Dark Territory

by Terrence McCauley

  “Your breakfast?” the leader said. “I suppose that’s a pleasant thought, seeing as how it’s your last one. Why’s your breakfast so important.”

  “On account of my not having it yet,” Mackey explained, “least of all my coffee. And as Bear Harper could tell you, I’m not a pleasant man before my coffee. Makes me impatient as hell, and seeing as how I’m a man who likes to keep things at an even keel, I intend on enjoying both on time at eight o’clock sharp.”

  The leader said, “Sorry to disappoint you, sheriff, but I can’t see that happening. We’re going to shoot you dead, show your body off to those people on the train back there, and take every cent they’ve got.”

  “You boys have had a good run, but it’s over.” Mackey raised his left hand. “You’re all coming back to the train with me. Upright or over your saddle, makes no difference. Make your choice, because time’s wasting and my breakfast is getting cold.”

  The other men looked at the leader, who did not move. “You don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on here, do you, sheriff? But, seeing as how I respect what you’ve done for your town, I’m going to make a proposition to you. You ride on back to that train and have your breakfast and we go on our way. No harm, no foul. Call this one a draw. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Mackey kept looking at the man. His left hand remained in the air. “Not sure what the three men you killed might think of it, though.”

  The leader smiled. “Fine, sheriff. Have it . . .”

  The man’s rifle flinched.

  Mackey dropped his left hand.

  Thunder boomed from the hillside as a single round from Billy’s Sharps punched a hole through the center of the leader’s chest, knocking the man from his horse.

  Two of the men behind him jerked and fell from their saddles as bullets slammed into their chests as well.

  The last two robbers struggled to keep control of their mounts as the horses of the dead men scrambled to run away.

  Mackey had already drawn his Colt and aimed it at the older of the two men, who had dropped his rifle when his horse bucked. He was tugging on the reins with one hand while groping for his sidearm with the other.

  “It’s over!” Mackey yelled. “Don’t do it!”

  But the man grabbed his pistol and began to pull it as Mackey fired. The shot caught him in the left shoulder. He rocked back from the impact but managed to hold on. Mackey fired again and, this time, shot him through the chest. The man dropped from the saddle as the frightened animal sprinted away and joined the other three bounding through the field to the left of the train tracks.

  Mackey shifted his aim to the last bandit, who was in a ball on the ground, hands held away from him. His horse was racing off to join the others. “Don’t shoot! I give up!”

  “Unbuckle your gun belt and stand up slow.”

  Mackey had the Peacemaker track the young man as he slowly unbuckled his gun belt and got to his feet. He kept his hands in the air and his head bowed.

  The sheriff looked over the bandit as he heard Billy and the Boudreaux brothers riding toward them. Mackey saw the boy’s jacket and pants bore specks of blood.

  “You shot?”

  The young man hesitated. “I don’t think so. And I don’t want to get shot finding out.”

  “Any other guns or knives on you?”

  “Got a knife in my boot,” the young man said, “but no guns.”

  “Pat yourself down for holes,” Mackey ordered him. “Just do it slow.”

  The Boudreauxs arrived as the young man finished searching himself for wounds. “I’m not hit, so the blood’s not mine.”

  Mackey was glad for that much at least. A wounded man would’ve been a nuisance this far away from the train. To Henry, he said, “Where’s Billy?”

  “Off to grab one of the runaways so this one can ride.”

  Despite the rising sun, Mackey could feel the air turning colder.

  Jack shivered and said, “I don’t want to be out here any longer than I have to. I say this last bastard here can double up with Henry if Billy’s gone too long.”

  But Henry Boudreaux was not having any of it. “He ain’t riding with me. I could smell the son of a bitch all the way back in the hills. I’ve got no intention of getting fleas.”

  “Well he sure as hell ain’t riding with me,” Jack argued. “Your horse is fresher. I’m the one whose been riding around all night by myself.”

