The Great Train Massacre

by William W. Johnstone

  “We received word that you murdered someone on the train yesterday between here and Reno.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Never mind who told us. We know that there were several witnesses.”

  “I did kill someone on the train, but it was in self-defense,” Matt said. “And we were standing on top of the train, so there couldn’t have been any witnesses.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. There were many witnesses. They saw your shadow on the ground.”

  “And they are telling you they can identify me by my shadow?”

  “They don’t have to identify you, Mr. Jensen. You have already confessed to it,” one of the deputies said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kelly had watched, from afar, the confrontation between Matt Jensen and the sheriff’s deputies. He felt a sense of accomplishment in getting Jensen out of the way, and he would have to let Conroy know that he was ultimately responsible for the success of the job.

  He thought for a moment that it might be a good idea for him to hire some men here . . . but he wouldn’t know who to hire, and he wasn’t sure that Conroy would reimburse him for the cost of hiring. He would just wait for Conroy’s next step, which, because Jensen had been removed, was bound to be successful.

  “All aboard!” he called, and the passengers, some of them new and some of them passengers who had taken advantage of the brief stop, climbed onto the train.

  When the last passenger was boarded, Kelly raised his lantern to signal the engineer. Then, with a blast of the whistle, the train began to roll out of the station. Kelly climbed onto the step, collected the tickets from the new passengers, then went to the front of the train, passing through the baggage car until he was standing in the vestibule between the baggage car and the private car.

  It was the middle of the night, and he knew that Gillespie and his daughter would both be asleep. Now would be the perfect time to do it.

  But how? He had no weapon.

  Wait, he had seen a hammer in the baggage car. He could kill them in their sleep by bludgeoning them to death.

  Yes, that’s exactly what he would do.

  Kelly stepped back into the baggage car, retrieved the hammer, then returned to the private car. He took a deep breath, then reached down to turn the doorknob.

  It was locked!

  Damn!

  With a sigh of frustration, Kelly turned and walked back through the baggage car. When he stepped into the Pullman car, he saw that Matt Jensen’s berth was empty. He decided to take a little nap. And why not? He asked himself. Jensen won’t be needing it anymore.

  Back at the sheriff’s office, Matt heard the train whistle.

  “Look, you’re making a mistake,” Matt said. “I have to be on that train, and it is leaving without me.”

  “Looks like you ain’t goin’ to make it, don’t it?” one of the deputies asked in a cruel tease.

  In a move that was so quick that neither of the deputies expected it, Matt snatched a pistol from the holster of one of the two men.

  “What the hell?” the two deputies called out in shock and fear. Both of them put their hands up.

  “You got a judge in this town?” Matt asked.

  “Yes, of course we do.”

  He pointed to the deputy whose pistol he had taken. “Go get him.”

  “Are you serious? It’s three o’clock in the morning! I’m not going to wake the judge up in the middle of the night.”

  “I think you will,” Matt said, cocking the pistol and pointing it at the other deputy.

  “Mason, for God’s sake, go get him!” the deputy said in a frightened tone of voice.

  According to the Regulator clock that was standing against the wall in the sheriff’s office, twenty minutes had passed since Deputy Mason left on his errand.

  “How far does he have to go to find the judge?” Matt asked.

  “Not far. The judge lives on the street behind us,” the deputy answered nervously.

  Less than five minutes later, Mason returned with a sleepy and grumpy-looking white-haired man.

  “What do you want with me, young man?” the judge asked. “The deputy woke me in the middle of the night, so whatever it is, it had better be good.”

  “You are a judge?”

  “That’s who you sent for, isn’t it? Yes, I’m Judge Craig. Now, what is it you want?”

  Matt, who now had his own pistol, put it back in his holster.

  “Thank you, young man. I find it easier to talk when someone isn’t pointing a gun at me.”

  “I put it away to let you know that I’m not a threat to anyone,” Matt said.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the deputy who was still armed pull his pistol. Matt let him get his gun all the way out before he reacted. He drew his pistol, pointed it at the deputy, and cocked it.

  Chagrined, the deputy returned his pistol to its holster. Matt did the same thing, then resumed his conversation with the judge.

  “Judge, when these two deputies pulled me from the train, they also pulled me away from the two people I have been hired to protect. And in doing so, they put Mr. John Gillespie and his daughter in grave danger.”

  “John Gillespie?” Judge Craig asked. “Are you talking about John Gillespie, the wealthy industrialist?”

  “Yes, I am talking about that John Gillespie. There have been several attempts made against his life, and not only his life, but his daughter’s life as well. The two of them are traveling to Chicago, and I have been hired to see that they get there safely. Right now, Mr. Gillespie and his daughter are in a private car that is attached to the train that left at least half an hour ago.”

  “Deputy Mason said that you killed a man on the train.”

  “I did, that is true. The man I killed had come to kill Mr. Gillespie. When I stopped him, he came after me with a knife. We fought on top of the car, and apparently we cast shadows onto the ground that were seen by several of the people on the train.”

  “How do I know you are telling the truth? How do I know you are guarding Mr. Gillespie?”

