Hell's Marshal (6 page)

The prospector fired again and everything returned to normal, Frank’s run picking up steam, even as the train pulled away from the platform. The first shot pinged off the light post where Camille hid, and before the prospector could fire another shot, Frank drove his shoulder into the old man’s ribs. They tumbled to the planks, Frank rolling away as the prospector slid on his side the other direction.

Frank came to his feet, gun drawn, and fired one shot, hitting the old man in the center of his chest. Flesh spattered the train car behind him as the prospector teetered on the edge of the platform, then fell between it and the moving train.

For a solitary, still moment, everyone froze, holding their breath as if letting it out would breathe life back into the old man.

“Hurry!” Curtis yelled from inside the first boxcar. “Get on before it leaves!”

Camille moved first, Spike following, both running for the open door.

Batcho yipped and jumped onto the car, slipping past the boy. Camille was just grabbing the rail to pull herself on when movement caught Frank’s eye. A hand grasped the edge of the platform, and the prospector hauled himself onto the planks.

“Go!” Frank yelled to the others. He ran, watching as Camille climbed aboard. Spike struggled, being hefty and slow. The big barkeep huffed, arm extended in a futile effort to grab the moving handle.

Frank’s leg screamed in pain, but he managed to get close enough to shove Spike in the back, giving the man just enough of a boost to stumble onto the car.

Frank’s fingers brushed the cool brass handle as the end of the platform neared. He had just enough space—

A shot rang out and fire stabbed him between the shoulder blades. He stiffened, stumbled, and fell from the end of the platform. He took the three-foot drop hard, smashing into the baked earth, his breath exploding from his chest. He lay stunned for a heartbeat, then he was up and running, pulling air back into his lungs with all his might.

The prospector followed on his heels, fetid breath hot on Frank’s neck. Frank’s leg slowed him down some, but he still managed to reach the door of an empty box car and grab the hand rail. He was about to lever himself into the car when the prospector dove and grabbed his right ankle, making him stumble.

Frank clung to the rail with one hand while the train built speed, his left foot dragging on the ballast. The prospector began to climb up his leg, reaching his knee in one lunge. His midnight eyes drove railroad spikes of terror into Frank’s heart. He kicked at the old man, but he held on with hands of iron.

Frank tried to draw his pistol with his left hand, but couldn’t reach. The prospector lunged again, his arms now around Frank’s thigh, his mouth bent into a savage grin. The old man drew his pistol, holding onto Frank with one arm, and pushed it into the existing wound. Frank screamed and almost lost his grip on the rail.

“So long, gun fighter,” the prospector wheezed. “Jesse sends his regards.”

Something streaked over Frank’s head, and a pickaxe impaled itself through the prospector’s eye, rocking his head back. Curtis grabbed Frank’s wrist and held on while Batcho leaned out, his forepaws on Frank’s chest, and clamped his jaws down on the old man’s wrist. The prospector lost his grip on Frank’s leg. With a scream, he rolled under the box car behind them and disappeared.

Curtis and Batcho managed to tug Frank inside, and the three lay on the cold floor, chests heaving. Batcho’s tongue flicked in and out of his mouth, spitting out chunks of dead flesh.

Frank reached out to scratch the coyote’s ears. “Looks like you ain’t so useless.”

Batcho bared his teeth in response.

As they watched, the bits of prospector meat coalesced into one larger chunk and crawled out the door. Frank and Curtis exchanged a look, and ran to the door, both peering out behind the train. There, a half-mile back, stood the prospector, watching them go with his dead, black eyes.

“Something tells me we’ll be seeing him again,” Curtis said.

Frank grunted assent and turned away.

“Thanks for saving my hide,” he muttered. “Now let’s find the other two and figure this out.”

Curtis pointed at Frank’s leg. “We’d better take care of that, too.”

