by Chris Barili
“Y’all know my friend, I believe,” he taunted in his wispy, too-young voice. “He means to keep you from following me.”
Frank jumped to his feet, taking aim at the boy’s galloping horse, but then the doors exploded off the Dampier House, peppering Frank with shards and splinters. Standing where the doors had been, towering to the top of the door frame, the prospector glared out at them, his eyes obsidian in the noon sun. His face was contorted now, like a second, hideous face had pushed its way to the surface, demonic and mad with rage.
He held a shotgun in one hand, braced against his hip, and his old revolver in the other.
Spike dove back behind the corner as the shotgun blasted away part of the siding. Frank rolled behind the trough again as forty-five caliber lead ripped and pinged around him.
The prospector laughed, the sound of a hundred demons rejoicing in death, reveling in the destruction of good. The shotgun roared again, and bullets ricocheted off the ground near Frank’s head. The old man never seemed to run out of rounds, no matter how often he fired.
Then a voice, high and squeaky, hollered over the gunshots, making the prospector pause.
“Hey, old timer!” Curtis yelled from the exploded doorway. “You smell like a corpse!”
The delay gave Frank the moment he needed. Rising to one knee, he fired a Holy-whiskey-coated round, striking the prospector in the shoulder. The old man rocked, bellowing in agony as smoke rose from the wound. Frank fired again and again, hitting him in the chest and leg. Spike let loose from the corner, too, and in an instant, smoke rose from all over the old man’s body, leaking from a half-dozen bullet holes.
He shrank, then, his body shriveling from its eight-foot height back to the crumpled, bent old man they’d seen in the pass outside Creede. His face remained grotesque, but he looked weak now. Decimated. His eyes opened wide with something Frank didn’t expect: fear.
Dropping the shotgun, the old man took off running down Division Street, not looking back.
Frank rushed to the porch to find Curtis unharmed, panting but grinning from ear to ear.
“That was right stupid, boy,” Frank scolded. “You could’ve been killed.”
“But I wasn’t.” He held up a folded piece of paper for Frank. “And I know where they’re going next. We can get Camille back.”
The paper—yellowed from smoke and age, like an old rancher’s teeth—turned out to be a map of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad, with a red circle drawn around Adair, Iowa.
Citizens had filed back into the street now, milling and whispering, and Frank could feel their eyes on him. Not needing any more attention, he folded the map and stuffed it in the pocket of his duster.
“All right, boys,” Frank said, striding up the hotel steps. “Gather up your things and let’s get some horses. We’ve got ground to cover.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Horses turned out to be a bad idea. Frank had already paid for three and found out the hard way they dislike the smell of death, especially when it’s climbing on their backs. They’d just started getting the horses calmed down when Batcho showed up and decided to scare them more, barking and yipping and growling until the mounts were uncontrollable. Then the coyote trotted off with what Frank swore was a smile on his face.
So they ended up getting their money back, minus a small fee for the inconvenience, and renting a private stage coach to Adair. They’d discussed taking the train, but never would have made it on time, having to stop in Des Moines. Short of changing horses halfway, the stage held their best hope of beating the new James gang to the spot.
Their only obstacle had been the wealthy family who’d already contracted the stage, but they got one whiff of Frank and Spike and decided to wait for the next day. Frank thought his cloud of black flies might have helped them decide, too.
Now the four of them—Frank, Spike, Curtis, and Batcho—sat on the worn leather seats of the stage as it thundered south. To their right, the setting sun drew long, distorted shadows across the prairie, golden grass swaying in the wind. The smells of old leather and dust filled the coach, but at least the horses couldn’t smell the corpses they were hauling.
“Outside Adair’s where the original gang tried their first train heist.” Spike had talked to the stage driver before they left, learning everything he could from the man. “Killed two people—a conductor and the engineer. Only made about a third of what they thought, since the gold shipment they were after went on another train.”
