For the Love of a Woman

by Orrin Russell

  Sara stood in the dim light of the adjoining room with her eyes looking down the barrel of a Colt model 1860 revolver.

  ‘You’d shoot me?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’ll start with a bullet in the leg. We still need you for the train. But yes, I’d shoot you. Don’t doubt it.’

  ‘So it was all for the money? That’s it?’

  ‘Ten thousand is no small sum. They say a fool and his money are soon separated. I spotted you for a fool the moment I saw you. I’ll admit,’ she let her eyes roam down his body, ‘I had a good time doing it. I think you did as well. Now put that knife down and get back into this room. Shane, get up.’

  Balum inched his way back over the dirt to his space against the wall. Shane was slow to pick himself off the ground.

  ‘Check his ropes again,’ said Sara. ‘I don’t know why those idiots didn’t tie his hands behind his back.’

  ‘They couldn’t have tied him over the horse that way.’

  ‘Shut up, Shane. Just check the ropes.’

  When Shane had finished his inspection of Balum’s feet and ankles he sat at the table across from Sara. Balum sat against the sod wall in the darkening stink of the room. A mouse appeared out of the kitchen. It watched Balum, looked at the two at the table, and summoned the courage to enter. It finally did, running past his feet and snatching up the piece of jerked meat still lying on the dirt floor.

  Shadows stretched out away from the setting sun. Shane piped up at times. He bragged about his whiskey. His company was requested everywhere he went, he insisted. Responses from Sara were sparse.

  The riders returned before nightfall. Sara jumped from the table and stood in the doorway watching the men dismount under the trees. Shane rose and looked over her shoulder from behind.

  ‘Where are they?’ she said as the four approached the dugout.

  They filed in, faces tight and shoulders hunched.

  ‘Uncle Frederick?’ she asked, turning to Nelson.

  ‘Let your father explain it. It was his harebrained idea.’

  ‘Father?’

  Aston took his hat off and threw it on the table. ‘Give me some of that goddamn piss-whiskey,’ he barked.

  ‘What happened?’ Sara demanded to anyone who would answer.

  ‘It’s a fortress,’ said Saul. ‘That’s what happened. There’s over a dozen cowhands riding all around the place, half of them Mexican, each one loaded down with weaponry like they were going off to war. One of those Mexes had a set of bandoliers strapped across his damn chest. Ain’t no four men gonna drag anyone out of there.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m thinking on it,’ said Aston between gulps of whiskey.

  ‘Thinking on it? It looks like you’re trying to get drunk to me.’

  ‘Leave me be.’

  ‘Let’s just shoot him,’ said Crenshaw. ‘It would have been hard enough to get him to cooperate with the robbery even if we had been able to hold his friends as hostages.’

  ‘Then who will they pin the robbery on?’ said Nelson.

  Crenshaw shrugged. His lawyer brain was through lawyering.

  ‘I got an idea,’ said Saul. ‘Those two friends he’s always hanging around with in Denver. One’s an old man, the other doesn’t even carry a gun. It’ll be easy.’

  ‘The train comes in tomorrow,’ said Nelson. ‘No way we can get to Denver and back before then.’

  ‘Shoot him,’ Crenshaw suggested for the second time.

  Shane Carly’s head turned to each man as they spoke, this way and that. He poured more whiskey into Aston’s glass and held the bottle out for anyone else who would dare accept it. Gradually, he found takers, and all but Sara stood or sat at the table with rancid whiskey coating their tongues.

  ‘There’s a better idea.’

  Each man turned his head to Sara.

  ‘There’s a woman,’ she said. ‘I know the way a man looks at a woman, and I saw the way he looked at her.’

  ‘Who?’ said Aston.

  ‘She was at the wedding. Dark hair, mid thirties, attractive. Beautiful, really.’

  ‘Yes, but who ?’

  ‘I don’t know who she is, but she’s out there.’

  Frederick Nelson slammed his whiskey glass over the table and stood up. He picked his hat up and pulled it over his dome. ‘If you know what she looks like, I know where to find her.’

  ‘Tell us what you know, Frederick,’ said Aston.

