Lincoln's Ransom

by Tim Champlin

  The conductor was of no help. Apparently, he felt he had done all he could to dissuade Kinealy and had not followed.

  “Better yet,” Packard continued, “let me see if I can get a look inside that car without being seen. If nobody’s bothering the coffin, I’ll just lay low until they leave.”

  Kinealy paused, as if having second thoughts about rushing headlong into this nest of coiled rattlesnakes. “Good idea, Packard,” he finally answered. “Sing out if the coffin’s in danger.”

  “Will do.” Packard had hardly gotten the words out before he was down the off-side steps of the platform, feeling relieved for the first time since they’d been stopped some minutes before. He was safe. He’d try to get a squint inside, but, if anybody was molesting that coffin, he’d eat his boots, heels and all.

  As Packard crept along the tracks, crouching close to the express car, he realized for the first time that the outlaws had chosen a perfect place to hit them. They were near the top of a long, gradual grade and had probably slowed to no more than a dozen miles an hour by the time they had slammed to a halt. There was an identical sliding door on this side of the car as well, but it was closed and locked. From beneath the coach, he could see the legs of the horses on the other side. He stood up and examined the door to see how well it fit. The old car’s blue-gray paint was peeling from the dried wood. The vertical planks in the door were not tongue-in-groove and had shrunk just enough to produce a crack perhaps a half inch wide. He pressed his face to the crack, and a limited portion of the interior came into view. The two men who had robbed their coach held pistols on Griffin, the express messenger. Packard moved his head back and forth, but couldn’t see anyone else. The other two robbers were either out of his range of vision or maybe were in the cab of the engine, holding the train crew. The low rumble of voices was indistinguishable until he turned and pressed his ear to the crack. A voice he recognized as Jesse’s came through. But now he had dropped all pretense of civility or courtesy.

  “We’ve wasted enough time with you. Open that safe before I count ten or tomorrow’s papers will be praising you as a dead hero.”

  “O K, if you say so, but it’s a waste of time, I tell you,” came another voice Packard identified as Griffin’s, but this time much less sure of himself. “There’s no cash or bearer bonds or gold or stock certificates. You hit the wrong train.” As he talked, his voice became muffled as if he had moved away. “I’ll open it,” he continued, his voice growing fainter. Packard could picture him, crouching by the big iron safe and working its combination. “If there was anything valuable in here, do you think I’d have opened the door so quick?”

  “If you hadn’t, we’d have blasted it off,” came the reply. “You didn’t have no damned choice.” This came from a third voice Packard didn’t know.

  There followed several seconds of silence, then he heard a faint scuffling of someone moving around.

  “See? I told you we weren’t carrying anything much this trip,” Griffin said.

  “Damn you!”

  There came a couple of thumps, and someone grunted. Packard applied his eye to the crack again, and Griffin was sitting on the floor, his back to him. He listened again.

  “You think we went to all this trouble just so’s we can go back with a few watches and a couple hundred in cash?” Jesse snarled.

  “I can’t help it that nothing valuable got shipped on this run,” Griffin whined.

  “Hell, I got a good mind to tie you to that safe and blow this whole damned car to splinters,” came the third voice.

  “Leave him be, Frank. It’s our own fault for believing our source about what this train was carryin’.”

  “Well, it’d give me a lot of satisfaction to take it out of this arrogant little bastard’s hide,” Frank grated in a deadly tone. There was another thump and a cry of pain.

  “Wait! Don’t hit me again. I’m just the messenger,” came Griffin’s suddenly high-pitched voice.

  “What other freight you got in this car?” Frank snarled.

  “Nothing much. A few cases of dishes, some boots, couple barrels of pickles....”

  “Pickles!” Frank was flying into a frustrated rage

  “Please, don’t!” Griffin begged. “I’ve got a wife and child at home.”

  Packard expected to hear a gunshot at any moment as Frank snarled: “I reckon your wife and child’d be well rid of a snivelin’ coward like you.”

