Showdown at Gun Hill (18 page)

“Jesus, you're out of your mind, Anson,” said Siedell, seeing a gleam of madness in his eyes as he spun out his delusional plans.

“You say that now,” Anson said, “but wait until you see me opening the strongbox full of cash your home office pays to get you back with all your fingers and toes—most of them anyway.”

“Listen to me, Anson,” said Siedell, “if it's money you want, how much? It's my enterprises. I can have cash sent to me at any bank in this country—whatever amount I ask for. Just take me to one, I'll show you. We don't have to be uncivilized about this.”

“I like being
uncivilized
,” said Anson, giving Siedell a sharp poke with his gun barrel. “I want the ransom delivered where I say, not in some damn bank with riflemen on every roof. I'm going to collect ransom on you, reward money on Max Bard, maybe even rob a couple of your new rail spurs while I'm at it. So sit yourself down and watch what happens next.”

Just then a blast of steam resounded from the engine; the train lurched back a foot and started moving slowly. Both Anson and Siedell had to steady themselves. On the bed, the woman looked up drunkenly at the two and rubbed her eyes.

“Oh, Mr. Diddles,” she said playfully, “you've invited a friend?”

“We're not friends,” Anson said, wagging the gun in his hand for her to see. “Go back to sleep.” He shoved
Siedell toward the rear door. “Stand right here,
Mr. Diddles
.” He reached down and clamped a handcuff around Siedell's wrist. He clamped the other end to his own. “You make one false move when we're out on the platform, I'll blow your head off.”

In the darkness, Siedell's men who'd been asleep in the next car had been awakened by the train lurching and the blast of steam. They quickly shook sleep from their eyes and stuck their heads out the windows, looking back and forth. “The train's moving!” one called out in surprise. More of his men came running from the boardwalk of a nearby rail shack.

Four men ran alongside the engine, still able to keep up with it as it slowly gained momentum. Above the roar and throb and hissing steam, one called out to the engineer, who stood in an open window with his hand on the throttle. “Leonard, where are you going?” he shouted up.

The engineer, Leonard Loew, stared down stiffly at him from the loud engine. The running men didn't notice the look of fear in the engineer's eyes.

“Mr. Siedell said move it,” he called back to them, “so I'm moving it.”

Satisfied, the four men slowed to a halt, unable to see that behind Loew stood Gus Holt with a gun to the back of the man's head.

“I wish King Curtis would tell us things sooner,” one of the men said.

“Let him hear you call him King Curtis, he'll tell you things sure enough,” another man replied. The four stood watching as the train continued backing away from the station.

“What's that?” one asked, nodding toward the dark object lying alongside the empty tracks as the train rolled on.

Without reply the four trotted toward the object. In the grainy purple light, they stopped again, this time looking down at a man's body, less its head, lying on the rocky ground. A few feet away lay the head of Jacob Bead with a stunned expression frozen on his grim face.

“Oh my God!” one of the men said. They all looked up and saw an unrecognizable figure standing in the darkness atop the engine behind the Gatling gun. “We're being . . .
what
? Robbed?” one asked the other three with uncertainty.

Seeing what was going on, one shouted, “Come on, the train's being stolen!” He started running toward the train as it made its way in reverse toward the switching track. At the car next to the Pullman, men were still hanging out the windows watching the station grow smaller behind them. Some had jumped down while they could, but now the engine had started gathering speed, making escape more difficult.

Inside the Pullman car, Bo Anson could hear shouting back and forth. Men's boots pounded hard and fast alongside the car. The boots quickly fell away, replaced by more running boots as the train rolled past.

“Let's go, before the shooting starts, Siedell,” Anson said, turning the rear door handle and swinging the door open. He shoved Siedell out in front of him as a shield. “Talk loud, make them hear you,” he demanded.

Siedell stepped over the two dead guards lying on the small platform, Anson at his back with his cocked revolver at the base of his skull.

He leaned out of the car and shouted down at his men running alongside the train, “Don't do anything rash. This man will kill me!”

His words caused most of the men to fall down from a run and slow to a halt as he went past them. They stood watching, their guns slumped in their hands.

“What now?” one man asked as the train swerved onto the length of the switching tracks.

