by Ralph Cotton
“I see.” Anson nodded and looked back at the station.
Lou Stiles, another gunman who’d joined him along the trail, gestured down at the bedroll he held clamped under his arm. Saddlebags draped his shoulder.
“Before I throw down here, Bo,” he said, “are you sure we’re here for the night?”
Anson stared at him for a moment.
“Throw down, Stiles—and all the rest of you,” he said, looking around at the other gunmen. He raised a finger for emphasis. “But always be ready to drag up and leave when you’re riding with me.”
Bedrolls hit the ground with muffled flops. Lou Stiles grumbled to himself under his breath, “That’s about the sort of answer I expected.” He kicked his bedroll out and pitched his saddlebags down on it.
At the rear of the gathered gunmen, Lyle and Ignacio Cady sat down stiffly in the dirt, having no bedroll, no saddlebags. They looked around at the gunmen rolling out their blankets.
“We’re in a dire state of want,” Lyle said. “Anson strikes me as not giving a damn about the bribe money.”
“He strikes me as not giving a damn about us,” said Ignacio. He wrapped his forearms around his shins and leaned his head on his raised knees. “If we get a chance tonight, I say we skin out of here while we can.”
“He’ll kill us if he catches us, Iggy,” Lyle warned.
“Why?” Ignacio asked in a blunt voice.
“I don’t know why,” said Lyle. “Because he’s crazy, I guess. He just will.” He lay on his side in the dirt and drew himself up in a ball, his arms crossed on his chest. “If we live through this, I say we ought to go kill Edsel Centrila, for putting us here.”
“Put Edsel Centrila out of your mind,” Ignacio said with resignation. “We’re not going to live through this.” He stared intently at his brother. “Look around us, Lyle. These are mostly new faces. Anson’s gunmen don’t appear to last long.”
“Jesus, Iggy, you’re right,” said Lyle, looking all around in the evening light. “You and I are lucky we’ve made it this far.”
* * *
After midnight, three of Anson’s men walked crouched and shadowy among the sleeping figures on the ground near the low-burning campfire. Hands reached out and shook the sleepers by their shoulders until they awakened and sat up on their bedrolls.
“The hell is this?” asked a bleary-eyed gunman named Chris Jackson. Instinctively he jerked a long-barreled revolver from under his head.
“Get up. We’re leaving,” another gunman named Randy Meeks whispered close to him. “Wake the man next to you.” As an afterthought, he said as he turned away, “Loosen your trigger finger—it’s going to get bloody tonight.”
“All right!” Jackson whispered in reply, excited at the prospect of a gunfight. He sprang up into a crouch himself and kicked the man lying rolled up in the blanket next to him. “Get up, Marvin! We’ve got gun work to do,” he growled under his breath.
As the men awakened, staying low, gathering their guns and bedrolls, Bo Anson, Ape Boyd and three other men hurried along on the ground beside the freight dock, guns and knives in hand. Making their way under the cover of darkness, they hurried toward the idling steam engine and stopped and looked up at the glow of a cigarette perched like a firefly atop the big engine.
“Ape, he’s all yours,” Anson said sidelong. “You’ll only get one chance, so cut deep and fast.”
“I’ll cut his damn head off, if you want me to, Bo,” Ape said, barely keeping his voice down to a whisper.
“Shh, keep quiet,” Anson warned. “Now get going.” He and the other two men watched as Ape disappeared along the side of the dock. A moment later, they saw him climb upward almost in a crawl and make his way over to the idling engine. He ascended its iron rungs to the top. They waited, almost holding their breath, until they saw the small ball of cigarette fire fall and break into sparks down the black-shadowed side of the locomotive.
“Ape got him,” Anson whispered to the two men beside him. “Here we go.” As the three slipped along the side of the dock, on the Pullman platform one of Siedell’s guards stood up and stared out into the darkness, his senses piqued.
“What you looking at, Felix?” another guard asked, sitting sprawled in a folding chair, his boots propped up on the iron handrail. He held a tin cup of coffee in his gloved hand. A rifle leaned against his side.
