It was easy enough to find out in Bent’s Junction that Yancey had been involved in a gunfight there with two hardcases. Once he had several eye-witness accounts, Cato searched out the saloon where it had happened and breasted the bar, ordering a whisky. When the barkeep poured, Cato motioned for him to leave the bottle and glanced around the room.
“Business is kind of slow,” Cato observed. He lifted the bottle. “Pour yourself one.”
“Thanks,” said the barkeep and brought up a shot glass from under the counter. He poured, saluted Cato and downed the drink. Cato poured him another and he immediately saw wariness come into the man’s face.
“Relax. Just want some information.”
“I dish out drinks, mister, not gab. Obliged for the redeye and that’ll be a dollar and two bits total.”
Cato grabbed the man’s arm, smiling, faintly, keeping it friendly. “You’ll get your money. Could be some more in it for you.”
The barkeep hesitated but there was greed in his eyes. Cato took out coins and slid five dollars onto the bar. Beside them he placed a dollar and a quarter in payment for the drinks. The barkeep looked at him but didn’t touch the money.
“Believe you had a gunfight in here a week or so ago,” Cato said. “Big man, callin’ himself Carlsen. Downed two hardcases but I think he got scalp-creased.”
The barkeep stared at Cato for a spell, then dropped his gaze to the coins. He looked at them for a long minute, then abruptly scooped them into his hand, dropped them into his pocket, leaving only the money for the whisky on the bar-top. He shook his head slowly.
“Nope. He already had that scalp-crease. Local sawbones had bandaged it for him before the ruckus. And he called himself Carlsen but Nathan, one of the hardcases, called him Banner or some such, just before he cashed in his chips.”
“Like—Bannerman?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Cato’s mouth was grim. Yancey had obviously been set up, then. If he had been using Carlsen’s name, then it was certain sure he had already killed the man before hitting town, and it was probably Carlsen who had scalp-creased Yancey.
“He was lookin’ for someone named Onslow,” the barkeep said, adding, “And I reckon that about takes care of your five dollars.”
Cato looked at him hard. “Would another five buy me any more? I warn you now, mister, it’d have to be somethin’ I could really use. I might get kind of upset if it turned out otherwise.”
The barkeep was nine inches or so taller than Cato and he made the mistake that many others had made over the years. He assumed that size counted for everything and drew himself up to his full height, looking down at Cato.
“Beat it, small change. You’ve had your money’s worth. Now get before I throw you out.”
Cato casually picked up his half-full glass and suddenly tossed the whisky into the barkeep’s face. The man cried out as the raw spirit bit into his eyes and Cato reached up, twisted his fingers in the man’s lank hair and smashed his face down onto the top of the bar. The barkeep’s knees buckled and he began to fall. Cato vaulted over the bar, caught him, and drove him back into the bottle shelves with a jar that shook loose a whole row of glasses. The splinters crunched under his boots as he grabbed a glass of wash water from the pan under the counter and dashed it into the face of the writhing, half-conscious barkeep. The man stopped whining and slowly straightened, blood oozing from a cut on his forehead. The other drinkers in the bar were frozen at their tables, gaping, wondering what in hell had happened. Trouble had simply exploded in the room and they had no idea why ...
Cato drew his massive Manstopper and tapped the barkeep lightly along the jaw with the heavy double barrels. “It only has to travel six inches, mister, and your jaw’ll be wired-up for six months ... It’ll cost you a lot more than five bucks to get it fixed.”
The man was scared silly now and nodded vigorously. “Okay, okay. Can’t tell you much, ’cept he went to the railroad depot and bought a ticket, quit town on the mornin’ train.”
“I know all that. You ain’t mentioned this ‘Onslow’.”
“Don’t know him ... Honest mister. Don’t know him. I reckon Nathan and his pard worked for him, but they’d work for anyone who could pay them. You could ask around town to see if he was stayin’ at any of the hotels, but I never heard tell of him.”
