by Ralph Cotton
‘‘These excavations and new rail services are proof of Germany’s commitment to a lasting friendship with your government,’’ the other German dignitary took the opportunity to remind the Mexican officers.
"Sí," the young captain said in acknowledgment, ‘‘and as my uncle, Generalissimo Matissmo, has instructed me to say, sharing this gold with you is our way of saying gracias.’’
‘‘I have a question of concern,’’ said the other German, touching a white linen napkin to his wide, sweeping mustache. ‘‘With all of the armed guards we have aboard, why is it we have none posted atop the cars, or anywhere outside?’’
‘‘It is the generalissimo’s idea, and a wise one to be sure,’’ the captain said, tapping his forehead. ‘‘Why bring attention to what we are doing?’’ He grinned and added half jokingly, ‘‘The gold is inside! What better place to have my men guarding it?’’
The German didn’t see the humor in it. He frowned and gave the captain an icy stare.
But before he could comment, his fellow official, Herr Steinven, said to the captain, ‘‘You must excuse Herr Frunhiem. It is a tendency of our government to be overprotective in matters of this nature. Perhaps we can learn something from your people in this regard.’’ He gave the other German a searing look. ‘‘Eh, Herr Frunhiem?’’
‘‘I must admit it is true,’’ Herr Frunhiem said, catching his comrade’s subtle reprimand. ‘‘Forgive me my meticulous ways. I know that you and your generalissimo are far more familiar with your land and your people than I.’’
Sipping his coffee, the captain shrugged and said, ‘‘I commend you for your concern and close attention. But along this line there is never any trouble. The first thing the generalissimo did when he took power was start hanging banditos.’’ He smiled. ‘‘Unlike our americano neighbors, our rails are safe.’’ He raised his coffee cup as if in salute. ‘‘I say let them have their robbers and desperados. Here, we have no Jesse James, no Warren Beck. Here we know how to keep the gold in the proper hands.’’
Herr Frunhiem moved back and forth in his seat, his hands holding on to the table edge.
‘‘Is there something wrong, Herr Frun—’’
‘‘Are we moving backward?’’ Frunhiem asked, cutting him off.
‘‘Backward?’’ Captain Guzman sat with a baffled look on his face for a moment. But then reality snapped on in his head and he jumped to his feet and threw up a window curtain.
‘‘Yes, backward, you fool!’’ shouted Stienven, both he and Frunhiem springing up from the table, jerking linen napkins from the front of their suits.
‘‘Guards! See what is going on!’’ Guzman shouted over his shoulder, sticking his head out the window and seeing the engine and the gold car far ahead of them, chugging on, closing the gap to the top of the hill.
‘‘What’s going on?’’ Stenhiem raged out of control. ‘‘We are going backward, you uncivilized monkey! Do you have to ask?’’
Without being ordered, two guards ran out onto the car’s platform. One grabbed the iron brake wheel and, turning it frantically, tightened it down, hearing the metal on metal screeching sound beneath their feet. From the rear door of the troop car in front of them, young soldiers spilled out onto the platform and began turning the brake wheel on their car. The engineless train began to slow, but not much as the gravity of the steep grade pulled them downward.
In the engine, his Colt in hand, covering the engineer and fireman, Earl Caplan looked back at the severed train and chuckled beneath his bandanna. ‘‘If it gets easier than this, I’m giving it up.’’ Then, turning back to the firemen who stood bent over a pile of firewood, he said, ‘‘Keep stoking! Keep her roaring!’’
The sweaty face of the Mexican fireman turned up to him without stopping, his hand cramming chunk upon chunk of firewood into the open boiler door. ‘‘I’m afraid she will blow up if I keep stoking!’’ he said in Spanish.
Caplan looked ahead, seeing the gap closing toward the deep cut in the top of the hill. ‘‘Keep stoking!’’ he repeated, waving the Colt. Alongside the engine, he saw Beck and Hedgepeth wave to him as their horses pulled away, running up the grade ahead of the engine and its single car. Once into the belly of the deep cut in the hilltop, the two nudged their horses up a thin path until they could look down on the train.
Beck’s job had been to race alongside, leading Hedgepeth’s horse until the pen had been pulled and the coupling opened between cars. Then he’d sidled in close enough for Hedgepeth to step down from the platform and back into his saddle.
