking about it,” Kern went on. “Callahan, or whatever the hell his name is, thought I was still knocked out. Reckon I came to sooner than he expected me to.”
He should have busted Kern’s skull wide open when he had the chance, the Kid thought bitterly.
“Get him on his feet and back on his horse,” Kern ordered.
“We’re not gonna kill him?” Bracken wanted to know. “Maybe find a nice ant hill and stake him out on it, like the Apaches do?”
Kern shook his head and said, “No, I was going to kill him at first, too, but I’ve decided we’re going to take him back to the hacienda. The general can figure out what to do with him. I’ve got a hunch, though, that before it’s over he may be wishing we’d gone ahead and found those ants.”
* * *
By the evening of Frank’s failed escape attempt, his headache had subsided to the point that he could ignore it. Conrad had done a good job of hitting him hard enough to knock him out without doing any permanent damage. Frank hoped he had suffered no permanent damage, anyway; he reckoned it might take a while to be sure about that.
He figured that under the circumstances, Ramirez might order that he didn’t get any supper, but footsteps sounded in the corridor about the usual time. When the door was unlocked and opened, though, it wasn’t one of the girls who brought him his meal. Instead, one of the Mexican revolutionaries carried in the food, and two more gun-wolves accompanied him. All three of them stood there and watched him eat a plate of cornbread and beans and drink a cup of the watery coffee. Two pointed shotguns at him, while the third leveled a long-barreled Remington. 44.
“You fellas must be really bored if you think this is an interesting way to pass the time,” Frank said around a mouthful of cornbread.
“Shut up and eat, gringo,” one of the Mexicans said.
When he was finished, they collected his plate and cup, then one of the shotgunners grinned and said, “You ought to be real proud of yourself, Morgan, considerin’ what you caused to happen to that gal.”
Frank’s head snapped up. “What are you talking about?”
“Florita. The general had her punished for tryin’ to help you escape.”
Frank couldn’t stop himself. He surged to his feet. The men stepped back and trained their weapons on him as their faces got intent . . . and a little bit nervous.
“That poor girl didn’t do anything—” Frank began.
“Don’t bother lyin’ about it. Bracken found the key to this cell in her pocket. She wouldn’t have had it on her if she hadn’t unlocked the door for you.”
Frank had never been a man who cursed a lot, but he bit back an oath now. The guards didn’t have the straight of things, exactly, but it didn’t matter. Ramirez had found out that Florita had done something to help Frank, and that was enough. He supposed that after she had locked the cell door when they stashed Hardy in here, she had slipped the key into her pocket and forgotten about it, what with everything else that had happened.
“What did the general do? Is Florita all right?”
“She’s alive, if that’s what you’re worried about. The general decided she had five lashes with a whip comin’ to her. Kern dealt ’em out. He put his back into it, too.”
Kern would die for that, Frank vowed. But someone else was even more to blame than the gunman.
Diego Ramirez. The debt the so-called general had to pay just kept growing larger.
“You settle down now, Morgan, and hope that boy of yours comes through with the ransom,” one of the men said as they backed out of the cell. “I suspect the general is startin’ to get a mite impatient.”
Another man added, “Maybe he should start cutting pieces off Morgan and sending them to the boy to convince him, no?”
That gave all of them a good laugh as the door clanged shut.
Anger seethed inside Frank the rest of that night and, after a few hours of restless sleep, into the next day. Another trio of armed men brought him his breakfast, but in the middle of the day, Beatriz came into the cell carrying a tray, accompanied by two of the bandits.
Frank stood up to take it from her and asked quietly, “Your cousin Florita, how is she?”
Beatriz looked down and didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I never meant for anything—”
“Step back, Morgan,” one of the guards snapped. “Girl, you get out of here.”
Beatriz started to turn away, but as she did, Frank said, “The time’s coming, Beatriz. This isn’t going to stand.”
Both guards chuckled at that. One of them said, “Sure, Morgan. Make promises you can’t keep. Convince all those peons to get their hopes up. We’ll just see what happens when our boys get back with that gold.”
“What gold?”
The other guard took hold of Beatriz’s arm and pushed her out of the cell. He glared at the other man as if telling him to shut up. They both went out, and the door slammed behind them.
Frank settled down to eat. As he did, he thought about what he had just heard. Some of the men had gone somewhere to get some gold. Nobody would just turn over riches to them, so that meant a robbery of some sort. They had gone to hold up a bank or a train.
More than likely, Ramirez would have sent a decent-sized force to carry out such a raid. So the number of men here at the stronghold had to be smaller than usual. A good time to make a move against Ramirez, Frank mused. Maybe Conrad would realize the same thing.
If Conrad was still here. The wild thought crossed Frank’s mind that Ramirez might have sent him with the others after that gold. He was convinced that Conrad was trying to work his way into the gang, and what better way to find out if a new man could be trusted than to send him along on a big job?
Unfortunately, locked in this cell, with his captors more alert than ever now, there wasn’t a thing he could do except wait. And waiting for action was mighty hard on a man like Frank Morgan . . .
; The rest of that day was long. Beatriz brought his supper but again wouldn’t speak to him or even look at him. She and Juana probably hated him because of what had happened to Florita, even though it wasn’t his fault.
The guards didn’t turn down the lamp at the end of the corridor at night, so the dim yellow light stayed the same all the time. It didn’t keep Frank from sleeping, so it didn’t matter to him. After spending some time, as usual, moving around as much as he could in order to keep his muscles loose, he stretched out uncomfortably on the floor and tried to doze off.
He hadn’t yet fallen asleep when he heard a hoot of laughter from one of the guards. The man said loudly, “Now, this is more like it! It’s damn well about time the general did somethin’ for us poor fellas stuck down here in the dungeon in the middle of the night.”
Frank stood up and moved to the little window in the door. Something stirred his instincts, a feeling in his gut that he needed to listen to this.
“Keep your voice down, amigo,” another man said, his accent marking him as one of the Mexicans. “Never draw attention to something good. Other men will just try to take it away from you.”
“Nobody’s takin’ this,” the gringo guard said. “Hell, I’m surprised they let you down here in the first place, girl.”
A woman’s voice said, “My cousins are upstairs with your friends, keeping them amused. But it was not fair to leave you two hombres with no tequila and no company.”
“Your cousin’s the one who got whipped, ain’t she?”
That made the visitor Beatriz.
“I have more than one cousin,” she answered. “But all of them are beautiful.”
“I’ll bet. Just like you. Gimme that jug, Paco.”
Frank smiled in the semidarkness. You could buy a man’s skill with a gun . . . but you couldn’t make him less stupid.
He heard more bold talk and more laughter from the other end of the corridor, followed ten minutes later by raucous snores that came from a pair of throats. Then quick footsteps along the hall from a slender, darting shape and the scrape of a key in the lock.
The Morgans Page 20