Steel Trails of Vengeance

by Ray Tassin

  Danner rode far ahead of the wagons and by the time he reached the forested area the wagons had fallen behind a good quarter of a mile. He reined his horse down to a walk as he entered the grove, scanning both sides as he moved along. The far end of the area was perhaps two hundred yards away. He cocked his head to catch any fugitive sound. A rustling to his right reached him. In a single motion he drew, cocked and aimed his Colts. A rabbit broke across the trail and vanished into the trees at his left. Danner kicked his mount into motion again.

  At the north end of the passage through the trees, Danner reined around and returned to the south entrance, moving faster this trip. Still he detected nothing. He sat idly in the saddle, awaiting the arrival of the wagons. He guided the column through the trees, half expecting horsemen to appear from some hidden spot within the wooded area. Yet no attack came. He could almost feel the stares of the grangers on his back when the wagons reached flat prairie again. Relaxing in the saddle and rocking with the gait of his horse, Danner considered the only remaining spot from which Tuso could launch a surprise attack—the low hills near Richfield—and the weakest of the three possible sites. Danner searched for a reason why Tuso would choose this spot, but he was unable to come up with an answer that made any kind of sense.

  Twisting in the saddle, Danner glanced at the string of wagons and off to both sides. In every direction an appalling flatness stretched to infinity, a sea of wheat broken only by the narrow and sometimes meandering road. The gentle rustling of the wheat and the dust swirling upward with gusts of wind, emphasized the powder dryness of the prairie. A sudden chill hit Danner then, straightening him in the saddle.

  Tuso could easily destroy these wagons and discourage all further rebellion, by the simple process of setting fire to the prairie. A single spark would start a holocaust sweeping across the plains, devouring all living things. Danner recalled a prairie fire he had once outrun and now he found himself scanning the plains for smoke. Tuso just might try such a stunt.

  Far ahead of their position the first of the low hills took form. By the time he reached the area Danner rode tensed for trouble. The road curved to his left for a quarter of a mile before cutting back north and heading straight into Richfield. If trouble came it would be on this quarter-mile strip where Richfield remained shut off from view. Tuso's bunch couldn't pick off the grangers without getting in closer to the wagons.

  Pulling up along the north side of the trail, Danner watched the hills while one by one the heavy grain wagons passed him by. Then he sent his mount trotting along the trail. He passed the wagons and Richfield appeared in the distance, with no signs of horsemen in between.

  Danner exhaled slowly, feeling a tiredness spread over his body. He tried to figure out why Browder's hardcases hadn't hit them. No answers came to him and he gave up thinking about it when they reached the edge of Richfield.

  For three days Danner led train after train into Richfield, each time without incident. Nor did he see any of Browder's gunnies in Richfield. Two round trips Thursday morning just about finished the job. The final trip Thursday afternoon required only four wagons.

  At the siding west of the depot Danner sat slackly in the saddle while the last wagon was weighed. Olie Swensen and McDaniel stood near the last of the boxcars, bent over a tally sheet. The last wagon moved off the scales and alongside the doorway of the boxcar. Several grangers climbed to the top of the heavy wagon and began shoveling the grain into the boxcar. A bogus door reached almost to the top of the doorframe, holding the grain inside. It was over the top of this bogus door that the grain had to be shoveled.

  Danner counted thirty boxcars in the string, then tried some rough, mental arithmetic. At 116,000 pounds per car, the train held somewhere around three and a half million pounds of wheat—a fortune in golden grain, representing a year's earnings for most of the farm families within fifty miles of Richfield.

  Dust enveloped the grangers working on top of the wagonload. They were near the bottom of the bed now and only their heads and shoulders showed above the high sideboards. Soon Danner heard shovels scraping the bottom. Then it was all over and the doorway was sealed off completely. Dismounting, Danner approached Swensen and McDaniel; then the four sweat-drenched and dusty grangers who had emptied the last wagon joined them.

