by Tabor Evans
LONGARM AND THE TRAIN ROBBERS
By Tabor Evans
CHAPTER 1
Deputy Custis Long stared past his manacled prisoner through the Union Pacific train's window and saw a pair of elk hurrying down from the western slopes of the Laramie Mountains to escape an advancing snowstorm. He looked up at the lead-gray underbelly of an ocean of deep, rumbling clouds, and could feel their Union Pacific railroad car being buffeted by the icy northern winds.
"We're going to get a real sonofabitch of a storm," Eli Wheat said, fogging up the window with his hot, fetid breath. "I'd guess that we might not even make it over the Laramie Mountains. Be a damned shame, wouldn't it, Deputy?"
"Yeah," Longarm said drily. "A real shame. Might mean that we'd have to delay your necktie party a few extra days."
"I sure wouldn't bitch about that," Eli said, his dark features shaping into a twisted grin. "Might be that I could even find a way to delay things a bit longer than expected."
"You try it," Longarm said, "and all you'll get for your trouble is another good pistol-whipping."
"You like to use that gun barrel of yours to part a man's hair, don't you?" Eli challenged, his voice turning nasty.
"Just shut up," Longarm snapped.
But Eli wouldn't shut up. He could see the snowstorm moving down from the Laramie Mountains, and that their train was charging right into its face. He could feel the train losing speed as it began the steep ascent into the rugged mountains, and every second that the mountains and the storm delayed the train was to his advantage.
"Could be," Eli said, voice growing loud so that all the passengers could hear, "that this is a real blizzard that we're facing. Could be that we might derail or something up there and all of us freeze to death."
Longarm noticed several of the other passengers pale. A pretty, auburn-haired young woman in her twenties just a few seats up shot a glance back over her shoulder, and Longarm could see that she was upset. It was growing colder in their car, and Longarm made a mental note to upbraid their conductor for not keeping the coach's wood-burning stove hot.
"Yes, sir!" Eli Wheat crowed. "I guess if I got to die, I'd sure rather it be by freezin' than having to dance at the end of a rope while a crowd of-"
Longarm reached across his body with his left hand and clamped it on Eli's throat, cutting off the man's words. His powerful fingers bit into Eli's windpipe, and he held his grip like a steel trap while Eli tried to smile and show that he was tough. A full minute passed and the killer's face grew bright red. His eyes bugged and he began to make gagging sounds.
"Let him go!" the young woman demanded, jumping from her seat. "You can't choke him to death like that!"
Longarm released his grip. Eli began to choke and suck for air. He was trembling and gagging and having an awful time. Other passengers, no longer able to ignore the disturbing sounds, turned, and their eyes said that they too did not approve of Longarm's method of silencing his prisoner.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" the pretty young woman scolded, coming to stand beside Longarm. She was shaking with fury. "What kind of a monster are you anyway? That man must be terrified."
"Terrified?" Longarm took a moment to curb his own anger. "Miss..."
"Noble. Martha Noble."
"Well, Miss Noble," Longarm said, "I can see that you are a sympathetic young woman. One possessing high-minded purpose and ideals."
"I wouldn't choke another human being just to prove how big and strong I am," Miss Noble said. "I wouldn't do what you just did to that poor man any more than I'd choke a kitten or a puppy."
Longarm heard several of the other passengers muttering in agreement. Eli was still choking and coughing, but it sounded forced to Longarm.
"This man is no kitten or puppy, Miss Noble," Longarm said, trying to explain, although he thought no explanation was due or even deserved. "Eli Wheat is a cold-blooded killer of men, women, and even children."
Miss Noble took a step back. She blinked and looked at Eli in disbelief. He made an attempt to smile. There were tears in his eyes and he looked beaten and submissive.
Miss Noble said, "I... I doubt that."
"Why?" Longarm asked. "Because he looks harmless? Of course he does! He's handcuffed and wearing leg manacles. But the man is a notorious stage and train robber. Eli, how many trains have you and your gang robbed?"
"Not a single one!"
