Longarm and the Train Robbers (14 page)

"You're a liar,
soon to be a eunuch."

"What the hell is
that?"

"You know what a
gelding is?"

"Sure,
but..."

Longarm cocked
back the hammer of his six-gun.  "Figure it out for yourself,
Ned."

The man's eyes
bugged with terror.  "Oh, please!"

"Names, dammit!  I
need names."

"I didn't do it! 
I wasn't there and neither was Fergus!"

"Maybe not,"
Longarm gritted.  "But you were helping them somehow.  You were
in on the train wreck."

Ned licked his
lips.  "All I did was to shoe some of their horses and... and
sell 'em some fresh mounts.  I didn't know that they were going
to send the damn train rolling down a mountainside!"

"I don't believe
you," Longarm said.  "Say good-bye to women, Ned!"

"All right!" Ned
screamed.  "I helped them set it up!  But neither me nor Fergus
ever rode with them.  I swear it!"

Longarm had been
getting the truth out of men long enough to know when they were
too afraid to lie, and Ned was finally telling the
truth.

"Names!"

Ned gulped. 
"Blake Huntington was the brains behind it and you killed
him."

"What about his
rich Uncle Clarence?"

"The old man
didn't know a damn thing about any of it.  I'm sure of that
much.  In secret, Blake hated his uncle.  Called him a damned
fool and worse."

"More
names."

"Big Tom Canyon
and a fella they just called Hawk.  They was in on it. They're
the ones that I helped.  The others I saw were just faces. 
That's all they were, I swear it."

"I've heard of Big
Tom Canyon.  Who else?"

"There was someone
important in Reno.  I never heard his name but Blake spoke about
him.  He has money and he was the one that seemed to be calling
the shots."

"What the hell
does that mean?  Be specific, damn you!"

"He's a
politician.  They said he was a state senator and that he made
his money on the Comstock Lode, but lost most of it a couple
years back on mining stocks.  All I know is that he was the one
that they were counting on to handle things if they went
wrong."

"What about Eli
Wheat?"

"They talked about
helping him escape if he wasn't killed.  That's all I
know."

Longarm stepped
back.  There was a train that he still might be able to catch if
he was willing to brave this damned storm and ride southwest
until he intercepted the Union Pacific.  But he'd have to hurry
and he'd have to take this pair with him and keep them under
arrest until he could find a jail along the rail line.  The next
one that he knew about wouldn't be until he reached Rock
Springs.

"All right,"
Longarm said, "let's get ready to ride."

"In this weather?"
Ned cried.  "It's storming out there and the rain will probably
turn to snow."

"How far is it to
the next Union Pacific depot?"

"Hell, that's
clear over at Lookout!  It's a good twenty miles or
more!"

"Then we'd best
stop talking and get to riding," Longarm said, walking over and
throwing open the front door.  "Help Fergus stand up and let's
move!"

As they stepped
out into the cold rain drenching the Wyoming prairie, Longarm
realized that this was going to be one hell of a tough
night.

CHAPTER
11

Longarm barely
remembered the little combination depot and coal and water
station at Lookout.  If he was in luck, he would find a competent
telegraph operator who could relay a message back to Billy Vail
about the vital information he'd just gained from his
captives.

Longarm had to
prod his prisoners hard to get their horses ready to leave the
ranch.  The wounded man named Fergus was especially difficult and
argumentative.

"I'll probably
bleed to death in the saddle before we reach that train!" he
wailed.

"You'll bleed to
death for sure if you don't climb into that saddle and quit
talking," Longarm warned.  "Because I'll shoot you
again."

Ned Rowe was more
cooperative.  He decided that Longarm had bought his story, and
now was trying hard to be cooperative.  Longarm saw little reason
to change the man's false impression of things and risk turning
cooperation into desperation.

"Damn, it's cold!"
Ned exclaimed, tightening his cinch.

"Quit jawin' and
mount up," Longarm said.

"I sure wish that
we could at least wait until tomorrow morning," Ned groused.  "We
could freeze to death before we reach shelter."

"That's a chance
we'll just have to take." Longarm snapped, watching the heavy
rain sheet off the roof to cascade across the barn's open doorway
like a waterfall.

"I can't get on my
horse!" Fergus choked.  "Not with this bad shoulder."

Longarm watched
the man struggle.  Each time Fergus started to lift his leg over
his cantle, he lost his balance and fell back.

"All right,"
Longarm said, starting to go over to help the man.

He was still on
his way over when Fergus made his move.  "Yaw!" he shouted,
leaping into the saddle and booting his horse through the barn
door and out into the heavy rain.  In less than two seconds, the
man had vanished.

"Damn!"  Longarm
swore. He mounted his horse.  "Dismount!"

"What?" Ned
cried.

"I said
dismount!"

Ned dismounted,
and Longarm grabbed his horse's reins.

"Hey!" Ned
shouted.  "Are you leavin' me?"

"I'll be right
back," Longarm yelled.  "And you'd better be here."

Longarm shot out
of the barn dragging Ned's saddled horse.  He was furious at the
wounded man for making a run for it in such bad weather. Before
he'd galloped across the yard, the rain had soaked him to the
bone.  It took him no more than three or four minutes to overtake
Fergus, who was bent over his saddle horn and riding for his
life.

When the wounded
man saw Longarm overtaking him, he cursed and tried to urge his
horse into a gully running strong with rainwater, but the animal
skidded to an abrupt halt and Fergus lost his seat.  The wounded
outlaw spilled headfirst into the gully and rolled down into the
muddy torrent.

"Come on, get out
of there before you drown, you damned fool!" Longarm
ordered.

"No!  You have to
shoot me again, you big bastard!  I ain't going to hang for that
train wreck!"

