Slocum #385

“He’s a hero. He saved my life. Those men were killers and would have . . . killed me!” The mail car clerk stood on the railroad depot platform haranguing a large crowd gathered to see what the fuss was about. Slocum tried to edge away, but the station agent gripped his arm hard and held him in place.

“I’m not your man,” Slocum said, but the station agent made sure he stayed. The clerk came over and grabbed Slocum’s hand and raised it high, as if he had just won a bareknuckles fight.

This made Slocum a mite uneasy since he had seen the outlaws struggling with a heavy canvas bag. There had been the one remaining in the safe but he thought the thieves had taken at least one before he had run them off.

Both the agent and Slocum turned to see the marshal with his deputy, Sid, at the edge of the platform.

“The crowd’s all ready to get liquored up in celebration,” Atkinson said, looking disgusted. He motioned to Sid to follow them around to keep the peace. Anytime the Leadville citizens celebrated, fists flew and shots were fired. “I want to look over the car.”

“You, too, Slocum. You turn up in the damnedest places.” He rested his hand on his six-shooter, as if he was ready to throw down on Slocum.

“You go through everything that happened, and don’t leave out the smallest detail,” the marshal ordered. He moved to the side of the car, where he wouldn’t be in the way.

Slocum recounted what he had done. Now and again, the marshal looked up at the holes in the roof and then at the dried bloodstain on the floor. He paced back and forth, then knelt by the safe door. He rapped it with his knuckles.

“Can see why they forgot to bring along dynamite. A can opener’d be all you’d need for this safe.”

“No, it wasn’t. I don’t have any say-so when it comes to shipping the gold or mail. That’s up to the railroad executives back in Denver, them and federal officials, who don’t give two hoots and a holler about such things.” He grunted as he pulled the canvas bag containing the gold coins from the safe and dropped it to the floor. He pawed through the coins inside, then dropped them back and closed the bag.

“From what you say, they had plenty of time to steal the coins. But they didn’t. You have any ideas about that, Slocum?”

“Marshal, I just heard the news.” Elena Warburton climbed into the car amid a flurry of petticoats and ruffles. She looked flustered, and Slocum could understand why. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was responsible for protecting the shipment.

“Seems your man here, Slocum, saved us all a powerful lot of trouble. He kept the robbers from taking the shipment. Reckon that puts him in line for a big reward.” Atkinson looked hard at Elena, who seemed even more flustered at the idea Slocum had prevented the robbery. “Doesn’t it?”

“There’d be bloody hell to pay if the miners lost their payroll. Last time that happened was nigh on a year back. The former marshal got his head bashed in with a crowbar trying to explain. They burned down the bank and some thought the whole town was going up along with it. Yes, ma’am, your man Slocum saved the day.”

Atkinson laughed. “I can see why you don’t trust her,” he said. “But you got witnesses. And the clerk, why, he’d swear on a stack of Bibles that you saved his life and prevented the robbery.”

“Just curious that Slocum happened to be Johnny-on-the-spot the way he was. How’d you come across a robbery a couple miles outside town?”

“Just went for a ride, Marshal,” Slocum said. “It was too nice a spring day to spend drinking away it away.”

“Wish more of Leadville’s fine citizens thought that way. There’d be fewer drunken fights.” He cocked his head to the side, and scowled. “Sounds like a dustup brewing as we speak.”

“Of course I will. That would be a shame if Slocum here saved it from robbers but I lost it.” Atkinson grunted as he picked up the heavy bag of coins and perched them on his shoulder. He staggered a step, got his balance, then dropped from the railcar to the ground and headed for the bank.

“Let’s go to the telegraph office,” he said. Slocum looked into the empty safe and came to the conclusion that had gnawed away at him since the robbery.

The clerk led one more cheer as Slocum and Elena made their way past the edge of the diminished crowd. Slocum waved and then pushed Elena through the crowd and back into the street so they could go to the telegraph office.

“You are mighty eager for that reward,” she said. She turned a bit frosty again. Something about accepting a reward for what he had done didn’t set well with her. And it didn’t with Slocum either. He told her why.

“I don’t care if you recommend a reward or not. That wasn’t a robbery,” Slocum said. She stopped and spun to stare at him.

