by Brett Waring
Showers of sparks were flying from under the wheels of the locomotive as the engineer slammed on the emergency brakes. But the whole train slid towards the trestle bridge with hardly a drop in speed—the rails were too wet.
The outlaws were in the open now, realizing there was not going to be any explosion that would render the express car helpless. But Larry had succeeded in getting the train between himself and Sundance and he stood in the stirrups, yelling, waving the engineer on, trying to tell him not to stop, that the bridge wasn’t going to blow.
Then, his eyes widened in horror as he heard an earsplitting crack and suddenly the supports went under the bridge and it seemed to kick violently, before twisting and erupting in a chaos of matchwood as the flood waters tore away the supports.
The bridge was gone in seconds and all that remained were twisted rails hanging out into space over the canyon.
Seconds later the locomotive plunged off the ends of those rails and down onto the muddy slope below, plowing up a mighty wave of sludge before rolling into the thundering floodwaters. The cars behind slithered along the rails and over the edge, hitting the slope at all angles, twisting end over end, rolling onto their sides, skidding down on their roofs. Some went into the river, others came to a stop, jammed deep in the mud.
But the special express car, although the flatbed wagon was caught near the top of the slope, its bogey wheels jammed hard, tore loose from the bolts and catapulted over the tops of the other wrecked cars, hitting the flood waters and disappearing in a cloud of muddy spray.
Yet, seconds later, so well-sealed was it that it bobbed to the surface and was wrenched away downstream at a dizzying speed, spinning endlessly.
Eight – The Waiting Game
“All for nothing,” muttered Larry Holbrook bitterly, sick to his stomach. “God, it was all for nothing!”
He stared at the train wreck and only the caboose and two other cars remained on solid ground. The passengers still alive were dropping out of the windows of these and then Larry felt a mighty jar in his upper left arm and he spilled from the saddle.
Dazed, he sat up in the mud, aware that his horse was running off, seeing the outlaws galloping across the tracks, Sundance shooting at him. Bullets thunked into the mud near him and some zipped past his face. His left arm dangled uselessly but didn’t pain him, even though he saw the blood dripping from his fingers and he knew he was hit.
He staggered up and started to run, having no real direction, just wanting to get away from the outlaws. He knew he was dead if they caught him or got a clear shot at him. Larry sobbed as he fell and began to claw his way, one-handed, up a slope.
He heard galloping hoofs and he closed his eyes momentarily, expecting to feel lead slamming between his thin shoulders.
Then a more distant rifle opened up, in rapid fire and he spun onto his back, startled as a man screamed in mortal agony only yards from him.
Wide-eyed, he saw Monte the breed pitching out of his saddle, his face a mask of blood, his smoking Colt dropping from nerveless fingers. Wrenching his head to the left, Larry saw there was another rider coming hell-for-leather down the slope above him, rifle to shoulder as he stood in the stirrups, expertly guiding his horse with his knees.
He had time to recognize Clay Nash and then Mitch Emerson was leaping his horse directly over his head and Larry dropped onto his face in the mud, one arm shielding his head protectively. The iron-shod hoof lightly brushed his forearm and he was deafened by the thunder of Emerson’s Colt as the man fired three fast shots at Clay Nash.
Nash’s rifle spat again and Emerson back-flipped from his horse as if jerked by a wire. His limbs were flailing out of control and he landed on the back of his neck at such an angle that, even if the bullet hadn’t finished him, the broken neck that resulted from the fall would.
Nash put his wild-eyed mount across the slope at an angle and saw the breed, Chickasaw, coming at him shouting a wild Indian yell. The man’s gun was blazing wildly, lead flying all over the mountainside. Nash’s hammer fell on an empty chamber. He reversed his grip on the rifle, holding it by the barrel and swinging the butt into the breed’s face with all his force. Chickasaw’s skull was cracked wide open and his body hurtled back to crash to the mud and lay there in a spreading pool of blood ...
The Wells Fargo man dropped his Winchester and palmed up his Colt.
