Hard Luck Money Page 17

  “Maybe Keene don’t,” Brattle said, “but I don’t mind blowin’ you to hell, mister.”

  There was that name again, The Kid thought. Brattle was being sure to provide another witness by saying it to the conductor.

  The Kid felt the irrational impulse to throw Brattle’s name out there, too, but he suppressed it. “Just get them to open the door.”

  “There are two deputy marshals in there, and the express messenger is armed, too,” the conductor said.

  Two of the other outlaws ducked around the near end of the express car, stepping over the coupling. After checking out the other cars, they had run along the far side of the train so their movements wouldn’t be visible from the row of businesses.

  “No passengers,” one of them reported. “Just freight cars and the express car.”

  Brattle prodded his gun barrel harder against the conductor’s chest. “Looks like we’ve got those guards outnumbered now,” he said in a tone of gloating satisfaction.

  “Blast it, what’s going on out there?” one of the men in the express car demanded. “Redmond, are you there?”

  The conductor swallowed hard. “Open up, Ketchum. There’s a, uh, problem up the line. I need to talk to you about it.”

  The Kid heard a thump as the bar on the inside of the door was drawn back. He nodded to the conductor. “You just might live through this, mister.”

  The Kid motioned for Brattle to step back against the side of the car. He did the same, positioning himself on the other side of the express car door as it began to slide open. They kept their guns pointed at the conductor.

  Despite that threat, the man was unable to conceal the fear on his face. As one of the deputy marshals guarding the money shipment stepped into the doorway, he got a good look at the conductor and realized instantly that something was wrong. With an angry curse, he started to swing up the double-barreled shotgun he held.

  The Kid acted faster, reaching up, grabbing the man’s belt, and heaving him out of the car. The shotgun went flying, and the lawman had time only to let out a startled yell before he plowed face-first into the cinders of the roadbed.

  Brattle bulled the conductor aside and shouted, “Drop ’em!” as he pointed his gun into the car. The other two outlaws crowded up behind him.

  The men in the car weren’t going to surrender without a fight. A gun cracked, and Brattle returned the fire, flame gouting from the muzzle of his Colt. The other two outlaws joined in. Shots rolled from their guns.

  With a dull boom, a shotgun went off inside the car. It didn’t sound that much different from the thunder of the approaching storm.

  The Kid didn’t know where the buckshot went, but none of the outlaws appeared to be wounded. It must have been a wild blast, triggered as a wounded man was falling.

  Brattle and the other two men scrambled into the express car.

  The deputy marshal The Kid had yanked out of the car stumbled to his feet. The Kid rapped him on the head with the Colt, stretching him out senseless on the ground.

  A little sick because he knew Brattle and the others had been shooting to kill, he looked into the express car and saw its two defenders lying on the floor in bloody heaps. He couldn’t let on how he was feeling, so he grabbed the conductor by the collar and roughly shoved the man toward the door. “Get in there and open the safe,” he ordered.

  “I—”

  “Don’t waste your breath tellin’ me you can’t,” The Kid snapped. “I know good and well you can. And unless you want to wind up like those two, you will.” Alexander Grey would pay for this, he vowed. Either by death or imprisonment, the outlaw mastermind would pay.

  It was the only thing that would lessen the stain of blood on The Kid’s own hands.

  And even that wouldn’t wipe it out, he knew. By helping the gang he’d been doing what the Texas Rangers wanted him to do ... but the freight clerk and the two men in the express car were just as dead as if he’d really been Waco Keene.

  The clerk had been married, too. The fact that the train’s engineer was his father-in-law was proof of that. So he’d left behind a widow and quite possibly some children. The Kid had no way of knowing if the same was true of the dead guards, but he didn’t have time to think about it.

  At gunpoint, he forced the conductor into the car. The man fumbled a key from the pocket of the dead messenger and took another key from his own pocket. It took both to open the safe.

