Steel Trails of Vengeance

by Ray Tassin

  Then the engine chuffed into motion again, soon leaving Spaulding behind. Midday heat reached an uncomfortable high and Danner went out to the open platform at the end of the coach. Holding on to the iron railing, he moved down the steps and sat down. About forty minutes west of Spaulding the train passed the first of the two sidings where the missing train might have gone. The rusty tracks pointed straight north, eventually reaching what had once been the small community of Velma. When Danner had gone there two years before he'd found only an abandoned cluster of rotting buildings. Tomorrow he would have to take another look at Velma.

  Moving over to the sunny side of the platform, Danner sat down again on the steps, waiting for the second trunk line. The land flattened out to the south and he could see the tracks long before the train reached them. They, too, appeared rusty and unused, leading only to the abandoned community of Crossville.

  Both Velma and Crossville spurs had appeared rust-covered, yet the missing train must have gone to one place or the other, for it couldn't get past Spaulding or Richfield unobserved, and it certainly wasn't on the main line.

  Danner moved out of the hot sun and tried to figure an answer. About the only thing he could think of was that the tracks could have been so weathered that a train moving across only once hadn't ground off all the rust.

  The forlorn whistle of the engine announced Richfield just ahead, and the train began to lose speed. Danner moved inside the coach and sat down, not wanting to be seen as the train pulled through town. The protest of wheels on rails worked along the cars and the train stopped finally. Danner went out the back end of the coach and dropped to the cinders. The small crowd at the platform all faced the first of the three passenger coaches, paying him no attention. He cut across the small city park toward the courthouse. Halfway across the street, a granger in a heavy grain wagon took a second look at him and snapped his team into a trot.

  Every granger in town would soon know he was back, Danner thought grimly. He had hoped to be out of town before anyone noticed him. Perhaps he should have kept out of sight until dark. He shrugged and climbed the courthouse steps, turning in at the sheriff's office.

  "Jeff!" Brant leaped from his chair, mouth hanging open. "Do you want to get lynched, boy? The grangers—"

  "What happened to McDaniel?"

  "Huh? He's still alive, barely. Gustafson was dead when we found him."

  Wearily, Danner slumped into a chair by the desk. "I've learned the highlights of what happened," he said, eying the old sheriff. "But I need to know the rest of it."

  Brant sat down on the corner of his desk.

  "Highlights. That's about all there is, boy. The train left here about dark and the Spaulding agent should have reported it passing there two hours later. When no report was made, the telegrapher here inquired and was told the train never reached there. Wainright came to me and I took a posse out. We spent the next day checking every inch of the main line and the spurs to Velma and Crossville." Brant threw up his hands. "It just disappeared."

  "Trains don't just vanish," Danner exploded, straightening in his chair. "They go only where there's track."

  "I know, I know," Brant replied. "But I looked myself and it just ain't there."

  Silently Danner weighed the information, muscles corded with frustration. "Who was on the key here that evening?"

  "Dick Boley."

  A good hand, Danner thought—as good as Ma Grim at Spaulding, so the train couldn't have doubled back to Richfield and gone on west. He looked up at Brant. "Who was aboard the train when it pulled out?"

  "Best I can find out, just the crew, plus Billy and Gustafson. I was in the yards myself. If any of Browder's bunch were hanging around, I didn't see them."

  "Has Billy been able to talk yet?"

  Brant shook his head. "He's been unconscious since we found him. And we've found no sign of the crew. They just vanished along with the train."

  Danner quit the chair and moved restlessly in a circle, head lowered in thought. "Someone boarded that train at the station or before it had gone far, shot Billy and Gustafson, then forced the crew to take the train to a hiding spot. It couldn't have gone past Ma Grim, nor could it have come back here past Dick Boley. It's got to be somewhere between here and Spaulding."

  "Nope." Brant shook his head. "Wherever it might be, it's not on the tracks between here and Spaulding, nor on the Velma or Crossville spurs."

  Danner clamped his jaws shut, knowing Brant was right—even though he couldn't be.

  "I've got to see Billy. Where is he?"

