by Ralph Dennis
But the march slowed. After the point man reached his forward position he eased into a bare trot. It wasn’t long before MacTaggart felt the bottled-up rage and impatience. He caught the arm of Corporal Lester and pulled him forward until he was abreast of the captain. “They blew the tracks at both ends of town, didn’t they?”
“I heard explosions to the east and the west.”
MacTaggart moved next to the captain. “They think they’ve cut both approaches. They won’t be expecting us.”
McGuire wasn’t sure. “If I ran this operation I’d blow the rails and guard the approaches.”
“We don’t know how many men they have.” MacTaggart tugged the shell belt away from his neck. It was beginning to chafe. “Unless they’ve got a whole company, they’re running against the clock. How long can they control a whole town?” The information they’d received from Corporal Lester, after he’d calmed himself, had made them aware that the boxcar hadn’t held up against the attack. The silence from the town, the fact that there was no continuing arms fire, confirmed this fear. “They’ve got to unload the boxcar. They’ve got to get on the road. It might mean they’ve pulled back to a line near the siding.”
“Fewer guards and more workers, you mean?”
“That’s it.”
“Will you take the responsibility if we run into a buzz saw?”
“I know my responsibility,” MacTaggart said. “Perhaps you don’t know yours.”
“Damn you, Mac.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re right.” Captain McGuire gave Corporal Lester a push. “Let me know when we’re a hundred yards from the train station.” A deep breath and McGuire lunged forward. He set a grinding pace.
MacTaggart matched him step for step. He felt the jolting in his stomach. Lord, he wasn’t in shape, he wasn’t the lad he’d been twenty years before.
He thought his lungs would burst. He looked past his shoulder and saw the distilled agony on Captain McGuire’s face. It wasn’t pretty to watch. There, we’re even, he thought, pain tears running down the lines on his cheeks.
He had his doubts then. He was afraid that his anger had pushed the captain beyond what he knew he was able to do. It could have been that the pace he’d set early had been to reserve himself for the fight that might come. And for all his regrets he knew that there was no way to change it. The captain would not stop unless the leg fell off.
Another fifty yards at the same pace and MacTaggart told himself it was foolish to worry about Captain McGuire. The captain might survive it. He was not so sure about himself.
He was running half blind. He slammed into someone, and he might have fallen if the hand hadn’t clutched his arm and steadied him. He stared at the man for a long time before he realized that it was the soldier they’d met on the tracks, the corporal.
“It’s there,” the corporal said.
“What? What’s where?”
“The train station,” Corporal Lester said.
They sprawled on a grassy field to the right of the track bed. “Two minutes,” the captain said. And then he sat down next to Corporal Lester and MacTaggart.
“You think the telegrapher is still alive?”
“He was when I took my dive onto the station platform.”
McGuire turned away. “Private Black.”
The point man, the soldier who was part Indian, walked over a couple of soldiers and stood in front of the captain. He was breathing evenly. “Yes, sir.”
“Pick one man. Take the corporal here with you.” He nodded toward Lester. “I want you to take the station and hold it.”
“If I can,” Private Black said.
“You’re in charge, Black.” McGuire faced the corporal. “Is that agreeable with you?”
“If you say so, sir.” Lester couldn’t hide his relief. He’d decided he didn’t like command.
“Is there a signal or a time?”
“Twenty minutes or the first firing you hear … whichever comes first.”
They compared watches. It was exactly 10:00.
A minute later, Private Black, the other soldier he’d picked from the detail, and Corporal Lester crossed the tracks and melted into the darkness of a row of buildings that lined the north side of the track.
“And the rest of us?” The two-minute rest was over. MacTaggart staggered to his feet and swayed from side to side.
“Our objective is the boxcar.” Captain McGuire stood, putting most of his weight on his right leg. He teetered for a long second before he got his balance. MacTaggart put out a hand and withdrew it when he saw that McGuire was steady.
MacTaggart looked down the track. That way led past the train station. “Which way?”
“From the south. This side of the tracks.” The captain led them across the field to the east. The field ended. Dark buildings loomed in front of them. Beyond those buildings, if they had their bearings, was the brick shell of the roundhouse.
It was backbreaking work. The bullion cases weighed every bit of a hundred pounds and probably more. After handling thirty of the crates, Vic said, “Shit, it’s hot in here.” He moved to the side of the boxcar and leaned against the doorway and took a few deep breaths. One of the Frenchman’s men, the one called Pierre, jumped from the tailgate to the boxcar and worked that end. Richard Betts took a case Pierre passed him. He paused in front of Vic.
“How’s it going?”
“I’m going to drop a hernia any minute.”
“There’ll be gold dust on it,” Richard said.
“Now you’ve made me feel better.” Vic backed into the boxcar once more. He and Pierre took turns passing the crates through the doorway. Betts and the little man, Jean, alternated meeting them and stacking the bullion in the truck.
After they passed the fifty mark Harry Churchman pulled himself into the truck. “What’s the count?”
