Cutthroats Read online

  As Slash slid his gaze farther back along the train, behind the tender car heaped with split wood, cool fingers of apprehension brushed the back of his neck.

  He turned to Pecos, who was hunkered on his left, his hand on the plunger handle, waiting for Slash’s signal.

  Slash said, “I thought Jay said there would only be the express car and caboose.”

  Pecos canted his head so he could see between the rocks in front of him. He looked up at Slash. “So, there’s one more car.” He grinned, blue eyes wide and round with eager anticipation. “Maybe they’re haulin’ more loot than expected.”

  Slash’s heartbeat quickened, his anxiety growing more keen and uncomfortable. He ran his gaze across the handsome red passenger car with brass window fittings and brass handrails on its forward and back vestibules. It sat in front of the plain yellow car marked WELLS, FARGO & COMPANY EXPRESS and the caboose trailing behind the express car, at the combination’s end. It appeared to be a private passenger car boasting four small windows behind which Slash could see no one.

  “They’re haulin’ some mucky-muck, looks like,” Slash said.

  “Maybe the ranch’s superintendent rode down to sell hosses or somethin’ down in Saguache, and he’s headed back to the spread. Jay said he did that from time to time, but that he usually only took one other man with him—his foreman. We can take ’em both.”

  “She didn’t mention nothin’ about the superintendent havin’ his own private rail car.”

  “You got your drawers in a twist again. Over nothin’, most likely.”

  “Uh-huh.” Slash’s heart raced. He had to make up his mind to go ahead with the job or to let it go. He couldn’t bring himself to pull out. He wanted the money in the express car too badly. He wanted to quit the long coulees and buy the freighting business too badly.

  He and Pecos weren’t getting any younger.

  “Go!” He snapped his left hand down.

  Pecos shoved the plunger into the box.

  The dynamite detonated with a thundering wail, blowing up a great, pyramid-shaped cloud of sand, gravel, and track rail roughly a hundred feet in front of the still-chugging locomotive. Slash felt the ground shudder beneath his knees. He’d poked his gloved fingers into his ears to soften the explosion—he’d finally learned to do that a few years ago, realizing he was growing hard of hearing after taking the full brunt of too many similar detonations over the years—but now he lowered his hands and grabbed his Winchester.

  The engineer cursed and pulled his head back into the locomotive’s cab, jerking levers to apply the breaks.

  “We’re on, pard!” Slash yelled, hoping like hell Jay was right about there being only three or four guards in the express car.

  It was that extra car, though, that worried him.

  He heaved himself to his feet and ran out from between the rocks, starting down the slope. Pecos grabbed his own Colt rifle and slung his sawed-off coach gun behind his back, where it hung by its leather lanyard, and broke into a run behind Slash. A third of the way down the slope, the two cutthroats separated and took two different routes down the steep mountain grade made perilous by low shrubs and large patches of slide rock.

  It was on one of these patches that Slash lost his footing, his left boot slipping out from beneath him. He hit the ground, rolled once, and, cursing under his breath and spitting grit from between his lips, lurched back to his feet and continued running at an angle down the slope.

  “I saw that!” Pecos said, voice pitched with wry amusement.

  Slash told him to do something physically impossible to himself.

  He gained the base of the slope and ran up the tracks toward where the locomotive was just then screeching to a shuddering halt about a hundred feet beyond. While Pecos stopped beside the express car, Slash ran back up the grade to the right of the locomotive, and, about fifteen feet up from the bottom of the slope, hunkered behind a rock.

  He loudly rammed a cartridge into the Winchester’s breech and aimed at the two men cursing and lurching around inside the cab.

  “Climb down out of there, you two, and do it fast or I’ll fill you so full of lead you’ll rattle when you walk!”

  It was the cutthroat’s customary overblown admonition for the simple reason it usually did the trick, resulting in only infrequent exchanges of lead. Engineers and firemen were not usually armed for prolonged lead swaps, and they didn’t usually have much stomach for them, either, since they were getting paid only to drive and fuel the train, not to defend it from owlhoots.

