Cut to the Quick

by Tony Masero

  The driver looked at her and tipped his hat. ‘Told you we’d do it,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine.

  ‘It isn’t over yet,’ she called back, watching a line of riders set off after the train as it gathered speed. She was wondering where Kirby had gotten to and was hoping he was clear and unharmed.

  ‘We have one big problem,’ the driver called.

  ‘It looks like most of our problems are back there,’ Belle answered pointing down the line with her pistol.

  ‘No, it ain’t that,’ said the driver. ‘This here is a single track mainline. That means the timing of traffic has to be exact or nasty things can happen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re off schedule now and those boys have taken the telegraph wires down. Nobody ahead or behind knows we’re running late. We could meet up with a train on the open line coming the other way.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ cried Belle. ‘That’s a tad inconvenient. Can we get to the law at the next stop in time, do you think?’

  ‘It’s like this,’ the driver went on. ‘We can keep her steady at fifteen miles per hour, maybe twenty at a push, but that uses up fuel fast. And it could get tricky when we come to the ruling grade ahead. That’s steep and we’ll be forced to slow down. It’s all relative and I don’t have no idea what may be heading down the line towards us right now.’

  ‘Just do the best you can,’ said Belle, frowning over all the computations.

  Back in the express car the blacksmith was making headway; he had beaten out a large enough cavity through both the complicated key structure and second steel fire door inside enabling Jesse to see the locking rods. The blacksmith was about to start hammering at them with a chisel when Jesse pulled him aside.

  ‘Leave it be,’ he sighed irritably, looking away from the safe to the outskirts of Timber Wheel Junction as it hurried past. ‘We’re fast running out of time. We’ll have to risk using dynamite to blow those rods.’

  His men on horseback were pounding along outside, firing at the driving cab as they rode. It was to no avail and Jesse knew it. Even if by luck they hit and incapacitated the driver the train would still keep on running. He had more hopes for his men inside the train who were forging their way through the carriages to make an advance on the engine house.

  ‘Wait a minute, Dingus,’ said his brother, who had returned early to the train in advance of the others in town. ‘Remember when we scouted this section of line not a week past?’

  ‘Sure, of course I do,’ said Jesse impatiently.

  ‘There’s a hill coming up ahead, you recall it?’

  Jesse nodded.

  ‘The train will have to slow down, right?’

  ‘Sure, but so what? Come on, get to the nub of it Frank, times a-wasting.’

  ‘We disconnect the express car from the rest of the train. It coasts back downhill whilst the rest of the rolling stock attached to the locomotive carries on ahead. It’ll take them miles to figure it out, meanwhile we’ll be heading back to the junction with time enough to get this damned thing open before they reach the next stop and call on any law.’

  Jesse shrugged, ‘Worth a try, I guess. We’ll blow this sucker but I don’t fancy being inside this car when we do.’

  He looked across at the two deafened occupants who now sat huddled and barely conscious beside the shattered body of the dead clerk. ‘Let’s do it. Two of you men get through that connecting door and see if you can make out the coupling link to the next car, must be a pin or rod, something you can disconnect. We hit the slope you jerk the peg out and we freewheel back.’ He turned to the remaining gang member. ‘You head out the back and stand by the brake wheel, when I tell you, start turning her.’

  Belle watched as the fireman hauled log after log into the fire, the blazing heat permeating the whole of the crowded cab. All of them were sweating now, as much from the tension as the heat. Dense gray clouds of smoke chugged out of the smokestack and poured down the rails behind in a long cinder soaked trail. The wind whipped at Belle’s hair and dress as looked back down the line where she could see they were just keeping ahead of the following horsemen. But she was more worried about the outlaws she guessed would be coming their way through the interior passageways of the train.

  A movement caught the corner of her eye.

  A lone rider. Coming fast and at an angle from the town outskirts, a ribbon of dust trailing behind him as he whipped the pony at top speed.

  Behind her, the firemen gasped and shouted a warning.

