The Last Gunfighter: Killing Ground Read online

  The train began climbing, following the steel rails that curled around the side of a mountain. Luther figured that when it reached the top of the slope it would cross a trestle so high that looking down into the valley below would send shivers of fear through him. The same thing had happened several times already during the trip. He really hadn’t been aware that heights bothered him so much until now.

  The steepness of the ascent meant that the train had to slow down to a crawl as the engine labored to haul the massive weight to the top. To the left rose an almost sheer wall of rock; to the right, the earth dropped away, falling several hundred feet to one of the twisting valleys that meandered through the mountains.

  From where Luther sat, when he looked out the windows on the other side of the coach, it seemed only nothingness was out there, and it made him dizzy and disoriented when he looked in that direction for too long. It appeared that there was nothing to support the train. It ought to fall right down the side of the mountain.

  So even though the view didn’t amount to much, he looked out the left-hand window beside Mr. Turnbuckle instead. The lawyer was dozing with his head tipped forward, his chin on his chest. An occasional snorting snore came from him. Luther sighed as he looked at the rocks now creeping by outside the window.

  Suddenly, movement caught his eye. A ledge ran along the slope, and a man stood on that ledge, poised as if to leap. He wore a short coat, a hat with a wide brim that was pulled down low over his eyes, and a bright red bandanna that was pulled up and tied around his head so that it covered the bottom half of his face. He gripped a revolver.

  Luther had seen similar figures on the covers of dime novels. The man was an outlaw!

  Even as that realization soaked in Luther’s stunned brain, the man on the ledge disappeared. A heavy thump on the roof over his head told Luther what had happened. The masked bandit had jumped from the ledge onto the roof of the railroad car.

  The train was about to be held up!

  That conclusion was inescapable. Even Luther knew that one man couldn’t stop and rob a train by himself, so there must have been other outlaws hidden on the slope, ready to make the daring leap onto the cars as the train crawled past. Even now some of them were probably closing in on the engine so that they could drop down into the cab and force the engineer to stop the train. The others would be making their way into the cars to loot the passengers’ valuables at gunpoint!

  Forgetting for the moment that he was just a lowly clerk and Turnbuckle was one of the leading attorneys in the entire country, Luther grabbed his employee’s shoulder and gave it a hard shake.

  “Sir! Wake up, sir! We’re being robbed!”

  At that moment, as if to punctuate Luther’s warning, a woman screamed somewhere in the rear of the coach, and a gun blasted. The report was deafening, and it was followed immediately by more screams from the female passengers and angry shouts and curses from the men.

  “Everybody stay right where you are!” a harsh voice bellowed, easily overriding the uproar in the coach. “Nobody move! Rattle your hocks and I’ll put hot lead in your damn gizzard!”

  Luther stiffened. An overpowering curiosity forced him to look around. He saw the man from the ledge stalking up the aisle, brandishing two heavy six-guns now. As the outlaw drew closer, Luther could see that his eyes were wild, filled with the lust to kill. At least the right one was; the left eye canted off at an odd angle, and Luther wasn’t sure the outlaw could see anything out of it.

  “Cough up the loot!” the bandit shouted. “Now!”

  Luther was prepared to hand over his wallet and his watch, the only things of any value that he was carrying. He hoped that Mr. Turnbuckle—and everyone else in the car, for that matter—would proceed in such a reasonable manner. If the masked desperado began shooting, there was no telling who might be hurt.

  Unfortunately, the legends about Claudius Turnbuckle were mostly accurate. He had indeed spent several years working on the docks and was a veteran of the wild days along the Barbary Coast. And as Turnbuckle surged up out of his seat with a roar of anger and turned toward the bandit, Luther saw to his dismay that his employer wasn’t going to cooperate.

  Not by a long shot.

  “Put those guns down or I’ll have you behind bars for the rest of your life!” Turnbuckle bellowed at the outlaw. He shoved past Luther, who clutched feebly and futilely at his coat. Turnbuckle lifted his walking stick and shook it. “By Godfrey, sir, do you know who I am?”

