Bannerman the Enforcer 13 Page 3

  He had been successful too, in his own way. Not that his exploits could ever match those of Jesse and Frank or their rampaging kin, the Younger brothers, but nonetheless, Roy Treece and his bunch were respected wherever they went ... and feared, too. That was what Treece liked: to see the fear come into men’s faces when they heard his name. A couple had been loco enough to exclaim, “Hell, he’s only a runt! I figured him to be eight feet tall!” Both those men were now under six feet of sod ... and a lot more had joined them over the years, for Treece was a killer. At least he didn’t mind killing, as long as there was money somewhere in it.

  And he had been led to believe by the two owlhoots who had been plumb loco from drinking their sourmash, that there was money in the morning train out of Bent’s Junction. There was: in the express car. But it was only a few dollars and not the boxes of gold that the drink-fuddled men had claimed. But Treece made careful preparations to stop that train as it climbed the mountain tracks up out of the valley and rocked along towards the railhead at Timbertop and all the stops in between.

  He and his men worked across the mountainside and planted their dynamite carefully, aiming to blow down a goodly portion of the hills onto the tracks and even the train itself. He had learned from experience that once the loco was knocked out by a landslide, he didn’t need to damage any more cars. When people knew there was nowhere to go no matter what they did, they usually just sat back and let the bandits get the robbery over and done with so that someone could start out on foot for help as soon as possible.

  And Treece aimed to knock out this locomotive personally. It was new, said to be fast and strong, and he wanted the glory of crushing it beneath the tons of rock he would send crashing down the mountain face when it reached the track below where he waited with his crew.

  He had no idea that Cato and the posse were already closing in, but, even if he had, he was just reckless enough to continue, thereby thumbing his nose at the law and, if he pulled it off, adding to the growing legend of Roy Treece.

  And, as the train rocked and swayed up the mountain track, Yancey Bannerman sat in his window seat, holding his head in both hands as the pain knifed through him and distorted his vision.

  Three – Mountain Massacre

  Yancey continued to hold his head, rocking in time with the train, gritting his teeth. Hell almighty, he had never known such pain! It seemed to block out his senses: hearing, sight, even his mouth was suddenly dry and tasteless. But it sure didn’t blot out his ‘feeling’ sense!

  He jumped as a hand touched his shoulder, gripping firmly as it gave him a gentle shake.

  “Can you hear me?” asked a voice, sounding as if it was coming from the far end of some narrow tunnel. “Are you all right, sir?”

  Yancey took his hands away from his head and slowly turned towards the voice, willing his sight into focus. He saw the small forearm where it disappeared into the frilled-edge short sleeve of a summer dress. Then the rest of the girl came into focus: a concerned face, a young face that he reckoned was only in the very early twenties; chestnut hair, hazel eyes, a few freckles on a small nose; a trim figure ... He smiled despite himself. Nothing wrong with his eyesight now! This girl was a looker. But he jerked as pain knifed through his skull as if it had been cleaved with an axe. His lips pulled back from his teeth, bloodless.

  “Sure I’m all right!” he snapped, though he hadn’t meant the words to come out quite like that.

  The girl dropped her hand away instantly and straightened her face. “Oh,” she said a little stiffly. “I see …”

  She eased back in her seat opposite and he had the thought that she hadn’t been there when the train had pulled out of Bent’s Junction, so she must have moved down while he had been holding his head. The train slowed as it reached a bend in the graded track. Conifers and piñon showed as the train rolled by, just the tops of them level with the window sill. The mountain slope dropped away from the track steeply. He blinked and looked across at the now tight-lipped girl.

  “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to snap ... It just came out that way. Guess I’m kind of hung-over.” He forced a smile. “Had a little howl last night in Bent’s Junction.”

  The girl frowned. “I see. You seem to be suffering from more than a hangover to me ... But, you know best what your hurt is, I’m sure.”

