Behind the Iron

by William W. Johnstone

  Fallon nodded, but he said, “You’ve told me all this before.”

  “And you know that you don’t have much time to get what we want out of Jess Harper.”

  “I understand.”

  “And how do you get in good with Doc Gripewater?”

  Fallon felt like he was back at that subscription school in Gads Hill again.

  “Cherry pie,” Fallon said dryly. “And gin. Or any way possible.”

  “You’re likely wondering why the warden can’t just put you in as Gripewater’s assistant,” MacGregor said.

  “No,” Fallon said. “That’s obvious.”

  “It is?”

  “It’s not the warden I have to convince,” Fallon said. “I have to convince the inmates that I’m not a spy.”

  “And then you have to get Jess Harper to trust you.”

  “In a very short time.”

  MacGregor frowned. “Maybe you think you could figure out a better idea?”

  Fallon chuckled and shook his head. His mind raced: A better idea than sending a former federal lawman, known to some of the inmates in the hellhole on the Missouri River, into prison as a spy? With an assignment to find a way to get a trusty’s position in the prison hospital? To meet, befriend, and possibly woo or even seduce a teenage girl who happened to marry an outlaw named Linc Harper and was now pregnant with the killer’s child? Have her somehow tell him where Linc Harper stashed all the loot he managed to take in a train robbery?

  “I know it’s a hard task,” MacGregor said.

  “It’s damned near impossible, Dan,” Fallon shot back. “You’re assuming Linc Harper told his wife all his secrets or at least the secret he probably would keep closest to his vest: where he stashes his stolen booty. You’re assuming Linc Harper didn’t just spend that forty-two grand on horses, cards, dice, loose women, and fancy clothes. You’re assuming that the convicts in that dark and bloody ground, once they find out that I’m a lawman—was a lawman—won’t stick a knife between my ribs two nights into my sentence. This is what you call a good idea?”

  MacGregor sighed. “You got out of Yuma. You can get out of this.”

  By that time, however, Harry Fallon had stopped listening. The door opened, but it wasn’t the conductor coming through. It was one of those men wearing a new suit, new bowler hat, well-traveled linen duster, and black-leather, tall-heeled Coffeyville cowboy boots with red tops inlaid with Lone Stars.

  The man stopped by the stove and lighted a cigarette, straightened, and slowly reached up and grabbed the cord above his head.

  “Hell,” Fallon said, and braced himself.

  The stranger pulled the cord, sending a signal to the engineer to make an emergency stop.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As the wheels screeched and groaned against the steel rails, sending sparks rising past the window, Harry Fallon kept his seat as the train ground to a stop. Dan MacGregor flew from his seat to Fallon’s, but managed to extend his arms. His hands, fingers extended, pressed hard against the hard wood, his elbows bent, and he shoved himself back into his seat.

  A few passengers screamed.

  “We’ve derailed!” a woman shrieked.

  A baby began bawling. An old man swallowed his chewing tobacco and began gagging.

  “Wreck!” a boy shouted with enthusiasm. “We’ve wrecked.”

  Dan MacGregor’s instincts took over. He reached underneath his coat toward his shoulder holster.

  “No,” Fallon whispered. “There are women and children to consider.”

  The man who had pulled the emergency cord had already drawn a big Colt with a long, long barrel. The massive .45 he held in his right hand. His left had pulled a big grain sack that had been folded and crammed under the left side of his jacket.

  “Folks!” he drawled. “Kind folks, if you please. Stay put. We ain’t derailed, ain’t hit no cow on the tracks, and collided with no eastbound choo-choo. Just relax and hush up.” He fired his gun to get their attention.

  The baby cried harder. The old man threw up into a spittoon. A woman screamed. Another fainted.

  From beyond the passenger coach, Fallon made out the reports of other guns being fired. Some sounded as though they were being fired in other coaches, and more than one came from the outside. There was no way, he realized, to figure out how many bandits were involved in this robbery.

  Smoke from the outlaw’s Colt had that acrid smell.

  The man stepped from the side of the coach into the aisle and began shaking the coarse grain sack.

  Fallon memorized the face.

