05 Ironhorse (12 page)

“Looks like we might be leaving this rain behind.”

“Does,” Virgil said.

“Won’t bother me none.”

“That’s good,” Virgil said.

We coasted for a bit longer and came to a tight canopy of trees that sheltered us from the sprinkling rain. When we cleared the tunnel of trees we were rolling pretty fast and were clearly on a wide sweep to the west.

“This has got to be the turn Whip was talking about,” I said.

“Hold us up, Everett.”

“What?”

“Slow her up.”

I did as Virgil asked and turned the brake wheel, which made a low grinding noise as we slowed.

Virgil looked at me, cocked his head a bit.

“Smell that?”

I had not caught a whiff, but in the next second, I did.

“Smoke,” I said.

“Let’s stop.”

I stopped the coach, and Virgil stepped off the platform. He walked down the dark track a ways, then stopped and stood still.

“Been plenty of lightning,” I said. “Might be the woods struck up.”

“Might be.”

“Could be a homestead,” I said. “Or Indians.”

The rails in front of us turned and disappeared behind a wall of thick woods.

“Let me walk a bit,” Virgil said. “Just follow me.”

Virgil started walking down the track. I turned the brake wheel, freeing the coach, and very slowly began to roll. After maybe a hundred yards we entered into a tall rocky hillside that had been dynamited for the rails. Virgil was hard to see clearly in the darkness. He was walking about seventy-five feet in front of the coach, and when he got to the edge of the rocky hillside, he held up his arms, motioning for me to stop. I turned the wheel, and the coach started slowing. Virgil remained standing on the track, looking downhill as the coach came to a stop square in the middle of the dynamited hillside. I foot-latched the brake, stepped off the platform, and started down the track toward Virgil. As I got closer, I saw what he saw.

A quarter of a mile down the track was the fire. It was hard to tell exactly what was burning, but whatever it was, rain or no rain, it was burning and the flames were high. In the distance behind the fire and off toward the west a ways, there was a faint glow.

“Half Moon Junction,” I said.

Virgil turned and looked back at me as I walked up.

“Maybe you can tell me for certain,” Virgil said, “but this dead hand here is Woodfin, ain’t it? One of Bragg’s top gun hands. We had a run-in or two with him, did we not?”

I was fixed on the fire and the sight of the town, and I had not noticed the man lying directly in front of Virgil, between the rails.

I looked at the big bearded man with the white shirt covered in blood, and he was for certain who Virgil thought he was.

“That’s him. That’s Woodfin. Vince and him were Bragg’s two backup bulls,” I said. “Lying between the rails like this, he’s obviously not one we shot.”

“No, he ain’t,” Virgil said.

I leaned down a little closer, and when I did I could see under Woodfin’s beard his throat was sliced open across his jawline, from ear to ear.

“Throat cut,” I said.

“Handiwork of Bloody Bob, no doubt,” Virgil said.

“Good of him to do some stall mucking.”

“Is,” Virgil said. “Reckon him and Woodfin had a misunderstanding.”

“Wonder what the outcome of an argument would have been?”

I looked back to Virgil. His attention was now on the distant flames ahead of us.

“That the coaches on fire, you think?” I said.

“Looks like it,” Virgil said. “Hard to say for certain.”

“Figure we’ll know soon enough,” I said.

“Figure we will.”

“And Half Moon, just there.”

“That it is,” Virgil said.

40

WE LEFT THE
coach where it had stopped and walked on down the track toward the fire. With the recently slain bandits, Virgil and me had plenty of weaponry choices. I carried my Colt and two other long-barreled Colts. Virgil had the .44 Henry rifle Bob dropped in the aisle and a second Colt in his belt.

“Least with Bob shot up, gone, hopefully dead,” I said, “and Woodfin cut like that, we have two less gunmen to deal with.”

“We do,” Virgil said.

“Vince is shot up, too,” I said. “No telling how bad, how deep. Might be he’s dead.”

“Might well be,” Virgil said.

“Ear shots are damn sure painful.”

“They are.”

“Hard to stop the bleeding,” I said, “and the pressure on the brain.”

“Don’t know he’s even got one.”

