by Brett Waring
Cody looked past the angry Scot and saw a captain climbing down from the troopers’ car, followed by two soldiers carrying rifles. He also noticed the Gatling gun and he began to realize just how important the Denver Special must be.
Lightning Cody compressed his lips and looked back to Duncan. It went against his grain to have to lose all that time by backing up but he knew he would have to do it and the less trouble he caused the better.
“Okay ... I guess you got right-of-way, Duncan, but I want it to go on record that I followed my instructions to the letter. It wasn’t my fault that things got fouled up.”
“You’re not being so stupid as to be sayin’ that it was mine, are you?” the Scot bristled.
Then the captain came up and stepped between the two engineers.
“Now, let’s get this straightened out pronto,” the captain said, unbuttoning his tunic pocket and taking out a report book and pencil. He opened the book. “First off, let’s get some names and times ...”
As the captain took notes and listened to the stories of the men in turn, Nash and his men stayed alert at their loopholes. They could see that the countryside on either side of the tracks was a tangle of rocks and brush.
Nash didn’t like it. He had a strong hunch that something was very wrong—even though a soldier had been sent back to say that there was no real problem. The Pegasus train would back up and the Special would soon get under way.
“Tell the captain to keep it in sight but not to get too close,” Nash called to the soldier. “I ain’t easy about this.”
The other guards looked at him sharply. They were all professionals; the cream of the crop. They, too, had their hunches; it was good to have them confirmed by Nash’s words.
But nothing happened. Within fifteen minutes they were moving again; the Pegasus train in full reverse and the Special moving forward at a reduced speed in its wake.
Nash kept the guards at the loopholes for a few miles and then gave the order for them to relax but to keep their guns handy. He still wasn’t easy about the situation, even though everything seemed to be normal enough.
He didn’t know that while the train had been stopped, it had picked up some extra passengers.
Men had slipped out of rocks and bushes beside the tracks and had clambered onto the rods beneath the cars. Two men were riding beneath the armored van with small sledge hammers and iron driving pins.
On the next car back, filled with troopers, two men clung to the axles as they worked on the brake bars and shoes with long spanners.
Behind them, under the second troopers’ car and the caboose, other men also worked on the brakes.
The descent of the mountain began, both trains moving lower around the spiraling tracks. Lightning Cody took it easy as he reversed down the range and refused to speak or answer the questions flung at him by his fireman. He was fuming at the loss of time, and he figured that once the Special had passed along the main track, he would make a determined assault on The Slide. He couldn’t hope to break any speed records but, by hell, he might be able to go up and over The Slide in one run.
At least he aimed to try ...
“Slide’s comin’ up, Lightning,” called the fireman and there was tension in his voice.
“I know, damn it!” Cody snarled, staring back as he eased off the throttle. The train had to go up and over a hump and then the big run down the steep grade would begin. He had never done it in reverse before but Cody didn’t anticipate any trouble. In fact, he was looking forward to it, and bared his teeth in a tight grin.
He would take out some of his lousy mood on the passengers and scare the hell out of them.
“Hey, Lightning,” the fireman called in sudden alarm as they began the descent. “What’s wrong? We’re goin’ like a bullet. Ease off or you’ll kill us.”
Lightning Cody was also alarmed. He liked speed, but he wasn’t exactly stupid. They were racing down the steep slope and he desperately checked his throttle settings and valve positions. It didn’t make sense; even allowing for the steepness of the grade, they shouldn’t be travelling anywhere near as fast, he thought. And there was that strange ‘feel’ to the train. He couldn’t understand it.
The wheels were spinning, but there was no shower of sparks; they didn’t seem to be gripping and yet the train was travelling faster than he thought it possible. Sweat was streaming from his face. He jerked the brake bar and nodded to the trembling fireman to spin the extra braking wheel.
It made no difference.
The train was a runaway.
Cody looked down at the section of rails they had already passed over and he knew instantly what was causing it ...
Duncan shook his head slowly as he watched the Pegasus train shoot down The Slide as if it had been propelled from a gun. Damn crazy Cody, he thought. The man’s ego’s been hurt and now he’s going to kill all his passengers, just because he’s let his temper get the better of him.
Well, Duncan didn’t aim to try anything fancy with the big load he had. The Slide had been on his mind ever since he had drawn the job of first engineer, and with that heavy armored van in the middle of the line of cars, he wasn’t looking forward to the steep descent.
He aimed to take it steady and ...
Duncan frowned and suddenly became more alert. He saw the second engineer look towards him sharply as both firemen straightened from their chores.
There had been a distinct lurch to the forward part of the train, just as they had topped the hump before The Slide began. It was almost as if part of the train’s load had been cut adrift.
Duncan leaned out the window and glanced back. At the same time, there was a short burst from the Gatling gun and he felt the blood drain from his face as he saw that the armored van had been cut loose ...
At the same time, the second engineer yelled:
“Dunc! The brakes don’t work.”
“It ain’t the brakes,” bawled one of the firemen on the footplate. “The rails are covered in grease.”