  Yancey nodded and looked out of the window as his vision shifted again and she went out of focus. Outside the window, the countryside went past in a blur of muted tones that he knew certainly wasn’t due to the speed of the train. Damn! He wished he had taken that doctor’s advice and taken to his bed for a spell! He sure couldn’t afford to get into any kind of hassle with his eyes playing up this way. And the pain was almost unbearable. He groaned aloud, involuntarily, and the girl leaned forward, her face concerned again.

  “Are you sure I can’t help? I’m a nurse. I’m sure you’re suffering from more than a hangover …”

  Yancey was gripping the window ledge now. He still couldn’t see properly. “In my warbag,” he gasped. “Bottle …” She hurriedly rummaged in his bag and brought out the bottle of pale colored painkiller. She uncorked it and handed it to him, having to put it right into his hand. He drank deeply as she frowned.

  “Are you suffering some sort of head injury?”

  Yancey nodded slowly, shuddering at the bitter taste of the medicine. “Bullet crease on top of my skull ... Doc said I should be resting—but I couldn’t.”

  “I think you might have concussion. And you should be resting! Look, you stretch out on the seat and try to sleep a while. How far are you going?”

  Some wary instinct in Yancey groped its way up through the pain and dizziness and he said, “All the way ...”

  “Then you have plenty of time for rest before we reach Timbertop. You lie down there.” The girl stood up to help ease him down, using his warbag as a pillow. She glanced out the window and stiffened. She sucked in her breath sharply and Yancey looked at her quickly, his vision clear again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Up there!” she said, pointing. “A band of—armed men! Surely they’re not train robbers …?”

  Yancey struggled to get to the window to see but his eyes played tricks on him again and the mountainside went out of focus.

  ~*~

  Outside, up the slope, Sheriff Arnie Watts moved his men in on the ledge where Roy Treece and his bunch hunkered down, waiting for the train to reach their section of track.

  Cato had broken the posse up into two groups, one under his command, the other with Watts as leader. He had stressed to the lawman that he wasn’t to move in on the train robbers until he gave the signal. He wanted to surround them and try to take Treece alive. It didn’t matter about the rest of the gang, but Treece must be taken alive.

  Arnie Watts figured that a little more glory his way wouldn’t hurt any and he wanted word to get around that he had led the attack that had wiped out the Treece bunch, not Cato, some Enforcer from way down in Austin. At least, that’s what he told the posse men with him and he said to hell with taking Treece alive: as long as the outlaw was stopped, that was the main thing.

  So, not waiting for Cato to get into position, Watts had ridden down the slope towards the ledge where Treece and his men waited. Treece had the fuse in hand for the dynamite and a vesta already out. When the laboring train reached a jutting red boulder would be time to light that fuse. It was just the right length to burn down and explode the planted dynamite as the train passed underneath.

  Then one of his men yelled a warning and he whipped around to stare incredulously as he recognized Arnie Watts at the head of a posse coming racing down slope, guns lifting. The first shots hammered across the mountain and lead whined off the rocks where the outlaws crouched. Treece dropped the fuse and snapped a shot at Watts who was throwing a shotgun to his shoulder as he raced in. His men scattered and one went down under a hail of lawmen’s lead. Watts’ shotgun thundered and Treece cursed as he flung himself flat
and the charge of buckshot chopped into the boulder above him. So that’s how it was! He blazed three fast shots as Watts thundered in and let loose with the second barrel of the shotgun. The charge decapitated the man next to Treece and the outlaw chief paled: he knew he wasn’t going to get out of this alive. He bounded to his feet, firing wildly at Watts as the sheriff veered away, shucking out fresh shells from the bandolier he wore across his chest.

  Goddamn it! There was another section of the posse sweeping in from the other way, led by a hard-riding horseman clutching some monstrous pistol that seemed to have two barrels, one above the other. Treece fired at him, missed and leapt away down slope, cut off now from where he had left his horse. Cato fired at his legs, missed, felt the wind of a slug fan his cheek and hipped in the saddle to trigger at an outlaw slightly above him and drawing a bead with a Winchester. The big Manstopper gun bucked in recoil in Cato’s fist and the outlaw threw up his hands and crashed down the slope.