Cato looked into the man’s scared eyes a little longer, then nodded, suddenly stomped his heel into the barkeep’s instep and as the man reached down with a gasp of pain, he hit him lightly behind the ear with the gun barrel and stretched him out on the floor, moaning, half-conscious.
Then he vaulted the bar lithely and walked out of the hushed saloon, the eyes of the tensed, silent men following him warily.
~*~
He rode the train to Concho, figuring on retracing Yancey’s steps, though all he had learned at the Bent’s Junction depot was that Yancey had bought a ticket clear through to Timbertop. Cato’s idea in stopping off at Concho was to see the girl, Marnie Hendry, again. He hadn’t questioned her much before, as she had been too anxious to get Yancey back to proper medical care. But now he figured maybe Yancey had mentioned something to her that could be of help. There was always the chance that she was involved and had sought out Yancey deliberately on the train, but he would find that out, too, when he reached Concho.
As the train climbed and passed over the newly repaired stretch of track where the wreck had occurred, he felt his jaw muscles tighten involuntarily. There was the fresh scar on the mountain slope above the tracks, left by the explosion. On the other side, down the steep slope, were still the remains of the splintered railroad cars and twisted seats, a warped bogey, a couple of lengths of twisted track. The slope was torn-up where the cars had plowed into the earth and he marveled again how so few people had been seriously injured in the wreck. Three people had died and it was nothing short of a miracle that there hadn’t been more ...
Once over the mountain, the train gathered speed on the long, angling run down to a whistle-stop known as Hell’s Kitchen. It was an outlet for cattle ranches way inland from the railroad, and a lot of farmers freighted their produce to market in Timbertop. Cowpokes either paid-off by the ranches or on their way into town for a weekend spree would sometimes be picked up here, complete with horses that travelled in the special boxcar. Today was one of the times when two cowpokes were on their way into the bright lights and there was a delay of almost half an hour while they loaded their mounts into the boxcar. One horse didn’t like the idea and gave a deal of trouble, but it was finally stalled and the sweating, cursing cowpokes swung up the steps and came into Cato’s car, wiping forearms across their flushed faces. They dropped wearily into a seat down the aisle and on the opposite side of Cato, stretched out their legs and tilted their hats over their faces, aiming to sleep until the train pulled into Concho.
Cato propped his boots up on the seat opposite, folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, rocking gently to the motion of the train as it rolled on down the track.
They tore through the next whistle-stop at full speed but pulled in at a small hamlet whose name Cato never did learn. No one got on board, but some mail and parcels were picked up. The train rolled on, the locomotive’s stack belching clouds of thick black smoke and a cascade of sparks. The countryside was dry and brown and Cato figured a few of those sparks could turn the place into an inferno if the breeze fanned them just right. After Twin Falls, there was a long, empty run to Concho, across seemingly endless miles of grass plain before lifting into rugged hills and the longest tunnel on any railroad in Texas at that time. It was called Rorke’s Tunnel in honor of the engineer who had driven it through solid rock beneath a towering mountain. After Rorke’s Tunnel, there would be a downgrade into Concho.
The route was scenic enough not to be boring but Cato was tired from long weeks on the trail after Roy Treece, and dozed in his seat. The two cowpokes seemed to be well asleep and one of them snorted and grunted, shifting restlessly. Cato’s chin rested on his chest above his folded arms, head nodding in time with the swaying and rocking of the train. The monotonous click-clacking of the wheels helped lull him into a light doze though the cowboy’s snoring prevented him from falling right off to sleep.
His breathing began to settle down into a deep rhythm and he found himself drifting pleasantly into proper sleep when his senses awakened sharply, though he did not open his eyes or move his head or body. Something was different. It took a few seconds for sleep to clear from his brain. Then he knew what it was: the cowboy had stopped snoring. Well, that was something, anyway, but, opening his eyes just a little so he could peer through his lashes, he knew his sixth sense had stood by him once more when he saw the two cowboys down the aisle and across from him standing slowly, their eyes on him, hands near their guns. One looked down the empty car and through the half-glass door into the car behind, making sure no one was coming. The other man eased his gun slowly out of leather …
Cato didn’t wait any longer. He threw himself down between the seats, dragging the heavy Manstopper out of leather and coming up shooting. The first shot smashed the window above the cowpokes’ heads and they dived for cover, one gun going off, the bullet flying wild. The second shot from the Manstopper punched a hole in the seat and one of the men swore as he was hit, though not fatally.
