by Tim Champlin
“Maybe not quite that close.” She smiled.
They finished eating, gathered up their few belongings, and debarked onto the platform. Rasmussen had used his spare belt to strap the damaged stagecoach bag, forming a loop for a makeshift handle. For now, he carried their precious luggage, along with his saddlebags.
The sun had risen only an hour earlier, but already the June day promised to be steamy. She breathed with relief as they entered an airy, high-ceilinged waiting room that gave the illusion of coolness. The place bore a faint aroma of coal smoke and cigars. People streamed through the massive depot, buying tickets, checking schedules and baggage at the counters, rushing to catch trains, going for breakfast in the restaurant. Arriving travelers dropped suitcases to embrace loved ones. After nine days on the road, the sight made her homesick. She hoped this day would pass quickly; they were due to arrive in Springfield by eight that night. She caught herself unconsciously scanning the flowing crowd for a man with a limp.
Her reverie was broken when Rasmussen paused to examine a large railroad map of Missouri mounted on a wall. She, too, studied it, noting the rail lines running south of St. Louis that were denoted in red against the green map. The St. Louis-San Francisco Line snaked southwest across the state toward Springfield and beyond. Another branch of the same road ran southward along the Mississippi. A third line—the Missouri Pacific—passed through Poplar Bluff and down into Arkansas. Lines on a map—they looked so simple. But she knew the rough terrain they crossed, and was grateful the two of them would not have to journey by horse and wagon.
By the time they drank cold lemonade in the station restaurant, it was time to board. They didn’t need a Pullman now; she’d reserved a parlor car for this leg of the trip. Damn the expense. No more of those uncomfortable day coaches with the bench seats like she’d ridden north.
The train crawled toward the edge of the city, then picked up speed, leaving the scattered houses behind and plunging into the heavy hardwood forest that clothed the Ozark Plateau far south into Arkansas.
She sat next to Rasmussen in an upholstered high backed armchair. Anchored to the floor, the chairs could swivel in any direction, or be tilted backward for a nap. The open windows admitted a pleasant breeze, and now and then a puff of coal smoke. Thank heaven the locomotive’s stack had spark arresters to prevent a showering of fine cinders.
For the first half hour, they hardly spoke, each engrossed in thought. Nellie had come to expect reticence from this man, who was all business. That suited her fine; she hadn’t intended to hire a jovial traveling companion. She glanced over and saw he’d removed his corduroy coat, exposing the holstered pistol at his lean waist. The heat had reduced him to the very picture of a casual traveler, with no celluloid collar or tie, shirt sleeves rolled up. He leafed through a copy of Harper’s Weekly, appearing to have difficulty keeping his eyes open.
She pulled her gaze away to stare out at the green wall of trees sliding past, nearly brushing the sides of the train. She wondered if she should tell Kent about her relationship with Johnny. Would it make any difference? Probably not. She was sure Kent would do whatever was necessary to protect her and the money. Besides, she and Johnny had parted, childless, several years ago. The fire of their romance and passion had long since burned out. She didn’t know if he’d continued to drink.
For some reason he was desperate to get his hands on the cash she carried. At first she thought he wanted the money for himself. It would make him a rich man, all right, but Johnny had never been greedy during their marriage, although he was often out of work. More likely he was under family pressure. Perhaps they’d promised him something in return for capturing the money. Or threatened him if he didn’t. Old man Clayton could be even harsher and more demanding than her own grandfather. Maybe the two patriarchs were carrying on their feud through their grandchildren.
A sudden break in the trees opened up a long vista. The midday sun bore down on two cultivated fields planted in tobacco and corn. A small house sat on the edge of cleared land in the distance.