Idaho and Sundance were breaking now, pulling their mounts around and making a run back towards the stand of timber across the tracks, shooting in his direction but without real aim. Nash hauled back on the reins and skidded his mount to a stop. He held the Colt with both hands as he drew a bead on Idaho, the blade foresight following the fleeing man in a long arc before he dropped hammer. The dagger of flame and pall of smoke obscured the target and when the wind whipped it clear, Idaho was lying over his mount’s neck, clinging desperately to keep from falling, a bloody patch spreading rapidly across the back of his shirt.
Nash swept his gun around, searching for Sundance, but the outlaw leader was disappearing into the stand of timber. The Wells Fargo agent fired two shots and heard the lead ricochet. He started to ride after him but his horse stumbled and he realized it was about ready to drop.
He would stand no chance of catching up with Sundance.
Holding back a curse, he dismounted stiffly and began reloading his rifle as he walked over the dead men to where Larry Holbrook lay beside Emerson’s body, bloody, streaked with mud, panting as he looked up at Nash, wide-eyed.
“Saw it all, kid. You did your best an’ you almost pulled it off. The river played us all a dirty trick by wrecking that trestle bridge.”
Larry nodded slowly and then suddenly his eyes rolled up into his head so that the whites showed and he fell back, unconscious.
As Nash knelt beside him, the dazed train guard organized those men from the passenger cars who could still walk and started climbing down the slippery slope into the canyon where other cars from the train dotted the mud above the raging waters of the flooded Colorado River.
“Hell almighty, Clay! Seven people drowned and five others killed by crushing! That’s a helluva death toll!”
Blocky Jim Hume paced across the partly-repaired office of the Wells Fargo agency in Signal, his hands behind his back, right fist slamming repeatedly into the palm of his left hand. He whirled and looked across to where Nash sat on a turned-around straight-back chair, his arms folded, smoking quietly.
“It was a massacre!”
“Nowhere near as bad as it could’ve been, Jim,” Nash told him. “If the kid hadn’t done his part the whole damn lot of ’em could’ve been killed. I know that’s no compensation to the kinfolk of those who were, but it’s a fact. The kid risked his neck to save the train. If the trestle hadn’t collapsed, no one would’ve been hurt.”
“And the gold would be safely in the bank up the street,” Hume added bitterly. “Yeah, yeah, I know, Clay. Sorry for soundin’ off, but it’s really gotten to me, this. What I’d really like to do is get my hands on Sundance Harmer and squeeze the life slowly out of him.”
“We’ll get him,” Nash said confidently.
“Sure. But he’s had four days’ start.”
“We couldn’t move because the rain started again. He wouldn’t’ve been able to go far. I nailed Idaho, but I dunno how bad. If they meet up, Idaho’s gonna slow Sundance down.”
“Or he’ll finish him off so he don’t,” Hume pointed out. He sighed and took a thick, short cigar from his vest pocket, piercing it with a gold spike on the end of his pocket knife and firing a vesta on his thumbnail. He spoke as he puffed heavy clouds of smoke. “Rain’s been stopped for just over a day now and so far no sign of that express car.”
Nash looked grim. “It was floatin’ last sight I had of it, but could’ve sunk any time, after bein’ holed on a rock or somethin’. I reckon we’ll have to play a waitin’ game, Jim. Maybe the river level will have to drop before we can locate it.”
Hume glanced
at him sharply. “When we do, we’ll find two dead men inside.”
“Likely killed in the crash, Jim. That car was lined with sheet-iron. They’d’ve been thrown against it mighty hard. Anyway, they’d be out of air by now, if they weren’t killed outright.”
Hume seemed dubious. “I dunno about that, I guess you’re right about them likely bein’ killed when the car plunged into the canyon, but if they weren’t—by some miracle—there just might be enough air in the car for four, five days. I mean, it wasn’t built to be airtight. Had a vent on the roof that could be closed off, though, to stop water pouring in.”
“No way out for ’em, except when the sliding door was unlocked?”
Hume sighed again. “There was a safety hatch built-in, under the floor. But if some of the stuff in there shifted across it, they mightn’t be able to get at it. No, Clay, I don’t think we’ll find Hal McWhirter or Tom Slocum alive, but we sure as hell have to locate that express car quick as we can and recover that gold.”