  "At Doc Harvey's. Lona is staying with him since Doc doesn't have a nurse."

  A low rumble reached Danner then and he tried to distinguish it. In three strides he reached the window facing the street. About two dozen grangers were converging on the courthouse lawn, their faces grim with fury. Olie Swensen was in the forefront, but apparently wasn't the leader.

  "You better scoot out the back," Brant breathed anxiously.

  Danner shook his head. "I'll talk to them."

  "Dammit, Jeff," Brant blazed. "You don't have to meet everything head-on. Give them time to cool off a little before you try explaining."

  "Would you cool off if you were in their position?" Then Danner walked out to the top of the steps.

  A tremendous growling swelled up from the crowd. Some shook fists and shotguns at him. A teenager at Olie's right clutched a hangman's noose. Danner raked the crowd with a searching glance, feeling the weight of their wrath beating against him. He raised his hand for quiet and the voices gradually subsided—but not the tight anger in their faces. For once Olie Swensen seemed at a loss for words, and it was the blond-bearded leader of the Andersen clan who stepped forward.

  "We're God-fearing family men who hate violence, Danner," Andersen said, his voice determined. "We want no trouble. But you have a choice to make in the next half-minute. The rope," and he gestured toward the noose in the hands of the teenager, "or telling us what you've done with that train."

  Danner had known fear many times and should have felt it now, but his anger at their blindness crowded out all else. He pushed back his hat and leaned forward slightly.

  "Listen closely, now, for I'll say this just once and no more. You've come to the wrong man. I just returned from Topeka. The man you want—"

  "We think not," Andersen interrupted, unruffled. "Every farm family in this area faces starvation for a year if we don't get the train back. We are fighting for the lives of all our women and children."

  "Then fight the right man."

  "We are—you."

  "Then I guess we've said it all." Long seconds dragged by in a stillness heavy with tension. Even Olie remained quiet, although his wrath showed plainly on his grumpy features. Danner rubbed the moistness from the palm of his right hand, wondering if he would be able to shoot into the crowd if they came for him. Andersen fidgeted uncertainly.

  "What is your answer, Danner?"

  "You've had the only answer you are going to get from me."

  "We've seen what you can do with that gun of yours, but you leave us no choice."

  The time for talk was gone now and Danner saw no need to waste more breath. Andersen would be the first up the steps, he decided, so he fixed his stare on Andersen's faded shirt front. A restlessness touched the crowd, yet no one moved forward. The ranks of the mob had swelled to fully fifty men now. Andersen glanced about him to make sure of ample support, then he clamped his jaws together with determination, moving forward slowly. Those in front fixed their stares on the holstered gun of Danner's, fearing it, but pressing onward.

  Danner remained poised and motionless.

  The elder Andersen was a yard in front of the others and the first to start up the steps. When he reached the middle of the steps Danner kicked out and up, his boot toe catching Andersen under the chin and spilling him into the group. All the leaders went down in a tangle. With a single motion Danner drew his Colts and eared back the hammer. Then a shotgun blasted
almost in Danner's ear and he whirled to find Sheriff Brant leveling down on the crowd with a twelve-gauge he had used to fire into the air. Andersen struggled to his feet.

  "I can't believe you would defend this man," Andersen said quietly.

  "If you really want that grain back," Brant stormed, "you'll go home and give Jeff Danner a few days to find it."

  "We figger he knows where it is now," Andersen returned, his blond whiskers quivering. "But that doesn't mean we'll ever see it again."

  "Now hear me, Andersen—all of you," Brant said, his frail body rigid. "Jeff Danner is the best lawman I've known in forty years of wearing a star. I tell you he had nothing to do with that theft, but given a few days he'll locate the train. That's why he came back from Topeka."

  Confusion spread across the bearded face of Andersen and he glanced about for support. An uncertain mutter came from the other grangers. Danner holstered his Colts. He knew they had passed the point of violence, at least for the moment. Andersen must have realized it also, for the stiffness went out of him. But he stared at Danner suspiciously before speaking again.

  "Danner, can you offer us something more than just your word that all this is true?"

