Novel 1963 - How The West Was Won (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Suddenly the cars jerked, the train chugged and spat steam, and the big drivers began to turn slowly. He heard running feet upon the platform and somebody swung onto the train. Zeb remained where he was, his face covered.

  The wheels began to move faster; the train chug-chugged ahead, then picked up speed, the whistle blowing.

  Not until the train was rolling fast did Zeb remove the newspaper and look around, searching for Ramsey, or for any of the men who rode with Charlie Gant.

  For an hour at least the train would be crossing a wide plain, with only occasional cuts through the hills, and no place where it would slow up or where thieves would be likely to bring it to a stop.

  Zeb took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. This was the one luxury he allowed himself. He sat back in the seat and thought of the railroad that lay ahead. He had been over every foot of it, and one by one he checked off the possibilities.

  Yet in the last analysis it mattered very little where they stopped the train. It would be a showdown there, regardless. However, it would, more than likely, be in the mountains.

  The train, as usual, consisted of a locomotive and tender, a baggage-express car, one passenger coach, two flatcars, and a caboose. One flatcar was loaded with freshly cut logs, the other with rolls of barbed wire. On the car with the barbed wire was a donkey engine.

  The conductor came along to take his ticket and Zeb looked up at him. “How many men back in that caboose?”

  “Just one. The brakeman.”

  “Is he armed?”

  “No reason to be.”

  The conductor glanced down at the badge on Zeb’s vest. “You expecting trouble?”

  Zeb Rawlings sat up. “Yes, I am. You know what you’re carrying?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, too many others know, too.”

  “I don’t want my passengers hurt.”

  “Neither do I, and there’s no protection for them in this car.”

  “Behind the seats?” the conductor suggested.

  Zeb looked his disgust. “Easy to see you’ve never been shot at by a forty-four. A pistol bullet would go through the backs of four or five of those seats before it stopped. Maybe more.”

  He got to his feet and walked slowly through the car, glancing at each man to see if he recognized any of them. Of course, Gant might be working with men Zeb had never seen, as well as with those who had appeared at the station with him. Any one of the men on board might be one of the outlaws.

  Taking his rifle, he went to the front end of the car and then stepped over to the express car. The door was not locked, and he went in, to face a six-shooter held in the capable hand of Marshal Lou Ramsey. There was a bandage around his head. Zeb saw Stover, Clay and Sims behind him.

  “I’m sorry, Lou.”

  “Well,” Ramsey replied irritably, “it got me here, didn’t it?”

  Chapter 23

  *

  CHARLIE GANT WALKED back to the horses, inspecting the hoofs of each one in turn. They were excellent horses, chosen carefully for speed and bottom, but principally for speed. The first dash in their escape would be important, for the more distance they could put between themselves and the actual crime, the better.

  He had planned every detail of the holdup with infinite care, and the horses had been tested at doing what they must do. First a three-mile dash at top speed, then a half-mile at a trot, a half-mile at a walk, and then a short dash. The space for the walk was through a patch of woods and they would make separate trails, all within sight of each other, then a dash across the intervening stretch into another patch of woods.

  An hour after the start of their escape they would come up to the other horses. The saddles they rode during that first part were all stolen ones, and would be abandoned with the stolen horses. Mounted on other horses, they would enter a creek and ride for slightly more than a mile. The creek had a sandy bottom, and there were no obstructions about which to worry. This course would cause the pursuit to lose time in finding the point at which they emerged, and when they did emerge it would be in a sandy wash where they left only indentations in the sand but no tracks that could be defined. They would leave the wash at separate points to further confuse their trail. After three hours they would change horses again, this time taking time to switch saddles.

  By noon of the day following the holdup they would be eating at a ranch over a hundred miles from the scene of the crime, and in another state, where friends were prepared to swear they had never left the area.

  Over much of the distance they would travel there were few water holes—some of them known only to Gant and to a few Indians long since dead. Without knowledge of those water holes any pursuit must fail. At one point, where there were no water holes for some distance, he had made an emergency cache of water to tide them over.

