The big gundown (9 page)

Edward Sheffield rushed into the car and shouted, “My God, what’s happened?” Then he spotted his wife on the floor. “Good Lord, Gloriana! Are you all right?”

Out of instinct, Morgan had drawn his gun as he peered through the window. He saw that the train had reached the gap where the spur line entered the mountains. Those bluffs Sheffield had mentioned loomed closely on both sides of the tracks.

Atop the bluff to the right sat the cannon that had boomed a moment earlier. Men clustered around it, reloading it. Morgan saw a man run a wet swab on a long pole down the barrel with practiced efficiency, putting out any lingering sparks from the first shot before a second charge of powder was packed into the weapon.

Other men armed with rifles clustered along the bluff, taking potshots at the train. Their intention was probably to make everyone in the cars keep their heads down until more outlaws could board the train and take it over.

Morgan grimaced. He couldn’t do any good with a handgun. He needed his Winchester, which was in the car with the buckskin, his saddle, and the rest of his gear.

“Stay here,” he told Sheffield and Glory. “Get behind one of the divans and keep your heads down.”

“What are you going to do?” Sheffield asked.

“I don’t know yet. Something.”

“Does this mean you’re working for me?”

Morgan suppressed the surge of impatience he felt. “It means I don’t like anybody shooting at me,” he snapped as he strode past them toward the door at the front of the car.

He stepped onto the platform as a bullet banged off of the brass fittings on the car. He quickly dropped down to the roadbed through the space between the two private cars. Morgan stretched out and wriggled on to his back underneath the train. Then he reached up, grasped the rods that ran under the cars, and began pulling himself along. He was well-hidden from the outlaws up on the bluffs as he tried to reach the car where his horse was.

Since Sheffield’s private cars were the last two of the train he had to make his way under the living quarters car and then the caboose. The converted baggage car where he had left the buckskin and his gear was right in front of the caboose. It wasn’t that difficult pulling himself along the roadbed, but he lost his hat and the gravel ripped and tore at the back of his coat, gouging his flesh in places, as well.

It took him a few minutes to reach the front of the caboose. During that time, he heard shots continue to ring out from the bluffs. A few shots came from the train as well, as passengers and crew tried to mount a defense, but from the sound of it, the resistance was rather feeble.

He couldn’t get into the car from the end, so he would have to expose himself to the outlaws’ fire. He pulled himself along to what he judged was the middle of the converted baggage car, as close as he could get to the sliding door on its side. Then he rolled out from underneath it and sprang to his feet, moving as fast as he could in the hope that he could get inside before any of the riflemen on the bluff noticed him.

That was a futile hope. Bullets burned through the air as he reached up and grasped the edge of the door, which had been left open a few inches to let in some light and air for his horse. Slugs thudded into the side of the car. Morgan thrust the door back, grabbed hold, and vaulted inside. He felt the hot kiss of a bullet against his neck as he rolled away from the opening. He wasn’t sure the lead had even touched him, but it had been mighty close.

Surging to his feet, Morgan ran over to the stall where the buckskin tossed his head in eagerness to get out. The horse had never minded the sound of shots or the smell of powdersmoke. Sometimes Morgan thought the buckskin thrived on those things.

“You’re better off right where you are, big fella,” Morgan told the horse as he pulled his Winchester from the sheath which lay next to his saddle. “You couldn’t do any good out there. There are too many of them.”

The car had doors on both sides. The one on the side of the bluff where the cannon had been set up was closed. Morgan eased it open a couple of inches. Not enough for the outlaws to notice, he hoped, but enough to let him take a look at the situation.

From there he could see the cannon and the men around it. They all wore bandannas tied around the lower half of their faces, and their hats were pulled down partially obscuring the upper half. Morgan couldn’t recognize any of them and didn’t spot anyone wearing the distinctive outfit Colonel Black had sported that day at the Williams ranch. Most of the men wore long dusters, though, that concealed their clothing, so Black could be up there.