“Over here, damn it!” shouted Arnold Inman from the open doors of the livery barn. “Get your horses and let's get after that train!” Behind him in the light of the oil lanterns, men busily saddled and bridled their horses. Others checked their revolvers, their rifles. Some were still stepping into their boots. Yet even as the men prepared themselves, over a hundred yards down the rails the train slowed almost to a halt and uncoupled the car carrying the detectives.

The four men turned and ran toward the livery barn, following Inman's tone of authority. They heard gunfire behind them as the men aboard the detectives' car jumped down from the slowing train. They immediately ran alongside the Pullman and started firing.

“They don't listen to you very well, do they, King Curtis?” Anson said, back inside the car now, bullets
thumping against the wooden sides. The gunfire sent Violet sitting straight up in bed, grabbing a sheet on her way and holding it in front of herself.

“They won't stop, Anson. They'll keep following you,” Siedell said. “These men are professional detectives, not some desert riffraff.”

“Too bad for them.” Anson jerked him by his cuffed hand over to a side gun-port window. As Siedell looked out through the small slot, Ape and his Gatling gun started firing on the men from overhead, chopping them down and leaving them dead in his wake. Empty shells bounced atop the Pullman car and rained down its sides.

“Damn you!” shouted Siedell. He tried to turn and grab Anson by his throat, but Anson stopped him with a blow from his gun barrel across his forehead.

Siedell staggered, dazed. Anson grabbed him by his lapel and shook him hard.

“Don't you pass out on me, King Curtis!” he shouted. “We've got a hard ride ahead!” He laughed in jubilation. Then he settled himself and asked, “How far does this rail spur go?”

Siedell, his mind addled by the gun barrel, tried to shake his head to clear it.

“You p-planned all this . . . without knowing how far we can go?” he asked as if finding Anson's methods faulty.

“Never mind how I planned it,” Anson said. “I ask the questions here, not you.” He shook the gun in Siedell's face. “Tell me how far, and don't lie about it.”

“Thirty miles—a little more,” Siedell said. “It's my
longest spur. It goes past two mining compounds and ends at Gnat.”

“My man tells me we have enough wood to make it that far running hard,” Anson said.

“I don't know—probably,” Siedell said. “I own this railroad. I'm not the fireman—”

“Hey, over there, you two,” Violet cut in on them from the bed, above the gunfire, the bullets thumping the outside walls. “Are we about through here, then? Should I go ahead, clean up and get dressed?” she asked drunkenly.

The slowed train gave a hard bump as outside, between cars, one of the three men Anson brought along uncoupled the detectives' car from the Pullman.

“No, don't
get dressed
,” said Anson. “Get the hell
out of here
before the train speeds up again.”

Violet stood up with the sheet around her and gave Siedell a piercing look.

“What about my money?” she asked bluntly.

“
Jesus
, Violet, I'll have it sent to you,” Siedell said. “Please get out while there's time.”

“Huh-uh, I don't think so,” she said, shaking her head. “I want my money.”

“Violet, I'm being kidnapped here,” said Siedell, trying to make her understand.

But Violet would have none of it.

“All the more reason . . . ,” she said, extending her hand and wiggling her fingers toward Siedell as the train began regaining speed. “I never should have trusted you. I should have gotten paid first—”

Her words cut short as a bullet from Anson's gun
thumped into the mattress and sent up a swirl of feathers. Violet jumped and cursed at Anson.

“Get out of here, woman!” he shouted, and fired again. Another puff of feathers kicked up as Violet ran from the Pullman car, cursing loudly. Still issuing a stream of vulgarity over her shoulder as she crossed the bloody platform, she leaped out and down to the ground, the sheet billowing in the air behind her. As she hit the ground, more detectives ran to her; back at the livery barn mounted men rode quickly toward the train. But they held their fire, following Arnold Inman's orders.

“Well, then, we're on our way,” Anson said with a grin as the train increased its speed into the black-purple night. Behind them the gunfire had stopped altogether; so had the Gatling gun above them. He reached down and unlocked the handcuffs and pitched them aside. “Now, we can have a drink and behave like gentlemen,” he said to Siedell, his revolver slumping only a little. “Or we can spend the trip me slicing pieces off you and throwing them out the window.”

Siedell stepped warily over to the silver tray.