  “There’s something here you might want,” Griffin’s terrified voice continued. “It’s an Egyptian mummy case.”

  “What?”

  “I hear tell the body’s encased in solid gold.”

  Packard reeled away from the door as if McGuinn had punched him in the ear. He would have bet Kinealy would have gone straight, and Janice would suddenly have turned into a toothless, hooked-nosed witch before the James gang even glanced at the canvas-wrapped lead coffin. But now the unthinkable had happened! The messenger had given them away to save his hide. His heart pounded and his mouth was dry as he took another look. But all three men had moved out of his limited vision. Desperately, he pressed his ear to the crack again but could hear only muted voices for a few seconds. Then Jesse’s voice said: “Hell, this thing’s sealed in lead. We gotta find something to bust into it.”

  They’d gotten the canvas off! He had to do something quick. He could yell for Kinealy and McGuinn, but a shoot-out could end in several men being wounded or killed, and possibly the contents of the coffin being revealed. The trainmen weren’t shootists, and it appeared none of the male passengers was eager to stand up to the robbers, so no help could be expected from that quarter. This flashed through his mind in a second or two as he considered, and rejected, a half dozen plans. It was apparent he had to create some sort of diversion to take their minds off the coffin.

  An idea suddenly hit him, and he scrambled toward the front of the express car where the tender, stacked with cordwood, shielded him from view of anyone in the locomotive cab. He was sure the brakeman hadn’t had time or opportunity to set the brakes on the individual cars. If he could uncouple the express car and send it rolling back downhill, that would surely distract the gang’s attention quicker than anything he knew to do, short of violence. The cars were connected with a simple link and pin coupling. Simple, but stout, he quickly discovered when he tried to pull the iron pin. The locomotive’s brakes were holding the whole train on this slope and were putting a strain on the coupling that would probably take three mules and a circus strongman to disengage.

  He looked around frantically for some kind of tool. Nothing suggested itself at first until he noticed some detritus along the roadbed. It was that or nothing, he thought, as he selected a rock slightly larger than his head and mostly flat on two sides. It was heavy enough to be an effective hammer, but not so heavy that he couldn’t swing it with some force. Bracing his knees wide, he knelt beside the coupling, grasped the rock on the edges with both hands, and swung upward with all his strength. Limestone chips stung his face, but the pin didn’t move. He swung again, and yet again, grunting with the effort of the blows. Swinging upward, trying to punch the pin out was awkward, and he couldn’t get enough force behind the blows. On the fourth hit, the rock split in two and fell out of his hands. He scrambled to find a thicker stone, conscious of another banging noise that was probably the outlaws, pounding on the lead coffin inside the car. He started again, and sparks flew as his rock hit the iron pin a glancing blow. Cold wind chilled the sweat beginning to trickle down his face and neck. His breath was coming in gasps before the pin began to inch up from its link. Encouraged, he hammered like a madman. With one last mighty effort, the iron pin popped out far enough to let the heavy link slide free.

  “Hey, you!”

  Apparently alerted by the noise, the horse-holder was looking at him from about twenty yards away. The mounted outlaw dropped the reins of his own horse and jerked his pistol with his free hand.

  Packard fell back out of the way as the
man fired. The slug whanged off the iron rail hardly a foot away. Packard yanked his own Colt and threw himself flat on the far side of the slight embankment beside the tracks. He snapped off a shot and then saw that his cover was disappearing as the train separated from the locomotive and tender. The express car, two passenger coaches, and caboose very slowly began to roll backward. It was as if a snake’s body had been chopped from its head. The gap widened to several feet and then to several yards as gravity began to pull the heavy coaches back down the long slope.

  The horse-holder fired again, but his startled animals were jerking, and the bullet kicked up dirt several feet away. Packard heard shouting from the direction of the express car and knew he had succeeded in diverting the attention of the robbers who were trying to force open the coffin. He suddenly remembered the brakeman was being held captive in the locomotive. There was no one to stop the runaway portion of the train he had just unleashed. As the severed portion of the train began to pick up momentum, Kinealy’s head poked out from the platform at the far end of the express car. He shouted something, but his words were whisked away by wind and increasing distance.

