Dooley just had to live to see Cheyenne. Or Deadwood. Or, hell, even Ogallala. Even tomorrow morning in North Platte, Nebraska.
They had reached the train yard, which was practically a city in itself.
A flat-switched yard with twenty tracks, the darkened yard must have covered acres and acres. A locomotive, belching smoke, hissing, squeaking, and churning, bumped two boxcars and sent them coasting down the “lead” to a resting place.
“Ain’t this romantic, love?” Zee asked.
She had to shout. The noise of engines and iron and cursing railroaders had turned deafening. Dooley could not hear clearly, but the lights from the headlights of locomotives and the lanterns of railroad men made seeing everything a little easier, and Dooley saw clearly.
“Look out!” He pushed Zee aside just as the knife flashed past.
“What the . . .” Zee tripped over the rails and landed sprawling on the track. Dooley leaped back as the knife turned toward him.
A giant hand held the knife, although the hand was nowhere near the size of the late Ewing Atkinson’s, and the knife was a jackknife and not a bowie the size of a cavalry saber.
The hand belonged to a man in brogans, striped denim trousers, a plaid shirt, dirty red bandanna, and railroaders cap. Gray stubble lined his cheek, and a scar crossed from the corner of his left eye, over his nose, and across his right eye—if he had a right eye—to the forehead and disappeared into the man’s gray hair and blue cap.
Dooley could not help but stare at the hole in the man’s head where an eye should have been. But he quickly jumped back as the knife came toward him again.
“Right nice-lookin’ lady you got with you, mister,” the man said in a panting Irish brogue. “I think I’ll take her after I gut you like a fish.”
Dooley ducked away from the knife again.
He chanced a quick glance toward another engine bumping another U.P. freight car, this one a flatbed, down another track, and wanted to call out for help, but knew how fruitless that would be. No one could hear him, and even though Dooley could see the workers several tracks away clearly, he knew they couldn’t see him, or Zee, or the one-eyed man with the knife.
“I appreciate ya bringin’ that sweet-lookin’ thing here fer me to enjoy, laddie,” the man with the knife said. And Dooley wondered if having just one eye could ruin a man’s vision.
Dooley tripped over another rail, landed hard on the crossties, and saw the man shift the knife quickly, into a throwing position, and Dooley reached for the Colt on his hip—wondering why he had not thought to pull his revolver before—and then a whistle screamed.
Bracing himself for the searing pain of a knife entering his belly, Dooley brought the gun up, but before he even pulled back on the hammer, the one-eyed man’s good eye was closing, and the railroader was dropping to his knees, the jackknife slipping from his fingers, and he was turning his head, and then he was falling, crashing against the other rail with a sickening thud. The man’s legs shuddered, and he pulled himself into a ball like an infant. He stopped moving.
Dooley pushed himself to his feet, holstered his Colt, and saw Zee Dobbs rushing to his arms, hugging him tightly.
“Love, oh, love, oh, Dooley-Dooley-Dooley . . .” She buried her face into his chest and squeezed him hard. “You saved my life, love. You sweet, brave, boy. You saved poor little me.”
The barrel of her revolver—the one she had used to put a bullet in the railroader’s back—burned Dooley’s side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Mr. Dobbs . . .” Dooley tried again back in front of the Red Dog Saloon.
“Hubert, boy. Any cur that saves my onliest daughter from a fate worser than death can call me Hubert.”
“Yes, but, see, it was more like Zee saved my bacon . . . Hubert.”
“Nonsense,” Zee said. “You shoulda seen Doosey, Pa. How brave he was. We oughts to celebrate.”
Dobbs shook his head. “No time fer that, sweetie pie. But I’s beholden to ye, Mannihan. I’s truly beholden to ye.” He stuck out his right hand. Sighing, Dooley shook it.
Dobbs turned to his daughter. “This man y’all kilt. Did he have any money on him?”
“Nothin’ but a jackknife, Pa,” Zee told him. “Dooney insisted that we leave it, and leave him.”
“Good jackknife?”
“Fair to middlin’.”
Dobbs’s stare turned harder as he considered Dooley, but softened as Dooley began to explain.
