Bandit Gold

by J. R. Roberts

  “That’s a fact,” the Gunsmith admitted.

  “Of course,” Lloyd said. “Our main concern is to see to it nothing happens to Miss Mather. That’s why we’re gonna take turns guardin’ her door.”

  Clint raised his eyebrows with surprise. Posting sentries around the clock seemed extreme to the Gunsmith, but he didn’t voice his opinion.

  “You fellers will be broken into shifts—six hours each. First Bruno, then Jimmy, then Mike and then our new addition, Adams here. Any questions?”

  “What happened to your shift, Stan?” Vargas asked, resentment in his voice.

  “I ain’t takin’ one,” the gunfighter answered. “I’m in charge of the rest of you. That means I’ll be checkin’ to make sure you all stand your guard proper. If I catch anybody asleep or drunk on duty, I’ll toss him off this train next stop it makes . . . unless I decide not to wait that long.”

  “Nobody gets thrown off this train without my say-so!” a gruff voice declared.

  They turned to face the speaker, a short, thickly built man with a small scrub-brush mustache. Dressed in a white shirt, suit trousers and a vest with a gold watch chain extended across his broad belly, he would have resembled a prosperous businessman if he didn’t have a .44 Hopkins & Allen on his hip.

  “Who are you, feller?” Lloyd demanded, his tone suggesting he didn’t really care.

  “I’m Walter Patterson, Pinkerton Detective,” the man replied with a pompous jerk of his head to arrogantly lift his double chin. “I’m in charge of law and order on this train.”

  “Ain’t that something,” Bruno remarked, cracking his knuckles to add menace to his contempt. “Just like in the dime novels, huh?”

  “We don’t reckon we have any business with you,” Lloyd stated. “You figure you got any with us?”

  “I see you men as potential troublemakers,” the Pinkerton man answered. “You’ve got hardcase written all over you—all five of you!”

  The pistolman glared at Patterson. Vargas and Bruno grinned while Markham’s chest seemed to swell with pride. Clint gave a small, helpless shrug.

  “If I have any trouble with you,” Patterson continued, “I’ll have this train stopped, wherever we happen to be at the time, and you’ll be allowed to get your horses out of the cattle cars and then you’ll be on your own. Is that understood?”

  “We’ve got a job to do,” Lloyd replied flatly.

  “This man is just trying to do his,” the Gunsmith stated. “I’ll admit none of us are exactly choirboys,” he told the detective. “But we’re on this train to stop trouble, not to start it, Mr. Patterson.”

  “Well, see to it you behave,” the Pinkerton man snorted before he waddled away.

  “Cabrón,” Vargas muttered sourly.

  “We didn’t have to give that son of a bitch no explanations,” Markham looked at Clint with contempt. “Why didn’t you kiss him while you were at it, Adams?”

  The Gunsmith sighed. “There’s no point in getting on bad terms with the man. We’d do better if we tried to get along with him, wouldn’t we?”

  “Adams is right.” Lloyd grinned. “Let the fat man swagger around and enjoy himself—so long as he don’t get in our way.”

  The others smiled. A large, cold knot formed in Clint’s stomach. He felt as though he was the only wolf in the pack that didn’t have rabies. The screech of a whistle announced that the train was about to move. It seemed to mock the Gunsmith for his decision to remain with the group as the locomotive lurched forward.

  Chapter Nine

  The Gunsmith carried his gear into his quarters. The room was a small, stuffy compartment with two bunks mounted doubledecker style to the wall. Mike Vargas sat on the bottom mattress, honing his knife with a stone. He looked up at Clint with disinterest and continued to sharpen his dagger.

  “Guess Stan put you in here with me,” he muttered. “Figures.”

  “Yeah,” Clint said dryly. “I’m just thrilled to have you for a roommate too.”

  Vargas rose and pointed the tip of his knife at Clint. “You don’t like sharing quarters with a half-breed, no?” He gestured with the dagger. “You want to do somethin’ about it?”

  Clint’s left hand lowered his saddlebags to the floor as his right fell to the holstered .45 on his hip. “Relax, Vargas. You’ll live longer. Besides, I figure I have to room with one of you guys. Lloyd has a room to himself and I don’t imagine I’d care much for his company anyway. Markham would probably be just as bad and Bruno doesn’t seem like such a great fellow either. Right now, all I have against you is the fact you seem aweful eager to use that knife when there’s no need for it.”

