Gun Country

An hour had passed since the train had taken on its water and gotten back under way. Captain Ploster had leaned back in his seat and allowed himself to doze, leaving the sergeant to warn him should the major or the colonel walk back to the troop car, which was something he doubted now that the train was rolling along at a good fast click.

He couldn’t picture either of the higher-ranking officers wanting to walk along the open edge of the flatcars in order to reach one of the two troop cars, especially now that they would be heading over the long trestle at Hueco Pass. Hallelujah for that. . . .

Yet, no sooner had he fallen into a light but fitful sleep than he heard the lowered voice of Sergeant Webster say close to his ear, “Captain Ploster, wake up, sir. The train is slowing down over the pass. There’s something wrong up there.”

As the captain awakened and stood up, a young soldier called out from an open window where he had leaned far out and looked ahead at the flatcars of arms and munitions pulling away from them across the deep gaping chasm below them. “Sergeant Webster, we’ve been cut loose from the train!” he shouted, drawing others to the open windows to see for themselves.

“Out of my way, lads, step lively!” shouted the sergeant, shoving and elbowing his way through the excited soldiers until he could lean out the window and look ahead across Hueco Pass. Gripping the open window frame with rage, Webster said, “The lousy sonsabitches are waving at me!”

On the last of the flatcars, Irish Tommie stood dancing a lively jig. He and the others waved their cavalry hats at the slowing troop cars left drawing to a slow halt almost halfway across Hueco Pass. Almost as one the men sailed their cavalry hats out across the canyon.

In the engine, the engineer heard the revelry of the outlaws on the flatcars. “Not a danged shot fired!” he exclaimed. He breathed a sigh of relief, then grinned and added, “That was as slick as socks on a rooster, if I do say so myself.”

Corio and Jordan lowered their Colts and let the hammers down, but kept the guns in hand. From atop the train a fireman named Lowell Kirby had walked down across the carload of firewood into the engine when he noted the cars behind them beginning to lose speed and separate from the train. Now he stood with his hands chest high and a worried look on his face. “Can I put my hands down now?” he asked. “I’ll need to stoke us up here in a few minutes.” He nodded toward the iron door on the boiler.

“Yeah, drop them,” said Corio. “Do what you need to do to speed us up and keep us moving, and we’ll let you out of this alive.”

“Thanks, Mister,” said the fireman, lowering his arms and taking a deep breath. “Just tell me where we’re headed, so I’ll know how far to stretch my wood supply.”

The fireman shook his head in consternation. “That’s a dangerous place out there around Yellow Moon,” he said in a fearful voice. “There’s outlaws from both sides of the border, would cut a man’s throat for his—” He stopped short, considering his present company.

“You’re not going to be a talker, are you?” Jordan asked in a harsh tone, his lowered Colt easing back up to level. “Because we both hate talkers.”

“Shut up, Lowell,” the engineer said over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the rails ahead. “Can’t you hear him? They hate talkers.”

Back on the abandoned troop cars that had now come to a complete stop almost halfway across the deep canyon, the second fireman, a younger man named Huey Sadler, walked carefully along the narrow walkway beside the train. He stopped as the captain and the sergeant stepped out and looked down at the dizzying space stretching downward beneath them. “They’ve taken one stock car of horses with them. There’s not enough room to lower a ramp and get our horses off the other, Sergeant!” said Ploster, assessing the situation.

“Right, sir, I’d say that’s the gist of it,” said Sergeant Webster. Looking at the second fireman, he asked, “Any notion what a man’s to do in this kind of situation?”

“I’ve never even seen a situation like this,” said Sadler. He stood scratching his head up under his cap brim. In the open windows the soldiers stood looking all around, and down at the yawning canyon below. “I say we’ve got to walk off of here,” Sadler concluded. He looked at Ploster and said, “Leastwise that’s what I’m going to do. I advise all of yas to do the same.”

Looking embarrassed, feeling humiliated and helpless, Captain Ploster asked humbly, “When will another train be through here?”

“Tomorrow at noon, or thereabouts,” said Sadler. “I’m going to walk back and warn them as far back as I can.”

Across Hueco Pass, Irish Tommie continued his jig on the rear of the flatcar. As he dipped and twirled he raised a flask to his lips and drank deeply, in spite of the fact that Madden Corio had given strict orders against it. “Look at me, I’m fat as a Christmas goose but lighter than a pillow feather!”

But Irish Tommie would have none of it. Instead of heeding Lemate’s advice, he reeled with laughter and jumped higher and higher as he shrieked toward the wide blue evening sky. With his eyes closed he finally jumped so high that when he came down, the flatcar had sped out from under him.

“Good Lord!” Boxer Shagin, one of Corio’s men who’d brought the uniforms, called out to his brother, Lindsey Shagin. “The idiot’s jumped off the train!”

Irish Tommie’s shriek had intensified, then stopped short as he hit the cross ties feet first, bounced high, flipped in a full circle and bounced twice more until he landed headfirst and came to a limp and broken halt between the two gleaming rails. “He’s bashed his bloody brains out!” shouted Richard Little, one of the men standing and gawking in awe as the train sped onward.

Brule Kaggan, another of the six who’d brought the uniforms, stood beside Little and Matt Ford. “Somebody tell Corio. We’ve got to go back for him.”

“In a pig’s eye,” said Ford. “Corio wouldn’t stop this train for his own mother.” He added with a wicked grin, “Hell, neither would I. Ma and I never got along that well.”