“A fourth of it is loaded.” Betts took a shuddering breath and wiped a hand across his forehead.
“Too slow,” Harry said.
“You try it a few minutes.”
“I might.” Harry reached for the next case. The breath whoofed out of him. “Jesus, it’s pure stone.”
Richard Betts caught the side of the truck and swung down. A cool breeze blew down the road and chilled him. He felt sweat slick the length of him. He shivered and clenched his hands into fists to control it.
Richard heard voices. He stepped away from the truck and saw the major and the constable, Lafitte, leaning against the hood of the Bulldog. They were talking in low whispers.
Why the fuck not? Wasn’t this a democratic army. “Major?”
Tom lifted his head and looked around.
“Vic and one of the Frenchies need a break.”
“Thanks, Richard.”
The major and Lafitte passed him and climbed the tailgate of the truck. Betts laughed to himself. Now that was a democratic army for you. You got to order a major around, and he thanked you for it.
When they were relieved, Vic and the little man, Jean, joined him for a smoke. They were tired, and the smoke stung their lungs. The smell of death blew at them from all sides.
Maybe you were supposed to get used to that smell. Betts wasn’t sure that he ever would.
“Richard.” Harry stuck his head past the side of the truck. “We’re going toward the hundred cases. You’d better bring the other truck over here.”
Betts flipped his cigarette into the middle of the road and walked away. Captain Johnny met him at the rear corner of the roundhouse. “How does it look?”
“First truck’s almost loaded.”
“How’s the time?”
“Harry’s worried.”
Someone moved on the other side of the captain. It was Henri Leveque.
“Give them a hand with the loading,” Johnny said.
“The smell … the smell there …”
“Not up to it?”
“I will do anything else,” Leveque said.
“Weak st
omachs.” Johnny saw that the Frenchman was unarmed. He passed his Thompson to him. “You take my watch, and I’ll break a sweat.”
He got into the truck with Betts. Vic started the engine and pulled it in a wide circle and headed down the road to the siding. He parked the Bulldog a few feet beyond the one that was being loaded. He left room for it to pull away from the siding.
The headlights lit the crossing. Gunny turned with the shotgun over his shoulder. He blinked into the lights. Betts switched the headlights off and leaned against the steering wheel and waited.
After five minutes Vic got into the loaded Bulldog and drove it away from the boxcar. He gave the horn a playful toot before he went out of sight behind the roundhouse. Betts answered with his horn. Then he backed the truck down the slot the first time and braked when Harry yelled at him.
“Get your wind yet?” Harry met him when he stepped from the cab. Johnny circled the front of the truck and stopped next to Harry.
“You lose yours?” Betts asked.
“Every bit of it,” Harry said.
“My turn then.” He was passing Harry when he heard Harry lower his voice and ask, “When do we deal with the Frenchman?”
“When we don’t need him anymore.”
“I don’t need him now,” Harry said.
Betts nodded to himself. That was only right and proper. Screw them for mixing in another man’s business. His arm muscles screamed at him as he pulled himself through the boxcar entrance.
He took a couple of steps into the boxcar until he located the major. Tom was seated on a low stack of the bullion crates. His head was down and his breath was ragged.
“Take a break, Major.”
Tom staggered to his feet and wobbled to the doorway. Richard Betts watched him grab the side of the truck, hang there, and drop out of sight.
After that it was all work. He geared himself to go all out. The frenzy he created passed to the other men. He wasn’t aware of time and he didn’t see faces, and as he worked he felt like his brain had turned itself off. This crate and that crate and the one after that.
He didn’t hear his name when Vic called him. Vic had to step into the boxcar and jerk a crate away from him. “Harry says you got to drive, so you’d better take a rest.”
“Huh?”
“Take a rest until we’re ready to move out.”
He understood at last. He said, “How about you, Vic?” but the words didn’t come out straight. They came out garbled, and he had to repeat it so that Vic could understand.
“In a few minutes,” Vic said.
Richard sat in the boxcar entrance, off to the side, for a couple of minutes. His strength was slow returning to him. Finally, still unsteady, he lowered himself to the ground and staggered to the cab of the Bulldog. The sliding door on the driver’s side fought him. He finally made it work by kicking it. He fell inside and caught the steering wheel to right himself. He leaned back and covered his face with his hands. God, he was tired, and his arms didn’t seem to belong to him anymore.
The last thought that came to him before he blanked his mind, before he emptied it, was that those goddam Gipsons hadn’t broke a sweat yet.
It was a dead town, the part-Cree soldier, Private Black, thought. There were lights on, the town glowed with them, but there were no people on the streets and no cars moved on the roads.
Ghostly.
At 10:05 Black left his rifle with the other private, Cooper, and crawled the final twenty yards to the train station. He thought of himself as the other spirit that was in him, the one that was an animal, and this time the spirit was a snake. He crawled and flowed. The ground was his natural element.
When he stopped thinking of himself as a snake he was on the station platform. No one had noticed him and he peered over a window ledge and into the waiting room. One bench had been moved to the doorway that led to the platform. It had been tipped on its side to form a barrier. The other bench had been placed flush against the other doorway, the one that led to the town.
