West Texas Kill

by Johnny D. Boggs

  The guards did as he said, footing it toward the Davis Mountains foothills. From the streets, he heard Spanish curses. Lo Grande bellowed something, but Savage kept walking down the side of the tracks to the third car, turning just long enough to see Coffman and Barr climb into the second car.

  From the hotel’s roof, a rifle popped. Savage looked up, saw one of Lo Grande’s butchers firing at the guards fleeing toward the hills. He couldn’t tell if those bullets were finding their targets, and he really didn’t care. He knocked on the door of the car in front of the caboose, and yelled at its occupants. The wood, reeking of coal oil, would burn like a tinderbox. They could live, he said, or roast. Their fellow guards were running for their lives. He’d give them ten seconds.

  Those men had a lot more mettle. Savage reached ten, and struck a match across his gunbelt. The lucifer flamed to life. “Match is lit, boys. Once this fire starts, nobody leaves that car alive.”

  “Hold it!” came a quick shout, and the door slid open.

  The guns came out first, then the men, and again, Savage directed the guards to start hoofing it toward the hills. They ran, but Lo Grande’s men didn’t try to gun them down. Savage had figured they wouldn’t. Now, they’d want to save their ammunition.

  To use on the Rangers.

  “Amigo!” Lo Grande reined in his horse.

  “Get in the car,” Savage told Scheidner. Ignoring Lo Grande, Savage started walking toward Ahern and the caboose.

  “Amigo, mi capitán, wait. We have done it.” Lo Grande eased his horse closer to the tracks, but the animal danced nervously, and he gave up a few yards from the tracks. Still grinning, he said, “We are rich, amigo. Rich beyond your wildest dreams.”

  Now, Savage thought, as he reached the caboose, gripped the wrought iron railing with his left hand, put his right hand on the butt of one of his revolvers. Now comes something from William Shakespeare.

  “‘But be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’”

  “Which are you?” Savage called out. He climbed onto the platform. He didn’t care what Lo Grande said, just wanted to keep that son of a bitch talking. He put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Amigo. Por favor, I cannot let you go inside that caboose.”

  Smiling, Savage released the handle, and turned to face Lo Grande. The Mexican’s smile vanished. He looked up and down the train, noticing for the first time, that Savage’s men were well hidden. That train made a hell of a fort, and most of Lo Grande’s men were in the street. Sitting ducks.

  Just like Lo Grande himself.

  “I’m afraid,” Savage said, “that this train has a schedule to keep.”

  He drew as he ducked, heard Demitrio Ahern’s Sharps boom from the far side of the caboose, and saw a Mexican spill out of his saddle. Smoke and flame belched out of the first car, then the two other Gatling guns joined in, spraying Front Street with lead. Horses reared, screamed, fell, and died. Riders were cut to ribbons. Dust flew off the ground like grasshoppers.

  Lead ripped into the facade at the top of the hotel. The bandit stood, twisting in a macabre dance, and somersaulted off the roof, crashing through the awning and landing on the boardwalk. The Gatling swept across the other rooftops, ripping through wood, adobe, and the bodies of the sharpshooters Lo Grande had placed there.

  Savage snapped a shot, but Juan Lo Grande, lucky bastard, had slipped over the saddle of his horse. The horse went down, and Lo Grande took cover behind the dead animal.

  The train jerked, almost spilling Savage. A bullet whined off the iron railing. Another shattered the window to the door. He recovered, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The wheels to the engine spun, caught, and the train moved, slowly at first. Gunfire roared again from two of the boxcars. Ahern’s rifle barked. The air smelled of brimstone and death. A horse galloped past. Savage fell back, and fired again. Reaching up, he grabbed the doorknob, fell inside, and kicked the door shut. The far door opened, and Demitrio Ahern slipped into the caboose, working the breech to ram in another big shell.

  Lying on the floor, face pale, hands covering her ears, was Grace Profit. She looked up.

  Hec Savage smiled.

  The train began picking up speed. Doc Shaw had said he reckoned that the engine would top out at maybe fifty miles a hour. They’d leave Lo Grande’s men—what was left of them, anyway—far, far behind. Should have enough time to unload their fortune in Sanderson, and light a shuck for Mexico.