Longarm snorted with derision. "That's a bald-faced lie. Eli and his friends have robbed at least four that we know of, and probably many more. They've derailed trains and ambushed dozens of stagecoaches. Their favorite method is just to shoot the driver, the guard, and a lead horse all in one volley. Needless to say, the safety of passengers concerns them not a whit."
Miss Noble started to say something, but Longarm wasn't finished educating her. "Less than a week ago, Eli broke into a sod house and murdered an entire family. A good wife, a fine husband, and their two sons."
"I find that impossible to believe!"
"I didn't do it!" Eli choked. "The deputy is just sayin' that so's he can mistreat me!"
Longarm ached to drive his right elbow into Eli's solar plexus hard enough to shut him up for a good long time. The memory of finding that family of murdered sodbusters was going to haunt him for a good long while.
"How long has it been since your prisoner has had anything to eat?" Miss Noble demanded.
Longarm ignored the question. His eyes took in the other accusing faces. "Listen," he said, "I know Eli isn't particularly mean-looking, but neither is a wolf if you happen to catch sight of one playing with its pups."
Eli started to say something, but Longarm cut him off with a withering glance.
Miss Noble went back to her seat, and on the way said loudly, "We wouldn't stand to watch an animal chained and mistreated that way, and yet we allow one human being to do it to another."
Longarm ground his teeth in anger and frustration. He'd met too damn many women like Miss Noble. They were well-intentioned but incredibly naive. He'd bet Miss Noble would also be opposed to demon whiskey and up to her pretty eyebrows in religion. Undoubtedly, she could quote the Bible for hours and was the product of a very sheltered existence. She'd never have seen another human being murdered, and she would find it in her heart to forgive any sin believing that was what God expected.
Longarm hoped that Miss Noble never saw the real savagery that a man like Eli Wheat was capable of exhibiting. One minute Eli could be whining and slightly patheticlooking; the next he could turn more vicious and deadlier than a cornered Apache.
Longarm stared out the window. The first flakes of snow were beginning to swirl in the air. The train was rapidly slowing, and Longarm could see that the wall of flying snow was less than a thousand yards up the mountain.
"It looks bad," Eli said, his voice a tortured whisper. "Real bad."
"It's nothing for this train. Hell, the tracks are clear and even if it is snowing hard up on the summit, the storm is just arriving so the snow can't be very deep. We'll get through without much delay, you can bet on that."
Eli loudly cleared his bruised throat. "If I had any money, I'd bet against us reaching Cheyenne in time to catch that southbound train into Denver. That's what I'd bet."
Longarm stood up and stepped into the aisle. Although he had stretched and walked up and down the aisle several times when they had been taking on coal and water in Laramie, he already felt stiff and restless. He was a big man who wore a brown tweed suit, a blue-gray shirt with a shoestring tie, and comfortably low-heeled army boots of cordovan leather. His brown Stetson was flat-crowned and somewhat the worse for wear, but his clothes were clean. A gold chain connected an Ingersoll watch in one vest
pocket to a twin-barreled, .44-caliber derringer in the other.
"Excuse me," he said as another passenger squeezed past him in the aisle and they bumped because of the rolling motion of the coach. "It's a little cramped in those seats."
"Maybe you should also let your prisoner stretch," Miss Noble snipped.
Longarm ignored the woman's suggestion. Always suspicious that a prisoner might have friends waiting for an unguarded moment to act, he surveyed the coach, eyes skipping over every single passenger. None seemed to be the type that would pose a danger. Unfortunately, this train was packed, every seat filled. And although the wind was finding cracks to seep into the car and cause it to become decidedly chilly, there were so many bodies crammed into the coach that the air was stuffy.
"We're really starting to climb now," Eli said. "I don't think this old train is going to make it over the summit in this storm."
"It'll make it," Longarm said, knowing that it would be a slow and difficult pull over the 8,600-foot Laramie Summit. If the snow was really heavy, they might even be forced to attack it with snow shovels or plows.
"Even if we do, it'll still be the longest sixty miles you ever rode," Eli predicted. "Sixty miles doesn't seem like much, but a lot can happen."