If he was, Morgan suspected he would be somewhere near that big gun. Slipping the barrel of the Winchester through the narrow gap, Morgan drew a bead on one of the outlaws standing beside the cannon.

The rifle cracked sharply and kicked against his shoulder when he squeezed the trigger. The man he had targeted jerked back, then stumbled forward and plunged off the edge of the bluff with a scream. While the wounded outlaw was falling, Morgan worked the Winchester’s lever and shifted his aim as fast as he could to another member of the gang. He wanted to bring down as many of them as he could before they realized where the deadly fire was coming from.

His second shot drove into the chest of another outlaw near the cannon and knocked that man out of sight. Morgan cranked off two more rounds and hit a third man before the rest of the owlhoot artillery crew sprang into action. Morgan’s eyes widened as he saw the cannon’s muzzle swing around and point toward the boxcar.

“Son of a—” he muttered before he leaped away from the door and threw himself into the stall with the buckskin.

The cannon’s boom was like a particularly loud clap of thunder. The cannonball smashed through the boxcar door, shattering it into kindling. The ball continued on at a downward angle, hitting the boxcar floor and blasting a hole in it as well. Luckily, the devastating shot missed Morgan and the buckskin by ten or twelve feet, but Morgan still covered his head with his arms to protect himself from flying debris. The buckskin whinnied shrilly as a splinter of wood nicked him.

Morgan knew he couldn’t stay there. The outlaws would continue to use the cannon to blast away at the boxcar, since they knew the deadliest shot on the train was in there.

He had no idea how fast a real artillery crew could reload and fire a cannon like that, but he hoped the outlaws wouldn’t be as efficient. He grabbed a blanket and saddle and threw them on the buckskin, who was moving around nervously. The horse might be accustomed to gunplay, but not an artillery barrage.

Morgan was all too aware of the seconds flying past. He was in a race against time, a race to get out of the boxcar with the buckskin before another cannonball came crashing through the wall. He drew the cinches tight, slung the sheaths that held the Winchester and the Sharps onto the saddle, and then threw open the gate across the stall entrance. He slid the door on the far side of the car all the way back. Shots began to fly through the opening. Morgan ducked into the stall, grabbed the buckskin’s reins, and swung up into the saddle.

His boot heels dug into the horse’s flanks as he yelled and sent the buckskin leaping forward. He had to give the buckskin credit for not even hesitating as the open door loomed in front of them. The horse leaped through it, sailing high into the air as bullets shrilled around them.

At that same instant, the cannon thundered again, and the ball crashed into the boxcar behind them, smashing right through the stall. Morgan glanced back and knew that he and the buckskin had avoided death by only shavings of a second.

The horse landed gracefully, running full blast. They were just outside the gap formed by the bluffs. Morgan whirled his mount and sent the buckskin racing alongside the train, close enough to the bluff so that the outlaws on the near side couldn’t hit them from that angle, and the railroad cars shielded them from the riflemen on the far side of the gap.

Morgan saw steam puffing from the diamond-shaped stack on the Baldwin locomotive. The engine didn’t seem to be damaged, at least not that he could tell. He rode past the cab and reached the front of the locomotive. The cowcatcher was a tangled, twisted mass of metal. Morgan figured that was where the first round from the cannon had struck. But the rest of the engine appeared to be all right, and the tracks themselves looked undamaged. The engineer must have brought the train to a halt because he thought the tracks were torn up in front of it and he feared a derailment.

Morgan thought the train could still move, so he whirled the horse around and raced back to the cab. The engine still had steam up. The engineer just needed to hit the throttle.

“Move the train! Move the train!” he shouted to a man he saw in the cab who was crouched behind the meager protection of the cab’s walls.

“The engineer’s dead!” the man called back to him.

Morgan grimaced and reach over to grasp an iron grab bar on the wall of the cab. He swung himself from the buckskin’s back into the cab, taking the Winchester with him.

