Longarm and the Train Robbers (6 page)

"How about a new
set of shoes?  The only reason I caught up with Eli Wheat this
last time was because his unshod horses went lame."

"You're right.  I
shoe my own horses and I'll do the sorrel.  For five more
dollars, you've got a freshly shod horse and I'll toss in a rope,
halter, and set of hobbles.  You'd have everything you need to
catch Eli and his murdering friends."

"Fifty-five
dollars total."

"That's
right."

Longarm knew that,
if the horse was as sound and sensible an animal as he appeared
to be, it was a very fair price.  "Saddle him up and let me ride
him around."

"Sure!"

The sorrel was
light-mouthed, quick-reining, and alert.  Longarm was no cowboy,
but he could recognize a horse that was well trained and eager to
please.  "I'll take him.  I'm expecting a telegram and wired
money this afternoon."

"He'll have a
fresh pair of shoes and be ready when you are," the liveryman
promised.

Satisfied that he
had bought himself a good horse, Longarm next went to the general
store, where he purchased food, a bedroll, supplies, and a heavy,
waterproof canvas sack in which to carry everything.

"I'm also going to
need a pair of woolen underwear and a leather coat," he told the
proprietor.

"We can fix you
right up," the man said with a somber expression.  "And I'll tell
you something else, Deputy.  I'm not going to take a cent of
profit."

"You're
not?"

"No.  I'm selling
everything to you at cost because I want you to catch and bring
those men to justice.  The engineer on board that train that died
was one of my best friends.  So you find those killers and give
them no quarter, hear me?"

"I hear you,"
Longarm said.  "And that brings me to the last thing I need,
which is a rifle.  I haven't got a lot of money, so if you've got
something used but serviceable and that shoots straight, that
would be fine."

"You want a.30-30
carbine?"

"Maybe something
heavier."

"I've a fine
Remington Rolling-block.50 I could offer at a good
price."

"That's an
excellent rifle, but I'm in need of something that holds more
than one shot."

"I see.  How about
a Winchester Model 1873?  I've a battered but serviceable
fifteen-shot with a twenty-four-inch barrel.  It's heavier than
the.30-30, being a.44-40 caliber."

"Let me see
it."

The rifle's stock
had been broken and crudely repaired with nails and wire, and
then covered with tightly stretched rawhide.  The Winchester
wasn't anything for looks, but the ugly stock felt solid and
Longarm figured that he might need a fifteen-shot weapon with
reaching power.

"How
much?"

"Ten dollars." 
The man smiled.  "That's what I paid for it.  Bought it off a
Cheyenne, but not before I tested it for accuracy.  It shoots
straight and the action is smooth."

"Sold."

Longarm left the
general store and returned to Martha's house.  She wasn't home,
so he packed his things, put on his new clothes, and headed back
into town.  After receiving directions, Longarm ended up at the
fancy law offices of Noble, Evans, and Black.

"Excuse me," he
said to a clerk wearing a green eyeshade.  "I'm looking for Miss
Noble."

"She's in
conference with Mr. Evans and Mr. Black.  If you could come back
later."

"I don't think
so," Longarm said, pushing past the clerk.

"Hey, you can't go
in there!"

But Longarm was
already "in there," pushing open the door to the private office,
and surprising Martha and two older men.

"Custis!"

"I apologize for
this sudden and unannounced interruption," Longarm said, "but I'm
about to leave Cheyenne.  Martha, I thought I ought to say
good-bye."

Martha's smile
died and she jumped to her feet.  "You're leaving so
soon?"

"I need to get on
the outlaws' trail," Longarm said.  "If it snows again, the
tracks are lost.  Every hour I delay is an hour that it will be
tough to make up."

"Any idea where
they might have gone?" one of the well-dressed men
asked.

"No," Longarm
admitted.  "They seem to have the ability to vanish into thin
air.  They might even have dispersed in all directions.  Today,
given the telegraph and so many law enforcement agencies, a
really smart gang comes together only when they have a stage or a
train to rob."

"That would make
it tough to apprehend them," the other lawyer said.

"Damned tough,"
Longarm agreed, not able to take his eyes off Martha, who looked
beautiful and very competent in a black pleated skirt and white
silk blouse.

Martha took his
arm.  "Gentlemen, you must excuse me for a few minutes while I
say good-bye to my friend."

The lawyers did
not look pleased, but nodded in agreement.  "We'll be waiting,
Miss Noble."

"It'll only be a
moment," she replied, leading Longarm out of their
office.

Once they were out
on the board sidewalk, Martha slipped her arms around Longarm's
waist.  Tears made her eyes glisten.  "It just occurred to me
that I may never see you again."

"I swear that I'll
return."

Her lower lip
trembled.  "But not to take that job or to get
married."

"I can't say what
I'll do for the future, Martha.  All I know for sure is that I've
already got a big job to do."

"You don't know
anything about this bunch and you don't even know how many there
are."

"I'll know more
when I pick up their trail," he said.  "A lot more."

Martha laid her
head against his chest.  "I'm scared for you, Custis. What if you
get killed?"

"Then your life
goes on just as it did before we met two days ago."

"It seems like
we've known each other for years.  I can't imagine not having
known you."

Longarm hugged her
tightly.  "Martha, I have to go now.  Stretching out a good-bye
never does any good."

She released him
and stepped back.  "I've told Mr. Evans and Mr. Black that they
can either buy me out of their partnership or bring me into the
firm that my father founded as an equal partner.  It seems that
they're having a very difficult time with that decision, but I'm
sure that they will make the right choice.  You see, they both
have suffered investment losses and don't have much cash on
hand."

