“That’s right, since there’s no way we can make it all the way back to Noyes today. Once we get far enough away from the tracks and back in these thick woods, we’ll fix us a big fire and pitch our tents real close to it. This time of year the storm shouldn’t last overly long.”
“I hope you’re right, Boss, ’cause I don’t relish sitting through a real winter norther out in the open.” Bull said, shivering in his coat.
Hammer grinned. “Just keep thinking of fifty thousand dollars, Bull,” he said. “That ought’a warm you up better than a campfire.”
* * *
As soon as the outlaws were out of sight, Smoke and his men came down off the hillock overlooking the railroad tracks and approached the wreckage site.
“Jesus!” Louis whispered at the number of bodies lying scattered on the ground.
They got down off their horses and began to move among the dead and wounded. Their horses snorted and shied at the smell of so much blood and at the sight of so many horses and men torn apart by the explosions.
When the group would find men still alive, the boys would try to make them comfortable, covering them with blankets against the cold and telling them help was on the way.
If the men weren’t too badly injured, they would move them over closer to the pile of boards that was all that was left of the boxcar to get them out of the wind and elements, for Smoke had told them a storm was on the way and they needed to get the men under cover if at all possible.
The final tally was eighteen dead, six injured so badly it was doubtful if they would survive, and five with non-life-threatening wounds.
When they had done all they could to stop the bleeding and get the wounded covered, Smoke asked Cal to start a fire near where the men lay to give them some warmth and to get some coffee brewing. The more seriously wounded he gave small drinks of water and whiskey mixed together to help ease their pain.
While Cal and Pearlie gave the others coffee when it was ready, Smoke and Louis stood nearby, smoking cigars as they drank some coffee in tin mugs, cradling the mugs in their hands to keep them warm.
Louis glanced back over his shoulder at the bodies lying dead all around them. “I’ve seen a lot of bad men in my time out West, Smoke, but I don’t know as I’ve ever seen anyone who could do this and just ride away as if nothing had happened,” he said, a look of deep disgust on his face.
“I know what you mean, Louis,” Smoke said, his expression grim as he sipped his coffee. It burned all the way down, and made his already upset stomach burn like it was on fire.
He took a deep breath, trying to get the stench of burnt flesh out of his throat, and turned to look at the dead bodies. “I want you all to remember this sight when we finally catch up with the men that did this, ’cause I do not intend to give them any quarter or mercy.” He turned his eyes to Louis. “And if any of you have any reservations about what I’m going to do, you’d better head on back to the rail yard with Van Horne and the wounded men when he gets here.”
Louis shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Smoke. Whatever you’ve got planned for the bastards that did this is too good for them.” Louis’s cultured face had turned grim and his eyes looked like those of a hawk, black and ferocious and unforgiving.
Smoke’s lips curled in a savage grin of anticipation. “Just remember you said that, pal, when the blood starts to flow and the outlaws’ bodies start to pile up.”
* * *
Within an hour, Van Horne showed up with ten covered wagons and a doctor and nurse, along with ten hard-looking men, to take care of the dead and wounded.
As the doctor and nurse began to examine and care for the wounded, Van Horne and the other men moved among the dead bodies of the Pinkerton agents who’d been killed by the outlaws.
Two of the men helping put the bodies in a wagon stopped and bent over, vomiting on the cold ground in response to the carnage around them. Many of the dead were in pieces; body parts blown off by the force of the explosions that tore the train apart. Blood was everywhere, staining the mounds of snow scarlet, and the smell of burning flesh was making everyone edgy and nervous.
Van Horne, a man not unused to violence, stood looking around with tears in his eyes. “I cannot imagine the depth of evil of the men who did this,” he muttered, shaking his head as the stack of bodies in the wagon grew higher.
He turned to Smoke and Louis, who stood next to him with Cal and Pearlie behind them. “The railroad will offer a ten-thousand-dollar bonus to you and your men if you capture or kill the bastards responsible for this outrage, Smoke,” he said, his voice low and grim.