  ‘When Balum took me in, we didn’t go directly to Denver. We made a detour here to Cheyenne. He had somebody he wanted to meet. Stayed out all night at the train station waiting, but that person never showed. What do you think he did then? He rode up to a whore house and peeked in the door. Whatever he saw he didn’t like. The whore was probably with some fella. But that’s who it is. I’d lay my money on it.’

  ‘You’re telling us he’s in love with a whore?’ Crenshaw said in disbelief. ‘One he’d rob a train for?’

  ‘I saw it,’ Aston cut in. ‘I saw that same woman at the wedding. You’re right, Sara. He didn’t take his eyes off her from the moment it started. Frederick, can you find that whore house?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  Aston pushed the whiskey away. ‘Saddle up boys. We’re riding.’

  19

  They returned two hours later in whoops and hollers, as though the bit of whiskey they had drunk had delayed its effects and descended upon them in that instant more powerful and intoxicating than anticipated. Boots stomped over the grassless yard before the dugout. Shane Carly swung the door wide and ran outside, taking the oil lamp with him and leaving Balum and Sara in the pitch black.

  Angelique was the first to enter. Her dress immaculate. Hair dark and shining. Rope wound about her arms, restricting them against her ribs.

  Frederick Nelson pushed her forward through the doorway and into the filth of Shane Carly’s home. Her face turned in the dark, searching to make sense of her kidnapper’s ambitions. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloomy interior. Balum could see her features. She was scared, there was no mistaking it, yet she was composed, sure of herself as always.

  ‘Go ahead,’ grunted Nelson. ‘Have a seat over there by your sweetheart.’

  Her eyes found him. Eyes frightened and silent. She walked to the wall and turned and sat with her back to it, Balum beside her. The two looked at each other in the darkness, their eyes connecting through the haze of dirty air, and Balum knew there was no rancor in her heart. Guilt rose up within him. He wished to speak his mind to her but he knew not what to say, nor was the moment given to him.

  ‘Why don’t we take her to the trees outside and have some fun?’ said Saul. ‘She won’t mind. She’s nothing but a whore anyway.’

  ‘You hear that, Balum?’ said Nelson. ‘Saul wants to have a little fun. I bet Shane does too. And Crenshaw. Hell, we could hump her till sunup. I expect you wouldn’t like that much.’

  Balum kept his lips together.

  ‘That’s what I thought. So I’ll tell you what. Tonight she can sit right there next to you. But hear me clear. You don’t help us on that train tomorrow and that whore of yours won’t be able to walk, come tomorrow evening.’

  Shane Carly had entered with the oil lamp.

  ‘Time to get some shuteye, boys,’ said Aston. ‘We’ll be leaving at sunup tomorrow. Spread your blankets and take a shot of whiskey if it’ll help you sleep.’

  ‘I’d rather sleep outside,’ said Sara.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Aston. ‘But you’re taking first watch over these two. Shane’ll take second. Hear that, Shane?’

  ‘I hear it.’

  ‘They’re tied good enough. Let ‘em sleep. But they start moving around too much, or they stand up, club ‘em down. I’d rather not have you shoot them. We didn’t got to all this work for nothing. Now turn out that light.’

  They had taken their bedrolls from the horses and unfurled them over the dirt floor. Shane extinguished
the flame and darkness swept over the room, gradually eased by the shimmer of stars through the one small window. Balum and Angelique shimmied down the wall until they were off it, their bodies flat over the floor. They lied close together, facing each other with the warmth of their breath mixing. Snores rippled out around them.

  ‘What’s happening, Balum?’ Angelique’s voice reached him so quietly it was barely a whisper.

  ‘They want me to rob the train with them tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So they can pin it on me. Nelson’s trial was a circus. They found him innocent. Half of Denver already thinks I should hang from the stories they told about me. If people think I robbed the train, these boys won’t have a thing to worry about.’

  ‘So that’s why they brought me here. To make you do it.’

  They were quiet for a moment. Two invisible faces in the dark. Angelique leaned closer to him, her lips nearly brushing his cheek.

  ‘It won’t do any good, Balum. They’ll kill you afterwards.’

