LASSITER WAS STILL a mile off when he heard the explosion wreck the caboose. He knew where he was even if he could see little. He knew the distance. He had timed it, ridden every foot of the path across the mountains. In daylight. Until he knew it by heart. It was harder to follow at night, in the storm. He was making better time than he’d expected. He was taking long chances to make time. The Cassidy man who had held the horses for him on the Hemite cutoff had given up. Refused to take the same chances. Even the reminder of the gold on the freight hadn’t tempted him enough to make this ride.
Lassiter was spurred by concern for the gold. He needed to be there. He didn’t want Cassidy locating it, loading it, disappearing into the fog with it.
They had not found it when he rode up beside the stalled engine. The search was getting frantic. The fog, still red, the torches with smoke streamers, the yelling confusion made an eerie picture. It reassured him. Backed up against the engine the train crew and Blood’s frustrated agents were held in a half circle of torchlight. Lassiter passed them, rode down the train, dodging cattle being rushed off the cars on improvised runways. He saw Cassidy, rode to him, swung to the ground.
The outlaw was quartered away from him. He came around, tight faced. His slicker was open, a gun in his hand. The hazel eyes were flaming. There was too much tension in the man, too much excitement. Lassiter grinned by way of easing it.
“Find it yet?”
The head snapped sideways. “Not in the front cars. We’re working down.” The mouth thinned suddenly. “You real sure it is on this train?”
Lassiter met the eyes, hid his sudden sinking in the stomach. With Blood you could never be certain. Suppose he had guessed wrong? Suppose Blood’s army of agents on the Express was actually to guard the gold, not simply to blast Cassidy’s mob into eternity? Suppose the cattle freight was the decoy? Had he out-sharped himself. He sounded very certain.
“It’s here. Find it fast. Blood’s got a crowd back on the canyon rim and an army in the Express and the Special. As soon as he finds horses this country will be crawling with guns.”
Cassidy still held his gun. Lassiter waited, hoped he wouldn’t try to use it. It would ruin the play if he had to kill Cassidy. His own derringer was cupped in his palm, under the edge of his slicker.
Cassidy seemed to read his mind, looked down at the gun as if surprised, dropped it into its holster. He dropped one eyelid.
“So let’s go find it.”
They found it in the last car, the one coupled to a caboose. Both cabooses were burning now, the cattle car just catching. The animals were bawling, terrified, scorching. When the door was slid back they jammed the opening. It made a delay. They were prodded back, let out in single file, jumping, hooking the long horns. Some fell from the ramp, lurched up, bolted after the others tails high, lumbered into the night.
There were canvas buckets in the cars, used to water the animals. Cassidy threw a detail to the river, a bucket line to bring water, douse the smoldering car enough that they could work inside it.
Blood had done a careful job, built a false floor on top of the gold, buried it in straw and cattle dung. The animals could not have dirtied it this much themselves.
They pried up the boards. The fourth one to come loose brought a shout. Men ran forward, stared, tore at the other planks. Row on row of ingots rested there. Each bore the Homestead mark. Each thirty-five pounds, around four thousand eight hundred dollars in every bar.
The men wanted just to look. To dream. None had ever dared dream like this. They had not actually believed through the planning of the robbery that the haul could be this much. The very number of the bars stunned. Two whole bars to each man.
Lassiter nudged Cassidy. “They can drool later. Time’s getting short.”
Cassidy came out of his own stupor, whipped his order across them. “Move. Damn it, move. Get the pack horses up here. Wells Fargo’s snorting down our necks.”
The remuda of pack horses, enough to carry the gold and some spares, were fitted with special saddles. Leather pockets sewed on a leather pad that hung across the horse. Three pockets on each side. Six gold bars to each horse.
Two hundred pounds dead weight. Plenty to carry if an animal was to travel any distance. His gang might not have believed in the gold, but Butch Cassidy was ready. Cassidy always prepared before he went into any project.
