Stamping Ground (24 page)

I announced myself first and was glad I had. Ephraim, the fireman, was waiting for me at the top with the aforementioned crowbar raised over his woolly head. The light of the flames crackling in the open box turned his skin from iron to bronze and made the burned flesh on his right breast and cheek look worse than it was. His hair was singed where it met his forehead. He must have stuck his head right into the box when the wheels stopped rolling. His eyes had a hunted animal look. When I got close enough for him to see me clearly he relaxed and dropped the bar clanging to the floor.

“How bad?” I asked, indicating his burns.

“I done had worse, I 'spect.” His dungeon-depth voice was soothing. There was a church choir in Helena that would have given anything to have that bass in its ranks, if he weren't black. “I'd sho' feel better, though, if'n you'd ask your friend there please don't open no holes in this child's hide with them there cannons he's aholdin'.”

I looked in the direction he had nodded, where Hudspeth was sitting on the floor with his back propped up against the opposite wall of the cab, his Smith & Wesson in one hand, the obsolete Colt in the other. He had the Spencer pinned beneath his not inconsiderable bulk. His forehead was smeared dark with blood, but I could tell by his heavy breathing that he was conscious.

“It's me,” I told him. “Murdock.”

“I knew that.” He spoke laboriously. “It's the nigger I was watching. He tried to take the Walker a minute ago.”

“To pertect us,” flared the fireman. “I heerd footsteps acomin' and thought it was them holdups come to shoot us. He was gonna put one in this child's belly when I backed off,” he added.

“Give him the Colt,” I told Hudspeth.

He stared at me, his barrel torso heaving. His breath was coming regularly now. I decided he wasn't hurt badly. “You must of thunked your head harder than me,” he said at last.

“I don't know how you feel about it, but I prefer to fight one enemy at a time. You and I aren't going to stand off the Cheyenne all alone. Give him the Colt.”

“Injuns, sho' 'nuff?” Ephraim rolled his eyes at me, the whites showing in the light of the fire. He sounded more eager than frightened. Black or white, they were all the same, these Easterners, coming out here thinking the West was something put on for their own entertainment. I ignored him. Hudspeth took nine, then handed over the Walker as I'd known he would all along. We had gotten to know each other pretty well during the time we'd spent together.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” he growled.

“So do I.” I gave the revolver to the fireman. He accepted it enthusiastically, checked the cap beneath the hammer, thrust it into his belt.

“Lame Horse isn't as impulsive as I thought,” I said. “The way I figure it, he put his braves to work tearing up the track with their lances and trade axes on their way to where they met us, just in case we made it on board. We've got till dawn before he catches up to us, maybe less. If we don't get those rails fixed by then we'll have to fort up and hope for the best. Does it hurt?”

Hudspeth rubbed the bloody spot above his eye with the heel of a hand. It was congealing now over a jagged gash an inch and a half long. “Not so much that a belt of good whiskey couldn't cure it,” he said.

I grinned. “We'll see about that after I check up on our prisoner.”

Custer was whooping it up fit to be tied as I mounted the platform between the baggage car and the coach, whining piteously and doing his best to turn the door into kindling. He reminded me of an old hound I'd once had who
would set all the other dogs to howling for miles around every time I stepped outside without him.

It struck me then. Drawing my belt gun, I propped the Winchester against the wall, kicked open the door of the coach, and threw myself into the first seat on my left, landing hard on my hurt shoulder.

That was a mistake. Somewhere someone crushed a fresh batch of walnuts and sparks of white-hot pain swirled before my eyes. For an instant I was blinded. Through sheer act of will I forced myself to see through the swimming red haze. Gun in hand, I scrambled over to the opposite seat and peered cautiously over the back.

I hadn't missed much. Ghost Shirt was gone, along with my handcuffs and six inches off the arm of-the seat he had occupied.

The door opened at the other end of the coach as I was getting up from between the seats. I raised my revolver to the level of the handle and thumbed back the hammer. My injured shoulder throbbed a half-beat off from the rapid banging of my heart. Colonel Locke came in and closed the door gently behind him.

