by Tonia Brown
Dodger raised his goggles and stared at the professor. “Well what?”
“What do you propose we do?” the professor asked.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because you came here seeking employment as head of my train’s security. This is a chance to show me what you can do.”
Dodger had to give him credit. It was a clever conclusion to draw. “I see. So you’re taking orders from me now?”
“Not orders, no. Consider them recommendations. Outline a plan of action, and I will say yea or nay. Simple as that.”
Ched snorted again at the word simple.
“You keep out of this,” the professor warned.
Dodger, however, had returned to eyeing the incoming bandits. They were moving fast, but the train could surely outrun them. Then again, if they moved too far away from the line, there was a chance they would run out of fuel before they could return. Dodger guessed that the shafts held a moderate amount of coal, but Ched had burned through a lot just showing off for his passengers.
“Do you have any weapons?” Dodger asked.
“There’sh a rifle in the cabinet,” Ched said. “But there are only a few shellsh.”
“Don’t you have any weapons?” the professor asked.
“No,” Dodger said as he raided the nearly empty gun cabinet. “I supposed they would be provided, considering the work.” In the cabinet rested a worn out Spencer loaded with just three shells. Even with ample practice, which Dodger sorely lacked, he wasn’t sure he could defend against that many men with so little ammunition. “Are you sure this is all?”
Ched hesitated, looking at the professor for a second before he said, “Well …”
“Well?” Dodger asked.
“Take the shteerin’, Doc.”
The professor slipped into place, taking command of the cab as Ched went to his foot locker. There he produced a key from the depths of his overall bib, and unlocked the chest. After rummaging about inside for a moment, he found what he was looking for, gathering it to him as he closed the lid. The man then returned to Dodger, holding aloft his prize.
Dodger stared, slack jawed and wide eyed.
Ched bore what looked like a matching pair of modified Colt revolvers in a dark leather holster. But instead of the usual narrow rings set about the belt to hold ammunition, the entire length of leather was scored in wide pockets from buckle to holster, both ways. The buckle itself bore a single word, a name worked into the tempered metal by an expert hand.
Boon.
“Ched,” the professor said in a soft voice, barely audible over the chuff and squeal of the driving engine. “I didn’t know you had those.”
“Shorry, Doc. He told me a while back if shomething happened to him, I should hang onto ‘em for the next shucker.” Ched winked at Dodger. “I guessh that shucker would be you.”
“Me?” Dodger asked, all but forgetting the approaching danger in face of these remarkable beauties.
“Here,” Ched said, shoving the handful toward Dodger. “Put ‘em on. I’ll bet what teeth I have left it’sh a perfect fit.”
Dodger shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t take those.”
“You aren’t taking ‘em. You’re borrowing ‘em. Don’t ever forget that.” Ched dangled the pair from their holster.
“I suggest you take them,” the professor said. “Because those fellows will be on us any moment.”
“All right, you win,” Dodger said and grabbed the pair of pistols. “I’ll borrow them for now, but you get them right back when we are done here.” He slipped the holster around his waist and buckled it in place. Ched could keep his teeth after all, because the thing was a perfect fit. Dodger drew one of them, holding it up to admire the beauty and impressive size of the weapon.
Each weapon gleamed in polished silver, inset with pearlescent grips. And the custom modifications didn’t stop there. The chambers were enormous, as big as Dodger’s fists and surely capable of holding far more than the standard six shots of the average pistol. The barrel was a good eight inches long, with two additional openings poised under the main barrel, running the length of the weapon all the way to the cylinder. Dodger supposed they were just for show, and what an impressive show they made. Intricate scrollwork adorned the barrels and oversized cylinder, a flowering pattern that spread across the guns like a living organism. And that’s how it felt in his hands.
Alive.
It was like gripping a rock and a rose at the same time.
Dodger drew the second piece and let out a satisfied groan at their perfect balance. “These should be in a vault somewhere. They must be worth a fortune.”
“They’re priceless,” the professor said. “But it has little to do with monetary value. They belonged to a friend of ours. He’s … gone now.”
“Gone but shure not forgotten,” Ched added.
As much as Dodger would’ve loved to have given the men a moment to reminisce about their long-gone friend, there were more pressing matters at hand. “Monetary or sentimental, these are certainly invaluable. Especially now. I confess I am a much better shot with a pistol than a rifle.”
“Then you’ll be an amazing shot with thoshe,” Ched said.
“Why?”
“Because they’re shpecial.”
“How special?”
“I can field that one.” The professor cleared his throat, at which Ched returned to his post, relieving the professor of the controls. “Boon did a remarkable job protecting our various investments, but unfortunately he was …oh … how should I put this?”
“A loushy shot?” Ched asked.
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Let me get this straight. I take it this Boon of yours was your previous security man?”
“Yes.”
“And he was a lousy shot?”
Ched chuckled. “He couldn’t shtrike the broad shide of a barn if you threw it at him.”
The professor nodded in agreement. “While his heart was in the work, he lacked a certain amount of skill.”
“No wonder you need a new man,” Dodger said.
Ched whipped about on his stool to snarl at Dodger. “You’d do besht to watch your tongue, shtranger.”
