The Speculator Line

by Trace Conger

  “Where you going?” Smilin’ said.

  “Gotta stop that train before we can get on it.” I yanked on the reins and led the horses to the tracks. I tossed the sagebrush on the ties, and as the horses bowed down to sniff the blossoms, I looped the reins together and tied them off on the rails, and then headed back to Smilin’.

  “You really think them horses are gonna stop that rattler?”

  “If not, we’re gonna have horse parts all over us.”

  “That’ll make get’n out of here a bit tougher,” Smilin’ said. “I hear dead horses ain’t as fast as live ones.” His laugh turned to a cough and he went down on one knee.

  “I’m hoping they’d rather stop and clear them horses than risk jumping those tracks,” I said.

  “If they even see the horses.”

  The locomotive’s steam whistle pierced the calm night sky, drowning out the thundering of its pistons. The horses lurched backward and tried to pull free, but the knot was too strong.

  “They’ll see them,” I said.

  The horses’ eyes glimmered in the headlamp as the train grew larger. The moon cast an eerie glow on the smoke and steam rising from the iron beast’s funnel, making it look like running water, pouring into the night sky. The locomotive’s headlamp flared down the tracks up to and through where the horses struggled.

  The steam whistle screamed again, louder this time. The horses reared high, each pulling the other in opposite directions. Then came the squeal of steel on steel as the locomotive’s brakes locked, sending sparks spraying into the brush right past us. The locomotive’s wheels left the tracks for an instant as the momentum fought the brakes and carried the steel giant forward. It looked like the train was going off the rails, but then the wheels crashed back onto the tracks, and the giant came to a rest less than ten feet in front of the horses.

  The locomotive spit a plume of steam from behind its six wheels. Its cowcatcher looked like a claw reaching out to tear our horses apart. The engine was as dark as the night and bled into the sky behind it. It must have been the length of fifteen horses from end-to-end, the largest train engine I’d ever seen. The coal car was just as long. It carried a pile of coal, which looked like enough to plow from California to New York and back without stopping.

  Behind the coal car were coupled four bright passenger rail cars that shined, unlike the charred locomotive, in the moonlight. Then the smell hit me. Not a burnt coal and oil smell, more like a cattle carcass rotting on the trail for days.

  Smilin’ and I stayed in the brush. A man in an ash-covered apron holding a lantern in one hand and a coal shovel in the other climbed down from the giant machine. He approached the horses, then turned to look back at the engine.

  A wail shattered the night. At first, I thought it was another whistle, but this was different. Part scream, part thunder, and it seemed to be coming from inside the train’s engine.

  We covered our ears to muffle the sound, but even pressing hard against my head, I could feel a stinging in my ears and my eyes began to water. Then it stopped. As if in response to the scream, the man in the apron thrust the shovel’s spade into the horses’ reins, severing them against the track, sending the horses galloping across the foothills.

  We tossed our rifles. They would draw too much attention on the train. It was tough to part with my Sharps, but it’s replaceable. We climbed the rear passenger coach’s steps, Smilin’s crimson hand slipping on the railing. The man in the apron shouted, “All clear,” and climbed back onto the locomotive. A moment later, the steam whistle blew and the rattler lurched forward, taking us with it.

  We pushed the passenger coach door open and stepped inside. It was half full--about twenty passengers. Two candles were perched on the wall at each end of the coach. I gripped my Colt under my trail coat in case I had to draw down. Some trains run with armed guards and some of these passengers might be heeled. If I was sitting in one of those wooden seats and saw two men board the train at an unscheduled stop in the middle of the night, one of them dripping blood, I think my trigger finger would be itching a bit more than usual.

  Smilin’ grabbed the edge of a wooden seatback to steady himself with his left hand, the right pressed the bloody neckerchief tight against his leg.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “I’ll live. But I gotta sit down.”

  I helped him into a seat in the empty second row, reached into his coat and jerked his Peacemaker from its holster, cocked it, and shoved it in his left hand.

  “Hope you’re half as good with your left as you are with your right.”

  “Maybe today’s the day we find out,” he said, fighting to steady the six-shooter.

  “As soon as we get to wherever this train is headed, we’ll get you patched up. Until then, keep your eyes up. I’ll keep a lookout in back.”

  Smilin’ nodded. I tilted my hat down, slipped my hand back under my coat, and headed for the rear of the coach.

  The candles at the front of the passenger car didn’t give off much light, but I could make out a few faces. Most everyone paid me no attention, which was fine by me. Some of the passengers stared out the windows. One fella looked all bloodied up as if he’d been on the wrong end of a pistol whipping. Another fella sat with his mouth wide open. He looked to be in shock or something, but I figured he was just sleeping, much like everyone else on the train. I made my way to the back of the coach and the darkness swallowed up the passengers’ faces like night eating a town. But, as I got closer to the two candles perched on the rear wall, row by row, the detail trickled back into the passengers’ features.

  That’s when I saw him. Sitting in the last row. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and red silk tie that dangled in a floppy bow under his chin. Just above the bow, a well-placed bullet hole. My bullet hole. His right thumb tucked under his gun belt, a long black duster coat pulled back far enough to reveal a five-point U.S. Marshal’s star pinned to his vest.