“Hit the sand chutes!” yelled Duncan and the second engineer stabbed his boot on the pedal that released pounds of gritty sand onto the rails. But it had no effect. The grease was too thick and the Denver Special hurtled down The Slide in the wake of the Pegasus train—without a hope of stopping.
Behind, the Gatling gun clattered in a series of short bursts.
In the armored van, Clay Nash had felt two lurches: one following the other within seconds. He didn’t know at the time that men riding beneath the van had crawled out to the ends, to where the shackles joined the van to the flat-top car in front—and to the first trooper’s car behind.
The men had waited for the slight forward motion of the van that eased the tension momentarily on the shackles and, with expert blows, drove out the linking pins, setting the armored van adrift—right on top of the hump.
At the same time, the men who had destroyed the brakes on the troopers’ cars and the caboose, had clambered onto the roof and had leapt across the gap onto the roof of the armored car.
Inside, Nash and his men heard the dull sounds as the men landed. Then came the screech of spinning metal as the exterior brake wheels were locked and the armored van stopped dead, just past the top of the hump. The Gatling gun raked the armored van but the bullets couldn’t reach the men because of the sharp angle as the front of the train ran wildly down the greasy tracks.
Behind the armored van, the troop cars and caboose rocked and swayed down the slope and, though several soldiers clambered up to the roof to spin the emergency brake wheels, nothing happened, because the shoes and bars had been loosened from their rests.
The armed troopers watched helplessly as they raced backwards down the steep grade. They knew there was no hope of stopping until they reached the bottom of the spirals, miles away around the mountain.
“We’re in big trouble, boys,” Nash said to the guards.
It was strangely silent in the armored van and it had become stifling because the
movement of air had ceased to flow through the ventilators.
“What the hell can they do?” asked a man named Drake. “They can’t bust in through the steel plate, even with dynamite, and they can’t open the van from the outside.”
Nash’s eyes lifted to the ceiling and the section that held the emergency hatch. True, it was supposed to be only opened from the inside, according to his sealed orders, but someone had to know it was there, apart from Hume and himself: for instance, workmen had had to install it. Maybe someone had reached them with bribe money, paid them to leave the catch undone, or fix it so that it could be opened from the outside as well.
“They can’t bust in through the roof, either, Clay,” Drake said, as he saw the big man looking up at the ceiling. “We’re lined with steel.”
“Not on the floor,” spoke up another man who represented the army, a tough sergeant named Brock. “Always figured that was a weakness.”
“Hell, it’s three-inch hardwood planks,” Drake said. “It’ll stop a bullet dead, better than steel plate, almost.”
“Who’s gonna be shootin’ bullets from underneath?” growled Brock. “I was talkin’ about explosives. Charge of dynamite could come up through that floor and drop the gold boxes clear out onto the track if a man knew what he was doin’. ’Course, it’d likely kill all of us, but I don’t reckon they’d worry much about that.”
“Thanks, Brock,” Nash growled, his mouth tight, giving the sergeant a cold look. “Just the kind of thing we need for morale right now.”
Brock shrugged. “No use hidin’ your head in the sand, Nash. It’s a possibility.”
Nash nodded. He knew. He had even mentioned the same thing to Hume, but the chief of detectives had been unable to get authorization at that stage for armoring the floor. By then, his plans had been submitted and approved by the necessary authorities and they had been impressed with the schedule and the almost non-stop route Hume and Nash had worked out. They figured that if the train held to the plan devised, there would be no need to worry about the remote possibility of someone trying to blast in the floor.
No one had figured on the train being stopped—and certainly not the fact that the armored car might be separated from the rest of the train.
But it had been done. Nash knew nothing of the greased rails or the sabotaged brakes; all he knew was that the armored van had been isolated and that it hadn’t been for nothing. Whoever had planned it, knew exactly what they were doing.
The worst part was waiting—and wondering what was going to happen next.
Meanwhile, the Ghost Riders’ plan was going to schedule.
The van had been separated in almost the exact spot the plan had called for. It had rolled on only a few feet and that wouldn’t make any difference at all. The forepart of the train was still streaking down The Slide like a rocket and the men beside the track could imagine the panic and frantic efforts of the engineers in the big loco as they desperately tried to keep from overtaking the lighter Pegasus train.
Mohawk Brown was supervising the men who crawled underneath the armored van with bundles of dynamite. He squatted beside the tracks and watched, directing the placement of the charges. He had four sticks fixed to the floor of the armored express car in singles. Two in the center, one each about halfway between the center and the ends. The fuses were fitted with the detonator caps and the lengths run back to where Mohawk crouched. Then he directed the men to place two charges under each set of wheels.
Sam Castle, wearing his white sheet and mask, just in case he was spotted by any of the guards, rode his horse along to where Mohawk waited.
“What the hell you doin’ with that dynamite under the wheels?” he demanded.
Mohawk looked up at him soberly and chuckled at Castle’s fancy disguise. Further down the line, he could also see the draped forms of Pres Hayden, Tod Burman and Grant Tibbs, riding back and forth, keeping anxious eyes out for any sign of returning troopers, but he was confident they would be long gone before any of the army men could get back.
Long gone—and rich.