  A figure had appeared over the piled logs in the tender, his gun held pointed at them.

  ‘Stop the train right now!’ he yelled.

  Belle had one last bullet and it had to count. She levered back the hammer and brought the gun up quick. She fired just as the wheels hit a hump in the rail and the engine swayed, her missing shot spinning off wildly into space.

  ‘I said stop the train or I’ll let you have it,’ the outlaw cried angrily as he fought to straddle the jouncing logs more firmly. ‘Do it!’ he warned.

  They never heard the shot inside the cab but only saw the man pirouette and a wash of blood fly from his mouth in a streaming arc as he flopped down onto the logs, his body bumping and rolling as the train jerked about.

  Belle looked around wondering where the shot that killed him had come from. She was about to clamber up to get the fellow’s loaded gun when a voice called out to her.

  ‘Belle, give me your hand.’

  It was Kirby racing alongside the tracks, his pony streamed with sweating ribbons of white foam.

  ‘Grade ahead,’ called the driver. ‘She’s slowing down.’

  Belle grabbed the cab handrail and leaned out, offering her hand to Kirby. He reached up and grasped her wrist, then kicking free of the stirrups, swung over and leapt onto the metal platform step.

  ‘Hiya, honey,’ he grinned, hauling himself aboard.

  ‘You cut that fine,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ asked the driver, hovering threateningly with a hefty hammer in his hand.

  ‘My husband, always late for the festivities.’

  ‘Didn’t complain when I plugged that fellow on the woodpile though, did you?’

  ‘I ran out of ammo,’ Belle explained.

  ‘Could have always thrown logs.’

  ‘I’ll throw you off this train, you don’t leave off complaining.’

  The locomotive was slowing down visibly as they headed up the steepening incline and Kirby frowned in dismay. ‘Can’t you get no more speed out of her?’ he asked the driver.

  ‘This is it until we’re over the hump,’ he said.

  Kirby looked through the cab’s porthole window and saw the rolling slope of the forested hillside rising above them.

  ‘I’ll get up on the woodpile,’ he said. ‘Keep them busy from up there. Belle, I’ll toss down that fellow’s pistol and you can do your worst from here.’

  She nodded agreement and watched as Kirby mounted the tender and scrambled over the blocks of timber.

  In the express car Jesse felt the engine slow and he pushed open the car’s connecting door.

  ‘You got that pin?’ he called.

  The two men were lying flat out, leaning over the edge of the platform and down between the buffers dragging at the hefty metal chain that secured one carriage to the next.

  ‘We’ll have her in a minute, boss. Just got to wait until the car’s come together a spell.’

  As the forward length of train slowed the faster travelling cars behind caught up and for a brief moment were wedged tight together, it was in this second as the clanking buffers clashed that the two outlaws unhooked the heavy chain link and drew it off its retaining hooks.

  ‘There you go,’ they yelled victoriously.

  Jesse watched with satisfaction as after a few seconds the carriages separated and they slowly began to roll back downhill as the forward part of the train pulled away.

  ‘What about our
boys up there?’ asked one of the men with a nod to the departing carriages.

  ‘They’ll have to make their own way back,’ sniffed Jesse indifferently. ‘Nothing we can do for them from here.’

  He turned back inside the express car and called out to the man at the brake wheel. ‘Start that wheel, we got to slow her down some now.’

  On top of the woodpile Kirby was engaged in a gun battle with a few of the gang’s gunhands, who were firing from the platform below the tender.

  Belle backed him up with any attempts the outlaws made to climb alongside the outside of the train.

  ‘We’re over the top,’ called the driver. ‘Back to speed now.’

  ‘Keep her going until you get to Pierce City,’ bawled Kirby.

  ‘No way,’ the driver called back. ‘First siding I see we’ll take her. I don’t fancy a head on with a special coming the other direction.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Kirby answered, snapping a shot over a raised head before him.

  ‘The riders are giving up,’ called Belle as she peeked around the cab.