"Shut up," Longarm growled, dropping back into his seat, "or I'll part your hair permanently."
Eli smiled, but there was no warmth in it. He was a hatchet-faced man, lean and muscular. Dressed in a heavy woolen jacket and baggy pants, and slumped down next to the window, he looked deceptively mild and even vulnerable.
Longarm knew better. Eli was a dead-eye shot. He probably stood about five feet ten and weighed less than 170 pounds, but every pound was bone and muscle, and he was as quick with a gun as any man that Longarm had ever crossed. Facing a gallows in Denver made him capable of any act of murder and desperation.
Miss Noble climbed to her feet. Shooting a look of pure venom at Longarm, she squared her shoulders and rummaged around in a brown paper sack. After a moment, she extracted an apple and a sandwich wrapped in crisp brown paper. Longarm knew at once that it was not a peace offering.
"Deputy," Miss Noble said, "perhaps I was a little harsh in my criticism of you. That doesn't mean that, for even a minute, I believe this man is capable of the heinous acts you say he committed, but-"
"He shot the sodbuster in the face with his own scattergun," Longarm said in a clipped, uncompromising voice. "Then my prisoner used that same scattergun to brain the oldest son, who was about eighteen."
"Stop it!" Miss Noble cried, shrinking away in horror.
But Longarm was angry. This woman hadn't been invited to interfere, and she needed to have a lesson in reality so that the next time she saw a lawman and his prisoner, she might be a fairer judge of who deserved her acid tongue.
"After he killed the father and oldest son," Longarm continued, "my prisoner went into the house and when the fifteen-year-old son attacked him, my prisoner used his knife. It wasn't much of a fight because Mr. Wheat is very, very good with a bowie. The boy had no chance at all."
Miss Noble paled. The sandwich tumbled from her grip, and Eli reached out and snatched it up. He stuffed it whole into his mouth and began to engulf it like a snake swallowing a big gopher.
"I'm not going to tell you the details about how this prisoner killed the wife and mother," Longarm said, taking pity on Miss Noble. "But I will tell you this much, it wasn't pretty and it wasn't a quick, merciful death. And so you see, I don't care if this man hangs or I have the pleasure of killing him before we reach Denver."
Miss Noble swayed as a sudden and powerful gust of wind rocked their coach. She appeared faint, and could not seem to tear her eyes off Eli as he licked his thin lips.
"Miss Noble, you look unwell. Why don't you take a seat?" Longarm said, feeling a little guilty because he had been so forthright in his account of the murder.
Another passenger who had also been glaring at Longarm now turned his icy gaze on Eli, who seemed oblivious to everything.
"Deputy, how did you ever manage to capture that... that monster?"
"He made the mistake of stealing the sodbuster's horses and cutting southwest toward Utah. Eli didn't realize that country is damned rocky and neither of the sodbuster's horses were shod. They went lame up in the Unita Mountains, and I was able to overtake Eli and catch him asleep right at dawn."
Eli's face turned bitter. "Damned sonsabitchin' plow horses!"
The other man introduced himself. "My name is Edward Ashmore and I'm the president of the Bank of Wyoming with headquarters in Cheyenne. We're opening a second branch in Laramie and I'm constantly traveling back and forth between those places. Fifty miles doesn't seem like a long journey by rail, except that it's all up and then down a mountain. It's a tedious and even dangerous roadbed."
"I know that," Longarm said. "There are a lot of switchbacks, and I've been over this stretch in winter when the trains had a terrible time crossing."
"I'm hoping that, it only being November, we won't get the kind of snowstorm we might get a month or two from now."
"I hope you're right," Longarm said, looking out the window and seeing that the snow was thick now and visibility was just forty or fifty yards.
"I for one," Ashmore said, "understand that there are such men as your prisoner. I've never witnessed a killing or been to war. But I've lived in Wyoming more than ten years now and I know that there are desperate and ruthless outlaws. Men perfectly capable of murder. Deputy Long, you're to be congratulated for taking every precaution against allowing this man to escape and attempt to murder one of us."
