Day of Reckoning

by William W. Johnstone

  “We’re goin’ to make as much money in one hour as them dumb cowboys will make in thirty years!” Cooper said. “Ain’t that somethin’ now?”

  With the medicine wagon

  The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, but the ground was still wet the next morning. Duff had taken the precaution the night before of gathering some wood and bringing it into the shelter with him. Because of that, he had dry wood for the breakfast fire, so even before Meagan and Ina Claire were awake, he lay the wood and started the fire. He had a sack of preground coffee beans he dropped into the pot of water to start the coffee brewing. Next he rolled out biscuits, then, putting them in a Dutch oven, set them on the fire to bake. The coffee was already done, the biscuits were rising in the Dutch oven, and bacon was twitching in the frying pan by the time the two ladies climbed out of the wagon.

  “Oh,” Ina Claire said. “That smells so good to wake up to.” She held her arms up over her body for a long stretch.

  “Well, ’tis good to see you this morning. ’Twas thinking, I was, that ye’d be sleeping ’til noon,” Duff said with a teasing smile.

  “Duff MacCallister, it is barely seven o’clock,” Meagan replied resolutely.

  “Besides, who could sleep with those heavenly smells coming from your cooking?” Ina Claire asked.

  “We’ll have biscuits soon,” he said.

  “Meagan, you should marry him,” Ina Claire said. “You’d have a full-time cook.”

  “And a full-time nuisance,” Meagan replied with a chuckle.

  Duff fried the eggs hard, so they breakfasted on sandwiches made from the biscuits, bacon, and eggs. They were eating heartily when they heard the whistle of an approaching train.

  “You think there are folks on that train, eating in the dining car?” Ina Claire asked.

  “I expect there are,” Meagan replied.

  “I’ve never been on a train,” Ina Claire said. “I sure wish I could eat in a dining car.”

  “You think it would be any better than this?” Meagan asked, holding out her biscuit sandwich.

  Ina Claire chuckled. “I don’t see how it could possibly be.”

  “Here’s the train,” Meagan said, though no declaration was necessary as the train was even with them now and going very fast. The engineer was standing at the window of the cab, and he returned Ina Claire’s wave. Small, gleaming coals were spilling from the engine’s firebox, leaving a gleaming path beneath the train, indicative of the size of the fire that was necessary to maintain such a speed.

  As Duff watched the train roar by, he saw the passengers inside, some reading the newspaper, some engaged in conversation, some merely looking through the window at the passing countryside. He couldn’t help but marvel at a technology that would allow people to be whisked across such great distances while in the cozy and dry comfort of the cars. It was as if an entire small town was on the move.

  Onboard train number Five Twenty-five

  “Hey, Ernie, did you see that medicine wagon back there?” the engineer asked his fireman.

  “What medicine wagon?”

  “The one we just passed that was parked along the side of the track. It was a red wagon with yellow writin’ on it, some kind of elixir, I suppose. Anyhow, there were three people with it, sittin’ near a fire, and it looked like they were havin’ their breakfast. A man it was, ’n he had two women with ’im.”

  “Damn, you musta paid a lot of attention to it.”

  “Yeah, I did. You mean you didn’t even see it a-tall?”

  “No, I didn’t see it.”

  “Too bad you didn’t. I wish you had seen it, so we could talk about it some,” the engineer said.

  The fireman laughed. “Hell, Doodle, seems to me we are talkin’ about it. I don’t know what about it that’s got you so interested, though.”

  “Oh, I just wonder what it would be like to be livin’ like that is all. It seems to me like that would be the life.”

  “What would be the life?”

  “Going around from town to town in a medicine wagon like that with a couple of good-looking women traveling with you.”

  “You want to travel around in a brightly colored wagon selling snake oil, do you?” Ernie laughed and shook his head. “You’re crazy, Doodle. Do you know that? You are flat-out crazy.”