"I wish you a good
start on your new life," Longarm said before kissing her and then
turning on his heel and marching on down the
boardwalk.

"I'll be waiting
for you!" she called.

When Longarm
reached the telegraph office, there was a telegram from his boss
that read: GET THE BASTARDS DEAD OR ALIVE.  Billy had also wired
a check for two hundred dollars, which told Longarm better than
words that he was supposed to stay out on the trail no matter how
long it took to bring Eli Wheat and the train-robbing gang to
justice.

"Your boss sounds
pretty upset," the telegraph operator said.  "I never got a
telegraph like that before."

"Marshal Vail
means business, all right," Longarm agreed.

A few minutes
later he collected the cash at the bank, and then went to collect
his horse.  It was nearly noon before Longarm was ready to
ride.

"I hope you shoot
them," Bob said as Longarm mounted the sorrel.  "I hope you kill
every last one."

"My job is to take
them alive, if possible, and bring them to trial."

"If you do that,"
the liveryman said, "I'll come down to Denver to watch them dance
on the gallows."

"You'd be
welcome," Longarm said as he reined his horse west and put it
into a gallop toward the nearby Laramie Mountains.

It was late
afternoon and the snow was almost gone when Longarm rode the
tough sorrel gelding up to the site of the train wreck.  Union
Pacific crews were everywhere cleaning up debris and searching
for more bodies.  Jim Allen saw Longarm, and came over to greet
him.

"More bodies?"
Longarm asked.

"Two.  I think we
have them all now.  It's a wonder that everyone wasn't
killed."

"Yeah."  Longarm
glanced up the line toward the summit.  "Did you see any sign of
an explosion?"

"I haven't had
time to look.  All my attention has been down the side of this
mountain.  That big locomotive will rest in that gulch
forever."

"Let's take a look
up the track and see if we can find out why it derailed," Longarm
said, reining up-slope.

He rode about two
hundred yards back up the track, and dismounted to stare at the
great pit where dynamite had exploded to twist the tracks like
hairpins.

"Holy cow!" Allen
said, catching up.  "They must have used a barrel of
dynamite."

"nat's right,"
Longarm said.  "They weren't scrimping, that's for sure. And they
brought a wagon along to carry off whatever they could find,
including the safe in the mail car in case they couldn't blast it
open."

"At least it
should be easy tracking them," the railroad supervisor offered
hopefully.

Longarm handed the
sorrel's reins to Allen and began to study the signs. He saw boot
marks and cigarette butts and plenty of horse tracks just
up-slope and behind a pile of rocks.

"They didn't need
to hide, but they must have been trying to get out of the weather
as they waited for the train."

"I wish they'd
have frozen solid," Allen spat out.

Longarm spent
another fifteen minutes studying signs.  There wasn't a lot to
see because the snow had covered the ground, then melted, leaving
everything indistinct.  He wasn't even sure how many men had been
involved.

"You find anything
real important?" Allen asked.

"Afraid
not."

"Too bad.  Looks
like they had a wagon that should be plenty easy to
follow."

Longarm's eyes
followed the wagon tracks.  He was very sure that he would find
the wagon abandoned somewhere up in the mountains.  Furthermore,
he was expecting that the tracks of the horsemen he followed
would splinter into small groups.

"I've got about an
hour of daylight left is all," Longarm said.  "Best make use of
it."

"Good luck,
Deputy.  I wish there was something that I could do to help you. 
There must be more lawmen coming."

"I prefer to work
alone," Longarm said.  "But you can bet that railroad detectives,
Pinkerton agents, and other federal marshals are on their way.
Thing of it is, I was on that train and it was my prisoner that
escaped."

"Yeah," Allen
said.  "And it was my men and passengers that died."

Longarm tugged his
Stetson low over his eyes and rode on, following the wagon and
its tracks.  The gang of train robbers was smart enough to travel
single file in front of the wagon and its team of horses so that
it was impossible to read how many there were.  However, Longarm
thought that he was following at least a half dozen--and perhaps
many more.  If there was any good news at all, it was that so
many men would attract attention and be remembered by anyone who
saw them--anyone, that is, who lived to report a
sighting.

CHAPTER
5

As sundown fired
the western sky, Longarm crested the backbone of the Laramie
Mountains and began to search for a campsite.  There was a cold
wind sweeping through the pines, and Longarm sought a heavy stand
of timber to cut the wind.  At least, he thought, there was no
sign of another storm on the horizon.  If there had been, Longarm
would have pushed on by starlight, following the tracks all night
if possible.

To Longarm's
surprise, the outlaws' trail led to an old, abandoned cabin where
the train robbers had spent their first night.  In addition to
the cabin, there was a sturdy pole corral.  Before penning his
weary sorrel, Longarm once again searched for any bit of
knowledge that would serve him in the future.  The buckboard used
by the gang had been left behind and it held no clues.

All that Longarm
discovered after an inspection of the corral was a horse's
hoofprint revealing a broken right shoe.  That, and a cigarette
butt that was wrapped in an unusual pale yellow paper that
Longarm had not seen before.  Otherwise, the corral, the cabin,
and the surrounding yard offered not a shred of evidence that
would help to identify the train robbers.

"These boys are
pretty careful," Longarm muttered as he hauled his bedroll and
gear into the cabin and then set about to make himself a small
fire on a stone hearth.

That night, the
wind blew hard and cold.  Longarm slept poorly, and was up before
dawn to saddle his horse.  He could not exactly say why, but he
was sure that the train robbers were heading for Laramie.  No
doubt they would filter into the busy town in ones and twos in
order to avoid drawing attention to themselves.