Red sat on his heels, stroking his erection.
"You want cock so bad you can taste it, whore. Tell me you want it."
Lee looked away. Red threw more wood on the fire so he could see her better.
He straddled her sitting on her crotch and watched her face.
"Give up the stubborn streak, whore. You lose, and you know it. Fuckers like you always lose, one way or another. You want me to cut one of your tits off?"
She glared at him a second, then turned away.
"Don't ignore me, bitch! My wife used to do that! I taught her a lesson. Am I gonna have to teach you one too?"
A grin came on his face and he moved between her legs and roughly drove into her vagina. He watched her as he pumped a dozen times.
"Oh, yes, the good stuff is coming. They opened the flood gates and it's coming, and when it gets here, then I've got a big surprise for you, little whore. A big surprise!"
He laughed softly and settled down to pumping hard. As his breath began to come in short gasps he took the knife in his right hand.
Red's eyes closed and his face contorted, he drove into her brutally hard and at the same time slashed her throat with the knife.
As he watched the blood spurt from her throat, the woman under him writhed in her death throes and Red screamed to the greatest climax of his life.
"My God!" the nearest man said. "He killed Lee! Look at that!"
The other men gathered around the two bodies.
Jimmy pulled his six-gun. "The bastard killed a woman!"
"She was just a whore."
"Yeah, but she was a woman. I don't hold with that." Jimmy stood in the firelight, his gun out.
Red came away from the dead whore slowly, his only concession to her had been to open his fly. Now his hand snaked down to his right hip in the shadows he drew his pistol.
The .44 roared twice in Red's hand and Jimmy, the youngest man around the fire, slammed backward as both rounds hit him in the chest and drove him into the darkness.
Red stood and looked down at Jimmy.
"The son of a bitch drew on me!" Red said.
They looked at Jimmy, and found he was still alive.
"No man got a right to draw on me!" Red bellowed in his own defense.
Jimmy could not talk. His eyes fluttered open, then closed. He lived for another fifteen minutes before he died.
They had just started to dig a grave for the two bodies when they heard a horse coming. All four men faded into the shadows until they saw the rider in the firelight.
"Yeah, what the hell you want?" Red called from the darkness.
"Got a message from Tony. He says get the camp closed down and cleaned up and be ready to move. There will be a train come along here sometime after midnight. You're to have the pack animals all ready."
"Easy to do that," Red said. "Tony tell you anything else?"
"Yeah," the messenger, a man in his twenties said. "He told me that you would pay me ten dollars for the ride."
Red laughed. "Yeah, he said you would be coming and that I should pay you off." Red's sixgun blasted twice and the rider jolted out of the saddle to the ground. He was dead by the time the men got to him. They stared at Red.
"Hell, I'm just doing what the boss said to do. He said to kill the messenger once he gave us the directions from Tony. I do what the fuck I'm told. Now, let's get these three bodies out of the way, get our gear together and be ready to ride at midnight."
Spur McCoy watched the last mine owner certify with the Treasury Department officials the number of gold and silver bars put on the train, and saw the three separate locking doors slide in place over the three-foot square opening in the vault-like interior of the box car. It would be a tough job for anyone to break into it.
"Won't be long now before I'm free and clear of this protection job," Sheriff Gilpin said. "I'll be glad when the train pulls out and the Federal officers take charge."
"That's when the real problems will come," Spur said. He stared at the train, trying to figure out the weak spots, the places where it was most vulnerable.
There were only four cars in the train, the engine and coal car, the gold vault car, the one passenger car with blacked out windows where Spur knew there were fifteen blue coated soldiers with loaded repeating rifles ready for a stiff fire fight if needed. The caboose brought up the rear.
The engine was the most vital part of the train. Stop the engine, you stop the train. Spur had cleared with the Federal men on board and the army people so he could come and go on the train. He told them he would be riding at least until the gold car reached Reno where it would be put on the main line.
Now he stepped into the passenger car and saw three army .45's lift to cover him as he entered the door.
"Evening," one of the army men said. "Glad it's you."
Spur waved at them and went to the end of the car. The door onto the little open platform where the passenger car coupled with the freight car was locked shut from both sides. McCoy went back to the caboose and climbed the metal ladder to the roof.
The train had not moved since the last gold and silver came on board. It was ten minutes until midnight.
Spur walked along the caboose top, jumped the short distance to the top of the passenger car and walked to the end. He jumped to the freight car that held the gold. There were no openings from the top into the car below. No explosives could be dropped down ventilator tubes, or any such openings. He moved on to the coal car and stared at it in the gloom of the half moon.
Nothing there but coal, a fireman to shovel it, and the engineer who drove the train.
Spur lay down on top of the box car, and felt the train lurch as the engine hissed steam and the string of units bounced and jerked as the train began to roll slowly down the track.
Yes, he would stay where he was. He had a good view of the whole train, could see any problems ahead and be ready for them. Nothing happened as the train rolled through Virginia City at ten miles an hour. It would not pick up any more speed until it left the city, and not much then because of the downgrade coming.