  “No, I’m not, I mean, when you consider there’d be no railroad schedules to keep, no station managers to deal with, no division chiefs. Why, you’d be your own boss, going wherever you want at whatever schedule you want to set for yourself.”

  “Doodle, do you have ’ny idea how many kids there is all over the country that want to grow up to do just what me ’n you are doin’ now?” Ernie asked. He picked up a shovel full of coal, then grinned. “Well maybe what you do more’n what I do,” he added as he tossed the coal into the furnace. “Think about it. Drivin’ a locomotive at thirty miles an hour and goin’ from place to place. Why, this is the best damn job in the whole country.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Doodle admitted. He smiled. “I know it’s the only thing I ever wanted to do.”

  “And here you are, carryin’ on ’bout some medicine wagon.”

  “Maybe it’s the romantic streak in me,” Doodle suggested.

  Ernie laughed out loud. “Yeah, you’re romantic all right. Virgie just tells ever’one how romantic you are.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about that kind of romantic.”

  “By the way, you’re sure keeping the throttle open this morning.”

  “I’m goin’ to try ’n keep ’er as close to forty miles an hour as I can, in order to make up for the time we lost back in Cheyenne.”

  “I’ll keep the fire goin’ hot as I can for as long as I can, but we’re goin’ to have to take on more coal when we get to Rock Creek.”

  “Yeah, I was plannin’ on that. But I figure even with the time we’ll use up takin’ on more coal, we’ll still be all caught up by the time we get to Rawlins. Then I can back off a little so’s you won’t have to be workin’ so hard to keep the fire up.”

  “Hah! Now that’s just real nice of you, Doodle, I mean, a-worryin’ about me havin’ to work so hard ’n all.” Ernie chuckled as he tossed another shovel full of coal into the fire.

  “We’re comin’ up on Deadman’s Curve now, ’n we’ve already made up a lot of it,” Doodle said.

  Ernie stood up straight and leaned on his shovel for a moment.

  “You ever wonder why they call this ‘Deadman’s Curve’? I mean, yeah, they was a wreck here a couple of years ago, but this ain’t the only curve where there’s ever been a wreck. How come they don’t call the other curves, Deadman’s Curve?”

  With Callahan, Manning, Cooper, and Morris

  “This ain’t much of a breakfast,” Manning complained as he took a bite of his beef jerky.

  “You didn’t have to come with us,” Cooper said. “You could be eatin’ ham ’n eggs ’n grits if you was in town someplace. ’N that would just be more money for the three of us.”

  “I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout not wantin’ to be here. All I said was this warn’t no breakfast.”

  “Pay attention! Here it comes,” Callahan said as the train drew into sight. “Ever’body, get where you’re s’posed to be but remember to stay back away from the track.”

  Callahan and the three men with him got back into the tree line, well away from the track.

  As the train got closer it grew louder and louder until, in addition to the chugging of the engine, they could also hear the sound of steel wheels rolling on the tracks and the couplings of the cars as they took up and then gave back the minute bits of space between the connections.

  Callahan glanced toward the section of track where the rail had been removed. It was just beyond a long curve in the track so that it would be unlikely that the engineer would see it in time to react to the danger. It seemed to Callahan as if this would be the best solution to the problem of stopping the train. It would for
sure stop it, and the wreck would no doubt immobilize any possible security men, as well as any would-be heroes from among the passengers.

  The train drew closer and closer, and Callahan involuntarily held his breath.

  Onboard the train

  “What the hell?” Doodle shouted out. “Ernie, brace yourself! Some of the track is out!”

  Doodle didn’t even bother to reach for the brakes or the Johnson bar, because he knew he wouldn’t have time. His stomach was in his throat as he braced himself on the window frame and the front of the cab and watched the missing track section come closer. For some strange reason he didn’t even feel fear. What he felt could better be described as the acceptance of something he could do nothing to change.

  He thought of Virgie and his two kids.