A man sat on the floor with his back to the bench that blocked the town entrance. He was smoking a cigarette and staring down at his hands. There were two long-barreled pistols on the floor next to his right leg.
This man had close-cropped hair, and he was short, a runt.
Another man leaned on the ticket counter. He held a service revolver, a Webley, in a lax hand.
Private Black did not see the ticket clerk. He backed across the platform and slid over the side of it and reached the ground. He did not crawl this time. There was no reason to. The two men inside were not watchful.
He returned a minute later with Cooper and with the corporal who was not of his outfit. He stopped them at the side of the platform.
“A man over there,” the corporal said.
A large man stood at the crossing a distance away. He had a shotgun or a rifle over his shoulder.
“I saw him,” Black said. He had not. The snake did not see everything. He did not, however, want to admit it to a stranger.
“That loaded?” He touched the Springfield ’03 the corporal carried.
“Yes.”
Black saw it in his head, the way it was going to be. “Wait here,” he said to the corporal. He touched Cooper on the back and led him down a narrow alley that ran beside the train depot. They reached the other side, and Black positioned Cooper so that he could watch the doorway on the town side of the station.
The corporal did not hear Black when he returned. The surprise showed on his face when he turned and realized that Black was there.
“In a few minutes Captain McGuire will start the attack over there.” A vague nod in the direction of the roundhouse. “I will be at that window.” Black pointed at the window above them. “Or at the doorway. One or the other. When I fire into the waiting room I expect the man over there, the one watching the road, to run in this direction.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to kill him.”
“All right.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
Private Black reached up and placed his rifle on the platform. One step to the side, and he eased upward and was belly flat on the platform flooring. He hadn’t made a sound, and he seemed to blend into the shadows.
Corporal Lester lifted the Springfield and settled the weight of it on the edge of the wood. He lined up on the man at the crossing. It was at least a hundred yards. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. A jerked trigger, and he would miss the man.
An ache started in his shoulders. He tried to relax.
He had never fired at anything but a target. A man was not a series of circles on a piece of paper. A man could shoot back. It was not a thought that helped him relax.
Captain Whitman pushed away from the side of the truck and stretched. Harry Churchman watched him. “See how the loading is going.”
Harry stuck his head into the space between the truck and the boxcar and asked his question. He walked back to the captain. “About twenty cases to go.”
“I think it’s time I had my talk with the Frenchman.”
“Want me along?”
Johnny shook his head. “Three of his men in there. Might be they’ll be disturbed.”
“I’ll calm them.” Harry lifted his Thompson and watched the captain head for the rear of the roundhouse.
“I’ll take over,” Johnny said.
“Is the loading finished?”
“Almost.” Johnny took the Thompson from Leveque. “Quiet here?”
“I thought I heard something a few minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“Where the pipes are stacked,” Leveque said.
“You check it?”
“No, it is quiet now.”
“Probably nothing.” Johnny lifted the Thompson to his shoulder. He pointed it in the general direction of the mound of pipe. “Where exactly was it?”
Henri Leveque stepped in front of him and lifted his arm to point.
Johnny touched the trigger and fired a short burst that blew off the top of the Frenchman’s head.
Bone fragments and blood and brain tissue mushroomed in a pink spray above Leveque as he pitched forward and fell on what was left of his face.
Now the animal in Private Black, his other spirit, was the great black bear, sometimes six feet high when he stood on his hind legs, and weighing as much as five hundred pounds. A fabled hunter, the black bear did not know what fear was when he was angry. There was nothing in the north woods that was a match for him.
The rifle he held was an extension of his claws.
A wind that blew across the platform ruffled the heavy fur on his back.
A black bear knew of time only what his body told him. He did not understand the ticking of a watch. But the rattle of gunfire on the other side of the tracks brought the itch of a growl to the back of his throat.
Private Black, the man-bear, reared to his full height and blocked the doorway. His claws reached inside the waiting room and ripped and tore at the little man who sat with his back to the other doorway.
Two rounds were fired through the open doorway. The first one splintered wood from the bench to the left of Randy’s head. The second shot should have hit him low in the chest or the stomach. It didn’t. Randy turned to his right and reached for one of the target pistols. The second round struck him low in the back.
Randy clutched his side and opened his mouth.
At the ticket counter Clark braced the Webley and fired twice at the soldier in the entrance. He didn’t know if he hit the soldier but the man disappeared.
Randy’s mouth moved without sound. The scream that he thought was there didn’t come out. Instead there was a choked cry. “Clark, help me.”
Clark looked down at the ticket clerk. He was facedown on the floor.
“Clark, you going to help me?”
Clark ducked through the baggage window and, bending over, ran to his brother. He fell to his knees over Randy. He was turning Randy on his stomach when he heard a rifle fire outside the building. It didn’t strike him or anywhere in the waiting room. Intended for someone else, he thought, and he placed the Webley on the floor next to him and reached for his brother once more.