  ‘They’ll kill me if I don’t. That’s certain,’ he whispered, scarcely audible. He ached to reach a hand out to her, to touch her, wrap her close against him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I’m sorry for everything else. I was angry with you. I didn’t read your letter until just today. I got mixed up with that girl Sara and turned a deaf ear to my friends’ warnings. I love you Angelique. Always have.’

  She leaned forward until her nose grazed his own. Her hands, bound by rope, reached out and found Balum’s and she held his fingers in hers. ‘I knew I wanted you ever since I first saw you sitting in my barroom looking like you’d been dragged through hell. I just tried not to admit it.’

  ‘I’m going to make sure every one of them winds up dead or in jail. I just don’t know how.’

  ‘You’ll have to think of something quickly, Balum. Robbing the train with them will buy you time, but not much. After that they’ll kill us both.’

  Outside the wind had picked up. An owl called out somewhere far away.

  ‘I know it,’ he mouthed the words. ‘I know it.’

  20

  Six men they were, horses galloping under them with necks stretched out to the rising sun. From afar there was no sound to them, only specks on the plains, dust hanging in the air where they passed. For the riders clustered tight, their ears were filled with the clink of metal on harnesses, the stomping of hooves over a trembling earth. They rode as though cornets played above them, drowning out the silence of the flat empty land before them.

  Their path cut well south of Cheyenne. No one saw the dust rise. No one heard the horses’ hooves nor the squeak of leather against leather. No cornets trumpeted their movements.

  Balum’s body held stiff in the saddle atop the roan. At every mile he searched for the chance of escape. The men riding with him allowed him no opportunity. They rode on all sides of him, their eyes watchful. He thought of Angelique left alone and tied in the dugout with Sara standing guard over her. He imagined her death, and his, their graves or lack thereof, and battled these thoughts from his mind.

  Having passed Cheyenne they curved to the northeast along hardpack of little resource to the withered grasses that grew thin and weak, gasping up toward the sky. The soil turned from loam to sand to clay. Plant life grew only in patches. Mesas rose in tight mounds above them, towering a hundred feet into the air or more. The hooves churned up dust which billowed around them and the riders pulled bandanas of varying colors over their mouths and noses and squinted their eyes as they trotted toward the glistening rail tracks ahead.

  No one spoke through that long ride. Sweat stained their clothing as the sun heated the humid air. It trickled from their brows and into the bandanas, cutting minuscule rivers through their dust-caked faces. Revolver handles protruded form holsters. Colts and Remingtons and Manhattan Navys. Cords of rope hung looped from saddle pommels. Rope destined to pull the strongbox from the traincar should the need arise.

  After three hours of hard riding, the horses were worked into a lather and the men wet with sweat and covered in dust and grime. They followed the rails east until they saw the hot iron tracks curve sharply to the south over their massive wooden ties. On careful steps they crossed the rails and rode to the shadowed floor at the foot of a towering mesa and pulled their horses to a stop. Sand cherry and sagebrush grew in ragged clumps. Among the thirsty shrubs the riders dismounted and drank long and greedily at their canteens. They offered Balum nothing.

  ‘What’s the matter, Balum?’ taunted Nelson. ‘Thirsty?’

  Shane Carly laughed along at the bigman’s joke.

  ‘Listen up boys,’ said Aston. ‘When she comes around that bend she’s gonna have to slow down. That’ll be our chance. But no foolishness; she’ll still be coming in hot. Once we board, you keep those bandanas snug over your faces. I don’t care how hot your damn breath is underneath. Frederick, you and me will head straight for the engine. We’ll stop the train, and if that lockbox doesn’t open easy we’ll pull the goddamn thing off with rope. Shane, that means you need to have those horses rounded up and alongside the train. I want that rope handy. Got that?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, his face sweating and his eyes showing their whites.

  ‘Saul, Douglas, you two make sure no passengers get any wild ideas. Keep your guns on them. Take their wallets and purses and if you see any watches or jewelry you might as well grab that up as well. Use that burlap sack we brought. And you damn well better keep an eye on Balum. Keep your gun on him as much as anyone else. Which reminds me,’ Aston reached into the saddlebag on his horse’s flank and brandished Balum’s Dragoon. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting this back.’