  “You can send a telegram to the Emerson Private Detective Agency in San Francisco. Emerson will confirm what I have told you.”

  “All right, I’ll do that first thing in the morning.”

  “No, sir, I need you to do it now,” Matt said. “I can’t afford to wait until tomorrow morning. I have to catch up with the train as quickly as I can.”

  “There’s nobody who will be doing business at this hour of the night,” Judge Craig said.

  “I’ve worked with Emerson before,” Matt said. “He keeps someone in his office twenty-four hours per day. You must do this.”

  The judge waited for a moment, staring pointedly at the pistol in Matt’s holster.

  “Is that a threat, Jensen? You have already demonstrated how fast you are with that gun.

  “Your Honor, I could have killed both of these men and gotten away easily,” Matt said. “But I’ve no wish to kill innocent men, and you’ve no reason to keep me here. Not when you can verify my story by a simple telegram.”

  “All right,” Judge Craig said. “Let’s go down to the depot and send the message.”

  Half an hour later they were standing at the Western Union desk waiting for the reply to the telegram Judge Craig had sent. The telegraph key started clacking, and the telegrapher began recording the message. When he was finished he handed the message to the judge.

  MATT JENSEN PRESENCE ON TRAIN IS CRITICAL TO PROTECT INDUSTRIALIST JOHN GILLESPIE AND DAUGHTER STOP PLEASE DO NOTHING TO IMPEDE HIS MISSION

  JEFFERSON EMERSON

  Judge Craig showed the message to Matt, then to the two deputies.

  “I apologize, Mr. Jensen,” Deputy Mason said.

  “I . . . don’t know what we can do to undo the damage,” Judge Craig said.

  “Where is the train now?” Matt asked the telegrapher.

  “It should be halfway between Evanston and Rock Springs by now,” t
he telegrapher said. He made a few taps on the key, then waited. It took but a moment for the response.

  “That’s funny, it hasn’t even reached Evanston yet. It should have been there before now.”

  “Do you suppose something has happened to it?” the judge asked.

  “I don’t know,” the telegrapher said.

  “Judge, I want you to order that a fast engine be put on the track so I can catch up with the train. I will pay the railroad for the engine.”

  The telegraph key began again, and as the telegrapher recorded the message, an expression of relief appeared on his face.

  “It has a bad wheel on the tender,” he said. “They can’t fix it in Evanston, they are going to have to go on through to Rock Springs. It’ll be running much slower than normal, so they’re clearing the track ahead of it.”

  “Come, Mr. Jensen, let’s get that engine for you,” Judge Craig said.

  Matt paid five hundred dollars to hire an engine and crew, and it raced down the track at more than fifty miles per hour. The sun came up, and the bright orb hung over the track right in front of them, impeding their vision. But just under three hours after they left Salt Lake City, they saw the train on the track in front of them.

  “I guess we’ll just follow it on in to Rock Springs,” the engineer said.

  “No, I need to get on it now.”

  “How are you going to do that? We’ve got no way of telling them to stop.”

  “I’ll climb out on front of the engine, then onto the last car of the train ahead.”

  “Have you ever done anything like that before?” the engineer asked.

  “No, but how hard can it be?”

  “Harder than you think. But if you are fool enough to want to do it, go right ahead,” the engineer invited.

  Matt had never done it before, but he knew what it would require. He would have to climb out onto the running board of the moving engine and pick his way alongside the boiler. It was simple enough when the engine was standing on a siding, but quite another matter when the train was running at full speed.

  Actually, they weren’t running nearly as fast now as they had been running, because the train ahead had been greatly slowed by the damaged wheel.

  Grabbing the handhold outside the window, Matt climbed onto the board and clung there for one dizzying moment, trying not to fall onto the blur of ballast below or against the searing hot jacket of the boiler. Then he moved forward.

  They were going down a little grade. It wasn’t steep, but the rails swooped down and around a hill. The wheels pounded in his ears, screeching as they took the curve. Finally, he reached his position, then hung there as the wind was cutting his face and blowing his hair. He felt as if he were falling through space.

  At that moment the engine rolled over a rough section of track bed. It gave a little twist and Matt was pitched back. He made a desperate grab for the guardrail, caught it, and hung there for a moment with his legs dangling but a foot away from the huge, rapidly spinning drive wheels. Finally, he pulled himself back up onto the running board. Once he was back on the running board, he paused for a moment to get reoriented, then he started moving forward until he reached the front of the engine. There he measured the distance between the engine and the trailing car of the train ahead of them. Looking back at the engineer he held up his hand, directing him to close the distance, providing him with as precise directions as he could.

  Matt knew that if he tried to pass between this engine and the train in front of him and missed, that he would be ground into a pulp under the engine.

  He looked down at the tracks between them and the car ahead and saw the cross ties whipping below him at blurring speed. When he gauged the distance to be correct, he held up his hand, palm open, which he hoped the engineer would take as a signal to hold it exactly where he was.

  Matt climbed out onto the cowcatcher, then jumped across the gap to the back of the car ahead. He caught onto the railing that ran around the back car, climbed over it, then leaned out to wave at the engineer.