  As the argument continued, Mackey closed his eyes. The Boudreauxs were among the best trackers and hunters he had ever seen, but they were a handful to deal with at any other time. “Knock it off. Billy will find his goddamned horse.”

  The sheriff turned his attention to the boy, “Got a name?”

  “Wilson. Joe Wilson.” He was looking down at the corpses that had once been his partners. “God, you really did kill them, didn’t you?”

  “And you would’ve been right down there next to them if you’d gone for your gun,” Jack told him.

  But Wilson was too shocked to be scared. “They’re gone. Even Tom. Christ.”

  Now that the Boudreauxs were there, Mackey opened the Colt’s cylinder, removed the spent brass and replaced them from cartridges on his belt. “Is Tom the name of the leader?”

  “Tom Macum. Rode with him up here from Omaha. The others were already with him by then.” He pointed down at the three other corpses. “Johnny Boy, Sam Dennis, and Tom Custer. We just called him Cus on account of Tom already being Tom, I guess.” He slowly lowered his hands and muttered to himself. “Gone now. All of them.”

  Henry caught Mackey’s eye. “This boy’s a bit touched.”

  Mackey ignored him. The name meant something to him. “Tom Macum? From Stansfield?”

  Wilson looked like he had just woken up from a bad dream. “I think so. Maybe. I don’t know. We didn’t talk much about things like that.”

  “Pull the mask off his face.” Mackey trained the Peacemaker on him. “And if you make a play for any of his guns, you’re a dead man.”

  Wilson did as Mackey told him. When the sheriff saw the face of the dead man, he recognized him as Tom Macum of Stansfield, Montana. He owned a ranch about an hour’s ride north of town. Had a wife, too, as Mackey could remember. He did not know if Macum had any children, but that hardly mattered now.

  The only question Mackey had was why a man like Macum would be robbing trains in the first place. He had never known the man to break the law before.

  Mackey asked Wilson, “How many trains have you robbed with these men?”

  “Three times. All of them went peaceful. Not the times when they killed folks.”

  “Of course, you weren’t,” Mackey said. “Charge will be murder all the same.” He decided there’d be plenty of time to question him about the particulars on the train to Olivette once they fixed the rails, but he had to be certain of something first. “This all of you? Your whole gang?”

  “As far as I know,” Wilson said. “It was always just the five of us. Now, it’s just me, I guess.” He lost himself looking at the hole in Tom Macum’s chest. “Just me.”

  The young man lurched forward and lost his supper on the side of the tracks. Mackey looked south and saw Billy Sunday riding back his way trailing another horse behind him.

  To the Boudreauxs, he said, “Looks like you boys will be riding solo. Billy’s found this boy a horse.”

  Mackey took in a deep breath of cold air and let it fill his lungs before he slowly let it out. Mr. Rice’s robbers were dead, a prisoner left alive to capture, and Billy had tracked down a horse for the prisoner. All before he had enjoyed his first sip of coffee.

  It was shaping up to be a fine day after all, and the sun wasn’t completely up yet.

  * * *

  The Boudreaux brothers hung back and flanked the queasy Wilson as Mackey and Billy rode a little bit ahead.

  “Nice shooting back there,” Mackey said.

  “I took the mouthy one to be the leader,”
Billy explained, “so I plugged him first. Jack and Henry took the other two.”

  Mackey had figured that had been the way it had played out. “The leader was Tom Macum.”

  Billy never reacted to anything, but he reacted now. “You sure? Tom Macum from Stansfield?”

  “He’s back there on the tracks with the other four,” Mackey said. “I saw his face after it was over, and Wilson confirmed it. I didn’t know the others, but Tom is a shock.”

  Billy kept riding. “Tom must’ve been in town a dozen or so times I can remember. Used to bring his cattle to market twice a year. Can’t think of a time when he stepped out of line or gave anyone any trouble.”

  “Well he made up for it by starting to rob trains,” Mackey said. “I wouldn’t have believed it, either, but he’s lying back there on the tracks as dead as the rest of them.”

