Border Fever

by Pronzini, Bill

  The posse had recovered from the sudden braking and were once again firing through the car’s windows, forcing the raiders to remain where they were in the rocks flanking both sides of the tracks. From his position near the gangway, M’Candliss squeezed off twice at a bearded face that appeared from behind one of the crags. Both shots, hurried as they were, missed low and sent showers of rock dust into the bandito’s face.

  M’Candliss ducked back, crawled across to where his rifle was wedged next to the fireman’s seat. At the left-side gangway, the fireman was crouched with his head down, cursing a blue streak and firing his revolver sporadically around the steel side guard. Frederickson, despite the pain of his wounded shoulder, was hunkered alongside him; he had a smoking pistol in his hand as well.

  Coming back with his rifle, M’Candliss waited until the bearded outlaw showed himself again. Then he raised up and snapped off a quick shot, and this time he didn’t miss. His bullet took the man in the throat, brought him toppling out of the rocks to sprawl along the right-of-way.

  The rest of the banditos continued to pour lead down from above, pinning M’Candliss and the posse inside the train. There was no way for any of them to get out without being cut down by the crossfire of fifty guns. They seemed to be trapped there, helpless, with no way of warning or stopping the approaching delegates’ special. And once that special reached the trestle over the chasm, and began to cross it...

  M’Candliss emptied his rifle at the rocks, hunkered low to reload. The heavy continuous gunfire filled the early morning with hollow reverberations of sound. The sun was rising, still hidden behind the peaks but showing an aureole of radiance at their tips. M’Candliss glanced up there and then hauled out his stem-winder again. Close to eight-thirty—

  And suddenly, above the hammering of rifles and revolvers, he heard the low mournful wail of a train whistle. It could only be the delegates’ train, a half-hour early and starting up the grade on the opposite side of the gorge.

  Damn! A coldness gripped him as he listened to the whistle blow a second time; from its clarity, he judged that the train was no more than a mile from the chasm now—a mile from death for all those on board. They wouldn’t hear the gunfire until it was too late for the engineer to stop. And there was nothing M’Candliss or the posse could do, pinned down the way they were...

  M’Candliss’ mind whirled, spun up an idea. It was close to suicidal as far as his own hide was concerned, but if Providence was still looking their way he might be able to save the lives of the American officials on that special. But he had to act immediately; there was no time for weighing and considering, only time for action.

  He turned his head, shouted across the cab to Frederickson and the fireman, “Start shoveling coal into the firebox! Get the pressure up on those gauges again!”

  Frederickson looked across at him as if he had gone loco. “What the hell for?”

  “Don’t you hear that whistle? That’s the delegates’ train! The only way to stop it is to blow up the trestle before they reach it. They’ll hear the explosion and maybe they’ll be able to stop in time.”

  “God Almighty!” Frederickson exclaimed. “You ain’t fixin’ to run this hog out onto that trestle yourself, are you?”

  “That’s just what I’m fixing to do,” M’Candliss answered tensely. “There’s no other way.”

  The wounded engineer and the fireman were staring at him with a mixture of respect and plain awe; neither of them moved for two or three seconds. Then the fireman snapped, “All right, then! Give me that shovel, Fred. M’Candliss wants steam pressure, by God he’ll get steam pressure!”

  M’Candliss waited until there was a break in the shooting, then shoved up and ran onto the footplate in front of the tender. He crouched there, protected by the side guard, and yelled at the top of his voice, “Tucker! Ed Tucker! Open the door so I can talk to you!”

  Moments later there was an answering bellow from the passenger car. “Tucker here!” He was also answered by a volley of shots from the surrounding rocks; bullets whined off metal, burrowed through the coal.

  “I’m here, Oak!” Tucker shouted again.

  “I’m going to uncouple us,” M’Candliss called back. “I’ll need cover fire.”

  “Why? What’s the idea?”

  “No time for explanations. I need that cover!”

  “All right, Cap, you’ve got it!” It was Meckleburg who shouted that; he must have been close to the sheriff at the open door. Then both men turned back inside because seconds later M’Candliss could hear them instructing the rest of the posse to step up their firing.

