Frank turns outlaw; the stickup of the Santa Fe; the threat of dynamite; crudity of bloodshed ; the lure of easy money.
Fate had more than half a hand in the chance that turned Frank into a train-robber.
Ruffled and angry that our plan had failed, he turned on me when Nicks left. "I don't believe him," he said. "We should have gone on. We did not work it right. I'd like to see their posse.
He did not have long to wait. We stopped off for a bite with Nigger Amos. Amos was a giant with a face as black as pitch and a soul as white as snow. He had married the prettiest little mulatto in the country. Their home was a jaunty yellow cottage that sat in the midst of the cornfields. Amos and Collie were smiles from the heart out.
Whatever he had was ours. Collie was proud of her dishes and her cooking. Amos sat on the porch while she fried chicken and waited on us. We had come in just as the two were about to eat, and there was Amos, big, hard-working farmer, slinking into the background until after the white folk had their dinner.
"Let's call him in," I said to Frank. He dropped his fork in surprise, looking at me as though I were demented.
"Why not? Here's me, a highwayman a train-robber; there's Amos, black skin, clean soul why not? It's his grub anyway
"Amos, come in and have dinner with us," I shouted to him. Poor Amos was more startled than Frank.
"What, sah? No, sah; no, sah; 'lowed I ain't forgot my manners."
Amos' manners probably saved our lives.
"Yo' boys done been up to mischief?" The whites of his eyes seemed ready to pop loose from the black when he looked into the room a second later. "What you done?" he panted. "Possemen a-comin'!"
Without waiting for an answer he ran to our horses and raced them into the cornfields.
"Yo' boys git down thar, too."
Not a moment too soon, for seven men galloped over the brow of the hill and drew rein at the porch. The innocence of Amos would have made an angel blush. He had seen no one. No, sah, no gemmen stopped at his door. Not one of them would dare to ride down to the cornfield in search of quarry. They cursed and browbeat him. Amos stood firm.
"What do you make of it?" Frank's impulsive, open face was blanched with anger. He was like a cornered beast, ready to strike at anything.
"What do you make of it?" he demanded again. "Well, I'll tell you. They've made the Santa Fe believe you robbed them. The Santa Fe is behind this."
It was probably a wild supposition. It seemed credible to us. Houston was attorney for the railroad. From the time we left the negro's cottage until we arrived at the Harliss ranch a few days later the posse was on our trail. It didn't worry me much. There was a tang of adventure in it that appealed. To Frank it was hell's torment. He didn't like being hunted. He seemed to feel there was all the shame of cowardice in the attempt to escape. It lashed him into a seething rage that made him want to turn and strike back at his pursuers.
They had been to the ranch house in our absence. They had left their mark in a few bullet holes in the walls.
"What are you going to do?" Frank asked. I was neither angry nor unhappy. Just then, outlawry as a business suited me.
"Finish up the deal Jake and I were planning when you came," I said.
"I'm with you."
And from that moment until the night of the hold-up he was like a man possessed. He had the resolution of an army behind him. Almost single-handed he pulled off the stickup of the Santa Fe. He had worked one vacation on the railroad. He knew all about engines, he said, because he had ridden the goat around the yards. He insisted on bringing up the train.
The Santa Fe stopped at Berwyn in the Chickasha. Frank and Bill were to get on the blind baggage as she drew out, climb over the coal tender and get the engineer and fireman. They were to bring the train about three-quarters of a mile into the timber where Jake, Little Dick and I were waiting. We would finish the transaction.
There was nothing spectacular about the job except the haul. It came off just as we planned it. A six-shooter is a commander that few men dare to question. When Frank jabbed it in the neck of the engineer he was master of the train. I stood on the track and waved my hand. Frank gave the order. The engineer stopped.
Little Dick and Jake ran up and down quieting the passengers with a big show of gun fire and much shattered glass. Few men are ever killed in a holdup. Veterans consider bloodshed bad form. Whenever I read of a conductor or messenger fatally shot I know that a new hand is in the game. It's easy to buffalo the crew. The passengers are a cinch to handle. They know the holdup has the drop on them.
Nobody wants to take the chance of starting things. If they ever did break loose at the same moment there'd be a stampede that would turn the odds the other way. I never saw one.
Frank took care of the engineer and the fireman. Bill and I went for the express.
"Open up!" I yelled.
No answer.
"Bill, take some dynamite, and put it on the trucks and blow the damn' tightwad out."
"No, no! Don't do it! For God's sake, gentlemen. I'll open." The messenger pushed the door to, bowing and shaking, and invited us in as though it were his private den and we were about to have a finger and a smoke. The courtesy of express messengers at such times is a bit pathetic. This one had either thrown the key of the safe away or he had never had it.
The boodle was in a regular Wells Fargo steel chest. The lid closed over the top. I took a stick of dynamite, put it in the crack just under the lock.
The explosion sprung the sides and smashed the lock. There was $25,000 inside and not a note injured. We each drew $5,000 from that evening's pleasure.
I told the story to a quiet, homebody sort of woman once. Her eyes lit up with amazement and the keenest delight. That look gave me a large gob of joy. She wasn't so different from me, although she had never taken a cent in her life.
"You looked as if you wouldn't mind running your hand into a chest like that," I said.
"It's all in the point of view, at that," she answered.
Another time, a skilled musician, a respected citizen, the father of three chilldren, took me aside. "On the level, did you get a rakeoff like that?" he wanted to know. "Well, what would it be worth to teach me the game?" I thought he was jesting until he had come three different times with the same proposition.
I didn't teach him. It is a game that always ends in a loss. The money goes. Happiness goes. Life goes.
Frank was the first to learn it. He turned the trick that sent us sneaking into Honduras in full dress suits and battered up hats.
He fell in love.
CHAPTER X.
In the Panhandle; a starving hostess; theft and chivalry; $35,000 clear; dawning of romance; two plucky girls; the escape in the tramp.
We had been in the game nearly two years. Two hundred and some odd thousands had passed through our hands. It had passed quickly.
Our partnership was capitalized at $10,000 one particular evening when we struck across the panhandle of Texas after a hurried departure from New Mexico.
We had gone there on the trail of Houston and Love. We had never given up the hope of evening up our score with them. But by that time our business connections had become generally known. It became increasingly difficult to gain an entree into any law-abiding city. Marshals in New Mexico fogged us a cargo of lead in the streets as a sort of salvo of welcome. We let it go as a farewell tribute and made a quick getaway.
The panhandle of Texas was forgotten of God Himself in those days. It was the bleakest, poorest, loneliest tongue of mesquite grass in all the South-west. Deserted dugouts with their dingy chimneys sticking above the ground marked the spots where men had settled, struggled and failed.