The train rolled on into the long shadows of evening, the surrounding terrain growing more rugged and mountainous until darkness sank down and enveloped the land. “Won’t be long, we’ll be coming to the starting edge of Yellow Moon Canyon, Mister,” the engineer called out in the dim glow of lantern light, above the deep, steady hypnotic throb of the steam engine.

Madden Corio pretended not to have been dozing and just awakened. Instead he forced his voice to sound strong and alert. “Good work, men,” he said to the two railroaders. “Don’t be surprised if there’s a bag of gold coins waiting for both of you once we get to where we’re going. How would that suit you?”

The engineer and fireman looked at each other in the dim flickering light. “That would suit me fine,” said the engineer. “But I’m afraid it wouldn’t set well with my employer.”

“I say man’s honor is all he’s got,” said the engineer. “I stand good to my word whatever it takes.”

“My hat goes off to you,” said Corio. “I feel much the same way myself. When I give my word I refuse to crawfish on it.” He and Jordan gave each other a knowing look, then chuckled between themselves.

Lawrence Shaw, Sonny Lloyd Sheer, Dan Sax and Able Hatcher sat atop their horses at the top of a steep trail leading down into Yellow Moon Canyon. They watched the round globe of the train light meander up as if from out of the earth and straighten itself into a long harsh beam of light across the rocky ground.

“Here it comes now,” Shaw said sidelong to the men beside him. “Bring Corio’s gunmen up behind us,” he said to Hatcher. “Get ready to cut them loose when I give you a signal.”

As Hatcher turned and rode away at a gallop, Shaw reached out and turned up a dimly lit lantern into a high glow. He raised the bright lantern over his head and waved it back and forth slowly toward the approaching train.

“Oh yes, they see us,” Shaw said with confidence, still waving the lantern. No sooner had he spoken than they watched the bright headlight shudder atop the engine as the train began its long, screeching, grinding, steam-blowing halt.

A moment passed as the train sat pulling and pounding and blowing off steam into the desert air. Then the heavy thud of a boarding ramp dropping resounded in the darkness, and horses’ hooves shuffled and clanked down onto the rocky ground. As Shaw and the others watched, figures began to move toward them in the shadowy moonlight. Shaw held the lantern low and gave a short signal wave to Hatcher and the others waiting just off the trail behind them.

In the darkness, Madden Corio saw the short wave of the lantern and said to Jordan and Lemate, who rode close beside him, “They’ve gotten themselves ready for us. Keep me covered.”

As the three rode closer and Corio saw the lantern go out altogether, he said to the shadowy images sitting their horses before him, “You better hope our wagons are ready and waiting. I’ll hear no ifs, ands or buts about it.”

Corio stopped his horse, the other two following suit beside him. They were barely able to make out the three figures in the pale moonlight. “Bring up the wagons, let’s get them loaded,” he commanded.

“What is there to talk about?” Corio asked, his hand on the rifle across his lap as he nudged his horse forward at a slower, more cautious pace. “Your partner and I agreed to the payback before you become a part of this deal.”

“Oh, have they?” Corio asked, moving forward and stopping fifteen feet away, his two men flanking close on either side. “In what way has anything changed?”

“What happened to him?” Corio asked, but his eyes kept moving back and forth, trying to see in the darkness down along the canyon trail.

In the darkness, Corio fell silent for a moment. Then upon making out the faces of Sheer and Dan Sax in the grainy moonlight, he said to Sheer, “Is that true, Sonny Lloyd? Dexter Lowe’s whore killed him?”

“And it’s true this man was his partner?” Corio asked, sounding wary of the whole idea. “And you believe all this, you being Lowe’s right-hand man?”

“Yes, I believe it,” said Sheer. “I heard the words come straight from Dangerous Dexter Lowe’s own mouth,” he lied. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

Corio stepped his horse in closer for a better look at Sheer’s and Sax’s faces. “What about you, Dan?”

“You see where we’re sitting, Madden,” said Sheer, nodding toward Shaw. “We’re with him, all the way.”

Corio considered what all the way meant. “We don’t have all night to sit jawing about this,” he said. He turned to Shaw. “If these two say you’re all right, then you’re good in my book. Now get my wagons up here, let’s get loaded and gone. We’ll finish talking about the money once we’re under way. We’re going to have soldiers down our shirts soon as they figure out what’s hit them.”

“I left Watkins and Skinner with them,” Jordan said to Corio. “I call out to them, they’ll start killing these saddle tramps quicker than—” His words stopped as he saw the two walk up from the trail, out of the greater darkness, their hands tied behind their backs.

“Shut up, Jordan,” said Corio, seeing that this was getting him nowhere. He calmed down and watched Skinner and Watkins walk up closer and stop. Watkins’ forehead bore a swollen imprint of a rifle barrel. Skinner’s nose and upper lip were swollen and bloody. “It looks like you’re trying to deal yourself in deeper into my business, Mister,” said Corio, ready to go along with anything so long as he got his wagons and got them loaded.

“Now you’re starting to get the message,” Shaw said. “My men get even splits the same as you pay you’re regulars.”

“This time out I get the same as your man here gets,” Shaw said, nodding toward Jordan. “Next job, whatever my men get will come off of my end.”

“You’ve got sand. I’ll say that for you, stranger,” Corio said, still knowing that it didn’t matter what he said, so long as he got moving across the border. “Hell, all right, it’s time I take on some new guns, expand on my horizons, so to speak.”