  These two were faster than most at climbing down out of the locomotive, leaping from the bottom rung of the iron ladder to the cinder-paved rail bed, turning toward Slash, and throwing their hands high in the air. The engineer was a full head taller than the fireman, who was twice as wide and wore a full white beard and black watch cap pulled low on his freckled forehead.

  They both stared wide-eyed up at Slash aiming his rifle at them from behind the rock. The engineer continued puffing the pipe jutting straight out from a corner of his mouth, the smoke wafting around his head.

  Neither man said anything. They just stood staring up the slope at Slash, hands raised high.

  Slash stared back at them, scowling. He canted his head to one side, studying their expressions.

  There they were again—those cold witches’ fingers raking the back of his neck. This time the nails were fully extended, tearing at the tender flesh under his collar.

  There was something about this setup he didn’t like. It wasn’t only the extra car, but these two men hadn’t needed any convincing to scramble down out of the locomotive. It was almost as though they’d been coached through the entire scenario, told to do exactly what Slash told them to do.

  Neither appeared to be wearing so much as a derringer, whereas most of the engineers he’d shaken down had worn a .45 or a .44 somewhere on their persons, and they’d at least made a show of being willing to use it before tossing it somewhat sheepishly down from the engine.

  “Belly down!” Slash ordered, gesturing with his rifle barrel.

  They did that, too, as though they’d been awaiting the order.

  “Stay right there and don’t move. You so much as lift your heads an inch, I’ll shoot ’em off!”

  “Yes, sir,” said the engineer.

  “You got it, sir,” said the fireman, nodding his head against the ground.

  Pecos walked on down past the tender car and the mysterious coach car to the Wells Fargo car, outside of which Pecos stood, holding his Colt rifle up high across his chest as he scrutinized the car before him.

  He glanced at Slash, then frowned curiously and said, “What’s got your tail a-draggin’? Dang, this is turnin’ out easy as pie coolin’ on a window ledge! I don’t hear no one movin’ around inside here, neither.”

  He canted his head toward the Wells Fargo car before him and grinned. “I’m thinkin’ Jay was right about there bein’ few guards if any at all. Maybe there’s just a safe!”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. There’ll be guards. If there’s any money at all, men will be guarding it. You should know that by now, you dunderheaded nincompoop.”

  Pecos widened his eyes and lowered his jaw in exasperated indignation. “Dunderheaded nin—? Jesus! Somethin’ really is crawlin’ up your behind. Or maybe you hit your head in that fall comin’ down the mountain, ya clumsy old fool!”

  Slash was studying the train, stretching his gaze from the locomotive to the caboose bringing up the rear, then back to the Wells Fargo car before him. He raked a consternated thumb along his jaw. “I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t like what?”

  “It’s too easy.”

  “You don’t like easy jobs anymore?” Pecos whistled and shook his head. “Boy, it is time for you to retire. Why don’t we just order that door open, whistle for hosses, and hightail it out of this racket you’ve grown too old and scaredy-cat for?”

  “I think we should just whistle for our hosses
.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Pecos chuckled dryly. “Not me, partner. I still got all my marbles in their rightful pockets. I ain’t lost my nerve. Not yet. I ain’t goin’ nowhere without my saddlebags filled with cash.”

  Slash raked his gaze along the train again, then narrowed an eye at his partner. “You don’t sense anything out of whack here?”

  Pecos usually had as keen a sixth sense as Slash did. Since he didn’t sense trouble here, maybe Slash really was being an old schoolmarm about the whole thing. Maybe age had, indeed, caused him to lose his nerve.

  “All I sense here is a safe brimming with cash. I hear it calling out to us, in fact.” Pecos cupped a hand to his ear and leaned toward the train car. “Hear it? I do, sure enough. It’s sayin’, ‘Come an’ get me, Pecos! Come an’ get me, Slash! It’s dark in here all by my lonesome! Come and free me from this dark place and I’ll make you two old raggedy-heeled cutthroats rich enough to buy your own business and a girl or two on weekends!’ ”

  He wheezed a laugh.

  “All right, all right,” Slash said, feeling foolish. He stepped back and raised his Winchester, levering a live round into the action. “Let’s get to it.”

  “That’s more like it.” Pecos backed up a step and curled back the hammer of his Colt rifle. Pitching his voice with menace, he yelled, “Open up that door or we’re gonna blast ya outta there and skin what’s left of ya!”