  ‘They’ve run out of steam I guess?’ grinned the driver as he patted the engine affectionately. ‘No keeping up with this old iron horse.’

  The train swept over the crest of the hill and began its downward run on the other side, gathering speed as it went. As the carriages rolled over behind them, Kirby glanced at the row of rooftops.

  ‘We’re missing one,’ he called.

  ‘Damn,’ cried the driver. ‘They’ve disconnected the express car. Shoot, they’ll run back clear to the junction.’

  ‘Can you head us back after her?’ Belle asked.

  ‘I can try,’ said the driver, hauling on the braking reverse.

  The locomotive complained under a sheet of flying sparks as the wheels locks and skidded on down the rails. There was no stopping the speeding train on the incline and it flew on, the wheels alive with a firework display of sheeting sparks.

  ‘It’ll take her a while,’ the driver confirmed.

  Twenty-two tons of locomotive barreled on down the line in a jerking, shuddering rush. The train’s carriages came crashing and banging up behind the engine, adding their weight to the forward momentum. Kirby could hear the distressed cries of the passengers still left inside the train as the huge beast tried to come to a standstill. A mile marker came sailing past and then another. Still the train rolled on although a slowing down motion could now be felt.

  ‘She’s coming,’ said the driver. ‘Won’t be long now.’

  Three miles down the line, the train stopped, the wheels spun and she slowly started her journey in reverse.

  ‘Well, whatever’s coming along behind will hit that express car first, at least there’s that to be grateful for,’ the driver advised them mournfully.

  ‘Let’s hope we get there before that happens,’ Belle said.

  ‘Hey,’ called Kirby from the woodpile. ‘These suckers are jumping ship.’

  Belle looked out and could see figures leaping from the slow moving train and scurrying into the trees alongside the track. The horsemen too had given up the chase and were making their way off into the woods.

  ‘Guess they’ve had enough,’ said the fireman.

  ‘More likely they’ve seen the money’s gone,’ advised Belle. ‘That’s what they came for and there’s no point in staying now.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘Pour it on, ye damned fellow!’ Paddy O’Laine bellowed angrily at his fireman. ‘Come on, man. Put your blasted back into it. Ye’re as limp as a widow’s private parts, I swear ye is.’

  Paddy, the driver of the No. 97 express, was a broad chested, mighty muscled figure of a man and as he checked his diminutive pocket watch in one big oil-stained hand he eyed his lanky fireman disapprovingly. He did not care for the fellow’s company but, doleful as he was, the man could pull it out when needed despite his stringy frame. That is, as long as Paddy gave him some verbal encouragement. Failing that, and as he had on several occasions, Paddy would box the fellow’s ears for him.

  Paddy was an immigrant Irishman with a private mission to fulfill and his rivalry with his nemesis Damian Dougherty was about to take a turn for the better. On every previous occasion until now, Dougherty had beaten him in the race to the terminal at Vinita. This time it was going to be different, Paddy promised himself. Dougherty would have to wait in the siding whilst Paddy sat smug in the station at Vinita.

  His rival, Dougherty, rode the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line up from Dallas and their friendly rivalry had continued for years with Dougherty the better to the finish line on too many occasions. This time Paddy was determined to make things different.

  Paddy was an experienced hand and had been riding the rails since coming over from Ireland twenty years before, he had been de-railed three times during the war and been held up by ‘Bushwhackers’ on two separate occasions. Survived a kerosene fire on a freight train and once, memorably, driven his munitions load safely through an entire artillery barrage. He knew the ropes and that was why the company had made him driver of No. 97 the St. Louis Express.

  The train had left the town of Pacific on schedule and passed through Arlington and Marshfield as the timetable allowed but now they were approaching Timber Wheel Junction and then it would be lickity-spit down through Pierce City and the final run into Vinita.