“I think it was a robbery but not like the mail car clerk thinks. I saw the outlaws with a heavy canvas bag that looked identical to the one in the safe.”

“I want you to get an answer from your Denver agent about what was put on the train.”

“I think the purpose of the robbery wasn’t to steal the coins and ride off but instead to substitute counterfeit coins for the real ones.”

“It’s a better scheme than having a youngster like the Eakin kid swindling coins one or two at a time.”

The whistle on the train sounded and then wheels sparked against the tracks as the engineer pulled out.

“The train is returning to Denver,” Elena said uneasily. “Nobody checked the passengers.”

“I’m the only one who can identify the counterfeiter I saw with Eakin, unless you got a good look at any of them when they were trying to kill us down in the valley.”

“It’ll look as if the Pinkerton Detective Agency substituted the coins in Denver. Our reputation will be ruined.”

Elena almost ran to the telegraph office and sent the message to her partner in Denver.

“I can’t believe Mr. Pullman would do anything crooked. He is so . . . infuriatingly proper.”

“He wouldn’t need to be in on the robbery,” Slocum said. “The counterfeiters are clever sons of bitches. They make good fakes, but getting them into circulation is hard if you try to do it one coin at a time.” He went on to tell her about watching the counterfeiters working in the blacksmith’s shop to tap out more of the coins.

“They needed to coat them when they finished stamping the coins,” Elena said thoughtfully. “That’s not difficult if you can get a fire hot enough to melt gold.”

“I’d lay odds that the coins are on the way back to Denver,” Slocum said. “It’s a bigger town and from there they can scatter throughout the West with their loot.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Anyone capable of a robbery like this would want to repeat it. Not here perhaps but somewhere else. They’d use a few of the real double eagles to coat more lead planchets.”

“There’s never such a thing as ‘too much’ for a crook,” Slocum agreed. He’d had his taste of this in the past when he had ridden with outlaw gangs. Easy money was as addicting as riding the dragon. If the first robbery went off without a hitch, then a second was planned right away. Soon enough, planning fell by the wayside and the bullets started flying. These counterfeiters were successful but had shown they would kill.

Slocum considered the train robbery and realized they were more dangerous than the usual gang of cutthroats. They had needed the mail clerk to be left alive to brag about not losing the gold shipment. Any hint that they had switched bags would set a posse on their trail instantly. As it was, Slocum thought they had simply boarded the return train for Denver and were well on their way to spending twenty thousand dollars in stolen coins.

“Miss, here’s your reply,” the telegrapher said, pushing the flimsy yellow sheet toward Elena and giving Slocum a look that showed how puzzled he was.

Slocum glanced over Elena’s shoulder. He reached down and pointed to the information that struck him the hardest.

“Pullman said the bag he put on the train had been marked 17. The one I saw was 23.”

“They didn’t know Pullman’s code,” Slocum said. “This means your partner isn’t in on the theft. Otherwise he would have told them the right number so they could match it up.”

“That’s a relief. He’s an overbearing, pompous—” Elena cut off the diatribe. “It’s good that he is still working for the best interest of the company.”

“Telling the banker he’s got a shipment of counterfeit coins isn’t going to help matters,” Slocum said. “It’s as bad one way or the other. Telling everyone he has bogus coins or just refusing to pass them to the miners—either way will cause a riot.”

“He can’t arrest them. How would he prove to the authorities that the men with the coins haven’t come by them legally?”

“Have him do some detective work, find the counterfeiters, and then I’ll take care of getting the coins back.”

“You feel badly about taking the reward when the shipment was actually stolen?” This thought caused Elena to brighten and a smile to curl the corners of her lips.

“You might say that,” he told her. She took his arm and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him in front of the telegraph clerk.

While she sent the longer, more complicated instructions to her partner, Slocum stepped outside the office and looked around Leadville. Even if the stolen gold was on its way back to Denver, something didn’t seem right to him. There was more here, and he didn’t know what it could be. Before he had a chance to think harder on the matter, Elena came out and said brightly, “Let’s get some food.”

“Then we’ll just have to find something to occupy ourselves until suppertime,” she said, steering him willingly toward the hotel.