  Nothing.

  Slash and Pecos shared a skeptical glance.

  Pecos cleared his throat and raised his voice louder. “For the last time, open up that damn door or die like a rat in a church privy!”

  “All right, all right,” said a needling male voice from inside the car. “Hold your horses!”

  Pecos glanced at Slash and grinned.

  Slash wrinkled his nose at him.

  There was some scuffing and grunting from inside the Wells Fargo car. Then the door opened, sliding along its rails from Slash’s and Pecos’s right to their left. When the door was open a few feet, a little man with close-cropped gray-blond hair wearing a green eyeshade and sleeve garters poked his head out.

  “All the way!” Slash yelled at him. “And be quick about it!”

  “All right, all right,” said the little express agent.

  He got in front of the end of the door and grunted as he pushed it along its rail. The door lurched along the rail as it opened, revealing your usual, run-of-the-mill express car complete with a small desk covered with ledger books, a large black safe against the back wall, and an old bull’s-eye lantern hanging from the ceiling by a wire. The door opened still farther to reveal a brass-canistered Gatling gun perched in the car’s open doorway, around which three severe-looking men wearing deputy U.S. marshal’s badges crouched.

  One of the marshals had a long, black cheroot dangling from between his mustached lips. Crouching over the nasty-looking weapon, he smiled around the cheroot, exhaling cigar smoke and then hardening his jaws as he turned the Gatling gun’s wooden-handled crank.

  The big gun roared like a baby dragon, spitting flames as well as .45-caliber chunks of hot lead toward the two cutthroats standing just outside the car with their mouths hanging open in shock.

  CHAPTER 13

  When he first saw the sun shining off the brass maw of that Gatling gun perched in the car’s open doorway, flanked by three black-clad federals, Slash’s heart bucked like a wild bronc in his chest.

  “Holy cow!” Pecos bellowed.

  He and Slash hit the ground as though their legs suddenly evaporated.

  At the same time, the Gatling gun roared with a caterwauling cry of RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

  The .45-caliber bullets screamed over the two cowering cutthroats’ heads, drumming into the slope behind them, a few screaming even louder as they glanced off rocks. Lying belly down against the ground, his cheek grinding on a knobby rock, Slash glared at Pecos, who lay staring back at him, gritting his teeth as the hot lead stormed over their heads, a few cratering the ground just off the heels of their toe-down boots.

  When the gun’s witchlike cries died, Slash said, “You plug-headed polecat!”

  He lifted his head but slammed it back down again when he heard the Gatling gun’s birdlike chirp as it dropped on its swivel, and then another deafening caterwauling broke out. Ten or so more rounds drilled into the ground in front of Slash’s and Pecos’s heads, between them and the Wells Fargo car.

  When the gun’s screech died again suddenly, leaving only a high-pitched ringing in Slash’s ears, he looked over to see Pecos’s lips move. He couldn’t hear what his partner said above the ringing in his own ears, but he could read Pecos’s lips. What he said wasn’t something Slash would repeat to his grandchildren, if he lived to have grandchildren one day, which at the moment seemed doubtful.

  Slash kept his cheek down against the knobby rock, but when the Gatling did not speak again and no bullets tore into his flesh, he lifted his head and cast a dubious glance into the express car where the three federals crouched, grinning through the wafting powder smoke. The deputy who’d been firing the Gatling gun straightened slightly, removed the long black cigar from between his teeth, and added a long plume to the powder smoke.

  “Toss away your weapons!” he barked, flexing his black-gloved right hand threateningly around the Gatling’s wooden handle.

  Slash looked at the man’s dark eyes. He looked at the Gatling gun from the maw of which thick smoke curled. The other two federals had raised rifles, and they cocked them loudly now, raised them to their shoulders, and angled the barrels down toward the prone cutthroats.

  Slash could feel at least one bead being drawn on his forehead.

  He looked at Pecos, who returned the look with a constipated one of his own.

  “Ah, hell!” Defeat burned inside Slash. He reflected briefly on growing old in the federal pen but was mildly comforted by the notion he’d probably hang. He just hoped they calculated the drop right, so he didn’t dangle too long, dancing while the crowd roared, the dogs barked, and the children beat his legs with sticks.

