The man was dead.
Ike rubbed his hand a little harder to remove the last traces of gore. A rustling sound made him peel back the coat. Two packets of paper were stuffed into a pocket held shut with a safety pin. He ripped away the cloth, hands too shaky to unfasten the pin. The first envelope was crammed with letters. Before he had a chance to look into the second, he heard Kinch cry out, “Wild-goose chase. They’re still somewhere near the roundhouse. They might be trying to get back to Gregorio if they don’t know he’s dead. You, Smitty, look on the far side of the dinky.”
Boots ran past as Smitty hunted for the fugitives beyond a small engine used to shuttle larger ones needing repair into the roundhouse. Ike held his breath as Kinch’s feet again stopped only inches from his nose. He cringed and half rolled onto the dead body.
A lump warned him he pressed down on the holstered gun. He yanked free the gun belt, with its three-pound iron burden. As he did, he tore away more of the dead man’s coat. Shiny leather drew his hand like a magnet draws a compass needle. He snared the wallet and crammed it into his own pocket. Greenbacks fell onto the ties, along with a few silver coins. Ike added those to his stash. For a man who looked down on his luck, he carried more money than a tinhorn gambler.
“You find him, Smitty?”
“Only the yard crew’s in sight,” came the answer. “This ain’t gettin’ us anywhere, Kinchloe. We need to—”
“We need to find them. You want to cross the boss? Disobey his orders?”
“Aw, Kinch, that’s not what I meant. I . . .”
The men stalked away, arguing.
Ike inched across the corpse to the far side of the freight car. He looked out. All he saw were workers, faces blackened from soot and clothing filthy from their work on the engines. One carried a wrench and another an oilcan with a long, thin spout designed to squirt into hard-to-reach friction spots on the mighty engines. A half-dozen others serviced a nearby engine, doing repairs Ike only guessed at.
Sure he was as dirty as any of the yard workers and hoping he would blend in, Ike tumbled over the rail and got to his feet, using the freight car for support. Legs shaky from fear almost betrayed him. He edged along the boxcar, then more boldly cut across tracks to meld in with the workers.
“Take another step and you’re a dead man.”
Ike clung to the six-shooter he had taken. Even with it in his hand, lifting and firing before the cinder dick fired was impossible. The detective’s gun was trained squarely on him. It looked like a train tunnel, dark and deadly and not anything he could avoid.
“Smitty!” Ike shouted the man’s name in an attempt to gain an instant’s respite.
“How’d you know my name, you varmint?”
The last thing Ike remembered was the bull firing. The pain that followed instantly vanished by the time he collapsed to the ground.
CHAPTER TWO
He heard voices, distant voices, all yammering at the same time. He opened his eyes, but only darkness greeted him. He settled back, aware of pain in his skull. That preacher man, Reverend Lawrence, the one his ma always dragged him to church to hear on Sunday, never said Heaven was anything like this. If he had to endure such pain for an eternity, maybe catching a ride on the train counted as a bigger sin than he’d thought.
There wasn’t any way possible that he had crossed through the Pearly Gates, not feeling like this.
Cheating Penrose out of his money by not paying seemed picayune now, but welshing on a debt must pile up worse than cheating the train company out of a ticket. What other sins had he committed in his life? There were so many, but he’d thought they were all minor—or even needful.
Ike stirred a little, feeling cinders under his hands. He lay on a bed of the clinkers. They cut into his elbows, too. The sun was warm on his face, but opening his eyes again gave the same view. Nothing. Darkness.
“Blind,” he moaned out. “I’m going to spend the rest of eternity blind as a bat.”
He yelped when water crashed into his face. He sputtered and turned away before another tidal wave threatened to drown him. If he had entertained the slightest thought this was Heaven, the deluge dispelled it. Ike wanted to protest, to argue about the Covenant of the Rainbow and demand to know why it was being disregarded. The water had to be part of a second great flood.
For another frightening instant, he thought he was cursed to see only clinkers and dirt. His numbed brain finally alerted him to how water had washed away blinding blood from his eyes. On his side he got a worm’s-eye view of the world.
Ike cried out, almost in relief at realizing he was still alive, when grasping hands yanked him to his feet. For a moment his knees buckled. Someone cursing up a storm held him upright until he recovered some strength in his legs. A few quick swipes across his eyes showed his problem. A bullet had run the width of his forehead and caused a veritable spring runoff of blood past his eyebrows and into his eyes, effectively blinding him. Ike pressed his forearm against the wound until the skin puckered and the wound began to clot over.
It took a few more seconds to realize he stood in the middle of a circle. All the men around him had their six-shooters drawn and pointed with deadly intent. He raised his hands to surrender, then saw only a couple had their weapons trained on him. Mostly they threatened each other. It made no sense.
“There’s a dead man in the roundhouse,” came a gruff voice behind him. “Somebody upped and shot him.”
“His name’s Gregorio. This here outlaw gunned him down, pure and simple.”
“You saw the crime?”
Ike turned slowly. The man behind him wore a shining silver badge pinned on his vest. Two men, obviously his deputies, flanked him. Not a one of the lawmen had their six-guns trained on him.
“I did. With my own eyes.”
“That’s right, Marshal. Mr. Kinchloe, he was chasin’ this skunk down and seen the whole thing.”
“Shut up, Smitty. I can tell my own story.” Kinchloe growled like a bear poked during hibernation. It wasn’t a good sound and boded ill for anyone daring to torment him further.
Ike got a better look at the men and put faces to the boots he had seen stalking back and forth as they hunted for him. He wished he hadn’t. Kinchloe obviously led the gang of railroad bulls through sheer meanness. He had a small gold shield pinned to his lapel. Smitty and two others showed off their badges by thrusting out their chests, as if this impressed the marshal one little bit.
Ike turned back to the marshal. The lawman had control, no matter what Kinchloe said. The only way he was giving up his power was if a new gunfight started. He might go down as the railroad dicks opened up with the weapons they held at the ready, but he showed no fear of that. His deputies were hopping around like fleas on a griddle, but they stood their ground beside their boss.
Ike considered the lack of lead flying to be a chance to live a bit longer and wonder what Heaven was really like, only from here on Earth and not floating around on some cloud.
“I never cut down nobody,” Ike started.
“Shut up.” The marshal held up the six-shooter Ike had taken from the dead man under the freight car. Ike instinctively looked in that direction. A hand draped over the rail warned that the corpse hadn’t been found. If the marshal spotted it, Ike was likely to be charged with another murder. “Is this your piece?” The lawman shook it in the air, making Ike increasingly uneasy. The weapon had ridden in a woebegone holster that had fallen apart. Whatever condition the pistol was in, such waving about now might cause an accidental discharge.