  As soon as the rifles and pistols were creating a simultaneous roar from inside the car, M’Candliss took a deep breath and then pushed up and scrambled across the coal in the tender. His boots struck the metal of the platform beyond, and he dropped to his knees at the pin coupler which joined the locomotive to the car. Feverishly, he dug at the fastenings of the pin, loosening it, trying to pull it free. Two slugs whined off the tender, a third cut an angry path past his bowed head, narrowly missing. His fingers were broken-nailed and bleeding, but he paid them no mind. He could still hear, above the din, the mournful wail of the whistle on the delegates’ train.

  Another bullet hummed by, and there were shouts from the men inside the passenger car as they sent round after round of lead at the banditos in the rocks. Behind M’Candliss, in the locomotive’s cab, he could hear the fireman cursing vehemently as he fed coal to the boiler, and Frederickson’s shouts that the steam pressure was beginning to rise.

  After what seemed like minutes, M’Candliss managed to work the pin free of the couplers. He flung it down, pivoted upward, and rolled back across the coal into the cab of the locomotive.

  Lumps of sooty anthracite bounced out with him, clattering on the footboards; a slug plucked at his forearm, stinging, but he scarcely felt it. He went to where Frederickson crouched at the controls.

  “I thought you were a goner out there for sure, Mister,” the old engineer said.

  M’Candliss grunted, staring at the gauges. “Have we got enough pressure yet?”

  “She’ll move, but she won’t break any speed records.”

  Before M’Candliss could respond, the whistle on the delegates’ special sounded again. If his judgment was correct, it was less than a half-mile from the gorge now and climbing fast. Time was running out.

  He snapped, “You boys had better jump for the car—now! I’ll take it from here.”

  Both Frederickson and the fireman hesitated, but the authority and urgency in M’Candliss’ voice decided them. Helping the wounded engineer onto the footplate, the fireman shouted to Tucker to open the car door—they were coming across. M’Candliss heard the sheriff’s answering shout, saw Frederickson and the sooty fireman go scrambling over the coal and down onto the platform. The men of the posse covered them with another fusillade as they dodged safely inside.

  M’Candliss was already at the controls. He released the brakes, pulled the throttle open. The ancient locomotive began to edge forward, drivers clanking as they turned, steam hissing loudly inside the boiler. More bullets whanged off its metal hide as Gueterma and his banditos realized what was happening, but M’Candliss kept his head down below the side window as he worked the throttle and checked the gauges.

  The 4-4-0 seemed to inch along as if it were a gigantic black slug, even though he had the throttle wide open. The stuttering clamor of the valves and the staccato beat of the exhaust swelled against his ears, but the needle on the pressure gauge wavered low. There simply hadn’t been enough time to build up enough pressure for any kind of speed.

  The whistle on the Prescott train sounded again from across the gorge, much louder now, echoing in M’Candliss mind with the continual reminder that time was fast running out. He poked his head outside for an instant, risking a bullet, as slugs screamed off the locomotive’s sides. The cowcatcher had almost reached the trestle.

  He could see the sheer rock wa
lls of Saddleback Gorge, the dizzying drop to the rocks below, and he knew that if he didn’t want that to be his final resting place, he had to jump soon. But if he left the throttle, it would close automatically and the locomotive would stop before it reached the place where the raiders had rigged out their dynamite. Frantic-eyed, he looked around the cab for some way to hold the throttle wide open.

  Then he saw the coal shovel which the fireman had dropped just before he and Frederickson had jumped for the passenger car. He bent, picked it up. Working rapidly, he managed to jam the tool between the throttle and the side guard, wedging it in as tight as his straining muscles would allow. If he jumped, and it popped loose...

  M’Candliss refused to think about that. The shovel would hold. It had to hold. He turned from the controls and ran to the gangway, keeping low. He poised there as the locomotive nosed out onto the trestle.

  And then he leapt out to the side, away from the gorge but onto unprotected open ground—straight into the murderous fire from Gueterma’s banditos in the rocks above.

