“I did. Didn’t see anyone who looked like the family, but a couple of men are definitely heeled. Could be Pinkerton men. Could be just travelers. My guess is they’re Rigg’s men.”
“Rigg’s men is a safer bet,” Mackey agreed. “How many?”
“Five possibilities,” Billy said. “None of them were sitting together. All of them eyed me as I walked through the cars. I tend to get that when they see a man of my persuasion walking through a train not wearing a uniform or carrying a silver tray.”
“All of them look you over?”
“All except one,” Billy said. “Lean man in a moustache and a bowler two cars ahead. Was awfully interested in the paper he was reading, too. Got the feeling he was working real hard not to look at me.”
“Probably because he already knew who you were. Find out where he got on.”
“Already did. The conductor said he boarded the train after us in Helena. He’s the one I pegged for a Rigg man.”
Mackey kept looking out the window. “Might be best if you took another look around, see where he is now.”
“Sounds like a good idea.” Billy stood up and moved to the door. “You want anything?”
“Nothing that’s on this train.” He looked away from the window for the first time in hours. “Take your time walking through the train. Make sure they see you’re alone. Maybe it’ll make them think now’s their time to take a run at me.”
Billy figured that was what Mackey had in mind. “Hopefully, it’s just my nerves talking. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“It’s something.” Mackey went back to looking out the window. “Your nerves have saved our lives more times than I can count.”
Figuring his friend was done talking for now, Billy went off to tend to the business at hand.
* * *
Billy found he drew even more looks from the passengers this time around as he slowly made his way through the train cars. They all quickly looked away.
Couples quickly whispered to themselves as he passed. Under other circumstances, Billy would have enjoyed the attention. But for now, he saw everyone as a threat. Rigg could have hired any one of them to try to take their lives, even the women. The retired colonel was nothing if not crafty.
Billy spotted the man in the bowler hat still seated where he had found him before, two cars ahead of their compartment. He was no longer reading his paper and sat with his eyes closed. But he did not have the relaxed look of a man asleep.
He looked like a man who was waiting for something.
Billy took his time walking past him and into the next car. Knowing the man would probably be looking to see if he stopped, Billy kept moving until he got to the farthest car in the train. He found the conductor, a roundish man with a round head that had a conductor’s cap perched unevenly atop it. He was the same conductor who had told him the man in question had boarded the train in Helena.
“I need you to go back there and see if the man we’re interested in is still in his seat.”
“Was he there when you walked through just now?” the fat man asked.
“He was, but I want to make sure he didn’t get up since then. He looked like he was sleeping, but I think he might’ve been faking it for my benefit.”
“I don’t see why he’d get up now. I’m sure he’s still where you found him, enjoying the ride.”
Billy knew train conductors were famous for their laziness, but this one was working awfully hard at living up to the reputation.
He grabbed the fat man and shoved him toward the door. “Get moving. If you get to his spot and he’s not there, take off your hat. I’ll worry about the rest.”
The conductor scrambled to open the door and got going.
Billy stood by the door and watched the fat man keep his balance with surprising ease as the train rocked back and forth along the rails. The conductor had just made it to the car in question, when the cars moved out of alignment as the train went around a curve, obscuring his view of the conductor.
Billy punched the door in frustration. Come on!
It took a few seconds for the train cars to align again before Billy could see through to where the conductor was. He was well past the section of the car where the bowler man had been sitting.
And the conductor was not wearing his hat.
The man in the bowler was gone.
Billy bolted into the next car and began running up the aisle. People gasped and leaned out of his way as he ran past them. He opened the doors to the next car and continued through that one and to the next, finally catching up to the conductor and knocked him out of the way, sending the fat man onto the laps of the couple who had whispered about Billy when he had passed through a few minutes before.
He cut through the last car between him and Aaron and saw the man, without his bowler now, reaching into a bag as he walked closer to Aaron’s compartment.
He opened the door and was ready to barge into the last car when the train hit another turn, and the cars went out of alignment again. Billy almost lost his footing and spilled out of the train but managed to grab onto the door to keep himself upright.
By the time the cars once again straightened out, Billy saw Aaron had his attacker pinned against the window by the throat. A coach gun had fallen to the floor at the man’s feet.
Billy opened the door and rushed to join Aaron. The bowler man’s eyes were bulging and his face had turned beet red. He feebly slapped at Mackey’s arm in vain, trying to break his grip before he strangled to death.
But Mackey’s arm could not be moved, and his grip did not falter.
Billy reached his friend’s side just as the attacker gurgled his last breath before life slowly left him. When his eyes went soft and his body sagged, Billy knew the man was dead.
Mackey let go, and the dead man collapsed to the train floor.
The fat conductor gasped when he saw the sight of the dead man on the floor of the train car. His train car.
“Good God. What have you done? What’s going on here?”
Mackey did not look at the conductor when he said, “Billy, take care of that.” He grabbed the dead man by the collar. “I’ll take care of this.” He looked at his deputy. “Give me your knife before you go.”
Billy could usually figure out what Mackey would need before he asked for it, but he had not figured on this. “What do you need my knife for, Aaron?”
