“Nailed shut, is it? Well, I wonder who did that?” Dalton asked.
“Oh, I expect it was a mistake of some sort,” Tom said. “I don’t really think anyone would nail the lid shut on my chest as a matter of intent.”
“Do you think that?” Dalton asked, and again, everyone laughed at the joke they were playing on the tenderfoot.
“All right, fellas, you’ve had your fun,” Mo said. “Wait a minute, Tom, I’ll get a claw hammer and pull the nails for you so you can get the lid open.”
“Thank you, Mo,” Tom said. “I don’t need the claw hammer to get the lid open.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you do. How else are you going to open the lid if you don’t pull the nails out first?”
“Oh, it won’t be difficult. I’ll just open it like this.” Reaching down with both hands, Tom used one hand to steady the bottom of the chest and the other to grab the front of the lid. He pulled up. With a terrible screeching noise as the nails lost their purchase, the lid came up. Reaching into the footlocker, Tom removed a pair of socks. “Ahh. That’s what I was looking for.”
“Good God in heaven,” someone said reverently. “Did you see that?”
“Dalton, I don’t think you ought to be messin’ any more with this one. He’s as strong as an ox.”
Sugarloaf Ranch, Big Rock, Colorado May 1, 1890
“Did you get a count?” Smoke asked Pearlie.
Pearlie held up the string and counted the knots. There were fourteen knots. “I make it fourteen hundred in the south pasture.”
“I’ve got another eleven hundred,” Cal added.
“And I’ve got just over fifteen hundred,” Smoke said.
“Wow, that’s better than four thousand head,” Pearlie said. “We’ve got almost as many back as we had before the big freeze and die-up.”
The big die-up Pearlie was talking about happened in January three years earlier when there had been a huge seventy-two hour blizzard. After the blizzard, the sun melted the top few inches of snow into slush, which was frozen into solid ice by minus thirty-degree temperatures the following day. Throughout the West, tens of thousands of cattle were found huddled against fences, some partially through and hanging on the wire, many frozen to death. The legs of many cows that survived were so badly frozen that, when they moved, the skin cracked open and their hooves dropped off. Hundreds of young steers wandered aimlessly around on bloody stumps, while their tails froze as if they were icicles to be easily broken off.
Humans died that year too—men who froze to death while searching for cattle; women and children in houses where there was no wood to burn and blankets could not hold back the sub-zero temperatures. The only creatures to survive and thrive that winter were the wolves who feasted upon the carcasses of tens of thousands of dead cattle.
Sugarloaf Ranch had survived, but nearly all the cattle on the ranch had died. Then Smoke heard from his friend, Falcon MacCallister. Falcon’s cousin, Duff MacCallister, recently arrived from Scotland, was running a new breed of cattle—Black Angus.
He had been spared the great die-up disaster because his ranch was located in the Chugwater Valley of Wyoming, shielded against the worst of winter’s blast by mesas and mountain ranges. His ranch, Sky Meadow, had no fences to prevent the cattle from moving to the shelter of those natural barriers. The Black Angus breed of cattle Duff MacCallister was raising was better equipped to withstand the cold weather than were the Longhorns.
Smoke had gone to Sky Meadow to meet with Duff, and after his visit, agreed to buy one thousand head of Black Angus cattle. That one thousand head had grown into a herd of nearly four thousand in the last three and a half years, and it had been a very good move for Smoke. Whereas the market price for Longhorn had fallen so low Smoke’s neighbors, who were still raising that breed, were doing well to break even on their investment, the market price for Black Angus, which produced a superior grade of beef, was very high.
“You men take care of things here,” Smoke said. “Sally is coming back today, and I’m going to meet her at the train station.”
“I’ll go get her,” Cal volunteered.
Pearlie chuckled. “I’m sure you would, Cal. We’ve got calves to brand and you’ll do anything to get out of a little work.”
“It’s not that,” Cal said. “I was just volunteering, is all.”
“Thanks anyway,” Smoke said. “But she’s been back East for almost a month and I’m sort of anxious to see her again.”
When Smoke reached the train depot in Big Rock, he checked the arrival and departure blackboard to see if the train was on time. There was no arrival time listed, so he went inside to talk to the ticket agent. He was huddled in a nervous conversation with Sheriff Monte Carson.
“Hello, Monte, good evening, Hodge,” Smoke said, greeting the two men. “How are you doing?”
“Smoke, I’m glad you are here,” Sheriff Carson said. “We’ve got a problem with the train.”
“What kind of problem? Sally is on that train.”
“Yes, I know she is. We think the train is being robbed.”
“Being robbed, or has been robbed?” Smoke replied, confused by the remark.
“Being robbed,” Sheriff Carson said. “At least, we think that it what it is. The train is stopped about five miles east of here. There is an obstruction on the track so it can’t go forward, and another on the track to keep it from going back.”
“How do you know this?”
“Ollie Cook is the switch operator just this side of where the train is. When the train didn’t come through his switch on time, he walked down the track to find out why, and that’s when he saw the train barricaded like that. He hurried back to his switch shack and called the depot.”
“And I called Sheriff Carson,” Hodge said.
“I’m about to get a posse together to ride out there and see what it’s all about,” the sheriff said.
“No need for a posse. Deputize me,” Smoke suggested. “Like I said, Sally is on that train.”
“You are already a deputy, Smoke, you know that.”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t want people thinking I’ve gone off on my own just because Sally is on the train. I need you to authorize this in front of a witness.”
“All right,” Sheriff Carson said. “Hodge, you are witness to this. Smoke, you are deputized to find out what is happening with that train, and to deal with it as you see best.”
“Thanks.”
Hurrying back outside, Smoke jumped into the buckboard. Slapping the reins against the back of the team, he took the road that ran parallel with the railroad. He left town doing a brisk trot, but once he was out of town, he urged the team into a gallop. Less than fifteen minutes later, he saw the train stopped on the railroad tracks. Not wanting to get any closer with the team and buckboard, he tied them to a juniper tree, then, bending to keep a low profile, ran alongside the berm until he reached the front of the train. Hiding in some bushes, he looked into the engine cab and saw three men. The fireman and engineer he could identify by the pin-striped coveralls they were wearing. The third man had a gun in his hand, waving it around every now and then, as if demonstrating his authority over the train crew.
Smoke moved up onto the track, but since he was in the very front of the locomotive, he knew he couldn’t be seen. He climbed up the cow catcher, then up onto the boiler itself, still unseen. He walked along the top of the boiler, then onto the roof of the cab. Lying down on his stomach, he peeked in the side window on the left side of the locomotive.
The man holding the gun had his back to that window so he couldn’t see Smoke, but the engineer and the fireman could, and their eyes widened in surprise. Smoke hoped the gunman didn’t notice.
“You two fellas are doin’ just fine,” the gunman said. “As soon as we collect our money from all your passengers, why we’ll move the stuff off the track and let you go on.”