by Brett Waring
“We’ll check it out, but it’s not too important at this stage. The main thing is to come up with some way of bustin’ into the armored van.”
“Derail the goddamn train,” Mohawk said casually.
They stared at him.
“Well, hell, that’s a sure way of gettin’ rid of the opposition.”
“Too risky,” Sam Castle said quickly. “There’ll be too many soldiers on board.”
“Hell, it’s worth a few necks for a hundred thousand,” Mohawk said.
“I don’t mean that ... I mean there’ll be too many for us to be sure some won’t get away. And there seems as if there’ll be horses on board as well. Both men and horses could jump off and by the time we get into that car, they could be together again and organized. Derailment’s no good.”
“’Course it ain’t,” growled Hayden. “Loco. Best way to bring the whole damn country down on your neck is try somethin’ like that.”
Mohawk looked hard at the crooked lawman.
“You figure we won’t have the whole damn country down on our necks whatever method we use?”
“Sure we will,” said Burman. “No way out of that—but we don’t want to wipe out a whole troop of soldiers into the bargain. If there’s some other way, I mean.”
“We’re gonna have to kill a lot of people,” Tibbs said slowly. It wasn’t that he minded the killing: it was the inconvenience of the hell it would stir up later that bothered him.
“What about the armored van itself?” Castle asked. “Any more information?”
Tibbs pulled his mouth into a tight line. He pushed a square of paper towards the others.
“That’s a sketch of it. Gonna take more’n a can opener to get in there.”
The others studied the rough sketch. Mohawk sat back and blew cigarillo smoke deliberately into the group. They waved it away irritably, and he grinned.
“You hombres figure out where and how to stop the train. Forget about the van. I know how to get into that.”
They looked at him in disbelief.
“One glance at a rough sketch and you know how to get past all that armor?” asked Hayden, with a sneer in his voice.
“That’s right, lawman,” Mohawk answered easily. “I know how to do it. Now, how about you come up with somethin’ useful? Or shut your face.”
Hayden flushed and Castle put a hand out swiftly and rested it on the man’s right hand as he started to jerk it from the table. The rancher set cold eyes on the outlaw leader.
“I reckon you better tell us what you’ve got in mind, Mohawk,” he suggested quietly. “It might not be as practical as you figure.”
“It is. You fellers come up with a way to stop the train. I’ll guarantee to get the gold out of the van.”
And that was all the outlaw leader would say.
By the end of the day, the meeting had come up with some alternative plans for stopping the train, dependent on which route was taken. They all contributed something and, as long as the route took the train over a steep peak, they were confident they could stop it—despite all the precautions that were being taken.
After that, they started to break up and Mohawk, still keeping his plans for breaking into the armored van to himself, went outside to gather his men.
While the others got their gear together, Sam Castle walked to the window and watched Mohawk move down the street. Then the rancher turned to face the others.
“Gents,” he said very quietly. “There’s somethin’ else we have to discuss.”
They all stopped what they were doing and looked at him quizzically.
“Just between us. We’ve got to watch Mohawk Brown. He’s showin’ all the signs of not only wantin’ to take over the Ghost Riders—but most of the profits as well. Anyone else get that impression?”
“Damn right,” Hayden said feelingly.
“I ain’t been easy about it for the last couple of jobs,” said Tod Burman. “He’s too close to goin’ completely loco. I don’t mind killin’, but he looks for it. Next it’ll be women or kids, just as long as he’s got a target.”
“That’s not what I’m talkin’ about,” Castle said crisply. He looked out the window again. “We knew he was loco and ruthless when we asked his bunch to join us. But he’s gettin’ too big for his britches. And this is the kind of deal where he might just decide that he should take over—or wipe us out so he and his bunch have a bigger share.”
Tibbs frowned. “I don’t like him. But we need him in this. He’s pulled many a train job. He’s got men who are experts in explosives.”
Castle nodded. “Yeah, we need him, I think we’re all agreed on that. We need him afterwards, too, to see to the melting down. But, after that ...” He raked his bleak eyes around the group. “Well—when we come to divvyin’ up, maybe we can fix it so there’s just the five of us. Four to one ... Savvy?”
“You mean, we turn on him and gun him down?” Hayden asked, eagerness showing on his narrow face.
Castle nodded. “Without him as leader, I don’t reckon his bunch would be too much trouble. As long as we kept them well away from the gold.”
He started for the batwings.
“Mohawk’s comin’ back now, but think on it, gents. I’ll see you here in a few days for the final talk. Adios.”
Chapter Five – Death Train
The Gold Train, as it was called, steamed out of Denver right on schedule.
It was just after dawn on the twenty-third. The town was deserted because of the curfew on Currency, Elliott, Charles and Coronado Streets.
At the depot, it was just the opposite. There was bustle and activity all down the line for the full length of the train.
The locomotive was one of the most powerful in existence. There were two engineers and two firemen working the huge cab and a double tender so that there would be no need to stop for wood for many miles. Spare tanks had been built into the sides of the tenders and water could be pumped up by hand or via an impeller to the main boilers.
