“One thing you’ve got to remember. A clever gambler never does anything fancy with a deck—that’s for show-offs. It even helps to seem a little clumsy, like this …”
Zeb Rawlings walked down the wide space between the two rows of stalls in the livery barn. His wagon, loaded with household gear, had been left in front of one of the stalls. Going to it, he lifted the lid on a long, narrow box tied to the side of the wagon, and from it he took his rifle scabbard. He drew the Winchester from the scabbard and began feeding shells into the magazine. Lou Ramsey came in the door behind him, and Zeb glanced around. “I’ll take that rifle, Zeb,” Ramsey said.
Zeb looked at him, but made no move to hand over the rifle; he simply slipped another cartridge into the magazine.
“Your pistol, too.”
“Sony, Lou, but I can’t oblige.”
Lou Ramsey pushed his coat back and placed his hand on the butt of his gun. With his other hand he reached toward Zeb.
Zeb indicated the hand on the pistol. “Thought you didn’t use that any more.”
“I’ll use it if I have to. I’d rather you didn’t make me use it.” “Lou,” Zeb said quietly, “I’m going out of here, and I’m taking this rifle with me.”
“To kill Gant.”
“Maybe … and maybe I’ll get killed. That’s your idea of this, isn’t it, Lou? That it’s him or me, a personal thing. Well, it could become that. If I settled down with my family and he came hunting me … and he will come—he as much as told me so.
“Unless I can stop him now, stop him red-handed in the process of breaking the law. Then it will be up to the law to put him away for good. The law, Lou. But I haven’t much chance without your help.”
Lou drew his gun slowly. “Your rifle first.” Just as he seemed about to hand it over, Zeb swung the rifle barrel with a quick gesture. It caught Lou on the side of the skull and he dropped as if shot.
Quickly, Zeb turned and went out of the stable. The train was whistling for the station, and he wasted no time. He knew what he had to do, and he knew just how difficult it would be to do alone. He bought his ticket and boarded the train as soon as it stopped. Hurriedly he found a seat and sank into it, putting a newspaper over his face, as if asleep. If Lou came to soon enough he would stop him, and this time he could not evade him, nor would he resist him again. He thought too much of Lou, and understood his problems too well.
He waited, his mouth dry, listening to every sound within the car and on the platform outside. Every hurried step, every surreptitious movement made him positive that he had been discovered and that the next instant the paper would be pulled from his face.
Suddenly the cars jerked, the train chugged and spat steam, and the big drivers began to turn slowly. He heard running feet upon the platform and somebody swung onto the train. Zeb remained where he was, his face covered. The wheels began to move faster; the train chug-chugged ahead, then picked up speed, the whistle blowing.
Not until the tram was rolling fast did Zeb remove the newspaper and look around, searching for Ramsey, or for any of the men who rode with Charlie Gant. For an hour at least the train would be crossing a wide plain, with only occasional cuts through the hills, and no place where it would slow up or where thieves would be likely to bring it to a stop.
Zeb took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. This was the one luxury he allowed himself. He sat back in the seat and thought of the railroad that lay ahead. He had been over every foot of it, and one by one he checked off the possibilities.
Yet in the last analysis it mattered very litte where they stopped the train. It would be a showdown there, regardless. However, it would, more than likely, be in the mountains.
The train, as usual, consisted of a locomotive and tender, a baggage-express car, one passenger coach, two flatcars, and a caboose. One flatcar was loaded with freshly cut logs, the other with rolls of barbed wire. On the car with the barbed wire was a donkey engine.
The conductor came along to take his ticket and Zeb looked up at him. “How many men back in that caboose?”
“Just one. The brakeman.”
“Is he armed?”
“No reason to be.”
The conductor glanced down at the badge on Zeb’s vest. “You expecting trouble?”
Zeb Rawlings sat up. “Yes, I am. You know what you’re carrying?”
“Of course.”
“Well, too many others know, too.”
“I don’t want my passengers hurt.”
“Neither do I, and there’s no protection for them in this car.”
“Behind the seats?” the conductor suggested.
Zeb looked his disgust. “Easy to see you’ve never been shot at by a forty-four. A pistol bullet would go through the backs of four or five of those seats before it stopped. Maybe more.”
He got to his feet and walked slowly through the car, glancing at each man to see if he recognized any of them. Of course, Gant might be working with men Zeb had never seen, as well as with those who had appeared at the station with him. Any one of the men on board might be one of the outlaws. Taking his rifle, he went to the front end of the car and then stepped over to the express car. The door was not locked, and he went in, to face a six-shooter held in the capable hand of Marshal Lou Ramsey. There was a bandage around his head. Zeb saw Stover, Clay and Sims behind him. “I’m sorry, Lou.”
“Well,” Ramsey replied irritably, “it got me here, didn’t it?”
Chapter 23
Charlie Gant walked back to the horses, inspecting the hoofs of each one in turn. They were excellent horses, chosen carefully for speed and bottom, but principally for speed. The first dash in their escape would be important, for the more distance they could put between themselves and the actual crime, the better.
He had planned every detail of the holdup with infinite care, and the horses had been tested at doing what they must do. First a three-mile dash at top speed, then a half-mile at a trot, a half-mile at a walk, and then a short dash. The space for the walk was through a patch of woods and they would make separate trails, all within sight of each other, then a dash across the intervening stretch into another patch of woods.
An hour after the start of their escape they would come up to the other horses. The saddles they rode during that first part were all stolen ones, and would be abandoned with the stolen horses. Mounted on other horses, they would enter a creek and ride for slightly more than a mile. The creek had a sandy bottom, and there were no obstructions about which to worry. This course would cause the pursuit to lose time in finding the point at which they emerged, and when they did emerge it would be in a sandy wash where they left only indentations in the sand but no tracks that could be defined. They would leave the wash at separate points to further confuse their trail. After three hours they would change horses again, this time taking time to switch saddles. By noon of the day following the holdup they would be eating at a ranch over a hundred miles from the scene of the crime, and in another state, where friends were prepared to swear they had never left the area. Over much of the distance they would travel there were few water holes—some of them known only to Gant and to a few Indians long since dead. Without knowledge of those water holes any pursuit must fail. At one point, where there were no water holes for some distance, he had made an emergency cache of water to tide them over. The plan was fool-proof.
Now, seated near the tracks, Gant took them over the route once more to be sure each man understood. The plan was to stick together; but if they could not, if one man was cut off, he was to choose an alternative hide-out equally as well hidden.
Each of the five men he had selected for the holdup was a man wanted for a killing.
“If shooting starts,” he instructed them now, “shoot to kill. If any man’s mask slips, everyone within seeing range is to be killed.” “What about that guard?”
“His name is Clay, and he will be alone in the car. The end of the car next to the passenger car will have the door locked, but that next the tender will also be barred. The bar bracket on the end toward the passenger car has been broken and was not repaired. A bullet will smash the lock on the door and allow us to enter.