“Stand down, Ched,” the professor said, stepping between them. “He didn’t mean anything.”
The driver growled once at Dodger, then returned to his duties without another word.
“You have to forgive our defense of him. Boon was dear to us all.”
“Was?” Dodger asked, before he recognized what the professor had tried so hard to imply. “Oh. Was.”
“Yes, we lost him very recently, in a tragic … accident.”
“Weren’t no accshident,” Ched spat. “Boon wash murderd. That’sh the only thing plain or shimple around here.”
“Ched. Please. Not now.”
The driver fell quiet again. An amber tear gathered at the corner of one sallow eye before it broke free and rolled down his withered cheek.
“I’m sorry,” Dodger said. “I didn’t mean to imply … I didn’t know.”
“Not at all,” the professor said. “I should have explained sooner. After all, if you are to be his successor, you have every right to know how he performed his duties. It’s just very hard for me to talk about him without getting a touch sentimental.” The professor patted Ched’s bony shoulder and added, “It’s hard for any of us to talk about him.”
“Again, I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Ched wasn’t moved by Dodger’s contrition. “They’ll be on ush any minute. If you got a plan, Carpenter, I shuggesht you shet it in moshion. Now.”
There lay the problem; Dodger didn’t have a plan. Perhaps if he’d anticipated this sort of on-the-job exercise, then he would’ve been better prepared. As it was, the most excitement he expected out of today was a quick interview followed by a light lunch then back to his room for a few hours of reading before his shift at the bar. What he didn’t expect was to be dropped in the middle of a
shootout with a half-dozen bandits. But, all things considered, he had been in worse situations.
Much worse.
“Do I need to do anything special to use Boon’s guns?” Dodger asked.
“They operate as normal weapons,” the professor said. “But they are calibrated to make up for Boon’s … um …”
“Lack of skill?”
“Nicely put.”
“Thanks, but what does that mean?”
Ched piped up. “It meansh he could hit not only the broad shide of a barn with thosh thingsh, but alsho the cowsh two fieldsh over.”
Dodger looked to the professor for a translation of Ched’s words.
“He means they have a wide range of cover,” the professor explained.
“Like the scatter of a shotgun?” Dodger asked.
“Sort of. You can see there is but a single trigger, but the gun actually releases three bullets when activated. That way, whenever Boon fired, he had three times the chance of striking his intended target.”
Dodger started at this news. “It fires three consecutive bullets with each shot?”
“No. Three all at once. Simultaneously.”
The professor may as well have been speaking French for all the good his explanation was doing. Dodger looked down at the weapon in his hand. They had to be kidding. Three bullets at once? Dodger holstered one of the guns, then flipped the catch on the other’s cylinder to swing it open. Three conjoined rings of empty chambers stared up at him from the cylinder, in a cloverleaf pattern. He tilted the weapon back a bit and looked clean through all three barrels to the cab floor beneath him.
The ‘just for show’ barrels weren’t for show at all.
They were every bit as real as the main barrel.
“I never … in all my days … I never …”
“I’m sure you haven’t,” the professor said over Dodger’s weak stammer. “You must admit, it raised Boon’s chances of landing a shot. All he had to do was point and click. There was, of course, a fair amount of collateral damage, but nothing insurmountable, and nothing compared to the damage he did trying to fight with a normal weapon.”
“Three at once?” Dodger asked again, still disbelieving his own eyes.
“Yes. Based on my own design.”
“But crafted by the besht weaponshmith in the bushinessh,” Ched added with stern reproach.
“Certainly,” the professor agreed. “In Boon’s skittish hands, they managed to keep us safe enough. In a skilled man’s hands, I can’t begin to imagine the havoc it will wreak.”
“Three bullets?” Dodger asked once more. He counted the number of slots in the oversized cylinder, then looked up to the professor. “Nine? It only holds three rounds?”
“Well, yes. One must make sacrifices. We had to lower the actual number of rounds in favor of a higher success rate. But we made up for it with those.” The professor pointed to a pouch perched on the left-hand side of the holster belt.
Popping the button on the pouch, Dodger took a peek inside at a handful of large metal rings. “What are they?”
“Preloaded spring-operated cartridges specifically designed with the nine shooter in mind.”
Dodger pulled free a ring, which turned out to be three conjoined rings, much like the cylinder, and filled with nine bullets ready for use. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how to load the gun. He pressed the ring against the cylinder until he heard it snap, after which the ring recoiled and the bullets were transferred from ring to cylinder, neat as that.
“Nice. Very nice. Quick and easy too. I like that. Should more than make up for only three rounds.”
“I’m glad you approve,” the professor said.
Dodger was duly impressed. A man with good aim could do a lot of damage with the nine shooters. He imagined a man with lousy aim did even more. Dodger held up a cartridge and asked, “You got many more of these?”
“In the trunk,” Ched said. “There should be a good two doshen or sho.”
Retrieving the things, Dodger tossed a few in the pouch and stuffed the rest into the pockets that bordered the holster. Even with the weight of the extra ammo, the holster settled on Dodger’s hips with an all too familiar ease. He loaded the second gun, then drew them both and marveled again at their beauty.