  McDaniel was the first to speak, his voice filled with enthusiasm. "We've just about pulled it off, Jeff, and not a sign of trouble from Browder."

  Danner nodded thoughtfully.

  "Huh," Olie snorted. "I'll do my cheering when I see the amount of the bank draft from those Junction City people." He mopped his bald head with a shirt sleeve, then stared at Danner. "When will they start this train on its way?"

  Danner squinted up at the late afternoon sun, then checked his pocket watch. "Afternoon eastbound will be here in about twenty minutes. Anytime after that, probably within half an hour to forty-five minutes."

  Olie nodded sourly.

  The sounds of footsteps on cinders brought Danner around in time to see Wainright come up—a harried Wainright with lines of bitterness burned deeper than ever in his face. He nodded to them.

  "I realize this is rather late notice," Wainright said, "but I'm afraid you'll have to cancel this shipment, or at least postpone it until I can get some railroad agents here and stop these robberies against the line."

  Danner shook his head. "The shipment goes through as scheduled."

  "No." Wainright's mouth thinned. "On top of everything else, we had a train derailed and looted earlier this week. I've decided there'll be no more big shipments until this trouble is stopped and the men responsible are jailed. We can't risk another big loss."

  "We ship as scheduled," Danner insisted.

  Anger washed across the countenance of Wainright, deepening the harsh lines already there. "The railroad won't be responsible for any losses if you ship against our warning. It'll be your loss, nor ours."

  "Now wait a minute," Olie Swensen exploded. "We can't accept the risk of losing a year's crops."

  Wainright shrugged. "The choice is up to you. If you want the railroad to stand good for it, you'll just have to let us hold the train here until our agents stop these robberies."

  McDaniel stepped in front of Danner. "What about it, Jeff?"

  "We ship—at least, you and I do. The rest can do what they want to. You know how many days and wagons it took to get that wheat here and loaded. It would take just as many men and wagons and days to take it back, and we still would be faced with the problem of disposing of it. But if we ship and the train should fail to pass Spaulding or reach Junction City on time, we could get to it before very much wheat could be hauled off."

  "I don't like it," Olie snorted. "We agreed to this plan of yours, thinking the railroad would guarantee safe shipment. It seems to me we better let them keep the train on a siding for a few days until they will guarantee it."

  Danner turned to Wainright then. "Will you accept responsibility for the load within a few days?"

  "Not until these bandits are behind bars."

  "That could take weeks, or months," Danner countered. "You could go broke refusing to accept freight for that length of time."

  "That's the way it is," Wainright insisted.

  "I still don't like it," Olie fumed.

  Danner spoke coldly. "Then back out of it and start unloading—your wheat, that is."

  Olie glared, stomped around in a circle and glanced at the other grangers. None of them liked it, but they liked backing down even less. One by one they nodded to Olie. But Olie wasn't ready to give in yet. He mopped his bald scalp nervously and paced some more. Then he turned to Danner and nodded sourly.

  "All right. You win. But Billy here," and he jerked his thumb at McDaniel, "and Mr. Gustafson will go with the train to Junction City. They'll sell the load and bring back the bank drafts." A not so subtle challenge filtered into his voice. "Is that agreeable with you?"

  Danner silently cursed the day when he had stood up before the gr
angers to suggest the plan.

  How much easier it would have been to have let them do what they wanted, while he shipped his grain to Junction City.

  Then McDaniel protested with a sharp cry. "Jeff's got a right to come along and ramrod things. This is all his plan. If it wasn't for him—"

  "Forget it, Billy," Danner snapped. "I'm going to catch the four-twenty to Junction City and make connections there with a train to Topeka. I have some personal business to 'tend to in Topeka that will take several days."

  "Huh?" Surprise loosened McDaniel's heavy features. "You never mentioned—"

  "I just now decided," Danner said. "It's something I should have done several weeks ago."

  "Then it's all settled," Olie nodded with obvious satisfaction.