“Well, if he don’t bleed to death,” I said, “he’ll most likely go crazier than he already is.”

We continued walking, following the track toward the fire ahead and the halo of light from Half Moon Junction just beyond. There was no more rain now, and the moon was showing full in the sky as we made our way closer to the fire.

“That’s the coaches burning for sure,” I said.

“It is,” Virgil said.

As we got closer we could see the fire was a single coach engulfed in flames, but the wood was nearly consumed and the flames were getting lower.

“The governor’s car,” I said. “The Pullman.”

“Is,” Virgil said.

“Let’s hope him and his wife are not inside,” I said.

“Yep,” Virgil said. “Let’s.”

As we got closer we could see the other cars were safe.

“The Pullman’s separated from the cars behind,” Virgil said.

The other coaches were disconnected from the burning Pullman and were sitting fifty or so feet farther down the rail.

“Must have been disconnected on the move,” I said.

Avoiding any possibility of being spotted by anyone, we skirted off the tracks, moved into the trees, and continued on closer to the burning Pullman and back section of the train. As we neared the coaches we could see there were lamps burning in the fifth and sixth car and the caboose, but there was no one moving about. We stopped, staying out of sight in the woods when we were parallel with the coaches. Even though the windows were fogged over, there was no movement inside the fifth and six coaches.

“Don’t see nobody,” I said.

“Ramp’s out.”

The stock car door was open and its boarding ramp was extended.

“Made off with our horses,” I said.

“They did.”

“Half Moon looks to be not but a quarter a mile there.”

Virgil and I moved on a ways past the coaches, stepped out of the woods, and walked toward the caboose.

“Look here,” I said.

There was a line of muddy footprints where passengers departed the coaches. The tracks tapered off to the south, toward Half Moon Junction.

The back door of the caboose was wide open. I looked in; there was nobody inside. We moved on, looked inside the stock car, and as figured, all the horses, including Virgil’s stud and my lazy roan, were gone. We walked through the sixth coach to see if there was anything significant to reckon with, but it was eerily empty; even the bodies of the first two that got killed, Redbeard and the fellow with the two Schofields, had disappeared. Virgil’s cigar was still in the ashtray where he had left it when this whole rhubarb went down. He picked it up and flicked the ashes off with his finger. I produced a match from the matchbox the undertaker had placed in my coat and handed it to Virgil. Virgil dragged the tip of the match across the back of the seat and lit his cigar. After he got it going good he waved the match in the air and flicked it away with his middle finger.

“That was a good horse,” Virgil said. “Good saddle, too.”

“It was,” I said.

41

VIRGIL TOOK A
few deliberate puffs on his cigar and we moved on. Like the sixth coach, the fifth was empty, too. We walked back up the track a ways and looked closely at the remainder of the burning Pullman. The heat was intense and the light was bright. Virgil stayed back as I walked closer, looking into the fire of the fancy coach. I walked slowly around the coach, looking into the dancing flames.

“Don’t see nobody in there, do you, Everett?” Virgil said. “No burnt-up people, no bones?”

I continued walking around the coach, looking into the fire.

“Nothing yet,” I said as I walked back up the other side of the coach, looking closely into the smoky fire.

“Do not,” I said. “Don’t see any bones.”

I looked back to Virgil holding the Henry rifle. The rifle’s brass receiver was reflecting the flames and glowing a brilliant golden orange against the darkness.

“I reckon the governor and his wife got out, and away,” I said.

“Seems so,” Virgil said.

“Yep,” I said. “Somehow, some way.”

I walked back to where Virgil was standing, smoking his cigar. He was looking off toward Half Moon Junction.

“Hard to figure all this,” I said. “The governor and his wife, horses gone, the Pullman burning, the passengers, cars separated.”

“Is,” Virgil said.

“I figure the bandits took off and left the passengers to fend for themselves.”

Virgil nodded, slowly smoking the cigar.

“You think they took the governor and his wife hostage?” I said.

Virgil shook his head.

“Don’t think so,” Virgil said. “Now they are back here away from us, don’t think they’d have a need for ’em.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t guess they would.”

“Whether they are alive or not,” Virgil said, “is another matter altogether.”

“So what are you thinking?” I said.