  The two men rode back to the train in silence for a time until Billy said, “You thought something was off about this whole thing from the beginning. Agee, the money, now Tom Macum? What the hell does it all mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Mackey admitted, “and I don’t think that kid we caught will be able to tell us much. Even when he does snap out of whatever fog he’s in, he was a follower, not a leader. Macum was always a smart businessman. If he was smart enough to be able to rob trains without us getting wind of it before now, then he wasn’t stupid enough to trust a green kid like Joe Wilson with any details.”

  “So who do you think has the answers?” Billy asked. “Agee doesn’t know anything, and the rest of the gang is dead.”

  “We’ll give their bodies a thorough going-over when we get them on the train. See if there’s any kind of notes or anything on them like we found on Ernst back in Tent City. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.”

  “I can track those horses if you want,” Billy said. “They were headed off in the same direction, which was south. Could be that they’re heading back home.”

  Mackey couldn’t dismiss the idea as quickly as he would have liked. Billy Sunday was a hell of a tracker, but there was no telling where those horses were headed. He had already lost one dear friend on a solo tracking mission against Darabont. The death of Sim Halstead had damned near killed both him and Billy. Mackey could not afford to lose his best friend, too.

  “I wouldn’t want you riding out alone,” the sheriff said. “I’d prefer one of the Boudreauxs go with you.”

  “It’s a one-man job, Aaron. Don’t need two. And I won’t do anything stupid, either. Just riding after a bunch of scared horses is all. They might’ve just been running scared for all I know.”

  “You know horses as well as I do,” Mackey said. “You know they were headed home. I’m just worried about what’ll happen when you find them. Remember what happened to Sim. I don’t want the same thing happening to you, too.”

  “Sim was trailing people who knew they were being followed,” Billy argued. “These horses are just following their instinct. I’ll read the trail, maybe track them for a day or two, and meet you back in Olivette. Sound fair to you?”

  It sounded more than fair. It sounded like the best thing Mackey had heard all day, but it did not make him like the idea any better. “That kid we caught said he rode with Macum on only three of the robberies. Given that there were seven robberies and Macum had five men each time, it stands to reason he’s got others with him. Others who might be where those horses are headed. I’ll approve it if you promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Don’t know any other way to be. I’ll ride ahead to the train and pick up provisions before I head out.”

  Chapter 17

  Billy rode ahead to secure provisions from the train’s cook while Lagrange rode toward Mackey on a brown Appaloosa. Despite his city clothes, he seemed to handle the big horse with ease. “Two rode out and five came back. I take it two of them are your outriders and the man in the middle is your prisoner.”

  “Says his name is Joe Wilson,” Mackey said. “The rest of his crew is dead. We’ll pick them up when the train gets closer to the damaged rail and the crew repairs the damage.”

  “How much damage is there?”

  “A section of track and all the ties,” Mackey said. “Doesn’t look like they burned anything, so the engineer and some volunteers should be able to get us back on track in a few hours. We’ll be late into Olivette, but I can’t remember the last time anyone was in a hurry to get there.”

  “I’ll leave it to you to break the bad news to the conductor,” Lagrange said. “I don’t think the man likes me very much, and the feeling is mutual. I’ll be glad to take the prisoner off your hands while you and your friends get cleaned up.”

  Mackey was a bit surprised. “And here I was thinking you’d be upset that we didn’t ask you to ride out with us.”

  “I know my skills and you don’t,” Lagrange said. “It only makes sense you’d want to face the robbers with men you knew and trusted. I would have felt exactly the same way.”

  His opinion of Lagrange improved all the time. He called back to the Boudreauxs. “This man’s name is Robert Lagrange. He’s from the Pinkertons. He’ll take the prisoner back to the train while you boys clean up. There’s a cabin for you boys all to yourselves. You should be pretty comfortable.”

  “What about you, Aaron?” Hank called out. “You sleeping with the horses?”

  He tipped his hat to Lagrange as the Pinkerton man took the reins of Wilson’s horse and led prisoner and mount ahead of them. He crossed the tracks in front of the engine and rode past the passenger cars with Wilson in tow.

