Zeller pulled in next to Kings, glancing over his shoulder as he spoke. “That tradesman’s seen our faces, Kings. Let me ride back and straighten him out before he talks to anybody he shouldn’t.”
“No,” Kings said. “He’ll forget he ever saw us afore we make a mile. Besides, who’s he apt to talk to out here, and what might he tell ’em? That we spoil our stock with carrots, or that we seem to be headed north?”
“I don’t like it.”
“You keep that gun where it is, Dave.”
The last statement was made in such a soft tone that any other man would have laughed it off, but Yankee Dave knew Kings too well. Wasn’t the sea graveyard-calm before the storm? As Zeller reined back in line behind Yeager, he thought back to a time they had robbed a bank in southern Wyoming. Kings shot a man on that job, a local would-be tough-nut who went along as a guide, for killing a stable boy—left the man facedown in the wildflowers five miles from town for the posse to find.
From the Pecos, Kings turned the horses northeast, and for the remaining daylight hours, there was no more talk. Now, under a brilliant half-moon, they rounded a bend in the lonely prairie trail. Kings caught a flicker of movement from a thick stand of piñon, followed by the faint clicking of stones.
In a move so fluid and practiced it almost looked slow, Kings’s pistol was out and cocked. It caught every one of his men off guard, to say nothing of the rifleman who stepped out from the piñon to stand directly in their path.
Behind Kings, saddle leather creaked, a horse nickered, and one of the men swore. Whoever it was, he wasn’t alone in his embarrassment. Of the six, Kings was the only one who had met the rifleman’s challenge. The man’s body was turned halfway toward them in duelist style, and because of this, no one could quite make out his features.
Kings was the first to break the silence. “Looks like we got us a stalemate, friend. What do you plan on doin’ with that rifle?”
“Where you fellers headed?”
Kings let his eyes circle, searching for other crouching shadows with guns in hand. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“What the hell is yours?”
Sensing he’d crossed a line, the man lowered his rifle barrel a notch, saying, “I wouldn’t be askin’ if I hadn’t been told to squat here and watch for a feller on a big black horse to come along. Told by one Red Howard. That name mean anything to you?”
Howard was one of Bob Creasy’s aliases. “It just might,” Kings said.
He started to wave his men onward, but the rifleman threw up a broad hand. It was attached to a wrist that stretched a half foot out from his too-short sleeve. He was more clearly visible now, tall and lanky, with shoulders wide and slightly stooped. His lazy drawl marked him for an Arkansas man. “You boys can hold up right there. Just you, partner.” The strength of his voice grew as he addressed the rest of the gang. “Anybody follers, he gets a bullet.”
The man wouldn’t have been able to stop them, but Kings gave a little fanning motion that told the others to stand down. The rifleman, too confident for his own good, reached to seize John Reb’s bridle and nearly lost a finger for his trouble.
The stallion stirred up dust as Kings regained control. “I think it’s best you kept your distance, partner,” he said above the snorting.
The place they called the Mission was situated down the trail in a clearing, a half mile from where the rifleman had intercepted them. It was little more than a low, brush-roofed shack with the slightest lean to the western side, and quite desolate-looking. To the rear, there were three horses in a corral—a strawberry roan, a bay, and a paint.
At one time or another, the place had been the home of a Catholic missionary, made plain by the numerous religious icons still gathering dust inside. What had become of the missionary, whether killed by the Indians or gone of his own volition, no one knew. In recent years his former home had become something of a meeting place for Kings and Creasy, and when Creasy wasn’t around, God only knew who else used it.
Creasy targeted the small stuff, hitting the stages that traveled to and from the forts and halfway stations, but he was also known to lead the occasional raid on small-town banks. Sometimes, he and Charley Davis joined up with Kings for a particularly complex or risky venture, and like coyotes before a wolf pack’s kill, they were only too happy to take in the considerably heavier loot. Every extra man was welcome, of course, though it had been some years since their last joint effort. The Arkansas rifleman hadn’t been in on that one.
