Yancey frowned. He reached up and touched his bandaged head gingerly. “Dunno as I want someone openin’ my skull. Hell, man, I’ve got enough pain as it is! They might do more damage! It’s one hell of an operation …”
“How do you know?” Cato asked quietly.
“I’ve read about it. The Incas in Peru used to do it way back in history. Trepannin’ they call it: cuttin’ a piece of bone out of a man’s skull ... what in hell are you grinnin’ at?”
Cato’s smile widened; he couldn’t help it. “Yance, I reckon that’s a good sign. You got some memory or you wouldn’t have been able to tell me all that stuff about the Incas!”
Yancey frowned. “Well, I’ll be …! Hell, I dunno. That just sort of came out. I didn’t think about it! But I’ve sure been thinkin’ about who I am and who all you folks are who keep comin’ in here. Damned if I can get a notion. That gal, Kate, tells me we meant something to each other.” He shook his head slowly. “Can’t believe I’d ever forget a good-looker like her!”
Cato laughed. “Man, you’re gettin’ better already!”
But Yancey didn’t smile.
Cato sobered. “All right, old pard. Maybe it don’t seem that way to you, but I see it as an encouragin’ sign. Yance, you can’t help me out, huh?”
“Nope. I—I dunno what you’re talking about and that’s gospel.” He touched his head again. “I dunno how I got this, and I don’t remember anyone named Carlsen or ever being in this Staked Plains place ... Llano Estacado or whatever it’s called.”
Cato stood up, grinning. “I just called it the Staked Plains, man. Never mentioned the old Spanish name. That’s somethin’ else you’ve dredged up yourself. I reckon you’ll be all right, Yance. I’ll see you when I get back. Adios, amigo.”
“Hasta luego,” Yancey replied automatically and then frowned as he gripped hands with Cato, for he knew the Spanish phrase meant ‘So long.’
The hell of it was, he didn’t know how he knew …!
Cato went out with a wave but once he had closed the door, his face set into hard lines. Maybe it was encouraging, the things Yancey was recalling instinctively, but Boles had told him earlier that it was a very dangerous operation and if the surgeon’s knife slipped only a fraction, Yancey could wind up a lunatic. The thing was, no one would know until he came out of it. And Cato had no wish to see his old sidekick even facing such a prospect.
As he moved down the passage, his mouth was pulled into a tight line. The men who had done this to Yancey were not going to have it easy. He would carry the picture of Yancey’s gaunt, sunken-eyed face with him along the trail to Bent’s Junction and wherever else it led him, until the mission was completed.
Five – Long Trail to Concho
It was easy enough to find out in Bent’s Junction that Yancey had been involved in a gunfight there with two hardcases. Once he had several eye-witness accounts, Cato searched out the saloon where it had happened and breasted the bar, ordering a whisky. When the barkeep poured, Cato motioned for him to leave the bottle and glanced around the room.
“Business is kind of slow,” Cato observed. He lifted the bottle. “Pour yourself one.”
“Thanks,” said the barkeep and brought up a shot glass from under the counter. He poured, saluted Cato and downed the drink. Cato poured him another and he immediately saw wariness come into the man’s face.
“Relax. Just want some information.”
“I dish out drinks, mister, not gab. Obliged for the redeye and that’ll be a dollar and two bits total.”
Cato grabbed the man’s arm, smiling, faintly, keeping it friendly. “You’ll get your money. Could be some more in it for you.”
The barkeep hesitated but there was greed in his eyes. Cato took out coins and slid five dollars onto the bar. Beside them he placed a dollar and a quarter in payment for the drinks. The barkeep looked at him but didn’t touch the money.
“Believe you had a gunfight in here a week or so ago,” Cato said. “Big man, callin’ himself Carlsen. Downed two hardcases but I think he got scalp-creased.”
The barkeep stared at Cato for a spell, then dropped his gaze to the coins. He looked at them for a long minute, then abruptly scooped them into his hand, dropped them into his pocket, leaving only the money for the whisky on the bar-top. He shook his head slowly.
