Crusade of Eagles Read online

  Loomis pushed the door open and the four men stepped inside. The car was dimly lit by two low-burning gimbal-mounted lanterns, one on the front wall and the other on the rear. They walked down an aisle that was flanked by two rows of closed curtains, listening to the heavy breathing and snores of the passengers.

  “Which berth you think they’re in?” Logan asked.

  “It don’t matter which one they’re in,” Loomis replied.

  “What do you mean it don’t matter?”

  “This is what I mean,” Loomis said. Reaching up, he jerked the curtain open to the berth nearest him, then reached in and grabbed the hair of a young woman.

  The woman screamed, but Loomis stopped the screaming by putting his hand over her mouth.

  The scream had the effect, though, of waking everyone up and causing them to jerk open their curtains, just far enough to stick their heads out. Seeing four armed and masked men standing in the aisle was a terrifying experience, and some gasped with fear. Others called out.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Sorry ’bout this unscheduled stop, folks,” Loomis said, waving his pistol about. “But we need to do a little business with you.”

  “Business? What kind of business?” a male passenger asked.

  “Money business,” Loomis said. “All of you, open your curtains.”

  A few opened their curtains only marginally wider.

  “Not good enough,” Loomis said. “I want them opened wide. Open ’em all the way, or I’m going to start shooting. And the first place I’ll shoot is into the berth that doesn’t have the curtains open.”

  At that moment, the porter happened into the car and, seeing the commotion and the armed men, yelled.

  “Who are you men? What are you doing in here? You can’t be in this car!”

  Loomis shot the porter, and the white-haired black man fell back amid screams from the passengers. One of the passengers, still wearing his sleeping gown, jumped down from his berth to see to the porter.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  “Oh, my God!” a woman said.

  The acrid smell of gun smoke filled the car and Loomis waved his pistol around. A little wisp of smoke was still curling from the gun barrel.

  “I guess now that you folks know I mean business,” he said. He pulled out his little cloth bag and handed it to the passenger who had gone to attend to the porter. “Put all your money in that bag.”

  “See here, this is unheard of !” the passenger sputtered. “I will not . . .”

  That was as far as he got before Loomis brought his pistol down, sharply, on the man’s head. The man collapsed across the porter’s body.

  The car was filled with gasps of amazement, but they were rather subdued because nobody wanted to get Loomis’s attention.

  “You,” Loomis said, pointing to one of the other passengers. “Look around in this fella’s berth and bring out all his money.”

  “What if he doesn’t have any money?”

  “You’d better pray that he does have some money,” Loomis said. “’Cause if he don’t have any, I’m goin’ to kill you.”

  It took but a moment for the passenger to find the money, which he quickly handed over to Loomis.

  “Now, that’s more like it,” Loomis said. “And put your own money in the poke as well,” he added.

  After that, all the passengers began cooperating so that, within moments, the money bag was full.

  “You folks did that just real well,” Loomis said. “Now, there’s one more thing we need before we go.”

  “What else is there? You’ve taken all our money,” one of the women passengers said.

  “Which ones of you are the MacCallisters?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Let’s just say I want them to do a private show for us. Now, which ones of you are the MacCallisters?”

  When nobody responded, Loomis pointed his pistol at the head of one of the women.

  “I’m going to count to five,” Loomis said. “If I don’t find out which ones of you are the MacCallisters by the time I get to five, I’m going to kill this woman. Then, I’m going to start counting to five again, and kill someone else. And I’ll keep on killin’ in here until I find what I’m looking for.”

  “One.”

  “You’re mad! You wouldn’t do that!”

  “Two.”

  “You’re insane! There are other people on this train! You’ll never get away with it.”

  “Three.”

  “No, please!” the woman begged. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

  “Four,” Loomis said, and this time he cocked the pistol.

  “I’m Andrew MacCallister,” Andrew said. Like the other passengers, he was dressed in a sleeping gown.

  “I thought this would bring you out,” Loomis said. Lowering the hammer on his pistol, he signaled for the others to move toward Andrew.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Where is your sister?” Loomis asked.

  “You’ve got me, that’s enough. You can’t have my sister, too.”

  “That’s all right,” Loomis said. “If you really feel that way, I’ll just start killin’ all the women in here until I get the right one.”

  “I’m the one you seek,” a woman’s voice announced very clearly.

  Loomis chuckled. “I’m the one you seek,” he repeated. “Lord, you folks do talk fancy, don’t you? You got ’ny clothes with you?”

  “They’re in the baggage car,” Andrew said.

  “Then put on what you was wearin’ before you climbed into the bed last night,” Loomis ordered. “I don’t care what you wear, just get dressed. The both of you.”

  “What do you want us to get dressed for?” Andrew asked.

  “Because you’re comin’ with us.”

  “What makes you think we are going to come with you?” Andrew asked angrily.

  Loomis pointed to the dead porter. “Do you want anyone else to die?”

  “No,” Andrew said.

  “Then both of you get dressed, and hurry.”

