Dead Man Walking

by Derek Rutherford

  Dead Man Walking

  The authorities warned Jim Jackson that if he ever set foot in Texas again then he wouldn’t get out alive. But Jim is back. Searching for information about old friends incarcerated in the cruel Texas penal system, with intentions to bust them out of wherever they are.

  When Jim foils a train robbery, he’s suddenly a hero and a hunted man. The death toll rises as Jim attempts to outrun both the authorities and the friends of the train robbers he killed. Meanwhile, there’s still a prison break to engineer.

  And there’s also the matter of the beautiful and enigmatic Rosalie Robertson. . . .

  By the same author

  Vengeance at Tyburn Ridge

  Yellow Town

  The Bone Picker

  Last Stage From Hell’s Mouth

  Dead Man’s Eyes

  Dead Man Walking

  Derek Rutherford

  ROBERT HALE

  © Derek Rutherford 2018

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2598-9

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Derek Rutherford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Chapter One

  She was a pretty woman, made prettier by the late afternoon light shining low across the plains and through the carriage window. The light lent her skin a golden glow that reminded him of the beautiful paintings he’d seen back east a lifetime ago. She wore a bonnet and fancy clothes, but her lips were tight, as if behind them she was gritting her teeth. Her eyes darted around the carriage. It looked as if she was waiting for something, and whatever it was, she didn’t expect it to be good.

  Jim Jackson eased into the seat opposite her. He’d spent an hour in the cattle wagon with his horse, making sure she was settled, reassuring her. He’d wondered about bringing her on the train but she hadn’t been bothered at all. There were other horses in the wagon too, plenty of hay, and they all looked happy enough swaying very gently with the motion of the train, relaxing, letting something else cover the miles for a change. Most of that time he’d spent with the horse, Jim realized, had been for his own benefit, reassuring him rather than her. So eventually he’d left her to the company of the other animals and had worked his way back through the short train, looking for a quiet space where he could stretch out and get some sleep.

  The train wasn’t full, so he chose the quietest carriage. The woman was sitting in the corner on her own. He sat opposite her. She looked at him briefly, smiled, and then stared out at the passing plains of Texas, the fields of cotton and cattle, the dark prairie, the smoke, sometimes white, sometimes black, blowing back from the locomotive.

  He watched her for a while and once or twice, when she scanned the carriage, she caught him looking and smiled again. He felt he was making her nervous so he stretched out best he could, pulled his hat down over his eyes and tried to sleep, enjoying the sound and feel of the wheels on the tracks, the light rhythms that made him think of music he hadn’t heard for a lifetime, not since he left his home all those years ago. He breathed in the smell of the smoke and occasionally the woman’s perfume.

  He was drifting into sleep when she made a quiet frightened sound. It was so slight that it almost wasn’t there, but when he opened his eyes she had her hand over her mouth and was looking out of the window at a couple of cowboys on horses watching the train roll by. The train was slowing as it climbed a slight grade, but then it started picking up steam again, accelerating. The woman dropped her hand from her mouth, looked at him and smiled, a little embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, very quietly.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

  They looked at one another for a few seconds. It was, Jim Jackson thought, that moment of choice when strangers can open a conversation or politely retreat into their own worlds without offence.

  ‘You look nervous,’ he said. ‘Have you not ridden a train before?’

  ‘Once or twice,’ she said. ‘It’s just. . . .’

  She looked out of the window again, then back to him.

  ‘Train robbers,’ she said.

  ‘Train robbers?’ He felt a kick inside, as if his heart had missed a beat then tried to catch up with itself.

  ‘My sister was robbed on the Kansas line. They killed a man. I read in the papers that there are train robbers here in Texas, too.’

  His throat was suddenly too dry to respond and in the pause she added, ‘I’m being silly, aren’t I?’

  ‘No,’ he said. The train was slowing again now, braking sharply. He heard the wheels complaining and he had to grip the edge of his seat. He felt his gun on his thigh. Not his gun, not the one that he had used more than ten years ago in his own train-robbing days, but the gun belonging to a Texas Ranger called Sam McRae. McRae had been the man who had arrested Jim Jackson and sent him to prison for ten years right here in Texas. Ten long years of hell. And Jim had been warned, in no uncertain terms, to never set foot in the state again.

  The wheels screeched.

  ‘What’s happening?’ the lady said, fear in her eyes and voice.

  Jim sensed movement and when he looked across the carriage and out the far window he saw a masked rider racing alongside the train.

  ‘They’re going to rob us, aren’t they?’ she said.

  Further up the carriage people were twisting in their seats trying to see what was occurring. There were only a half dozen other people in the carriage – two men in smart suits, a woman with a young boy and a baby, and another man, like Jim Jackson, dressed in trail clothes.

  The train stopped.

  From somewhere up ahead a gunshot echoed out, loud and clear, and as sharp as an Indian knife.

