“There’s always somebody willing to pay good money for a crate of rifles,” Schofield shouted. He caught himself as the cars rocked on an uneven section of track.
“That’s a Texas Ranger with me. You can’t run.”
“I won’t have to.”
The bullet Ike expected sailed through the air at him. He threw himself forward and triggered a round from his rifle. Schofield’s aim was as bad as Ike’s. The gunrunner was able to fire faster with a handgun, but the shorter barrel made his accuracy less. Ike levered in a new round and fired parallel with the railcar roof—almost parallel.
The bullet plowed a wooden furrow all the way into Schofield’s face. The railroad owner jerked back and vanished. For a dozen frenzied heartbeats, Ike waited for return fire. It didn’t come. He scooted forward on his belly. As he went, he levered in a new round. The closer he got to the space between the cars, the more he expected Schofield to pop up and blaze away.
Not sure what to do, Ike finally took the bit between his teeth. He poked his head over the edge, fearing an ounce of lead would blast into his face. It didn’t.
Schofield had fallen. His coat was caught on the coupling, and that was all that kept him from tumbling to his death. Arms flailing, sulfurous curses rising to match the steam engine’s toxic exhaust, Schofield tried to grab on to an iron rung for support.
Ike pointed his rifle down and called, “Give up! I got you dead to rights!”
Schofield cursed even more vehemently and thrust his right hand upward. He still held his six-shooter. Ike should have retreated, but the sight held him mesmerized. Schofield fired once. Not braced or able to take the recoil properly, he lost the pistol. It rattled down to the tracks. Ike thought it discharged as it hit a rail, but the noise of passage was too loud for him to be sure.
What he was certain of was this feeble effort on Schofield’s part doomed him. He stretched back from the recoil. His coat ripped and he fell to the tracks. Ike expected the same bloody sight as when Kinchloe had fallen under the rolling steel wheels. He wasn’t sure if he felt a tinge of disappointment when it never happened.
Schofield’s descent took him outward rather than straight down. Ike thought he hit the desert and was left behind in a flash. By the time he wiggled to the edge of the roof and searched the desert for some trace of the gunrunner, the train had rolled on. Schofield might be dead, or he might have survived. If he still lived, he had a ways to hike back to a town where he might find a horse. Finding him wasn’t going to be hard, not for a badge-carrying Texas Ranger like Zeke Thorne.
Ike pushed back from the edge and once more stood. Wobbling as he walked forward, he kept a sharp eye out for anyone wishing him ill. One of the Comancheros might have stuck around. Smitty’s fate was unknown. He thought the railroad bull had taken a tumble onto the desert sands, too, but he wasn’t positive. Schofield and his men had the habit of turning up over and over like a bad penny.
He launched himself forward and landed on the lead freight car. From here it was only a quick jump into the coal tender after dashing the length of the Pullman. He thrashed about and got himself filthy from the coal until he came to the front of the pile.
His eyes watered from coal dust. It took a few seconds for him to take in the tableau in front of him. The Ranger lay facedown on the floor of the engine cab. He wasn’t stirring. The young fireman held a sawed-off shotgun in shaking hands, aimed at Thorne. The engineer leaned out the cab window, watching the tracks ahead. From the way the pressure gauge trembled and hissed, the engineer was highballing along, running full pressure in the boiler. The small engine wasn’t built for such speed. It was intended for moving a few cars around a rail yard and not long hauls.
“Drop the shotgun,” Ike called. The roar of the furnace drowned out his order. He fired the rifle and immediately regretted it. The bullet ricocheted and finally whined off into the distance once it no longer found metal plates in the cab.
The stoker jumped a foot and swung his weapon around. Ike froze. He had no reason to kill the youngster, yet fear etched onto the sooty face foretold what was going to happen next. Kill or be killed. But Ike’s finger refused to draw back on the trigger. Paralyzed, he looked down the two twelve-gauge barrels at his death.
The shotgun roared. It discharged its leaden load harmlessly into the air as the Ranger half rose and dived forward, tackling the fireman around the knees and lifting.
The report from both barrels rang loud in Ike’s ears, but the boy’s scream as he sailed through the air to land in the desert sounded louder.
The sudden departure of the stoker broke Ike free from his shock. He trained the rifle on the engineer and shouted, “Slow down. Slow down!”
“Like hell! You thieves’ll never rob my train! Mr. Schofield ordered me to highball it!”
The engineer twisted the valve even wider. The shunting engine lurched with an added burst of speed, but all Ike saw was the steam pressure gauge needle bending as it slammed hard into a limit pin.
It wasn’t his imagination when he heard loud reports from in front of the cab. Rivets in the boiler were blowing out from the excessive pressure. The engine was seconds away from exploding.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ike drew a bead on the back of the engineer’s head. The man was going to kill them all if he didn’t shoot, but plugging anyone from behind tore at his very soul. He shifted aim a few inches and fired. The bullet missed the engineer and smashed the steam valve. For an instant nothing happened. Then the control throttle erupted and drove past Ike to bury itself in the stack of coal where he sat. An instant later came a gout of boiling steam the thickness of his arm.
Flinching away, he flopped down onto the cab floor. He looked up and saw the column of steam quickly die. In a few seconds, hot water dripped down to sizzle in a big puddle at the engineer’s feet. The loss of pressure caused the engine to slow and eventually come to a dead stop.
“You ain’t robbin’ my train. I won’t let you!” The engineer reared back, grabbed a wrench and started to swing.
Ranger Thorne braced himself, judged his distance accurately and loosed a haymaker that lifted the engineer off his feet. The man crashed against the cab wall and slid down into the puddle of heated water.
“Better move him or he’ll blister to death,” Ike said, grabbing the man under the arms and heaving him to one side.
“Why d’you care? He done tried to kill us.”
“He was doing his job. It wasn’t his fault he had no idea about what a skunk Schofield is.”
“Is?” The Ranger pushed his hat back, wiped his forehead, then cocked his head to one side. “Is? Not was?”
“I don’t know how he ended up after taking a tumble from between cars,” Ike admitted. He shuddered, remembering the gory mess Kinchloe had made outside of Marfa. “He was still alive and kicking the last I saw of him.”
“That’s good, if he’s not among the newly departed. I want him to stand trial and pay for all the misery he’s caused selling guns to the Comancheros. There wouldn’t have been an outlaw gang or renegade band between here and Indian Territory not sporting brand-spankin’-new rifles if he’d sold what’s in them freight cars.” Thorne shook his head and wiped more sweat from his forehead. He left sooty streaks but never took notice. “Truth is, he’s been doin’ this for quite a spell.”