Frank winced as the pain returned, but shrugged it off. “I’m already dead. What harm’s a little hole gonna do?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Frank rested his head against the supple leather cover of his seat’s cushion, closed his eyes. He tried to ignore the sharp pangs of pain in his thigh while Camille cleaned his wound with a foul-smelling brown whiskey they’d bought from a fellow passenger. Frank hadn’t offered the whiskey Buzzy had given him—he didn’t think it would have the same effect.

“Amazing,” she muttered, looking up for a moment, her cold, blue eyes avoiding his. “The wound is healing itself so fast the bullet fell out. If all our bodies do this, we might have a chance at surviving.”

He could feel his flesh mending, weaving fibers together as if it had a life of its own.

Outside the window, the gray and brown hues of the Rockies streaked past, a blur of drab earth tones with splotches of green here and there for variety. The sun set behind them, distorting shadows, melting the purple and black of the sky into the surrounding countryside. Inside the train, a solitary fly buzzed, the rest of the swarm left behind.

“Makes sense if you think about it,” Spike said, watching her work, wincing with every move as if she were working on his leg. “Our souls brought our bodies back from the dead and healed years of decay. Bullet wounds are light work.”

The barkeep sat across from Frank in their private compartment, with Curtis beside him, trying not to look at the blood. At their feet lay Batcho, seemingly asleep, though the occasional twitch of his ear hinted he was aware of more than he let on.

Once she’d cleaned his wound, Camille handed Frank the needle and thread.

“I ain’t your seamstress,” she said. “Mend your own damned pants.”

For an instant, he saw something dark dancing behind the ice of her eyes, something shadowed and frightening. Then she smiled, locking eyes with him, and sat on the bench, leaving a fist’s width between them.

He thought for just an instant it had been more than just a smile, like she’d saved it just for him. But that was silly, so he shook it off and looked at Curtis.

“Tell us everything you saw.”

Curtis drew in a deep, dramatic breath, and looked at the ceiling.

“I was outside the jail when they brought Red in. Took two men just to get him into the cell. He was yelling, and thrashing, making the biggest fuss when they dragged him in that front door. Marshal Rossen and Sheriff Plunkett did the arresting, and they said he had super-human strength, like he was four men wrapped into one body.”

He leaned in close then, as if about to enlighten them with a great secret. He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.

“Minute he got inside that cell, they say he went limp, and passed clean out.”

“That’s when the spirit must have left him,” said Camille. She avoided Frank’s gaze, now. “Do you know who the spirit possessed next?”

“Sure do!” he nodded as he spoke. “Jeb Fisher. I watched it happen, seein’ that he was standing right beside me. One minute he was watching Sheriff Plunkett, the next his eyes turned all black and he smiled all icy and cold. Then, he just turned and walked away without even a word.

“I knew something wasn’t right though—I’m a smart boy, they say—so I followed him. Followed him all the way to the Commodore mine, where he hitched up with some no-goods from out of town. They didn’t see me listenin’ under the foreman’s window, but I heard ‘em clear as day say they were going to Northfield, Minnesota.”

“Did they say what they were going to do there?” Spike asked. “Doesn’t seem like a very big place, and if I recall, Jesse likes to make a big show of things, likes to politicize them as the north oppressing southerners.”

“They all laughed and griped about making something right, like Jesse had unfinished business.”

Frank wracked his brain, trying to recall if the James gang had done anything in Northfield, but he’d never really followed them. He’d had his own problems to look after when he’d been alive.

“Who were these no-goods?” Camille pressed the boy. “And how many were there?”

“I counted four,” Curtis answered. “Mostly small-timers, thugs who worked for Soapy Smith, but crossed him somehow.”

“They any good with their guns?” Frank asked.

Curtis nodded. “Most of them are former rebel soldiers. They took a whole wagon load of dynamite, too.”

“What about your friend, Mr. Fisher? Can he shoot?”

Curtis opened his mouth to reply, but Camille cut him off.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, frowning. “He’ll have Jesse’s shooting skills.”