“So, another mistake being rectified,” Frank muttered. “But there’s more to this than just re-doing their fouled up robberies.”
Spike nodded. “They stole forty-thousand dollars from the bank in Northfield. They have enough TNT to blow up a mountain. And they pick up men in every city. That’s not for your average heist.”
“Or no heist at all,” Frank suggested. “Curtis, you got that newspaper I bought?”
The boy nodded and dug the rolled-up paper out from under his seat.
“Good,” Frank told him. “Now look in the letters to the editor section and see what’s there.”
Curtis flipped through the paper, stopping a few pages in. His eyes went wide and his mouth formed an “O.”
“How’d you know?” he asked.
Frank shrugged. “I didn’t know much about Jesse when I was alive, but I recalled he was always writing letters to the papers. Go ahead, then…what’s it say?”
Curtis scanned the page, shaking his head. “Seems like Mr. James thinks the south shoulda won the war. His letter kinda rambles about Union crimes against the south and how only his gang fights for the average southerner now, but he finishes with something strange: ‘July 16th is our Independence Day, rooted in the clay from which we came and to which we will return forever. With the blood of our oppressors and that of innocents shall we rise again.’”
“So, this is all about the south getting what’s theirs?” Spike asked, barely lifting his head from the leather cushion.
“Sure sounds like it,” Frank answered. Batcho’s ears perked up and he sniffed at the newspaper. “Jesse never did accept the south’s defeat, so he probably blames the north for him going to Hell, too. If he robs from the north and gives to the south, he gets some revenge.”
Batcho sniffed the paper again, this time growling and ruffling the fur on his neck. He looked at Frank, whined, then growled at the paper again.
“Damned coyote,” Frank spat. “Other than biting the prospector, you’ve done us no good at all. You almost got us lost, scared those horses, and now you’re growling at a newspaper. You’re as worthless here as you were in the underworld.”
Batcho sighed and put his chin on his paws.
An hour later, Curtis was snoring, his head on Spike’s shoulder while the stout barkeep coated more bullets in what remained of their Holy-whiskey.
“You’d have made a fine father,” Frank murmured.
Spike looked up and studied him through squinted eyes, his brow wrinkled so much the dead, dry skin cracked.
“That’s why you couldn’t shoot him, isn’t it?” Spike asked. “Because he’s in a kid’s body and you…”
Frank looked out the window, into the growing darkness. The stage had slowed to avoid injuring the horses, but he could see little in the shadows.
“Leave it be,” he warned.
“You can’t dwell on that now. We need you.”
Frank sighed and took his hat off long enough to run his fingers through his dead hair. It had started to soften a bit, as if life were slowly returning to his body one strand at a time.
“What would you know about it? You never shot your own boy.”
“You didn’t know,” Spike reassured him. “You couldn’t have—”
“Don’t matter. I know what it’s like to shoot a boy, and to lose one. Jeb Fisher is someone’s boy, and if I can find a way, I’ll capture James’ spirit without killing the body it lives in. I owe his father that much, at least.”
Spike clapped Frank on the shoulder.
“The judges sent a gunfighter on this mission, Frank. They had plenty of dead lawmen, plenty of bounty hunters, and plenty of other men. But they sent you. They knew your reputation and sent you because of it.
“You don’t send a gunfighter to catch people, Frank. You send ‘em to kill. If we’re gonna win this, you’d better get to killin’.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
They arrived at the train depot in Adair just before nine in the morning of their second day, their third set of horses lathered and huffing, their driver eying his passengers as if they were ghosts. Frank wondered if the man had any idea now close that was to the truth.
The station at Adair was a simple, steep-roofed building with white clapboard sides and no platform. Passengers milled around on the hard-packed dirt surface, their clothes caked in dust. Anvil clouds rose in the far west, though, threatening a soaking later. A single locomotive, gleaming and black, puffed smoke ahead of its mix of passenger and boxcars. Its whistle blew, making Curtis jump and Batcho tuck his tail.