Davis was kneeling outside the open door, plucking feathers from a sage hen in preparation for supper. He looked up as Kings rode into camp, and just behind him, Creasy stepped through the shack’s sagging doorway.
“As I live and breathe!” he crowed, grinning widely. He walked out to greet Kings with arms outspread. “Gabriel Kings! Step down and make yourself to home.”
Bob Creasy was average in height and sturdily built, with a thatch of copper hair. His freckled, square-jawed face had a rugged handsomeness to it and was dignified, he thought, by a nose broken in a boomtown prizefight years back. On his upper lip was a scar that gave his every grin a sneering quality.
Davis was a little shorter than Creasy, almost fat but massive through the chest and shoulders. His sun-browned face was broad and weathered beyond his years, but the dimples that even his close-shaved beard couldn’t hide made him a favorite of the sirens he so frequently visited.
The rifleman moved up and was introduced to Kings as Hardyman Foss. They shared a handshake and a brief word, after which Foss stood back to lean on his rifle. The pretense was to leave Kings, Creasy, and Davis to themselves, but he was actually sizing Kings up, searching for something contradictory or unbefitting of the things he’d heard. A crooked spur, a break in the seam of Kings’s trousers . . . Dirt under the nails, maybe.
“Well,” Kings said to Creasy, “you’ve had a week to consider my telegram. How ’bout it?”
Creasy crossed his arms and kicked dirt. “Matter of fact, Kings, there’s a coupla questions I wanted to ask. One, why don’t you tell us why we should risk gettin’ shot up helpin’ you take this train? I know the U.P. will have doubled security on their line, so why? When in a couple more days, we three could hold us up a stage with no trouble at all?”
“Expectin’ a good-sized sum, too,” Davis chimed in. “Army pay comin’ in to the fort, should be upwards of two thousand dollars.”
Kings chuckled. “Is that all?”
CHAPTER 4
Twin rail lines stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, breaking the monotony of the land with streaks of scalding steel and the steady chugging of pistons. The Union Pacific was scheduled to come to the end of its journey on Sunday at a quarter past two in the afternoon, and if Kings had anything to say about it, it would be with a significantly lighter load.
He and the men had anticipated the train’s arrival and were waiting in the shade of the water tank when it pulled up. Kings informed the conductor, peering down from the gangway between the first-and second-class cars, that they had come to the tank for the same reason as he had—to refuel, then push on. He and his men were headed north, Kings said, and the conductor had no reason to doubt him.
Seventeen minutes later, the locomotive eased into gear and labored on toward the east, trailing smoke and echoes. Ten seconds after that, the conductor felt a complaint coming on as he leaned out a window to see the travelers whip their horses into a gallop—not north as he had been told, but hard after the Union Pacific.
Struggling to maintain composure, he announced to the first-class passengers that a robbery was about to take place. He flinched at the cries of the womenfolk and avoided the clutches of panicky men as he moved down the line to the second class. Once there, he wouldn’t bother breaking stride, and he wouldn’t repeat himself—by hook or crook, he had to reach that company boy in express . . .
By the ti
me the conductor moved into the smoker, Kings had left the saddle, scaled the caboose ladder, and was on the roof. Finding his balance, he started along the line, headlong into the smoke. Timing his strides to match the length of the boxcars, Kings gathered speed, hurtled gap after gap, oblivious to the screeching wheels below. He covered the distance in under a minute.
Through the fumes he could see the brakeman and engineer engaged in a relaxed conversation, unaware that he was climbing down the woodpile behind them. He unholstered his gun and eased the hammer back to full-cock.
The engineer turned, blue eyes wide behind a mask of soot. “What’re you fixin’ to do?”
The outlaw gestured to the brakeman. “Whatever I plan to do, it’d go a lot easier if this rig was standin’ still. Pull it.”
Creasy and Brownwell had no problem subduing the four payroll guards bivouacked in the express company car. Pistol-whipping one convinced the others there was only one way they’d be stepping off the train alive. Brownwell moved quickly, tying hands behind backs with rawhide cords, as Creasy unloaded their carbines and stuffed their sidearms in a tote sack.