‘‘All right, English,’’ said Beck, slowing to a halt atop the hill. He pulled his bandanna down from his face as he spoke. ‘‘Next time we’ll get one of the younger men to do your part.’’
‘‘Nonsense,’’ Hedgepeth laughed, also pulling his bandanna down. ‘‘I have this part refined to an art form. Who else could do this as well as I?’’ He set his derby at a haughty angle atop his head and smoothed his hair back beneath the brim.
‘‘That’s what I thought,’’ said Beck, gazing up toward the deep cut in the hilltop as the engine and the gold car approached it. ‘‘Get ready, Soto,’’ he murmured to himself.
On the lower half of the grade, the severed cars had screeched and ground, and managed to all but come to a halt. Soldiers leaped to the ground and threw the iron wedging chocks under the wheels. The wedges scooted along loudly for a few yards, then brought the train to a jolting halt. Beck and Hedgepeth watched the doors to the stock car swing open and a loading platform drop to the ground.
‘‘Come on. It’s time we got farther back from here,’’ Beck said, looking fifty yards to their left and across the deep cut to where Soto waved an arm back and forth, signaling that he lit a long length of dynamite cord that reached down into the rocky hillside above the tracks. ‘‘It’s all up to our new explosives expert now.’’
A half mile inside the deeply cut hilltop, the rest of the gang waited restlessly on horseback. Seeing the two ride toward them, smoke from the engine’s stack puffing and bellowing behind them, Kirkpatrick stood up in a buckboard, half-loaded with heavy rocks. Joyously, he said, ‘‘Here they come, and not a single shot fired!’’ Behind the buckboard, his big dun horse stood with its reins hitched to the tailgate.
No sooner had the Tall Texan said the words than a blast shook the ground beneath them, causing their horses to spook and have to be settled. Behind Beck and Flannery, the engine with its one car rolled along quickly, steam hissing from its overtaxed fittings. Behind the engine and the express car, a wide belch of rock, dust and smoke shot straight up toward heaven and folded back over itself into a mushroom head.
‘‘Whoa!’’ said Cruzan, staring up as if in awe. ‘‘I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the federales getting through that for a while.’’
‘‘Right you are, Cruz,’’ said Kirkpatrick, standing, holding the reins taught on the two nervous buckboard horses. ‘‘But let’s not get full of ourselves. We need to work fast while we can.’’
Beck and Flannery had veered their horses off the tracks, allowing the train to finish coming to a halt. As soon as the rest of the gang had gathered around them beside the express car door, Beck pulled his mask back into place and banged on the door with his rifle butt. ‘‘Open up quickly. There’s been an explosion!’’ he called out in perfect Spanish.
The gang waited tensely, hearing bolts thrown open on the inside of the door and a voice of a soldier reply in the same language, ‘‘We felt it. What was it . . . ?’’ His words trailed to a halt as he slid the door open and he and three other guards stared down at the guns pointed up at them.
‘‘Lay down the rifles!’’ Beck demanded, seeing one soldier start to instinctively raise his rifle to his shoulder. As the soldiers hurriedly followed his order, Beck called out, ‘‘Step down! Hurry it up!’’
Jumping to the ground, Beck and the others pushed them along. ‘‘Keep moving! Walk toward the smoke. Don’t look back,�
��’ Carver said, watching them trudge along, still uncertain of what had happened.
‘‘So far so good,’’ Beck said, stepping out of the way as Kirkpatrick pulled the wagon load of rocks in beside the open express car door. ‘‘Where’s Soto?’’ He looked around in time to see Soto ride up, slide his horse to a halt, and step over onto the buckboard and into the car, a coil of blasting cord over one shoulder and a canvas backpack hanging from the other.
‘‘How did the blast go?’’ Beck asked as Soto rolled the pack off his shoulder and set it on the floor.
‘‘It went perfect. The mixture was hot, just as I meant for it to be,’’ Soto said matter-of-factly. "They won’t be riding up through the cut. It will take a crew of rail hands days to reopen this route.’’
Beck looked at Flannery with a slight smile. ‘‘Real good,’’ he said. They watched as Soto opened the pack and took out six palm-sized balls of pliable clay, each wrapped in its individual piece of moist canvas. He picked up two of the balls.