"That's up to a
judge!" Longarm yelled.  "But if you want to save the taxpayers
some money, then I will shoot you!"

Longarm drew his
Colt, took aim, and fired.  His bullet ripped away Fergus's empty
holster and the man yelped in fear, then came scrambling out of
the gully like it was crawling with rattlesnakes.

"Get on your
horse!" Longarm ordered.

"I can't! 
Remember?"

Longarm was wet,
chilled, and miserable.  He used a second bullet, which sent
Fergus's Stetson flying back into the gully.  "I won't be
suckered a second time," he warned.

Fergus found a way
to mount his horse.  Longarm led him and the other spare horse
back through the driving rain to the barn.

"All right, Ned! 
Come on out of there and let's ride!"

No
answer.

Longarm drew his
six-gun again and dismounted.  He expected that Ned might be
waiting to ambush him with a pitchfork or a hay hook.  But
Longarm was mistaken because, after a few frantic moments of
searching, it was clear that Ned Rowe had escaped into the stormy
night.

Longarm was fit to
be tied.  He now realized that, in his rush to overtake Fergus,
Longarm had forgotten that there was a third horse belonging to
the man he'd killed.  And it was this horse that Ned had used to
bolt for freedom.

"Dammit!" Longarm
swore, slogging through the mud searching for Ned's
tracks.

But the rain was
coming down too hard and there was no telling in which direction
Ned had chosen to run.

"He got clean
away, didn't he?" Fergus said with a twisted and triumphant
leer.

"Yeah, he did,"
Longarm replied.  "I haven't got time to hunt him down tonight,
but I'll find him later.  Just like I'll track down Eli
Wheat."

"You might not be
so lucky a second time with Eli," Fergus said as Longarm
remounted.  "You go lookin' for them boys, they'll kill you, and
I hope to hell I'm there to watch you die."

"You won't be,"
Longarm promised, for he had already decided to turn his
prisoners over to the sheriff in Rock Springs, who was a man that
could be trusted.  "Let's ride!"

If anything, the
rain came down harder as they rode through that awful night in
the direction of the station at Lookout.  A few hours before
dawn, rain turned to sleet.  A faint gray dawn hugged the eastern
horizon and showed Longarm the railroad tracks.

"Let's go!" he
urged, reining west.

"Lookout is back
toward Laramie," Fergus argued.  "We missed it by riding too far
west."

"Then what's the
next depot?"

"There ain't
nothing left at what used to be the Miser depot.  So the next
depot is Rock Creek.  But that's another seven or eight
miles!"

"Then we'd better
put the spurs to these ponies," Longarm said, booting his tired
sorrel into a gallop across the sloppy ground that paralleled the
tracks.

The westbound
train overtook them before they could make it all the way to Rock
Creek.  Longarm heard its eerie whistle blow, and reined his
horse up to see the locomotive lumber toward them in the
distance.  The ground was rising toward Rock Creek and the train
was moving slow, its stack spewing smoke into the
sleet.

"What are you
gonna do now?" the wounded man crowed.  "We lost the damned
race."

Longarm knew that
there really was only one thing that he could do and that was to
stop the train.  "Let's ride up on those tracks."

"What?"

"I said come on!"
Longarm ordered, dragging along the horses and scrambling up on
the roadbed.

"That train won't
stop!" Fergus shouted with rising panic in his voice. "It'll
think we're train robbers and it'll run us the hell
down!"

"No one lives
forever," Longarm replied, dismounting and hauling Fergus out of
the saddle.  He ripped the man to his knees, drew his six-gun,
and said, "Lay down across the rails."

"What?"

"Lay
down!"

Fergus lay down on
the wet tracks.  He was at the end of his rope, hurt, confused,
and weakened by loss of blood, his mental and physical reserves
gone.

"You gonna let him
run me over!" Fergus screamed as the train moved inexorably
closer.  It was close enough already that the tracks were shaking
and the horses were snorting nervously.

"I want more
names!" Longarm called over the sound of the approaching train. 
"I want all the names or this train is going to cut you into
three messy pieces!"

"Oh, Lord!" Fergus
howled, his eyes wild.  "First you shoot me, now
this!"

"Names!"

With one eye on
the looming locomotive and another on Longarm, Fergus spat out
the names like bullets from the muzzle of a Gatling gun.  "Big
Tom Canyon.  Hawk Jenkins.  Two-Fingered Earl.  Shorty Hamilton. 
Bob Orr.  Indian Red Lopez!  That's all I know.  Please, don't do
this!"

Longarm planted
his boot firmly on the back of Fergus's neck and turned the
horses loose to run a short ways off, where they stood heads down
and rumps to the driving sleet.

Longarm raised his
hand in the frontier signal of peace and said to his prisoner,
"Well, Fergus, we'll just let the engineer decide your
fate."

Fergus howled and
screeched like crazy until the train began to slow.  If it
hadn't, Longarm would have let the man up, and then he'd have
jumped on board and forced the engineer to stop.

The engineer
looked frightened, and there was a rifle in both his and the
fireman's fist when the big locomotive ground to a shuddering
halt.

"What the hell is
going on down there?" the engineer called out.

"I'm a federal
officer of the law.  I got a prisoner and a big need to get to
Reno."

"This ain't no
damned way to board a train!"

Longarm ignored
the outburst.  "Here's my badge!" he said, digging it out of his
pocket to display to the two nervous railroad men.  "Can we load
our horses?"

"Hell,
no!"

Longarm shook his
head.  He looked to the young fireman and said, "If my prisoner
moves, you have my permission to shoot him again."

The fireman was
barely out of his teens, a tall, powerful young man covered with
the wet muck and grime of coal dust.  Only his teeth and eyes
showed white when he said, "You mean he's already been
shot?"