Then Cato lunged to his feet and charged down the aisle away from the killers, kicking open the car door and going out onto the rear platform. He heard lead splintering the woodwork around him, turned and snapped two shots back down the aisle. One of the men reeled and his arms flailed as he was carried back several feet by the impact of lead. Cato shot him again and then swung onto the ladder and felt the wind of the train’s passage pluck at him. He went up fast onto the rocking roof of the car and threw himself flat on the walkway.
Black smoke rolled over him. Sparks burned his neck and the back of his hand. He lay there full length, gun in hand, muzzle pointed at the top of the ladder. As soon as the remaining killer showed his head above the roof line he was going to have it blown off …
But he waited and nothing happened. The train rolled on. The car swayed drunkenly round the bends. But no one showed on the ladder. Cato frowned and squirmed around to face back down the car the other way, thinking the killer might have decided to use that ladder. He was almost right. The man had gone one better than that. He came up the ladder of the car ahead, at the far end. He stood on the ladder’s rungs, his upper body lying along the car’s walkway, gun in both hands as he carefully lined-up on Cato.
His gun jerked with recoil as it roared and the hot lead sprayed splinters into Cato’s face. He clawed at his stinging eyes, getting off a wild shot. The killer took the opportunity to climb all the way up onto the top of the car and he ran forward, teeth bared in the wind, hat flying off, hair streaming, gun braced into his hip. He fired twice and Cato, rolling to get all the way round so he could shoot, slipped off the walkway and hit the steep, curving slope of the car roof. He skidded down and dropped helplessly towards the car’s edge. His wildly scrabbling left hand snatched at a vent rim and his arm was almost wrenched out of its socket as it took the sudden jar of his full weight. He hung there, legs over the edge of the car in the wind, smoke blinding and choking him, sparks and hot soot spitting against his flesh, his heavy Manstopper dangling from his right hand.
Cato bared his teeth, trying to get enough momentum into his swinging legs so that he could catch the roof edge with his boots and try to clamber back up. But the killer would finish him long before that.
The man was grinning coldly now as he leapt from the forward car to Cato’s. He stumbled, but steadied himself on the walk and he laughed as he put a bullet through the tin cylinder of the vent only inches from Cato’s clinging fingers. Cato almost let go by instinct but managed to grip the metal again, even as the cowpoke took careful aim. His gun swinging over the side with his body, Cato fumbled at the toggle on the hammer spur and managed to flick it with his thumb. This allowed him to fire the single twelve-gauge shot shell housed in the center of the cartridge cylinder and lined-up with the smoothbore, underslung barrel.
The cowboy was taking his time, gripping his gun in both hands, settling his boots firmly, as he aimed deliberately at Cato’s fingers. As the train rounded a curve it whistled loudly and Cato saw the black maw of Rorke’s Tunnel rushing towards him. Hell, if the cowpoke didn’t get him, the tunnel wall would unless he got his body back up onto that car roof pronto!
As the killer’s finger tightened on the trigger, Cato yelled with the effort he made to bring the massive Manstopper up and over and he dropped hammer as soon as the barrel pointed in the cowpoke’s general direction. The shot shell exploded with flat thunder, swiftly whipped away by the wind. The charge of buckshot took the surprised killer in the center of the chest and his body was flung off the rocking car as if kicked by some giant invisible horse, little more than a bundle of bloody rags.