  When the thick steel door swung back, it revealed half a dozen heavy canvas bags on shelves inside the safe. Brattle backhanded the conductor, knocking him off his feet and stunning him.

  Then Brattle dragged one of the bags out of the safe, jerked it open, and reached inside to pull out a banded sheaf of twenty dollar bills. “This is it!” He waved the money triumphantly. He stuffed the bills back in the bag and started handing the sacks to the other men.

  “Got the horses ready to go, out here!” a man called from outside. He was one of the two outlaws who had taken over the locomotive. If any shooting started, their orders were to knock out the engineer and fireman and grab the gang’s horses from the hitch rack. Obviously they had followed through on that plan.

  The robbers leaped out of the car, taking the sacks of money with them. The Kid had one of the sacks in his left hand. It was heavy, but not as heavy as his heart. Anger burned fiercely inside him at the thought of those three dead men.

  The outlaws swung up into their saddles almost as one. They galloped toward the rear of the train and swung around the caboose, leaping their mounts over the rails.

  Somewhere behind them, a man yelled in alarm. Either the conductor or the surviving deputy marshal had come to, or someone else had discovered the train had just been robbed.

  At that moment, thunder crashed again and lightning shot across a sky gone dark above the settlement. The storm had moved in while the men were looting the express car.

  Rain sheeted down, falling in thick curtains blown around by hard gusts of wind. The Kid lowered his head against the downpour. Like the other men, he was soaked to the skin in a matter of moments.

  No one would be able to come after them in the deluge, he told himself. The rain and the gloom hid them from sight as they fled. And any hoofprints their horses left would be swiftly washed away.

  But not the blood, The Kid thought.

  That was going to take time.

  A lot of time.

  Chapter 27

  As they had planned beforehand, the gang made their getaway to the south, riding hard for several miles before The Kid and Brattle brought their horses to a stop and signaled for the other outlaws to do likewise.

  Brattle raised his voice over the sound of the rain pouring down. “Nobody can follow us in this weather. There’s no point in us keepin’ on this way!”

  The Kid nodded, agreeing with him. If anybody had seen them riding away from the railroad tracks, those witnesses would know they had started south. The inevitable search for them would focus on that direction. “We might as well swing west for a ways, then head for the ranch.”

  “Sounds good to me. I ain’t no duck! The sooner we’re out of this weather, the better.”

  The summer thunderstorm was a powerful one, but it hadn’t spawned any cyclones, as far as The Kid knew. Just hard rain, frequent lightning, and gusty winds.

  All of those things started to taper off as the outlaws rode west, traveling at a fast pace but not an all-out gallop as they had been earlier. The farther west they went, the lighter the rain fell, until it stopped completely.

  “That’s one good thing about these Texas gully-washers,” Brattle said as the horses splashed through mud puddles. “They don’t usually last very long. Wouldn’t surprise me if we saw the sun shinin’ in a little while.”

  His prediction proved to be correct. A short time later, breaks appeared in the clouds, even while thunder still grumbled and growled to the east where the storm had moved on.

  Sunlight slanted through those gaps and qui
ckly warmed a day that had turned chilly while the storm was passing through. The air soon felt sticky and steamy. The Kid’s soaked clothes were uncomfortable.

  “We made a good haul,” Brattle said with a grin on his ugly face. “The boss said there was supposed to be sixty grand in that money shipment, and from the looks of it, he was right.”

  “Yeah, but what’s his share from that? What’s yours?”

  “You don’t need to be concerned with that right now. Your share’s goin’ to pay back the boss, remember?”

  The Kid shrugged. “I was just wondering how much he’s gonna collect for sitting in that ranch house while the rest of us do the real work and run all the risks.”

  Brattle surprised The Kid by throwing his head back and laughing. “You think you’re the first hombre who’s tried to stir up trouble that way? You’re wastin’ your time, Keene. All of us are collectin’ more loot than we ever did workin’ on our own. We don’t care how much the boss makes for bein’ smart enough to put this deal together.” He turned in the saddle to look at the other outlaws. “Do we, boys?”