“Sleeping like a baby,” he said, turning. “I must have given him a stronger dose than I thought. Did you—” He stopped when he saw the gun.

“Ghost Shirt,” I barked. “Did you see him?”

“Why, no, I—” He realized the implication of my words and glanced at the seat in which he had last seen the Indian.

While it was still dawning on his sodden consciousness I retrieved my carbine and pushed past him roughly, heading for the door through which he had just passed. Outside I leaped to the ground and looked up and down the length of the train as if expecting the fugitive to be standing there waiting for me. He wasn't. I did find the piece of wood he had taken with him when he finished the job the sudden
halt had started, lying on the ground south of the tracks, but that was no clue at all, as he might have flung it there to throw me off while he lit a shuck north.

The first thing Locke and I did was search the train from top to bottom. I had learned my lesson the time a defendant on trial for murder in Judge Blackthorne's court made a run for it while court was in session and officers scoured Helena for two hours without result, only to have the janitor stumble upon him crouched in the rear of a cloakroom down the hall from the judge's chambers. We divided the train down the middle—or nearly so, Locke wanting nothing to do with the baggage car and its fanged occupant—me taking the front as far back as the coach, the colonel seeing to the caboose and the senator's car just in case our quarry had slipped inside after his own exit. We checked under the carriage and up on the roofs. I even risked my skin looking through baggage, where I knew he couldn't be from the way the dog was acting. The third time it went for my leg I should have shot it, but I didn't. I'm like that sometimes. I considered letting it out to see if it would lead us to its master, but gave that up because there was no way ot telling whom it might attack when it did. Besides, the dog was Cheyenne. Silly as that sounds, I've seen horses brought up on Indian tradition throw their new riders when tracking down members of the same tribe for unfriendly purposes, and it was just possible that this mongrel would lead us into God knows what rather than betray the whereabouts of the man who took care of it. We didn't have time to find out. So when I left the car I made sure Custer was still inside.

I met Locke outside the coach. He was carrying the lantern I had seen the conductor with earlier.

“Anything?” I demanded.

“Just the conductor.”

“What did he see?”

“I didn't ask. He's dead.”

“Ghost Shirt?” I snatched his sleeve.

He shook his head. “Not unless he rammed the poor
man's skull into the steel railing on the back of the caboose. That stop splattered his brains all over the platform. I dragged his body inside.”

“Well, that's that.” I put away the Deane-Adams. “He's either taken off on his own or gone to meet Lame Horse. I hope he decided to go it alone.”

“Why?”

“Lame Horse doesn't know our firepower since we came on board. He may hold off attacking until dawn just to play it safe. If Ghost Shirt gets to him with what he knows, they'll hit us right away. What are we, twenty miles from where you picked us up?”

He calculated. “More like fifteen.”

“Two hours, then.” I had him hold up his lantern and looked at my watch in the yellow light. “Seven if they wait till morning. With luck we'll have the repairs done by then. How much have you got in that flask?”

He had produced the item in question and helped himself to a swig. He touched his lips with the back of his hand, held up the vessel, shook it and listened to the contents sloshing around inside, frowned.

“Two swallows.”

“Not enough.” I held out my hand. When he gave it to me I tipped it up and finished what was left in one long draught. As the warmth of it spread through my system: “Mind if I borrow this?”

“Be my guest.”

I climbed to the platform of Firestone's car. Since Locke was his bodyguard I paused outside the door and shot him a questioning glance. Although perplexed, he nodded his permission. I entered the sanctum.

The lamp on the bar was still burning. Fortunately it was bolted down or the entire structure would have gone up in flames after that last stop. Even the chandelier, its chain clamped securely to the ceiling, was still intact. In the corner, the curtains on the great four-poster had been left open just enough for me to see Senator Firestone's mountainous
belly quivering beneath the counterpane as he slept in the grip of his opium-induced dreams.

Someone, probably the colonel, had had the foresight to place both decanters in the cabinet beneath the bar after his last visit, and neither was damaged. I uncorked the flask and poured into it what was left of the cognac. Locke had been hitting it hard, but there was more than enough to fill the pint container. The colonel was standing in the doorway as I turned to leave.