“The robbery happened about a mile and a half west of town,” Spike told the others. “There’s a stone marker, commemorating those who died. I’ll see if I can find a wagon to carry us the rest of the way.”
“We’ll walk,” Frank said, starting down the road away from the depot. The train lurched forward at the same time, chugging west, its cars slow to move behind it, as if they longed to stay and rest at the depot.
Curtis took off at a run for the nearest boxcar. When he reached it, he ran along beside the train, matching its speed.
“This will be faster!” he shouted. “Come on, quick now!”
Spike grinned at Frank. “Grit.”
Then he huffed and puffed his way alongside the boy. Frank sighed, then followed, Batcho yipping at his heels.
Spike grasped the handle on the boxcar door and heaved it open just as a shout rose from the depot. Spike hauled himself inside, then tugged Curtis in with him. The train had picked up speed now, and Frank struggled to keep up. He managed to grasp Spike’s wrist, though, and the stronger man pulled him inside.
That left Batcho. The coyote ran alongside the train, moving as fast as his legs would move, scruffy tail streaming behind him like a banner.
“Jump!” Frank yelled. “We’ll pull you in!”
But the coyote gave up, slowing to a trot, then a walk, then finally sitting beside the track, his tongue lolling out as he watched his companions go.
“Damned worthless coyote,” Frank muttered.
“He’ll find us,” Spike said. “Inside that coyote head is the mind of an Indian guide.”
Frank grunted, then sat with his legs dangling out the door. Curtis and Spike stood behind him in silence.
When the marker came into view on the side of the tracks, Frank heaved himself out of the car, rolling when he hit the grass-covered ground. Spike and Curtis followed, the boy doing surprisingly well, as if he’d jumped off trains before.
The three stood, waiting for the train to pass.
“What now?” Spike asked.
“Now, we wait.” Frank snatched a long stalk of prairie grass and chewed on it, his hand resting on the handle of his pistol. “And when the James gang shows, we kill them, save Camille, and drag Jesse’s spirit back to Hell, screaming.”
Thunder clouds stalked in the distance, behind a small stand of trees, but the sky overhead was bluer than Frank had ever seen.
“We’d best hide in those trees,” he said.
The shade cooled them, but did nothing to relieve the thick, wetness of the air.
Frank took up position behind an ancient oak, peering out around its fat, textured trunk to watch the tracks. Curtis and Spike sat, backs against trees, and closed their eyes.
“Last time they robbed a train here,” Spike said, “they removed a section of track. Train crashed, people died. You reckon they’d make the same mistake again?”
Frank shrugged. “Don’t know, but I don’t suppose a soul condemned to Hell rightly cares who he kills in the living world.”
“He cares,” Curtis said, not even opening his eyes as he spoke. “He’s trying to paint himself the hero, judging from that letter. Can’t kill innocent people and still be a hero.”
Spike raised an eyebrow at Frank. “Young man has a point.”
Frank nodded. “You’re proving more useful than that damned coyote guide. Just stay out of sight when the shooting starts. You’re the only one of us with a life left to live.”
“So, you three are really dead?” Curtis asked.
Frank nodded again, still watching the tracks in both directions. A smudge of smoke rose from the east.
“How’d you come back?”
Frank gave the boy the short version of their story, starting with the judges, and Curtis listened in silence, nodding his head from time to time. When Frank finished, the smoke on the horizon had grown and in the distance, a whistle blew. The train appeared as a thin, black worm sliding toward them across the rolling terrain.
“Frank?” Curtis didn’t look at him, the boy’s eyes far away and dark, like the undersides of the storm clouds coming in from the west.
Frank grunted.
“Since there’s a Hell, you suppose there’s a Heaven too?”
“Residents of Hell seemed to think so.”
