“Gimme a hand, if it’s that important,” the worker said. He bent and lifted, grunting as the heavy crate came off the floor.
“Be careful with it,” the foreman called. Ike saw another man inside the freight car. He was as nervous as those on the warehouse floor, but he came over and pointed. The crate was lifted up and then slid across the boxcar’s floor with a noisy, grating sound. Only when the careless worker backed off did the man inside heft the box. He disappeared. Ike heard the crate being set into place.
“Keep going. We got three cars to load in the next couple hours. The train leaves at dawn, and the freight’s gotta be on it. If it’s not, you’ll all regret the day you were born.” The foreman berated the others and got them working, moving long, slender crates from the pile.
Ike started to return to where he’d left Lily, then reconsidered. Nothing made a whit of sense to him. He slipped around to the rear of the mountain of crates being loaded. Peering at them, he saw illegible markings where a description of the contents should have been stenciled. Ike pressed his hand against one of the long, narrow crates, then pushed hard. He failed to budge it. Whatever was inside weighed more than a casual shove moved easily.
A pry bar laying on the floor gave him a chance to find out what was going on. Using the notched end, he lifted the wooden lid on the nearest box. When he had opened a space large enough to reach through, he moved closer. This was crazy. He ought to pull off the top, but the creaking nails as he opened the crate this far clawed at his senses. If the foreman heard the ruckus, he’d come to investigate.
Screwing up his courage, Ike reached inside the box. He recoiled, then settled down. His nerves were getting the better of him. He had touched something warm and stringy. He pulled out a handful of wood shavings, then pushed it back in. It took a little digging around blindly before he touched cold metal. With a heave, he pulled up whatever was being shipped to get a good look at it.
“Rifles,” he whispered. Hastily returning the weapon to its place, he closed the crate the best he could without making undue noise. Before he returned to Lily, he sought out the other crates like the one dropped by the careless workman.
The lid popped free when he used the pry bar. The smell making his nostrils flare confirmed his suspicion. Gunpowder. Ammunition. Lots of ammo, enough rounds to fight an entire war. Ike stepped away and did a quick count. If the crates between him and the railcars were all rifles, more than a thousand rifles were being shipped. The large amount of ammo would keep those rifles firing for a good, long time.
He hunkered down, thinking hard. Not knowing where the weapons and munitions were being shipped robbed him of any definite proof of what was going on. The only thing that came to mind was a supply for all the army posts along the rail line. This many rifles would arm a half-dozen cavalry posts, maybe more.
He had heard the Warm Springs Apaches had fled into Texas from an Arizona reservation. Soldiers could fight off those Apaches until they were captured and returned to distant homes. Or maybe the shipment was intended to cross the border into Mexico. They not only fought the Indians but sniped at each other across the Rio Grande, one army unit pitted against another, in the beginning of a new civil war. The official Mexican government had the means to buy enough guns to fill three freight cars.
And the rebels? Whoever backed them might have enough money, too.
Ike made sure the lid was secured on the ammo box before working his way back through the stacks of merchandise to where he had told Lily to wait. He sagged in despair when she wasn’t sitting quietly on the box where he had left her. Helping her was nothing less than a sure way of getting killed. His luck had been running high, with Marshal Granger finding the badge and the documents Augustus Yarrow carried. Confusing him for the deputy got Ike away from a lynch mob.
And what had he done but come right back onto the property of the man who had whipped up the frenzied mob? Ike scowled at that. If Granger was right and the railroad owner was responsible for hiring the mob, why? Why had Schofield taken such an interest in a man he thought was nothing more than a freeloader sneaking a ride on one of his freight cars?
Schofield had to suspect he was Yarrow and that the Arkansas deputy was hot on his trail. Ike remembered what the bookseller had said about the dime novels. That lawman hero went after crooks responsible for crimes not usually noticed by most folks.
Like smuggling guns? Lots of them?
The soft hiss of cloth caused Ike to whirl around. His hand flashed to his six-shooter. It was halfway out of the holster when he froze. Lily had taken refuge amidst taller stacks of boxes.
“You scared me,” he said, dropping the six-gun back into the holster and coming out of the gunfighter’s crouch. Ike was more surprised at the way he instinctively spun to throw down on the woman. Every move had been smooth, easy and quick. He was no gunfighter, but the motion had been natural, as if he had practiced for long hours.
It was a good thing he hadn’t fired. He had used a pistol often enough to know he wasn’t that good a shot. Spraying lead all over the warehouse might have endangered Lily, but he was more likely to have missed. The loud reports would have drawn the workmen like ants to a picnic. He didn’t have to be a genius to know how impossible fighting them all off would have been.
They didn’t even have to carry guns. All the foreman needed to do was crack open a crate and every last one of them would have a rifle along with enough ammo to ventilate him.
“You scared me,” she said, her hand going to her breast. “I don’t like being alone. Not in here, not with Mama out there somewhere.”
Ike looked over his shoulder, as if the crew by the freight cars were sneaking up on him. He heaved a deep breath and took Lily by the hand.
“It’s dangerous even being in this warehouse.”
“Then let’s find my mother and get out!” Lily jerked free. “You don’t have to help us. You . . . you can go on your way. You were hiding on that flatcar to get away.”
Ike wasn’t going to deny it. He wasn’t quite sure why he had let her pull him off. Staring at her, he tried to remember a more beautiful woman and failed. Her eyes flashed, and her cheeks burned with emotion. Her auburn hair was in wild disarray. If an angel came to earth, he thought this was the way she would look.
“I don’t even know your name. I heard your ma call you Lily.”
“Lily Sinclair, sir. And my mother’s name is Catherine Sinclair. Well, not exactly. That’s not really her name.”
“What?”
“Her given name’s Daisy.” She smiled winningly. “She’s Daisy, and she named me Lily. But Catherine is her stage name. She’d considered something French. Sandrine, perhaps. That’s quite exotic, but—”
“Miss Sinclair, I don’t care about any of that. All I want to do is rescue your ma and get out of here before we get mixed up in a mess beyond solution.”
“You ought to be on the stage yourself, sir. You are overly dramatic, if I may say so.” She studied him closely. “Dramatic and quite romantic, actually. Your heroism is not pretend or playacting, is it? You are quite brave.”
“Where did you see her enter the warehouse? Back there?” He pointed deeper into the towers of crates.
“Yes, back there. I think. She ducked through a door, and the railroad detectives trailed behind. I am sure they caught her. There wasn’t any way they missed seeing her, they were so close on her heels.”
Ike herded her in front of him. They wove in and out of the stacks until they reached the far back wall, where a door stood partially open. A cool night breeze worked past the door frame, causing the door to sway to and fro fitfully.