  “I am very good with a knife, Adams,” Vargas smiled, but he backed away from the Gunsmith and sat on the bunk. “I had to learn how to use a blade as a boy because everybody hates a mixed blood like me. I have used a knife many times in the past and I’ve killed a lot of men with one, Adams.”

  “I believe you,” Clint nodded. “Guess I get the top bunk, right?”

  “Sí,” Vargas gestured with his dagger again. “Any objections?”

  “No,” Clint assured him, shoving his gear in a corner.

  “You’re a real obliging hombre, aren’t you?” Vargas remarked. His tone suggested he found the characteristic to be a weakness.

  “I try to be,” the Gunsmith answered as he climbed onto the top bunk.

  “You know something, Adams?”

  “A couple of things,” Clint replied, stretching out on the mattress.

  “I’m not just a half-breed,” Vargas said bitterly. “I ain’t that lucky.”

  “How’s that?” Clint said. He didn’t really care, but Vargas obviously wanted to talk and the Gunsmith hoped the conversation would discourage the man from getting any more notions about his knife.

  “My father was part Yaqui Indian. In Mejico that’s the same as being a leper. He crossed the border and got married to another outcast. My mother was half-Anglo and half-colored. I guess one of those plantation fieldhands got himself one of those lily-white Southern putas or a planter did some late-night plowin’ with a nigger maid. Ma never explained how it happened. Maybe she didn’t know herself.

  “So I wind up with all four races in my veins,” Vargas continued. Clint heard him rummage about under his bunk and then pull the cork from a bottle, probably tequila or whiskey. “Do you know what it’s like being half-gringo, half-greaser, half-injun and half-nigger?”

  “That’s a lot of halves.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “No, you have no idea because you are an Anglo,” Vargas growled. “It is hell for one that is less than pure white to live in this country.”

  Clint didn’t comment. If Vargas wanted to wallow in self-pity, the Gunsmith figured that was his privilege.

  Suddenly, Vargas laughed. “But money is the great equalizer. One day I will be very rich and then the gringos will treat me with respect. You speak like a man educated in the East. They taught you to talk good and act like a gentleman, no? You probably read books and write letters and you think that makes you better than me.”

  “Vargas” Clint replied in a weary voice, “I don’t think I’m any better than you and I haven’t done anything to merit your accusations. We’re supposed to be here to protect Mather’s daughter, not to fight among ourselves.”

  “Sí,” Vargas laughed bitterly. “You talk good, Adams, but why are you with us, eh?”

  “I keep asking myself the same question,” Clint sighed. “I think it had something to do with money.”

  “Sí,” Vargas barked with delight. “It is what I said, no? Money and power. That’s all the Anglos admire. One day, I will have plenty of both.”

  With that, Vargas turned his attention to his bottle. He didn’t offer to share his liquor with the Gunsmith, which didn’t bother Clint. The Gunsmith kept his pistol by his side, hand resting on the butt, in case Vargas got crazy drunk and decided to cut him
up just because he was available. However, the mixed breed only drank for a while, muttered something in Spanish that Clint didn’t understand and lay down on his bunk. Clint soon heard snoring coming from the bottom cot.

  Clint glanced down at his gear in the corner and decided he’d have to fish the .22 New Line Colt revolver out of the saddlebags when he got a chance to do so without Vargas or any of the others being aware of it. The Gunsmith had picked up the diminutive gun in Kansas a while back and often carried it when he felt a backup weapon might be needed. Everything seemed to suggest his current adventure would get worse before it was over—and the very men he was working with promised to be a bigger threat than any band of Apaches they might encounter on the way to Yuma.

  He stripped down to his long johns and closed his eyes. Clint allowed himself to drift into a light slumber, his senses still alert although his muscles and nervous system rested. He had slept in this manner most of his adult life, a weapon always within reach. At times, the Gunsmith wondered if he’d ever be able to fully relax.

  When I’m dead, he thought.