  I yanked my Colt, cocked it and had it on his forehead as quick as a whip.

  “Hey you,” I said.

  No answer.

  “Look at me, you sonofabitch.” I struck the Colt against his head knocking his hat off. Still no answer. He didn’t move. Just looked forward, eyes locked on the passenger in front of him.

  “The cabin. I shot you dead.”

  A jolt on the train knocked me backward, but I kept my balance and my aim. Then a stronger force pulled me back. I clutched the seat with my free hand. The passenger car swayed as the train slowed.

  We’re stopping.

  I moved my free hand to the upper rail of the coach to steady myself, keeping my Colt dead center on the marshal’s forehead. I glanced at his hand to see if he was making a move for his revolver. He wasn’t. The coach bounced from side-to-side, swaying wide now. The brakes took hold and nearly threw me to the ground, but my hand clenched tighter around the rail, keeping me on my feet. The wheels screeched, and from the window I could see the sparks spraying out from beneath the train as the brakes locked, the iron wheels fighting the track.

  The coach jerked as it squealed to a stop. My hand slipped from the upper rail and I tumbled into the aisle, but I kept a white-knuckled grip on my Colt. I pulled myself up with the seatback and that’s when I saw the man sitting next to the marshal. A big Indian with a fist-sized hole in his gut. His head was cocked to the side and his mouth open wide. Staring into that face, I had to fight to hold onto my iron.

  “Put down your weapon, son,” a voice said from the front of the coach. I whirled around, gun raised. The man in the ash-covered apron, a lantern at his feet, trained a rifle on me. He racked the lever.

  “You’re not supposed to be on this train,” he said. “Lower that six-shooter, or I’ll find you a seat.”

  “Steady that hand, old man,” I said. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

  “Holster that pistol and you won’t find one.”

  “I’m willing to bet I can drop you before you get a shot off,” I said. />
  “I don’t think you wanna do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Another wail rushed through the coach, this one louder than the first one back on the tracks. It rattled the windows, and the candle flames nearly separated from their wicks. The sound pierced my eardrums and I wanted to cover my ears to stop the blood seeping down my cheek, but I kept the Colt trained at the center of the man’s apron instead.

  The shriek faded.

  “Because I’m not the only one you’d have to shoot through, son. Pull that trigger and the conductor is gonna come back here and deal with you hisself. And you don’t want that.”

  That wail. The conductor.

  “What kind of train you driving, old man?”

  “I’m not going to ask you again to lower that piece. I got no notion to shoot you. But you got to get off this train. We can’t go no further with you on it. And we have a schedule to keep. Last chance.”

  The candle at the front of the coach flickered, and shadows danced across the rifleman’s face.

  Shadows can play tricks on you. Throw off your aim. Why risk taking a shot from back here when Smilin’s a seat away?

  I lowered my Colt, slipped it back in its holster, raised my hands, and started walking up the aisle.

  What are you waiting for, Smilin’? Put him down. You’re not getting a cleaner shot.

  “He can’t help you now,” said the man in the apron, catching me glance at the back of Smilin’s head. “He’s staying with us.”

  Smilin’ John was slumped against the window, his skin gray next to the red velvet seat cushion. His hand, no longer pressed against his leg, lay on the seat still grasping the neckerchief. Blood seeped down his side, pooling on the cushion beneath him. The silver Peacemaker, still cocked, was on the floor next to his feet.

  The man in the apron stepped aside, his rifle still trained on my chest.

  “Go on now,” he said.

  I walked past him and stepped off the coach. The train had stopped only a few feet from the solid rock of the canyon wall. It had nowhere to go.

  “You just gonna throw me off this train in the middle of nowhere? There’s people back there who want to string me up,” I said.

  “Whatever you got yourself into ain’t my concern, son. I trust you’ll find your way wherever you’re headed. There’s a creek a few miles back. Might head that-a-way.”

  The man in the apron leaned out the coach’s doorway and swung his lantern in a wide arc signaling the conductor. The locomotive’s whistle screamed and the canyon wall began to fall away. It crumbled around the train like a herd of cattle parting for a stagecoach. Another blast from the steam whistle and the train crawled into the tunnel. As the last coach disappeared into the darkness, one by one the rocks climbed into place and sealed back up, leaving not a pebble on the ground.

  I grabbed at those rocks to see if I could tear them away, to right my mind, see that it was a trick or something. But, that rock wall was as solid as the ground beneath me. Not a loose stone anywhere.

  Standing next to a canyon wall with no horse and no water wasn’t a good spot to be in, so I decided to follow the old man’s advice. I skinned both Colts from my holsters, cocked and lowered them to my side, and walked back to Coal Creek.

  Eyes up.

  A Note from the Author

  Thank you for reading “The Speculator Line.” I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked it, please take a minute to post an online review. You can comment on the book here.

  Trace Conger

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  About the Author

  Trace Conger is an author in the crime, thriller, and suspense genres. Prior to writing full time, he worked as a publicist, a copywriter, and a freelance writer.

  He lives in Cincinnati with his wonderfully supportive family.