Behind the second tender were the special box cars, two of them, that held horses for the troopers. Following the horse cars was an open flat-top with a mounted Gatling gun facing forward and ten armed soldiers. Then came the armored van with its rifle slots, followed by the two carloads of troopers and, finally, the guard’s van. There were four troopers in the van.
The big engine boomed as the steam built up in the pipes and hissed through the bypass valves, compressed in the cylinders and slammed the pistons down. The wheels inched forward. The first engineer opened the throttle a little more, spun a wheel to adjust the pressure gauge reading, and looked down the platform to where the railroad agent was still waving his green lantern.
The train rolled out of Denver and Jim Hume, among the crowd of authorized folk on the depot siding, let his breath hiss out slowly between his teeth. At least the first part had gone without a hitch, he thought. There had been no trouble at all in transferring the gold coins from the mint to the armored van. The army had cooperated to the fullest extent and the whole operation had gone as smoothly as he could have wished.
He hoped like hell that the rest of the long journey went off as smoothly ...
Inside the armored van, Clay Nash checked the lashings on the pile of express boxes stacked and strapped in the center of the big van. There were five other guards and each man had a double-barreled Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun as well as rifle and side arms. There were special racks beside each rifle slot, holding ammunition. The calibers had been standardized, both rifles and six-guns being in .44/40 and all the shotguns in twelve-gauge. They had enough spare ammunition to start a war, Nash thought.
He lifted his face and saw the spinning ventilator wheel on top of the van. Cool morning air gusted down and touched his flesh. They were a good idea, he thought. He glanced around and briefly wished there had been more light.
There were plenty of lanterns on the walls, but Nash didn’t particularly want to use them. He just didn’t like being locked in the van with
naked flames burning in the lamps, no matter how many precautions had been taken to ensure against accidental fire.
It was a strange job, unsettling, guarding the money, not just because they were likely to run up against thieves, but because it called for steel nerves to be locked in an iron box.
Suppose there was an accident, a derailment? No one could open the van to get to anyone inside, because the keys to the outer locks were in Washington.
Nash had some sealed orders in his pocket to be opened later. He would find out when he read them that there was a special escape hatch built into the roof, for use in the event of an accident. It could be opened from inside and only by a catch concealed behind joints in the steel sheathing of the ceiling. Hume had wanted to keep it quiet so that word wouldn’t get out.
For, although the guards had been screened as thoroughly as possible, no one could be sure that a big enough bribe mightn’t make one of them open that special roof hatch to allow robbers in at some stage.
It seemed that just about every contingency had been covered, even to the extent of providing each car on the train with an external brake wheel on the roof, so that, should there be a runaway, the train crew could go aloft and use the brakes to stop.
There didn’t seem to be any possible way that the gold could be stolen.
The train travelling down the spur track from the small town of Pegasus hooted wildly as it rounded the bend in the grade and rocked and swayed on the last of the slope as it hit the flats.
It had five cars although there were only a handful of travelers making the run to the main line that would eventually take them to Denver. It had been rolling for two hours and would shortly arrive at the points that would let it onto the main line and the long, easy run to Denver.
But the driver had been given special instructions. On no account was he to pass the points if the signal flag showed orange on the junction pole. There was some sort of special train steaming out of Denver for Washington and it was essential that it should not be held up. It needed a clear track and the railroad had taken all precautions to see that none of the slower trains got in its way or, as sometimes happened, travelled towards an oncoming train because of an engineer’s impatience or because some roving Indian had stolen the flag.
However, the railroad had arranged for a red lantern to be lit and hoisted to the top of the pole as well. If it were burning, even if there were no orange flag, the Pegasus train had to wait until the Denver Special steamed by.
The engineer had killed enough time, he reckoned, as he yanked the whistle cord and gave another blast. The Denver Special ought to be past, he thought, and he was sick of travelling at a snail’s pace. His passengers wouldn’t have agreed with him; not the way the train had swayed and bounced down the grade. But then, the engineer wasn’t known as Lightning Cody for nothing, either. He was a man made to break records and had been doing it for so long that it was second nature to him.
He simply could not keep the train rolling at a slow pace. He was impatient, but he would follow his orders to the letter. If the orange flag and/or red lantern was burning when he reached the junction, he would wait, no matter how irritable it made him. But he was damned if he aimed to make the journey down from Pegasus a slow one any longer. He would rather steam up at full blast and wait half an hour, than crawl along and hit the junction when it was all clear.
The men of the Ghost Riders knew all about Lightning Cody and his penchant for speed. They aimed to use it for their own purpose and it wouldn’t cost them a red cent in bribe money.
They simply allowed Cody’s natural impatience to work for them.
Accordingly, the train from Pegasus arrived at the rail junction about thirty minutes early.
But there was no orange flag flying and no red lantern burning.
In fact, there was a green lantern burning on the tall junction pole.
Lightning Cody had been given no exact schedule for the Denver Special so he had no hesitation in giving a series of wild blasts on the whistle and sending the Pegasus train hurtling into the long curve of the junction and tearing out along the track that led up and over the mountain to Denver.