“Thought I saw something out there, Herb,” said Felix Otto. He kept searching the darkness as he spoke.
“You’re jumpy as a damn cat,” Herbert Shiller said with a little chuff. “Sit down and have some of this coffee before the pot gets cold on us.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Otto said, still searching the dark as he backed up to his folding chair and sat down. He laid his rifle across his knees and relaxed a little. “I could have sworn I saw something moving around.”
“Might’ve been a coyote,” said Shiller. “They get bold and brazen when there’s been elk gutted and skint for dinner.” He patted a hand on his belly. “Can’t say that I blame them.”
“If I am jumpy as a cat,” said Otto, “I think we all have good reason to be. Did you get a good look at those new gunmen—I mean detectives—who rode in here?”
“I saw them,” said Shiller with a short little grin, “but I didn’t let the sight of them ruin my day.”
“Hell, neither did I,” said Otto. “But I would feel better if they had rode on a few miles instead of bedding down right next to us.”
“Best get used to them,” said Shiller. “That’s the kind of gunmen Mr. Siedell wants riding for him until he gets shed of Max Bard and his men.” He paused and drew a Colt from its holster and twirled it on his finger. “Besides, we ain’t exactly schoolboys ourselves, are we?”
Otto relaxed a little and gave a low chuckle.
“Hell no, I expect we ain’t at that,” he said, patting his repeating rifle on his knees.
* * *
Inside the plush Pullman car, Curtis Siedell lay on his bed with a cigar glowing in the dark. At his left side a young local woman named Violet Kerns lay naked outside the bedcovers. Siedell’s left hand lay on the small of the woman’s back. His fingers tapped lightly, idly as he stared up in thought and blew smoke at the car’s ornate ceiling.
When a scuffling of boots sounded on the rear platform, he cocked an eye toward the door and listened closely, smoke looming around his head. After a moment, all was quiet, and he started to go back to his thoughts. But a tapping on the door caused him to sit up and listen again. He stood up and wrapped his robe around his nakedness.
“Yes, Otto, what is it?” he said, a little annoyed, knowing it had to be Felix Otto, certain that Herb Shiller would never interrupt him while he had a woman in his bed.
When he heard no response from the other side of the door, he walked over to it, cursing under his breath.
“This better be important, damn it,” he growled. He swung the door open and saw no one standing there, just the two guards sitting upright in the folding chairs. He gave them a questioning stare when they didn’t even look around at him. “Are you two asleep?” he asked angrily.
Still no answer . . . ?
“I better not see either of you—” His words stopped short when he saw Shiller’s hand fall limp at his side and dangle there.
“My God!” he said, seeing blood run down Shiller’s fingertips and pool on the platform floor.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Bo Anson said, stepping around from beside the door, clamping his boot down to keep Siedell from slamming it shut. “It’s just me,” he said coolly. “Waiting to be summoned, King Curtis.” He held a cocked Colt only inches from Siedell’s face. As Anson took a step forward, Siedell stiffened.
“What the devil are you doing, Anson?” Siedell said, trying to sound in command, even though he fully realized he wasn’t.
“You didn’t
come to see us,” Anson said, still stepping forward as Siedell stepped backward. “We figured we’d come see you.” He glanced at the naked woman lying asleep on the bed.
“I hope we didn’t interrupt anything.” He grinned. Behind him the other two men stepped inside and closed the door. On the bed the woman stirred only slightly and mumbled, but never awakened.
“Nobody saw nothing,” said one of the new gunmen named Frank Castor.
“Good,” Anson said. “Holt, you and Harvey get up the engine. Make us ready to back out of here. There’s a switch track a hundred yards out. Back us into it when we get there, and cut the other car loose.”
“You got it, Bo,” said Holt. He and a gunman named Harvey Clausen hurried away through the front door of the Pullman.
Anson looked all round at Siedell’s plush private car with admiration.