“The engine’s whistle drowned out the gunshot, but I figured it would be best to leave the body where it fell, and get Zee to safety. The knife would be evidence for the U.S. marshal, or the county sheriff, or the local lawman, or the U.P. railroad officers. They’d likely figure that the man had met his death while trying to commit a crime.” He paused. “I mean, they certainly won’t attribute that to the Dobbs-Handley Gang.”
“Smart thinkin’, son. But we best gather up the boys and get out of North Platte before they find that low-down dirty dog.”
* * *
And so they left North Platte, Nebraska, under the cover of darkness and made their way along the South Platte River west, did not stop when the sun rose, barely stopped for a noon meal and to rest their horses and stolen mules, and made another ten miles before camping that night.
There, Zee told her version of what had happened, and how Dooley had saved her from a fate worse than death, and Dooley felt men coming over to shake his hand, pat his back, or just give him that nod that said more than words or handshakes or pats on the back ever could. He had been accepted into the gang of cutthroats, for even the worst of the killers who rode with Hubert Dobbs and Frank Handley (now that Ewing Atkinson was dead and buried and his reward paid off) would never, ever, have ill designs on a woman—especially one that looked like Zerelda Dobbs.
Well, one man did not come over to shake Dooley’s hand, or offer any word of praise, or pat his back, or give him that all-knowing look.
In his bedroll near the stolen farm wagon, Doc Watson merely sipped coffee and cleaned his revolver. He did look at Dooley when all the praisers and patters and head-nodders had returned to their plates of salt pork and beans, and it was an all-knowing look, too, but Doc Watson knew the truth.
* * *
Ogallala had also been founded when the Union Pacific was pushing rails westward to link the oceans, but it had never amounted to much until a year or so back. That’s when the town had been laid out and when the first cattle from Texas began arriving. The city had grown with the cattle industry, and so had the city’s cemetery, a well-used patch of ground called Boot Hill. It was even on a hill, a real hill, because this far west, the land began to rise.
Front Street in Ogallala was longer and wilder than the one in North Platte, and the cattle pens sprawled, but the rail yard was not nearly as complex as North Platte’s.
A trail herd from Texas had arrived, so the town was booming. The gang rode past the livery stable, the Cowboy’s Rest Saloon, the undertakers, the lawmen, the hotel, the stores, the brothels, the gambling parlors, the cafés, the hotels, but before they got to Boot Hill, they pulled into a wagon yard. There, Frank Handley and Doc Watson negotiated a reasonable price for the crew to spend the night, feed and grain the livestock, and have a pretty fair night.
“Fall, Parker,” Hubert Dobbs said while the men unsaddled their mounts and unhitched the team of mules from the stolen farm wagon. “You boys can go to one of the saloons first. On account you didn’t get to in North Platte. Nobody else leaves this wagon yard, though. Till I get back.”
“Where you goin’, Pa?” Zee asked.
“Post office. Then find me a newspaper. I want to make sure that dead man Dooley killed . . .”
Dooley instinctively started to raise his hand to correct the outlaw again that he had killed nobody in North Platte, but lowered it when he realized how fruitless that would have been.
“. . . ain’t caused no stir.”
Zee stood next to Doole
y. She leaned her head close to his and whispered, “He always does this, Doomey. Thinks of some reason to go see the wanted posters, see which one of the boys is on the rise, so to speak. What all is you wanted fer, love?”
“I’m not wanted for anything,” he told her.
She snorted as her father continued. “Now, as soon as I’m back, we’ll do us some drinkin’ and gamblin’ and whorin’, but we ain’t robbin’ nothin’ here, neither. No shootin’, no killin’, no stealin’, no nothin’. Too many damned cowboys in this burg, and cowboys can clutter up anythin’.” He pointed at Fall. “You recollect what happened that time in Ellsworth, don’t you, Parker?”
“I’m Fall,” Fall said.
“Sure, you recollect. Damned cowboys. Liked to have gotten us all killed.” He eyed Dooley. “We was ridin’ out after robbin’ the bank, and those damned waddies was ridin’ right at us. Not to stop us. They was just shootin’ out the street lamps. Hoorawin’ the town. Damnedest hoss wreck you ever seen. Barely got out of that burg afore the law was upon us.” His head shook. “So none of that. We lost Fall that day.”