  * * *

  Callahan stood well back from the track, watching the approaching train in utter fascination. When the train hit the open section where the rail had been removed, it continued on for a long moment, the piston rods causing the huge driver wheels to spin over thin air, as if the train would actually be able to defy gravity. Then, almost as if being set down slowly by some giant, the driver wheels that were over the removed track dropped three inches. As they came into contact with the cross ties, they began chewing them up and spitting out huge chunks of timber. They continued for a short distance on the ties but then dropped even farther into the dirt. This had the effect of not only creating an imbalance but of having a disproportionate thrust, with more drive on one side of the engine than the other.

  The result of this loss of equilibrium in both drive and angle caused the engine to tumble over on its side, and when it did so, the boiler exploded with a thunderous noise and a tremendous gush of steam. The next three cars behind the engine—the tender, the express car, and the baggage car—turned over as well. The fifth car telescoped into the fourth car, and the sixth and seventh car, while neither telescoping nor overturning, did leave the track. Only the final car, which wasn’t a passenger car but was a stock car, remained relatively unscathed, though even it subjected the livestock to a rather sudden stop.

  After the sound of the exploding boiler, the screech of steel on steel, and the crash of tumbling and colliding cars, there was a silence, though that silence was filled almost immediately with screams, shouts of fear, anger, and the weeping of the injured and shocked passengers.

  “Damn! I ain’t never seed nothin’ like that in m’ whole life!” Manning said excitedly. “That was better’n any rodeo or show I ever been to.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Callahan said. “Now come on, Manning, let’s you ’n me get the money and get out of there before any of the passengers figure out what’s happened and come out shootin’! Cooper, you ’n Morris keep a eye open in case any of the passengers takes a notion to be a hero.”

  With guns drawn, Callahan and Manning approached the wrecked train.

  “Help us, mister,” someone called from the engine cab. “The engineer is hurt bad.” Steam was still drifting from the ruptured engine boiler.

  Callahan fired a shot toward the fireman, though his shot missed. “You get back in there and stay there,” he demanded.

  The fireman, responding to the order, slipped back into a corner of the overturned cab, out of sight.

  “Damn, Callahan, lookie here! We ain’t goin’ to be able to get into this thing!” Manning said. “This here car’s only got one door ’n it’s on the side that’s a-lyin’ on the ground!”

  “It’s got doors on the each end, don’t it?” Callahan replied.

  “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think about that.”

  “We’ll get into the car that way.”

  “No, that ain’t goin’ to work, neither,” Manning said after a moment. “The cars is all jammed up agin one another ’n we can’t get to the doors.”

  “You mean to tell me there’s sixty thousand dollars in that car ’n we can’t get to it?” Callahan asked angrily.

  “I don’t see how we’re a-goin’ to do it,” Manning replied.

  Because he was unwilling to accept Manning’s appraisal of the situation, Callahan made a personal inspection of the wrecked express car.

  “Damn it!” he shouted angrily when he saw that entry to the car was, indeed, denied.

  “Here, you men!” someone called from back in the train. “We’ve got some injured passengers here. How about comin’ back ’n givin’ us a hand?”

  Callahan saw that the man who had called out was wearing the uniform of a conductor. Callahan took a shot at him but missed.

  “My God! You’re the ones who did this, aren’t you?” the conductor called.

  Callahan fired a second shot, again missing, and the conductor hurried back into the train.

  “Help!” they heard the conductor’s voice shout. “Any of you men who have a gun, turn to! The train is being robbed!”

  “Morris, Cooper, Manning, let’s go!” Callahan shouted. “We got to get out of here!”

  “We ain’t figured out a way to get into the express car yet!” Manning called back.

  “It don’t matter whether we have or not, we got to get out of here now!”

  Almost on top of Callahan’s shout came gunfire from the rear of the train.

  “Wait! We can’t go yet! We didn’t get none of the money!” Cooper yelled.

  “You can stay if you want, we’re gettin’ the hell out of here!” Callahan shouted.