  “Yeah,” the bandit said, his wild eye rolling. “You’re a stupid son of a bitch who’s about to die!”

  With that, the guns in his hand came up, and both weapons roared thunderously as smoke and flame erupted from their muzzles.

  Chapter 9

  Luther was too stunned by the roar of the guns assaulting his ears to do anything except sit there and watch as the bullets slammed into Turnbuckle’s body. The lawyer clutched at the back of a seat and tried to stay upright, but he was too badly wounded. He slumped to the floor of the aisle and lay there gasping in pain.

  Luther wasn’t the only one shocked by this wanton display of brutal violence. The other passengers were silent now as they stared in terror at the train robber. Mothers clutched their children to them and husbands tightly embraced the shoulders of their wives as they waited to see what would happen next.

  “Don’t be like that dumb bastard,” the outlaw said as he used his left-hand gun to gesture at the fallen figure of Claudius Turnbuckle. “Stand and deliver, and maybe you’ll live through this!”

  He holstered the left-hand gun and used that hand to pull a canvas sack from behind his belt. Thrusting the sack at Luther, he said, “You! Four-eyes! Take this and open it up. Get everybody’s valuables. Make it snappy now, or I’ll ventilate you, too!”

  It had been a while since Luther had been called Four-eyes. Childhood, in fact. But the insult was just as painful and unjust now as it had been then. It wasn’t his fault that his eyes were a little weak and he had to wear spectacles.

  Of course, under the circumstances it would be foolish to worry about a little name-calling, Luther realized, when Mr. Turnbuckle was lying there dying on the dirty floor of a railroad car and a crazed bandit was threatening his life, too. He forced himself to his feet and took the canvas sack with trembling hands.

  “Don’t drop it,” the bandit jeered, and even though the bandanna masked the lower half of his face, Luther could well imagine the ugly grin that must be on his lips.

  Luther opened the bag, and with the outlaw prodding him in the back with a gun barrel, he went up and down the aisle, collecting wallets, pocketbooks, watches, rings, and other jewelry from the other passengers. Everyone cooperated. They would have been insane not to, Luther thought.

  When he was finished…when the car had been looted to the bandit’s satisfaction…the man said, “Now you, Four-eyes.”

  “I…I beg your pardon?” Luther’s strained voice sounded odd to his ears, as if it didn’t even belong to him anymore.

  “It’s your turn. Empty your pockets into the bag.” The bandit nodded toward Turnbuckle. “And don’t forget that son of a bitch either. Clean him out, too.”

  Luther followed the man’s orders, taking out his own valuables and adding them to the collection in the sack. Then he knelt next to Mr. Turnbuckle’s body.

  The lawyer wasn’t thrashing around and moaning anymore. He lay there gray-faced and motionless, either unconscious—or dead. Luther thought Turnbuckle was still breathing, but he couldn’t be sure. As the outlaw loomed over him, he went through Turnbuckle’s pockets, removed his wallet, took the watch and chain from his vest, slid a couple of rings from Turnbuckle’s fingers. Everything went into the sack.

  “That’ll do,” the desperado growled. He thrust his free hand at Luther, who gave him the sack. The outlaw looked down at him, that blind, off-kilter eye rolling wildly, and lined his pistol on Luther’s face.

  Luther stared into the barrel from only inches away a
s the bandit pulled back the weapon’s hammer and said, “You’re so scared I reckon I’d be doin’ you a favor if you put you outta your misery, Four-eyes.”

  At that moment, Luther was sure, absolutely certain, that he was about to die. His life had only seconds remaining in it. He knew he ought to do something, anything, but fear and dread had frozen him in place as he knelt next to Claudius Turnbuckle’s body.

  Then the outlaw laughed and eased the gun’s hammer back down.

  “But you ain’t worth a bullet,” he said. With that he turned and stalked toward the rear of the car, glaring at the frightened passengers on either side of the aisle and causing them to shrink away from him as he passed.