  Packard’s throat constricted as he watched. The train wouldn’t merely roll to a stop after a mile or two. At the bottom of the grade was a long curve. With the speed this train would be traveling by the time it reached that point, there was no way it could stay on the tracks. And it wasn’t just the two outlaws and the body of Abraham Lincoln he was sending careening down that hill. He could almost see the terrified face of Janice Kinealy when she realized that she and all the other passengers were hurtling toward destruction.

  Chapter Twelve

  Packard’s inertia lasted only a matter of seconds. Then he bounded away after the retreating train with the speed of a sprinter. Fear shot so much adrenaline through his system that a mad grizzly couldn’t have caught him. His boot soles barely touched the rough ballast and cross-ties as he flew toward the end of the express car.

  The gap closed quickly at first — until a rock turned under his right foot. He felt his ankle going, and instantly tucked his shoulder and rolled into a fall. Momentum brought him back up onto his feet immediately. His ankle hurt, but he’d taken the pressure off it so quickly that he knew it was all right. The train had gained several yards on him. He redoubled his efforts, running just outside the tracks with one eye on the uneven ground ahead of him. It was an unequal contest; he had the advantage of desperation, while the train was only obeying the laws of physics.

  He finally edged close enough to make a lunge for the iron railing. One hand snagged it, and then the other. But his feet failed to keep up, and for several seconds he was stretched out nearly horizontal, boots plowing a furrow through the dirt and stones. Pulling with both arms, he got his legs windmilling under him and, with a mighty bound, landed on the bottom of the metal steps.

  His breath came in ragged, painful gasps, but he had no time to recover. The ties were flashing past just beneath, faster and faster until they looked like one continuous blur. He dragged himself to his feet and swayed up the two more steps to the platform. The door into the end of the express car was locked, for which he breathed a prayer of thanks. Even armed with his Colt, he had no wish to face Jesse and Frank James. His hand went automatically to the holster beneath his wool jacket as he tried the door. The gun was gone! It had apparently been flung out when he took that tumble. It couldn’t be helped now. He had to stop this train.

  As he stood there panting, he made a quick assessment of the situation. The two outlaws and the express messenger were inside this car. One side door was open, but both end doors were locked. He assumed Griffin, the messenger, had a key and would probably use it to unlock one of these doors once he realized their peril. But, by then, they would be going too fast to jump. Kinealy and McGuinn were still on the platform at the other end of this car, if they hadn’t retreated into one of the coaches. He would have to climb over the roof to reach them.

  His main concern, however, was to stop the train. Every car had a brake wheel at each end to apply a brake manually to the four-wheel truck just beneath. He grabbed the small iron wheel that stuck up about a foot from the hand railing and began to turn as fast as possible. He spun it until it would turn no more. If the brakes were being applied, there was no resistance through the wheel itself and no squalling of brake shoes against metal — nothing but the rumble of the heavy car and the screech of wheel flanges against rails as they picked up more and more speed.

  He cursed himself roundly and loudly for doing such a stupid thing as uncoupling these cars. But cussing himself produced about the same effect as spitting into the wind. His next move had to be a lot more productive. To that end, he climbed quickly, but carefully, up onto the hand railing and grasped the rungs of the iron ladder that led to the overhanging roof. When he pulled himself over the top and looked down the length of that train, his nerve nearly failed him. Wind was whipping into his face at forty to fifty miles an hour, and each of the four cars was swaying dangerously. He hoped that Kinealy, McGuinn, and Hughes and maybe some of the other passengers were already trying to set the brakes on the cars. It was their only chance.

  He’d never had an ambition to be a circus high-wire walker, but the next minute or so gave him plenty of training for it. With the car dancing a jig beneath him, he had to negotiate a three-foot-wide ridge that ran a full sixty feet. On either side of this raised ridge were small windows to admit light and air when the car was sealed. Also on either side of this ridge the roof sloped off to nothingness. Not even a seam or rain gutter to grab onto if he slipped.

