“You—go—to—hell,” Bates said. Blood bubbled at his lips when he spoke.
Matt heard a horse galloping away, and hurrying back to the broken and now bloodied window, he saw Odom, still naked, riding hard out of town, lashing the animal on both sides of his neck with the ends of the reins, urging him to greater speed.
Matt stood up angrily. He had lost valuable time trying to get the outlaw to talk. He turned and ran from the room, down the stairs, and out the front, then urged Spirit into a gallop in the direction Odom had gone.
Matt found the horse Odom had been riding about five miles out of town, contentedly cropping grass. He also found the body of a man who had been stripped naked. Odom now had clothes and a different horse.
Chapter Sixteen
As soon as the track was repaired and service restored, Marshal Kyle took the nine p.m. train, which was the first eastbound train from Sentinel. Deputy Hayes was in a pine box in the baggage car ahead. Kyle was taking him back to Purgatory, though he had no idea where to deliver the body, other than to the office of the city marshal.
The train was crowded because several eastbound passengers had waited for rail service to be restored, preferring to wait in the comfort of a Sentinel hotel to the long and uncomfortable ride in a stagecoach. Kyle managed to find a window seat halfway back in the second car, and once the train was under way, he watched the little yellow squares of light slide by on the ground outside the night train as he listened to the rhythmic click of the wheels passing over the rail joints.
In addition to Hayes’s body, Kyle was carrying several wanted posters for Matt Jensen. This time, the wanted posters had a woodcut likeness of Jensen that was so accurate that several of the people who had been passengers on that ill-fated train remembered seeing him.
“I sure can’t see this fella as a murderer, though,” one of the injured passengers told Kyle. “He pulled me and two others from the wreckage. I don’t reckon I’d be alive today, if it weren’t for him.”
That passenger’s story was not unique, as it was repeated by at least a dozen others, if not from personal experience, then from observation.
“What kind of man are you, Matt Jensen?” Kyle asked quietly as he studied the picture. “On the one hand, you shoot a man down in cold blood. On the other, you go out of your way to save the lives of perfect strangers when you could have used the confusion of the train wreck as an opportunity to get away.”
It was Kyle’s intention to leave the packet of wanted posters with Marshal Cummins so they could be distributed, not only around Purgatory, but all over Maricopa County.
The run from Sentinel to Purgatory, which took almost six hours by stagecoach, took just over an hour by train. Even though he was on the train for such a short time, the gentle rocking of the car, the click of wheels over rail joints, and the rush of wind had combined to put Kyle asleep. He was awakened by the conductor’s call.
“Purgatory, Purgatory!” he called. “Folks, if you are going on through, don’t get off the train because we will only be here long enough to let off some passengers and pick up a few more. We will not be here more than a couple of minutes. This here is Purgatory,” he repeated. The conductor stopped beside Kyle.
“Marshal, I believe you said you were going to Purgatory?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kyle replied. “Thanks for waking me up.”
“Well, you only paid as far as Purgatory,” the conductor said. “I couldn’t let you go any farther now, could I?” He laughed at his own joke.
“I reckon not,” Kyle replied. “Conductor, you understand I have something that has to be unloaded from the baggage car, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, Marshal, don’t you worry none,” the conductor said. “We won’t leave till that’s all taken care of.”
“Thanks.”
Kyle felt the train beginning to lose speed, a gradual slowing at first, then slower, and slower still, until by the time they reached Purgatory, the train was traveling at a virtual crawl. Looking through the window, he saw the dark, or at best dimly lit, houses sliding by outside until, finally, the train came to the much more brightly lit depot. There, the train stopped with the screech of steel on steel, and a final jerk, which left them motionless. The few who were getting off here got up from their seats, reached into the overhead bins for their packages, then began shuffling toward the end of the car in order to detrain. The passengers who were going on remained in their seats, some dozing, some reading, others looking through the window.
Stepping down from the train, Kyle stood on a wooden platform that was adequately, if not brightly, lit by several kerosene lanterns. While the train snapped and popped and hissed alongside him, he watched as Hayes’s coffin was taken down.
“What have we got here?” the station agent asked, coming over to look at the coffin.
“Who are you?” Kyle asked.
“I’m Colin Randall. I’m the Southern Pacific agent in charge of this depot. Who are you?”
“I’m U.S. Marshal Ben Kyle. This is Deputy Hayes,” he said, pointing to the box. “He is one of yours, I believe.”
“Hardly one of mine, Marshal,” Randall said disdainfully. He sighed. “However, he does belong to Marshal Cummins.”
“Do you know where I can hire a wagon at this hour?”
Randall held up his finger as if asking Kyle to give him a moment. “Bustamante!” he called.
“Sí, señor?” A short, stubby, gray-haired Mexican shuffled out from the freight section of the depot.
“Hitch up the wagon and take the marshal where he wants to go.”
“Sí, señor.”
Kyle waited for a few minutes; then he heard the creaking sound of a wheel in need of lubrication. A moment later, he saw the wagon appear from the side of the depot. Bustamante drove up to Marshal Kyle, then stopped.
“Grab that end, will you?” Kyle ordered, standing at one end of the coffin.
“Sí, señor.”
Because there were only two of them, it was a heavy lift to put the box containing Hayes’s body on the back of the wagon, but they were able to do so. Then Kyle climbed up onto the seat.
“Where to, Señor?” Bustamante asked.
“The city marshal’s office,” Kyle answered.
“Sí.”
They were the only traffic on the street as they drove from the railroad depot to the city marshal’s office. Behind them the train, after a few blasts on the whistle, got under way with the puffing of steam and the sound of the coupling slack being taken up as, one by one, the cars were jerked into motion. There were a few moments of train noise. Then, as the train noise faded, the only sounds remaining were that of the wagon, the hollow sound of the horse’s hoofbeats, and the incessant squeaking of the wheel that Kyle had determined was the left front one.
“You need to do something about that wheel,” Kyle said.
“Sí, señor,” Bustamante replied, staring straight ahead and with no change of facial expression. It seemed fairly obvious to Kyle that this subject had been broached with Bustamante before, and probably responded to in the same way.
The wagon pulled up to the front of the city marshal’s office, then stopped.
“Wait here,” Kyle told Busatamante.
“For how long, Señor?”
“For as long as it takes,” Kyle said resolutely.
“Sí, señor.”
Going inside, he saw someone sitting in a chair behind a desk. The chair was tilted back, so that the man’s head was resting against the wall. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and Kyle could hear the deep, rhythmic breathing of sleep.
“Excuse me,” Kyle said.
The response was a quiet snore.