The professor cleared his throat. “Now I put it to you again, Mr. Carpenter. What do we do?”
When Dodger decided to look into the job of a hired gunman for a private rail, he considered that his work would involve the occasional holdup, but he never supposed he would have free range of a fully navigable engine from which to defend. This changed the entire game. It was more than just taking refuge inside a car, hunkering behind a seat as you squeezed off the occasional shot through an open window. This was a whole different beast. He had an iron horse beneath him, a steed of unfathomable power and drive. This put him on more than equal footing with the approaching men, and with Boon’s nine shooters in Dodger’s hands, the bandits had no idea what they were in for.
Dodger almost felt sorry for them.
“Ched!” Dodger shouted as he put away the guns. “Bring us about so they approach the back end of the cab. When they are almost on us, bring her to a stop, but don’t wipe her clock completely.”
“Will do,” Ched said and proceeded to turn the train around once more.
“Stop?” the professor shouted. “What do you mean stop? We can’t just stop!”
Dodger yanked his long duster around the guns to conceal them. “Both of you keep out of sight, and if you hear me holler giddyup, then bat the stack off her and get us the hell out of here. Don’t panic at the sound of gunfire. I might have to set off a few warning shots, so just wait for my verbal cue.”
“I reckon I can manage that,” Ched said. “We should come to a shtop here in a shecond.”
“You aren’t going out there, are you?” the professor asked.
“Yes,” Dodger said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s hard to hold a decent conversation from inside the cab.” Dodger pulled the handle on the sliding door, wincing as dust flew up into the cab. He slipped his goggles down his face. “I’m going out to talk to them for a bit-”
“Talk to them?” the professor asked. “Why on earth would you want to do that? I know their type. Those men are out for blood. They are armed. They will kill you as soon as look at you.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“What?”
“We don’t know what they want. For all we know, they are a bunch of ranch hands who lost their herd in a storm. And to be quite frank, sir, if I plan on taking a man’s life in my hands, then I would like to know why. Wouldn’t you?”
The professor didn’t seem to have an answer for that.
“Then let me do what you are so hot to hire me to do. You shutter these windows and stay out of sight.” With this said, Dodger stepped onto the platform, closing the door behind him and leaving the professor fuming. He had bigger things to deal with than the fury of his potential boss. Through the goggles, Dodger watched the approaching men with interest and worry. He hoped he wasn’t biting off more than he could chew, but he was very serious about the need to know. The days of blindly shooting at folks just because the boss man ordered it were long behind him. Never again, he had promised himself. And he had every intention of keeping that promise.
The train drew to a stop, but the approaching men did not. They continued to whip their steeds as they raced the last few hundred yards to meet the cab. It wasn’t until they were almost upon the car that they finally yanked their collective reins and came to an abrupt halt. There, the men sat upon their huffing horses, staring at Dodger, or rather at the cab itself. Dodger could see the wonder on each man, or at least the surprise in their eyes. He wasn’t sure what they were expecting to gun down and rob, but he was fairly sure the Sleipnir’s cab was nowhere near their wildest dreams.
They ranged from teens to middle aged, with builds from lean
to broad shouldered. They were dressed in a similar manner—a filthy flannel shirt tucked into a pair of even filthier blue jeans, topped with a leather vest and a wide-brimmed hat—but as luck would have it, they all bore a bandana of a different color across their mouths, making for a set of colorful but crude masks.
The rider in green was tall, tan, lean, and carted a single pistol.
The man with the brown mask was as white as a freshly bleached sheet, with pink eyes that watered in the springtime sun. His hair was as white as he was, hanging long and free from under his hat. He also carried a single revolver.
The one behind the blue mask was short and squat, as black as night, and toted an impressive hunting rifle.
The fellow under the black bandanna was a white man armed with another rifle. He also sported an impressive shiner that covered a good three inches around his left eye.
The owner of the red bandanna was the biggest of the men, as well as the hairiest. His beard hung in a great bush under the length of his mask, and crawled over the upper edge as if trying to escape the cover. His eyes were shadowed by the thick forest of a single brow. There didn’t seem to be an inch of them that wasn’t covered in hair. Even the hand that held his pistol was more fur than fingers.
Though all of the men’s weapons were drawn, none was aimed. Instead they hung loose from their respective owners’ hands. Dodger could tell, even from behind the masks, that each man was slack jawed with awe. As they should be.
“Holy shit,” the green bandanna said.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like it,” the brown bandanna said.
“What is it?” the blue bandanna asked.
“It’s a train, ya idjeet,” the red bandanna said.
“Can’t be a train,” the blue bandanna said. “Where’s the rest of it? And how come it’s a-runnin’ wif no track? Huh?”
“Yeah,” the green bandanna said. “Where’s her tracks?”
The four fell into an argument over the possibilities, while the fifth man continued to stare, narrowing his eyes as he looked just past Dodger. No, not past, at. He was staring right at Dodger. The men’s heated discussion included many colorful phrases and choice insults, as well as a fair bit of grumping and growling. Dodger was pleased by the disorienting effect that the Sleipnir had on these men. This was a tactic he could get used to employing.