“You know how to run this thing?” he asked as he ducked down behind the other wall, next to the bloody body of the engineer, who had been shot through the head.

“Yeah, but those sons o’ bitches up on the bluff will pick me off if I try to work the controls!”

“No, they won’t, because I’ll cover you,” Morgan said. “Now grab that throttle!”

The man, who had to be the fireman, hesitated, but the fierce look on Morgan’s face convinced him he would be in even more danger if he didn’t do what he was told. As Morgan rose up at the side of the cab and started blazing away at the men on the bluff as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever, the trainman lunged to the engine’s controls and shoved the throttle forward. With a burst of steam and a screeching of metal on metal as the drivers engaged, the locomotive lurched forward.

Bullets whined and popped and danced around inside the cab. The train began to pick up speed. Morgan saw the barrel of the cannon moving in an attempt to line up a shot at the engine. He sprayed lead around the big gun and forced the men working it to leap for cover. That gave the locomotive and the coal tender time to clear the gap. The nearly sheer walls on both sides of the tracks fell away.

The outlaws continued shooting at the cars that rolled past, but they couldn’t stop the train with rifle fire. The fireman looked back and yelled triumphantly, “We’re gonna make it!”

Then he grunted in pain as a slug ripped through his body. He slumped against the brake lever, and once again the train began squealing and skidding to a halt. Morgan whirled away from the side of the cab and grabbed the wounded fireman, jerking him away from the brake. He released it and slammed the throttle forward again.

The train hadn’t come to a complete stop, making it easier to regain some speed. Chuffing loudly, the engine kept going, climbing a long slope.

Morgan leaned out to look ahead. The tracks ran in a straight line for a mile or more. He risked abandoning the controls to climb onto the pile of coal in the tender. From there he could see the outlaws on the bluffs, as well as their cannon. The cannon’s crew had swiveled the weapon even more, and Morgan knew they were lining up a shot. If they could blow a hole in the locomotive’s boiler, they could still stop the train.

The cannon boomed before Morgan could do anything about it. Maybe he imagined it, but he thought he could hear the high-pitched whistle of the cannonball as it flew toward the train.

There was nothing Morgan could do to stop the cannonball. He threw himself backward, onto the floor of the cab, as the shot fell short and hit the tender instead of the locomotive, smashing into the mound of coal and sending pieces flying everywhere. Some of the chunks pelted the cab like black rain.

But the train kept moving. Morgan scrambled to his feet and checked the tracks ahead. No obstructions, no sharp turns that would require the train to slow down. He shoved the throttle forward as far as it would go.

He didn’t want to blow the boiler, but right now his main concern was getting the train out of range of that cannon. The big gun could throw a ball more than a mile, but its accuracy diminished with every yard between the train and the cannon. Morgan thought they were already far enough away so that it would be luck more than anything else if the next shot found its target.

He heard the cannon blast and jerked his head around in time to see the puff of smoke from its muzzle. Then with a crash of rending wood, the cannonball slammed into the last car in the train.

The car where he had left Edward and Glory Sheffield.

Morgan’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace as he saw pieces of debris fly high in the air from the impact. He heard a groan and looked down to see the fireman struggling to get to his feet again. The man’s left arm hung limp and his shoulder was covered with blood, but at least he was conscious again.

Morgan reached down and grasped the man’s right arm to haul him upright. “Can you handle the controls?” he demanded.

The wounded fireman was pale and shaken, but he managed to nod. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. I’ve got to go back and check on the Sheffields.”

A narrow ledge ran along the side of the tender. Morgan made his way down it carefully. When he reached the first passenger car, he climbed to the top, figuring it would be quicker going that way than trying to get through what was bound to be a lot of chaos and confusion from the frightened passengers inside the car.

Aware that he was making himself a target, he ran toward the rear of the train, leaping from car to car. It was dangerous, especially because the high speed was causing the train to sway a little on the tracks, but he wanted to reach the last car as quickly as he could.