  Cato was cursing Arnie Watts for having jumped the gun but there was nothing to be done now except trade lead with the bandits. At least they had saved the train. It still labored up the tracks below while the gunfight took place up here, the outlaws scattering on foot, but going down fighting. Two posse-men were hit. One was still in the saddle, holding a dangling, bleeding arm, but the other man lay face down and unmoving on the slope, his mount running wild. An outlaw leapt out of cover in an attempt to grab the flying reins. Cato threw down on him with the Manstopper and the man was flung aside by the impact of the lead, to crash into one of his pards. The second man tried to shoot over his companion’s body and a posse member blasted him with his rifle.

  Cato searched for Treece and saw the man leaping and bounding away down the slope. He cursed as he saw what the man was about: without a horse and unable to get to one, he was going to make a run down the slope to intercept the train, leap aboard and likely put a gun on the engineer and driver. He would get away if he managed to reach that train.

  Cato set his horse slithering and skidding down the steep slope of the mountain as the gun battle raged all round him. Men swore and cried out in pain. Guns hammered and bullets ricocheted wildly. The train panted and creaked and swayed as it made its way up the steep grade. Treece cut across the slope, past where the dynamite was planted, mighty glad it hadn’t gone off and wrecked his last chance of escape. But upslope, Arnie Watts reined in his mount and threw the shotgun to his shoulder. He saw Cato cutting in in an effort to head Treece off.

  The sheriff sighted along the twin barrels with both eyes open and pulled both triggers simultaneously. The big Greener bucked and thundered as the double charge of buckshot was hurled down the slope at Treece. The outlaw reeled as some of the shot struck him but the main part of the charge plowed into the soft ground where the dynamite was planted with its waiting, unlit fuse. The buckshot did the fuse’s job only too well. It slammed through the loose covering of earth, bit into the sticks and the thin copper detonators of fulminate of mercury. It took only one sphere of shot to hit one detonator …

  There was a tremendous eruption of earth and rock and brush and Roy Treece’s body was flung high into the air as the dynamite exploded in a thunderous sheet of flame. The blast wave blew Cato clear off his horse and sent the animal, whinnying wildly, crashing over onto its side. Other riders were unhorsed and some of the outlaws, closer to the blast area than most of the posse, were killed outright. Then it seemed as if half the mountainside began to slide out from beneath their feet and hundreds of tons of rock and earth and full-grown trees plunged away towards the railroad tracks and the laboring train.

  Cato, ears ringing, sat up, blinking, shaking his head. He saw the landslide charging like something berserk down the slope and he mouthed an involuntary ‘No!’ as he saw the train below. The locomotive was moving too slowly on this section of track to get out of the way of the landslide, even though it was further ahead than the outlaws intended.

  Even as he watched, teeth bared, the first boulder slammed into the firewood tender with a dull clang and the car rocked violently on its bogey. Then a wall of earth and uprooted trees and bouncing rocks smashed into the car following behind and it lurched and swayed, lifting clear off the rails, borne on top of the slide like driftwood caught on a wave. It toppled onto its side and skidded and spun and rolled.

  Then the rest of the landslide hit, but, luckily, when that first car had been jerked cleanly out of the line, much of the thundering avalanche poured through the gap as the following cars lost speed. But the car immediately behind was hit on the front end and it spun its front bogey off the tracks, tilted at a crazy angle but didn’t quite fall over onto its side. Wood splintered and glass shattered, drowning the cries of the terrified passengers.

  The locomotive itself was clear, though the rear bogey of the tender was off the rails and dragging, bouncing on the ties. It acted as a brake and the locomotive shuddered to a halt, the fireman and engineer leaping from the cab in wild panic. But the landslide was mainly past now. It had lost a lot of its impetus and what was still pouring down the slope was mostly earth and small stones that piled up like dirty-gray snowdrifts against the sides of the remaining cars, pushing them off the horizontal but coming to a halt when they were at a precarious angle, just short of falling. But it still hit hard enough to stove in slatted timber walls, and send glass flying and slashing through the cars.