“My, my,” he said as if in awe. On a silver tray stood a selection of whiskey, brandy, wine, an open leather bag of brownish Mexican cocaine. “It’s almost a shame killing a man who has so much to live for.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to, Anson,” said Siedell, “but it’s not going to work. My men will chop you to pieces. Did you see what I have mounted overhead?”
“I saw the Gatling gun,” said Anson. He reached his rifle barrel up and tapped it three times on the ceiling. Immediately Ape replied with three taps of his rifle butt. “But that’s my little meat chopper now.”
“What is it you want?” Siedell said, sounding less unyielding now that he saw Bo Anson and his men were building an upper hand on him. “Has Max Bard put you up to this?”
“Huh-uh,” said Anson, “although we did once talk about taking over your operation, see how long we could run it before anybody realized you were dead.” He shook his head. “No, this is all my idea. I’m even going to kill Max and his men and collect the reward you’ve got on their heads—the reward says redeemable at any rail station belonging to Siedell Enterprises.” He grinned.
“Jesus, you’re out of your mind, Anson,” said Siedell, seeing a gleam of madness in his eyes as he spun out his delusional plans.
“You say that now,” Anson said, “but wait until you see me opening the strongbox full of cash your home office pays to get you back with all your fingers and toes—most of them anyway.”
“Listen to me, Anson,” said Siedell, “if it’s money you want, how much? It’s my enterprises. I can have cash sent to me at any bank in this country—whatever amount I ask for. Just take me to one, I’ll show you. We don’t have to be uncivilized about this.”
“I like being uncivilized,” said Anson, giving Siedell a sharp poke with his gun barrel. “I want the ransom delivered where I say, not in some damn bank with riflemen on every roof. I’m going to collect ransom on you, reward money on Max Bard, maybe even rob a couple of your new rail spurs while I’m at it. So sit yourself down and watch what happens next.”
Just then a blast of steam resounded from the engine; the train lurched back a foot and started moving slowly. Both Anson and Siedell had to steady themselves. On the bed, the woman looked up drunkenly at the two and rubbed her eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Diddles,” she said playfully, “you’ve invited a friend?”
“We’re not friends,” Anson said, wagging the gun in his hand for her to see. “Go back to sleep.” He shoved Siedell toward the rear door. “Stand right here, Mr. Diddles.” He reached down and clamped a handcuff around Siedell’s wrist. He clamped the other end to his own. “You make one false move when we’re out on the platform, I’ll blow your head off.”
Chapter 18
In the darkness, Siedell’s men who’d been asleep in the next car had been awakened by the train lurching and the blast of steam. They quickly shook sleep from their eyes and stuck their heads out the windows, looking back and forth. “The train’s moving!” one called out in surprise. More of his men came running from the boardwalk of a nearby rail shack.
Four men ran alongside the engine, still able to keep up with it as it slowly gained momentum. Above the roar and throb and hissing steam, one called out to the engineer, who stood in an open window with his hand on the throttle. “Leonard, where are you going?” he shouted up.
The engineer, Leonard Loew, stared down stiffly at him from the loud engine. The running men didn’t notice the look of fear in the engineer’s eyes.
“Mr. Siedell said move it,” he called back to them, “so I’m moving it.”
Satisfied, the four men slowed to a halt, unable to see that behind Loew stood Gus Holt with a gun to the back of the man’s head.
“I wish King Curtis would tell us things sooner,” one of the men said.
“Let him hear you call him King Curtis, he’ll tell you things sure enough,” another man replied. The four stood watching as the train continued backing away from the station.
“What’s that?” one asked, nodding toward the dark object lying alongside the empty tracks as the train rolled on.
Without reply the four trotted toward the object. In the grainy purple light, they stopped again, this time looking down at a man’s body, less its head, lying on the rocky ground. A few feet away lay the head of Jacob Bead with a stunned expression frozen on his grim face.
“Oh my God!” one of the men said. They all looked up and saw an unrecognizable figure standing in the darkness atop the engine behind the Gatling gun. “We’re being . . . what? Robbed?” one asked the other three with uncertainty.
