The tight knot of bulls filtered through the narrow corridors between the crates. They spread out. If he had remained on the warehouse floor, he’d be trapped by now. Or worse. The way they held their weapons warned they intended to take no prisoners. He couldn’t blame them. They were used to being the sole power in the rail yards. Now he challenged their supremacy and made them look incompetent in their boss’ eyes.
The tower of crates under him wobbled a mite, but he took the chance of standing and jumping across to another. Then another and another. He gained confidence and ran faster on this aerial highway. He risked being seen, but letting Catherine get caught again was a deadlier outcome. At the very edge of the mountain range of boxes, he caught himself and kept from tumbling down to where the freight handlers milled around. They had loaded all three cars and looked around anxiously.
All the gunplay had spooked them. This made Ike feel more confident. He faced only Schofield’s hired thugs and not the small army of laborers, too.
“Get out of here. All of you. Leave!” Kinchloe waved a six-shooter around and drove the men from the warehouse.
Only they refused to budge.
“We want to get paid! You’re not cheatin’ us outta our due for a night’s hard work!”
Kinchloe buffaloed the man, laying him flat when his pistol barrel connected with an exposed temple. He cocked his six-gun and pointed it at the dazed man.
“If any of the rest of you want to save his worthless life, get him out of my sight. You got to the count of three. One . . .”
A man scrambled to half drag his friend along. Blood trickled down the dazed man’s head, but he fought to get his feet moving, one in front of the other.
Ike took careful aim. A single shot removed Kinchloe once and for all. He took his finger off the trigger when Smitty and two others burst into view. They held a struggling Catherine Sinclair. She kicked and futilely tried to yank away from the much stronger men.
There wasn’t any way he shot it out now. Catherine would be in the middle of the gunfight. Worse, Smitty was the kind of owlhoot who’d use a woman as a shield.
Ike had lost the upper hand due to numbers and Catherine being held captive, but he saw a way to get out of the warehouse. He jumped down from the top of the crates. A second leap sent him staggering into the middle of the workmen being chased from the warehouse.
“Don’t shove,” he called loudly, then did that very thing to the man in front of him. The scuffle promised to turn into an all-out donnybrook.
“If you’re all not outta here by the time I reload,” claimed one of the railroad dicks, “I’m going to start cutting you down one by one.” He opened the gate on his Colt and fumbled for fresh bullets in his coat pocket.
This caused a stampede. The men surrounding Ike carried him along. He went with the tide of humanity and burst outside into the humid night air. Clouds moved in, promising a storm by dawn. This suited Ike perfectly, since it blocked starlight that might have shown Schofield’s henchmen his face. He moved along at a quick clip but didn’t outpace any of them. Standing out from the crowd now spelled more gunplay and his eventual death.
“All you men, show up at eight o’clock to get paid.” Kinchloe popped out of the warehouse and looked around.
Ike knew who he sought. He kept his head down but saw out of the corner of his eye how Smitty manhandled Catherine Sinclair. She tried halfheartedly to get away. Giving up was the smartest thing she could do right now, Ike thought—if she expected him to rescue her.
He turned away to hide his holster with his six-gun resting in it. None of the others carried a gun, even tucked into their waistbands. And why should they? All of them were freight handlers, not gunmen.
A few grumbles along the way kept the men from noticing he didn’t belong with them. They exited the rail yard and went their own way, each loudly vowing to be first in line when Kinchloe paid out their wages. Ike walked more slowly and then collapsed in a chair propped against a storefront, nerves shot. He had no idea what to do about rescuing Catherine. There might be no reason for Schofield to hold her captive, but Kinchloe was another matter. In him Ike saw the makings of a madman, totally devoid of humanity, and a merciless killer—and, for Catherine, something worse.
He leaned back in the wooden chair and closed his eyes. His head threatened to explode, but one idea percolated upward and burst on him. If he wasn’t able to get Catherine out of her captivity at the rail yard, there was a man in town who could. Ike rocked onto the balls of his feet and stood straighter. It felt as if he stuck his head in a noose, but Marshal Granger was the law in San Antonio. He was duty-bound to free the actress.
“All I have to do is convince him to do it,” Ike muttered to himself.
He wandered around lost for a few minutes, then spotted the two-story jailhouse at the end of a street. The lynch mob had gone home for the night. Ike wished he could make a similar claim. The steps leading into the main lobby mocked him. Getting the image of steps leading to a gallows from his mind didn’t happen. Rather than enter the way most citizens would, he went around to the side stairs.
Climbing the steep steps was more like the thirteen steps up to a gallows than the front steps ever could seem, but he had escaped this way. Somehow that made this different. Tentatively tugging on the doorknob, he felt a pang of guilt when the door opened. If it had been locked, he knew he would have turned tail and left San Antonio, Catherine Sinclair be damned.
The long corridor down to the cell block echoed with his footsteps. He glanced into the cells before hunting for the marshal. There wasn’t a call to go farther. Granger lay on the nearest bed in an open cell. The marshal sat upright, hand clutching his Colt. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and then dropped his feet to the floor with a loud thump. Ike saw how the lawman kept his pistol aimed, more or less, in the direction of the intruder.
“I need your help, Marshal,” Ike said without preamble.
“You got the goods on that varmint already? You’re one fast worker, Deputy.”
“Please don’t call me that,” Ike said hastily.
“Sorry. I plumb forgot you’re undercover. What name are you going by?” Granger padded from the cell in stocking feet, went to the table where he had examined Ike’s stolen credentials and fumbled about underneath until he found his boots. He laid his Colt on the table as he pulled on his boots.
“The less you know, the better,” Ike said. He almost asked the marshal what that undercover mission was supposed to be. Finding a way to ask what was in the letter the marshal had taken without giving himself away as an impostor seemed too hard a trail to navigate. “I need your help getting a woman away from Kinchloe. He and other railroad detectives have taken her prisoner.”
“The Sinclair woman?”
Ike tried not to look too surprised. Granger was astute and kept his ear to the ground.
“She’s the one.”
“I heard about her and her daughter being booted out of the Grand Palace. There’s some connection between that den of iniquity and Martin Schofield. I’ve never figured out what, but he might be a silent partner. That jackass Zachary who runs it doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose, but the Palace prospers.”
“There was a bit of gunplay at the big warehouse smack in the middle of the rail yard. That’s where Mrs. Sinclair was held.”
“You ran into a brick wall trying to get her out of there? Schofield has an army of road agents working for him. I’ve identified one or two of them by wanted posters.” He slammed his hand down on a stack of posters on the table. “It’s not worth my time to arrest them. The rewards are picayune. Ten dollars, twenty-five dollars, for crimes that’d hardly get a stiff fine, much less any jail time in these parts.”