  The curtains closed on the two berths, upper and lower, that were occupied by Andrew and Rosanna. Then, just a few minutes later, they reopened and the two, now fully dressed, stepped out into the aisle.

  The engineer blew the whistle.

  “Hurry it up! We’re fixin’ to pull out!” Logan called.

  Loomis took out a letter and dropped it on the floor of the train car.

  “This here letter needs to go to a man named Falcon MacCallister back in Colorado Springs,” he said. “I’m countin’ on someone in this car gettin’ it to him, ’cause if I don’t hear from him in one week, I’ll be killin’ these two.”

  “Come on, hurry up! The train is moving!” Kelly said.

  “All right, let’s go,” Loomis said, shoving his two prisoners toward the end of the car. The train was already rolling by the time they reached the vestibule, but Loomis pushed Andrew and Rosanna off, then jumped off behind them.

  By the time all were down, the train was rolling at a pretty good clip and pulling away from them. Loomis took his hood off and the others followed suit.

  “What do you want with us?” Andrew asked.

  “You two just do what I say, and quit askin’ so damn many questions,” Loomis replied.

  The horses were no more than one hundred yards away from the track.

  “Michaels!” Loomis called. “Michaels, where the hell are you?”

  “I’m right here,” the albino said, riding up from the shadows. He was riding one horse, and leading six others.

  Seeing him, Rosanna gasped. The albino’s pasty complexion was even whiter in the moonlight, and he looked for all the world like a ghost.

  Strayhorn chuckled. “What’s the matter? You scared of the albino?”

  “No,” Rosanna said. “No I was just—startled is all.”

/>   “Yeah, he does that to folks,” Strayhorn said.

  “Can you ride?” Loomis asked.

  “Yes, a little.”

  “A little, huh?” Loomis said. “Well, you’re going to have to ride more than just a little. Get mounted, the two of you.”

  Andrew started to mount one of the horses, but Loomis stopped him.

  “No, let the woman have the mare. She’s a mite more gentle. The woman can ride, can’t she?”

  Andrew gave the reins to Rosanna, then chose the other horse. “Yes, she can ride,” Andrew said, answering Loomis’s question. He started to tell them that she was a champion rider, but thought better of it, believing that the less information he shared with them at this point, the better off they would be.

  “Yeah, but can she ride without falling off the horse, is what I want to know.”

  “I’ll hang on tight,” Rosanna said as she mounted the horse, then arranged her dress in a position that would allow her to ride astride.

  “Yeah, well you better hang on real tight, little lady,” Loomis said. “’Cause if you fall off, I’ll tie a rope around you and drag you to where we’re goin’.”

  “Whooeee, that come off slick as a whistle,” Strayhorn said. “Wonder how much money we got.”

  “More’n a hunnert dollars, for sure,” Logan said.

  “When I say, we’re going to divide it up,” Loomis answered. “But that ain’t nothin’ compared to what we’re goin’ to get.”

  By now the puffing sound of the train was barely audible, and the long, lonesome sound of the whistle indicated just how far away the train was.

  Rosanna shuddered.

  Where were they, who were these men, and what was going to happen to them?

  Rosanna watched as the man with the drooping eye took a rope from his saddle. The rope had been pre-tied with a loop on each end. He looped one end of it around her neck, and the other around Andrew’s neck.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s ride.”

  As soon as the train got under way again, one of the passengers looked out onto the front vestibule, while another looked out back.

  “They’re gone!” the man up front said.

  “Nobody back here either,” the other said.

  “Somebody needs to get the conductor.”

  “Get me for what?” the conductor asked, coming into the car at that moment. “What’s going on here, why is everyone out of . . . ?” The conductor stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the porter lying on the floor of the car. “Travis!” he shouted, moving quickly to him.

  “The porter is dead,” one of the passengers said as the conductor knelt down to examine him.

  “Who did this?”

  “Some men.”

  “Some men? What men? What did they look like?”

  “They were all wearin’ masks.”

  “’Tweren’t masks, it was hoods they was wearin’,” another said. “It covered their whole face, like this.” He put his hand over his face in demonstration.

  “Well, were they already on the train? Did anyone see them before they put on their hoods?”

  “No, they come on when the train stopped.”

  “And they took the MacCallisters,” another passenger said.

  “The MacCallisters are gone?”

  At the conductor’s questions, everyone in the car started talking at the same time, so the conductor pointed to the first man.

  “What is your name?” the conductor asked.

  “Carl Taylor.”

  “Well, Mr. Taylor, how about you”—he looked at the other passengers—“and only you, tell me, in detail, just what the Sam Hill happened in here!”

  While Taylor related the entire story, the other passengers nodded in agreement with what was being said. Then, when Taylor was finished, the conductor reached up and pulled on the emergency cord.

  When the conductor pulled the emergency cord, all the air brakes were immediately activated. The wheels locked and slid along the tracks, sending out showers of sparks.

  In the engine, the fireman was thrown off balance and nearly fell against the hot furnace.