  ‘They’re going to rob us,’ she said again. Along the carriage the baby started crying.

  Jim Jackson loosened his gun in his holster.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said. He stood up and moved across the carriage from where he’d been sitting. He pressed himself up against the carriage bulkhead so anyone coming in mightn’t see him for a second. It wasn’t much, that second, but it would be enough. The way they’d used to do it was all about surprise and shock, burst into the carriage, wave a gun to scare everyone, and then work the passengers, taking what you could carry: money, purses, jewellery, watches. It had been lucrative. It had also sent him to hell for ten years.

  Somebody shouted in the carriage next to theirs. He couldn’t distinguish the words but there was a threat in the tone.

  He heard boot-steps on the roof. Someone was running along the length of the carriage above them.

  Another gunshot rang out, this one closer but still in the next carriage. Somebody screamed. He couldn’t tell if it was through fear or pain.

  He heard footsteps just the other side of their carriage door. A man slid open the door quickly and hard. It smashed into its stop with a so
und not unlike a gunshot.

  The man stepped into the carriage. His face was hidden beneath a red neckerchief, and a brown hat was pulled low over his eyes. He wore a black coat despite it being a warm day. He wasn’t tall, but he was lean. He held a Colt .45 out in front of him, and he locked eyes on the woman who had been sitting opposite Jim.

  ‘Nobody move,’ he yelled. ‘I damn well mean it. You move and you’re dead.’

  The man looked down the carriage to where one of the businessmen was rising, his hands already halfway in the air. The baby was still crying and his older brother was struggling to catch his breath too. The man in trail clothes down that end of the carriage hadn’t moved but he was looking towards the train robber.

  The robber sensed Jim standing right beside him.

  He turned, opening his mouth to bark out another order. Jim hit him hard on the temple with the butt of his gun and the man’s legs buckled and he folded to the floor. An arc of blood sprayed across the carriage.

  The woman with the children started screaming. The businessman with his hands in the air was saying ‘Dear God,’ over and over. The woman who had been sat opposite him was staring wide-eyed at Jim. There was a splash of blood on her cheek.

  At the far end of the carriage the door opened.

  The man who had run along the roof of the carriage had a yellow bandana covering his face. His hat was black and he wore a light brown jacket and blue trousers. He had leather chaps over the top of his trousers and the spurs on his boots jingled as he stepped into the carriage. He had a gun in his hand.

  Maybe, Jim Jackson thought, the trail-hand down that end of the carriage had seen what Jim had done and figured he ought to do something similar. For no sooner had the train robber stepped into the carriage than the trail-hand was rising, reaching for his own gun.

  ‘Stop!’ Jim yelled. You couldn’t out-draw a man who already had a gun in his hand. The train robber fired twice. The roar of the gun was deafening in the carriage. The trail-hand was blown backwards. He flipped over the rear of the seat from which he had just risen.

  Jim had been holding his own gun the wrong way, a grip that had allowed him to knock out the first train robber with the butt, rather than shooting him. Had the second robber chosen to shoot Jim before that trail-hand then it might have been a fatal mistake on Jim’s part to have knocked out that first man rather than shoot him. It was a trait, this penchant for mercy, which had got him into trouble before. As the trail-hand landed, moaning on the carriage floor, the robber turned his attention to Jim. But those few seconds had been enough; Jim had readjusted his hold on his own gun and now he fired twice. The bullets hit the robber in the chest, smashing him backwards through the still open door.

  Jim stepped away from the carriage bulkhead, ears ringing, the smell of cordite and gunpowder in the air. He turned and looked into the next carriage. The end-door to that carriage door was closed, and the blind on the window was down. Whoever was in there would have heard the shots but wouldn’t know what was happening. Jim crouched down and turned over the first train robber. The man was unconscious. Jim strode along the carriage aisle, ignoring the businessmen and the crying children with their white-faced mother. He knelt alongside the cowboy that the second robber had shot. The man would live. One of the train robber’s bullets had taken him in the shoulder, the other in the upper arm.

  ‘You,’ Jim Jackson said to the nearest businessman. ‘Quickly.’ The man looked in shock, his face pale and his lips quivering, but he stood shakily and came across to Jim.

  ‘You have to stop the bleeding,’ Jim said. ‘Find some cloth. Keep it pressed hard against the wounds.’ He looked up. The woman at the far end of the carriage was staring. The one with the children, too. ‘The ladies will help.’

  ‘You,’ he said to the second businessman, whose mouth was moving as if he was still praying. ‘Take your belt and tie up that fellow down there.’ He pointed back along the carriage towards the unconscious first robber. ‘Tie his arms. Take your friend’s belt and tie his legs, too.’

  Without waiting for the businessmen to respond, Jim went quickly to the robber he had shot.

  The man was laying half in and half out of the carriage door. He was dead.