‘‘Bring two more,’’ he said to Beck, gesturing toward the four bundles of canvas. Looking at Clarimonde, who stood among the men who had gathered in the open door, he said, ‘‘Light a cigar. Keep it glowing for me.’’
Clarimonde gave Beck a glance, then did as Soto had ordered her, seeing Beck pick up two of the balls and follow Soto to one end of the car.
Beck stood holding the two balls and watched as Soto examined the large, flat door of a safe built into the width and height of the express car. Shaking his head as he ran a hand over the smooth, thick metal, he stuck one of the balls of clay three feet up from the lower edge of the door, and pressed it as deeply as he could into the crack.
‘‘What fools they are,’’ he said. ‘‘They build it bigger and thicker, yet they still build it the same.’’ He unwrapped the other ball, reached up, placed it the same distance down from the upper-right corner of the door and pressed it in the same manner.
Beck watched intently. This part he could do— this part he had done countless times. He looked around at Clarimonde as she moved forward, puffing on a thin, black cigar. She returned his knowing look and stood quietly as Soto turned to Beck and took the two balls he’d carried for him. ‘‘Want me to get the other two?’’ Beck asked as Soto turned back to the door.
‘‘No,’’ said Soto, ‘‘I won’t need them. I brought them just in case these fools might have engineered something more difficult. I should have known better.’’
Beck nodded and looked at Kirkpatrick, who had stepped in beside him, waiting restlessly, a long iron pry bar in his hand.
When Soto had flattened the four balls of nitro-infused clay into place, he cut four short lengths of cord and stuck their ends deep inside, squeezing the clay carefully around them. He then tied the four ends to the end of the coil on his shoulder and began stringing it out toward the door as the others hurriedly stepped out onto the buckboard.
Soto didn’t leave the car. Instead, he reached out the door to Clarimonde, took the cigar from her and stuck it in his mouth. He cut the end of the long cord from the coil on his shoulder, placed the other two balls into the pack and passed the pack out the door to Flannery.
‘‘Aren’t you getting out?’’ Beck asked, standing beside Clarimonde as he watched Soto stick the glowing end of the cigar to the cord.
‘‘No, I will stay here and watch. I want to see the instant of ignition.’’ As the cord sizzled along the express car floor, Soto crouched low but kept his eyes on the thick metal door of the safe.
Kirkpatrick held the buckboard team steady. The men on the ground held their horses’ reins in the same manner.
When the explosion went off, the entire car shuddered as the big metal door seemed to launch itself off the front of the huge built-in safe in a swirl of fire.
Soto saw the big door rock back and forth on the express car floor, the weight of it causing the car to sway from side to side until it settled. ‘‘Perfecto,’’ he whispered to himself.
Stepping in beside Soto, Beck fanned his hat back and forth. Seeing the safe door lying smoking on the floor, he called out, ‘‘All right, it’s blown. Everybody get your pouches and saddlebags loaded and let’s get out of here.’’
Chapter 21
As the rest of the gang hurried up across the buckboard and into the express car, saddlebags over their shoulders, Kirkpatrick climbed down to the ground and waited until everyone was inside. Then he led the wagon horses a few feet away, wrapped the traces loosely around an iron rail on the side of the seat and walked back to untie his big dun from the tailgate. Walking to the front again, he slapped the left horse soundly with a foot-long riding quirt.
‘‘Hyiieeee!’’ he shouted, stepping back as the two horses bolted forward along the tracks. He watched them until they cleared the cut and veered off across the flatlands, toward a hill line three miles away. ‘‘There you go, Matissmo. You and your federales chase that,’’ he said aloud to himself.
Looking along the tracks he saw the freed engineer and fireman walking back toward the cloud of smoke and Earl Caplan hurrying toward the express car. ‘‘You had better run, Earl. I’ll bag it all up and not leave you squat.’’ With a laugh he jerked his rawhide pouches from his saddlebags, hitched his horse quickly to the express car and climbed inside.
Gathered around the open front of the safe, the men filled their rawhide bags quickly. Beck had known from the start that no matter how many of the coins he and his gang bagged and packed away, there would still be a fortune in gold left behind. Seeing Carver stuff pouch after pouch inside his saddlebags laid out on the floor, Beck warned him, ‘‘Don’t get too greedy, Billy Todd. If you can’t carry it, what good will it do you?’’