  The plan was fool-proof.

  Now, seated near the tracks, Gant took them over the route once more to be sure each man understood. The plan was to stick together; but if they could not, if one man was cut off, he was to choose an alternative hide-out equally as well hidden.

  Each of the five men he had selected for the holdup was a man wanted for a killing.

  “If shooting starts,” he instructed them now, “shoot to kill. If any man’s mask slips, everyone within seeing range is to be killed.”

  “What about that guard?”

  “His name is Clay, and he will be alone in the car. The end of the car next to the passenger car will have the door locked, but that next the tender will also be barred. The bar bracket on the end toward the passenger car has been broken and was not repaired. A bullet will smash the lock on the door and allow us to enter.

  “Remember, now, when we reach the river we will make our crossing below Pyramid Canyon; and once on the other side we will cut the ferryboat adrift and let it go on down the river. But I believe we will have lost any pursuit long before that time.”

  “Sounds too good to be true,” Jenks said admiringly. “I never did know a job planned so thorough.”

  “You ride with me,” Gant replied shortly, “and they will all be planned that way.”

  He walked out of the tiny hollow in which they waited, to look again at the track. The barricade of logs and boulders would force the train to stop, and they could board easily.

  Again he went over every step in his mind, trying to find a loophole he might have overlooked. There was none.

  Jenks, Indian Charlie, Gyp Wells, and Ike Fillmore had all worked with him before. Only Lund was a new man, but he had more experience than any of the others. There was nothing to worry about there. So, then—why was he worried?

  Zeb Rawlings.

  The man was bad luck, the worst kind of bad luck; for every time their paths crossed, things turned sour. If for no other reason than that Rawlings was becoming an obsession, he must be killed.

  But first his wife and children.

  Rawlings must see them die, knowing he could do nothing about it. Thoughtfully, Gant considered the men with him. Only Lund and Indian Charlie would be apt to go along with him on that.

  He spat bitterly. It angered him to think of how shocked he had been at the station when he had turned and seen Zeb Rawlings. He had had no idea Rawlings was even in Arizona, for after the fight at Boggy Depot Gant had left Indian Territory and gone north, and for several months he had lived quietly, holding down a railroad job in Dakota.

  Gant had been in Jimtown, a small place on the Northern Pacific, when Lund came to him with the story of the gold shipments. Jenks was waiting for him in Deadwood, and they had picked up Fillmore in Cheyenne on the way south.

  Carefully, they had avoided all their old haunts, coming into Arizona from California, after arranging the rendezvous at a small ranch owned by the Indian. Nobody had seen them, nobody knew who they were; and then they had to run into Rawlings, of all people.

  Gant lifted his eyes from the barricade and studied the bleak desert mountains opposite. It was through those m
ountains they would soon be riding, for half a mile down the tracks they would cross over and head into the hills.

  Rawlings! Gant would never forget that day at Boggy Depot when Rawlings had stood there so calmly, shooting as if on a target range. Gant would have sworn that nobody—nobody at all—could outshoot his brother. Not Hardin, Hickok, Allison, or any of them.

  He glanced at his watch now. It was time.

  He walked back to the campfire. “Dowse that fire and mount up.”

  There was no need to discuss the holdup itself, for they had been through all of that. He turned on Fillmore. “Don’t forget now, Frenchy, nail that caboose. If the brakeman gives you any lip, kill him!”

  Far off, the train whistled.

  They stepped into their saddles, checked their gear. Charlie Gant led the way down to the point where the barricade waited.

  The cut was narrow, and they had built the barricade carefully to make it look like a slide off the side of the cut. Inspecting it again, Gant doubted if any casual glance would arouse suspicion.

  He felt jumpy, but there was no occasion for worry. He had planned this better than any time before, and his jobs had a way of working out. Even Floyd had admitted nobody could plan a job better.

  Floyd.…

  Why think of him now? Suppose Charlie had stayed and shot it out with Rawlings then? Could he have saved Floyd if he had opened fire? He would never know.