  He considered drawing his Colt, ending it all right here. But that was too much like suicide. Suicide was a coward’s way out. Slash was no coward. He’d face what he had to face, a necktie party if that’s what was in the cards he’d been dealt, and shake hands with that fork-tailed old demon, Scratch, afterward . . .

  Giving a ragged sigh, he unsnapped the keeper thong from over his right-side Colt, shucked the weapon, and tossed it out away from him. When he’d tossed away his second Colt and his bowie knife, and Pecos had tossed away his Russian .44, his sawed-off shotgun, and Colt revolving rifle, the cigar-smoking federal said, “The rest!”

  Slash and Pecos shared another dark glance, rolling their eyes. They sat up and dug into their boot wells for their hideout pistols, and tossed those away, as well.

  “That it?” asked the cigar-smoking federal.

  “Yep,” said Slash.

  “Don’t worry—we’ll be checking every nook and cranny,” the federal barked back at him.

  “I don’t know, partner,” Pecos said. “He sounds awfully eager to check our nooks and crannies.”

  “Shut up!” the federal admonished above the chuckles of the two other deputies. “You’ll get a rifle butt to the head for every other hideout we find!”

  “Oh, go to hell!” Slash said.

  Apparently finding the tolerance to ignore the admonition, the federal said, “Get up! Try to run, and I’ll cut you in two!”

  Grunting and cursing and spitting sand and weed seeds from his lips, Slash heaved himself to his feet. Pecos must have bruised his knee when he’d hit the ground; he was having trouble getting up. Slash gave him a hand, and the two stood facing the three federals—the two with rifles, the cigar-smoking devil on one knee behind the Gatling gun, daintily flicking ashes from his cigar.

  All three were chuckling in delight at the two middle-aged cutthroats before them—two rarely seen wild
cats they and many others had been hunting for years with no success.

  Here they were before them now.

  Slash felt like a caged circus animal, and he wasn’t even in a cage yet.

  He gazed back at the three deputy U.S. marshals and shook his head in deep befuddlement. “How . . . ?” he tried. “How in the hell did you know . . . ?”

  He let the question dissolve on his lips when he heard a click and turned to see the rear door of the coach car open onto its brass-railed vestibule. A nattily attired, grinning man in a wheelchair was rolled out through the open door and onto the car’s outer platform. He was pale and clean-shaven, vaguely skeletal in appearance, with cobalt eyes set in deep sockets. Cottony hair poked out from beneath the brim of his bullet-crowned black hat.

  Slash heard Pecos draw air sharply through his teeth. Or maybe it was his own startled intake he’d heard above the bells of disbelief tolling in his ears. Again, his own heart kicked him, like a young colt’s hoof, as he saw that the person rolling Chief Marshal Luther T. “Bleed-’Em-So” Bledsoe out onto the vestibule was none other than Jaycee Breckenridge.

  “Jay?” Pecos grunted, jerking his head back with a start.

  He glanced at Slash, who blinked his eyes as if to clear them. When that didn’t work, he used his thumb and index finger.

  Still, it was Jay standing there behind Chief Marshal Bledsoe, standing out on the vestibule now, the sunlight glowing richly in her copper hair that hung to her shoulders in thick, curly waves. She wore a rich green traveling gown, low-cut and trimmed with white lace at the full bodice and sleeves. Her cleavage was shaded, like the mouth of a deep canyon at dusk. Around her neck was a double strand of luminous white pearls.

  Christ, even pearl earrings dangled from her ears!

  Slash could smell the intoxicating fragrance she wore—the sweet scent of ripe raspberries cut with sage.

  “Hidy, boys!” Bledsoe called, spreading his thin lips in a grin that revealed nearly all of his oversized, false teeth. He held a sawed-off, double-barreled greener across the arms of his chair. His right thumb was caressing one of the rabbit-ear hammers. “Been a long time! I don’t know that we’ve ever been formally introduced. But I’m sure we all know who each other is, don’t we? Oh, and I reckon Miss Breckenridge here needs no introduction—does she, boys?”