  Jim felt his heart lurch again. They – Jim and his fellow train robbers back in the day – had never been violent men. In fact he had been known as Gentleman Jim Jackson. They had made a fortune whilst rarely firing a shot. It had been the early days of train robbery and people were less prepared for it, less likely to resist. But who was to say these men had been violent men? Maybe they’d were just shouting and waving guns trying to frighten people, the way Jim’s gang used to, and now one was out cold and the other was dead. All because a fellow who wasn’t scared of shouting and guns had been travelling in the carriage.

  But this wasn’t the time for deep thinking. Jim knew how these things worked. There would be two men in the next carriage along, maybe the one beyond that as well. There would be a man with a gun on the driver and engineer.

  And none of them would take kindly to discovering that one of their own was dead. Once you started something you had to finish it.

  He reloaded his gun as he walked back along the aisle and opened the door to the connected carriage.

  Someone was bleeding on the floor. Gut-shot. A young man, maybe twenty years of age. He was squirming and moaning in pain.

  There were two robbers, again with faces masked and hats pulled low. One had a gun in his hand and the other was holding a sack into which a lady and a gentleman were just dropping their purses and watches.

  The robbers looked at Jim. Their eyes met. The one with the gun was raising his hand, finger tightening on the trigger, when Jim shot him. Jim’s bullet took the man in the throat and he fell backwards on to a fellow in a smart black suit, white shirt, and a bootlace tie.

  The one holding the sack paused, dropped the sack and raised his hands.

  Jim walked towards him, keeping his eyes locked on the man, his gun steady in front of him. Peripheral vision showed a couple of young, strong-looking farmhands just beyond the man.

  ‘Boys,’ Jim said. ‘Figure you can hold this one down a while?’

  The boys smiled.

  Jim took the man’s gun from his holster. One of the farm boys grabbed the man’s raised arms and yanked them down so hard behind his back that something snapped with a loud crack. The man screamed.

  ‘Take my darn money, would you?’ the boy said, and twisted the man’s arms so he had no choice but to lie face down on the floor.

  The far carriage door slid open.

  Another train robber stood there, this one wearing a black bandanna. The masked man took in the scene and then slid the door shut again. Jim heard the man shouting, his voice become quieter almost immediately as, Jim figured, he jumped from the train.

  Jim ran down the carriage.

  Sure enough the man was racing across the dirt to where a colleague sat guard on a chestnut mare, holding the reins of a half dozen horses. A third man appeared running from the front of the train. A moment later there was the blast of a shotgun, and that third man went down screaming. But he scrambled to his feet again, his clothes peppered and shredded, and he made it to the horses.

  The men mounted the horses, jabbed spurs into horseflesh, and then they were gone, empty-handed, wounded, and frightened, heading towards the tree line.

  Chapter Two

  Jim Jackson led his horse down the boxcar ramp and on to the dirt alongside the railroad track. He rubbed her nose and said, ‘So much for a quiet journey.’ The shaking that had wracked his body following the shooting – and the killings – had stopped, but he still felt empty and sick. It hadn’t been so long ago that he had killed a man for the very first time. Since then there had been others. And although it was always they – the ones he had killed – who had initiated their own demise, it didn’t make the act any easier. He took a deep breath and turned around, intending to get his bearings, his
first proper view of Austin. Instead he found three men standing facing him.

  ‘This is the fellow,’ Frank Stokes said. ‘Daniel Flanders. He’s the one.’

  Frank Stokes was the train driver. Back along the track, when the train was still stationary after the attempted robbery, Jim had jumped down off the carriage at about the same time as Stokes. There had been a guard, too, and the fireman. A couple of passengers had joined them. All had stood there in the Texas heat, looking out at the trees into which the outlaws had fled, talking and trying to make sense of what had just happened. Smoke and steam had been blowing back over them and the sound of someone cursing came from inside the closest carriage. One of the passengers had told Stokes how it had been Jackson who had foiled the robbery, and when Stokes asked Jackson his name ‘Daniel Flanders’ had been the best that Jackson had been able to come up with. Not long before, back in New Mexico, he had been reading Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders to a blind man who’d had his eyelids cut off by the Apache.

  One of the three men standing in front of him now was wearing a black suit with a vest and a gold watch chain running from a button into a pocket. He wore wire-framed spectacles and had very little hair.

  He held his hand out.

  ‘We owe you a debt of gratitude, Mr Flanders,’ the man said. ‘We being the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, the passengers that ride on her, and the state of Texas itself. My name is Maxwell Higgs. I run this station. This is Charlie Entwhistle,’ Maxwell indicated the man on his left. ‘He’s our Passenger Manager. You’ve met Frank, I know.’

  Jim shook hands with Higgs and Entwhistle.

  Over their shoulders he saw the two young country boys manhandling the captured robber off the train. The man was swearing and moaning in equal measures. Standing back, just alongside the tracks, waiting for the two boys and the robber was a fellow in a white shirt and grey vest with a gun at his hip and a star on his chest.