The animals were led to the door in a line. Lassiter brought up one, in his turn. A machine rhythm was working now. One man lifted a bar, passed it to another who passed it on. When it was handed out through the door Lassiter took it, dropped it into a pocket, reached for another. With the horse loaded he pulled out, made room for the next in line.
The loaded animals were herded away, gathered by twos, so that their milling would not create a quagmire. Lassiter led his aside, quiet, without fuss. Within a hundred yards the fog swallowed him.
He was alone. The gray curtain around him stifled breathing, deadened the swish of the hooves on the soft grass, distorted the noise around the train. He quickened the pace. Rode a quarter of a mile, crossed a low ridge, dropped into a gully, reached the natural cave. Here water had undercut a cottonwood, left the crown of roots dangling over an empty, hole. He took two bars from the pockets, wedged them into the mud at the back of the hole, watched the gravy thin soil ooze over them. There were loose stones caught among the roots. He worked them free, filled the empty pockets. The weight was not the same, but the leather bulged out, did not lie flat.
He turned back, watchful, satisfied that the lashing rain had already filled his incoming tracks. In minutes they would be gone. He drifted out of the fog, into a group. If the men there even noticed his coming they would assume he came from the train. But they were too elated, and too miserable under the beat of the storm.
The horse he rode put its butt to the wind. The pack animals did the same, waited hipshot, heads hanging. The horses had no sense of urgency. Lassiter did. Patience was one of his strengths. But patience did not mean foolhardy dalliance.
His life, he knew, was uncertain from this point on. Butch Cassidy had no further need of him. Cassidy had the gold in his hands. And he could find the Outlaw Trail from here blindfolded. Sometime soon now Cassidy would try to kill him.
The safe thing to do was to fade out now. Leave the pack horse. Ease into the fog, ride for the Hole. It would be awhile before Cassidy would miss him. Probably not before the crew was assembled, was lining out on the long trail. Cassidy would not want him loose, riding the country knowing as much as he did. But at this particular moment time was too pressing. The outlaw could not afford to waste it in any search. And even Cassidy would not be able to force any of these men to trust the others with the gold while they chased through the hills looking for him on a night like this. That was what he should do.
He did not. He had to be certain where Cassidy would head. That he would follow the plan they had made, start at once for Mexico. Devious as the man was, it was possible that he might try to return to the Hole-in-the-Wall after all.
Lassiter’s whole project depended on knowing the answer.
He handed the lead rope of the pack horse to the man nearest him, kneed the black, rode down to Cassidy.
“How much longer are you going to be?”
Cassidy grinned. “You getting nervous? Don’t. We’re ready now. Already started moving.”
Lassiter looked toward the head of the train. The beam of the headlamp was steady, stabbing across the barricade to the wrecked bridge. It cast a feeble light on the ford that ran down the steep river bank. They were supposed to use that ford, take to the water, skirt along the shore where the current would wash out any sign of where they had gone. The trainmen, the agents were to be tied, blindfolded, left in a cattle car where they could not see what direction the Wild Bunch took.
He saw the men in the car, a dark mound. He did not see anyone at the ford or near it. Behind him he heard Cassidy’s quick laugh.
“A little change in plan. My idea.”
“Back to the Hole?”
“Never mind. You just trail along if you want your quarter split. If not, you can cut out now.”
“Why? Why the change?”
“To teach you a little lesson, friend. You’ve been swinging a pretty wide loop. I want it understood and plain to see who’s boss here. Now, are you with me or against me?”
Lassiter timed a hesitation. “I didn’t come this far to ride out with an empty poke. You call the shots.”
The horses were stringing out. Fifty mounts and the pack animals. It made a long line. A serpent wriggling back into the unseen hills. The hooves dug a trough that a blind man could follow. There was no attempt to hide it.
There was no choice but to go along. Cassidy fell in at the end of the string. Lassiter stayed close, as close as possible to the man. If it was intended for someone to shoot him out of the saddle somewhere ahead he would make the target as hard as possible. Throughout the remaining hours of darkness a bullet could knock down Cassidy as easily as himself.
It was after daybreak that he should expect the attack. Still, he rode with the derringer in his hand, under the edge of his slicker.