  Luther lost his precarious balance and sat down hard in the aisle next to Turnbuckle. His heart pounded so hard it seemed to be on the verge of bursting out of his chest. He couldn’t hear anything except a roaring in his head, and he didn’t seem able to draw enough air into his lungs. He gasped like a fish out of water.

  The outlaw vanished into the vestibule at the end of the car. Luther gradually became aware that the train wasn’t moving anymore, but he didn’t know when it had come to a stop. Shortly after the robbery had begun, he assumed. The gang of thieves must have horses hidden somewhere nearby, he thought. They would gather there as soon as their looting was complete and ride away into the godforsaken wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas. They probably had a hidden stronghold somewhere the law would never find them.

  “Gal…Galloway…”

  The tumult in Luther’s head had subsided to the point that he was able to hear the strained whisper that came from Turnbuckle. The lawyer wasn’t dead after all.

  But with two bullet wounds in his chest, surely he wouldn’t last much longer. Luther leaned over him, anxious to hear whatever Turnbuckle had to say.

  “I’m right here, sir. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

  “Tell…tell…”

  Turnbuckle had never been married and had no children, as far as Luther knew. But he must have other relatives, and surely there was some message, some dying words, that he wanted Luther to pass along to his family.

  “Who do you want me to speak to, sir?”

  Turnbuckle’s eyelids fluttered. His eyes, bleary with pain, opened enough to focus on Luther’s face.

  “Tell Frank Morgan…I’m sorry I can’t…help him.”

  Luther couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “You want me to go on to Buckskin, sir? After…after this?”

  “Got a…client…client always…comes first.” Turnbuckle lifted a hand. “Tell Morgan…delay case…get Stafford…You can…file a motion…for a delay…don’t let…the client down…”

  A long, rasping sigh came from Turnbuckle as his head fell back and his eyes closed again. Luther was sure the attorney was dead this time, but Turnbuckle’s chest continued to rise and fall in a strained, ragged rhythm.

  “Buckskin,” Luther whispered. “He wants me to go on to Buckskin.”

  Turnbuckle was still alive when the conductor came through the car a few minutes later. Clearly shaken, with blood running down his face from a gash in his forehead where one of the outlaws had pistol-whipped him, he called for help and had the wounded lawyer carried into one of the Pullman cars by several porters. The passengers who had booked the compartment were forced to give it up. The fireman was also wounded, having put up a fight when several of the masked bandits stormed the locomotive’s cab, and he was placed in another Pullman compartment while the conductor went to look for a doctor among the passengers.

  Luther stayed by Turnbuckle’s side, even though there was nothing he could do to help the man. A short time later, the train jerked into motion again and finished its slow, laborious climb to the top of the pass.

  The conductor came back into the compartment, accompanied by a beefy man with a white beard.

  “This is Dr. Clemens,” the conductor told Luther. “He’s agreed to have a look at the wounded men while we get on to Carson City just as fast as we can.”

  “Do everything you can for him, Doctor,” Luther told the physician. “Money is no object. This is Claudius Turnbuckle, the famous attorney.”

  Clemens grunted. “Never heard of him, young man, but I’ll do everything I can for him anyway. Sort of swore an oath to that effect when I took up doctorin’.”

  Luther didn’t really trust the man. Clemens didn’t sound very educated, for one thing, and for another he had the faint scent of whiskey lingering about him. His hands seemed swift and competent enough, though, as he opened Turnbuckle’s bloodstained clothes to reveal the two red-rimmed bullet holes in the lawyer’s chest.

  Clemens opened the bag he carried with him and took out a clean cloth and a bottle of something he used to swab blood away from the wounds. He leaned close to them and tilted his head in a listening attitude.

  “Don’t hear any whistlin’,” he announced after a moment. “Means the slugs prob’ly missed the lungs. And they didn’t get the heart or this fella’d already be dead.”

  “You mean he’s going to survive?” Luther asked, astounded.

