Longarm dropped over the bulkhead and into the locomotive, stepped over the stout boots of the overall-clad fireman, blood gushing out the side of the man’s head. He stepped over to the engineer, who had a similar hole as the fireman, in the same side of his head.
He saw now what had happened. The gang had shot the engineer and the brakemen before Hayes’s men had leaped onto the train…probably from a perch similar to Longarm’s.
They’d figured they could stop the train whenever they wanted by pulling the brake through chain from anywhere behind, in any of the cars. Only, they hadn’t counted on the engineer falling over the dead-release lever that disengaged the through chain, rendering it impossible to brake the train from anywhere but in the locomotive itself.
Longarm pulled the engineer off the lever and let him drop to the floor. He turned the lever back to the right, saw the long, wood-handled brake, which looked much like the brake on a wagon, and hauled back on it. After a few seconds, he felt the locomotive tremble as the wood-and-metal brake jaws clamped over the iron wheels of all the cars.
Only, the forward momentum was too great for the brakes. They wouldn’t hold. The lever leaped back upright, releasing the brake jaws and nearly tearing Longarm’s shoulders from their sockets.
“Shit!” the lawman shouted into the wind, grabbing the handle with both hands and hauling back and down on it once more.
Again, he felt the engine tremble beneath his boots. It sort of hiccupped, but the handle jerked upward despite Longarm virtually hanging on it the way the engineer had been hanging over the dead-release.
“Need some help?” The feminine voice had sounded from behind.
Longarm glanced over his shoulder to see the girl he’d left on the vestibule crawling over the wood stacked in the tender car. She’d thrown a thin, very low-cut, sleeveless pink dress on. The wind billowed it out in front, revealing her tender, sloping breasts, which jostled as she crawled, barefoot, across the wood.
Longarm continued to wrestle with the brake lever, encouraged by the hiccups he felt through the iron grate of the locomotive floor whenever he got the brake engaged, though he was having a devil of a time keeping it engaged. The girl climbed over the bulkhead, winced at the dead men lying around Longarm, and came over to where Longarm was clutching the lever with both hands and leaning far back toward the floor, grunting and sighing and cursing through gritted teeth.
Straight ahead, he saw the bridge and the canyon. It was sliding up on him fast as the train continued to barrel down the side of the pass, which was leveling out a little now though the train was still hammering along at forty or fifty miles an hour.
That was just too fast. He had to get the speed down to half that or they were all doomed.
The brakes screamed like a hundred terrified girls, but the jerking Longarm could feel meant they weren’t continuously engaged.
“Let me help!” the girl shouted above the wind.
She climbed on top of Longarm, her back to him, the brake handle between them. She propped her bare feet up on the front bulkhead, and pressed her body back and down against the brake handle and Longarm.
He could feel her round rump against his crotch. Her hair blew around his face in the wind. It smelled faintly like sage and chokecherries. Her dress blew up in the wind, exposing the long, creamy length of her legs clear to her hips.
The brakes screamed more shrilly than before. The engine shuddered violently as the jaws clamped down hard over all the iron wheels.
Longarm looked through the golden cloud of the girl’s blowing hair. The locomotive was nearly level with the bridge now, and it was still swooping toward them but not quite as quickly as before. To both sides, the trees were thinning out, exposing the clay-colored boulders of the ridge still angling down toward the gorge.
To the left of the rails, two gray coyotes watched the train from a stony ledge, ears raised curiously, one curveting as though it wanted to run but was too fascinated by the big iron, screeching contraption to hightail it just yet. Both brush wolves were wondering if the train would make it or pile up at the bottom of the gorge.
The locomotive jerked and shuddered. The brakes squealed so shrilly that Longarm thought his eardrums would pop. The girl screamed as she threw her head back against Longarm’s chest, grinding the heels of her feet into the bulkhead and pressing her supple body down harder against Longarm and the brake handle.
Longarm closed his eyes. He was about tapped out, the power in his body draining. His tense muscles were turning to putty.
Gradually, the shuddering continued until Longarm looked to both sides and saw nothing but clear, blue Colorado sky stretching from horizon to horizon. They were over the bridge. And they were probably not moving over fifteen miles an hour. Maybe less than that. The train was still hiccupping and the brakes were still screeching, but, by damn, they’d done it!
They’d gotten the train slowed. The bridge should hold.
“We’re over the middle of the canyon!” the girl cried.
Longarm kept his hands wrapped around the brake lever. He felt as though his knuckles were about to pop, his arms about to tear loose from their sockets. The girl’s hair in his face was a tonic, however. So, too, was her rump grinding against his balls.
When he felt the engine grind to a final halt, he looked to both sides. Red, rocky slopes rose around him, stippled with piñon pines and firs. He could smell the pine resin. It was like perfume. The locomotive panted like a dying dinosaur; the fire in its box hadn’t been stoked since the outlaws had killed the fireman. Now that its momentum had been broken, and it was stopped, it wouldn’t be going anywhere until it was fired up again.
“We made it,” the girl said in a sexy, husky voice, rolling off of Longarm, setting her feet on the floor and looking around with girlish delight. “We made it, mister. You did it. You saved us all!”
As though on cue, a great, victorious whoop rose from the passengers behind the tender car.
Longarm gained his feet, straightened. The brake remained now in the locked position. He squeezed his hands together, wincing as the blood oozed back into them, as the damaged tendons and muscles barked their complaints.
He looked at the girl beaming up at him. “Couldn’t have done it without you, miss,” he said, panting.
“Call me Matilda.”
He gave a weary half smile. “Call me Longarm.”
She leaped up and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts against his chest, her lips against his mouth.
“Longarm,” she said, “when we get to Creede, you’re gonna get the biggest thank you that any girl has ever given a man!”
Chapter 4
Two days later, riding north along a well-traveled stage road, Longarm reached into the pocket of his recently laundered tobacco-tweed frock coat, and pulled out the pink flimsy he’d received at the telegraph office in Creede. The missive had been sent in response to his request to have a few days off before heading back to the lawdog’s grind in Denver.
REQUEST DENIED STOP AZ RANGERS AND U.S. MARSHALS AMBUSHED IN ARIZONA STOP GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE PRONTO END STOP
It was signed by Longarm’s persnickety boss, Chief Marshal Billy Vail of Denver’s First District Court.
Longarm frowned at the flimsy and then stuffed it back into his coat pocket. “Back to the grind,” he muttered, and while he could have used a few more days to frolic with Miss Matilda Nightingale in Creede—he didn’t know whether that was her real name but preferred to believe it was—the news of the deaths of his fellow lawmen graveled him.