Ike’s mouth turned to cotton. The only answer he managed was a small nod.
“Mr. Kinchloe, is this the gun you saw him kill Gregorio with?”
“I told you it was, Marshal. You turn him over to me. In my capacity as chief detective for the South Texas Central Rail Company, I’ll take him into custody and—”
“This here gun’s not been fired in a month of Sundays.”
The marshal’s declaration stopped Kinchloe in mid-tirade.
“I saw it with my own eyes.” The railroad bull’s voice crackled and sparked with menace now. “He’s ours, Marshal Granger.”
“Not been fired, so he’s not the one who killed Gregorio. A pity about him.” Granger looked past the circle of detectives to the roundhouse. “Gregorio was a fine, upstanding man. Could never see what kept him in Schofield’s employ.” Granger cleared his throat, spat and said in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “That’s Mr. Schofield, I mean.”
“Mr. Schofield,” Kinchloe echoed, as if speaking the name of royalty.
“You go tell your boss that I’m holding on to this varmint until I can clear up details about how Gregorio died.” Granger stepped back a pace. His deputies moved forward. One held a scattergun; the other lifted his six-shooter and aimed it somewhere between Kinchloe and Smitty. Granger jerked his head to one side, silently ordering Ike to move.
The tension in the air reminded him of the way the world felt before a fierce summer lightning storm. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and his flesh tingled as if fuzzy-legged spiders crawled up and down his spine. If he didn’t obey the marshal immediately, the STC railroad cops would make the decision to keep him from the clutches of the law.
Running behind a moving train, a wire noose around his neck, didn’t appeal to him. Whatever the marshal had in store was better than losing his head and flopping around on the prairie like . . . like a chicken with its head cut off.
“Right away, sir,” he said, stepping past Marshal Granger.
The instant he came shoulder to shoulder with the deputies, all hell broke loose. Ike instinctively dived forward. His imagination soared even higher than his fear at that instant. He had never been in the army, but this had to be what full-scale battle was like. Lead zinged overhead and kept him pressed to the ground. He turned his head sideways, his cheek picking up cinders and soot.
He stared directly at the dead man under the freight car. Neither the railroad bulls nor the legitimate lawmen had found that body yet. They had argued over the dead man in the roundhouse. The best Ike could figure, Kinchloe or one of his henchmen had taken that man’s life. Smitty had claimed the murder, but it didn’t take a genius to see that the man was a liar out to curry favor with their boss.
Schofield? That was the name the marshal mentioned.
Ike knew he would follow Gregorio into a grave if he didn’t clear out fast.
As distasteful as it was, he rolled toward the tracks, got under the boxcar and crushed down on the corpse. He kept rolling until he came out on the far side of the freight car. Gunfire died down back where he had started, replaced now by angry shouts and louder curses. Whatever had happened, someone triggered a shot that set off a tiny skirmish. It died down all too fast for Ike’s liking.
He put his head down and ran for his life. Trains rolled along the sidings, and he jumped over switches in his vain attempt to get out of the rail yard. If anything, he got so turned around he might as well have been running inside the roundhouse.
A yell behind him warned he was about to be captured again. He had no idea what mayhem he caused, but he grabbed a switch, kicked off the safety clamp and heaved. The switch ground metallically, moving tracks to shunt an incoming engine with a long line of cars behind it onto a new siding. He jumped over the tracks just as the engine chugged past, cutting off any attempt of the men after him to get a decent shot.
Ike veered again when good sense warned him about jumping onto the train and trying to ride away on it. The locomotive vented a long, loud whistle and spilled the steam in its boiler. Clouds of white vapor soared upward. If he had tried to hide on that train, he’d have been found in a few minutes as it stood motionless on the tracks.
He kept his head down and sprinted for an open warehouse door. He whirled around and slammed the door shut behind him, then pressed his back against a cool wall as he gasped to regain his breath. Sweat poured down his body. Worse, the graze on his forehead took to oozing blood again. Tiny rivulets trickled down into his eyes and burned like fire. He pressed his bloodied hand against the wound to stanch the flow.
Outside the massive building—a major warehouse from the look of row after row of crates stacked to the rafters—more gunshots sounded. As before, new orders shouted by both Kinchloe and Granger collided and conflicted until the shooting stopped.
They’d settle their differences too soon for him to escape back the way he came. Ike stumbled forward into the depths of the warehouse, weaving between the mountains of freight stored here.
Loud voices came from ahead. He spun and started to retrace his steps. The echo of men’s boots against the floor in that direction warned him he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He might bluff his way past the men ahead. There wasn’t any way they knew a thing about the dustup he had caused outside. But if they slowed him down, just a bit, the men coming on his trail would have an easy time capturing him.
Worst of all, whoever followed him didn’t matter. It might be the law or the cinder dicks. Either way he was going to end up in a world of trouble.
He looked around frantically, wishing he had the six-shooter the marshal had taken from him. Shooting his way out of the pickle he found himself in wasn’t too bright if he faced a dozen men, but a few shots in their direction might scatter them.
His hands were empty, and the stolen gun had been taken from him. Ike felt as if his head was going to split apart. If only some clever plan to escape rather than blinding pain rattled around inside his skull.
“I should never have stolen his papers and money and gun,” he bemoaned. “This trouble is my due for all the crimes I’ve committed.” But it wasn’t all his fault. His brief traveling companion had been the reason men had died. Gregorio had been the one he sought out, and Kinchloe or one of his henchmen had gunned him down rather than let the two palaver.
There wasn’t anything he could change about the men’s unfortunate deaths. A quick look around finally gave him a glimmer of hope. He flexed his fingers, then jumped high.
His fingers curled around the splintery edge of the crate. With a mighty pull, he hoisted himself up in time to flop forward as a trio of warehouse workers stalked along the route where he had just walked. Peering over the edge gave Ike a clear view as the freight handlers stopped and spoke with the ones that had blocked his way forward.
“Got ’em chained down so’s they won’t run off. Ain’t that what the foreman ast for?”
Ike heard laughter and a few crude remarks that made no sense.
“Let’s go tell him all about it. Do you think he might share a nip from that bottle he keeps in his desk drawer?”
“We’re not talkin’ ’bout the same lout. Herk’d never share a drop with the likes of us, no matter how good a job we did.”
“I saw Herkimer spill a drop on his desk. I swear he fell face forward and lapped up the whiskey like a cat lickin’ up cream.”
“That’s nuthin’,” piped up another worker. “I saw him try to stuff his tongue all the way into an empty bottle when he thought there was a drop of rye he’d missed.”