  Balum caught it in the air. From the weight he knew immediately the chambers had been emptied.

  ‘It’s empty,’ he said.

  ‘No shit it’s empty,’ said Saul.

  ‘It’ll stay empty. Once this is all over with you can have your whore back and go buy as many bullets as you please.’

  Balum holstered the gun and looked down the tracks. There would be nothing after this. Not in those men’s plan.

  The sun drifted in the sky. The edge of the mesa’s shadow crept closer to them and they hugged tighter to the rising cliff to keep from the sun’s heat. Saul walked about picking up stones and throwing them. Douglas Crenshaw and Shane Carly sweated as though the cool of the shade had no effect on them. A hawk flew overhead, circled, disappeared.

  ‘And one more thing,’ said Aston suddenly. ‘Don’t any of you fools go using each other’s names. Got that?’

  They mumbled and bobbed their heads.

  The sun cut over the peak of the mesa and burned away the shadow with it. They stood in the sun with their eyes squinting under their hat brims and waited.

  The smudge of thick steam rising like a tendril up to the sky was what they saw before they heard any sound, any grinding of wheels, the pump of the engine. It came rocketing out of the southeast, gleaming in the sunlight, red and black and thunderous.

  ‘Wait till she’s just past us!’ shouted Aston.

  It slowed and took the bend, turning to show each railcar linked one after another. When the engine had reached the straightaway toward Cheyenne Aston glanced back and motioned with his hand and they took off all six of them once more, charging like cavalry into war. The last of the cars with the caboose attached at the end slipped round the bend and the horses turned in line with the squealing cars, their feet matching the velocity of the train. Dust rose in a haze about them. Aston and Nelson shouted commands which were swept away before they could be heard. Nelson was the first to board the train. He grabbed the metal railing of the caboose end and flipped a leg over the saddle, then jumped from the stirrup and landed on his knees on the platform.

  Aston rode alongside Balum. He pulled his gun and leveled it across his saddle and shouted words which Balum couldn’t hear but knew full well their inten
tion. He charged the roan over the extended railroad ties and performed the same movements Nelson had, his mind reeling when his eyes caught the ground flying past beneath. With a hand clutching the railing, Balum leapt from the roan. Nelson grabbed him by the shoulders as he landed and pulled him onto the clear section of platform. Aston followed. Saul charged in behind him, the train beginning to accelerate on the straightaway. He jumped, caught the railing, and landed with his legs crashing into the metal staircase. His horse veered wildly away from the commotion and Shane Carly’s figure shrunk as he scrambled in the blowing dust to round up the horses.

  Crenshaw came charging behind. His eyes were wild and the bandana had fallen away from his face. The horse beneath him flared its nostrils, sides heaving with the load of the fatman on its back. Crenshaw reached out a hand in an empty gesture.

  ‘Get closer!’ shouted Aston from the caboose’s stairway. ‘Pull your leg over!’

  Crenshaw waved his hand pathetically while his horse lagged further behind.

  ‘Goddamnit!’ Aston yelled again, but Crenshaw’s horse had flagged, and the train drew away.

  ‘He’ll catch up to us when we stop,’ shouted Nelson above the train whistle. ‘Let’s go.’

  Through the caboose the four men walked. The crew’s accommodations were stacked against the car walls. A small table with remains of food sat uncleaned. They crossed the distance outside to the next car, bandanas covering each face save for Balum’s. Under each bandana their hands clutched guns, hammers cocked back. The door swung open and they made their way through an aisle packed tight with chests and boxes and supplies packed up from distant places. Frederick Nelson led the way, Balum behind him. Saul and Aston took up the rear.

  ‘Pull your gun out, Balum,’ Aston ordered from the back.

  Balum did as he was told. His mind scrambled for a solution but nothing came of it.

  The next two cars held more of the same. Balum swung his eyes over his surroundings, looking for a weapon of any sort. Something he could use as a club, anything. All about him the supplies sat wrapped in rope or packed tightly away in crates and chests. They crossed to the next car, the next after that. On the following they ripped open the door to a passenger car with two rows of benches all facing them.