Nash looked out the window. “Rain’s still holding off. We could get some pack hosses and be underway by this afternoon.”
“Fine. I’ve told Sheriff Gentry I don’t want his posse in this, they’ve done a fine job with the survivors but the fewer who know about the express car and its cargo the better ...”
He broke off as there was a knock on the door and frowned a little quizzically as he called, “Come in!”
The door opened and Larry Holbrook came in a little diffidently, his left arm in a sling, face pale and pinched. He moved a mite slower than usual as he nodded to Hume and Nash.
“Hey, figured you’d be laid-up a spell yet,” Nash said.
The kid gave him a brief smile. “I’m okay. Infirmary’s kinda crowded, anyway, with all them folk who were hurt in the wreck. I told Doc I was feelin’ pretty good so I moved out to make way for someone else.”
Hume slid out a chair and indicated that the youth should sit. Larry dropped into it gratefully.
“Something of a hero around the place, eh, Larry?” Hume smiled.
The youth looked embarrassed. “I—I dunno how I come to be mixed up in it in the first place. Knew it was wrong and so on. Sort of—confused, I guess. I was scared of jail, scared of goin’ through with blowin-up the bridge. Din’t know what to do for the best. Then, when Sundance gave me the job of lightin’ the fuse, I knew I had to make my choice, pronto.”
“You did the right thing,” Nash told him. “Passengers are pressin’ the railroad to pay you some sort of reward. You deserve it.”
“Aw—not really. I left things kinda late and a lot of folk were killed and hurt.”
“Would’ve been a lot more except for you,” Hume told him. “And that’s gospel, Larry, even without the dynamite. The train would’ve been on that bridge when it collapsed and if she’d dropped straight into the river no one would’ve survived. That sloping bank saved a lot of folk. You got reason to be proud, son.”
That seemed to brighten the kid up and he half-smiled as he said, “I came to see if I could help some more. I mean, I can show you the cave where Sundance an’ the others hid out. I dunno if he’ll make for there, but he just might.”
“Or Idaho might, anyway,” said Nash standing quickly. “If he’s hurt, he’ll run for some hole he knows. You feel up to ridin’, Larry? Hume and me are gettin’ ready to go out and look for that express car. We could be out for a week or more.”
“I’ll be all right. Doc says I was lucky. Bullet went clean through my arm, didn’t touch bone and didn’t rip up the muscle much.”
“What do you think, Jim?”
Hume pursed his lips, drew on his cigar and then nodded as he exhaled. “I reckon young Larry’s tough enough to make such a ride. And we could sure use his help. Wells Fargo’ll be paying a reward, too, kid, so you could end up rich—with honest money.”
“Aw, that part don’t matter, Mr. Hume. I just wanna help. Kinda make up for what I done—here, and out at Skillet Canyon.”
“You’re the kind of young feller Wells Fargo could use, Larry,” Hume said, thrusting off the wall where he had been leaning. He dropped a thick arm lightly on Larry’s shoulder.
“Let’s get going.”
Young Larry Holbrook seemed deep in thought as he moved out of the office with Hume and Nash following.
Nelson Hayward knew there was no way he was going to be able to cross the flooded Colorado. And that meant that he might as well forget about that job he had been going after.
It didn’t worry him much, except he had very little ready cash left. He had heard that Nash had downed Waco Bright in Cedar Ridge all right but the telegraph had been out and so he hadn’t been able to make his claim for the bounty. To top it off, he had been nearly caught by a flash flood down in an arroyo a couple of nights back and he had to scramble up the slopes for his life, dragging his mount by brute strength. He had lost his saddlebags and blankets and his rifle.
The letter from Nash authorizing him to claim the bounty on Waco had been in the bags, so he didn’t even have that to call on in the future.
The river itself was a raging flood for miles along its length. He had met some of the searchers from Signal looking for bodies or survivors from the train wreck and he had learned that Sundance Harmer and another wounded outlaw named Idaho were still loose somewhere in the hills.