  Cooper took one look back toward the passengers who were gathering alongside the wrecked train, then he spurred his horse on to catch up with the others.

  They had not gotten one cent from the aborted robbery.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “I always love the smell of things on the morning after a rain,” Meagan said after they had eaten their breakfast and were under way later that morning.

  “I liked listening to it against the wagon,” Ina Claire said. “It helped me sleep. Though I worried about Duff being out in the rain.”

  “Nae need for you to have been worryin’ about me, lass. Sure ’n I had a good dry place last night. There was nae a drop of rain got in.”

  “I’m glad you made a place for the mules. I wouldn’t want to think of them standing out in the rain, either,” Ina Claire said.

  They heard a distant, rumbling noise.

  “Oh, it’s thundering,” Ina Claire said. “I hope we don’t get more rain.”

  “That wasn’t thunder, lass,” Duff said.

  “I heard it, too. If it wasn’t thunder, what was it?” Meagan asked.

  “It sounded like distant artillery, but it could nae be that.”

  “Perhaps it is someone blasting in the mine,” Meagan said.

  “Aye, could be,” Duff replied, but the worried expression didn’t leave his face.

  It was less than half an hour later that they approached the train wreckage. They could see the engine and the first few cars on the side, as well as several more off the track. There were also several people moving around, many of them bleeding, nearly all of them in various stages of shock.

  “Oh, my! That sound we heard wasn’t thunder, it was a train wreck!” Ina Claire said.

  “Aye, that it was,” Duff said, and he hurried the mules into a lumbering run.

  As they reached the train they saw a stock car attached to the rear, and it was one of only two cars that hadn’t overturned.

  “Thunder!” Ina Claire called out. “Thunder is in that car!”

  “Duff, Sky, and Shadow are there as well!” Meagan added. Shadow was Meagan’s horse, a purebred stallion she had only recently acquired.

  This was the train that had been selected to transport the horses on to Laramie, which was the next town of any considerable size.

  Stopping alongside the stock car, Duff opened the door and went inside. Sky recognized him immediately and came over to nuzzle him.

  “Och, ’tis good to see that neither you nor your traveling companions are hurt,” Duff said, rubbing Sky
behind the ear.

  “You! Get out of there!” someone shouted. “Just because the train was wrecked doesn’t give you the right to take the horses.”

  “They are our horses!” Ina Claire said resolutely.

  “What do you mean they’re your horses?” The questioner was wearing the uniform of a conductor. “You weren’t even on the train.”

  “We were nae on the train, but these are our horses,” Duff called back from the stock car. He stepped down, then showed the conductor the shipping documents.

  “Oh,” the conductor said after he examined the papers. “I’m sorry.”

  “There is nae need to be sorry. Ye were but doing your job.” Duff held his hand out toward the train. “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. A bunch of bastards removed a rail to purposely wreck the train, intending to rob it.”

  “Four men?” Duff asked.

  “Four? Yes, I think so. At least, that’s all that I saw.”

  “And would one of the four have been a large man with a rather flat nose?”

  The conductor looked surprised by Duff’s question. “Yes, now that one I did see,” he answered. “How did you know?”

  Duff started to tell the conductor that he had been looking for them, but he had a second thought.

  “I’ve been reading about him. His name would be Callahan,” was Duff’s only response. “Have ye any fatalities?” Duff asked.

  “Five, so far, including the engineer. And we still haven’t gotten everyone from the cars. By the way, do you suppose we could use your wagon to haul some of the injured to the next town?”

  “Aye, we would be glad to let you use the wagon.”

  One of the porters came running up to the conductor then. “Mister Decker, sir, Mr. Poindexter is still alive, we’ve heard him pecking on the side of the express car.”

  “I don’t know how we’re goin’ to get Poindexter out,” Decker said. “The car is lying door-side down, and it’s jammed up against the adjacent cars at either end.”