Smoke glanced at the others, who all shook their heads. “No, Bill, that’s not necessary. My men and I will track the sons of bitches down for you and do whatever is necessary to bring them to justice without any thought of reward or payment,” Smoke said, his voice equally serious.
“Yes, Bill,” Louis agreed. “There are some things money cannot buy, and justice for the dead is one of them.”
“Thank you, men,” Van Horne said with feeling, shaking each of their hands in turn.
From over near where the wounded lay, the doctor raised his head and called, “Mr. Van Horne, one of the men wants to talk to you.”
The group walked over and stood next to the man the doctor was kneeling next to.
It was Albert Knowles, the chief detective assigned to head the Pinkerton contingent on the train. His left leg was lying at a funny angle and there were cuts and smoke burns on his face and hands.
Van Horne squatted next to him. “Albert, how are you doing?” he asked gently, smoothing Knowles’s hair back with his ham-sized hand.
Knowles grimaced as he tried to shift position. “I’m all right, Mr. Van Horne,” he said, his eyes moving over to the wagon being filled with dead bodies. “At least, I’m in better shape than most of my men,” he added in a strangled, hoarse voice full of remorse.
“Don’t blame yourself for this, Al,” Van Horne said. “There was nothing you could have done against an attack like this.”
“No, Mr. Van Horne, I’m afraid I am to blame for this,” Knowles said, his voice filled with self-disgust.
“How’s that, Al?” Van Horne asked. “How can you possibly blame yourself for this atrocity?”
“I think I recognized the voice of the leader of the men who blew up the train,” Knowles said, his eyes shifting around, unable to meet Van Horne’s.
“Oh?”
“Yes, sir. While I was eating lunch at a saloon in town, a man approached me and told me he was an ex-marshal from down Fort Smith way. We got to talking and he asked a lot of questions about the security arrangements on the payroll trains.” Knowles sighed. “I didn’t think much about it, and he did it in such a way as not to arouse my suspicions, but I can see now he was pumping me for information on where my men would be stationed on the train to use against us.”
“What was his name?” Van Horne asked grimly.
“He said his name was John Brody, but I doubt he was telling the truth,” Knowles said. He went on to describe the man he’d talked to in detail, as only an experienced detective could.
Van Horne had started to shake his head when Smoke spoke up. “Bill, doesn’t that sound a lot like that man who came up to us the other day while we were in town eating, who inquired about a security job?”
Van Horne snapped his fingers. “Damn, Smoke, I think you’re right.” He pursed his lips, thinking back to that day. “Now what was his name?” he said, almost to himself.
“He didn’t give a name, as 1 recollect,” Louis said. He glanced at Smoke. “But I think Smoke had him pegged from the get-go.”
Smoke nodded. “That’s right. He sure as hell didn’t look like he’d spent much time using his hands for manual labor, and he wore his side arm like a man who knew how to use it, tied down low on his hip.”
“Well, whatever the hell his name is and wherever he goes to try and hide, I want him brought down,” Van Horne said. �
��One way or another!”
17
Hammer and his men rode hard for the rest of the day to put as much distance between them and the railroad as they could, until just before dusk they came to a large lake.
The edges of the lake were still rimmed with ice, with large patches out away from shore showing brilliant blue water where the ice was beginning to melt. About twenty yards from shore, the dead body of a large elk floated in an open hole in the ice where he’d evidently fallen through the ice pack.
“Looky there, Hammer,” Bull said, pointing to the elk. “That sumbitch must weight over a thousand pounds.”
“Yeah, an’ that elk meat would taste mighty good if we cooked it over a fire,” Sam Johnson, one of the gang members said, licking his lips at the thought.
Hammer glanced around. The place where they’d stopped had a good cover of trees growing by the edge of the lake, and was moderately well protected from the frigid north wind blowing across the lake toward them.
“That’s a good idea, Sam,” he said. “Why don’t you see if you and the boys can get a rope around his horns and drag him into shore. We’ll make camp here and see about cooking up some hot food.”