  Clemens shook his head. “Oh, no, I didn’t say that. He’s lost a lot of blood and there’s no tellin’ what other damage that lead might’ve done in there. The fact that the shots missed his heart and lungs accounts for the fact that he’s still alive, but I wouldn’t hold out a lot o’ hope, young fella. Is he your pa?”

  “What?” Luther shook his head. “My father? No. He’s my employer. I’m his law clerk.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t count on him makin’ it to Carson City. Even if he does, he prob’ly won’t last much longer. Sorry. Nothin’ I can do.”

  Luther was sitting on a stool next to the bunk where Turnbuckle had been placed by the porters. At the doctor’s grim diagnosis, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall behind him.

  He felt lost and unsure of what to do next. There wasn’t really anything he could do until the train reached Carson City. Once there, he could wire Mr. Stafford in Los Angeles for instructions. He was sure that if Mr. Turnbuckle succumbed to his wounds, which seemed inevitable, the body would need to be prepared for burial and then shipped back to San Francisco for interment.

  He was getting ahead of himself, he thought. Right now, Turnbuckle was still alive, and despite the doctor’s dire prediction, there was no way of knowing for sure how long he would stay that way.

  Clemens patted Luther on the shoulder and said, “I got to see about that fireman. He caught a slug, too, the conductor said.”

  “Yes, of course,” Luther said. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Clemens went into the next compartment, leaving Luther sitting there listening to the faint, ragged breathing that came from Turnbuckle.

  The next few hours were some of the longest that Luther had ever spent in his life. It seemed to him that the train would never reach Carson City, that he would be stuck here for eternity, growing sick from the car’s swaying and bumping as he sat there waiting for Claudius Turnbuckle to die.

  Turnbuckle didn’t die, though. His ragged breathing still continued as the train finally rolled into the station at Carson City. Ambulance wagons were sent for immediately, and Luther watched anxiously as attendants from the local hospital lifted Turnbuckle onto a stretcher, carried him off the train, and placed him in one of the wagons. The men allowed Luther to climb into the wagon, too, and let him ride along with them to the hospital.

  When he got there, he spent another hour pacing back and forth nervously in a waiting room while Turnbuckle was examined again by other doctors. Finally one of the medicos, this one a tall, gaunt man with a black spade beard, came out and spoke to Luther.

  “I regret to say that Mr. Turnbuckle’s condition is quite grave,” the doctor reported. “The loss of blood and the shock of his injuries might well have killed him already, but he continues to cling to life. I think it’s only a matter of time until he succumbs to his wounds, however
.”

  Luther blinked. “Are you talking about days, Doctor, or hours, or…”

  “Impossible to say,” the doctor replied in a brusque voice. “Could be days, could be a matter of minutes. I’d err on the side of hours, though.”

  “Can you keep him…comfortable?”

  “Of course. We’ll do everything we can for him. And you never know, he might pull through. Miracles do occur from time to time, you know.” His tone made it clear that he didn’t expect that to happen in this case, though.

  “Thank you. Thank you, Doctor,” Luther mumbled. His hat was clutched in his hands. He turned it over a couple of times before he finally put it on and left the hospital.

  There was a telegraph office at the train station, he recalled. He returned there, walking along the streets of Nevada’s capital city. Those streets were paved, and light poles with gaslights on them were placed at regular intervals. Luther passed several brick buildings with multiple stories. Carson City was no longer the rough frontier town it had once been. While it was no San Francisco, it was an outpost of civilization, and Luther felt a little better for being here. The whole incident of the train robbery had begun to seem unreal to him.

  But all he had to do was remember the terrible roar of the outlaw’s guns and the sight of the blood welling from Turnbuckle’s wounds and soaking his clothes, and it was all too real again.

  When Luther reached the train station, he found that his bags, as well as Turnbuckle’s, had been unloaded and left there. The train itself had moved on, of course, since it had a schedule to keep and the robbery already had delayed it. As soon as Luther had sent that wire to Stafford, letting him know what had happened to his partner, he inquired at the ticket counter as to when the next train for San Francisco would be leaving.