Atop the distant bluff, the cannon boomed again, and Morgan gritted his teeth as he paused to see where the ball would land. It plowed up dirt and threw a cloud of dust in the air to the right of the train. The gunners were losing the range. Morgan started moving again. When he reached the caboose, he climbed down using the grab irons on the side of the car.

As his booted feet landed on the platform at the front of the caboose, the door opened and Edward Sheffield rushed out, nearly running into Morgan.

Sheffield grabbed Morgan’s arm. “There you are! My God, did you see what happened? They shelled the train with a cannon!”

Morgan didn’t like being grabbed, but at the moment, he was more concerned with what might have happened to Glory. A jolt of relief went through him as he saw her come up behind her husband. He didn’t particularly like her, but he had liked the idea of her being splattered all over that train car by a cannonball even less.

He pulled his arm loose from Sheffield’s grip and said, “I thought the two of you were still in that last car.” He gestured through the open door at the destruction. The cannonball had come through the roof of the car, leaving a gaping hole, and slammed into one of the divans, demolishing it. There was a hole in the floor, too, where the cannonball had gone on through. They were lucky it hadn’t hit the wheels and derailed the car.

“We had just started forward to look for you,” Sheffield said.

“Are you all right?” Glory put in.

Morgan nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Scratched up a little from crawling around under the train, that’s all.”

Glory’s eyes widened. “
Under
the train? What if it had started up again?”

“I’d have been out of luck,” Morgan said, although it was possible he could have stayed where he was and let the train pass over him. As soon as it cleared him, though, he would have been an easy target for the outlaw riflemen on the bluffs.

He leaned out a window and saw that the gap was well behind them. The train was out of effective range of the cannon and well out of range of the rifles. By now the outlaws might be mounted up and coming after them on horseback, but Morgan didn’t see any dust to indicate that. More than likely, since the ambush had failed, the gang had given up on stopping the train…at least for now.

The blue-uniformed conductor crowded onto the platform behind Sheffield and Glory. “Does anybody know what’s going on?” he asked with a note of panic in his voice.

“Your engineer’s dead,” Morgan told him. “The fireman’s at the controls. You’d better get somebody up there to shovel some coal for him. He’s wounded, so he can’t do that job.”

The conductor jerked his head in a nod. “I’ll get up there myself, right now. We don’t want to start losing steam. Those bushwhackers might try to come after us.”

“Even though their ambush failed?” Sheffield asked.

“They were bold enough to attack a train with a cannon,” Morgan pointed out. “Maybe we’d better not underestimate them.”

The conductor hurried off toward the front of the train. Glory said, “I never heard of such a thing. It’s like those outlaws are at war with the railroad.”

“That’s one more reason I’m convinced Gideon Black is behind this,” Sheffield snapped. “These attacks are being carried out like military operations, and he’s got the knowledge to do so.”

Morgan looked behind the train again and spotted the buckskin galloping after it. The horse couldn’t keep up, and was falling farther behind as the train continued to climb into the Dragoon Mountains. Morgan grimaced. He didn’t want to lose the buckskin. The horse had been a fine saddle mount.

At that moment, the train began to slow, either because the flames in the firebox had died down and it was losing steam, or because a curve was coming up. Either way, Morgan didn’t care. He seized the opportunity as the train’s speed fell off to a crawl.

“I’ll see you in Titusville,” he told Sheffield.

“Wait a minute,” the tycoon said. “Where are you—Morgan!”

It was too late. Morgan had already clattered down the iron steps attached to the platform on the rear of the caboose and swung off, landing in a run on the ground. His momentum kept him going for several steps before he came to a stop.

Sheffield glared at him as the train continued to pull away. Glory stood beside her husband with a look of concern on her face. Morgan lifted a hand in farewell to both of them. Then he turned and let out a shrill whistle, calling the buckskin to him.