“Nope. He already had that scalp-crease. Local sawbones had bandaged it for him before the ruckus. And he called himself Carlsen but Nathan, one of the hardcases, called him Banner or some such, just before he cashed in his chips.”
“Like—Bannerman?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Cato’s mouth was grim. Yancey had obviously been set up, then. If he had been using Carlsen’s name, then it was certain sure he had already killed the man before hitting town, and it was probably Carlsen who had scalp-creased Yancey.
“He was lookin’ for someone named Onslow,” the barkeep said, adding, “And I reckon that about takes care of your five dollars.”
Cato looked at him hard. “Would another five buy me any more? I warn you now, mister, it’d have to be somethin’ I could really use. I might get kind of upset if it turned out otherwise.”
The barkeep was nine inches or so taller than Cato and he made the mistake that many others had made over the years. He assumed that size counted for everything and drew himself up to his full height, looking down at Cato.
“Beat it, small change. You’ve had your money’s worth. Now get before I throw you out.”
Cato casually picked up his half-full glass and suddenly tossed the whisky into the barkeep’s face. The man cried out as the raw spirit bit into his eyes and Cato reached up, twisted his fingers in the man’s lank hair and smashed his face down onto the top of the bar. The barkeep’s knees buckled and he began to fall. Cato vaulted over the bar, caught him, and drove him back into the bottle shelves with a jar that shook loose a whole row of glasses. The splinters crunched under his boots as he grabbed a glass of wash water from the pan under the counter and dashed it into the face of the writhing, half-conscious barkeep. The man stopped whining and slowly straightened, blood oozing from a cut on his forehead. The other drinkers in the bar were frozen at their tables, gaping, wondering what in hell had happened. Trouble had simply exploded in the room and they had no idea why ...
Cato drew his massive Manstopper and tapped the barkeep lightly along the jaw with the heavy double barrels. “It only has to travel six inches, mister, and your jaw’ll be wired-up for six months ... It’ll cost you a lot more than five bucks to get it fixed.”
The man was scared silly now and nodded vigorously. “Okay, okay. Can’t tell you much, ’cept he went to the railroad depot and bought a ticket, quit town on the mornin’ train.”
“I know all that. You ain’t mentioned this ‘Onslow’.”
“Don’t know him ... Honest mister. Don’t know him. I reckon Nathan and his pard worked for him, but they’d work for anyone who could pay them. You could ask around town to see if he was stayin’ at any of the hotels, but I never heard tell of him.”
Cato looked into the man’s scared eyes a little longer, then nodded, suddenly stomped his heel into the barkeep’s instep and as the man reached down with a gasp of pain, he hit him lightly behind the ear with the gun barrel and stretched him out on the floor, moaning, half-conscious.
Then he vaulted the bar lithely and walked out of the hushed saloon, the eyes of the tensed, silent men following him warily.
~*~
He rode the train to Concho, figuring on retracing Yancey’s steps, though all he had learned at the Bent’s Junction depot was that Yancey had bought a ticket clear through to Timbertop. Cato’s idea in stopping off at Concho was to see the girl, Marnie Hendry, again. He hadn’t questioned her much before, as she had been too anxious to get Yancey back to proper medical care. But now he figured maybe Yancey had mentioned something to her that could be of help. There was always the chance that she was involved and had soug
ht out Yancey deliberately on the train, but he would find that out, too, when he reached Concho.
As the train climbed and passed over the newly repaired stretch of track where the wreck had occurred, he felt his jaw muscles tighten involuntarily. There was the fresh scar on the mountain slope above the tracks, left by the explosion. On the other side, down the steep slope, were still the remains of the splintered railroad cars and twisted seats, a warped bogey, a couple of lengths of twisted track. The slope was torn-up where the cars had plowed into the earth and he marveled again how so few people had been seriously injured in the wreck. Three people had died and it was nothing short of a miracle that there hadn’t been more ...