  Danner shook his head without speaking, still in the grip of a rash and stubborn anger.

  Andersen flushed, unsatisfied but unwilling to change his course. "Suppose we give you three days. Can you promise to recover our grain in that length of time?"

  Again Danner shook his head.

  Disconcerted, Andersen clamped his mouth shut for a moment then looked about the crowd and back to Danner. "You don't offer us much reason for trusting you."

  "I didn't ask you to trust me."

  "Ease up, boy," Brant whispered harshly. "Ease up."

  Olie Swensen rushed up to the bottom of the steps then, his right fist upraised. "I promised Lona to stay out of this," he snarled. "But I'll put the rope around your neck myself if you don't change your tune."

  "You can try," Danner said with ice in his tone. Andersen held up both hands then, heading off a new rise in tempers. "I say we wait three days. There shouldn't be any doubts by then. If Danner can't produce that train, or won't produce it, by then, we can still find him." He turned and faced the grangers. "Does anyone object?"

  Nods of approval came slowly, reluctantly, but not from Olie Swensen.

  "What if he decides to run out?"

  Danner grinned at him without mirth. "You know better than that."

  Olie flushed and turned away. The crowd began to disperse. Danner breathed easier then, for all of his unyielding talk.

  "Jeff," Brant said tiredly, "if I hadn't come out when I did, would you have fired into that crowd?"

  "Who knows?" Danner said. Then he pulled out a bandanna and wiped the sweat from his neck and forehead.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Time moved slowly while Danner stared at the unconscious McDaniel lying so still against the white sheets of the clinic bed. His face flushed with fever, McDaniel breathed so shallowly that Danner sometimes wondered if the strong Irish heart had stopped beating. He squirmed in the cane-bottomed chair, wanting to help his friend and knowing there was nothing he could do. Lona rocked gently in a chair on the other side of the bed, her face haggard from lack of sleep and worry. She'd said scarcely a dozen words since Danner had arrived.

  "I heard how you've looked after him since they brought him in," Danner said softly. "I appreciate it, and so will Billy." At first he didn't think she had heard him, then her hand came up to her throat and her fingers touched the brooch.

  "He's a good man," she said simply.

  Danner could think of no suitable answer and he sat quietly as the morning sun crept farther into the room. It was time to be moving out, he thought, yet he felt a reluctance to leave with so much unsaid between Lona and himself. But she hadn't mentioned it and he didn't either.

  "Does the doctor think Billy will make it?"

  Lona shrugged tiredly. "We won't know until tomorrow, but it looks like he might be all right." Then she looked at him directly for the first time.

  "Father told me what happened yesterday when you came back. I know you had nothing to do with—shooting Billy, and everything, but were you really in Topeka?"

  "You, too?"

  Color touched her cheeks briefly, then she shook her head. "I told you I knew you had nothing to do with the robbery. I'm just curious as to why you would go to Topeka."

  Danner stared down at the blunt ends of his fingers.

  "I remember," she probed, "some time ago you received a letter from Topeka offering you a job as special agent for a railroad there. That's why you went, wasn't it?"

  Wordlessly, Danner nodded, then felt the need to say something.

  "I'm thinking about it."

  "But why?" she demanded. "You haven't even given the farm a fair try yet."

  "Every man has to do what is right for him," Danner said.

  "And working as a hired gunman is right for you?"

  "There's more to it than that," he answered.

  Her lips pinched in tightly, then she closed her eyes with a faint shake of her head. When she looked at him again there was a misery in her eyes that brought a feeling of shame to Danner.

  "When the Colonel was alive I thought you stayed with a detestable job out of loyalty to him. But to go back to a job like that when you are free from it and have a chance at something so much better, is—" She shook her head again then looked away.

  Sounds of the morning work train moving out of the yard warned Danner of the time slipping away from him, time he needed for a more vital purpose just now.

  "I'll be busy for a few days," he said, rising and starting toward the door. "When I get this mess cleared up, we'll talk about it some more."

  "No," she shook her head. "There's nothing more to say, unless you change your mind about the farm. I'm not leaving here, not ever."