“We lost Smalls,” Fall corrected. “I’m Fall.”
“Besides,” Dobbs concluded, “I’ve been doin’ some considerations and I’ve decided that we don’t rob nothin’, don’t kill nobody, we become peaceable citizens till we gets to Cheyenne. Then, maybe we get ourselves a stake by robbin’ that club or a bank, or a U.P. express, and then we set up an operation in Deadwood that’ll make the James-Younger Gang look like a bunch of nuns on Easter mornin’.”
With that, he checked the loads in his revolver and nodded at Fall and Parker. They walked out of the wagon yard, and the trail dust from two thousand longhorn cattle quickly swallowed them.
There wasn’t much for Dooley to do except tend to General Grant—and the stolen mules, since no one else in the gang volunteered. He led the mules to the water trough, dropped some grain in a feed bucket, and rubbed down the gelding, cleaned the hooves. The horse nuzzled him as he fed the bay a sugar cube.
“You haven’t had a good run, have you, General?” Dooley said softly. “Been hitched to that wagon for so long. But don’t worry. We’ll get you out of here somehow, some way. You and Blue.”
The blue-eyed dog had come over, and so Dooley patted the horse’s neck and squatted to rub Blue’s fur. The dog rolled over, and Dooley rubbed his belly. He stared through the fence posts of the wagon yard at the cattle town in western Nebraska.
A town like Ogallala could offer Dooley plenty of opportunities, more than he had seen since Dodge City, Kansas. Some herds just stopped in Ogallala on their way to the Powder River range in Wyoming, or maybe even Deadwood in the Black Hills. After all, miners had to eat, and a savvy cattleman could make a small fortune selling a herd in a town like that. Providing, of course, they weren’t jumped by Sioux and got their hair lifted.
Or Dooley could stay in town, gamble. He didn’t need to get to the Black Hills, especially if Hubert Dobbs, Frank Handley, and Doc Watson planned on settling in that area to rob and steal and kill and plunder. Ogallala seemed peaceful compared to Deadwood.
And Dooley might even find a job on some cattle drive, drift on to Wyoming—but not the Black Hills—or hire on with a kindly rancher, and head south to Texas or Kansas or New Mexico or Colorado or anywhere that was far, far away from Zee Dobbs, her father, and the killers she rode with.
Or, hell, Dooley figured even if he could wind up back in Des Moines, Iowa, alive, that would suit him right down to the ground.
* * *
Hubert Dobbs returned two hours later. He turned the boys, and his daughter, loose, after reminding them about the restrictions on killing, stealing, and other criminal acts. He did not, however, let Dooley go with them.
“You stick with me, sonny,” the outlaw leader said. “Get a good rest. I got me an idea, and I want you to ride out a ways with me come first light. You can ride that fine bay you got, kid. And bring that smart dog of yourn, too.”
That got Dooley hoping. Was Dobbs serious? Or would someone else ride out with them—Zee, for instance? He refused to get his hopes up, until the next morning. After breakfast in the wagon yard, Hubert Dobbs saddled the big horse he rode, and Dooley saddled General Grant.
“We’ll be gone two, four days,” Dobbs told Handley, Zee, and Doc Watson. “I heard there might be somethin’ goin’ on in Julesburg. Y’all sit tight. Enjoy the town. I’ll be back directly and we can light out for Cheyenne.”
Zee waved as they rode out of the yard. “Be careful, love. Bring me back somethin’ fancy from Julesburg!”
They crossed the Platte and rode at a gentle southwesterly direction, walking the horses at first before picking up into a trot. Blue barked happily as they rode, and it felt good to ride, feel the saddle underneath him, feel the air in his face. General Grant kicked into another gear, and they were loping, but only for a few hundred yards. Then Dooley reined in, and let Blue and Hubert Dobbs catch up.
The last thing he needed was to catch a bullet in his back from Dobbs, who might think that Dooley was trying to escape. Which, of course, was Dooley’s intention. He wouldn’t get a better chance than this.
“What’s in Julesburg, Mr. Dobbs?” he asked.
“You’ll see. It’s a good idea I come up with. Yep. Real good one.”
