Deadly Road to Yuma (21 page)

His gun rose and fell suddenly, crunching down on the conductor’s head. The man groaned in pain and fell to his knees, driven down by the blow, then pitched forward on his face.

His face mottled with rage, the engineer started toward Garth, but the outlaw stepped back quickly and leveled his Colt again. “Might as well tell you now,” Garth said, “I can run one of these contraptions if I have to. So don’t think I won’t plug you if I have to.”

The engineer stopped and struggled to control his anger with a visible effort. Finally, he asked, “What do you want? Is this a robbery?”

“Nope,” Garth said again. “Just keep this locomotive rollin’ all the way to that water stop up ahead. When we get there, you can take on water just like you always do. Nobody has to know anything’s goin’ on except us.” He paused. “There’s one more thing. I think some fellas are gonna be waitin’ there to get on the train. You’ll let ’em do it, understand?”

“Friends of yours?” the engineer grated.

“One of ’em is. The others…not hardly.”

Garth moved so that he could cover both the engineer and the fireman, then nodded toward the unconscious conductor. “Get that uniform on, Jeffries. I don’t reckon any of those lawdogs ever got a good enough look at you to recognize you.”

Jeffries nodded and holstered his revolver. He bent and began pulling the blue coat off the conductor.

By the time the water tank had come into view up ahead, Jeffries had the uniform on and was tugging the black cap down on his head. “How do I look?” he asked with a grin.

“Good enough to fool those varmints. Just stay out of the passenger cars and away from the brakes. We don’t want any of ’em to realize you ain’t the real conductor.”

Jeffries nodded in understanding. He had taken off his gunbelt, but he had the Colt tucked behind his belt. The conductor’s coat concealed the gun butt.

“Slow and easy, just like normal,” Garth told the engineer. The man blew the whistle and then worked the control levers, slowing the train. Garth risked a glance toward the water tank, and felt a surge of excitement and anticipation as he spotted the small group of men standing near the tracks.

The wind blew the long hair of the man in the center. That would be Joshua. He was flanked by Thorpe and some nameless deputy, who were hanging on to him. Bodine and Two Wolves were on either side of them.

All nice and neat, Garth thought, and he and Jeffries could have just gunned them all down, if not for the fact that Joshua would be in the line of fire, too. After this much time and trouble, Garth didn’t want to take any more chances on harming his leader and friend.

Steam shot out in clouds as the train slowed more. The locomotive was almost even with the water tank now. With practiced ease, the engineer brought it to a smooth halt. With a giant hiss, more steam billowed out, obscuring Garth’s view of the waiting men. He crouched, not wanting any of them to spot him.

Then, as the steam blew away, Jeffries let out a startled, bitter curse and exclaimed, “Bodine and Two Wolves—they’re gone!”

As the train eased to a stop next to the water tank, Matt said to Thorpe, “Something’s wrong, Marshal. Better get Shade back under cover while Sam and I check it out.”

“What—” Thorpe started to ask, but he was too late. The blood brothers were already moving.

Matt and Sam went in different directions. Sam ran around the front of the engine, leaping across the tracks in front of the cowcatcher, while Matt raced alongside the train. When he came to the first passenger car, he bounded up the steps to the platform at the front of it.

Sam reached the engine cab, which was partially open on the sides. Through that opening he saw the men crowded into the cab, including an hombre dressed only in long underwear who lay on the floor of the cab, either unconscious or dead.

The engineer and the fireman were easy to spot. So was the conductor. That left one man who had a gun in his hand, a craggy-faced, mustached gent who obviously had no business being up there.

As soon as Sam saw that man, everything clicked together in his mind. The outlaws had figured out the plan Matt and Sam had come up with to get Joshua Shade to Yuma, and they had taken over the train to stop that from happening.

The gunman in the cab must have seen Sam from the corner of his eye. He whirled, bringing up his gun as he did so. “Two Wolves!” he exclaimed as his face contorted in anger and hate.

Sam snapped the Winchester to his shoulder and fired just as flame spouted from the muzzle of the outlaw’s revolver. The Colt’s roar blended together with the whipcrack of the rifle. Sam felt the wind-rip of the bullet next to his ear.

His shot didn’t miss. The rifle bullet drilled into the outlaw’s chest, flinging him back against the engineer. Reacting swiftly, the engineer brought his hand down in a slashing blow against the gunman’s wrist, knocking the revolver loose. Then, as the outlaw began to sag, the engineer clouted him with a big fist to the jaw, knocking him the rest of the way to the floor of the cab.

Sam lowered the Winchester and looked toward the conductor, intending to ask the man if he knew how many outlaws were on the train. A shock went through him as he saw the gun in the conductor’s hand, and he realized too late that the unconscious gent who’d been stripped was the
real
conductor. The man now wearing the blue suit was one of the outlaws.