Hayward had scrounged a couple of cans of beans and some coffee from the searchers but generally he had been living off the land as he made his way through the hills, and in the floods, food was scarce. He had planned to cross over to the other side and try the ranches around there for work, but he was getting sick and tired of drifting from one place to another. He had always been the black sheep of the Hayward family and he knew they had been pleased when he had quit Boston for the West. He had had his scrapes with the law and done his share of breaking it in his early days and, with the passing years came maturity—and the knowledge that he had been damn lucky not to have been caught.
When he was really pressed even now, he wasn’t past stealing food or other belongings that he needed. He rarely got the chance to steal much money, but if there was some lying around unattended, Nelson Hayward picked it up—but only if he was broke.
He imposed that much of a restriction on himself.
Right now, he was as broke as he had ever been and he got to thinking about what that posse man had told him, about Sundance Harmer being still loose in the hills. With Idaho, a wounded man.
Both had bounties on them and Hayward still had his six-gun. He could handle it pretty well, even if he did say so himself, and he figured that he could sure use a piece of those bounties.
So, instead of crossing the mountains as he had intended, he set out to deliberately track down the outlaws. He was far back in the hills now, in the general area where he had run into Larry Holbrook, some time back. He had watched the kid ride into a narrow gulch, expecting to see him emerge higher up the slope of the mountain but the kid had never reappeared. At the time, Hayward hadn’t been overly curious, but now that he was flat broke ...
Now he figured that maybe Sundance had had his hole-in-the-wall somewhere in that gulch: he had gathered from what Nash had said that the kid had been tied in with the outlaws, but that hadn’t interested him much at the time, either. Now, losing his chance to pick up the bounty on Waco, Hayward dredged up every piece of information that would help him get some easy money.
He was willing to take a chance or two and he didn’t mind shooting a man in the back if he had to.
It took him some time to locate the gulch entrance, for much of the countryside had been changed by the rains. Trees had been washed away and rocky landmarks had disappeared as whole slopes slid away under the sheer weight of the water. But the rain had been stopped for almost two days now and the waters running through the arroyos and washes and draws had begun to recede.
He found the gulch and had to climb his mount over a mound of muddy debris to enter it. Hayward took
it easy, picking his way in carefully, six-gun in hand. Halfway through, walking the horse slowly over the rain-flattened brush, he noticed a reddish scar on the left hand wall near the far end of the gulch.
As he drew closer he saw, that it was a ragged streak of red clay that had been washed down from somewhere above. But it stood out alone: the mud underfoot was brown and black and the walls seemed to be of the same composition. The clay had to have come from somewhere.
Like maybe the floor of a cave he couldn’t see from down here...
Hayward dismounted and tethered his horse to a nearby tree. He checked the loads in his Colt, spun the cylinder and, satisfied that it was operating smoothly, began to climb the slope of the gulch wall. He slipped twice in the mud and cursed but the mud itself softened his footsteps even if it made it harder to scale.
He rounded a jutting sandstone boulder and nodded in satisfaction to himself.
He could see now where the streak had come from. A cave mouth, as he had suspected. Likely water had gotten into the cave during the recent downpours and had flooded over the edge, washing out the reddish clay-water mixture onto the gulch slopes.
It pointed like an arrowhead of blood to the black maw of the entrance and Hayward moved across swiftly, placing his boots carefully. As he came to the entrance, he crouched low and, clinging to the gulch wall just below, listened.
Almost at once he heard two distinct sounds. A man’s moans and the stomp of a horse.
Hayward smiled crookedly. Looked like his men had come home to roost. Or one had, anyway ...
He pulled himself up easily, climbed into the cave entrance and padded forward, moving close along one wall so he wouldn’t be silhouetted. He paused, listening again. The moan came a second time, closer, more distinct.
Nelson Hayward notched back his gun hammer slowly, moving it so that the ratchet didn’t make any sound as it clicked to full cock. Then he stepped swiftly around the rocky corner and saw the small campfire deep in the rear of the cave and the huddled form of a man lying in a pool of water just this side of it.