“We’re gonna blow the floor out, right?” Mohawk asked the rancher and the man nodded slowly. “We dunno for sure where that gold is stacked. It might drop right out onto the line for us and make it easy. Or it might be somewhere in the back of the car on a section of floor that don’t split apart. Which means we’d have to crawl under and up into the van through the hole we’re gonna blast. Wastes time, Sam.”
“And how does a charge under the wheels save time? Seems to me, you’re likely to blow ’em off the bogey and then the damn car’ll be resting on the tracks and we’ll never get in.”
Mohawk grinned. “You just don’t know dynamite the way I do, Sam. You leave this part to me. You and the others stopped the train. You just leave me get on with my bit, savvy?”
There was a steel edge to Mohawk’s voice and Castle tightened his lips behind the mask, then nodded curtly and went down the line to look at The Slide.
The two trains were out of sight around the mountain bend. He hoped they wouldn’t crash into each other, because dozens of people might be killed—which would make the whole deal that much harder to get away with. The killing didn’t bother him; it was the reaction by the authorities that would rankle.
Back at the armored van, Mohawk had all his charges in place. He made signs to his men and they faded into the rocks. Mohawk moved back himself, playing out the fuses and estimating the lengths required so they would all burn at the same rate and explode as close to one another as possible.
“By God, they’re gonna blow the car,” Drake said, standing on tiptoe, straining to see out of a loophole.
Nash was beside him in a second.
“Can’t see anything,” he said.
“Well, I sure did. Some hombre duckin’ in among the rocks and he had what looked like a lot of wires in his hands. They had to be fuses, Clay. Judas! They’re gonna blow us to kingdom come.”
The other guards turned to face Nash. They were tough men, with steel nerves, but none of them, including Nash, liked the idea of being inside what amounted to a coffin.
Nash grabbed a chair and placed it beneath the emergency trapdoor. He climbed up and started to lift away the fake join covering, revealing a recessed bolt.
“Only found out about this in Hume’s sealed orders,” he said as he worked desperately to slide the bolt back. “It’s an emergency trapdoor in case there was a train wreck. When you go up, lie flat along the roof. If you’re spotted and there’s shootin, too bad, but try not to let ’em see you. Then slide down and jump off the side away from where they are.”
The bolt came free and he stood on tiptoe and heaved up the steel door.
“I need a boost,” he said, gasping a little.
“Fuses are burnin’,” rapped Drake from his loophole. “I can see the smoke.”
Men grabbed Nash’s legs and heaved him up. He felt the door lifting upright and, just as it started to fall back, heard a shattering explosion and the screams of the guards.
Flame and splinters erupted into the van, then it shuddered and lifted off the rails, tilted dangerously, rocked, and tilted again at one final explosion, a little late. It hurtled past the point of balance and crashed onto its side with a rumbling impact, lifting dust and stones into the air to join the thick, acrid smoke of the dynamite.
Inside the van it was sheer hell. Dismembered bodies hurtled around while the ammunition stacked beside the loopholes exploded with intermittent, cracking volleys as the bullets flew and ricocheted murderously.
Suddenly, everything went still. The van was on its side beside the tracks with a gaping, smoking hole in the floor and a shattered box spilling gold coins onto the cinders.
Mohawk Brown emerged from his shelter, screwing a fingertip into his ringing ear and grinning. He waved and the Ghost Riders came galloping towards the scene of devastation as the outlaw leader pointed triumphantly to the wreckage of the armored van.
“Help yo
urself,” Mohawk said. “I just busted open your piggy bank for you.”
Chapter Six – Manhunt
Captain Macrae cursed as he led his men up the steep mountain slopes. They slipped and slid and fell on the loose gravel. Some of the troopers were using the railroad ties, skipping from one to the other over the cinders, but it was still a steep climb.
They had travelled miles. The cars had finally come to rest in a depression between the hills around the curve of the mountain. They had rocked and swayed several times, rolling up the grade a few yards and then back down. With no braking mechanism whatever, the cars continued to sway until they lost all momentum. But Macrae and his men were pouring out of them before they came to their final rest and he had the first squad running back up the mountainside, rifles at the ready, by the time the last of the men had leapt to the ground.
Before he had been able to break them into groups, they had heard the rumbling of explosions from the top of The Slide. Smoke poured from the distant ridge as they rounded the curve, but that was all they were able to see. The armored van was hidden by rocks and brush and the top of the ridge.
There was no gunfire and Macrae’s mouth tightened. It sounded as if the guards hadn’t even had a chance to put up a fight. He knew the Gatling gun and the horse van had been hooked to the loco and he couldn’t understand why the train hadn’t been able to stop and at least allow the Gatling to give some protection to the car. Even if it had stopped part-way down the steep slope, his men had been instructed to manhandle the Gatling if the situation warranted it. No, there had been good planning. Someone had covered all the angles.
They had severed the protection so expertly that he knew they were going to find the armored van gutted and the gold gone.
By the time they reached the wreckage of the van, Captain Macrae knew he was right. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing inside that smoking wreck of the van but there was nothing else for it. Some of his men were standing around, looking at the shattered flooring. Two soldiers were being sick in the bushes. Macrae steeled himself as he walked closer and averted his eyes from the splintered flooring.
