Vendetta Trail (16 page)

“Too bad. I was rather enjoying the idea of them running bare-assed around St. Louis.”

Ned and Luby lay on the floor of the empty boxcar, recovering their breath after the run, both through the train shed and the final rapid sprint to catch the freight train as it was leaving the station.

“What was that son of a bitch doin’ on the train?” Luby asked. “I thought they wasn’t supposed to board until eight-thirty.”

“They let the high-class passengers on first,” Ned said. “That’s so they can get all settled in them fancy cars.”

The freight rolled over several switch connectors then and
beneath them the wheels clacked and the entire car shook and rattled.

“This sure as hell ain’t no fancy car,” Ned added.

“You ever rode in one of them fancy cars like that?” Luby asked.

“No,” Ned replied. “But I expect I will, once we get this job done and them Italians pay us. I may just take me a trip and go first-class.”

“Where will you go?”

“Maybe to Paducah, or New York, or Omaha, or someplace like that.”

“LUBY! LUBY, WAKE UP!” NED HISSED.

Luby groaned once, then opened his eyes.

Even with the side door open, it was dark in the boxcar, and Luby rubbed his eyes.

“What is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“We’re gettin’ off here.”

Awake now, Luby looked through the open door. He could see tall trees whipping by, dark shadows against the star-filled sky. He could hear the sound of the engine, the roar of passing wind, the growl of wheels rolling on the track, and the squeak of the shuddering, twisting boxcar.

“What do you mean we’re getting off here? Where is here?”

“Here is here,” Ned said again. He started kicking Luby, not too hard, but not all that lightly either. “Come on, get up, let’s go.”

“Are you crazy? This is the middle of night, in the middle of nowhere, and the train is still movin’.”

“You’re gonna jump off with me or I’m gonna push your
ass off. One way or the other, you’re getting off here,” Ned said. “Now come on.”

Getting up reluctantly, Luby followed Ned to the open door of the boxcar. The sound of the wind and the wheels rolling across the track was much louder here. Here too they could smell the smoke from the engine.

“Jump!” Ned shouted, pushing, even as he gave the order. The two men leaped out into the black maw of night. They hit the ground and rolled painfully for several tumbles, then stopped.

“Anything broken?” Ned asked.

“No,” Luby answered after examining himself. “That ain’t no thanks to you, though. What the hell did you want to jump off the train in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, for? That don’t make no sense a’tall.”

“We’ve come far enough,” Ned said. “I figure we had no more’n a two-hour head start comin’ out of St. Louis, three at the most, so pretty soon now they’ll be shuntin’ us off to a sidetrack to let the passenger train pass us by. When that happens, it’ll be too late.”

“So, what are we going to do now? Jump on the passenger train when it comes by?”

“No, I’ve got a better idea,” Ned said. “I was looking out the open door just before I kicked you awake, and I seen that we passed over a trestle.”

“What’s so important about the trestle?”

“We want to stop the train that the whore and the piano player are on, don’t we?” Ned asked.

Luby laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I get it. We knock down the trestle, they might just take a tumble.”

“Maybe you ain’t so dumb, after all,” Ned said.

“I don’t like it when you do that,” Luby complained.

“You don’t like it when I do what?”

“When you call me dumb, like that. I ain’t dumb.”

“You ain’t, huh? Well, you’re teamed up with me, ain’t you? You can’t get much dumber than to team up with me.”

Luby thought about the comment for a long moment, then realized that it was a joke and he laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “You can’t get no dumber’n that.”

The two men started walking east along the track while, behind them, the train they had just left was rapidly disappearing in the distance. The train blew its whistle and it sounded a long way off.

“Hey, Ned, how are we goin’ to knock that trestle down?”

“I seen a little toolshed right there alongside it,” Ned replied. “I figure we can get all the tools we need from that.”

“How far back is it?”

“Can’t be more’n a half a mile,” Ned answered. “A mile at the most.”

“A mile? Damn, that’s a long walk in the dark,” Luby said.

“Stay on the track, you won’t get lost,” Ned said.

“I wasn’t worried about gettin’ lost. I was just commentin’, that’s all.”

It took them about twenty minutes to reach the trestle, and by then the eastern horizon was streaked with red and pink. It would be full light within half an hour.

“It’s goin’ to be mornin’ soon,” Luby said.

“That’s good,” Ned said. “Come mornin’, we’ll have enough light to work by. The only question now is: Will the train get there before we get finished?”

“You think it might?”

“If we don’t quit gabbin’, it might.”