  Danner grasped McDaniel by the shoulder and shook him lightly, his tight face relaxing slightly. "Take care of yourself, Billy. I'll see you in a few days, as soon as I get back from Topeka. Tell Lona where I've gone, so she won't worry or wonder, and that I'll explain it to her when I get back."

  "Sure, Jeff," McDaniel said uncertainly.

  Wicked rage burned through Danner as he strode swiftly to his horse, mounted, and jogged eastward along the main street. He finally had all he could take of Richfield and vicinity and all of the block-headed citizens of both. He was getting out and Lona could stay here or come with him as she saw fit. He'd long ago learned to live with few friends and even fewer social contacts. But now he knew if he was subjected to much more of the charges and suspicions of men like Olie, he was likely to break some heads. As for the train, well, Browder wouldn't be foolish enough to wreck it because he couldn't possibly get away with the load. The wheat could be salvaged, even if the train was wrecked.

  Leaving his horse in the stable, Danner hurried back toward the depot. It had been more than a year since he was offered a special agent's job with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, but maybe the job was still open. He'd know soon enough.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Before dawn of the second morning after leaving Richfield, Danner arrived in Topeka, rump-numbed and soot-covered. He found an all-night barbershop near the depot and awaited daylight in a hot bath. A sleepy Negro porter brushed off Danner's wrinkled clothes and polished his boots. A shave lifted the rest of his depression and he left the shop somewhat more mellowed than he had been in several days. He reached the depot again with the morning sun and strode around to the track side. To his left sprawled a long two-storied frame structure alive with people leaving and entering.

  The World's First Harvey House, a sign above the door said. Entering, Danner sat down at a table near the front and placed his order for steak and eggs. Then he gazed out the open doorway at the rail terminal gradually awakening to a new day. An army of railroaders moved about the workshops across the rows of tracks. Danner counted twenty-three handcars loaded with section crews leaving the shops before his breakfast arrived. Half the patrons of the Harvey House wore the rough garb of railroaders and their talk centered on various aspects of their profession. Danner only half-listened to their discussions until a burly trackman at the next table mentioned Richfield.

  "—made off with the entire train," the trackman finished.

  "Aw, come off it, Barney," a second trackman scoffed. "A locomotive and thirty boxcars loaded with wheat couldn't just vanish."

  "That's what the telegrapher said," Barney insisted. "The way I got it, this here train left Richfield about dark and was supposed to pass a substation called Spaulding in about two hours, only it never got there. They've searched all the track between the two points and found nothing. Now they're trying to locate a soured-up ex-employee of the railroad who they think engineered the job—a man named Danner."

  Danner threw his tab and a silver dollar on the counter and hurried out of the Harvey House. In the depot, he learned that he would have to wait over an hour for the next train west. Impatience prodded him. Savagely he jammed his hands into his pockets and paced about the loading platform.

  Countless questions tortured his mind, adding fuel to his restlessness. The trackman had been right about one thing. A train couldn't just vanish.

  Then he realized what a perfect frame this made for him. "YOU ARE TOO GOOD A PATSY." That was what Tuso had meant a few days before in the stable when he had said Danner was too good a patsy for what Browder had planned. And Danner had helped things along by leaving Richfield just before the wheat train.

  A numb agony gripped Danner now and he groaned softly. He should have stayed with the shipment until it was sold. Too late, he realized he had committed the cardinal sin of all fighting men—he had underestimated his opponent.

  It seemed an eternity before he boarded the westbound and the trip through the day dragged endlessly. Soon after dark he quit the AT&SF where the line joined the main line of the Great Plains Central. In the depot, he learned there wouldn't be another passenger train south until morning. But a few minutes later he spotted a freight train moving out to the south. He loped alongside, pulled himself into an open boxcar and settled down for the long journey to Junction City far to the southwest.

  Danner didn't know when he fell asleep, but darkness still blanketed the car when he awoke.