  Just the same, he wished Floyd was here now. He was the solid one, the stayer. Floyd was one man he could always count on.

  But could Floyd count on you?

  The question came to his mind unbidden, and he swore and jerked on the reins so that his horse reared. He quieted it down, but his mood remained savage.

  He drew his pistol and checked the action and the loads. He looked back at the others. “Ready?” he asked.

  Their replies came back to him. “Ready!”…“Sure!”…“I’ll say!”

  They were good men. Just the same, he wished Floyd was here.

  The train whistled again, and he could hear that far-off rush of wheels that reminded him so much of the wind in the pines of a great forest. It was coming up the valley now, almost to the mountains.

  It might have been better had he been further from a town; but still, they must clear the track before they could go on, and that would take time. And this position gave them a straight run across the valley. A hard run but a good one, and safe enough if they made it as he had planned.

  He would bring this off, disappear for a few weeks, and then he would pay a visit to that ranch Rawlings was headed for. The thought gave him a savage pleasure.

  At that moment the train whistled again.

  He started his horse walking forward, and the rest followed.

  Only three or four minutes now…

  Chapter 24

  *

  IT WAS VERY still in the express car, and very hot. Zeb Rawlings stood his rifle between his knees and wiped his palms on his trousers. Waiting was hell. It always made a man jumpy.

  He could feel it coming now, the dry mouth, the sick, empty feeling in the belly. This time it would be for keeps. One of them would die. Charlie Gant was like a mad dog that would bite and tear at anything in his lust to destroy. Take a brave man every time, Zeb thought—I’d fear a brave man less than a coward. The coward has no scruples.

  Floyd Gant…there was a good man. An outlaw, but a good man with it all, a solid man. You knew where you stood with Floyd Gant.

  They had fought Indians together, hunted from the same stand, slept under the same buffalo robe. You took what shelter you could get when those Panhandle winds were blowing.

  Without Charlie to talk him into it, Floyd might never have become an outlaw, and with him it probably started as a lark more than anything serious. In those days a good many cowhands had rustled a few head to buy drinks or to see them through a hard winter.

  Out on the buffalo range Zeb had shared a fire with Floyd Gant many a time, never friendly, exactly, yet not enemies, either. There had always been that unspoken rivalry that comes between two men of almost equal ability at anything; and out on the hunt Floyd was the best hunter, except for himself.

  There was no telling about that, either, when you came to think of it. There was too much luck involved. Your aim might be perfect, you might have judged the wind right—and then the buffalo might lift his head, kick at a fly, or even shift his weight. A mere shifting of the weight from one foreleg to the other could mean the difference sometimes between a shot through the heart or lungs and a bullet glancing off a shoulder bone or breaking a leg. And a bull with a broken leg might easily excite the herd so that you’d get no more shots.

  If you kept the wind in your face or blowing from them toward you, and if you took your time, you could shoot buffalo from a stand…and shoot for hours, sometimes. They had never learned to fear a gun, and the booming sound meant nothing to them. But the smell of blood would make them restless and they would move off. Or a wounded buffalo threshing around would start them sometimes.

  *

  ZEB LOOKED AT the others. “Hot in here,” he said.

  Clay nodded. “Sure is. We have to keep her locked up.”

  “Where do you think?” Ramsey asked suddenly.

  “This side of Kingman, I feel pretty sure.”

  “You think they’ll run for the Hualapais?”

  “No.”

  “Indian Charlie was with them—he’s part Hualapai.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Gant will do something different He’s too smart to do the usual.”

  The train whistled.

  “There’s a cut right ahead,” Ramsey said thoughtfully. “And Boulder Spring is right back in the rocks, only a few miles off.”

  Clay got up and went to the front of the car. The train was veering around a slight curve that gave him a view of the track up ahead.

  “Barricade!” he called. “There’s a barricade up ahead!”

  “We’re slowing down,” Stover yelled.

