If a cat had gotten in there, it could just get back out on its own, he decided.
The whimpering and crying sounds continued, and after a minute, he started to get worried. He still had a prisoner in there, after all, and with Marshal Hatfield and Fred Ordway laid up, she was his responsibility.
He carried the coffee over to the desk and set it down. “All right, all right. Hold your horses.”
He got the keys from the nail where they were hanging and went over to the cell block door. The sounds were louder as they came through the barred window in the door. “Hey, are you all right in there?”
The prisoner didn’t answer, but Helton could tell that the pitiful noises were coming from her cell. Muttering a curse under his breath, he unlocked the door and swung it open. “Lady . . . whatever your name is . . . are you all right?”
He still got no response, so he stuck the keys in his pocket, drew his gun, and stepped into the cell block. Jensen had warned him to be careful, and so had the marshal, but the prisoner was a woman, after all, and just a little bit of one, at that.
Helton stepped closer to the cell door. The light was dim, but he could see well enough to tell that the blonde was huddled on the bunk, doubled over and clutching her stomach. She lifted her head, and he was shocked to see how pale and haggard her face looked, beaded with sweat.
“That greaser woman . . . poisoned me!” she gasped.
“N-now hold on,” Helton stammered. “I’m sure Señorita Consuela wouldn’t do that. Anyway, McCluskey ate the same thing you did . . .”
“That’s right. He’s not here anymore. You don’t know if he’s sick or not.”
Helton started to back off. “I’ll go get the doc—”
“Maybe you could . . . get me some water first?”
He’d been told to keep his distance from her, but she was so sick there was no way she could be a threat. He had sense enough to step back into the marshal’s office and lay his gun on the desk, though, just to make sure she didn’t try to grab it away from him.
He poured some water from a pitcher into one of the cups they used for coffee and carried it into the cell block. “You’re gonna have to get up and come get it. I’m not unlockin’ that door.”
“All right. Th-thank you . . .” She struggled up from the bunk and stumbled toward the cell door. When she reached it, she leaned against the bars and clung to them with one hand while she reached through with the other arm. That hand trembled violently, so Helton had to step closer and press the cup into her fingers with both of his hands.
He felt a slight impact against his belly, almost like somebody had tossed a rock and hit him, and looked down to see the handle of a knife protruding from his body. His eyes widened as crimson began to spread on his shirt around the blade. He gasped. “How—” He didn’t know where she’d had the knife hidden. He hadn’t even seen her other hand move.
His knees folded up and he dropped the cup. Clattering loudly, it fell onto the stone floor. The prisoner grabbed his shirtfront with her other hand and jerked him closer. She was surprisingly strong for a woman, especially one so sick.
But she wasn’t sick at all, Helton realized as he looked into her face from a space of a few inches and felt the cold steel going in and out of his body as she stabbed him again and again. His weight dragged him down, and she knelt with him as she continued to thrust the knife into him through the bars.
He couldn’t believe it was happening.
He died that way, with his mouth still hanging open in amazement.
“Please, I need a ticket.”
The clerk at the ticket window in the station looked up and saw a young woman. She wore a blue dress and looked a little disheveled and pale, but she was still attractive, other than the look of desperation on her face.
“Ma’am, the train’s about to leave—”
“I know. That’s why I have to hurry.”
“Well, you might make it . . . How far do you want to go? All the way to Cheyenne?”
She nodded. “That’s fine. How much?”
“Let’s see . . .” He could tell she was getting more impatient, but such things couldn’t be rushed. The railroad didn’t pay him for making careless mistakes. “It’ll be two dollars and fifty cents.”
She thrust a bill through the wicket.
“There’s five dollars. I don’t need any change back, just the ticket.”
“Well, now, ma’am, I’m not sure it’s wise throwin’ money around like that—”
“Please. It’s a matter of life and death.”
Some folks, it was just a waste of time arguing with them. The clerk wrote up the ticket, tore it out of the book, and handed it to her.
She’d been telling the truth about not wanting the money she had coming back to her. She turned and ran from the lobby, across the platform, and swung up onto the last passenger car after it had already started rolling. Couldn’t be easy for her to do that, a little thing like her.
The clerk shook his head. It took all kinds in this world, he supposed.
He looked down at the five-dollar banknote she had given him and saw the dark stain along its edge. A frown creased his forehead. It looked almost like . . . He shook his head. That didn’t make any sense.
The stain looked almost like blood.
Derek Burroughs rode onto a rocky promontory where he could look down at Rattlesnake Wells. The train was just leaving after getting the caboose hooked up again, clouds of white smoke billowing from the Baldwin locomotive’s diamond-shaped stack as it pulled out.
Horseshoes rang loudly on the rocks behind Burroughs. He glanced around as more than a dozen hard-bitten, well-armed men rode out of the trees. He was expecting to see them, so he wasn’t surprised by their appearance.
As the group of riders reined in, the man in the lead asked, “Is that it? The train with the gold?”