“What's your pleasure, Bo?” he said. “Or do you prefer I call you Mr. Anson?”

“Rye,” Anson said, nodding at the tray. “You can call me whatever suits you. Just don't try nothing stupid that'll get you killed.” He glanced out the side window through the gun port and saw lantern light growing smaller behind them. Yet he still saw riders' black silhouettes against the purple night. The horses were doing their best, but he knew the animals couldn't keep
up with them for very long. Behind Siedell's riders, he knew his men would be coming, pacing their animals, taking their time. Caught between the Gatling gun and his gunmen, the detectives and their worn-out horses wouldn't stand a chance.

*   *   *

The Ranger first sighted Max Bard and his men as they moved two at a time across a narrow stream deep in a pine-filled valley. He watched the riders slip across the stream, long-rider style, he told himself, two of them riding double. He gazed out and down through his battered telescope. After what he considered a long period of time, he saw the last of the men had made it across. Still he waited. A full three minutes later a single rider came forward from the pine cover and crossed stealthily, looking back over his shoulder.

That's all of them,
he told himself. He closed the scope and scooted backward across the flat he lay on. Out of sight from the valley below, he stood up and dusted his trouser knees and the front of his shirt.

“It's Bard and his guerrillas,” he said to the two sheriffs who sat atop their horses, the woman holding the reins to Sam's copper dun. “Looks like they're following Anson and his men the same as us. They must've just got onto his trail from the other side of these hills. We might have to deal with them first if the opportunity presents itself.” He looked back and forth between the two as if asking for their thoughts.

“I say take what comes to us first,” said Sheriff Deluna. “They're all the same element. Besides, it's not every day that you run into Max Bard and his gang.
When you do see them, like as not they're headed to rob something.”

Sam looked at Sheriff Stone.

“She's right. Let's take them down while they're within reach,” Stone said, sounding better than he had for the past two days.

Deluna turned in her saddle and looked him up and down with a question.

“I'm up to it, Sheriff Deluna, if that's what you're wondering,” Stone said. Sam noted the faded trousers and shirt he'd given Stone to wear, both items coming from down deep in his saddlebags. He was still missing a boot, but with any luck Sam figured he'd shoot his way into one somewhere.

“I'm just checking on you, Sheriff,” Deluna said. “I know you've got the guts for it. I've seen your gun work.”

“Then what's your concern, Sheriff?” Stone asked quietly. “That we'll get into a gunfight and I'll run off howling at the moon?” He offered the trace of a grin, which told Deluna and the Ranger that he was back to himself.

“All right,” the Ranger said, getting back to business. “The new rail spur from Gun Hill ends twelve miles ahead. It might be that Bard and his men are headed there to rob it—make up for what they missed last time.” He took the reins from Deluna and stepped atop the dun. “If we can skirt this hillside and get ahead of them, there's a blind pass up ahead, with another stream running through it. They didn't stop for water here. They'll have to stop there. It's a good place for us to set up a trap.”

Sam turned his copper dun and put it forward, the two sheriffs flanking him. They rode hard, gaining ground on Bard's gang by taking the higher, more treacherous trails. These were trails that had evolved from ancient game paths, routes worn into rocky ground by centuries of elk, deer and the four-footed predators who'd stalked them.

By early afternoon the three had ridden back down a steep gravelly path leading to the main trail. There, beside a rolling stream that pooled against a half circle of tall chimney stone, they watered their horses to keep the animals from growing restless and nickering at the wrong time at the scent of the cool stream. With the horses watered, the three checked the animals' hooves and forelegs and led them out of sight and waited.

No more than a half hour had passed when a drift of dust rose above the sound of horses' hooves moving at a light and steady pace. The Ranger watched as a single rider came into sight, slowed his horse and scouted along the edge of the water hole. Before the rider reached the spot around the half-circling edge where Sam and the sheriffs had watered their mounts, Max Bard and the rest of his gang rode up off the trail through a maze of rock and stopped.

Before the guerrillas could get down from their saddles, the scout stopped his horse sharply where hoofprints of the Ranger's and the sheriffs' mounts stood in the soft wet ground. As the scout leaned a little in his saddle and stared down, Sam whispered to himself, “He's seen us,” and he cocked his rifle around the edge of a large rock.