Seeing what was going on, one shouted, “Come on, the train’s being stolen!” He started running toward the train as it made its way in reverse toward the switching track. At the car next to the Pullman, men were still hanging out the windows watching the station grow smaller behind them. Some had jumped down while they could, but now the engine had started gathering speed, making escape more difficult.
Inside the Pullman car, Bo Anson could hear shouting back and forth. Men’s boots pounded hard and fast alongside the car. The boots quickly fell away, replaced by more running boots as the train rolled past.
“Let’s go, before the shooting starts, Siedell,” Anson said, turning the rear door handle and swinging the door open. He shoved Siedell out in front of him as a shield. “Talk loud, make them hear you,” he demanded.
Siedell stepped over the two dead guards lying on the small platform, Anson at his back with his cocked revolver at the base of his skull.
He leaned out of the car and shouted down at his men running alongside the train, “Don’t do anything rash. This man will kill me!”
His words caused most of the men to fall down from a run and slow to a halt as he went past them. They stood watching, their guns slumped in their hands.
“What now?” one man asked as the train swerved onto the length of the switching tracks.
“Over here, damn it!” shouted Arnold Inman from the open doors of the livery barn. “Get your horses and let’s get after that train!” Behind him in the light of the oil lanterns, men busily saddled and bridled their horses. Others checked their revolvers, their rifles. Some were still stepping into their boots. Yet even as the men prepared themselves, over a hundred yards down the rails the train slowed almost to a halt and uncoupled the car carrying the detectives.
The four men turned and ran toward the livery barn, following Inman’s tone of authority. They heard gunfire behind them as the men aboard the detectives’ car jumped down from the slowing train. They immediately ran alongside the Pullman and started firing.
“They don’t listen to you very well, do they, King Curtis?” Anson said, back inside the car now, bullets thumping against the wooden sides. The gunfire sent Violet sitting straight up in bed, grabbing a sheet on her way and holding it in front of herself.
“They won’t stop, Anson. They’ll keep following you,” Siedell said. “These men are professional detectives, not some desert riffraff.”
“Too bad for them.” Anson jerked him by his cuffed hand over to a side gun-port window. As Siedell looked out through the small slot, Ape and his Gatling gun started firing on the men from overhead, chopping them down and leaving them dead in his wake. Empty shells bounced atop the Pullman car and rained down its sides.
“Damn you!” shouted Siedell. He tried to turn and grab Anson by his throat, but Anson stopped him with a blow from his gun barrel across his forehead.
Siedell staggered, dazed. Anson grabbed him by his lapel and shook him hard.
“Don’t you pass out on me, King Curtis!” he shouted. “We’ve got a hard ride ahead!” He laughed in jubilation. Then he settled himself and asked, “How far does this rail spur go?”
Siedell, his mind addled by the gun barrel, tried to shake his head to clear it.
“You p-planned all this . . . without knowing how far we can go?” he asked as if finding Anson’s methods faulty.
“Never mind how I planned it,” Anson said. “I ask the questions here, not you.” He shook the gun in Siedell’s face. “Tell me how far, and don’t lie about it.”
“Thirty miles—a little more,” Siedell said. “It’s my longest spur. It goes past two mining compounds and ends at Gnat.”
“My man tells me we have enough wood to make it that far running hard,” Anson said.
“I don’t know—probably,” Siedell said. “I own this railroad. I’m not the fireman—”
“Hey, over there, you two,” Violet cut in on them from the bed, above the gunfire, the bullets thumping the outside walls. “Are we about through here, then? Should I go ahead, clean up and get dressed?” she asked drunkenly.
The slowed train gave a hard bump as outside, between cars, one of the three men Anson brought along uncoupled the detectives’ car from the Pullman.
“No, don’t get dressed,” said Anson. “Get the hell out of here before the train speeds up again.”
Violet stood up with the sheet around her and gave Siedell a piercing look.