  He dropped to all fours and scuttled forward, trying to keep his weight low and centered as the coach whipped from side to side like an angry bull. The cold wind tried to rip him off backward. Half the distance was covered when the car suddenly lurched, and he was flung sideways, both hands sliding on the smooth roof. The toes of his boots snagged the ridge just before his upper body went over the edge. Holding his breath and straining to keep his toes hooked, he carefully placed his palms on the roof and pushed backward until his body was lying athwart the center ridge of the car. He lay there, heart pounding, and turned his head away from the wind to breathe easier. It was then he realized his face was close to one of the narrow, dirt-streaked skylights. Moving gingerly to keep his balance, he rubbed a spot clean and looked down into the express car. Griffin lay on his back on the floor, and the outlaws were gone! He raised his head and looked back up the hill. The locomotive and its tender were growing smaller in the distance, but the outlaw with the horses was nowhere to be seen, and he saw no one along the right of way. Somehow the robbers had gotten away into the woods, while he was plunging toward his death!

  Crawling and gripping with fingernails, knees, and feet, he scrambled to the end. The whole trip couldn’t have taken more than ninety seconds, but it seemed an eternity. He fully expected the train to be near the bottom of the grade, but a quick look showed the curve still at least a mile away as he climbed down between cars. Kinealy and McGuinn were not where he had left them. He flung open the door to the first passenger coach.

  “Runaway!” he shouted. “Help set the brakes!”

  “Already got six men on it,” a rough-looking man in miner’s clothes replied.

  “Then come on and help me out here!”

  “We’ve done set those,” the miner replied, indicating the two brake wheels on the adjoining platforms where Packard had just entered. “They don’t work worth a damn.”

  Packard pushed through several terrified passengers and out the other end of the car. Kinealy and Hughes were twisting the iron wheel on the platform, and this brake was working. A high-pitched squeal of agonized metal nearly pierced his eardrums. Across the platform Janice Kinealy was helping turn one of the brake wheels until a brawny man with a full beard gently pushed her aside and lent his muscle to the effort.

  Packard bounded across the platform, grabbed Janice by the shoulders, and pulled her inside th
e coach. Her brown eyes were wide with fear. “Are we going to crash?”

  “I hope not,” he replied, somehow seeing everything clearly and calmly “Are there men on the caboose brakes?”

  “Yes. The conductor and three or four others.”

  “I’ll go help.”

  He dashed out the lower end of the car with Janice right behind him. But his help wasn’t needed. In fact, there was no room for him to get close to the brake wheels; they were being fully manned by the male passengers. For the first time he felt they might have a chance. Their efforts to save themselves could make the difference. He and Janice stepped back into the coach and waited. He stuck his head out of a window and saw the curve coming up fast. The air was full of rumbling, grinding, and the smell of scorched metal. Their freewheeling speed was gradually being checked, but not nearly quickly enough.

  A few seconds later the caboose careened into the curve, and all passengers in the following coach instinctively threw their weight to the inside as the car leaned outward, wheel flanges screeching against the rail. He grabbed Janice and pushed her into a seat against the window, wedging himself in against her. The men outside clung to the brake wheels and railings to keep from being flung off the platforms as centrifugal force pulled them toward the trees and rocks. He could have sworn he felt the inside wheels of the truck lift clear off the rail. Tortured steel screamed. The coach tilted at an impossible angle and hung there, suspended, for the space of several heartbeats. Packard held his breath and hugged Janice tightly, bracing for the crash.

  Limestone ledges and tree trunks flashed past in a blur, and then the coach settled back onto its wheels as the curve flattened out. His breath escaped in a long sigh. Now that the weight of the train was on nearly level ground, the inefficient mechanical brakes took hold and pulled them to a stop within a quarter mile. The sudden silence was deafening.