  It was hard for him to believe that everything had ended that quickly, but it had. “Me? I’ll clean up later. For now, I’m going for my coffee.”

  But the screams from the train that cut through the morning air told him the coffee would have to wait.

  He brought Adair into a full gallop with the Boudreaux twins right behind him.

  Mackey brought her up short in front of the first car behind the tender car. He slid off the saddle and threw up the reins to Billy, who had ridden back to meet them. His Sharps was already in his hand. “Want me to go in with you?”

  “No. I need the three of you to stay out here until I see what happened.”

  Mackey climbed up to the first car and went inside. He kept his hand close to the Peacemaker without actually drawing it. No sense in scaring people until he knew exactly what he was up against.

  As soon as he entered the train car, he saw the reason for the screaming right away. A dandy in a fine blue suit and waxed moustaches was standing in the middle of the aisle, holding a knife to a young lady’s throat.

  At first, Mackey thought it might be Lagrange, but this man was taller and older than Lagrange by about ten years.

  Mackey drew the Peacemaker and cocked it as he aimed it at the man. “Put the knife down before someone gets hurt.”

  But the dandy only pulled the lady closer and held the blade at her throat. Now, Mackey could see that it was a straight razor, not a knife.

  “Not on your life, sheriff. I’m going to tell you how this plays out. You’re going to get us three horses from the boxcar back there. Then you’re going to let me, that boy you just arrested, and this pretty young thing I’ve just met ride out of here. You’ll agree to stay on the train and won’t follow us. You do that and maybe, in a few miles, I cut this young lady loose.”

  She screamed as the man yanked her hair. “You know how to ride, don’t you darling?” The dandy grinned. “If not, I’d wager you’ll learn soon enough.”

  Mackey kept the Peacemaker aimed at the attacker’s head as he walked slowly forward. “I’ve got three men posted outside, boy, and another coming at you from behind. The only way you’re going anywhere is in a box unless you let her go.”

  The man pulled the woman with him as he backed up the aisle, away from Mackey. “Stay right where you are.”

  But Mackey kept coming. And the Peacemaker did not waver.

  The passen
gers screamed as the man stumbled and almost fell. But he kept his balance and the blade at her throat without cutting her.

  Mackey used the distraction to close the distance between them by a step or two.

  From the back of the car, Mackey heard Lagrange call out, “Back away from the girl or you’re dead.”

  The dandy turned around just long enough for Mackey to make his move. He rushed forward to grab the blade, but was too late.

  The man slashed out at Mackey, but missed wildly. The sheriff burst forward and kept the attacker’s arm extended. Passengers screamed and ducked out of the way as the woman broke free from his grip.

  The man landed a left hook on Mackey’s jaw, but the sheriff’s grip on the knife hand didn’t falter.

  Lagrange rushed from the back of the train and slid his forearm under the man’s neck and tried to wrestle the knife from him. Mackey uncocked his pistol and brought the barrel across the right side of the attacker’s face.

  His grip on the knife held, so Mackey did it a second time, then a third until he finally went down and the knife skittered under the seats.

  Mackey holstered his gun as Lagrange dragged the unconscious man out of the car backward. When they reached the dining car, Mackey flipped the unconscious man on his stomach and patted him down for weapons while Lagrange twisted a tablecloth and used it to bind the man’s hands behind him.

  “You’re going to need a towel for his head,” Mackey said. “He’s bleeding pretty bad.”

  “Of course, he is,” Lagrange said as he swiped some cloth napkins from an unoccupied table and wrapped them around the man’s head like a bandana. “You caved his head in. That tends to cause some bleeding.”

  Mackey held the napkins in place while Lagrange worked. It may not have been perfect, but it was better than allowing him to bleed to death.

  “Any idea who he is?” Mackey asked.

  “I saw him when I first boarded the train,” Lagrange said, “but that was it. I never took him for working with the robbers.”