He saw a man move first out of the corner of his eye. They had just retraced their route past one of the mills, and a man dressed all in black jumped from a building near the tracks and ran hard, grabbed the rail along the coal car and boosted himself up to the coal pile.
The engineer had not seen the man move. The fireman was busy shoveling coal. Spur ran toward the edge of the freight car. The coal car was attached to the engine on this rig. He saw the man now, standing beside the engineer, a gun in his hand, as he yelled at the man who ran the train.
Spur watched with a frown. He could shoot the robber, but the man might live long enough to kill the engineer. There seemed no way to take the gunman alive.
Slowly the train picked up speed as it headed past the last few buildings and into the grade that would wind down over four thousand feet to the valley twenty-one miles away.
Spur lay at the edge of the jolting box car. He heard glass breaking behind him, then three thunderous explosions that rattled the train but did not blow it off the tracks. Spur ran back to the passenger car and saw smoke coming from the broken windows. He lay down and hung over the side so he could see inside the car. The section was shattered. A dynamite stick bomb thrown through the window? Probably. Then he noticed the soldiers. They were riddled with wounds, everyone he saw was dead or dying. He saw one sergeant still in his seat, the ends of two large nails sticking out of his head.
That was when Spur remembered the deadly shrapnel bombs he had seen made: nails taped to two or three sticks of dynamite. They created a grape shot effect and in a 360 degree zone. The soldiers could not help him defend the train!
Quickly he lifted back to the roof and ran along the top of the rocking train to the coal car. The man still had his gun trained on the engineer.
Spur took out his army .45 Colt and aimed carefully at the gunman. He must not let the jolting boxcar ruin his aim. In any case h
e had to aim as far from the engineer as possible. Spur waited for a relatively straight and even section of track, and he fired. The round tore through the shoulder of the gunman below. He slammed against the engine controls, then turned to fire to the rear. Spur's second round took him through the heart, and the engineer clawed at him to get him away from the controls. In doing so the engineer pushed the dead man out of the engine to the swiftly passing roadway.
McCoy jumped to the coal car, waved at the fireman who only then looked up, and moved toward the engineer.
"Somebody is trying to take over the train!" Spur shouted so the engineer could hear over the noisy steam engine.
The engineer nodded.
"Thanks for killing that bastard! He was bragging to me how easy it was to get on board."
"Don't stop the train for any reason before we get to Carson City," Spur said.
The engineer understood.
Spur looked up and saw a figure outlined against the sky standing on the coal car. He tossed something at Spur and then leaped back to the boxcar.
Spur McCoy looked down in the light from the fire box and saw a sputtering fuse of a dynamite bomb lying at his feet. The fuse burned rapidly, and he could see dozens of nails and staples taped around the two sticks of dynamite.
If it went off in the engine cab it would kill all three of them and the train would become a runaway!
Spur dove for the deadly dynamite and nails bomb.
THE DEATH DEALING nail bomb on the floor of Engine No. 20 of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad had a burning fuse not three inches long when Spur McCoy ended his dive on his elbows. He grabbed the horrendous device and tossed it out the big window opening of the engineer's cab.
Almost at once there was a shattering roar as the bomb went off before it hit the ground. It had dropped well below the height of the window and only three or four of the bent and twisted nails drove into the window and clattered harmlessly around the metal train cab.
"Close," Spur said as he stood. The engineer jumped back to the controls on the train, and slowed the line of cars as they started down the first grade on the twenty mile trip to Carson City.
Safe for the moment, Spur knew, but the man who threw the bomb was still on the train. Spur jumped on the coal and peered over the top of the treasure car. No one rode the top of the train. The killer could be between the cars or in the caboose or passenger car.
The Secret Agent moved cautiously, checking every possible hiding place as he worked down the top of the gold car. No one lurked on the platform between the cars. He knew the door into the death car was locked from both sides so the man could not have entered that way.
A minute later Spur ran along the top of the passenger car and checked the platform between the passenger car and caboose.
No one there.
He eased down the ladder and looked inside the regular passenger unit that held the army guard.
For a moment it reminded him of the war. Blood and bodies were everywhere. One or two of the men might still be alive inside, but it was doubtful. He would check them as soon as he found the bomber. He went to the roof of the caboose. There was no entry through the front of the car. He had taken only two steps on the wooden roof when a rifle bullet plowed through the top of the caboose a dozen inches from his foot, then another, and another. He pulled back to the front of the Passenger car and waited.
It seemed the only solution. He waited for a slight upgrade, then went between the fast moving cars and worked to uncouple the cars. He had learned how in St. Louis from an old train man, and now the information came in handy. As the train slowed on the upgrade, he kicked the last release point and the cars came apart. The caboose slowed more and more and gradually the passenger car and the rest of the train pulled away from it. Someone appeared on the top of the caboose swear ing. Spur dodged inside the passenger car as the rifleman fired six shots into the door of the train car, but missed Spur.
The agent looked at the death in the passenger car. Eight men had been killed outright by the three blasts of the small bombs. Two more must have lived for a few moments. One groaned where he lay in the aisle. Spur ran to look at him, stepping over bodies with no arms, and another with his head blown off.