“It’s ’bout time,” Shorty Wallace observed as he sat shivering in his saddle, his coyote-fur coat pulled tight around his shoulders. “I’m ’bout frozen clear through.”
Hammer grinned. “Good. Then a little work pulling that elk in will warm you up, Shorty,” he said. “Go on, get to it so we can eat ’fore it gets dark.”
“You think that ice will hold a hoss?” Shorty asked as he tried to figure out a way to get the elk to shore.
Hammer laughed. “Well, it sure as hell didn’t hold that elk, did it, Shorty?”
“Yeah, an’ if you fall in that water, you’ll be frozen solid ’fore we can get you out,” Bull added, shaking his head at the thought.
* * *
By the time Shorty and Sam and a couple of other gang members had managed to rope and drag the elk to shore using long ropes tied to their saddle horns, Bull had a roaring fire going in the center of the copse of trees they were camping in.
Coffee had been brewed in several pots, and the men were mixing it with generous dollops of whiskey and brandy to ward off the chill as the temperature continued to fall and large, wet flakes of snow began to drift downward from the dark clouds overhead.
The wind, instead of dying at dusk as it usually did, was freshening as the storm built to its full force and the snowfall intensified.
“Damn,” a half-breed Indian named Spotted Dog said, rubbing his hands together in front of the fire. “I thought Minnesota was cold, but this land is even worse.”
“Shit,” Jerry Barnes said, edging closer to the fire and turning his back to it to warm up his rear. “I thought Injuns don’t feel the cold like us white men do.”
Spotted Dog laughed. “That’s right, Jerry, they don’t. But I’m only half-Indian, and my white half is freezing its balls off.”
“Well, why don’t you squat over that there fire, Dog?” Sanchez asked, laughing. “That’ll warm them cojones right up for you.”
Shorty looked up from where he was working on the elk with a long-bladed skinning knife. “Damn, Hammer. This beast is near frozen solid. I can’t hardly cut no steaks off’n it with this knife.”
Hammer shook his head in disgust. “Dog, go on over there an’ show Shorty how to skin an elk.”
“Yeah, Dog,” Jerry Barnes said. “It’s just like scalpin’ a man, only you got to cut deeper.”
Spotted Dog glared at Barnes, who had only a fringe of hair around the side of his head, the top being completely bald. “There are times when I’m tempted to try scalping you, Jerry, but with the sparseness of your hair, I figure it would be a waste of time.”
With that parting shot, which made the other men around the fire laugh, Spotted Dog stepped over to the elk and with expert flicks of his wrist, stripped the skin off and cut several large steaks off the back strap. “The trick to cutting meat, Shorty,” Dog said as he held up the bloody steaks, “is to have a knife that’s sharper than your thumb.”
Soon, the charred meat was being cut up and passed out among the men, who were eating it with large plates of pinto beans and hard biscuits that had to be dunked in their coffee before they could be chewed.
As the men ate, they also drank a great deal of whiskey, trying to get warm. Before long, they were all in a festive, half-drunk mood, and were all talking about how they planned to spend the money they’d stolen from the train.
* * *
Smoke and Louis and Cal and Pearlie lay on their stomachs, peering through binoculars over a ridge at the outlaws’ camp two hundred yards away. They’d laid their ground blankets down so the dampness of the ground wouldn’t get their clothes wet, a sure way to freeze to death in this weather.
The snow was falling heavier now, and the brims of their hats and their shoulders were becoming covered with ice. Though the others were shivering from the cold, Smoke didn’t even notice it, the fires of vengeance burning in his gut keeping him warm.
“I make it about thirty men, give or take a couple,” Smoke said, speaking in a low voice even though he knew the snow and wind would muffle any sounds they made.
“Me too,” Louis said, peering through his own set of binoculars.
“I wonder why they’ve made that fire so big,” Pearlie whispered from his position next to Smoke. “It’s like they ain’t afraid of nobody seein’ it.”