They had arrived just in time to nab the conductor, too, Brownwell jerking him in from the passage by the throat of his stiff blue jacket. He didn’t need much convincing and was presently slumped in the corner, hugging his knees and wagging his head.
Once he finished with the guards, Brownwell returned his attention to the young man whom the conductor had intended to reach—an oily-haired easterner with pits on his chin. After minutes of trying, he had failed to extract the combination to the lockbox, and the boy had proven resolute in the face of Brownwell’s many threats.
“What the hell’s takin’ so long?” Creasy stepped over, hefting the tote sack, and took in the youth with one head-to-toe glance. “Shouldn’t you still be in books, kid?” he asked with a curled lip. “What’re you doin’ way out West?”
Brownwell answered for the company man. “He’s workin’ for President Sidney Dillon himself, who entrusted him with the responsibility of seein’ that this safe makes it safely from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ ” He spat to the side. “Or some such guff.”
With a sudden groan, the train lurched, staggering the men. When they’d come to a complete stop, Creasy moved to slide the car door open. As expected, Davis and Seward were waiting at the bottom of the embankment.
Creasy held up an arm against the sunlight. “We’re gonna need to blow it,” he said to the ex-artilleryman. “This ’un ain’t no joke.”
Seward dismounted and dug out three sticks from his pack. “Think this’ll be enough?”
“For a start.”
As Seward rummaged, Davis stood in his stirrups and saw Kings coming from the front of the train with a big, bearded man in denim close behind. Sensing danger, Davis went for the rifle under his leg and shouted a warning.
Kings spun and drew, thrusting the muzzle in the brakeman’s face. The fellow stopped short, eyes crossing in an attempt to focus on the barrel.
“I just th-thought I’d watch,” he managed, backing away with hands shoulder-high.
Lowering the weapon, Kings couldn’t help but grin. “You’re lucky we don’t charge admission.”
Creasy hopped down and met the Virginian halfway. The brakeman stayed where he was.
“What’ve we got?” Kings asked.
“Oh, we got a brave soul in there, says the bossman give him this job special, and he means to keep it. Said we’ll get the money over his dead body. Brownwell’s near ready to call him on it.”
“Tom rigged the box yet?”
“I ain’t heard any shots, so I’ll venture to say no.”
Kings exhaled with irritation.
“Just like old times, huh?” Creasy asked in an attempt at humor.
“Durn near brings back memories.”
Creasy drew his bandana over his nose and jogged to catch up with Davis, who had also masked himself and was opening the door to the first-class car. “Well, hello there, sir!” Creasy said, swinging up and in to snatch a gold watch from a heavyset man. “You shouldn’t have!”
When Kings reached the express car, he saw the guards, seated and trussed up like a brace of sage hens. He nodded at the conductor, who averted his eyes, then looked to Seward, who was kneeling before the safe in question. He was busily at work, capping four sticks of dynamite and wedging them strategically beneath the lockbox. To the left, Brownwell was holding a boy who couldn’t have been thirty against the wall with a gun under his nose.
“Put it away, Leroy,” Kings said. “You’re scarin’ the kid.”
The young man seemed surprised when Kings reached out to clap him on the shoulder. “Breathe easy, son. This is just how dangerous men do business. Let’s you and me take a stroll.”
With an inescapable grip on the company man’s elbow, Kings escorted him to a sunny vantage point forty yards north of the boxcar. They were joined by Brownwell and Creasy, who roughhoused and herded the guards with shameless abandon. Creasy in particular had never had much use for lawmen and was like a child on Christmas morning whenever he had the opportunity to abuse one or two. With a laugh, he planted a boot between the shoulders of the nearest guard, snapped his knee like a whip, and watched with satisfaction as the men banged bodies and toppled helplessly to the dirt.