The wounded man had no face, only a bloody mass of flesh. A massive wound in his chest bled a steady stream. Spur turned away. There was no way to save the man from death.
He ran out of the car, saw the caboose a quarter of a mile behind, and stopped on the tracks. Spur climbed to the top of the car and hurried forward to the coal car and engine.
"How far are we from Virginia City?" Spur asked.
The engineer looked outside.
"Maybe two miles, no more. Just starting."
As he said it a blast lit up the tracks a hundred yards in front of them. The massive explosion curled one of the tracks back like the stem of a wilting flower. Rocks and dust burst into the air with tremendous force, some of them raining down on the onrushing train.
"We're doing fifty miles an hour!" the trainman yelled. "No chance I can stop her. Jump on the uphill side!"
Spur looked on the downhill side and saw why. They were snaking along a sheer drop into dark ness. He had no idea how far down it was to solid ground. He crawled to the right hand side door and motioned for the fireman to jump. Then Spur went off hoping for a soft landing.
The hard ground of the embankment where the track bed had been blasted out rushed up fast to meet Spur McCoy. He hit on his feet and tried to run, but the forward motion of his body jolted him ahead of his feet and he hit on his shoulder and rolled away from the deadly grinding wheels of the train.
He rolled, hit his head, rolled a dozen more times, then came to a stop against a huge boulder which had been blasted apart and shoved aside to make room for the tracks.
When he stopped rolling he could hear the wheels of the engine screaming as the engineer locked them and they shrilled steel against steel in a hundred foot skid.
But there was not time nor distance enough. The dynamiter had planned well. The blast came at precisely the moment when the engineer would not have time left to stop the train before it hit the blasted tracks.
In the faint moonlight Spur had seen the right of way filled with a continuing shower of sparks from the tracks and wheels, then he saw the sparks stop, the great hulk of the engine lifted as it tried to climb the twisted, upthrust tracks. It was an impossible task and the shattered track bed gave way on the outside of the cliff and the engine tilted, then slanted more to the side and rolled half over as it plunged off the tracks into the black void.
The treasure car and the passenger car followed the engine. They were locked tightly together, and Spur could only watch as the thirty million dollars in gold tipped over the side and vaulted into the black air space over the deep canyon.
Spur tried to sit up, but his scratching made noise, and he waited, counting the seconds until he could hear the crash below. It took too long! How deep was the gorge?
Then the sounds came, the crash of metal against rock, metal tearing, wood splintering, rocks crashing down from the small landslide, then the booming, blasting roar of the boiler exploding.
Spur waited but there was only silence. He was sure the engineer did not get out of the cab. He was on the wrong side, and he was locking the drive wheels until the end, hoping for time to stop his train.
At least the soldiers were all dead before they went over.
Spur sat up. He ached in every muscle in his body. His heavy jacket had protected his torso and arms, but his legs were scraped and scratched and his hands a mass of scraped off skin and raw flesh. He felt for his six-gun. It was still in place. The tie down had saved him, keeping the holster from flopping around.
The Secret Agent pushed on the rock and got to his feet. The caboose was out of sight a half mile down the tracks.
Spur walked unsteadily to the tracks and looked over the dropoff. It looked bottomless in the dark. Two hundred feet? Probably enough
to crush the steel box inside the treasure car and pop it open like a cardboard box when you stepped on it.
He could not get down to the wreck from here. Staring through the gloom, Spur decided a quarter of a mile on down the tracks the cliff was not so sharp, and he figured he could climb down.
McCoy heard a groan and checked the right of way. Fifteen feet behind him he found the fireman. The man had a broken leg.
"Just stay right there, pardner. We'll get a work train or a handcar out here as soon as we can. Afraid thirty million in gold has to come before you do this time."
The fireman nodded. "Christ, but it hurts!"
Spur looked at the leg, straightened it out, causing the man to scream. Then Spur put some outward pressure on the foot and the fireman grinned.
"Yeah, that's better. I can stand it now. Thanks."
Spur patted his shoulder and limped on down the tracks. It was painful walking, as he made his way around the hole in the tracks and the fifty feet of roadbed that had been blasted into the gorge. It would take a major construction project before a train could run on the tracks again.
Spur's left knee collapsed and he almost fell. He caught himself and stood, tried the knee and found the heavy bruise on the side. He tested it and found that he could walk, if he took it easy. No hard running, no dramatic jumps.
It took Spur twenty minutes to work his way down the steep side of the canyon. He held on to scrub growth, worked along shelves of rock and at last got to the bottom. There was a dry watercourse but no wetness. As quickly as he could, he walked back toward the steaming mass of wreckage ahead of him.
There had been no fire. The furnace must have been smothered by the wreckage so there was nothing to burn. If the flames had worked into the brush and timber along the valley floor it could have been a serious forest fire.
He came to the dead engine first, crumpled and lying on its side looking like a beached whale, entirely out of its element and natural surroundings. The engine had hit the side of the cliff and rolled and tumbled. Two of the drive wheels had been knocked off, the smokestack had vanished, and as he got closer, Spur saw that the body of the engineer hung half out the window on Engine 20.
Spur: Nevada Hussy Page 14