“They probably think that since they killed most of the Pinkertons, there ain’t nobody on their trail yet,” Cal said, his voice quivering from the chattering of his teeth.
“You’re right, Cal,” Smoke said. “That and the storm that’s come up to cover their tracks gives them a false sense of safety. They probably have no idea that the Chinaman who saw the robbery would have gotten us on their trail so fast.”
Louis glanced at Smoke. “You planning on hitting them tonight?” he asked.
Smoke thought about it for a moment and then he nodded, his eyes flashing in the reflected light from the campfire down the slope. “Yes, but not just yet. Let’s pull back a mile or so and build us a fire. We’ll eat and feed the horses and get warm and wait until just before dawn to attack. That way the sentries, if they bother to post them, will be tired enough that they won’t be effective.”
They followed him as he eased back off the ridge and got up on his mount. He walked the horse away from the outlaws’ camp for a half hour and found a good spot for a camp, nestled in a thick grove of tall pines and maple trees in a small depression surrounded by heavy boulders that would hide the light from their campfire.
As he dismounted, he told Cal and Pearlie, “Gather up as many pinecones as you can carry. They’ll light easy and burn hot to get the wet wood going for our fire.”
While the boys were gathering pinecones and sticks of wood, Smoke set about making coffee and fixing a camp supper that would give them the energy they were going to need later on that night. Louis saw to the horses, getting them covered with blankets and setting out piles of grain for them to eat. Once the fire was going, he would melt some snow for them to drink.
After they’d eaten and filled their bellies with plenty of hot coffee, Smoke showed them how to gather tree limbs covered with pine needles and lay them in piles up against the trunks of some of the larger pine trees. They put their ground blankets down, crawled into their sleeping blankets near the fire, and pulled the tree limbs over them. The pine needles on the limbs kept both the snow and the cold away from them, and they slept snug as bugs in rugs.
* * *
At almost exactly three in the morning, Smoke came awake. Years of living in the High Lonesome had helped him develop an internal alarm clock that rarely failed to waken him whenever he wanted.
He crawled out from under his blankets and pine limbs to find almost two feet of snow had fallen. He threw some pinecones on the red-hot embers of the fire and prepared
another large pot of coffee before waking the others.
By the time Louis and Cal and Pearlie were up and awake, he was sitting next to a roaring fire, sipping steaming hot coffee from his mug and planning his next move.
As Louis filled their mugs, he glanced over at Smoke. “All right, Smoke, what’s our next move?”
Smoke spoke while staring at the fire. “There’s too many of them to just go into their camp with our guns blazing. We could probably get most of them, but sure as hell they’d manage to get a couple of us before we finished them off.”
“So, what should we do?” Pearlie asked. “Maybe we could surround them and shoot down into their camp from a distance,” he offered.
Louis shook his head. “No, son, it’s too dark for accurate fire, and even then, there’s so many of them that they’d be able to mount an attack on us before we could get them all.”
Smoke looked up at them, his eyes full of reflected flames from the campfire, his grin fierce. “You’re right Louis, so here’s what we’re going to do, men . . .”
Cal and Pearlie and Louis squatted down on their haunches next to the fire and listened as Smoke outlined his plan of attack.
* * *
Squatty Lyons was leaning back against the bole of a ponderosa pine, his arms crossed over his chest and his chin tucked into the collar of his rawhide coat against the north wind. “Damn that Hammer for giving me the dog watch,” he mumbled to himself, his teeth chattering against the cold. “You don’t see him out here in the dead of night freezing near to death keeping watch when no one’s within a hundred miles of us,” he complained to the night air.
He glanced over at the long line of horses tied one after the other to a rope strung between two trees as he fumbled in his coat and tried to keep his hands from shaking while he built himself a cigarette. Hammer had told him it was his responsibility to keep watch on the horses during the night. “Huh, as if someone’s gonna sneak up here in the middle of nowhere an’ steal ’em,” he growled, sticking the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and pulling out a lucifer to light it with.
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