"I appreciate your support," Longarm said, loud enough so that Miss Noble could not possibly fail to hear. "A lawman never seems to get much respect, and we damn sure don't get much pay either. But someone has to track down fugitives of the law and bring them to justice."
"Tell me, have you ever considered some other occupation?"
"Such as?"
The banker shrugged. "The Bank of Wyoming could use an ex-lawman to guard shipments between Cheyenne and Laramie. I like your no-nonsense style. You strike me as a true professional, sir."
Longarm warmed to the praise. "I sincerely appreciate your kind and flattering words. But the fact of the matter is that I like my work. Oh, I grumble about the hours and the bad pay. I sometimes even envy a sheriff or town marshal who can go home to a wife and children. I'm constantly being sent hither and yon after escaped fugitives. But I'm good at it, and in fact I think there are few better."
The banker smiled. "Yes, yes, I'm sure that's true. You're exactly the kind of a man that we could use to protect our interests. There's a bright future in Wyoming banking for a steady man who can handle himself. I'm sure that we could offer you a salary that would make you give up that badge."
"Thanks, but I'm just not interested."
Ashmore looked genuinely surprised. "I'm not used to being turned down when I offer a man an exceptionally well-paying job. Is there... is there something personal you have against me, sir?"
"Oh, no! I just like my work and right now I'm trying to keep my mind on my prisoner. Maybe the next time I come through Cheyenne I can look you up and we can talk."
"By then the position might be filled."
"That's a chance I'll just have to take," Longarm said, trying but failing to sound concerned because he doubted that he'd have any real interest in being a bank guard no matter how good the pay.
"I'm going to raise hell with our conductor for letting this coach get so frigid," the banker said, rubbing his hands briskly together. "It's outrageous!"
Longarm glanced around. "I haven't seen him for quite some time."
"I'll go look for him," the banker said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I'm not about to let these good people, many of whom are undoubtedly faithful depositors at the Bank of Wyoming, suffer because of a dereliction of duty."
"Good idea," Longarm said, noting how the storm and the train had finally met so that visibil
ity outside was reduced to nothing.
Eli stared at the window, the muscles of his jaw distended. In a quiet voice he said, "I'm not going to hang."
"That's not my business," Longarm said. "All I'm sworn to do is bring you to trial."
"Yeah, but you don't know what happened back there at that homestead."
Longarm's voice dropped to a hard whisper. "Oh, yes I do! I can read signs and I know you slaughtered that entire family."
"They weren't neighborly to me," Eli said between clenched teeth. "The sodbuster, he wouldn't give me a fair trade for two lame horses. All I wanted was a fair trade!"
"So you blew his face off? Tell it to the judge after I tell him about the wife and the sons."
"They were mean to me!" Eli hissed. "Didn't even ask me in for supper after I said I was hungry."
"That's no reason to kill them."
"They asked for it!"
"Shut up," Longarm breathed. "If I wasn't a deputy of the federal court in Denver, I'd have gut-shot you up in the Unitas and been done with it. You deserve to die hard, Eli. A bullet in your brain would be too kind."
Eli glanced sideways at Longarm. "You're no different than me," he said. "You just hide behind a badge so you can do your killing legal."
Longarm's eyes shifted to the man, then past him to the window. Even over the pounding of the iron wheels he could hear the sound of the wind howling off the Laramie Mountains. This storm was coming all the way down from Canada. Longarm could only imagine what kind of a white, frozen hell the locomotive engineer must be fighting as he peered vainly ahead into the freezing maelstrom, trying to gauge where each of the many switchbacks would be and hoping that the snow did not stick on the ground to block the rails. "I never liked snow until now," Eli said with a smirk. "I always said that I was going to California. That's where I was headed when you caught me. I'd never have killed again."
"That's a lie. You've killed so often that it means nothing to you anymore. That woman whose throat you cut in Denver was-"
"Was just another tired-out old whore!" Eli choked out. "She tried to get me drunk so that her boyfriend could steal the money from my pants. But I was wise to 'em! If he hadn't jumped out of that hotel window, I'd have killed him too."