“This must be a first,” he observed. “A reverse conversion.”

“It's not for me.”

“I've heard that before.”

“Nobody likes a drunk with a sense of humor.” I put the flask in my hip pocket and accompanied him outside. “I don't suppose you've any firepower aside from that Remington,” I said when we were back on the platform.

He shook his head. If I hadn't known how much he'd consumed already that night I might have sworn he was dead sober. He changed roles as often as a repertory company.

“How about ammunition?”

“Under the bar. Two boxes.”

“Get them.” I stepped down and struck out toward the engine.

Hudspeth, on his feet beside the locomotive as I approached, wasn't surprised to learn that our prisoner had escaped. “Figured as much, the way you two was scrambling all over the train a while ago.” He patted his forehead from time to time with a bloodstained handkerchief. “Course you know if he gets to Lame Horse we're dead as rocks.”

“Maybe not. Maybe they'll leave us alone once they have him.”

“You said yourself they won't.”

“It doesn't cost us anything to hope.”

The engineer appeared from the front of the train. As he crossed the beam of the powerful mounted lantern I saw
that his lower lip, although no longer bleeding, had swollen to nearly twice its normal size.

“Give Gus the Spencer,” I directed the marshal. “We need as many hands as we can get. You can't fire two guns at once, and you've got enough ammunition to stop a war with just that Smith.” I indicated the cartridge belt he had liberated from one of the troopers at the Missouri, strapped around his waist.

“Got me a gun.” Gus patted the butt of the Walker Colt sticking up above the waistband of his pants.

“I give it to him,” announced Ephraim, descending from the cab. “It's his'n anyways.”

“From now on you're a rifleman.” I took the Spencer from Hudspeth and gave it to the fireman.

“She's loaded up tight,” said the former, as Ephraim inspected the breech. “Used all the shells there was left. What was that you said before about bringing whiskey?” His eyes shone eagerly as he looked at me.

“Sorry. All out.”

His shoulders sank.

“Will brandy do?” I held out the flask.

He seized it with a noise a hungry St. Bernard might make accepting a raw steak. Suddenly his jaw tightened. He lowered the flask and rammed the cork back in with the heel of his hand.

“Reckon not.” He thrust it back at me.

We stared at each other for some time in silence. Then I felt a slow grin spread over my face. I was a father watching his son take his first step unaided. “Keep it,” I said. “For later.”

Ephraim cleared his throat loudly enough to drown out the ticking of the boiler as it cooled. We all looked at him. “Seems a shame to just put it away like that,” he ventured.

It might have been that my eyes played tricks on me in that poor light, but just then it looked as if the ends of Hudspeth's handlebar moustache twisted upward in the first smile I had seen on his face since we met. He turned the flask over to the fireman, who held it out in front of him
for a moment, admiring it. Then he yanked the stopper and did for a quarter of the vessel's contents in one healthy pull. Drawing the back of his hand across his mouth, he returned the flask with a grateful nod to the marshal, who offered it to Gus.

The engineer shook his head. “I'm a man of temperance,” he explained. “When I ain't, I don't do a lick of work for days, and from the looks of them tracks that's one thing we can't afford.”

“Can they be fixed?”

“Won't know that till we try.” He walked around Colonel Locke, who had just joined us bearing the two boxes of cartridges for his shoulder gun, and came back from the cab a minute later carrying a heavy sledge in each hand. “Who's first?” He held out one of them.

I stepped forward without thinking and took the hammer in my left hand, the right still holding the Winchester. The weight of the instrument when he let go sent a bolt of lightning straight up my arm to the shoulder. I dropped it and was following it to the ground when Hudspeth caught me in both arms.

“Let's have a look at that there arm,” he said, lowering me to the prairie. I lay on my stomach while his powerful fingers poked and probed my shoulder in the light of Colonel Locke's lantern. The little shocks I felt as he did so were bearable after the big one I'd just experienced. His whistle of surprise was long and low and faintly reminiscent of the train's throaty blast.