Once over the mountain, the train gathered speed on the long, angling run down to a whistle-stop known as Hell’s Kitchen. It was an outlet for cattle ranches way inland from the railroad, and a lot of farmers freighted their produce to market in Timbertop. Cowpokes either paid-off by the ranches or on their way into town for a weekend spree would sometimes be picked up here, complete with horses that travelled in the special boxcar. Today was one of the times when two cowpokes were on their way into the bright lights and there was a delay of almost half an hour while they loaded their mounts into the boxcar. One horse didn’t like the idea and gave a deal of trouble, but it was finally stalled and the sweating, cursing cowpokes swung up the steps and came into Cato’s car, wiping forearms across their flushed faces. They dropped wearily into a seat down the aisle and on the opposite side of Cato, stretched out their legs and tilted their hats over their faces, aiming to sleep until the train pulled into Concho.
Cato propped his boots up on the seat opposite, folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, rocking gently to the motion of the train as it rolled on down the track.
They tore through the next whistle-stop at full speed but pulled in at a small hamlet whose name Cato never did learn. No one got on board, but some mail and parcels were picked up. The train rolled on, the locomotive’s stack belching clouds of thick black smoke and a cascade of sparks. The countryside was dry and brown and Cato figured a few of those sparks could turn the place into an inferno if the breeze fanned them just right. After Twin Falls, there was a long, empty run to Concho, across seemingly endless miles of grass plain before lifting into rugged hills and the longest tunnel on any railroad in Texas at that time. It was called Rorke’s Tunnel in honor of the engineer who had driven it through solid rock beneath a towering mountain. After Rorke’s Tunnel, there would be a downgrade into Concho.
The route was scenic enough not to be boring but Cato was tired from long weeks on the trail after Roy Treece, and dozed in his seat. The two cowpokes seemed to be well asleep and one of them snorted and grunted, shifting restlessly. Cato’s chin rested on his chest above his folded arms, head nodding in time with the swaying and rocking of the train. The monotonous click-clacking of the wheels helped lull him into a light doze though the cowboy’s snoring prevented him from falling right off to sleep.
His breathing began to settle down into a deep rhythm and he found himself drifting pleasantly into proper sleep when his senses awakened sharply, though he did not open his eyes or move his head or body. Something was different. It took a few seconds for sleep to clear from his brain. Then he knew what it was: the cowboy had stopped snoring. Well, that was something, anyway, but, opening his eyes just a little so he could peer through his lashes, he knew his sixth sense had stood by him once more when he saw the two cowboys down the aisle and across from him standing slowly, their eyes on him, hands near their guns. One looked down the empty car and through the half-glass door into the car behind, making sure no one was coming. The other man eased his gun slowly out of leather …
Cato didn’t wait any longer. He threw himself down between the seats, dragging the heavy Manstopper out of leather and coming up shooting. The first shot smashed the window above the cowpokes’ heads and they dived for cover, one gun going off, the bullet flying wild. The second shot from the Manstopper punched a hole in the seat and one of the men swore as he was hit, though not fatally.
Then Cato lunged to his feet and charged down the aisle away from the killers, kicking open the car door and going out onto the rear platform. He heard lead splintering the woodwork around him, turned and snapped two shots back down the aisle. One of the men reeled and his arms flailed as he was carried back several feet by the impact of lead. Cato shot him again and then swung onto the ladder and felt the wind of the train’s passage pluck at him. He went up fast onto the rocking roof of the car and threw himself flat on the walkway.
Black smoke rolled over him. Sparks burned his neck and the back of his hand. He lay there full length, gun in hand, muzzle pointed at the top of the ladder. As soon as the remaining killer showed his head above the roof line he was going to have it blown off …
But he waited and nothing happened. The train rolled on. The car swayed drunkenly round the bends. But no one showed on the ladder. Cato frowned and squirmed around to face back down the car the other way, thinking the killer might have decided to use that ladder. He was almost right. The man had gone one better than that. He came up the ladder of the car ahead, at the far end. He stood on the ladder’s rungs, his upper body lying along the car’s walkway, gun in both hands as he carefully lined-up on Cato.