  Chapter Fourteen

  M’Candliss landed on his feet, staggered forward several steps in an upright position, and then sprawled onto the rocky ground with jarring impact. Bullets gouged the earth around him as he rolled toward a melon-shaped boulder set almost but not quite flush against the cliff. Miraculously, he reached the safety of the natural shield unhurt.

  He came up next to the boulder with ‘the .44 still clenched in his right hand, having held it in close to his body with his finger clear of the trigger when he jumped from the locomotive. He pitched his body into the narrow space between the boulder and the wall, conscious of stinging pain in his arms and legs from rock cuts during his fall and roll. More whistling lead chipped splinters from the stone behind him.

  He saw that the 4-4-0 was full on the trestle now, still seeming to crawl snail-like along the steel rails and wooden struts. The shovel was holding. He moved his gaze back to where the passenger car sat by itself some fifty yards from the trestle. The men from Adobe Junction were still sending heavy fire at the renegades, keeping them pretty well pinned down in their entrenchment. It was this relentless firepower which had allowed M’Candliss to escape unharmed from the locomotive.

  He sent two shots from his own weapon winging across at a raider who tried to move from one outcropping to another; the man twisted, fell from view. Seconds later M’Candliss heard the keening moan of the approaching train once more, so close that he knew it was just beyond the corner of the opposite ridge. As he peered across the chasm, he saw the advancing plume of smoke from its stack drifting up over the rocks. Any second now the special’s locomotive would steam into view.

  Heart hammering, M’Candliss brought his eyes back to the 4-4-0 on the trestle—just in time to see the explosion.

  There was an ear-splitting concussion, a blinding flash of orange light and acrid black smoke. Flying bridge particles and locomotive sections erupted through the flame and smoke; metal splinters and lumps of coal rained down all around. Some struck the unprotected banditos in the rocks; M’Candliss heard shouts and short, terrified screams.

  The fireball that engulfed the locomotive licked hungrily at the broken, teetering wreck that had once been the trestle. Then M’Candliss, safe in his niche behind the boulder, saw what was left of the old engine fall end over end with a trail of fire toward the rook-strewn bottom of the gorge.

  As the last rumble of the explosion died away, there came the sound of two long whistle blasts from the delegates’ train. Then its locomotive hove into view around the far bend, sparks flying from its wheel flanges as the engineer, having heard the explosion and able now to see what had happened to the trestle, applied full brakes. The cars behind swayed violently; the tortured scream of locking brake shoes and metal grinding on metal reverberated off the Cliff walls.

  More of the burning trestle crumbled and followed the debris into the chasm; the last remaining timbers were disintegrating, like an arch with its capstone missing will collapse. The oncoming locomotive skidded toward the brink, and for an instant M’Candliss thought it would slide off the twisted rails at the edge and plunge downward, carrying its string of cars with it.

  But then he saw it shudder, like a huge animal shaking itself, and come to a rattling stop no more than a dozen yards from the gorge. Relief surged inside him as he watched smoke belch from the locomotive’s stack, blanket the cars behind in sooty plumes. There was a rocking jerk, and then the engine, a big Mallett Hubbard, slowly reversed from the gaping maw.

  In the ranks of the outlaws, mass confusion seemed to have taken over. They were no longer shooting at the Adobe Junction posse, and Meckleburg, Tucker, and the others, sensing that the tide of battle had turned in their favor, burst from the car with their weapons blazing. A half dozen of the banditos spilled dead or wounded from their positions above, and the others suddenly seemed loath to stand and fight; there was only sporadic answering fire. The possemen, fanning out on both sides of the tracks, made it to cover without losing a single one of their number.

  High in the rocks directly across the right-of-way came a sudden angry bellow. M’Candliss, reloading his pistol, recognized the voice as Frederico Gueterma’s—a voice maddened with rage and frustration.

  “Attack!” Gueterma was screaming at his renegades. “Run the anglos into the gorge! We still outnumber them, you fools! Fusilar! Fusilar!”

  The outlaws responded sluggishly, as if they knew the cause was now futile. Some showed themselves, only to be cut down by the bullets of the possemen. Now it was the anglos, the honest men of Arizona, who were on the offensive. And it was plain that they could taste the sweetness of victory and revenge.

