Inside it was just as ornate as the other. Two tough-looking eastern men loafed in the drawing room with a pair of shotguns across the table before them. They had been playing checkers.
At a call from one of them, Enright came from the sleeping room, bringing a sack of gold. He returned for another, then made more trips until there were eight sacks in all.
“That’s a fair load,” he said. “You’ll have to make more than one trip.”
Chantry liked none of it. One trip, loaded down with gold, was bad enough, but several? With each step the odds piled up against them, and no matter what they carried each man must keep one hand free to use a gun.
He glanced at the two guards. “You two want to help? We’ll pay you.”
One man shook his head. “Mister, I’ve got a family back in St. Louis. I wouldn’t stick my head out of that door with a sack of gold for anything on earth.”
“Nor me,” said the other. “Guarding inside of this car is one thing. The Colonel here, he’s got steel plates in the sides of this car. He’s ready for anything that happens. From in here we could stand off an army, but outside there in the dark? Mister, maybe I’m not very bright, but I’m not crazy, either.”
“Besides,” he added, “we’ve heard all the talk. I’d like to help you, but I just can’t see my way clear to committing suicide.”
Earnshaw stared at them, then he looked at Tom. For the first time he appeared to realize the gravity of the situation. “Is it that bad?” he asked.
“Mr. Earnshaw,” Chantry said, “out there tonight in that cluster of shacks and tents are perhaps a hundred men who have committed every crime in the books. They come here to prey on the track-workers, but they’ll grab anything that’s loose. Aside from them, there are at least two groups who feel they should have this money. One of them has already killed men in the process of trying to steal the cattle. They are not in town just to have a little recreation.”
“It’s only a few yards,” Earnshaw said.
“We’ll move it now.”
Chantry bent over and looked out of the car windows. All was dark and silent. There was a faint glow of light from the windows of the car they were in, and he could see light from the other private car further along the track. There might be any number of men hidden out there, and they could remain invisible until they opened fire.
“We’ll cover you from the door,” one of the guards volunteered, “but that will help for only a few yards.”
Chantry picked up two of the sacks and slung them over his left shoulder. In his right hand he carried his gun. Earnshaw took two sacks and they stepped out of the door.
Chantry went down the car’s steps and dropped off to the dirt. This was, he felt, the crucial moment. Nothing happened.
He moved out, gun ready, and waited until Earnshaw reached the ground. With Earnshaw close behind him, he started for the other car.
Three hours earlier, and a few hundred yards from town on the bank of the Arkansas, three big men got down from their horses, tied them to brush, and descended a steep path to the door of a dugout in the river’s bank.
The door of the dugout was above the water-level and some distance back from the river’s edge, but the dugout had been the work of some optimist who was ignorant of western rivers. The Arkansas in flood was far from being the placid stream that now flowed along not far from the door. In flood it was another story; at the first high water the dugout would be flooded, washed out and away. At the moment, four people sat inside awaiting the arrival of the three big men.
A table, two benches, and four bunks were in the small room. Hank Talrim was sprawled on one of the bunks, chewing on a straw. Bud was at the end of the table, watching Sarah, who was playing solitaire.
The fourth person was a tall, slim man playing an oddly twisted look to his face. He was sallow and unshaven, and his mustache was stained with tobacco. There was an expression about him of ingrown bitterness and distaste.
The door opened and all of them looked up. The man who entered first was huge, with broad shoulders and big hands; his once red hair was freely sprinkled with gray.
“Howdy.” He glanced once at Sarah, then at the sallow-faced man. “Hello, Harvey. You seen Sparrow?”
“Sparrow? Is he here?”
“Uh-huh. What you reckon that means?”
Harvey shrugged. Ruff always irritated him.
It was the man’s size. They had worked together a dozen times over the years, but Harvey never failed to be angered by Ruff’s very presence. And now to make things worse, there were the two boys as well, huge men too.
“Maybe he’s here same as us. If Chantry’s boy is huntin’ us he surely ain’t goin’ to have to look far.”
“Stay away from him!” Sarah said curtly. “He’ll get his when we get the gold. Leave it at that, and stay out of sight.”
“I still say the best time is when they are transferring the gold from one car to the other,” Harvey said.
“And that’s why you’ve got nothing,” replied Sarah sharply. “They will be keyed up, ready for trouble. Chantry will have some men around, some we don’t expect to be there. Let them move the gold. We’ll take it when they’re off guard and think they can relax.”
“What d’you think?” Frank Ruff looked at Bud Talrim.
“I like her thinkin’, What she says, goes.”
Ruff sat down, and the two boys, Mort and
Charlie, squatted on their heels. “I don’t like it, Sparrow bein’ here. He’s always been sore over that shootin’.”
“Forget him! Harvey said. “He never amounted to nothin’.”
“Have you seen him lately?” Charlie Ruff spoke mildly. “He’s mighty high-toned now, got him a big ranch down Texas way, and another in New Mexico.
He runs fifteen, twenty thousand head of cattle.”
“I don’t believe it,” Harvey said.
“Believe whatever you’re of a mind to,”
Charlie said. “That’s a fact, what I said.”
“Some of those cattle Williams and Chantry were drivin’ were his,” Mort Ruff commented. “Sparrow’s in this somehow.”
“Maybe if we wait,” Frank Ruff said, “he’ll do our killin’ for us.”
For a few moments there was only the sound of the shuffling of the cards.
Then Sarah spoke. “Those cattle,” she said, “will bring nearly fifty thousand dollars.”
“I never seen that much money,” Hank Talrim said. “Somehow it don’t make no picture.”
Bud gave him a disgusted glance. “You can make a picture out of a dollar, can’t you? Well, anything you can buy with a dollar, you can buy fifty thousand times as much.”
“Whoo-ee!” Hank exclaimed. “I don’t know what I’d do with it all.”
Sarah’s face was still. Only her eyes seemed to move, and they missed nothing. Secretly she felt only contempt for these men, but they were useful to her. And she did not underrate them. The Talrims seemed willing to do what she said, but they would turn on her and kill her as quickly as a cat. The others, she was sure, would not kill a woman.
As she played she studied them, considering which one she would need the most. Once the money was in their possession, she must get rid of the Talrims. Harvey was as treacherous as the Talrims, and Frank Ruff was too suspicious. Charlie was the smartest of the lot, the best-natured, the only one around whom she felt safe, but at the same time she believed he would be less easy to fool.
Mort was the one. Somehow she would have to work on Mort … she had caught him stealing glances at her. And somehow she must trigger trouble between Harvey and the Talrims … after they had the gold.
Once Paul was gone, she had moved at once to use the Talrims. She had crossed their trail a few times, knew where they were likely to be, and she had approached them, demanding their help. She was still not sure why they had gone along, nor did she dare approach either one separately. Each one seemed aware of what the other was thinking, and she was intelligent enough to perceive that there was no separating them.
They had told her about Rugger. He was a cow thief, and worse. So she had waited for him one night on night guard around the herd. She kept out of sight until he appeared, led him off to one side, and suggested stealing the herd. The others had come in as a matter of course.
When the theft failed she saw at once that the death of French Williams was no longer important. They were too close to the railhead, and the thing to do was get the money after the herd had been sold. She intended to have that money and to go to England or France with it and live her years out in style.