Julesburg. Dooley had never been there, although he had heard of it. It lay in the northeastern corner of Colorado, and had played a big part in the Pony Express days. But from all Dooley had heard, the town was small. If it had a bank, it would not carry enough cash to entertain a greedy outlaw like Hubert Dobbs.
“I’ll fill you in when we make camp this eve,” Dobbs said.
So they rode, in the sage and grass and wind, and Dooley kept glancing back over his shoulder, toward Ogallala, thinking he might see dust from the rest of the boys, and girl, in the gang. Yet all he saw were blue skies, until they made camp.
They had probably covered half the distance between Ogallala and Julesburg, Dooley figured, though he still had no idea what a town like Julesburg had to offer a robber and murderer like Hubert Dobbs. But the evening had turned nice, not much wind to speak of, the smell of sage intoxicating, and flat, soft, sandy ground in which to make camp. Dooley picketed the two horses, while Dobbs busied himself getting a small fire going between some clumps of sage.
Dooley filled the coffeepot with water from his canteen, and brought it to the fire.
“Thanks,” Dobbs said. “You tend the fire. I’ll fetch us some grub.”
So Dooley busied himself with adding branches of dead sage, and—after he had dropped some coffee beans into the pot, of course—dried buffalo dung to the fire.
They had outfitted themselves fine indeed, Dooley thought. Dobbs had already set a cast-iron grate over the fire and had laid out his skillet and some utensils at the side. They had not shot any game for supper, but Dooley had packed some beans in his saddlebags while Dobbs had brought some bacon and an onion with him.
Coffee. Fried onion and some bacon. For outlaws always on the run, that seemed to be mighty fine grub for a one-night camp.
“Hey, Doolski,” Dobbs called out. “Stand up, will ya?”
Leaving the pot on the side of the fire, Dooley obeyed. He found himself staring down the barrel of a double-barreled shotgun Hubert Dobbs had brought out. The killer thumbed back both barrels and grinned.
Shotgun wedding? That was Dooley’s first thought, but he knew that couldn’t be what this was all about. After all, Zee was back in Ogallala.
“I found somethin’ mighty interestin’ on the post office wall, boy,” Dobbs said with a sneer. “You’ve got quite the price on yer head, boy, and I’s aimin’ to collect.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I’m not wanted for anything,” Dooley told the leader of the Dobbs-Handley Gang.
“Shuck yer Colt over yonder,” Dobbs told him, and Dooley obeyed. It wasn’t like he had any choice in the matter.
Tha
t at least made Dobbs relax a little, although he did not lower the double-barrelled shotgun.
“You sure you ain’t wanted for nothin’?” Dobbs asked.
Dooley nodded.
That caused the old man to chuckle, which in turn caused Dooley to grimace because he did not like to see a man laughing when he was holding a shotgun pointed straight at Dooley’s midsection. If he laughed too hard, he might touch off a trigger, or both triggers.
“Well,” Dobbs said, “then how do you explain this?”
Without lowering the barrels of the scattergun, Hubert Dobbs let his left hand slip into a pocket. The right hand kept the double-barrel braced against his hip, and Dooley knew better than to make a play with two rounds of double-ought buckshot looking him in the face. When the right hand reappeared, it held a folded-up placard, which the outlaw flapped open in the wind, and tossed it to the ground. The wind carried it about halfway between Dooley and Dobbs.
Of course, the piece of paper landed facedown, snagged on a clump of sage.
“Pick it up,” Dobbs instructed. “Turn it over. Man should know what he’s done and why he’s gotta die.”
Slowly, Dooley moved forward, squatted, never taking his eyes off the shotgun and the man holding it. He turned the paper over and read:
WANTED
BANK ROBBER & KILLER
There was no name, no artist’s rendition of a likeness, but nobody could deny that the description below the bold uppercase and underlined words didn’t fit Dooley Monahan to a T.
On the 8th of May, 1876, the Second State Bank of Omaha was robbed of $3,182 by the Dobbs-Handley Gang, which left a teller and a deputy marshal slain on the streets of this fine Nebraska city. One newcomer to the gang is believed to have murdered in cold blood our beloved county sheriff, Noble James Brazile IV, devoted to upholding the law and good order of our fine state, who was found brutally shot to death on the banks of the Platte River a few days later.
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