  He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and moved over to the open doorway. According to the looks of the sky, morning wasn't far off. The locomotive whistle sounded, drawing his attention forward. In the distance he made out a town, and soon he recognized Junction City. Hunkering down, he considered his next step. Too many people in Junction City knew him, especially around the railroad yards, for that had been the eastern end of the Colonel's railroad. He'd just have to chance it, however, for he had to reach Richfield quickly. The train began to slow as it passed the first scattered shacks. Danner tensed, waiting, and when the depot was a couple of hundred yards away he leaped, hit the ground running, tripped but regained his balance and came to a halt by a workshed, breathing heavily. Here he waited until the freight moved on south toward Cimarron Valley. From the roundhouse then came the early morning westbound for Richfield. It chugged along the south side of the depot and stopped in position for loading passengers, all but the last coach hidden from Danner's sight now by the depot. Moving over to the street paralleling the north-south tracks, Danner walked on to the north side of the depot and peered inside. The waiting room held quite a few people, but all were crowding out the door on the far side. The only telegrapher-clerk on duty was a stranger to Danner. When the waiting room was completely emptied, Danner went inside. At the desk he ordered a ticket to Richfield.

  "That's the train out there loading now," the clerk muttered. "It leaves in about ten minutes."

  Danner paid for the ticket and stuck it in his shirt pocket. Outside, the waiting platform held some two dozen passengers waiting to board the train, but none faced the waiting room. He turned back to the clerk, a youngster tired from the long night shift about ended.

  "Anything new on that missing train?"

  "Nothing," the youngster shook his head, "except one of those farmers died last night."

  "Farmers?" A chill hit Danner then, and he thought of McDaniel.

  "One of the two they found alongside the tracks a few miles from Richfield. He had a bullet in his throat. The other one was shot in the chest, but I guess he's still alive."

  McDaniel and Gustafson, Danner thought. But which one was dead?

  All the passengers were aboard now and the locomotive whistled a warning. Danner stepped outside and moved unhurriedly to the far end of the last coach. As the final whistle sounded he went up the steps and inside the car, dropping into the first seat at the rear of the half-filled coach. The nearest passenger, a drummer, sat six seats up and facing forward. Danner stuck his ticket in his hatband, slumped down and covered his face with the hat. Joe Bearden was the conductor on this train and he'd easily recognize Danner if he caught a glimpse of his face. But Joe wouldn't pay any attention to a sleeping passenger, especially one in rumpled clothes so much l
ike many other passengers. Soon after the train jerked into motion Joe did just that—took the ticket from Danner's hatband, punched and replaced it with a grunt, then was gone.

  Tilting his hat slightly, Danner watched the prairie race by. The finding of Gustafson and McDaniel only a few miles from Richfield indicated the train had been taken over at that point, yet it never reached Spaulding, and there were only two sidings between the two stations where the train could be hidden. But the two sidings would undoubtedly have been checked by now. It didn't make sense; a feeling of frustration touched Danner. Then he wondered if it had been Gustafson or McDaniel who had died. It didn't make much difference, probably, because the survivor had a chest wound and likely wouldn't last long.

  The monotonous click of the wheels lulled Danner into a half-sleep through much of the morning. But he shook himself awake when the train began to slow for the stop at Spaulding. The engine moved on past the yellow frame station building and stopped at the wooden water tower, leaving the rear coach about a hundred feet from the station. The station, woodshed and water tower provided a minimum of relief from an otherwise barren area. Only the need for fuel and water before trains reached Richfield kept the station in existence. Few passengers ever boarded the train here and seldom did anyone ship from Spaulding. A movement caught Danner's attention and he pressed his face against the grimy window of the coach.

  The Spaulding agent, Ma Grim, stepped out onto the platform in front of the station, her arms folded across a massive bosom and her blocky shape blending with the nondescript surroundings.

  If the missing train had gone past Spaulding, Ma Grim would have reported it, Danner thought. Her devotion to the Colonel's railroad was beyond question. Danner considered leaving the coach long enough to talk to her, but the conductor moved into his line of vision and he decided against it.