They walked across the trestle, stepping carefully on each of the cross ties.

“There’s the toolshed I was tellin’ you about,” Ned said, pointing to a small wood building just off the track.

“Damn, the shed’s got a lock on it,” Luby said, pointing to the door.

Ned pulled his gun and aimed it at the lock. The gun boomed, the bullet tore through the body of the lock, and the hasp popped open.

“Now it don’t,” he said with a satisfied grunt.

“What kind of tools do you reckon we’ll need?”

“Crowbars and sledgehammers, I reckon,” Ned said. “We’re going to take a section of track right out of the middle, then knock over the timbers. That ought to be enough to stop them.”

Luby pulled out the tools and the two men started working. They sweated and grunted for a few minutes, then Luby laughed.

“What is it?”

“I always swore I’d never do hard work,” he said. “Now look at me. I’m slaving away here as hard as any gandy dancer you ever seen.”

“You ever knowed a gandy dancer who got a thousand dollars for about half an hour’s work on the railroad?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s what you’re gettin’.”

“Ha!” Luby said as he swung the sledgehammer. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

Hawke and Rachel were having breakfast in the dining car when the engineer suddenly applied his brakes, causing the train to brake so hard that the breakfast dishes slid off the table. A steward was just delivering the meal to one of the other tables when the hard braking action started, which caused him to fall, sending the contents of his tray crashing to the floor.

A couple of the women diners cried out in alarm and one of the male passengers cursed in anger.

With a squealing, sliding, shuddering sound, the train finally came to a complete stop.

“Oh, what is it? What’s happening?” Rachel asked.

“My guess is something on the track,” Hawke said. “Let me check on it.”

Leaving the dining car, Hawke stepped down onto the ballast-covered ground alongside the train, then hurried forward to the engine. Though sitting still, the engine was alive with potential energy…spitting steam and percolating water as if protesting the indignity of having been forced to stop while at full speed. Others were beginning to get off the train as well, and Hawke could hear them calling out to each other in curiosity, wondering what was wrong and why the train had made such an abrupt stop.

The engineer and fireman were standing at the front of the engine when Hawke arrived.

“Mr. Hawke, didn’t you say you was the U.S. Marshal?” the engineer asked.

For a second Hawke didn’t know what the engineer was talking about, then he remembered that he had made that claim when he was chasing Ned and Luby.

“Uh, yeah,” Hawke replied. “Actually, I’m a deputy U.S. Marshal.”

Again, he hoped he wouldn’t be asked to produce any proof.

“Well, sir, there’s somethin’ queer about this, and I was wonderin’ if you wouldn’t mind comin’ down with me to have a look?”

“I’d be glad to,” Hawke said, pleased that he was being asked to have a look around, rather than being put in the position of having to ask.

Hawke and Charley walked to the front of the train, then down the track several feet until they reached the edge of the
trestle. It wasn’t a very long trestle, as the gully the little bridge spanned was barely over twenty feet long and no more than ten feet deep.

Not all the trestle was down. There was a section about twelve feet long, missing from the exact middle.

“It’s a lucky thing you saw this,” Hawke said.

“I know. The track makes a little curve back there and I just happened to be lookin’ in the right direction to catch it,” Charley answered. “Nine times out of ten, I wouldn’t have happened to glance over like that, and I wouldn’t have seen it in time to stop.”

The two men walked out onto the trestle itself and stood at the very edge of the break.

“Marshal, this here ain’t no accident,” the engineer said. “Looks to me like someone pulled up the track, then knocked over the timbers that supported it. The rails and timbers are still here. See ’em down there?”

“Yeah, I see them,” Hawke replied.

“We could’a run right off of this thing,” the engineer said. “And, goin’ as fast as we was, we would’a busted the boiler wide open. Me’n Wayne would be dead for sure, and like as not, a lot of other folks as well.”

Hawke put his hand on Charley’s shoulder. “It’s a good thing for all of us that you are as careful as you are.”

“Yes, sir, well, I’ve always tried to be,” Charley replied.

By now most of the rest of the crew and passengers had reached the front end of the train and they stood there, staring at the missing section of trestle.

“Have you ever run into anything like this before?” Hawke asked.

“No, sir. Well, not deliberate, that is. But I’ve come across down bridges and track outages.”

“What do you do about it?” Hawke asked.

“Well, first thing we have to do is put up warnin’ flags behind us, and then some on the other side of the trestle. That’ll keep any other trains from runnin’ into us or off the track. “Then we’ll have to send someone on ahead to Sedalia and get a work crew out here.”