“That’s it,” Burroughs confirmed. “It stayed extra time in the roundhouse so the shipment could be hidden in the cab of the locomotive, just like my source at the mine told me it would be. Once they’re well out of town, they’ll stop and transfer it to the caboose.”
“A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in gold,” the other man said with an avaricious grin. “We’re all gonna be rich men once we take it off that train.”
“Yes, we are,” Burroughs agreed, nodding. He wasn’t thinking about the gold as much as he was about Luke Jensen. He sincerely hoped that his old friend wouldn’t try to interfere when he and his men stopped the train.
He’d really hate to have to kill Luke, he mused, especially after saving his life just the night before.
CHAPTER 14
The first thing Luke had done when he boarded the train with McCluskey was to seek out the conductor. That hombre’s eyes had widened at the sight of the outlaw shuffling along in handcuffs and leg irons. Others who had seen the prisoner seemed upset, looking askance at Luke and McCluskey and giving them a lot of room.
“You can’t bring that man on my train like that,” the conductor said.
“I don’t have any choice in the matter,” Luke declared. “I’m sure not taking these irons off him. This is Frank McCluskey. He’s wanted all over this part of the country, and I’m taking him to Cheyenne to turn him over to the authorities there.”
The conductor’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I don’t see a badge on you, mister, so I suppose that means you intend to collect the reward on this fellow when you turn him in.”
“That’s right,” Luke said evenly. He heard the contempt in the conductor’s voice plainly enough but knew from experience it was best for him to keep a tight rein on his temper in such situations.
“Well, you can’t have him in the regular cars. It’ll frighten the other passengers too much. You’ll have to put him in the caboose, and I won’t stand for any argument about it.”
Since that was exactly what Luke wanted, he didn’t intend to argue. He wasn’t going to admit that to the conductor, thou
gh. The man might change his mind just to spite him.
Luke nodded curtly. “All right. If that’s the way it has to be, I guess that’s what we’ll do.”
The conductor sniffed as if to say Damn right you will. Luke looked down to hide the grin that flashed across his face for a second.
“Let’s take him on back there now,” the conductor said.
By that time, the caboose was hooked up again to the train, which rolled slowly along the rails, building up speed as it left Rattlesnake Wells. The three men walked through the passenger cars, which were behind the baggage cars, and into the car bringing up the rear that served as the conductor’s office and a place for the brakemen to take it easy when they weren’t working.
The brakies weren’t in there at the moment.
The conductor told Luke, “You might as well put your prisoner on that chair over there in the corner. He can’t get loose, can he?”
“Not likely.” Luke steered McCluskey over to the ladderback chair and sat him down in it. He took out another pair of handcuffs and looped one end around one of the rungs in the back of the chair and the chain between McCluskey’s cuffs. By snapping it shut, he ensured that McCluskey couldn’t get up and go anywhere without taking the chair with him. As awkward as it already was having his ankles fastened together like they were, getting around while fastened to the chair would be almost impossible.
“There’s coffee on the stove,” the conductor said with grudging hospitality.
“Much obliged.” Luke poured himself a cup but didn’t offer to do the same for McCluskey. He was through showing the outlaw any consideration. “How long does it take to get to Cheyenne?”
“We’ll arrive about seven o’clock this evening, if there aren’t any delays.”
“What’s the country like between here and the junction?”
“Mostly flat, which means we make good time.” The conductor’s attitude was warming up a little. Talking about the train that was his responsibility probably helped with that. “There’s one range of pretty rugged mountains to get through.”
Luke nodded. Normally he would have worried about the train slowing down to take the grades in the mountains. That would make it easier for someone who wasn’t supposed to be there to get aboard.
But McCluskey didn’t have a gang that would set out to rescue him, Luke reminded himself. The only person who seemed determined to set the outlaw free was Delia, and she was locked up safely back in Rattlesnake Wells.
Luke frowned slightly as he sipped the coffee. She had been behind bars when he left the marshal’s office and jail earlier that morning, but he had no way of knowing if she was still there, he realized. She was shifty as a sidewinder. The likelihood of her causing any more trouble was small, but he couldn’t rule it out one hundred percent.
He would be glad when Frank McCluskey was off his hands and the reward money was in his pocket.
The door of the caboose opened, and a man in a gray suit and darker gray derby hat stepped in. He had a successful, well-fed look about him, with a beefy face, thick dark mustache, and bushy side-whiskers. A short black cigar was clamped between his teeth. He stopped short as he saw Luke and McCluskey, and an angry flush began turning his face an even darker red.
“Damn it, Hitch!” he exploded. “What are these two doing in here?”
Delia sat beside the window and tried to collect her thoughts as she watched the flat terrain covered with scrub brush rolling past outside. She was still a little out of breath from rushing to the train station and from the strain of worrying that the stupid deputy’s body would be discovered before she could get aboard and leave Rattlesnake Wells behind.
Killing the lawman had been a calculated risk. When she’d taken the knife from the sheath strapped to the inside of her left thigh and put it in the man’s belly, she hadn’t known whether he had the key to the cell on him or not. It was the only chance she had to free herself and help Frank, so she’d taken it.