  A final burst from one of the Gatling guns rang out as the 4-4-0 locomotive pulled Hec Savage, his surviving Rangers, Grace Profit, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of gold bullion east, out of Murphyville, toward Marathon and Sanderson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Smoke hung about the ceiling of the boxcar, which reeked of the acrid stench of gunpowder and stale sweat, but to Hec Savage the place smelled of wealth. Sunlight beaming through the open side door reflected off the gold bar he held in his hands, and he couldn’t help himself. A tear or two almost welled in his eyes, and he practically giggled like a schoolgirl. The bar had to weigh close to twenty-five pounds. He tried to figure that out: Twenty-one dollars an ounce at twenty-five pounds? It was too damned complicated for him.

  He looked up, beaming, and saw a grinning J.K. Scheidner with a doctor’s stethoscope hanging around his neck. He heard Demitrio Ahern mumble something. He stood, weaving as the boxcar rocked, and brought the bullion bar closer to his chest. Grace Profit was looking at him, the wind rushing through her hair, her eyes on the safe Scheidner had just opened.

  “Maybe,” Savage said, “you’re thinking, ‘By God’s grace, Captain Savage was right. He can afford to buy me that fancy saloon in Argentina.’ Maybe you’re thinking, ‘Lord, Hec Savage isn’t so repulsive after all.’ Is that it, Grace?”

  She turned, looked out the open side door, and watched the desert fly past her.

  “You want me to open up those other safes, Capt’n?” Scheidner asked. “In the other boxcars?”

  Savage staggered back against the wall, amazed again by the weight of the bar. He knew when he’d hired J.K. Scheidner that having a safecracker on the payroll might come in handy, but he had been thinking if they happened to find some old strongbox some outlaws had taken from a bank, or if they managed to raid Juan Lo Grande’s fortress south of the border. He’d never expected to have this.

  He moved back, and looked into the safe. Nine other bars sat there, so damned beautiful. Ten bars were likely in the other safes in the other boxcars.

  “Capt’n?” Scheidner asked again.

  “No,” Savage said. “And keep that door there locked.” He pointed to the regular door at the front of the car. Those weren’t ordinary boxcars. They were built like a fort, with heavy, reinforced doors in the front and back, and the regular sliding door on the side, all equipped with bolts thick and heavy as railroad spikes. The walls of the cars were so thick none of the bullets fired by Lo Grande’s men had come close to penetrating them. “Don’t want to tempt the boys. You’ll open the other safes when we reach Sanderson.”

  It had taken Scheidner only twenty minutes to open that one. He could be cracking those safes while they hitched up teams to the wagons once they were in Sanderson.

  “Let’s go,” Savage said. Clutching the bar tight against his heart, he headed back for the caboose.

  Horses stomped around the compound of La Oveja, slaking their thirst from the troughs by the corrals.

  Don Melitón spoke sharply in Spanish to two of his vaqueros. They answered, “Sí, patrón,” and one of them helped Linda Kincaid into the saddle before the two men mounted their own horses, and led the Terlingua whore through the stone fence and toward Calamity Creek.

  “They will take her west to the town of Marfa,” Don Melitón told Chance. “That seems to be the safest place. For now.”

  Chance nodded. He looked at his left hand. He should change that dirty bandana he had used for
a dressing, and clean up the wound, but had no time.

  “They will stay with her until they hear otherwise from me. If Captain Savage or Juan Lo Grande want her, they will have to go through Benito and Tomás.”

  That, Chance figured, would take a lot of doing. Linda was safe. Now all he had to worry about was Grace Profit.

  After he gathered the reins to the black mare, Chance swung into the saddle. Beside him, Moses Albavera was already mounted. The don climbed with dignity onto the back of his horse, adjusted the stampede string to his hat, and stared hard at Chance, but did not pay any attention to the black man beside him.

  “I hope to God you are right,” the old man said. Chance took that as a warning. If he were wrong . . .

  Well, he wasn’t wrong. He knew that. Hoped he did, at least.

  Across the flats, the mountains rising in the background, the train barreled down the tracks, the smell of smoke and cinders obscuring the aroma of coffee brewing on the stove in the caboose. Like a ship in gale seas, the car rocked violently, so much that Hec Savage had trouble maintaining his balance as he tried to grab a cup.

  “How fast do you think we are traveling?” Demitrio Ahern asked.