  He was not one of the two men Fallon and MacGregor had spotted at the train station in St. Louis, although he, too, wore a pair of Coffeyville boots, although his appeared much worn, patched, and the spur ridges on the sides of his boots were scarred. In fact, the spot just above the heels had been worn so roughly that the leather had ripped. He did not wear spurs, but Fallon figured a pair was likely stuck in the saddlebags on the horse waiting somewhere nearby.

  Without those high-stacked heels, the man was likely an inch or two shorter than Fallon. He wore woolen trousers of black-and-gray stripes, suspenders, a solid blue shirt, tan canvas trail jacket with dark brown corduroy cuffs and collar, and a plain red bandanna. The hat was gray, nondescript. A gunbelt was buckled across his waist, and Fallon thought, from the bulge in the canvas jacket, that maybe he packed another pistol on his left hip. The face was round. His sandy hair was thin, and Fallon thought the man might be bald underneath that hat. The eyes were light, but Fallon would have to wait till the man came closer to figure out the color. He wore a handlebar mustache, and the rest of his face was covered with a day or two of beard stubble. His accent had an Ozarks twang.

  “Folks,” the man said as he stopped by the first occupied seat in the coach. He grinned as he shook the sack in front of the woman with her gray hair in a bun and wearing a proper dress of black-and-gray wool. The big Colt remained trained down the coach, moving from male passenger to male passenger. “On this fine mornin’ you good folks has gots the privilege of bein’ robbed by Linc Harper and his pals.” He grinned, revealing buckteeth, a bottom incisor missing, and a gold filling in the center of one of those huge, top beaver teeth. “And we gots the honor of takin’ any money, watches, rings, and jew’lry. Partin’ is such sweet sorrow, but think of all them stories you’ll be able to tell yer kids, grandkids.” He glanced at the woman. “And yer great-grandkids, ol’ lady, sweetie pie, ma’am.”

  The gun’s barrel moved toward the woman’s chest. She gasped. The barrel waved a few times and then returned and stopped in the general direction of Fallon and MacGregor. MacGregor had to crane his neck. Fallon could look straight at the gunman.

  “Lady, I don’t reckon I did say broaches in particular, but that would fall underneath that department of jew’lry, which I’m plumb sure I did say. In the bag, or I’ll deliver somethin’ else you’ll be able to tell your great-grand-young’uns—once yer busted jaw be healed up good.”

  The woman started sobbing, begging that the broach had belonged to her mother’s mother.

  The old-timer a few rows behind her and across the aisle stopped vomiting long enough to lift his head, spit—missing the spittoon—and say, “Give him the thing, lady, else he’ll kill us all.”

  “Please!” shrieked the mother of the screaming infant.

  MacGregor turned away and looked out the window.

  The woman began removing the broach pinned over her heart.

  “Two men,” MacGregor said in a soft whisper. “Outside the express car.”

  Fallon nodded.

  “That’s all I can see.”

  “Three passenger cars, right?” Fallon’s voice was barely audible.

  “I don’t wanna hear no talkin’, folks!” the bandit yelled. “So y’all shut up so I can hears what’s happenin’ in this here train and what’s happenin’ outside.”

  MacGregor nodded to answer Fallon’s question. “No Pullmans,” he mouthed
.

  “But a smoking car,” MacGregor’s lips moved.

  “Two with the engineer and brakeman,” Fallon whispered.

  “One to hold the horses,” MacGregor mouthed. “No, most likely two.”

  Fallon held up both hands close to his chest, spreading out all five fingers on his right hand but folding his thumb on his left. “Ten,” he mouthed.

  MacGregor let out a sigh. “At least,” he said softly.

  “Hell.” Fallon exhaled.

  “Holderman.” MacGregor’s lips moved deliberately. “Smoking car.”

  Fallon did not blink, did not answer, and just let his cynical stare tell the detective his thoughts.

  “Yeah,” MacGregor whispered. “I know.”

  “No talkin’. Not even whisperin’. Ever’body needs to shut up. Unless I start talkin’ to you. Like I’m a-doin’ right now.”

  The bandit had made his way to the woman with the baby. He grinned. “Boy’r gal, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Boy,” the mother sobbed.

  “Where’s the runt’s papa?”