  The answer seemed logical enough and it didn’t disturb his sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  A woman’s scream jolted Clint from his shallow slumber. Fully alert and instantly aware of his surroundings, the Gunsmith leaped from the bunk and landed nimbly on his feet, the modified Colt in his fist. Clint jerked open the door and dashed from the room before Vargas had even risen from his cot.

  The Gunsmith followed the woman’s voice through the corridor. A middle-aged man’s head poked from an open doorway, gazing curiously down the hall, although not quite curious enough to get personally involved. His eyes swelled in their sockets when he saw the tall figure of Clint Adams, clad only in his long johns, charging toward him with a gun in his hand. The man swiftly retreated into his quarters and slammed the door. The Gunsmith kept moving.

  As he’d suspected, the scream had come from Linda Mather’s room. Where the hell is the sentry? Clint thought, glancing about even as he ran, half-expecting to see the dead or unconscious figure of one of the escort team sprawled on the floor. Worry about it later, he told himself as he slammed a naked foot into the door.

  It burst open and he immediately dropped to one knee and cocked the Colt, held in a firm two-handed grip. Jimmy Markham stared into the muzzle of Clint’s gun. Linda Mather stood beside a large, brass-framed bed. She tried to hold together a negligee in one small fist. The front of the flimsy pink garment had been torn apart. Linda’s other hand rubbed her right cheek. Both sides of her face were tinted crimson.

  “I didn’t hurt her!” Markham declared. Although he wore his twin Colts, both hands were raised in surrender.

  “Are you all right, Miss Mather?” Clint asked, his gun still trained on the youth.

  “Yes” she replied in an unsteady voice. “Just make him leave me alone.” Linda tilted her head toward Markham.

  “Looks to me like he tried to force himself on you and slapped you around to try to get you to oblige,” the Gunsmith remarked, rising and walking into the room.

  “She wouldn’t stop screamin’,” Markham declared as though to justify his actions. “I wouldn’t have hit her ifn she’d been quiet.”

  “You little bastard,” Clint hissed through clenched teeth.

  “No!” Linda exclaimed. “Don’t shoot him. Just get him out of here, please.”

  The Gunsmith approached Markham. “The lady thinks I should let you go, but I’m inclined to think you deserve a bullet. What do you think, kid?”

  “Well,” Markham thought for a second or two. “I didn’t really do nothin’ ...”

  “Oh?” Clint shrugged as he eased the hammer forward to uncock his Colt.

  Markham began to lower his arms and sighed with relief. The exhaled air suddenly became a retching gasp when Clint rammed the muzzle of his pistol into the kid’s solar plexus. His left hand turned into a fist and cracked into the side of Markham’s skull, sending him into a corner.

  “Pretty touch with a woman, huh?” Clint remarked, tossing his Colt onto the bed.

  “He’s still armed, Clint!” Linda cried in horror.

  “So what?” the Gunsmith rasped as he stepped toward the young gunman.

  Through a scarlet haze, Markham saw his opponent’s hands were now empty. His lips twisted like snakes to form a sneer as his hands plunged to the butts of his holstered revolvers.

  The Gunsmith’s right leg swung out. He raised his toes to drive the hard ball of his bare foot into Markham’s crotch. Agony shot through the boy’s groin to branch out through his nervous system like an electrical shock. His mouth formed a black oval, but the only sound to escape from his throat was a dull gurgle.

  His hands abandoned the still holstered pistols to claw at the source of his suffering between his legs. Clint whipped a right cross to the kid’s jaw and propelled him into a fancy chest of drawers with a large mirror. An ivory-handled hair brush clattered to the floor as the impact of Markham’s body rocked the furniture.

  “Madre de Dios!” Vargas exclaimed. He’d arrived in time to see the Gunsmith discard his revolver and take on the young pistolman barehanded. “Mucho machismo . . . mucho loco!”

  Markham staggered away from the dresser, his knees buckling slightly. Clint was a bit surprised that the kid was still on his feet. Oh, well. That could be taken care of easily enough.

  Watching the Gunsmith’s feet, Markham reached for his Colts once more. However, the kid had to get the guns out of leather before he could use them, something Clint didn’t intend to allow. The Gunsmith quickly stepped forward and grabbed Markham’s wrists, pinning his hands—and the revolvers—to the holsters.