“Already told you. To finish up here.” He held out his hand and waited for his deputy to hand him his knife. “Time to remind Colonel Rigg that old habits die hard, Sergeant.”
A chill went through Billy at the sound of his old rank, for he suddenly knew why Aaron wanted the knife.
He pulled it from the scabbard on the back of his belt and handed it over, handle first.
Mackey took it from him and dragged the corpse into their compartment. “Tell the conductor this compartment stays shut until we reach Dover Station, or I won’t be happy.”
Mackey slid the compartment door shut.
The conductor was holding his hand to his chest, his eyes full of horrible questions.
Questions Billy did not dare answer.
CHAPTER 28
Early the next morning, Colonel Nathan Rigg cleaned his nails with a telegram envelope as he waited at the station for the train from Helena to arrive.
He was in wonderful humor, for today was a special day. One that would be long remembered as the day he would finally see the end of the insolent Aaron Mackey and his colored boy Billy Sunday. It had been a day he had waited a long time to see. He had even taken a bath, shaved closely, and put an extra shine on his boots and pistols for the occasion.
This was a moment he wanted to savor alone, which was why he had ordered his men to carry out other tasks. There were not many of them left after the fire, and there was much for them to do to bring order back to town.
Rigg looked up from his grooming and was warmed by the sound of chains snapping all over town as teams of horses took to clearing away the debris of wha
t was left of the old Dover Station.
The odor of burnt buildings had always been a pleasant smell to him. It meant renewal. For Rigg, it meant forty percent of the future that was to come.
Some of the old-timers who had survived the fires, like Doc Ridley, had denounced what had happened as God’s vengeance for the town’s decent into wickedness and villainy at the hands of James Grant. Ridley claimed the rioters and looters had merely been the tools of the Almighty for smiting the town just as He had done to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Mr. Grant had ordered Rigg to personally shoot the mouthy old fool several times, but Rigg had decided to let him live. He enjoyed the Bible-thumping doctor’s rants, especially when they were aimed at him whenever he walked down the street.
Every able-bodied man still in town was working day and night to clear the burned-out buildings and dead bodies from the streets, while Doc Ridley clutched his Bible and hurled insults at him. Words were all he could hurl. The notion of trying to kill him had probably never entered his saintly mind.
Rigg was glad Doc Ridley had not done anything foolish enough to force his hand. He found the doctor’s impotent rage entertaining, and he imagined entertainment would be in short supply in Dover Station for the foreseeable future.
Rigg had enjoyed reading The Dover Station Record’s detailed account of the “Fall of Dover Station.” He especially enjoyed the widely differing death counts that seemed to grow larger the farther away the other papers that covered the story were located from the scene. The Record reported forty dead, a number that did not include the ten who had died during the panic at the mayor’s swearing-in ceremony. Papers as far away as San Francisco said the entire town had been swept away in a firestorm that had taken hundreds of lives, leaving Dover Station a virtual ghost town. He had not read papers from back east yet, but imagined the New York dailies would say it was the worst tragedy since the burning of Atlanta.
Let them speculate, Mr. Grant had said. All the more glorious for our cause when we rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
All the more profitable for Rigg, too.
But paradise, Rigg decided, was a bit farther in the distance than he would have liked. Mr. Grant’s newfound sobriety following the fire had served to make him particularly tedious as far as Rigg was concerned. But he could tolerate a certain amount of tedium while his money still spent well with the promise of more to follow.
Grant seemed intent on living up to his promise of including him in on forty percent of what the newly formed Grant Land Office Company brought in. As a man who had always owned one hundred percent of nothing, Rigg liked the idea of having a piece of the future. A future he and his men now controlled.
Almost all of the old wooden buildings in town had burned to the ground after the General Store exploded. The ammunition old Mackey stored was set off by the fire, sending burning cinders across half the town. Without a fire brigade to combat it, the flames had spread quickly. Not even Mr. Grant had expected so much damage.
Rigg laughed at the irony of it all. The store of the man credited as one of the settlers of the town had played a key role in its ultimate destruction. And it had taken the man himself with it.
Rigg’s only regret were the six men he had lost in the fire. Not one of them had made it out alive. When the pile had finally cooled down enough for the draft horses to sift through the wreckage, he found them all scattered throughout the store. Each of them had been shot at least once. Most more than that.
Brendan Mackey had been found, too, still clutching the Winchester he had used to kill his own murderers. Under different circumstances, Nathan Rigg imagined the old man would have been someone he would have liked to know, maybe even respect.
Rigg sighed and went back to cleaning his nails. Alas, fortune had other plans.
He smiled again when he saw the headline of The Record folded beside him on the bench.
JAMES GRANT VOWS TO REBUILD!
FORMS NEW ENTERPRISE
FOR THAT PURPOSE
Grant’s words still thundered in his ears as he addressed the stunned townspeople from atop the rubble of Mackey’s store. He was freshly shaven and reasonably sober, wearing a black suit that was appropriately solemn given the occasion.