  “Dead,” the woman said.

  “That’s a shame. Your watch, lady. An’ that ring. I mean, yer a widder woman now, not married no more, so you don’t need that ring.”

  The items fell into the sack. Seating across the aisle, a man in a black broadcloth suit and flat-brimmed gray hat leaned forward and said, “How can you be so cruel? This woman and her child—”

  The long barrel of the Colt slammed across the man’s skull. The hat flew off, and the man crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  “I gots to eat like ever’body else,” the man said. “He thinks he’s outsmartin’ me. Boy!” He trained the Colt on a kid, about eight years old, traveling with his parents. The Colt moved from the kid to the man and wife. “Don’t worry. He won’t get kilt, but I ain’t got no reservations ’bout makin’ him an orphan if you get smart.” The gun’s aim turned back toward the boy. “Get down and go through that gent’s pockets. I know he’s got a mouth on him, so I reckon he’s got some greenbacks and gold.”

  The boy seemed excited for the chance to take part in a robbery. The father pulled his sobbing wife closer. A few more gunshots outside made the passengers inside this coach shudder, and the baby cried harder no matter how much the frightened mother rocked him and patted his back.

  A wallet, a few silver dollars, a gold watch were retrieved by the youngster. The boy dropped those in the sack and then showed the bandit a Remington over-under derringer he had taken off the coldcocked Good Samaritan.

  “That’s nice,” the man said. “No, sonny. That don’t go in the bag. Put that li’l lady’s popgun in my jacket pocket.” He nodded at his right side, and there the youngster slipped the derringer inside.

  Smiling, the outlaw held the bag out toward the kid.

  “Boy,” he said, “take one of the coins outa this here sack fer yer troubles.” The man grinned again, the gold filling reflecting sunlight from the nearest window. “Yer now an honorary member of Linc Harper’s gang. But don’t get no gold coin. Make sure it’s just a Morgan dollar.”

  The father started to object, but the massive barrel of the outlaw’s Colt stopped him. The boy grinned, held up the coin for the outlaw’s inspection, and then slid into the seat behind his parents.

  The outlaw took two watches, a purse and a billfold from the boy’s parents.

  “Don’t throw up yer breakfast on my boots,” the outlaw said as he came to the man who had swallowed his chewing tobacco. “You might not think much of my boots, but they cost me fifteen dollars twenty-one years ago. When I was perty much as honest as most of you folks.”

  The pickings from that man seemed mighty slim, but the next couple gave the outlaw a string of pearls, a diamond pin from the gentleman’s tie, a fine gold watch, a checkbook, coin purse, and wallet.

  Outside, someone began shouting. The robber waved the Colt at Fallon. “Open that winder,” he said.

  Fallon obeyed.

  “Fuse is lit! Fuse is lit! Fuse is lit!”

  The man and wife currently being relieved of all their valuables sucked in a deep breath. The man sat down opposite them, swearing softly, and started to say, “Folks, best brace—”

  The explosion roared, shaking the entire train, and the concussion jarred four more windows open. It sounded like hailstones pelting the roof of the coach, but Fallon understood it had to be debris from the express car.

  He could already smell smoke from the explosion.

  “I hates dynamite,” the robber said as he pushed himself back to his feet. “And I shore don’t care much for an expressman who won’t open the door when he knows what’s a-gonna happen if he don’t. Linc Harper ain’t one to trifle with, folks. I bet he used an extra stick of dynamite just to teach that damned fool of an expressman a lesson.”

  The man chuckled as he stopped at the seats occupied by Harry Fallon and Dan MacGregor.

  “That damned fool of an expressman is likely scattered all across that express car, and maybe all the way to I-oh-way and down to Arkansas. Don’t you reckon?”

  The barrel waved at Fallon, who slowly spread open his coat. “Nothing,” Fallon said. “No watch. No wallet. Nothing.”

  “I call that horse apples,” the outlaw said, and his finger touched the trigger slightly.

  “Don’t be a damned fool!” said someone sitting behind Fallon.

  MacGregor cleared his throat. “It’s true, mister.” MacGregor slowly pulled back his coat, revealing the brass shield of the American Detective Agency.