  Stunned by the explosion and landslide itself, the posse, and the two remaining outlaws, picked themselves up and stood coughing in the dust cloud as the landslide rolled on down the far slope beyond the tracks, losing and dissipating itself amongst the timber.

  Cato staggered and skidded his way across the loose scree of the slope to where Sheriff Arnie Watts was picking himself up and looking around for his fallen shotgun.

  “Great Godfrey!” Cato yelled, his own voice sounding far off as if his ears were still ringing from the effects of the explosion. “What in hell did you think you were doin’, Watts? I told you to wait for my signal! And I said I wanted Treece alive! Now you’ve blown him to kingdom come!”

  “Long as we can still collect the bounty,” Watts said, starting to reload his shotgun. “Ah, what the hell, Cato! Treece had to be stopped and I stopped him!”

  “Goddamn you, Watts!” Cato snapped and he brought up the heavy Manstopper he held, slamming the fat cylinder and barrel brutally across the side of Watts’ head. The force of the blow lifted the sheriff’s feet clear off the ground and he crashed to the slope with blood pouring from his nostrils and mouth. Breathing hard, Cato stood over him and lifted his angry face to the rest of the dazed posse. “Well, don’t just stand there, damn it! Get on down to the tracks and help the folks in them wrecked cars!”

  They slid and skidded their way down to the railroad tracks and as they drew closer, they could hear the cries of the injured and the frightened sobbing of mothers calling out for their children.

  The fireman and engineer came running back to help and uninjured passengers were climbing out of the broken windows and doors of tilted cars, dazed, surprised that they were still alive. Cato organized the posse men and the uninjured male passengers into teams. He went into the second car himself after looking down the slope at the first car to be hit and knowing that there was little use in hurrying down there: it was unlikely that anyone had survived that fall. He was relieved to hear the bruised and bleeding conductor say that there had been only about four passengers in the front car, as most of it had been reserved for a picnic party that was to board at the next stop.

  Cato hurled shattered timber aside and pulled a broken set of seats off the legs of an unconscious cowman. He hauled the man out, dragged him to the door, and passed him out to the waiting hands of the men there. Before the man was laid down on the ground, Cato was back in the tilted, darkened car, groping his way down what had been the aisle, climbing over the tangle of seats and wreckage, calling out for anyone who needed help.

  “Down here!” a woman’s
voice called from the far end, but, as he made his way down there, he found two children huddled, speechless with fear but luckily only bruised, under a pile of twisted seats. He carried one under each arm back to the shattered doorway and handed them out to the rescuers. He shoved one man off as he tried to climb aboard.

  “Stay out of there!” Cato snapped. “I don’t like the angle this car’s at. Too many runnin’ around inside might just tip it past the point of balance and send it over the side. I’ll drag back anyone I find ...”

  He groped his way forward again, crawling on all fours, found an old woman and a younger one, and got them out. But it still wasn’t the woman who had called before. He shouted and she replied from the far end:

  “I’m all right, but there’s a man caught here. And I—I thought I felt the car move some.”

  Great! thought Cato. That’s all we need, for the car to start moving past the point of balance. He realized that the removal of the shattered seats he had hurled through the windows and the people he had taken out, had left this end of the car a lot lighter than it had been. With all the seats and baggage and some people down at the far end, the section that jutted out over the edge of the track, the car could well tilt up and begin its long slide to oblivion down the slope ...

  On his hands and knees, he moved twisted and shattered wreckage cautiously, yelling at the woman to keep talking. He got his direction from the sound of her voice and had to strain and kick to move a pile of broken seats. The car lurched and he felt his heart jump into his throat as he froze instantly.

  “My God!” cried the unseen girl. “Are we—are we going over the edge?”

  “Just move easy, very easy!” Cato said, seeing her vague outline now. “You got someone with you, you say?”