She had never murdered anybody before. She’d killed two men in the past, customers of hers who’d gotten too rough with her and then lost their temper when she fought back. Those killings had been self-defense, and she’d never lost a bit of sleep over them.
She didn’t think the deputy’s death would bother her for very long. After all, Frank’s life was at stake and she loved him. Whatever she had to do to save him was justified as far as she was concerned. She would have killed the damn bounty hunter, too, and the marshal, and the marshal’s Mexican slut, and anybody else who got in her way and threatened her man.
If anyone had asked her why she’d fallen so hard for Frank McCluskey, Delia couldn’t have said. All she knew was that from the moment he had put his arms around her and kissed her, she was his forever and would do anything for him.
Someone slid onto the empty half of the seat beside her, next to the aisle, and interrupted her musing about McCluskey. She turned, saw a man in a cheap suit. He had weaselly eyes over a long, whiskey-veined nose. A drummer of some sort, Delia thought, trying not to shudder as he boldly ran his eyes over her. She was used to being looked at like that by men, as if they could see right through her clothes to the ripe body beneath.
“Hello. Traveling by yourself, miss?”
“No,” Delia said primly. “My husband is with me.”
That statement had some truth to it. Someday she and Frank would be married. She was sure of it. And while he wasn’t exactly with her at the moment, he was somewhere on the train, and that was close enough for her.
Being told that she was married seemed to take some of the starch out of the drummer, but he didn’t deflate too much. “Oh? Where is he, then?”
Maybe he was used to women lying to avoid his unwanted attentions.
“He’s gone to talk to the conductor,” Delia said without missing a beat. “He’s an important man. Everyone on the railroad knows him.”
“Is that so? I ride this line pretty often. Maybe I know him, too.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” Delia’s haughty tone made it clear that the traveling salesman would be beneath her mythical husband’s notice.
“Well, I’m sure you won’t mind if I keep you company until he gets back.” And with that he slid a little closer so his hip was touching hers.
Delia felt her self-control slipping away. She slid her hand into the pocket where she had put the knife so it would be handier and turned slightly toward the drummer. He wore a look of slightly surprised anticipation on his fox-like face.
He was about to be even more surprised, she thought, leaning toward him and putting a little weight on the knife. The tip of its razor-keen blade penetrated the man’s coat and shirt and pricked into his side. “I think it would be best if you went and found somewhere else to sit, instead of annoying me.”
His eyes widened and his rather prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed hard.
He stammered, “I-is that—”
“Yes, it is,” Delia said. “And I’m perfectly capable of carving out your liver with it if you don’t do exactly what I told you.”
He had gone pale, which made the veins in his nose stand out even more. “For God’s sake, lady, be careful with that! You’re sticking me.”
“I’m about to do worse than that,” Delia told him.
He scooted away from her on the bench. She made the knife disappear back into her pocket.
“Take it easy,” he muttered. “I’m going, I’m going. You don’t have to be so damn touchy. All I wanted was a little pleasant conversation to pass the time.”
“All I want is for you to go away. And don’t even think about going to the conductor and complaining about the crazy woman with the knife. If you do, I warn you I’ll find you. Some night when you least expect it, I’ll be there.” She smiled at him. “And then I’ll cut out your eyes and your tongue, but not before I’ve done some cutting elsewhere. I won’t leave you with any of the things that are so important to you, mister.”
H
e practically leaped up from the seat and hurried away.
Satisfied, Delia settled back in the seat and looked out the window again, thinking.
She had been through both passenger cars after she came aboard. Since Frank and the bounty hunter hadn’t been in either one, they were in one of the freight cars or in the caboose. She considered the caboose the more likely possibility and had settled into a seat in the second passenger car closest to it.
What she would do after getting into the caboose would have to wait until she was actually in the caboose, and then she could figure it out. The goal was pretty simple, though.
Set Frank McCluskey free . . . and kill Luke Jensen.
Luke looked at the man in the derby and said in a deceptively mild tone, “Most men wouldn’t take kindly to being talked about like that, mister—and I’m one of them.”
The newcomer ignored him and continued glaring at the conductor. “You know there’s not supposed to be anyone in this caboose except railroad employees and my guards. Who are these men?”
The conductor had a look of dismay on his face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bertram. I completely forgot about the shipment.”
“Forgot?” Bertram repeated. “My God, man, how could you forget about that much—” He stopped short, glanced at Luke and then at McCluskey as if thinking that he’d been about to say too much. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name’s Luke Jensen. This is my prisoner, Frank McCluskey.”
Bertram’s piggish eyes widened. He had heard of McCluskey, even if the conductor hadn’t. “Frank McCluskey the outlaw?” His voice had a little squeak of alarm in it. “Here?”
“Better calm down, mister,” Luke advised. “If your face gets any redder, you’re liable to pop a blood vessel.”
Before Bertram could respond to that, the door of the caboose opened again and a hard-faced man carrying a rifle came in. “We’re ready to stop and make the switch, boss.”
Bad Men Die Page 8