The locomotive’s steam whistle wailed a warning and a half minute later a crossing of a dirt road flashed past her window. She could hear the brakes grinding as the train slowed on a downgrade and rounded a long curve. Looking ahead, she saw a spindly wooden trestle. The heavy car swayed as the train crept across. She noticed Kent sitting upright and tight-lipped, eyes fixed on the smoothflowing green river in the gorge below. She hadn’t ridden many trains in her life, but knew that most rail lines had abysmal safety records. She had no fear of dying in the flaming wreckage of a rail car, any more than she feared snakebite or swamp fever. Trestles weakened by floods or neglect were just another possibility in an uncertain world, and she ignored them all with the fatalistic confidence of youth.
As the day wore on, she found herself relaxing. In spite of the likelihood that her husband was aboard this very train, she’d seen no sign of him. Every mile that rolled under the wheel trucks, every hour that unwound from her small pocket watch meant she was closer to home and safety. She never knew a small leather bag with $250,000 worth of paper currency could be so heavy. Or did it just seem that way?
The train stopped briefly at Cuba and again at Rolla to discharge and take on passengers and mail.
The conductor strolled through their car, punching the tickets of local riders. “Lebanon, next stop!” he called, moving down the aisle. “Lebanon, Missouri, next stop in thirty minutes.”
“Kent, Lebanon is only forty miles from Springfield,” Nellie said, touching Rasmussen’s arm to rouse him from a doze. “I should stop and wire Grandpa to meet us.”
Rasmussen nodded. “Does he live in town?”
“Oh, no. He’s on the old home place, ten miles south. The telegraph agent will send a boy on horseback to deliver the message.” She paused. “I’m to use the code word ‘done’ to let him know my mission was successful.”
“Does he expect you today?”
“This week was as close as I could estimate my return. Grandpa’s been troubled with rheumatism of late. He might send my uncle.”
“Where’s your father?”
She felt a familiar twinge in her stomach at the mention of her parent.
“Gunned down from ambush six years ago. We suspect the Claytons, but nobody was ever caught or tried for it. Like I said earlier, the local sheriff hopes we’ll keep killing each other off, and good riddance to all.”
The train ground to a halt at 7:30, and the engineer positioned the locomotive under the spout of a water tank.
Rasmussen slipped on his corduroy jacket and slung his saddlebags over one shoulder. He took charge of the stagecoach bag and its precious cargo, while Nellie carried only her small grip with a change of clothes and personal items. They debarked onto the stone platform of a long brick depot.
“Where’s the town?” he asked, glancing around at the solid banks of trees behind the station.
“When the Frisco came through here a few years back, the Lebanon town council wouldn’t donate any land to build a depot, so the rail line located out here, nearly two miles from town.”
“Cut off their nose to spite their face,” he commented.
“Western Union is in that little building next door,” she said, pointing.
Two porters in stiff-brimmed caps passed them, pushing a baggage cart piled high with boxes and mail sacks. The big iron wheels of the handcart turned in front of them, blocking their way. Rasmussen stepped aside to go around. The two porters were suddenly on him, one pinning his arms and the other snatching the Merwin-Hulbert from its holster and shoving the muzzle into Rasmussen’s chest.
Nellie started to scream, but a dirty, callused hand clamped over her mouth from behind while a fourth man clubbed Kent with the barrel of a pistol. He slumped forward, stunned. She twisted and struggled to no avail as the two porters and another man dressed as a railroad worker in overalls and brogans dragged her and Kent behind the depot into the woods. She rolled her ey
es and looked about frantically for help, but apparently no one had seen or heard the quick, silent assault in the late afternoon shadows behind the loaded luggage cart. The view of the Western Union office had also been effectively blocked. The few men she glimpsed passing in and out of the depot were on business of their own, and didn’t look in her direction.
The three men forced their two captives more than fifty yards into the woods before they stopped.
“I’ll take my hand away if you don’t scream,” a whiskey voice said in her ear.
Her lungs heaving and nostrils flaring, she nodded. The hand was removed, and she gasped gratefully. Her captor kept her arms pinned from behind.
Rasmussen was recovering his senses, looking around.
A lean porter shoved a pistol into his chest. “Make a sound and I’ll kill you.”
Rasmussen said nothing. A small spot of blood soaked through his thick blond hair near the crown of his head.