Sam tried to bring the rifle to bear on the phony conductor, but before he could, the glare of a muzzle flash filled his eyes. He felt the heavy slam of a bullet’s impact against his body, rocking him backward. His feet slipped on the gravel roadbed. He heard another shot, but didn’t feel that bullet. He had already fallen to the ground and barely clung to a shred of consciousness.

Meanwhile, Matt had plunged headlong into the first passenger car, and the sight of a man running in with a rifle in his hands spooked the passengers into thinking the train was being held up. A couple of women screamed, and men started to their feet as they yelled questions and curses.

“I’m a lawman!” Matt shouted over the hubbub. That was stretching the truth more than a little, but it might quiet them down quicker than anything else he could say. “Take it easy!”

His eyes scanned the passengers and didn’t see anybody who looked like an outlaw. Just then, he heard shots from the engine and knew that his instincts, as well as Sam’s, had been right. If the gang had taken over the train, there had to be more of them somewhere in the cars. He ran toward the rear of the train.

As he came into the next car, somebody yelled, “Bodine!” and a gun cracked. A bullet smacked into the wall near the door after whipping past Matt. Screams filled the air.

“Everybody down!” Matt shouted. The passengers dived for the floor, leaving three hard-bitten-looking hombres who had stood up to blaze away at him.

A Winchester was no good in a fight like this. He dropped the rifle as he went into a crouch and palmed both Colts from the thonged-down holsters attached to the crossed gunbelts.

It would have been a sight to see if anybody had been looking. The innocent passengers were all bellied down on the floor, though, with their arms over their heads even though that wouldn’t offer any protection from flying lead. Matt stood at the front of the car with his guns roaring and flashing as the three outlaws blazed away at him from the other end of the car.

The man on Matt’s far left stumbled back with a couple of .45 slugs in his chest and then collapsed. The man on the far right twisted around, dropped his gun, and clawed at his throat as blood spouted from the place where a bullet had ripped it open. The third and last man got off a final shot that came close enough to knock Matt’s hat off his head, but that was the last chance the outlaw got. A bullet slammed him back against the rear door of the coach. He hung there for a second and then slid down it, leaving a crimson smear on the wood.

With his pulse pounding heavily in his head, Matt slowly lowered his smoking guns. All three of the outlaws were down, their bloody forms motionless in death. Out of habit, Matt holstered his left-hand gun and used that hand to reach to the loops on his shell belt so he could start reloading.

“Drop it,” a voice said.

A woman’s voice.

Shocked, Matt looked down to see the blonde who had introduced herself to him as Jessica Devlin back in Pancake Flats. She knelt in the aisle holding the rifle he had dropped. Her pretty face was lined with strain. She was pale, but looked determined.

“Miss Devlin—” he began.

“Drop your gun, Mr. Bodine,” she repeated. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I…I will if I have to.”

Matt didn’t really believe her, but you sort of had to give somebody the benefit of the doubt when they were pointing a .44-40 repeater at you. He didn’t drop the Colt, but he slid it back into leather.

He didn’t need the gun anyway. He wasn’t going to shoot Jessica.

“Look, I’m not an outlaw,” he said, thinking maybe that was what she believed. “In fact, I’m working with the law—”

Jessica came to her feet, keeping the rifle leveled at him. The barrel shook a little. The Winchester was heavy, and she probably wasn’t used to handling a rifle.

“Where is Joshua Shade?” she demanded, shocking him again.

“Shade?” Matt repeated. “You don’t mean—”

“Just tell me where he is.”

Obviously, there was a lot more to this young woman than there appeared to be. A bitter, sour taste welled up under Matt’s tongue as he realized that she must be working with the gang. He didn’t know how she had gotten mixed up with Shade’s bunch, but that didn’t really matter now.

He didn’t answer Jessica’s question, though, because suddenly there was a lot more shooting outside.

Maggie couldn’t believe what she was doing. She had never pointed a gun at anybody in her life. She had never even shot a bird or a squirrel or anything like that.

And yet here she was, threatening to kill a man.

She had no choice, though. She didn’t know what had gone wrong with Garth’s plan, but if the outlaws succeeded in freeing Joshua Shade, there was still a chance, slim though it might be, that they would take her back to wherever they had left Ike and Caleb. All she could do was try to put them in her debt.

So for that reason, she had picked up the rifle and pointed it at Matt Bodine, taking him by surprise. She would force him to take her to Shade, she thought, and then Garth and Jeffries and the others would come and see what she had done…

Shots roared somewhere close by, outside the train. A window in the car shattered, and a woman shrieked in terror. Maggie couldn’t stop her head from jerking around toward the sounds.

From the corner of her eye she saw a flicker of movement, and instinctively squeezed the trigger. The roar of the shot slammed against her ears like a thunderclap.