  “As fast as she’ll go.” Savage fell against the north wall, knocking a map to the floor, and, shaking his head, continued to weave his way toward the coffeepot.

  “I hope Doc Shaw does not blow a boiler.” Ahern looked seasick.

  Savage had reached the stove. He loosened his bandana, using it to grip the handle of the pot, and filled his cup, splashing some of the liquid on the stove. He looked across the caboose, found Grace Profit rocking in her chair to the rhythm of the car’s violent dance. “Coffee, Grace?”

  She shook her head.

  He turned toward Ahern, was about to ask him the same question, but Ahern had jerked the rear door open, stumbled outside, and was heaving over the back of the caboose. The door banked open and shut as Ahern vomited. Savage laughed, and tested the coffee, gripping the wall with his right hand. He looked at the desk beside the front door, saw that bar of gold sitting there, shining so brightly, so beautifully, and sipped more coffee.

  While Albavera hurriedly threw wood into the furnace, Chance started to load their horses into the boxcar.

  “No, you ain’t!” Mickey McGee roared.

  “Why the hell not?” Chance asked. He looked down the tracks. No smoke. No train. Not yet.

  “Because I ain’t killin’ no horses,” McGee said. “Rangers and colored boys . . . don’t mind killin’ them, but I ain’t killin’ no horses.”

  With that, McGee simply stuck his head back inside the cab, and helped Albavera stoke that fire.

  Muttering an oath, Chance pulled the black mare away from the box, patted her side, and pulled off the headstall, tossing it into the cattle car on top of the saddle. He did the same with Albavera’s horse, and both animals wandered off in search of something to graze. Chance walked toward the locomotive, having second thoughts about their plan.

  He had suggested that they try to derail the train that would be coming from the west, maybe loosen the rails, maybe pile up rocks and debris on the tracks.

  “We don’t have the tools for that, or the time,” McGee had said.

  “Well,” Chance had suggested, “let’s just stay here, and leave this train to block their way.”

  McGee was adamant—“Obtuse,” Albavera had called him. “That would give them boys the advantage,” McGee had replied. “I ain’t givin’ them vermin no chance at all. I’m takin’ the fight to ’em.”

  Surprisingly, Don Melitón had agreed with the railroader. So had Albavera, and they had come up with another plan. As Chance gripped the railing on the old 4-4-0, Don Melitón rode up, his men right behind him.

  “We might be able to slow that train, but we won’t be able to stop it,” Don Melitón said. “A horse cannot outrun a train, especially not as tired as our mounts will be.”

  “I know,” Chance said. “I appreciate this.”

  Don Melitón and his vaqueros would be decoys, drawing fire from the outlaws on that train, while Chance, Albavera, and McGee . . . Chance shook his head.

  Don Melitón pointed a long finger at Albavera. “As I told you at La Oveja, this changes nothing, pendejo. You and me’ll settle our accounts after this is over.” Just like that, he faced the Ranger again, tipped his hat at Chance. “Vaya con Díos.”

  Chance nodded a silent reply.

  “¡Hijo de la chinga!” Ahern roared from the rear platform.

  At first, Savage thought the half-breed Mexican was referring to his stomach woes, but suddenly Ahern was stumbling through the door, reaching for his Sharps.

  About that time, one of the Gatling guns opened fire.

  “Get down,” Savage told Grace. He dropped his cup, drew a .44, and followed Ahern onto the platform. Another Gatling spoke up, kicking up dust a dozen or more yards in front of a bunch of hard-charging horsemen. Ahern knelt, pulled back the hammer, and squeezed the trigger. The carbine’s bullet sailed harmlessly over one of the rider’s heads.

  “Hold your fire, damn it.” Savage had to grip the iron railing to keep from being tossed off the caboose.

  The front door swung open. Savage turned and aimed the Merwin Hulbert through the open rear door. He held his fire, as Scheidner threw his hands up, yelling, “Don’t shoot, Capt’n. It’s me!”

  “Get back to that Gatling gun, man!” Savage snapped.

  “I’m out of ammunition for it, Capt’n. And those gents are out of range for my revolver.”

  One of the other Gatlings ceased firing.