“How far is it to Sedalia?”

“I’d say about five miles.”

“That’s an hour and a half at a brisk walk,” Hawke suggested.

The engineer smiled. “Not if Lorenzo goes.”

“Lorenzo?”

“Lorenzo’s one of our porters,” Charley said. “He’s one of them fellas that likes to run—and not just a little ways. He likes to run a long ways. He’s always doin’ it. If we turn him loose, he could get to Sedalia in forty minutes…say twenty minutes to get a work crew back here and half an hour more to put the track back in place. We’ll be on our way in no time.” The engineer turned to yell at his fireman. “Wayne! Wayne, have Lorenzo come up!”

A few minutes later a slender young black man came up to the front of the train. Charley explained what was needed and Lorenzo nodded, then reached down and retied both shoes. That done, he started up the track at a brisk pace.

A shot rang out, and Lorenzo tumbled down the side of the track berm.

“Lorenzo!” Charley shouted, and he started toward the porter.

“I’m all right, Mr. Charley. Don’t come here!” Lorenzo shouted back. “I’m just stayin’ out of the way of whoever’s shootin’ at me!”

Another shot rang out and this time the passengers, amid screams and shouts, started running pell-mell.

Most ran away from the shooting, but Hawke, having seen where the puff of smoke came from, started running toward it.

The third shot was fired directly at Hawke and it came close enough for him to hear the angry buzz of the bullet.

By now, Hawke had his pistol in his hand and he dived into the dirt behind a poison sumac bush just as another bullet cut through the leaves.

“Uhnn,” Hawke yelled, then he lay perfectly still.

“Hey, Ned! Ned, I think I got ’im!” a voice called excitedly.

“Go check ’im out. See if he’s dead,” Ned replied.

“All right, I…wait a minute! I ain’t goin’ to check ’im out. You check ’im out.”

“You’re the one says you shot ’im!”

It was Ned and Luby! How did they get here, to the trestle, before the train did?

Hawke didn’t move. After a few moments, he heard the sound of boots on rocks as someone came walking up the dry ravine toward him.

“He ain’t movin’,” Luby said. Now Luby’s voice was very close. “I think I got ’im.”

“Make sure the son of a bitch is dead, then let’s go kill the whore,” Ned called back.

Hawke waited until Luby was right over him, then he turned over.

“What the hell?” Luby gasped, bringing his pistol up.

Hawke pulled the trigger and his bullet hit Luby under the chin. Luby fell back.

“Luby, what happened?” Ned called. When he didn’t get an answer, he called again. “Luby, is he dead? Did you kill ’im?”

Hawke crawled on his belly, away from the poison sumac, over to a growth of wild berries.

“Luby?”

Hawke saw Ned stand up.

“Luby’s dead, Ned!” Hawke called.

Ned swung around toward the sound of Hawke’s voice and
started firing wildly. His gun boomed three times. Hawke shot back, only once, but once was enough. His bullet found its mark and Ned threw up his gun and fell over backward. Hawke ran over to the fallen outlaw and knelt beside him. He could see bubbles of blood coming from Ned’s mouth. Ned was trying hard to breathe, and Hawke heard a sucking sound in his chest. He knew that his bullet had punctured Ned’s lungs.

“Why did you come after us?” Hawke asked. “You aren’t Mafia, are you?”

“Mafia?” Ned tried to cough, and as he did so, he sprayed blood. “Who is Mafia?”

“How did you know how to find us?” Hawke asked.

“Bellefont.”

“What?”

“Belle…” Ned started to say, then he drew in two short, audible gasps before he stopped breathing.

“Ned?” Hawke said, shaking him gently. “Ned?”

Ned didn’t respond, and Hawke put his hand to his neck. Ned was dead.

When Hawke got back to the train, only the engineer, fireman, conductor, and Lorenzo were still standing outside. The others had all retreated back to the train when the shooting started.

“Did you get them?” Charley asked.

“Yeah,” Hawke said, nodding.

“Wonder what they wanted to rob this train for? We aren’t carrying anything,” Bates said.

“You think I can start into town now, Mr. Bates?” Lorenzo asked.

“What do you think, Mr. Hawke?” the conductor asked.

“Yes. You can go now. They’re both dead.”

Lorenzo looked at the engineer.

“Go on, Lorenzo, get started,” Charley said. “Otherwise we’ll be out here all day.”

Lorenzo nodded, then started running. Within a minute he was already out of sight.