  The banditos floundered. Then, in a body, those still alive fled in headlong retreat, disobeying their grande general as they ran for their horses and their lives. The men from Adobe Junction cut down more of the fleeing raiders, showing them the same lack of quarter that they had shown the people of the villages they had pillaged and destroyed.

  M’Candliss, left his niche behind the boulder and the possemen swarmed from their concealment, giving chase among the outcroppings on both sides of the tracks. None of the outlaws stood to face the onrushing men. M’Candliss ran across the right-of-way, up into the rocks toward the place where he had heard Gueterma yelling. When he and some of the men from Adobe Junction crested the ridge on that side he saw that several of the banditos had gathered their horses and were scattering down a narrow twisting trail. But Gueterma wasn’t one of them.

  The possemen gave chase down the trail. M’Candliss turned the other way, sharp-eyed and watchful, to search through the rocks and jack pine strewn along the ridge.

  “You!”

  M’Candliss whirled at the sudden outcry, dropping to one knee. The muzzle flash of a pistol came from a jagged series of rocks on his immediate left; he felt the searing heat of a bullet pass along his right cheek, almost burning the skin. Then Gueterma appeared, a pearl-handled revolver in his right hand, his eyes wild with hatred. He fired again, but M’Candliss threw himself to the left and the bullet missed harmlessly.

  Before Gueterma could line up for a third shot, M’Candliss flattened out on his belly and triggered his .44. The bullet sent the pearl-handled pistola flying and brought a howl of pain from Gueterma.

  M’Candliss shoved up to one knee, then onto his feet, keeping the .44 leveled. The Mexican stood clutching at his wounded hand, glaring with more malevolence than M’Candliss had ever seen in one man’s eyes.

  “You demonio!” Gueterma screamed at him.

  “You are not a mere man to have escaped death at the hands of fifty! You alone did this! You alone prevented my plan from succeeding!”

  “Not just me, Gueterma,” M’Candliss said. “Isabella Ortiz, a dozen hard men from Adobe Junction, and a handful of others too.”

  “No, it was you! I would have become El Presidente but for you!”

  “You’d never have become El President
e,” M’Candliss told him. “Not as long as your country and mine are full of decent people. You could have had an army, Gueterma, and you still wouldn’t have got what you wanted.”

  “What I had were pigs, deserting me, betraying me. If only I had had you or a dozen like you!” His mouth twisted bitterly. “Instead of killing you, or threatening to kill you, I should have bought your services.”

  “Your kind can never buy me.”

  “I would have given you gold, a fortune in gold—”

  “There’s not enough gold in Arizona to put me on your side of the fence.”

  “You mock me, Capitan.”

  “Maybe so. I’m sick of the sight of you.”

  The wildness blazed brighter in the Mexican’s eyes. “I will kill you! “he bellowed. “I will grind your bones into powder and spit on what is left!”

  “Your killing days are over, Gueterma—”

  With the suddenness of a rattler uncoiling, Gueterma launched himself at M’Candliss. The ranger sidestepped, fired a warning shot, but Gueterma kept coming, bull-like, head down and arms outstretched. M’Candliss triggered another shot, not as a warning this time, trying to bring the Mexican down, but his aim was hurried; the bullet missed wide. Then Gueterma was on him; swinging viciously. One flailing arm struck M’Candliss’ wrist and dislodged the .44, and sent it clattering against an outcropping.

  Another wild punch slammed into M’Candliss’ cheekbone, making his head rock and sing with the impact. He staggered back, managed to gain leverage, then drove his fist into Gueterma’s stomach. But the blow barely fazed Gueterma. It brought a grunt and an even more savage assault. Bloodlust had consumed the man—a crazed need to kill the one person he held responsible for destroying his fanatical plot.

  But there was rage in M’Candliss too, and an urge to vent it on this hell born traitor. He blocked most of Gueterma’s swings and landed a few of his own. The two men fought toe to toe, like bare-knuckled prizefighters, each of them hurt but neither of them yielding, both driven by the frenzy of their feelings.