  Hell, it wasn’t like anybody on that train could hit a moving target, not as bad as those coaches were rocking, as fast as that train was hauling. On the other hand, it wasn’t like one of those riders could hit anybody on board.

  Those thoughts had just crossed Savage’s mind when Ahern sang out, “Madre mía.”

  Savage looked down. The Sharps carbine clattered on the platform, and bounced over the side, smashing in the dirt. Demitrio Ahern sank back against the caboose, both hands gripping his stomach. Blood poured between his fingers. He looked up at Savage, his eyes revealing shock, his face paling. He started to lift his right hand to begin the sign of the cross, but the caboose lurched, and Demitrio Ahern slumped against the iron rails. Another bullet thudded in the wooden wall of the caboose.

  Savage dived back inside, and slammed the door shut.

  Those riders were damned good shots.

  “Where’s Demitrio?” Scheidner asked.

  “Dead.” Savage danced across the floor to the other door. Crouching, he stepped onto the platform between the two cars, looked north, then south. The guns had fallen silent aboard the train, but the horsemen would loosen an occasional shot. Savage counted about a dozen riders on the southern side of the tracks. A bullet whined off a piece of iron. He looked to the north. Another dozen men on that side.

  “Lo Grande’s men?” Scheidner asked, as Savage returned to the caboose, and slammed the door shut.

  “No.” He holstered his gun. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then who?”

  “Don Melitón Benton’s.”

  “That old man? What the hell would he be doing attacking a train? You think he knew about the gold? Think he’s trying to rob this train for himself?”

  Savage answered the Ranger with a withering stare.

  Scheidner wet his lips, then ducked as another bullet thudded into the outside wall of the caboose. He gave his commander a hopeful look. “What are we gonna do?”

  “Nothing,” Savage said. He looked at the gold bullion. “We’ll outrun those idiots. We’ll—”

  He never finished. The whistle screeched from the engine. Almost immediately, the brakes on the train squealed, showering the desert flats with sparks. The engine groaned. Savage slammed against the door, Scheidner slid across the floor and Grace was tossed out of her chair.

  Cursing above the metallic noise of the bra
kes, Savage reached up, grabbed the doorknob, and started to pull himself up, then felt himself hurled backward, hearing a deafening roar, before his world turned black.

  A gloved hand pulled the iron door open, blasting Dave Chance with heat, and he shoved in two more pieces of wood before the furnace door slammed shut. Moses Albavera helped pull him to his feet, and Chance, wiping the soot off his face, leaned against the back of the cab, caught his breath, and turned to fetch a couple pieces of wood from the tender. Albavera looked at the gauge on the boiler, and shot Mickey McGee an I hope you know what the hell you’re doing look.

  McGee leaned his head out the window, came back in, pushed the throttle, and held his breath.

  “You hear something?” Albavera leaned out the locomotive.

  Chance could barely hear the words over the roar of the engine. Albavera pulled himself back inside, rubbed his eyes. Both men heard the noise then, and McGee peered out the window. Chance set the pieces of wood on the floor, put his hand on the butt of the Schofield. McGee’s hand pulled back on the throttle, and the train began to slow. He looked at his two helpers, and said, “Iffen I was you two, I’d disembark this locomotive right about now.”

  “You haven’t stopped it yet,” Albavera protested.

  “This train don’t stop. In fact, it’s about to speed up.”

  McGee’s eyes convinced Chance. As the train slowed, he leaned out the cabin, and launched himself into the air.

  He landed on his moccasined feet, tumbling violently, uncontrollably over cactus, stones, and through one creosote bush. He heard the roar of the passing boxcar, and prayed his momentum wouldn’t carry him back up the embankment, onto the rails, and under the wheels. Then the train was gone, and all Dave Chance could hear was the pounding in his head, and several yards away, the curses of Moses Albavera.

  Spitting out sand and blood, Chance pulled himself to his feet. His left arm was broken between his wrist and elbow. He grabbed his hat, snagged on that creosote bush, and slammed it on his head. Blood seeped from his split lips, from his busted nose, down both arms. He pulled the Schofield from its holster, blew the dust off it, making sure it would still cock. He dropped it back into the holster, and reached for the Smith & Wesson .32, but it was gone. He looked down along the rails, but couldn’t find it. By then he was standing over Albavera, who was sitting up, shaking his head, testing the sawed-off Springfield.