That part of the Rockies was known as the Witch’s Hump because the slopes were steep, rising up to permanent snow on the caps.
But the railroad spiraled around, descending in a series of steep, but manageable grades. It had been a major feat of engineering to carve the corkscrew descent out of the granite surface and, like so many marvelous accomplishments in building railroads in the wilderness, it would never be acknowledged until the men who had masterminded it had been dust for a hundred years.
Despite the spirals easing the line down from the crest to the gentler slopes of the base, there were two or three sections that were very steep indeed.
One was where a minor range met and traversed the main rise of the Witch’s Hump. It was known as The Slide and gave the passengers a thrill as the train hurtled down, seemingly in a death plunge, for the best part of five hundred feet. It was entirely safe, of course, but the passengers experienced a thrill of fear nevertheless.
The fact that trains had little trouble in climbing back up The Slide when coming from the other direction should have told folk that it wasn’t really as bad as they thought.
So, Lightning Cody sent his Pegasus train hurtling at The Slide from below and made it over halfway up before he had to change his throttle and valve settings. He grinned at his fireman. He was improving. His ambition was to hurl a train straight up that slope in one hit, and he vowed that he would do it someday.
But he was satisfied, considering the load he was pulling, and he slammed the throttles and valve wheels around expertly, roaring at the fireman to throw more logs into the furnace, and sent the train panting and laboring to the top. Then he started the easier climb up the spirals and laughed as he pushed his face out the window into the keening wind of the mountainside. Speed was food and drink to Cody.
But, if he had looked back he might have wondered what the group of men who came out of the rocks beside The Slide were doing. They were scooping thick grease from cans and smearing it on the rails.
They covered the whole length of The Slide, then tossed the empty cans into the brush and hurried back to a draw where their mounts waited. They swung into leather and galloped off across the face of the mountain.
By now, Clay Nash knew about the emergency hatch in the roof and had located it without anyone noticing.
He glanced at the clock as the train rolled along a flat stretch. They seemed to be making good time. There was little swaying in the heavy armored van; the weight of the steel plate kept it anchored to the tracks. There were special brakes to grip the wheels and the axles, too, to help slow it at the same rate as the other, lighter cars.
Suddenly, Nash frowned and he saw the other guards look swiftly towards him.
The train was stopping.
And it wasn’t the easy, gradual process of a normal stop, it was a harsh, grinding halt with the brakes slammed on hard and the wheels sliding and skidding on the rails.
The men braced themselves and stumbled a little as the train shuddered to a complete stop.
“What the—?” began a big Wells Fargo man.
“Trouble,” Clay Nash snapped, grasping his shotgun. “To the loopholes.”
The guards slid back the metal covers over the T-shaped slots and Nash moved into one of the turrets. He pressed his face against the cold steel and strained to see what was happening. The other guards looked towards him as he swore softly. They saw him stiffen then straighten.
“It’s another train,” he announced. “Comin’ towards us!’”
“What?” the big man exclaimed.
Nash nodded. “Yeah. Damn hard to believe—but it looks like one of the junctions has fouled up on the signals and let a train through that’s bound for Denver.”
“Hell almighty! What happens now?”
“The only thing that can happen,” Nash s
aid. “That train has to back up. Clear down the Witch’s Hump and all. I wouldn’t want to be on it, goin’ backwards down The Slide, but it sure don’t have any choice.”
He glanced at the concealed emergency hatch. He didn’t want to open it, but he sure as hell would like to be able to go out there and find out just what was happening.
It wasn’t as it appeared on the surface, he was sure of that. Every precaution had been taken to avoid such an event taking place. But something had gone wrong—or been made to go wrong. It was the first breaching of the plan and Nash didn’t like it.
He felt the tension starting to knot his belly. It looked like trouble was starting early.
The engineer on the gold train was a burly Scot called Duncan. He leapt from the cabin and confronted Lightning Cody who was shouting his head off.
“I’m tellin’ you, Duncan, there was a green lantern burnin’ at the junction.” The two angry men stood facing each other between their panting locomotives which were no more than fifty yards apart. “No orange flag and no red lantern. Just a green light. The damn points must’ve been switched in the right direction, too, or we couldn’t have gotten onto this main line.”
“I don’t care two hoots, Cody,” Duncan shouted. “You should have waited. You must’ve known I couldn’t have reached the junction by that time.”
“Known, hell! No one told me nothin’. Just look for the green lantern before turnin’ onto the main line and I damn well found the green lantern. Your run was so goddamn secret, it’s a wonder they even told you when you was leavin’.”
“They didn’t—not until thirty minutes before. But that doesn’t make any difference now. You’re on the wrong track and you’ll have to back up.”
“The hell I will!” flared Cody. “I followed my instructions and that’s all there is to it.”
Duncan whipped off his greasy cap and flung it to the ground. His face was red with anger.
“You damn well back up,” he screamed. “If you don’t, I’ve got a whole army to call on. And I’m sure the captain can spare a man or two to place you under arrest if needs be.”