‘‘Oh, I’m going to carry it, Memphis!’’ Carver said with a grin and a gleam in his eyes. ‘‘Don’t you doubt that for a minute.’’ He squatted down, hefted the saddlebags over his shoulder and struggled to his feet. His legs wobbled as he walked to the door and let the bags fall off to the ground. Then he hurried down, brought his horse over, and stooped down to do the same thing over again.
‘‘Everybody get finished up,’’ Beck warned, taking his watch from his vest and checking it.
‘‘What about you, Memphis?’’ asked Hunt Broadwell, stooping the same way Carver had done.
‘‘I’ll get mine. You get out of here, Hunt,’’ said Back, giving him a boost with his heavy saddlebags. ‘‘We’ll see you at Pierman’s in a few days.’’
Seeing that the men had begun walking out to their horses, their saddlebags filled, Memphis moved in and began filling pouches for himself. Beside him, Flannery said as he fumbled with the drawstring on a bulging rawhide pouch, ‘‘Memphis, do you realize we’ve made this job without so much as a shot fired?’’
‘‘So far, so good,’’ said Memphis. ‘‘Don’t jinx it talking about it.’’ He busily dropped coins into the rawhide pouches. A few feet away he noted Soto doing the same, but seeming in no hurry, with little concern toward gathering his share.
On the other side of Soto, Beck saw Clarimonde standing back, as if afraid to have anything to do with the gold. ‘‘Ma’am, a share of this is yours, the same as everybody else,’’ Beck reminded her.
Soto shot Beck a hard stare. But then he looked away and went on filling his pouches.
Clarimonde gave Beck a concerned look, but she made no effort to help herself to the gold.
‘‘Hurry up, Memphis,’’ said Caplan, one of the last to fill his saddlebags with the bulging pouches of gold.
Beck looked at him as he tied off his last pouch of gold and stuffed it inside his saddlebags. ‘‘Go on, Caplan,’’ he said. ‘’You don’t have to wait for me. Everybody takes off when he gets his share, remember?’’
‘‘I remember,’’ Caplan said, ‘‘but we all had a private vote. We’re none of us leaving until you leave. So, hurry up.’’
‘‘Are you out of your mind?’’ Beck stood, hefted his saddlebags over his shoul
der and walked to the door. Outside, the rest of the men sat atop their horses, waiting restlessly.
‘‘No more than I ever was,’’ Caplan replied. ‘‘Somebody has to keep you in line.’’
Beck shook his head and handed his saddlebags down as Broadwell nudged his horse forward and led Beck’s horse up to the express car door. ‘‘What am I going to do with you men?’’ Beck said, swinging down into his saddle.
Behind Broadwell, Carver and Cruzan led Soto and Clarimonde’s horses to the door.
In his saddle, Beck spun his horse in a tight circle with an arm spread and said, ‘‘All right, is everybody happy now?’’
The men nodded and laughed and murmured among themselves. ‘‘I’m happy!’’ Carver cried out, waving his sweat-stained range hat above his head. ‘‘Let’s go spend our money!’’
‘‘You heard him,’’ Beck called out. ‘‘Everybody split up into ones and twos and disappear. Anybody needs me, I’ll be at Pierman’s for the next week. Then I’m going to disappear too.’’ He looked at Suelo Soto and the woman and said, ‘‘Suelo, bad news, the woman is riding with me.’’
‘‘Oh, is she?’’ Soto looked at him in surprise; so did Clarimonde.
‘‘That’s right, she is,’’ said Beck. ‘‘I’m in charge. She’s been a working member of this gang ever since the job started. That means she takes orders like everybody else. I’m ordering her to ride with me. I want information she’s got.’’
‘‘Huh-uh, any information you get will come from me, when and if I feel like giving it,’’ Soto said. ‘‘I made it clear from the beginning, this woman is with me.’’ His hand was poised near his gun butt.
‘‘And I just made it clear she’s not,’’ Beck said with finality, leaving no pretense about what he expected this to turn into. He looked at Clarimonde, knowing that once he’d made this move, she would have no choice but to go along with it. She couldn’t weaken and back down. ‘‘Move your horse away from him,’’ he said to her, giving a jerk of his head. His hand lay also poised near the butt of his big holstered Colt. The men backed up their horses a step, watching intently. This was why Beck had wanted them to ride away without him. He’d intended to confront Soto one-on-one.