  Dropping his rifle, Zeb jumped for the door and dashed through it, scrambling over the tender to get to the cab of the locomotive.

  “Don’t stop!” he yelled.

  “I can’t plow through that!”

  Zeb dropped from the tender to the floor of the cab. “Open her up!” he cried. “Wide open!”

  “She’ll jump the tracks!”

  At the edge of the brush near the tracks, Charlie Gant stared unbelieving as the locomotive seemed to gather speed. The driver-wheels churned at the track. “Why, the damn fool!” he said aloud.

  The train hit the barricade with a tremendous crash and rock, logs, and debris flew in every direction. The force of the impact knocked Zeb and the engineer in a heap on the cab floor. Only a quick grab at a hand-rail kept Zeb from falling out.

  But the debris had been piled on top of the logs laid across the rails, and not between them, and it was thrown wide. The locomotive stayed on the tracks, but it was slowed almost to a halt by the impact. The jolt made the engineer lose his grasp on the throttle, perhaps slowing the speed at the same time.

  “All right!” Gant yelled. “Take ’em!”

  Bullets smacked against the cab and one of them struck the coal, spattering the cab with tiny fragments like a sudden burst of bird shot.

  Zeb took careful aim. Gant was coming up the track, and he had a clear sight on his chest. Suddenly his hand was knocked up and his bullet went wild in the air.

  “Don’t be a fool, Zeb!” Ramsey said. “Let him get aboard! You want Gant; now’s your chance to get him in the act!”

  Zeb started to make an angry reply, then he realized Ramsey was right. After all, unless Gant was actually killed on the train there might always be some who would say that he had hidden behind his badge when he killed Gant.

  “Listen!” Ramsey grabbed his arm. “They’re getting on behind, and they have to cross those flatcars to get here. That’s where we can get them!”

  Scra
mbling over the coal car, they started back. Stover was waiting, with Clay and Sims, inside the express car, guns ready. Zeb and Ramsey went on into the vestibule of the passenger car, and started through.

  A man grabbed Zeb’s arm. “What’s up? What happened up there?”

  “Stay where you are,” Zeb replied shortly. There’s a holdup.”

  A woman gasped, and several men started up. “Sit down!” Ramsey commanded. “And get down on the floor!”

  *

  THE INDIAN, LUND, and Jenks were already in the caboose. Charlie Gant came up the steps and lunged through the back door.

  “Did they all get on?”

  “Gyp’s on the wire car. Frenchy’s picking up the horses.”

  “Good!” He turned sharply on the brakeman who stood back, white-faced and scared. “Hit that brake!”

  “No use. It would just burn out with the engine going like this.”

  Gant struck viciously with the barrel of his pistol and the brakeman dropped as if shot. Holstering his pistol, Gant grabbed the wheel and spun it. The wheels screeched, but the train did not slow. Smoke poured up from the caboose hotbox.

  “All right, load up your guns and let’s go!” He looked ahead over the weaving flatcars. “It’s a long way to that gold!”

  With drawn guns they started forward, scrambling over the wire and the logs.

  Zeb, Ramsey, and now Clay waited inside the passenger car, while the few passengers crouched close to the floor between the seats, as far forward in the coach as they could crowd. Some had suitcases and bedrolls stacked around them. A woman with two young children sat on the floor with her back against a seat-back, and facing the open seat upon which a two-foot-high bedroll had been placed.

  Gant made his way over the wire car, falling a little behind to let Lund and Indian Charlie be the first through the door. Opening it, they lunged in, and were met by a blast of gunfire.

  The Indian was knocked back against the wall of the car and he went down, his face twisted into a grimace of shock, surprise, and pain. Desperately he fired, working his gun like a cornered rattlesnake, striking at everything within sight.

  Lund had seen the guns an instant before the fire opened and had dropped to the floor. Shooting up, his first bullet struck Clay, turning him halfway around. Clay tried to bring his gun to bear and Lund shot again, then lunged up to his feet. He found himself staring into the eyes of Zeb Rawlings.