“Hurry. Get that rope,” barked one of the men.
A red-faced man in overalls slipped out of a coil of rope he’d been wearing across his barrel chest like a bandoleer.
In less than a minute Rasmussen and Nellie were pushed to the ground on either side of an elm tree, and faced the two-foot-thick trunk with their arms and legs embracing it. The rope was looped around both of them and the tree, the knots tightly secured. Nellie didn’t trust herself to speak for fear she would break into sobs. She knew—they all knew—what this was about. The quarter million in cash. One of the porters emptied Rasmussen’s saddlebags onto the ground and the other porter proceeded to stuff the bundles of greenbacks into it, apparently for easier transport.
“Nice-looking gun,” a big, mustachioed man said, examining Rasmussen’s nickel-plated Merwin-Hulbert. “But I can’t figure out how to open the damned thing. Reckon I can get a few bucks for it, though.”
“No you won’t. That gun is too distinctive. It could tie us to this robbery,” came from behind Nellie.
She jerked her head around as far as she could from her cramped position. That voice was all too familiar. Johnny Clayton was standing there, his hand swathed in a white bandage.
“What do ya mean…tie us to this robbery?” The big man snorted. “They can see our faces, can’t they?”
“It’s our word against theirs, if it ever comes to that,” Clayton said. “The gun would be physical evidence we were here. Leave it!”
The mustachioed man tossed the weapon on the ground with the empty stagecoach bag and Nellie’s small grip.
Two short blasts on the steam whistle announced the train’s imminent departure.
“Let’s go, boys,” Clayton said, staring at Nellie. “It wouldn’t do to miss our ride.”
He’d slipped off the train to rendezvous with his men in the woods, she decided. All very neatly planned.
Johnny’s lean, dark face was not smiling. “Sorry, Nell,” he said, sounding as if he really meant it. “I had to do it. We won’t gag you, but you’ll holler a long time before anyone hears you back here.” He had the worn, hollow-eyed appearance of someone who’d been drinking a lot more than he’d been eating or sleeping.
Then the four men were running through the sparse undergrowth toward the depot, the loaded saddlebags bouncing on Clayton’s shoulder.
“Damn you, Johnny!” she shrieked. “You can’t leave us here!”
Chapter Five
Embarrassed, more than hurt, Rasmussen leaned his forehead against the rough bark, thankful the thick bole of the elm screened his face from Nellie. Here he sat, hugging a tree, bound hand and foot, the woman he’d sworn to protect sitting opposite him in the same predicament. Worst of all, the $250,000 he had been guarding was missing, swiped so skillfully there’d been very little violence and no noise. He hadn’t even had a chance to put up a fight.
“You hurt bad?” Nellie asked from the opposite side of the tree.
“No.”
“Quit trying to sound tough,” she said. “I saw your head bleeding.”
“Scalp wounds bleed a lot. Just a dull ache now. No dizziness. I’ll be OK.”
The blow to his pride had been worse. Somehow it helped to talk. Relief at escaping alive had made him almost giddy. Or was it the blow to the head? He was glad he hadn’t been struck with the butt of his Merwin-Hulbert with its skull-splitting wedge of steel. The men had worn no masks and could be identified later. He’d never dealt with criminals like this. It was far different from tracking and arresting Americans who crossed into Canada to sell whiskey to the Indians.
Sometimes the Mounties had encountered armed resistance when the whiskey peddlers were cornered, but as a policeman he was always on the offensive, not the defensive. This time, he was the hunted, not the hunter, and he’d not been up to the challenge. It was unclear to him why the robbers had left two live witnesses. Extreme confidence of the professional, or extreme stupidity of the amateur, were his only guesses. Perhaps they operated on some Southern code of honor that stopped short of murder—a hanging offense.
“What’s next?” she asked. “This rope is cutting off circulation in my wrists.”
“Get loose and send a telegram to your grandfather.”
The huffing of the locomotive faded as the train pulled away. The peaceful sounds of Nature settled around them—the scuffing of a squirrel in the dry leaves, the trilling of a nearby mockingbird.