  Paddy spat on his palms and rubbed his hands together for luck and then grasped the throttle lever as he stuck his head out and felt the hot cinder smoke pan his cheeks as he checked the rail ahead. The engine vibrated under his hand and by its touch he could feel the pump of the wheels running smooth as silk over the rails. ‘Fine’ – he thought – ‘I’ll have ye this time Dougherty, you auld sod. Ye can kiss my ass at the station and I’ll dance on your bleeding head as I wave farewell whilst I’m passing by’. He chuckled at the prospect, and then turned again to the fireman.

  ‘More wood, ye bloody popinjay. I’ve a schedule to keep and I’ll knot your head against a railroad tie we don’t keep it.’

  Paddy swore to himself that this run was going down in the record books – or he’d want to know the reason why.

  Jesse felt the car slowing nicely as they squealed their way down the main line and back into Timber Wheel Junction. He peered out of the broken doorway at the still silent town. All looked quiet and he wondered if any of their attackers where still around or if all of them were on the divided train. It would be worth finding out, he considered, just who that party had been. They had been good that was for sure. He recognized that from the body count and the fact he was sitting here in this express car with only Frank and three of his men left from the original twenty.

  ‘Get to work,’ he ordered the blacksmith. ‘You men, string some dynamite in there when he’s ready. I want this thing open and us gone in a half hour. You with me?’

  They nodded in understanding and Jesse jumped down from the car with Frank close behind.

  ‘Frank, I’ve a mind to find out just who it was came onto us here. What say we go into town and ask around?’

  Frank James nodded. ‘I’m with you there,’ he agreed. ‘They certainly blew feathers up our ass, the bastards.’

  The two men strolled off casually towards Main Street.

  Although still a young man, Jesse had seen his fill of violence and death. Committed to the South his older brother Frank had led the way during the war by enlisting early on. It had not been until the later years that young Jesse had eventually joined up with the guerillas and fought a merciless and cruel campaign under diehard leaders like ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson and Quantrill. There’s had been a war of attrition, not connected officially to any branch of the Confederate Army, as irregulars they had brought a frightening wave of terror to both civilians and military alike.

  Massacres had been their byword and it was known that cruel corpse mutilations were a part of their terror campaigns. Beheadings and scalp taking, ears and noses cut off and body parts diced and spread
around. None of those gruesome events had left anything but an etched scar of lasting violence on the psyche of the young Jesse and his fellow participants. The ‘Bushwhackers’ as they were known had continued on long after the official war was over and it was only then in an act of revenge for ‘Bloody Bill’s’ death that the James boys had first come to the attention of the general public.

  They had ridden together into the town of Gallantin in search of the scout who had tracked down ‘Bloody Bill’ and killed him. The one-time scout was supposedly working as a clerk in the town’s bank and Jesse had put two slugs in the man behind the counter. It was only later they found out they had made an error and shot the wrong man, their victim being an innocent employee. After boasting to all and sundry that they had paid back for Bill’s death, Jesse was to get full coverage in the press nationally and with this dubious claim to a mistaken murder his name had spread.

  On the back of this fame, John Newman, a journalist who was also a Confederate veteran and fanatical supporter of Southern principles, had taken up Jesse’s cause and written pamphlets, dime novels and articles creating a mythical figure who purportedly still stood for the greatest values of the beaten South. So the erroneous legend had grown and now Jesse enjoyed the support of not only those that knew him but also those Southerners who suffered under the regime imposed by the North’s Reconstruction policies and also those that believed all that they read.

  Yet, Jesse was not the man of that fiction.

  He was a charismatic figure, of that there was no doubt, and a flamboyant contrast to his more bookish elder brother, who read Shakespeare and had originally aspired to a teaching career. Jesse was a wild card at heart and whilst claiming to aid the common man by striking at the rich railroad companies, in truth it was to no more than a gold lining to their pockets that the outlaw and his confederates aspired.

  The brothers walked on and made it onto Main Street and went unnoticed amongst the groups of excited townsfolk gathered around the bodies still lying in the dust. No one expected that the James Gang would make so early a return to the town now the gun battle was over and the train gone.