“I’m thinking we do ourselves the necessity of getting over to this Half Moon Junction,” Virgil said, pointing the Henry rifle in the direction of the town, “and figure out just what befell.”

I nodded, and we started walking toward the town. We walked back past the other cars and past the caboose. A lamp was hanging on the back of the caboose, and as we passed it I noticed the engraving on the receiver of the Henry rifle Virgil was carrying.

“That yellow belly looks fancy,” I said.

Virgil held up the Henry a bit.

“It is,” Virgil said. “Got detailed engraving on it. Bunch of new scratches on the stock, and the front sight is busted off.”

We continued walking and left the light from the caboose behind.

“Not Bloody Bob’s rifle, that’s a fact,” Virgil said. “He stole it, I imagine. It’s got a deck of cards and a riverboat engraved on it.”

“Maybe he got it off some professional boat gambler,” I said.

“The other side of the receiver has happy and sad masks,” Virgil said. “Like you’d see displayed on tent shows.”

“Maybe it belonged to a gambler,” I said. “Who is a performer, a thespian or something.”

“Might,” Virgil said. “Just might.”

I opened Bob’s pouch and pulled out the extra cartridges I’d previously felt were inside and handed them to Virgil as we walked.

“Here,” I said. “What’s left of the cartridges.”

Virgil took the bullets and put them into his coat pocket as we continued making our way toward Half Moon Junction.

42

HALF MOON JUNCTION
was painted in Gothic-style lettering on the north side of the water tank. The south side, the side I’d seen when we were passing through, traveling north, simply bore the symbol of its namesake, a painted half-moon. Virgil and I walked down the tracks, around the water tank, and crossed over the planks of the depot’s wide loading dock. We stepped over another set of rails that tapered off to the west and made our way up the wet caliche road toward the streetlights of Half Moon.

—

The first sign of life was at an encampment on the east side of town at the edge of a small brook. There were several tents pitched around an open-sided teepee with a fire burning beneath it. A few miners were having a spirited game of blackjack in their underwear; their trousers and shirts were hanging near the fire to dry. Across from the brook was another encampment with rows of single tents, and somewhere within we could hear a man and a woman arguing about something. A short ways on, there was a lean-to shack set back off the road surrounded by a corral with a few scrawny goats and a donkey. There was a wagon-wide bridge over the brook, and on the other side was the start of the proper buildings of Half Moon Junction. We crossed over the bridge, and a young barefoot fellow wearing a China hat approached carrying a laundry sack. He looked to be part Chinese and maybe part Indian.

“Young fellow,” Virgil said, stopping the young man’s forward momentum.

“Yes,” the young man said.

“You speak English?”

“Yes.”

“Where would we find an officer of the law, sheriff, marshal, police?”

The young man nodded, smiling.

“Yes.”

“Yes,” Virgil said.

“Yes,” the young man said, then hurried on over the bridge and into the tent encampment.

Virgil looked at me, smiled a bit, and said, “Yes.”

We walked on. The rails that were running westerly from the depot had a section of track that switched off into a big miners’ yard with a covered loading facility on our right. Just past the miners’ yard, there was a livery stable. The door was open, lamps were on. There were a number of horses standing in a lot next to the barn. Virgil walked next to the rail, looking at the horses in the lot, and when he got to the barn door, he looked inside. There were two young Indian men at the back of the barn, mucking stables. Virgil took a few steps inside and looked around. The Indians watched him for a moment and went back to work. Virgil walked down the center of the barn, looking at the horses in the stalls. When he got to the end he turned around and walked back to the door. As he figured, there was no sign of his chestnut or my lazy roan, but he was taking a look anyway, if for no other reason than just to provide himself an understanding of some sort.

We walked on up the street, and the next building we came to was a small church on the south side nestled between two big tents. A large woman opened the door as we walked by and threw out a basin of water. She turned to go back inside but stopped when she saw Virgil and me.

“Well, hey there, boys. How ’bout getting a piece of Heaven with Betty Jean?”

Virgil looked up to the steeple. He glanced at me and looked back to Betty Jean. Betty Jean was no church lady, and obviously this church was no church. It had been converted into a brothel, and Betty Jean was most likely a member of the congregation.