The conductor, needing no supervision, had come shambling along behind. He brought to mind a peasant headed for the stocks in some medieval village, or, as far as he knew, the chopping block. Kings, Brownwell, and Creasy watched with mild amusement as the poor fellow took his position near the mess of guards, crossed his ankles, and slowly sank to earth.
Davis, shouldering a sack of valuables, led the horses to a patch of scrub grass. He moved from one to the other, scratching noses, speaking softly, preparing them for what was coming.
Within five minutes, Seward bounded out of the car and came running. “Plug your ears, gents!” he shouted, seconds before the blast.
Flashes of ignited nitroglycerin and bits of roof flew into the air. Planks and hunks of twisted shrapnel shot forth with the force of bullets, and a hot wind slammed into the faces of the outlaws and their temporary prisoners. Scraps of paper from the obliterated mail slots fluttered across the grass. There was smoke and the faint sound of screaming women. Higher still were the cries of a baby, and somewhere an engineer and his brakeman stamped and swore. Despite the cacophony, Kings knew the only injuries suffered were to their ears. In the span of his career with Tom Seward, never had a single innocent been so much as bruised from the effects of Seward’s work.
Kings waited until the smoke dissipated before he left the company boy, the conductor, and the scowling guards under the guns of his men. Stepping up into the car, he was greeted by the gnarled and still smoking remains of the safe, which scarcely concealed the stacks of greenbacks and bags of twenty-dollar double eagles. Squatting in the wreckage, he began to transfer portions from the safe to the sack he’d tucked behind his belt. Before long, a dull pain began to throb in his hip. Also making its presence known was a soreness in his clicking right shoulder joint. Aches and pains, physical as well as mental, were not out of the ordinary for Kings. In the mornings he was often possessed by a weariness that made slugs of his muscles and weights of his spurs. Nighttime rarely found him asleep in his bed but wide-eyed on the porch, as if it were possible to be too tired to sleep.
He was only thirty-seven and knew it was an age that many in his line of work never lived to see. Still, Kings wondered whether his time as an outlaw had made his body that of an old man, or whether this was simply the Almighty’s way of passing sentence on a man whom no worldly authority could bring to justice.
“Kings?” That was Creasy hollering. “Kings, you about done?”
He took a moment before calling back. “Just about.”
Standing up, he felt the reassuring weight of the guns on his hips and liked it, to say nothing of the sack, which was not light. When he stepped down from
the car, he stopped thinking like Gabriel and became Kings. He secured the sack to his saddle, conscious of the stares of his men. Don’t let no one see you sweat, boy, his father had taught him, and he didn’t.
“Wring ’em out,” he shouted, and, five abreast, they wrung them out toward the horizon.
Yards behind, the company man coursed a shaky hand through his sweat-slick hair and stared across the plains after the departing outlaws. As they crested a rise, the ground seemed to disappear from under them, and for a single, perfect instant they appeared airborne, flying into the skyline on the winged horses of Greek myth.
There had been a lot of money in that safe, all of which was being carried away while he stood watching. From his periphery he saw the guards, still bound, spinning like one giant children’s top as they tried to find their feet. The conductor hadn’t moved. He might have passed out during the blast.
Mr. Dillon was going to be mad as a hornet, but at the present moment, the young man couldn’t have cared less what the president of the Union Pacific Railroad was going to say.
He’d done all he could, after all, and how many of the fellows back home could say they’d been robbed by the likes of Gabriel Kings?
CHAPTER 5
The town of Refuge in Pecos County, West Texas, was founded four years after Appomattox by a Methodist circuit rider whose hopes for its spiritual future had long since evaporated. By no means a New Zion, much less a Salt Lake City, it was still a far cry from the Sodom or Gomorrah of the plains, largely due to the efforts of one man.
North and south of the invisible border known as the Deadline, which separated town proper from the red-light district, Marshal Asa Liddell’s word was respected by all and sundry. Men could keep their guns on their person but were warned that any discharge, whether in self-defense or general rowdiness, meant walking orders. In Liddell’s three years as marshal, there had been seven shootouts over cards or women, and only one of them had fatal results.
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