The horse trotted up to him, then stood there trembling a little, worn out from the effort of trying to keep up with the train. Morgan patted the animal on the shoulder and then took hold of the reins. He couldn’t ride the buckskin until the horse had had a chance to rest. He slid the Winchester back in its saddle sheath, then started walking along the tracks, leading the buckskin.

Morgan hoped those outlaws weren’t pursuing the train. If he had to make a run for it now, he’d be out of luck. The buckskin couldn’t gallop another half mile without collapsing.

Luckily, the sky remained clear of dust behind him. Once the train was out of sight, he was alone in the foothills of the Dragoons.

The walk gave him some time to think. Sheffield was right. The outlaws use of the cannon pointed straight to Colonel Gideon Black. Throw in the connection with the raid on the Williams ranch, and that was more than enough proof for Morgan. The ex-colonel was the man he was looking for.

Finding Black might not be that easy. Morgan wasn’t convinced that accepting Sheffield’s offer would do any good. A posse of hired guns could tramp around those mountains for weeks without finding any sign of the outlaws. It was easier to avoid a large group of men like that than it was to throw one man off the trail.

The problem was, what could one man do against two dozen outlaws who had gotten their hands on a
cannon
, for God’s sake?

He wasn’t any closer to an answer to that question when he came in sight of Titusville a couple hours later. He had walked for half an hour to let the buckskin rest, then mounted up and ridden at a slow but steady pace for another hour and a half, following the railroad tracks. That brought him to the settlement, which was tucked into a shallow valley that came to a dead end against the slope of a mountain. Part of the way up the face of that mountain, Morgan saw a number of buildings scattered around a large, dark opening in the face of the earth. That would be the Gloriana Mine, he thought, the source—or rather, one of the sources—of Edward Sheffield’s wealth and power.

The damaged train sat at the depot. The engine had been uncoupled and pulled into a roundhouse, where it was turned around and then run back out onto a siding. Men were already working on it, trying to repair the damaged cowcatcher.

Morgan reined to a halt beside the locomotive and asked one of the men working on it, “Do you know where I can find Mr. Sheffield?”

“I expect he’s down at the mining company office.” The man pointed along the street. “That is, if he’s not off somewhere chewin’ nails. I never seen the boss so mad.”

Morgan nodded his thanks. He wasn’t surprised to hear that Sheffield was still upset.

He rode along the street until he came to a red brick building with a sign on it proclaiming it to be the headquarters of the Sheffield Mining Corporation. He dismounted and left the buckskin at the hitch rack in front of the building.

When he went inside, he planned to ask one of the workers if Sheffield was there, but he didn’t have to. He heard the tycoon’s angry voice coming through an open door behind several desks.

“—absolutely nothing!” Sheffield was saying. “Your men were worthless, Bateman, and that means that
you’re
worthless to me!”

Morgan headed toward that door. A man who had been sitting at one of the desks got up quickly and moved in front of him. The fellow was tall and slender, in shirtsleeves, vest, and string tie. He said, “Hold on a minute, mister. Can I help you?”

Morgan nodded toward the door and said, “I’m looking for Sheffield.”

“I’m afraid
Mr.
Sheffield is busy right now—”

Morgan stepped around the man. “Sorry. I have to see him.”

“Wait! You just can’t—”

Sheffield appeared in the open door. “Morgan!” he said. “I thought I heard your voice out here. I was beginning to worry that those outlaws had caught up to you.” He turned to look over his shoulder. “Step out here, Bateman. I want you to meet the only man who actually accomplished anything when those outlaws attacked the train.”

A man in a brown suit followed Sheffield out of the inner office. He wore a flat-crowned brown hat, and long blond hair fell around his shoulders. Dressed like that, with the long hair, the man bore a faint resemblance to the famous Wild Bill Hickok, and Morgan had a hunch the hombre knew that and tried to play it up to his advantage. The man also wore a pair of ivory-handled Colts.

And at the moment, the anger in his eyes made it clear that he would like nothing better than to pull both of those irons and fill Morgan full of lead.