  The question brought more laughter from the men. Dodge said, “Far as we’re concerned, Waco, Mr. Grey earns every penny he takes.”

  “Fine,” The Kid said, his voice curt. “I was just thinkin’ out loud, that’s all.”

  “Best to do as you’re told and not think too much,” Brattle said.

  They rode on in silence, gradually curving back to the north, crossing the railroad tracks, riding through a wide basin, and then climbing a ridge commanding a view of fifteen or twenty miles to the east.

  The Kid spoke up again. “I didn’t care for the way you kept tossin’ my name around, Brattle.”

  “What’s it matter? The law’s already lookin’ for you.”

  “Yeah, but once word gets around that I was mixed up in this robbery, the reward being offered for me will go up ... especially since we left three dead men behind us.”

  “They shouldn’t have put up a fight. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about that, Keene. All you have to do is stick with us and you won’t get caught.”

  No, not until they were ready for him to get caught, The Kid thought. And by then it would be too late.

  Somehow he had to get a signal to Tyler and let him know it was time for the Rangers to move in. The Kid could testify about the robbery and the killings, as well as Alexander Grey’s part in them.

  He didn’t know where that would leave Beatrice, who would be on her own again, but there was nothing he could do about that. Maybe he could use some of Conrad Browning’s money to help her get started in a new life, if her pride would allow that.

  The Kid started seeing familiar landmarks, and knew they were getting close to the old ranch. Brattle knew it too, because he reined in. “I’m gonna need that gun back now, Keene.”

  “Gun?” The Kid said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Brattle snapped. “You know what I’m talkin’ about. That gun you scooped up after the deputy sheriff dropped it.”

  The Kid smiled and reached for the butt of the Colt tucked in his waistband. Brattle moved quickly, gripping the handle of his own revolver, and The Kid sensed the other outlaws behind him were ready for trouble, too.

  “Take it easy,” he drawled. Moving slowly and deliberately, he took hold of the weapon and drew it. Then he reversed the gun and held it out butt first toward Brattle.

  “You try anything fancy like a road agent spin, and the other fellas will blast you full of holes,” Brattle warned.

  “If you haven’t figured out by now that we’re on the same side, Brattle, I don’t know what I can do about it. I carried my weight in that holdup, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but the boss’s orders say you don’t carry a loaded gun around the place unless he okays it.” Brattle took the Colt from The Kid. “I don’t make the rules.”

  The Kid didn’t say anything as they hitched their horses into motion again. For a second, he had considered blasting Brattle off his horse and then turning to shoot it out with the other men. Four against one odds were pretty bad, but he had won against some long odds in the past.

  Not today, he told himself. Too much depended on him staying alive for a while longer.

  They followed the ridge for a couple miles before it sloped down into another valley with a creek running through it. The plateau where the ranch was located was on the far side of that valley. The Kid could see the hill serving as Tyler’s lookout point looming to the west. It seemed likely the young Ranger was watching them.

  As they started across the valley, The Kid reached into the canvas sack hanging from his saddlehorn by a short length of cord and pulled out a bundle of money.

  “What are you doin’?” Brattle asked as The Kid riffled his thumb along the edge of the greenbacks.

  “Just thought I’d take another look at this loot, since pretty soon I’ll be turning it over to the boss and won’t ever see it again.”

  “I told you, stick with us and you’ll have more money than you know what to do with. Now put that away. You’re makin’ me nervous.”

  “Why should it bother you? You think we’ll run into somebody who’ll see it and figure out we stole it from that train?”

  “Maybe it sounds far-fetched, but it could happen. Now put that money back in the sack, damn it.”

  “All right, don’t get a burr under your saddle.” The Kid replaced the money.

  “I’ll get whatever I want under my saddle!” Brattle exclaimed, annoyed.