Matt leaped forward, reaching for the Winchester’s barrel. He got his fingers around it and wrenched it upward just as the rifle blasted. The slug punched harmlessly into the train car’s ceiling, showering down some splinters.

Jessica Devlin cried out as Matt jerked the rifle from her hands. He leaped to one of the windows and saw the riders galloping past, firing into the cars. Matt recognized several of them from trading shots with them on previous occasions, and knew they were the rest of Shade’s gang.

He didn’t know exactly what the plan had been, but obviously the outlaws had split up, some of them boarding the train as passengers while the others waited for the shooting to start before rushing in to take a hand in the fight.

Matt broke out the window with the Winchester’s barrel, poked it through, and started firing. He picked off a couple of the outlaws, his bullets knocking them out of their saddles. But then he was forced to duck as a hail of bullets stormed back at him.

With a sudden lurch, the train jolted into motion.

Now what the hell…

Willard Garth struggled up out of the pit of pain into which he had been dropped. That damn half-breed Two Wolves had shot him, he remembered.

But he wasn’t dead yet, which meant he might still succeed in freeing Joshua.

Garth started struggling to his feet, but was only halfway there when a hand grasped his arm and helped him up. He blinked blearily at Jeffries, who still wore the conductor’s outfit and was covering the engineer and the fireman, who had been forced at gunpoint to the other side of the cab.

As Garth spotted Sam Two Wolves lying on the ground beside the engine with a dark bloodstain on his buckskin shirt, he felt a surge of satisfaction. The pain deep inside told Garth that he probably wouldn’t live to see the sun set again, but at least that damn ’breed was dead.

“Gimme…gimme my gun,” he rasped to Jeffries.

“You’re hurt, Garth—” Jeffries began.

“Hell, I know that! Just gimme my gun.”

Jeffries picked up the fallen revolver and pressed it into Garth’s hand. “I’ll watch these two,” Garth went on as he leaned against the side of the cab. “You go get Joshua.”

“Thorpe and that deputy hustled him around behind that shed.”

“You can take ’em by surprise,” Garth said. “They’ll think you’re the conductor.”

Jeffries’s eyes lit up. Garth was right. The lawmen wouldn’t recognize him.

“You’ll be all right here?”

“Sure. Just—” A wracking, agonized cough shook Garth for a second. He used his free hand to wipe bloody foam from his lips. “Just go get Joshua.”

Jeffries nodded, then leaped down from the cab and dashed toward the shed.

Garth’s head was swimming, and he knew he couldn’t count on staying conscious for any length of time. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace as he swung his gun up.

“Won’t need you two anymore,” he told the shocked engineer and fireman, then pulled the trigger twice.

The engineer doubled over as a bullet tore into his guts. The fireman went over backward under the impact, falling out of the cab and landing a few feet away from Sam Two Wolves.

Satisfied that neither of them was a threat anymore, Garth turned to the locomotive’s controls. As he had mentioned earlier, he had driven a train before, back in the days before he became an outlaw, and not much had changed since then. The throttle, the brake, the gauges were all the same. He was confident he could get the train moving again.

He heard shots from behind the shed, as well as from somewhere back along the train.
Bodine
, he thought. Bodine was in the passenger cars, shooting it out with the men who had been left there.

But the shots from the shed meant that Jeffries had found Joshua. Garth gritted his teeth against the pain, and leaned against the window in the side of the cab as he waited to see who would come out from behind the little building.

Jeffries appeared a moment later, leading an obviously unsteady Joshua Shade. Joshua’s feet were free, and he was unwinding some cut ropes from around his wrists. The gag in his mouth was gone.

“Praise the Lord!” Shade cried as he climbed into the cab, helped up by Jeffries. “You’ve freed me from the heathens, Brother Willard!”

“Good to see you…Boss,” Garth managed to get out. “What about Thorpe…and the deputy?”

“I plugged both of them,” Jeffries said as he climbed into the cab behind Shade. “You were right, Garth. They thought I was the conductor and didn’t know any different until I had lead in them.” He laughed curtly. “I never saw anybody look so surprised as that damned marshal.”

Garth heard more shooting, and looked back to see the rest of the gang slamming bullets at the passenger cars as they galloped past. That was a good distraction, but not necessary now.

“Let’s get…outta here,” he said as he shoved the throttle forward. “Jeffries…go back behind the tender and uncouple the rest o’ the cars…No need in haulin’ them with us.”

Jeffries nodded, and started along the walkway on the side of the coal tender as the train began to pick up speed.

Shade looked at Garth and said, “You’re hurt, Brother Willard.”

“It don’t matter,” Garth said. “All that matters is…we finally got you away from those damn lawmen, Joshua.”

“Yes, and again, praise the Lord for that. We’re going back to Arrowhead and Pancake Flats and wipe those dens of iniquity off the face of the earth. They deserve to be punished by holy fire for how they treated a humble servant of the Lord.”