  Clint’s head reared back and shot forward, the front of his skull butting Markham in the face. The youth sagged, blood trickling from his mouth and both nostrils. Clint pulled Markham’s arms to draw the kid’s Colts, then twisted the boy’s wrists and forced the guns to fall from their owner’s grasp.

  An uppercut slammed into Markham’s already battered solar plexus. The boy moaned as he doubled up. Clint seized the youth’s hair with his left hand, jerked Markham’s head back and delivered a devastating right to the point of the kid’s jaw. Markham crashed to the floor.

  “That’s enough!” Stansfield Lloyd demanded. He and Bruno had joined Vargas in the doorway to witness the conclusion of the onesided battle.

  “I think Jimmy would agree,” Vargas commented. “If he could talk right now.”

  “Not bad, Adams,” Bruno said, looking down at the unconscious youth.

  “Jimmy was molesting me, Stan,” Linda explained. “Clint came to my rescue.” She turned to the Gunsmith. “How can I ever thank you, Clint?”

  When he looked into her beautiful face, a glow of gratitude and admiration lit up her features and Clint knew how he’d like her to thank him.

  “You just did, ma’am,” was all he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bruno dragged Jimmy Markham across the threshold. A black porter, dressed in railroad overalls and cap, watched with dismay and fearfully clutched his bucket and mop. He was about to advise Clint Adams to put some clothes on, but the pistol in the Gunsmith’s hand discouraged the porter.

  “Maybe I should clean up later, suhs,” the man remarked woodenly.

  “Wait a minute,” Stansfield Lloyd snapped. “Give me that bucket.”

  “Suh?”

  Lloyd pitched the dirty water from the bucket into Markham’s face. The youth coughed violently and rolled on his stomach to throw up. Lloyd kicked him sharply in the ribs.

  “Get up, you jackass!” the gunman ordered.

  Markham stared up at Lloyd. “Stan, I—”

  “I’ve got one thing to say to you, kid,” Clint announced in a cold, flat voice. “If you ever touch that girl again, you’d better know how to do more with a gun than twirl it on your finger.”

  “You won’t have to do nothin’, Adams,” Lloyd growled. He glared at Markham. �
��What’s wrong with you? Manhandling the boss’s daughter like she was a saloon whore!”

  “She’s a good-lookin’ woman, Stan,” Markham replied feebly as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “And it sure looked like she wanted it.”

  “That’s why she screamed, huh?” Lloyd hissed.

  The pistolman’s arm became a blur and suddenly the muzzle of his Remington .44 was jammed under Markham’s chin and the hammer had been cocked back. The youth stiffened in terror and closed his eyes as if to eliminate the danger by not seeing it. Lloyd’s fast, Clint noted. Very fast.

  “I usually grant a feller one mistake, Jimmy,” Lloyd whispered, his tone a soft howling wind in a graveyard. “You made a real big one and you’d better not make another. Understand?”

  Markham tried to nod, but the gun barrel in the hollow of his jaw arrested the movement. “I understand, Stan,” he replied through clenched teeth. “I won’t do nothin’ like it again.”

  “What’s going on here?” the voice of Walter Patterson demanded.

  The Pinkerton detective waddled through the corridor, red-faced and panting from unaccustomed exertion. Lloyd shrugged. “Just a little misunderstanding,” the gunman replied.

  Patterson glanced at the faces of the escort team and thrust a finger at Markham. “What happened to him?”

  “Got into an argument that sorta got outta hand,” Lloyd answered. “It’s over now.”

  “I was told a woman screamed back here.”

  “That was Miss Mather,” Lloyd nodded. “She thought she saw an injun at her window. Just a bad dream. Wanta ask her about it?”

  “I told you men that I expected trouble from you and I see I wasn’t mistaken,” Patterson declared. “I will not tolerate this sort of conduct on my train.”

  “Your train?” Bruno chuckled. “Ain’t that something?”

  “Does the railroad know you own this rig?” Vargas inquired with a wiry grin.

  The Pinkerton man thrust his fists into his wide hips. “If there’s another incident by any of you, I shall have all five of you put off this train. Is that clear?”