Cato gave no more thought to the man: he knew no one came back after taking a charge like that in the body. He slid the smoking gun into his holster and snatched at the edge of the car roof as the loco whistled again and disappeared into the maw of the tunnel. He saw the jagged rocky edge of the walls rushing towards him as he got one boot on the roof edge, slipped, but took all his weight on his straining arms and heaved mightily, hauling himself bodily onto the edge. He threw himself forward and snatched in his legs just as the car rolled into the reeking, choking blackness of the tunnel. His boots brushed the rock and the impact thrust his legs onto the car roof. He flattened himself beside the walkway, not knowing how much clearance his body would have from the tunnel roof. Thick, reeking black smoke enveloped him and he coughed and choked and was blinded. There was a hellish thundering noise as the locomotive and the cars rolled into the long, curving tunnel through the mountain and he was gagging, weakening, sobbing for air when, abruptly, the car rolled out into sunlight and the black smoke dissipated and his tortured lungs burned with the first deep breath of fresh air.
Shaking, retching, Cato pulled himself onto the walkway and lay there, gasping, chest heaving, his face blackened, eyes smarting and vision blurred.
He figured he would make the effort to get to the ladder and climb back on down to the platform in a little while ... just a little while ...
~*~
When the train rolled into Concho, Cato was in a hard-as-hell mood. He hadn’t liked being so close to death up on the car roof: being shot at was one thing, but almost being crushed by a moving train against a tunnel wall ... well, a man didn’t expect to die that way, smeared all over the mountain. He was angry, more angry than when he had left Austin and he reckoned that the fact that the two killers had been sent on board the train to get him, showed he was on the right trail.
They had been sent to stop him reaching Concho, and he figured it could well be because that was where the girl was. Which meant she knew something she wasn’t aware of knowing, or she was in it right down the line and wouldn’t be expecting him to show up alive in town.
But she was not on the depot platform when the train rolled in and Cato dropped off on the opposite side to the platform, moving swiftly down the cars and right up to the front of the train and around the locomotive. He saw the fireman, engineer and conductor talking with the stationmaster and figured they were likely reporting the shooting. He didn’t aim to get delayed by explanations and slipped across behind the telegraph shack with his warbag and ducked down a narrow lane behind the depot and found himself in a freight yard, amongst stacked cases and lumber and railroad ties. That suited him. It was dusk and, keeping to the deep shadows, he made his way out of the depot yard and onto the street that led down to Main and the orange lights of the town’s buildings.
The fact that the girl hadn’t met the train didn’t mean she wasn’t in with the men who had tried to kill him, anymore than it would have meant for sure that she was in the know if she had been there when the train rolled in. Now he had the job of finding her, but he figured it oughtn’t be too hard. Nurses weren’t common in frontier towns; usually it was the doctor’s wife or daughter who handled the nursing chores.
He was right: everyone seemed to know Marnie Hendry and he had no trouble in getting directions to her small cabin out near the north edge of town. He walked out there with his warbag over his left shoulder, smelling fresh paint and turpentine as he approached. The small white picket fence had been newly painted, and so had the chocolate brown door beyond the arched rose arbor. Seemed she was planning on settling-in, which seemed to fit in with what he had learned in town. She had come here to be nurse for Dr. Bryant, whose wife had died some months ago and left him with no one to handle the nursing chores. He was getting old and couldn’t manage everything himself. Seemed that Marnie had been the only applicant, but she knew her job and Bryant was mighty pleased with her. Those in town who had had need of her services also had praise for her.
But Cato aimed to play it safe and when she opened the door to his knock, eventually recognized him in the light of the lantern she held, and asked him in, Cato stepped warily and kept his right hand close to the butt of the Manstopper. He sat down in the sparsely furnished parlor.
“I hope to get some better furniture after a while, when I have more money,” the girl told him. “Can I get you some coffee? Something to eat, Mr. Cato?”
“I’ve eaten, thanks,” he said shortly, looking at her somewhat coldly.
The girl frowned. “Is there anything wrong?”
“Reckon there should be?” he countered.
“I—I don’t know. I get the feeling that you’re all—tense—and that you’re—well—probing me ... The look in your eyes isn’t exactly the friendliest, Mr. Cato.” Her manner became abruptly brisk. “Why are you here, anyway?”