That painted a smile on the boy’s lips, though his eyes remained far away. “Then that must be where my parents are. And it must mean I’ll see ‘em when I go there, too. They’ll be waiting for me.”
Staring at Curtis, Frank felt a bond with him, one he’d never had with his own boy. It made him question if bringing him along had been the right thing.
The train whistle blew again, and Frank readied himself.
“Well, you just stay hidden like I told you,” he warned. “Don’t be in such a hurry to make it out of this world.”
Curtis didn’t reply, but continued to stare off into the distance, like he could see his ma and pa waiting for him.
“We wait here until the James gang makes their move on the train,” Frank told Spike. “With any luck, we can catch them by surprise. Shoot for the head, especially if our prospector friend shows up. I’ll handle Jesse myself.”
He patted the lasso on his hip and the iron cuffs under his duster. He’d take the Fisher boy alive. Killing a child was not an option.
The locomotive was visible now, a gleaming black machine burping clouds of smoke, looking like it was bound for destination: Hell itself. The ground shook as it reached them, and the engineer blew the whistle again, making Curtis cover his ears. Frank studied the train and its surroundings, searching for any sign of the James gang. Flat cars, box cars, and hoppers clattered past on the track, with no sign of the gang or its leader. Finally, the caboose streaked by, a flash of red following a snake of browns and grays, and still the new James gang was nowhere to be seen.
As the caboose lumbered out of sight, Spike stood and stretched.
“That was a freight train anyway,” he said, pacing around their little copse. “The gang preferred to rob passenger trains, so if the safe was empty, they could steal from the passengers.”
Frank acknowledged him with a curt nod, but something in his gut felt wrong. He went over things in his mind, from the map to what the gang had done so far. Adair had been circled on the map. Like Creede and Northfield, it marked a wrong Jesse needed to make right. It was almost too perfect, and for an instant, Frank wondered if it was a trap.
He shook off the feeling. This had to be it.
So, like Spike, he paced their hideaway, only Curtis still lounging against a tree. The day wore on, the sun turning their shaded spot into an oven, and the clouds rolled closer,
pushing the humidity up until Frank thought he could have taken bites of the air. Mosquitoes found them, whining in his ear and trying to bite him, mingling with the constant swarm of flies. Curtis swatted and swiped to keep them off him, but Frank and Spike didn’t have to bother. Bites would heal before starting to itch.
The next train blew its whistle around three hours after the first, startling Curtis from a light sleep and making Frank look west, where a tendril of smoke rose to merge with the gray of the cloud base above it. Flashes of lightning lit up the clouds, and the train sped east, fleeing the wrath of the storm.
This was a short, sleek passenger train that streaked by them in just a few seconds, not even slowing, its passengers staring out their windows, unaware Frank and his comrades were staring back.
As the passenger train slipped east into the wavy hills around Des Moines, Frank cussed under his breath.
“Still no sign of the gang,” he muttered. “I’m starting to think we got the wool pulled over our eyes.”
“There’s one more westbound passenger train due in ninety minutes,” Curtis said. “The Des Moines to Omaha evening run. I asked around at the depot, and it normally carries armed Army officers, so I’m betting it has a gold shipment.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?” Spike asked.
“Sorry,” Curtis said. “Frank had his mind set on waiting here.”
Frank rolled his eyes, but sure enough, ninety minutes later, as the sun dipped behind the storm clouds and a few drops of rain pattered the grove around them, a train whistle blew to their east. Lightning flashed and a few seconds later, thunder pealed across the plains. Frank’s gut twisted—the thunder seemed somehow prophetic, like some sort of omen or warning that evil rode on the clouds and that the world of the living should move aside and make way.
The train came into sight over a hill, smoke erupting from its stack as it sped across the open plain. With the sun almost down and the lightning their only true source of illumination, Frank caught only glimpses of the locomotive, with its light a shining eye in the dark between flashes. Slowly, the train’s roar took hold in Frank’s knees.