His gun jerked with recoil as it roared and the hot lead sprayed splinters into Cato’s face. He clawed at his stinging eyes, getting off a wild shot. The killer took the opportunity to climb all the way up onto the top of the car and he ran forward, teeth bared in the wind, hat flying off, hair streaming, gun braced into his hip. He fired twice and Cato, rolling to get all the way round so he could shoot, slipped off the walkway and hit the steep, curving slope of the car roof. He skidded down and dropped helplessly towards the car’s edge. His wildly scrabbling left hand snatched at a vent rim and his arm was almost wrenched out of its socket as it took the sudden jar of his full weight. He hung there, legs over the edge of the car in the wind, smoke blinding and choking him, sparks and hot soot spitting against his flesh, his heavy Manstopper dangling from his right hand.
Cato bared his teeth, trying to get enough momentum into his swinging legs so that he could catch the roof edge with his boots and try to clamber back up. But the killer would finish him long before that.
The man was grinning coldly now as he leapt from the forward car to Cato’s. He stumbled, but steadied himself on the walk and he laughed as he put a bullet through the tin cylinder of the vent only inches from Cato’s clinging fingers. Cato almost let go by instinct but managed to grip the metal again, even as the cowpoke took careful aim. His gun swinging over the side with his body, Cato fumbled at the toggle on the hammer spur and managed to flick it with his thumb. This allowed him to fire the single twelve-gauge shot shell housed in the center of the cartridge cylinder and lined-up with the smoothbore, underslung barrel.
The cowboy was taking his time, gripping his gun in both hands, settling his boots firmly, as he aimed deliberately at Cato’s fingers. As the train rounded a curve it whistled loudly and Cato saw the black maw of Rorke’s Tunnel rushing towards him. Hell, if the cowpoke didn’t get him, the tunnel wall would unless he got his body back up onto that car roof pronto!
As the killer’s finger tightened on the trigger, Cato yelled with the effort he made to bring the massive Manstopper up and over and he dropped hammer as soon as the barrel pointed in the cowpoke’s general direction. The shot shell exploded with flat thunder, swiftly whipped away by the wind. The charge of buckshot took the surprised killer in the center of the chest and his body was flung off the rocking car as if kicked by some giant invisible horse, little more than a bundle of bloody rags.
Cato gave no more thought to the man: he knew no one came back after taking a charge like that in the body. He slid the smoking gun into his holster and snatched at the edge of the car roof as the loco whistled again and disappeared into the maw of the tunnel. He saw the jagged rocky edge of the w
alls rushing towards him as he got one boot on the roof edge, slipped, but took all his weight on his straining arms and heaved mightily, hauling himself bodily onto the edge. He threw himself forward and snatched in his legs just as the car rolled into the reeking, choking blackness of the tunnel. His boots brushed the rock and the impact thrust his legs onto the car roof. He flattened himself beside the walkway, not knowing how much clearance his body would have from the tunnel roof. Thick, reeking black smoke enveloped him and he coughed and choked and was blinded. There was a hellish thundering noise as the locomotive and the cars rolled into the long, curving tunnel through the mountain and he was gagging, weakening, sobbing for air when, abruptly, the car rolled out into sunlight and the black smoke dissipated and his tortured lungs burned with the first deep breath of fresh air.
Shaking, retching, Cato pulled himself onto the walkway and lay there, gasping, chest heaving, his face blackened, eyes smarting and vision blurred.
He figured he would make the effort to get to the ladder and climb back on down to the platform in a little while ... just a little while ...
~*~
When the train rolled into Concho, Cato was in a hard-as-hell mood. He hadn’t liked being so close to death up on the car roof: being shot at was one thing, but almost being crushed by a moving train against a tunnel wall ... well, a man didn’t expect to die that way, smeared all over the mountain. He was angry, more angry than when he had left Austin and he reckoned that the fact that the two killers had been sent on board the train to get him, showed he was on the right trail.
They had been sent to stop him reaching Concho, and he figured it could well be because that was where the girl was. Which meant she knew something she wasn’t aware of knowing, or she was in it right down the line and wouldn’t be expecting him to show up alive in town.
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