  The outlaw’s eyes—they were green, Fallon decided—widened. “You’re a law dog?”

  MacGregor shrugged. The Colt now was aimed directly at the bridge of MacGregor’s nose.

  The outlaw laughed. “He takin’ you to Jeff City?”

  Fallon nodded.

  “And you think maybe I’ll just take you instead of this gent’s watch and wallet?”

  Fallon shrugged. He wasn’t sure if riding with Linc Harper was a better option than being slammed behind the iron and stone of the Missouri State Penitentiary.

  “Well, that ain’t happenin’. The split us boys get from Linc ain’t gettin’ no smaller.”

  “But . . .” Fallon sang out desperately. “Listen . . .”

  The man’s head whipped around to Fallon. “Shut up!” he bellowed and brought the Colt toward Fallon’s chest.

  Then he saw the movement and swung the Colt back at MacGregor.

  Two gunshots roared. Fallon felt the muzzle blast as the big .45 blew out the glass of the window. He couldn’t hear the baby bawling anymore. All he heard was a deafening ringing in his ears, and Fallon wondered if his eardrums had ruptured.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Fallon realized he was standing, holding the arm of the gunman. He felt the heat of the Colt’s barrel, as he ripped the heavy revolver from the train robber’s hand. The man offered no resistance, and Fallon pushed him away, but used his free hand to pull the derringer from the outlaw’s pocket.

  The bandit fell between the seats across the aisle. His eyes remained open, staring at the ceiling of the coach. They did not blink. The man did not breathe. Fallon saw the smoldering hole in the center of the outlaw’s chest, the shirt blackened by the powder flash, and just a little splotch of blood.

  All of this had happened in mere seconds. Fallon’s right ear still rang, but he heard someone’s voice, sounding like a bad echo, in his left. He saw Dan MacGregor brushing past Fallon. The detective held a smoking Smith & Wesson in his right hand—Fallon wondered where he’d gotten it—and he knelt in the aisle and reached for the corpse. His left hand jerked the trail jacket, revealing, as Fallon had suspected, another holster. This one also held a .45-caliber Colt, which MacGregor drew from the holster.

  Somehow, Harry Fallon heard something else. He turned toward the door that led to the front of the train. A man wearing a duster and Coffeyville boots—one of the two Fallon and MacGregor had noticed back
in St. Louis—had kicked open the door. He stopped, cursed, and raised the heavy revolver he had carried with the barrel pointed toward the floor.

  Fallon and MacGregor fired, their shots sounding just like one, and dust puffed off the robber’s black coat as he slammed through the open doorway, hit the railing, and fell into a heap.

  It sounded like everyone in the coach had started screaming now, almost sounding even louder than the roaring echoes of gunshots.

  Holding two guns—his own and the dead man’s across the aisle—Dan MacGregor started toward the door and the second dead robber.

  As he ran past the white-faced, stunned people at the front of the coach, MacGregor turned around. “I’ll take the front!” he yelled. “You take the back. This is our best chance!”

  Fallon did not know what the young man meant by best chance. Best chance at taking Linc Harper alive? Best chance at getting themselves killed? The latter seemed a more likely scenario.

  But Fallon was running toward the next coach. This was the last coach, after which there would be a baggage car and the caboose. Dan MacGregor was running toward two more passenger coaches and the express car, and Fallon figured, most of the robbers would now be at that express car. Or from the sounds of the gunfire in the third passenger car, those killers might be heading this way.

  He had no time to contemplate. He pushed through the door and stepped into the platform between the coach and the smoking car. He didn’t know what time it was. Perhaps mid-afternoon, but the air did not feel fresh. He smelled the thick smoke, and he saw it, too, burning his eyes worse than the pistol shots in the close confines of the coach he had just left. But Fallon was not outside long.

  Lowering his shoulder, he slammed through the door, passed the closets on his left and right, and dived to his left in the smoking car.

  A bullet punched through the hard wooden seat, sending splinters into Fallon’s cheek and right hand and thudding into the paneled closet behind Fallon.

  “Sumbitch!” the outlaw swore.

  Fallon came up, above the seat, started to aim, and quickly dropped to the floor as another bullet slammed into the closet’s exterior wall.