Cato looked at her soberly for a long minute, then sighed as he sat back in the easy chair. “Hell, I don’t really know, Miss Hendry …”
“You might as well call me Marnie. Everyone else does.”
“Yeah, okay, Marnie ... Look, you know who I am and what I do. You know Yancey is an Enforcer too. Well, that head-wound is givin’ him a heap of trouble and he’s lost his memory, don’t know any of his old friends, or even his own name …”
Compassion showed on her face. “I felt he was suffering concussion by his actions ...”
“Well, to cut things short, I’ve taken over his assignment and, well ... I sort of wanted to make sure that you didn’t go lookin’ for him on that train, that you met him just the way you said.”
“Well, of course I did!” she said indignantly and he swiftly held up a hand.
“Sure, I guess so ... your story checks out. But I’m kind of edgy. Couple of hombres tried to kill me on the train coming down here and—”
“And you thought I had something to do with that?”
“Ease up now! If you’d been following Yancey you could have ... Since hittin’ town, though, I’ve heard nothin’ but good words about you, Marnie, and I guess I have to take a chance, sometime, so …”
“Well, thank you for very little, Mr. Cato!” the girl said angrily, standing up. “I’m surprised you didn’t have your gun out and cocked when I opened the door!”
He smiled a little sheepishly. “I thought of it … But I did keep my hand on the butt.”
Her face tightened even more and then she saw the funny side of it and relaxed, sitting down again, shaking her head slowly. “I suppose I shouldn’t blame you. But it is rather annoying when your intentions are well-meant.”
“Yeah, sorry about the whole thing. Part of my job, though. Only way a man can stay alive sometimes. I figured that maybe Yancey might’ve said something that could be of help.”
Marnie frowned. “Like what? He didn’t really say much at all.” She smiled faintly. “When I think about it, he was probably just as suspicious of my motives as you, possibly more so.”
“Could be. Well, did he say where he was headed?”
“Timbertop ... Because I said there was plenty of time for him to have a rest and then we saw the gunfight on the mountain and ... the wreck followed.”
“He bought a ticket all the way to Timbertop,” Cato said slowly, “but the ticket seller on the Bent’s Junction railroad depot recalled him askin’ about what towns the train passed through. He kind of got the impression that Yancey aimed to stop at one or maybe more of ’em. Maybe just to check ’em out; maybe because of some information he’d picked up.” He slammed a fist down into the palm of his other hand. “Damn, but I wish Yancey could remember!”
She studied his face closely. “He’s obviously a good friend,” she said quietly.
“The best. We been through a lot together ... Can’t help but feel to blame for him bein’ the way he is.”
Marnie was surprised. “How can you think that? You said the head-wound was causing the trouble.”
“Now, it is. But it mightn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been banged about in that train wreck ... and that was my fault for not goin’ it alone like I should have!”
He frowned as the girl shook her head slowly. “I don’t agree with you, Mr. Cato. I saw Yancey on the train. He was in distress; he was seeing double; he was pale, his eyes looked glazed and one pupil was larger than the other ... These are all definite signs of concussion, especially with the intense headache he complained of. I don’t think he received any further injuries in that train smash. I think he would have finished up with amnesia if the train had brought him safely here or to Timbertop or wherever he was going.”
Cato studied her face and saw that she meant it. He made a helpless gesture. “You could be right. Doesn't stop me feelin’ kind of guilty, though …”
“And so you’re going to finish your friend’s assignment for him, come hell or high water, and avenge him by killing the men who are involved?”
“Something like that,” he said crisply.
“And you think that’ll help him?”
“It’ll help me!”
Her eyes were intent on him and he saw the curiosity there and knew she had never met anyone like him before: a man prepared to risk his life and kill for friendship.
What surprised him most was that he saw sudden understanding come into her eyes and when she offered to put him up in the cabin’s spare room for the duration of his stay in Concho, he knew he was right. She wanted to observe his actions at close quarters.
That was all right by Cato. It was a long time since he’d had a woman as young and beautiful as Marnie Hendry interested in him for any reason!