  The engineer caught his signal, then slowed down enough to open up a considerable space between the two trains.

  The first thing Matt noticed once he was back aboard the train he had missed this morning was how much slower it was going now than it had been.

  He stepped into the car, which was a day car, surprising many who had not expected to see anyone come into the car from the back door. He nodded and smiled at a few of them, then passed on through the car as if there was nothing at all unusual about his entrance.

  When he passed through the diner he saw Kelly sitting at the front table having his breakfast. Kelly dropped his fork in surprise.

  “Hello, Mr. Kelly. Surprised to see me?”

  “I . . . uh . . . yes. I haven’t seen you since we left Salt Lake City. I thought, perhaps, you had gotten off the train.”

  “Now, why would I have done that? I’m committed to seeing the Gillespies safely through, all the way to Chicago.”

  “Well, yes, but I thought Mr. Gillespie said that the danger had passed, so when I didn’t see you this morning, I gathered that you must have left the train in Salt Lake City and started back.”

  “No, I’m still here,” Matt said, without providing any additional information. “Have you seen them this morning?”

  “No, I didn’t want to disturb them.”

  With a nod, Matt continued on through the train until he reached the private car. He knocked quietly.

  “Who is it?” John called from the other side of the door.

  “It’s me, Matt.”

  The door was jerked open quickly.

  “We thought you were gone,” John said with an obvious sigh of relief.

  “I was, for a while.”

  Matt told them the story of his being arrested and of subsequently hiring an engine and crew.

  “It wasn’t all that hard to catch up with you,” he concluded. “This train has a bad wheel, and that has made it necessary for it to run a lot slower than it has been.”

  “I thought so!” Mary Beth said. “I used your formula to see how fast we were going. Why, we are only doing about fifteen miles to the hour.”

  “Yes, and I’m glad of it. I wouldn’t have caught up with you had you been going as fast as we were in the beginning.”

  “Why were you arrested? I know you said it was for killing the man who tried to kill us. But who would have reported that?”

  “According to the deputies, several people on the train saw the fight. Or at least they saw shadows of two men fighting.”

  “But if all they saw was shadows, how could they relate that to you?” Mary Beth asked.

  “Good question,” Matt replied with a broad smile. “How could they possibly know that I was one of the two men dumb enough to get into a knife fight on top of a fast-moving train?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rock Springs, Wyoming, September 3, 6 p.m.

  Once the train reached Rock Springs it was shunted to a sidetrack because one of the wheels on the tender had gotten “out of round,” and it was necessary that the wheel be replaced.

  There was another eastbound through train due at two o’clock in the morning, but they were told that the wheel could be replaced in no more than six hours, which meant they would be able to be on their way again before having to transfer to the next available train.

  “We’ll get underway again at midnight,” Kelly promised all who complained to him about the delay.

  Mary Beth wanted to leave the train and look around the town. She had never been here before, and as she explained to Matt and John, “I like to see new places.”

  “I don’t mind looking around either,” John said. “There is a very productive coal mine here, producing coal for the railroads, and I would like to get a good look at it.”

  “Are you planning to buy it?” Matt asked.

  “Ha, I wish I could. But the coal mine belongs to a couple of brothers, Archibald and Duncan Bl
air. They opened the mine at just the right time, when the Union Pacific Railroad arrived.”

  “Were they the first pioneers, Papa?”

  “No, darlin’, that would be Ben Holladay. He brought his Overland Stage Company through here because of something that was even more valuable than coal then, and perhaps even now. Rock Springs is a valuable source of water in the midst of the desert.”

  As Matt, John, and Mary Beth were walking around town, the conductor was standing at the Western Union counter inside the depot. He was waiting for a reply to the telegram he had just sent to Conroy in which he said simply and cryptically . . .

  AT ROCK SPRINGS WYOMING STOP JOB REMAINS OPEN

  When the telegraph key started clacking, he looked toward the telegrapher.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Kelly, this is what you’ve been waiting on.”

  As the key continued its clatter, the telegrapher wrote the note on a piece of yellow paper, then he handed it to Kelly.

  CONTACT ARNOLD HELLMAN AND FENTON LADUE WHO ARE LOCALS STOP MENTION MY NAME TO THEM STOP AM WIRING TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR EXPENSES

  The telegrapher filled out a form and handed it to Kelly. “Sign this receipt, and I’ll give you the two hundred dollars.”

  “Thanks,” Kelly said.

  “Oh, I would like to go in here before they close,” Mary Beth said as they passed by a dress shop. “I always like to see what the ladies are wearing in other towns.”

  “We’ll come in with you,” Matt said.

  Mary Beth laughed, then tilted her head. “Matt, do you really want to come into a dress shop?”

  Matt laughed as well. “No, not really. I just don’t think I should let you out of my sight. I am responsible for your safety.”

  “What do think is going to happen to me in a dress shop? Look, there’s a saloon just down the street. Why don’t you and Papa go in there and have a beer? If anything happens, I’ll scream loud enough for you to hear me, you don’t have to worry about that. I’ll scream loud enough for the whole town to hear me.”