“The old Dover Plains may have burned away, but the heart of the town still beats within each of us stronger than ever. Our bank building, our Municipal Building, our sawmill, our rail station, and our newspaper building are all still standing defiant in the face of defeat. These are the buildings I helped build when I first led this town. And I vow, with your help, to replace every business and every structure with new buildings that will withstand any fire or torment visited upon us. Let us forget the past and begin anew to forge a new Dover Station that will be the envy of any town this side of the Mississippi!”
Yes, Rigg had to hand it to Grant. He was a pretty good speaker when he was sober, and he had been sober for several days now. Part of him thought Grant might even make good on his promise. Rigg certainly hoped he did. After all, forty percent was nothing to blow one’s nose at.
He looked up from cleaning his nails when he heard heavy footsteps on the station floorboards. He feared it might be one of his men to tell him Jerry Halstead had found a way out of the jailhouse. Having to hunt down the gunman would only serve to ruin this special day.
Rigg was glad to see it was only Paul Bishop, lugging his own bags as he waited for the train.
The tall, dignified banker did not look so dignified now. He looked pale and frail, as if he had aged twenty years and lost twenty pounds since the riots had broken out two days before.
Another man might have left Bishop to dwell on his defeat in peace, but Rigg was unlike other men. He never passed up an opportunity to gloat.
He tucked the telegraph envelope he had been using to clean his nails into his coat pocket and stood to approach Bishop.
“What a sight indeed,” Rigg smiled. “The cock of the walk slinking out of town. Except he’s not a rooster. He’s just a common cur summoned back to his master in New York City with his tail between his legs. My how the mighty have fallen.”
“Shut your filthy mouth, Rigg,” Bishop spat without looking at him. “Shut it right now.”
“Your manners, sir.” He pulled back his jacket and placed his hands on his hips. The handle of the Colt Thunderer glinted proudly in the morning light. “Us gentlemen must not forget ourselves, no matter how dark the hour might be.”
“You’re no gentleman,” Bishop said. “You’re a butcher. A common thug. A cancer that will keep growing until it kills the very thing it lives on.” He straightened his coat, as if to salvage some degree of dignity. “My only regret is I won’t be here to see you get what you deserve.”
“Been called back to New York City, have you?” Rigg asked, though he already knew he had been. One of Grant’s first actions after things settled down was to regain control of all the enterprises he had lost in the previous year. He focused on reestablishing control over the telegraph office first. Information was power, especially in times like these. “Guess your bosses don’t have the stomach for a fight.”
Bishop finally looked at him. “They don’t have the stomach for carnage, Colonel Rigg. They don’t see any value in continuing their association with a town that seems so intent on destroying itself. They intend on divesting their holdings in Dover Station immediately.”
Rigg had already known that, too. Bishop had received the telegram from Mr. Rice late the previous night, recalling him to New York. He thought news of his triumph over Mr. Rice and Mr. Van Dorn might send Grant jumping back into the bottle in glorious victory.
Rigg had never been so glad to be wrong. Now that power was shifting back his way, Grant acted like a man reborn.
“It’s a shame you have to return home like this.” Rigg beamed. “I was hoping you’d stick around for a while, sir. See what we can make of this place with your own two eyes.”
“I’ve already seen enough to last me
for a lifetime,” Bishop said. “You, Grant, and that mad Hancock woman are welcome to have this place. Mr. Rice and Mr. Van Dorn will invest their money in more civilized locations in the territory, where their holdings will be secure from the likes of you.”
“Secure,” Rigg repeated, “for now. But don’t count old Jimmy Grant short. He’s a man of vision and determination.” He dropped his voice to a theatrical whisper when he said, “Not to mention the small fortune he managed to siphon off you morons back when he was running things. Yes, sir. Swiped it right out from under your high noses.”
Rigg looked out on the wreckage of the town and injected a dose of pride in his voice as he said, “Yes, sir. It’ll take us a year or two before we have this place back on its feet. Maybe three on the outside. But we’ll get it done, then move on to the next town and the next. We are a force of nature, Mr. Bishop. Grant and Rigg. You’ll be hearing from us again real soon.”
Rigg’s heart skipped a beat when he heard the train whistle echo through the valley. He had been so busy gloating, he had nearly forgotten his real purpose for being at the station. The train from Helena was almost there. His glory was riding the rails and nearly at hand.
He was suddenly in a generous mood. “You’re not exactly my first choice to share this moment with, Mr. Bishop, but when the train comes, I’d like to show you something. Something that will prove to you the depth of our resolve and the length of our reach. Something you’ll be proud to tell your fancy bosses about in New York City. A glimpse into Montana’s future.”
“I’m afraid I have other commitments,” Bishop sneered, “though I thank you for the kind offer.”
Rigg patted the Colt on his hip. “It wasn’t exactly an invitation.”
The businessman looked away from him. “A gentleman indeed.”
* * *
When the train grinded to a halt at the station, Rigg pulled Bishop on board before the conductors had a chance to step off the train. He pushed aside the passengers who were waiting to disembark, shoving them aside as he rushed headlong toward the compartment where he knew Mackey and Sunday were lying dead. The telegraph he had received from Chidester Station had given him the compartment number where he could find them.
The Dark Sunrise Page 21