  “What the hell, Doodle! You need to give me a warnin’ when you’re goin’ to do somethin’ like that.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Doodle answered, closing the valve to stop steam from going into the actuating cylinders. “It had to be someone on the train, pulling the emergency brake cord. Take a look on your side, Austin, see if you see anything.”

  With the fireman looking out one side and the engineer out the other, the train came to an emergency halt. It sat on the track then, still but not quiet, as the relief valves opened and closed.

  “Here comes Paul,” Doodle said as he saw the conductor running up alongside the train.

  “Wonder what he wants,” Austin mused.

  “Doodle, we have to go back!” the conductor called up to him.

  “Go back? Go back to where?”

  “Go back to where we took on water! Some men came on board back at the water tower. They robbed the passengers in the Pullman car and they killed Travis.”

  “Why should we go back?” Doodle asked. “Seems to me like we should just report it at the next stop.”

  Paul shook his head. “No, we have to go back. They took the MacCallisters.”

  “The MacCallisters? That’s them actors, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” Paul answered. “And if we lose them, the railroad will never hear the end of it, and neither will we.”

  “What would they have taken them for?” Doodle asked.

  “I figure maybe just to keep someone on the train from shootin’ at ’em when they got off. More’n likely the MacCallisters is still there. That’s why we have to go back.”

  “All right,” Doodle said. “Get back on board. We’ll go back.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the train was, once again, sitting on the track beside the water tower. By now all the passengers, not just those in the Pullman car, knew about the men coming on board and taking the MacCallisters.

  “I’ll bet there’s a reward for findin’ ’em,” someone suggested, and that was enough to spur several of them into leaving the train to help look around in the dark for them. Using hand-carried lanterns, they searched for nearly half an hour, but found nothing.

  As they were searching for the two missing passengers, the conductor and the express man moved Travis’s body from the aisle of the Pullman car into the baggage car.

  “Thanks, McCorkle,” Paul said.

  “Yeah, well, I hate it that happened to poor old Travis, but you’re right, we couldn’t just leave him in the aisle of the car. It would upset the passengers somethin’ fierce.”

  Paul had just jumped down from the baggage car when Doodle leaned out of the engine cab and called down to him.

  “Paul, you better get everyone back on board.”

  “Give them just a few more minutes,” Paul said. “The MacCallisters must be here somewhere.”

  Doodle shook his head. “Don’t matter if they’re here or not, we got to get goin’. There’s another train due here in half an hour. We’re going to need to open up a lead on them.”

  “Yeah,” Paul said. “All right, I’ll spread the word. How ’bout you givin’ a toot on the whistle?”

  Doodle nodded, pulled his head back into the engine, and a second later blew the whistle.

  “All right, folks, that’s all,” Paul called to the searchers. “Let’s get back on the train. Pass the word to the others. Back on the train. Doodle, give a couple of whistles.”

  Doodle climbed back onto the engine and blew the whistle a couple more times, and that had the effect of calling everyone back.

  “Oh, say, conductor,” one of the Pullman passengers said. “The leader of the men left a letter.”

  “He left a letter? Why didn’t someone tell me before now?”

  “I don’t know. I forgot in all the excitement, I guess.”

  “Where is the letter?”

/>   “I think Mr. Taylor has it,” the passenger said, pointing to one of the other Pullman passengers.

  “Thanks,” Paul said. Then he called out to the other passenger. “Mr. Taylor! What’s this I hear about the train robbers leavin’ a letter?”

  “Oh, yes,” Taylor said, reaching into his pocket. “Here it is.”

  “Well, were you going to give it to me? Or were you going to maybe keep it as a souvenir?”

  “Actually, I was goin’ to turn it in at the next stop,” Taylor said. “The robbers said that this was supposed to go to Falcon MacCallister in Colorado Springs.”

  “All right,” Paul said. “I’ll make certain that it gets on the next train going back.”

  Paul waited until the last passenger was aboard. Then he raised and lowered his lantern a couple of times to signal to the engineer that it was all right to go. He climbed aboard, just as the brakes were released and the train started forward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Loomis and the others rode through the night, with Andrew and Rosanna riding very carefully because the looped rope ran from Andrew’s neck to Rosanna’s. If either of them fell while riding, it would probably kill both of them.

  It was still dark when they finally stopped. Looking around, Andrew and Rosanna saw a main house, a barn, and a rather large corral.

  “What is this place? A ranch, do you think?” Rosanna asked quietly.

  “If it is, it’s deserted,” Andrew answered just as quietly.

  They weren’t quiet enough, because the albino heard them. “Shut up, you two. If we want you to talk, we’ll ask you somethin’.”

  “What is this place?” Rosanna asked.

  “It’s a place where nobody will find you,” the albino said. “Now, get down.”

  Rosanna started to dismount.

  “Rosanna, wait!” Andrew called, stopping her just as she began. “We have to do it together, remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rosanna said. “I nearly forgot.”

  Coordinating their movements, the brother and sister dismounted, then waited to have the rope removed from their necks.

  “Go on inside,” the albino ordered gruffly.

  “Wait, better let me go in first and have a look around,” Strayhorn said, stepping up onto the porch.