  Danner stared at her for a long moment, fighting against a rising turmoil that might make him say something he would regret. Then he nodded and turned away.

  Jogging along the main street Danner was only dimly aware of the stares that sought him out. He turned north at the vacant lots separating Browder's granary from the nearest business establishments. A lean-to built along the trackside of the granary was used to protect loading of boxcars during bad weather. It wasn't long enough to hide a locomotive and thirty boxcars, even if Browder had been foolish enough to try it. Still, Danner rode up to the entrance for a look-see just the same. As he had expected, the long shed was empty.

  As Danner reined away, he heard a low rumbling chuckle that could have come only from the mammoth Alec Browder. He whirled his horse and found Browder and Tuso standing just inside a loading doorway of the granary. It was difficult to tell what Browder was thinking behind the squinting eyes, but the taunting grin on the swarthy face of Tuso transmitted a clear message.

  "Lose something, big man?"

  Danner stared at them with an impassiveness he didn't feel.

  "Oh," Tuso feigned a sudden realization, "come to think of it, I believe I did hear something about you misplacing some little old something or other. Train, wasn't it?" Then he cackled loudly, poking his elbow in the ribs of Browder. The vast belly of Browder shook with mirth as he shifted his bulk to his left leg, then back again.

  Danner felt the heat spread across his face.

  "If you don't find that little old choo-choo," Tuso taunted, "those sodbusters are going to make you guest of honor at a neck-stretching party."

  "If I don't find it," Danner replied, "I'll tie the knot myself." Then he whirled his mount and galloped eastward along the track. He should have ignored Tuso, instead of shooting off his mouth like a schoolboy afraid of any other kind of fighting.

  Gradually the humiliation subsided and he put the matter from his mind as he reached the dry creekbed where McDaniel and Gustafson had been dumped from the train after they were shot.

  He examined the ground withou
t results. Any sign that might have existed had been erased by the possemen who found the bodies. But it wasn't much of a loss, he thought. The two bodies had undoubtedly been tossed from the train. The sign couldn't have told him more than that.

  It has to be somewhere between here and Spaulding, Danner told himself, gazing eastward along the tracks. In this flat country there just wasn't any place a train could be hidden, even if an improvised track could be constructed. Leading his horse, Danner moved slowly across the dry creekbed and along the tracks for about twenty feet. Then he stopped in mid-stride.

  Wainright had mentioned the theft of some steel rails—and rails were useless except for tracks. Browder was cunning enough to have built a spur line for hiding the train. But that would have taken a lot more trackage than had been stolen. Wainright said two flatcars, but he didn't say how heavily loaded. It was a remote possibility, Danner knew.

  Mounting, Danner rode eastward. He'd soon find out if a spur line had been built. By riding between the rails, he could scan the ground along both sides of the track. Even temporary tracks would have left some indentations in the ground.

  By noon Danner reached the spur line to Crossville without spotting anything worth a second glance. He checked the rails leading south. The heavy coating of rust lay undisturbed; no train had been over the tracks for several years. In the scant shade of a few scrub trees, Danner unsaddled and let his mount roll in the dust. Then he nibbled on cold beef and biscuits. While eating, he noticed a small dust cloud far to the west. One or two riders seemed to be riding parallel to the tracks along the same course he had been following. Probably some ranchhands, he thought. The Flying Cross ranch was only a few miles to the north.

  Saddling again, Danner continued on eastward. The sun beat against him with a vengeance now, bringing the sweat from him, then drying it out. At one point the tracks curved slightly to the north, and as Danner moved around the curve he glanced over his shoulder to see the two riders about three miles back and holding to the course of the tracks. They dropped from sight as Danner moved around the curve.

  The Velma spur line appeared the same as the Crossville tracks. A train couldn't have passed over the rails without disturbing the coating of rust. There wasn't much point in going on to Velma, Danner thought, especially since Brant's posse had already been there. Roadbeds on both the main line and the spur stood about eight feet above the level of the prairie at this point. Danner noticed some indentations in the soil near the foot of the embankment and he led his horse down the slope for a closer look.