“We could strain back against the loops and then let up to see if we can stretch it a little,” she suggested.
“This new hemp won’t give enough to matter. And it would just pull the knots tighter.” He thought for a few moments. Their hands were overlapping. “I can reach the knots on your wrists,” he said. “Move your left hand up a little.” He began patiently to work the hard knot, nails trying to get a grip and tug it open. It was discouraging work. “This might take a while,” he said. “Just relax.” He didn’t want to tell her it might be impossible.
“Hard to relax in this position.”
They fell silent as he continued to struggle, his strong fingers plucking, getting purchase, twisting, tugging. Perspiration began to trickle down his face in the still, humid atmosphere.
“Something’s biting me on the legs,” she said, squirming. “Could be flies, or ants, or beetles, or anything!”
Rasmussen ignored her anguished imagination. He had troubles of his own, breathing deeply with the concentrated strain. He managed to wedge a finger under one of the tiny loops and began to work it loose. It took another ten minutes, but he pulled it partially free. Leaning hard to the right, he could barely see his right hand; he operated mostly by touch. He swore softly as he bent back a fingernail against the stubborn knot. But he kept at it, doggedly. “Ahh…there she goes!” The knot relaxed its grip, and Nellie pulled the loops free from her left hand.
From there it was only a matter of minutes for her to free herself, and then Rasmussen. They got up, brushed themselves off, and stretched their stiff limbs. The boots had protected Nellie’s ankles, but she rubbed her chafed wrists.
Rasmussen retrieved his pistol from the ground, checked its loads and action, and blew a few specks of dirt from it. Good as new. He holstered it, then stuffed his few belongings into the empty stagecoach bag, and handed Nellie her own small grip.
“We have one less bag to carry,” she remarked without emotion, as if still in shock.
“You feeling OK?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded without looking at him.
“Let’s go.” He led the way out of the shaded woods toward the Western Union office, Nellie hurrying to keep up.
But there was no need to rush.
“Line’s been dead for two hours,” the telegrapher told them when they asked to send a wire to Springfield. “Don’t know when it’ll be operating again. Likely a tree limb down on the wire somewhere.”
They conferred outside on the platform. “Might’ve known they’d cut the wire first thing. Is there any way we can rent a couple horses or a
rig and beat the train to Springfield?” Rasmussen asked.
“Not from here. The road’s decent, but the train clips right along. It’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Rasmussen nodded. “Does the train make any more stops?”
“No. Not even for water.”
“Then they aren’t likely to jump off somewhere before they reach Springfield. Too much risk of injury…or drawing attention to themselves from other passengers.”
They checked with the depot ticket agent and learned the next westbound train wasn’t scheduled until the next afternoon. The hack that transported passengers to and from town had already left, so they walked the two miles into Lebanon.
They were mostly silent on the hike. But, as they approached town, Rasmussen said: “I don’t suppose it would do any good to say I’m sorry.”
“Won’t change anything, if that’s what you mean,” Nellie replied, looking at her boot toes scuffing along in the road dust. “We’re both in a fix. I failed in the mission I was given. So, not only will all those busybodies start a whispering campaign that I let the Claytons steal it on purpose, but….”
“Why would they do that?” Rasmussen interrupted.
“I neglected to tell you that Johnny Clayton and I were married for a few years.”
He looked up, surprised. “Nice time to tell me.”
“Would it have made any difference?”
“Probably not,” he replied slowly. “But I might have treated him differently when we met in the dining car. Maybe would have put him off the train, or taken some other precaution.”
“I doubt it,” Nellie said. “You men are all alike. You thought you had him bluffed out. I’m sure he wired ahead and arranged to have those men waiting for us at the Lebanon depot. I recognized that fat one with the mustache as one of his cousins.”
Rasmussen stopped in the deserted road and turned to face her. “Before today this Johnny Clayton was only a nuisance, not to be taken seriously. Now I’m going after him with everything I’ve got.”