  The Kid grinned. “I’m not sure that even makes sense.”

  “It makes sense enough to me,” Brattle snapped. “Come on. We’re almost back to the ranch.”

  He heeled his horse into a trot, and the others matched his pace. The slope leading up to the plateau was a fairly easy one, so the horses didn’t struggle.

  Twenty minutes later, the six men rode up to the old stone ranch house. As they reined in, the front door swung open and Grey stepped out, an eager expression making his pale face look a bit less cadaverous than usual. His eyes lit up at the sight of the canvas money bags hanging from the saddles. “Success!” he exclaimed.

  “That’s right, boss,” Brattle said as he swung down from his horse. “Everything went off without a hitch, except we got mighty wet when a thunderstorm blew through.”

  The Kid’s mouth tightened. Without a hitch, Brattle had said. That was true enough for the members of the gang, The Kid supposed, but not for the three dead men they had left behind.

  “Dodge, Hendry, you take care of the horses,” Brattle went on. “The rest of you, let’s take this money inside.”

  Grey came up to The Kid. “Any problems for you, Waco?”

  The Kid shook his head. “Not really.” He paused. “Brattle was a little free about using my name.”

  “Is that so?” Grey frowned, as if he hadn’t given Brattle the order to do just that. “Well, I don’t suppose it’ll make much difference in the long run, will it? You’re already a fugitive from justice, after all.”

  “That’s what I told him, boss,” Brattle put in.

  The Kid had expected Beatrice to come out and greet them, too, but he hadn’t seen any sign of her. He told himself there was no reason to worry about her, but even so he realized he would be glad when he saw for himself that she was all right.

  The two men Brattle had picked out led the horses around to the barn while everyone else went into the house. They entered the cavernous front room, and Grey motioned to a large table. “Dump the money there,” he ordered. “I’ll count it and find out just how well we did today.”

  Grey used that we as if he had been right there with them, The Kid thought, shooting it out with the hombres inside the express car. He might as well have been. Without his evil brain behind all of it, those men would still be alive.

  The Kid saw the greed on the man’s face as he looked at the greenbacks spilling from those canvas sacks, and was glad Brattle had taken the loaded gun away fro
m him. At that moment, he was mighty tempted to put a .45 caliber bullet right between Alexander Grey’s reptilian eyes.

  Beatrice came into the room then, and a surge of relief went through The Kid. He thought she looked happy to see him, too, but she glanced away quickly so Grey wouldn’t notice her reaction.

  “Look at that, Beatrice,” Grey said as he waved a hand at the pile of bills on the table. “Another installment on a fortune that will dwarf anything our father ever had, eh?”

  “I don’t care about that, Alexander,” she said. “I don’t care about anything that has to do with him.”

  “I can’t say that I blame you for feeling that way. He’s a despicable man.” Grey smiled. “But enough about that. Would you like to help me count this?”

  Before Beatrice could answer, a flurry of gunshots suddenly erupted somewhere outside. Everyone stiffened in alarm. The Kid thought the shots came from the barn.

  Brattle jerked his gun from its holster and yelled, “Somebody must’ve jumped Dodge and Hendry!” He took off at a run for the back door. So did the other outlaws.

  Grey told Beatrice, “Stay here!” and started to follow.

  The Kid hesitated. It was a chance to grab Beatrice and get out of there. If he could get his hands on a couple horses ...

  “Come on, Waco!” Grey threw the order over his shoulder, putting an end to that idea.

  It would have been a long shot anyway, The Kid told himself.

  He ran out of the house behind Grey. The shooting had already stopped as they emerged from the big stone pile. They were in time to see Brattle and another man half dragging, half carrying a limp, bloody figure out of the barn.

  The Kid’s breath froze in his throat as he recognized the wounded man. Brattle and the other man dumped the intruder at Grey’s feet. “Look who Dodge and Hendry caught skulkin’ around the place, boss.”

  It was the young Texas Ranger called Tyler.