“We’re slowing down,” Stover yelled.
Dropping his rifle, Zeb jumped for the door and dashed through it, scrambling over the tender to get to the cab of the locomotive. “Don’t stop!” he yelled.
“I can’t plow through that!”
Zeb dropped from the tender to the floor of the cab. “Open her up!” he cried.
“Wide open!”
“She’ll jump the tracks!”
At the edge of the brush near the tracks, Charlie Gant stared unbelieving as the locomotive seemed to gather speed. The driver-wheels churned at the track. “Why, the damn fool!” he said aloud.
The train hit the barricade with a tremendous crash and rock, logs, and debris flew in every direction. The force of the impact knocked Zeb and the engineer in a heap on the cab floor. Only a quick grab at a hand-rail kept Zeb from falling out.
But the debris had been piled on top of the logs laid across the rails, and not between them, and it was thrown wide. The locomotive stayed on the tracks, but it was slowed almost to a halt by the impact. The jolt made the engineer lose his grasp on the throttle, perhaps slowing the speed at the same time. “All right!” Gant yelled. “Take ‘em!”
Bullets smacked against the cab and one of them struck the coal, spattering the cab with tiny fragments like a sudden burst of bird shot. Zeb took careful aim. Gant was coming up the track, and he had a clear sight on his chest. Suddenly his hand was knocked up and his bullet went wild in the air. “Don’t be a fool, Zeb!” Ramsey said. “Let him get aboard! You want Gant; now’s your chance to get him in the act!”
Zeb started to make an angry reply, then he realized Ramsey was right. After all, unless Gant was actually killed on the train there might always be some who would say that he had hidden behind his badge when he killed Gant. “Listen!” Ramsey grabbed his arm. “They’re getting on behind, and they have to cross those flatcars to get here. That’s where we can get them!” Scrambling over the coal car, they started back. Stover was waiting, with Clay and Suns, inside the express car, guns ready. Zeb and Ramsey went on into the vestibule of the passenger car, and started through. A man grabbed Zeb’s arm. “What’s up? What happened up there?”
“Stay where you are,” Zeb replied shortly. “There’s a holdup.” A woman gasped, and several men started up. “Sit down!” Ramsey commanded. “And get down on the floor!”
The Indian, Lund, and Jenks were already in the caboose. Charlie Gant came up the steps and lunged through the back door.
“Did they all get on?”
“Gyp’s on the wire car. Frenchy’s picking up the horses.” “Good!” He turned sharply on the brakeman who stood back, white-faced and scared. “Hit that brake!”
“No use. It would just burn out with the engine going like this.” Gant struck viciously with the barrel of his pistol and the brakeman dropped as if shot. Roistering his pistol, Gant grabbed the wheel and spun it. The wheels screeched, but the train did not slow. Smoke poured up from the caboose hotbox. “All right, load up your guns and let’s go!” He looked ahead over the weaving flatcars. “It’s a long way to that gold!”
With drawn guns they started forward, scrambling over the wire and the logs. Zeb, Ramsey, and now Clay waited inside the passenger car, while the few passengers crouched close to the floor between the seats, as far forward in the coach as they could crowd. Some had suitcases and bedrolls stacked around them. A woman with two young children sat on the floor with her back against a seat-back, and facing the open seat upon which a two-foot-high bedroll had been placed.
Gant made his way over the wire car, falling a little behind to let Lund and Indian Charlie be the first through the door. Opening it, they lunged in, and were met by a blast of gunfire.
The Indian was knocked back against the wall of the car and he went down, his face twisted into a grimace of shock, surprise, and pain. Desperately he fired, working his gun like a cornered rattlesnake, striking at everything within sight.
Lund had seen the guns an instant before the fire opened and had dropped to the floor. Shooting up, his first bullet struck Clay, turning him halfway around. Clay tried to bring his gun to bear and Lund shot again, then lunged up to his feet. He found himself staring into the eyes of Zeb Rawlings. Riddled with bullets, he fell back against the door, which gave way behind him and he tottered back into the vestibule.