“So, it’s five on three,” Frank said. “Good odds.”

“Unless our gold-digging friend shows up,” Spike added. “We barely handled him last time all by himself.”

“And they said they were hoping to meet someone with your same name in Northfield,” Curtis tossed out. “Frank.”

“Jesse has a brother named Frank.” Spike said, yawning. “They made a deadly team.”

Taking on the James brothers wouldn’t give Frank’s posse as good a chance. They were seasoned soldiers, guerrilla fighters who’d massacred dozens of Union soldiers without so much as blinking an eye. But if he had to face them, at least Minnesota was out of their stomping grounds, away from the hordes of sympathizers who worshipped them like heroes. People from Arkansas through Texas and into Missouri saw the James brothers as folk legends, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Except they never seemed to get to the giving part.

“We need to get there quick, then,” Frank said. “Our escaped prisoner is up to something.”

The door to their compartment slid open and a dapper-looking man in a suit and bowler, a thick moustache on his lip, and a shield-shaped badge on his chest stepped inside their compartment.

“Did I hear something about escaped prisoners?”

His voice reminded Frank of silk, smooth and cool on the ear.

“Just small talk,” he answered. “Nothing serious enough for a mighty Pinkerton man to worry about.”

The detective helped himself to the bench on the other side of Camille, making the one-time hooker slide closer to Frank until their thighs touched and her hand drifted toward her knife. He looked the group over one by one, swatting at the fly that buzzed around his head.

“You’re a might heavily armed for run-o-the-mill travelers,” he quipped, moustache jerking up and down. “You folks wouldn’t be a posse crossing county lines, would you?”

“We’re no posse,” Frank lied. “Just on our way to Minnesota and heard travel could be dangerous through the mountains.”

The detective looked unconvinced.

“Who ever heard of a posse with children?” Curtis interjected, smiling a rogue’s charming smile. “My ma and pa here just want to get us to our new home safe-like. They even told me, they said, ‘if only the brave men of the Pinkerton Agency were here to protect us, we wouldn’t need these weapons.’”

The detective gave the boy a long, hard stare, then shook his head and stood.

“You folks stay out of trouble now, hear?”

He left the compartment, sliding the door closed behind him.

“Go back to roughing up miners,” Curtis grumbled after him.

After a moment, Spike looked at Frank.

“I may know how to slow down our prospector friend. Did they give you Holy Water?”

“Kind of.” Frank removed the whiskey bottle from his duster pocket and started to hand it to Spike. He paused, then extended it to Curtis instead.

“Take a little drink,” he ordered. “Let’s make sure you’re alive.”

Curtis looked at Camille, who shrugged.

“Do it, if you know what’s good for you.”

Curtis grinned and popped the cork. Everyone stared at him as he took a tiny swig of the whiskey and choked.

“Yuck,” he said, sticking out his tongue, “it tastes so…old.”

When nothing happened to him, Frank breathed a sigh of relief and handed the bottle back to Spike.

“Now give me your bullets,” said the stout barkeep. “And a candle.”

An hour later, using a tin cup and a knife, he’d hollowed all the bullet points, filled them with drops of Holy-whiskey, and sealed them with wax. Then he dipped each one in Holy-whiskey and reloaded them into the guns or ammo belts, leaving just a few shot glasses-worth in the bottle. Camille handed him her Bowie knife and he coated that in the stuff, as well.

“That might not kill the prospector,” he said, “but it ought to slow him down a bit.”

“What was that thing back there?” Curtis asked.

“Not exactly sure,” Frank told him. “But Buzzy warned me James might bring someone else back to help him, and it looks like he did. Whoever he brought borrowed that old prospector’s body.

“Don’t matter though. Soon as we get to Denver, we’re dropping you off with a foster home, so you’ll never see that old man again.”

If Frank hadn’t seen the little con artist in action, he might have believed the look of indignation on his face, and fallen for the crossed arms.