“Rawlings!” he gasped at Gant. “Rawlings is in there!” He swayed, and grabbed at the brake wheel, but fell over the rail. For an instant he clung, his white, blood-streaked face staring up, and then his fingers began to slip.
Gant stared back at him, his muscles frozen as he looked down into that bloody, horror-filled face, and then the fingers let go and Lund fell beneath the churning wheels of the train. A scream of mortal agony sounded, and then there was only the pound of the wheels.
Only a second had passed. Wheeling, Zeb’s face showed in the doorway and Gant fired wildly, desperately, and then he leaped for the car. He grabbed for a hold, felt his fingers slip on the rough bark of the logs, then dig in. With astonishment, he saw a fingernail had torn loose and his finger was raw and bloody.
Suddenly panic swept through him. Rawlings was here! Rawlings would kill him! Frantically, he scrambled up the logs. Astride, he turned and shot back, emptying a gun into the door, then he slid down the logs and crawled toward the barbed-wire car.
In the doorway of the caboose Gyp Wells was firing to cover his retreat, but Gant, glancing back again, saw Zeb come through the door. In a panic, Gant fired again; and then as he moved backward, he saw where a bullet had struck the cable that bound the logs, almost cutting it in two. Somehow, somewhere he had discarded his empty gun and drawn the second one. He could hear Zeb coming, scrambling over the logs, and as he looked up, Gyp Wells ducked back for cover in the caboose. Putting the muzzle of his pistol down against the cable, Gant fired.
The wire cable, released from its tension, snapped past him like an angry whip. He dropped to the wire car and started scrambling over the bundles. His hands were ripped, his clothing torn by the fierce barbs, but he could think only of escape. Desperately, he looked around again. Zeb was running along the top of the logs, and even as Gant looked they started to split apart, rolling toward the down side of the car as the train rounded a small curve. Right before his eyes, Zeb disappeared between the logs, and Gant felt a wild impulse to yell. With savage delight, he kept looking back over his shoulder as he scrambled over the wire.
The logs, still held by the wire cable that bound them at the other end, had opened like a fan, one of them almost dragging on the ground beside the speeding train.
Zeb had felt himself going, and he caught wildly at the rough surfaces of the logs as they spread under his feet; then as the front wire held, the logs stopped shifting.
The butt end of the trailing log fell between two boulders as the train started to round a bigger curve. It ripped loose with a terrific wrench, almost derailing the flatcar and pulling loose the coupling pin, which had been poorly seated.
The train plowed into the curve at high speed and logs spilled off the side. Zeb felt logs falling away from him, and as he was exposed a bullet tore a deep gouge in a log at his right. Rocking with the force of the falling logs, the coupling came loose, and the locomotive, followed by the express car and coach, went rolling on around the curve.
The flatcars and caboose slowed, almost stopped, and then slowly began to roll backward down the grade.
Zeb heard a wild shout behind him, then Ramsey yelling, “Stop the train! Back her up!”
Another bullet struck within inches of Zeb’s face and he crouched low beside the log, shifting his gun to his left hand to expose himself as little as possible. Suddenly, Gant saw his chance. Zeb Rawlings was trapped on the log car. Now, if ever, he could get him. Quickly, he scrambled to cover behind the donkey-engine. Lifting his gun, he waited, watching his chance. Zeb was crouched among the fanned-out logs, with only partial protection. Gant was out there somewhere, on the caboose or the wire car, but he dared not lift his head to look. The flatcars and caboose were rolling back down the grade, but the grade would not last forever. With Gant back there, there was at least one other outlaw whom he’d seen leap back inside the caboose. He waited, holding his gun, ready to chance a shot. Suddenly he heard the train whistle more loudly, and a shot struck the donkey engine with a bang.