IN a sandy wash near the Union Pacific tracks, a few miles west of Wilcox, half-a-dozen men waited. It had rained heavily during the night, but now the rain had stopped; the world was still, breathless, dank. Dawn was near at hand.
“Hark!” said Lonny Logan, pinching at his cigarette. “Is that it?”
They listened intently. Among them were Lonny’s brother, the Sundance Kid—Flat Nose George, Bob Leigh, Carver, Doc Lantry. Plans had been laid to rob the through express. The brains behind the exploit and the real daredevil of them all, Reb Santee had ridden into Cheyenne—the nearest stop to the east—the night before to board the express. He would take no companion. It was incredible, but true. His plan was to reach the engineer by some means and stop the train at this point. The Wild Bunch was waiting to see whether he would make good.
They had argued the matter pro and con, but now they were silent, expecting the express any minute.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Bob Leigh, a moment later.
They all heard the distant, attenuated roar of the train across the plain. Five minutes later a dark shape rushed forward through the first faint light.
“He didn’t make it!” cried Doc Lantry disgustedly. “It’s goin’ right on by.” There was nothing here to indicate a proper anxiety for Santee. As a matter of fact, Doc hoped for the worst.
Even as he spoke, however, the scream of the air brakes split the deeper rumble of the locomotive. Slowly the train ground to a stop.
“All right, boys!” the Sundance Kid jerked out swiftly. “Reb done his part. It’s up to us to back him!”
They ran along the train. Pullman windows banged up; heads were thrust out. As the outlaws swung aboard, a shot echoed from the rear of the train—another. The Kid returned this fire in a flash. “Yuh got ’im!” Bill Carver called out. It discouraged further argument. The heads of the curious were hastily withdrawn.
“Take a look ahead,” Logan directed Flat Nose George. “See what the smiler’s doin’.”
This was answered a moment later when Reb stepped down from the cab, herding the engineer and the firemen before him.
“Here, you!” he called, avoiding Curry’s name. “Put a gun on these two.”
Flat Nose George complied. Reb strode back along the train. Several of his companions had gathered at one end of the express car.
“Got that stick of blastin’ powder?” he grinned at them as he came up. Bob Leigh handed it to him. “Watch the caboose,” he said, and walked to the door of the car. Angry exclamations sounded from behind its grating, but crouching down, he paid no attention. The slugs from a six-gun, fired at an angle, could not reach him.
Bill Carver crawled under the train to guard the other side. The sky was bright in the east now; figures could be distinguished vaguely at some distance. As Reb worked at the closed door a brakeman with a rifle jumped down from the caboose and knelt on the ballast. His weapon came up. It was Doc Lantry who blazed away at him. The rifle was never fired. The brakeman wilted down.
“Yuh didn’t have to do that!” Reb flung at Doc. “Couldn’t yuh smoke him back inside?”
Lantry began to swear, but Reb wasn’t listening: he touched off the blasting powder, ran to the car-end, ducked. The explosive let go with a roar that rocked the car. The outlaws dashed forward. The car door hung in splinters.
Santee was the first inside, gun in hand. But the way was clear. The express guard and the mail clerk were both dazed and half-conscious, shocked and hurled back by the explosion.
“Bring our hosses,” Reb told Lonny Logan, while the Sundance Kid and Bob Leigh attacked the safe in the upper end of the car. “Take one up to the engine, too.”
Leigh slipped away. Further occasional shots rang along the train as Bill Carver and Doc Lantry put an abrupt end to investigations by the trainmen and angry passengers.
Blasting powder ripped open the express safe, blew aside the crates with which it was shielded. The Kid and Leigh knelt to stuff saddle-bags with currency, gold, a little silver.
“Okay,” said Santee coolly from the door, as they stood up. “Let’s light out of here.” He kept an eye on the reviving express guard as his companions walked to the door and jumped down. Then Reb swung out also.
All except Bill Carver and himself were in the saddle. Ahead, Flat Nose George awaited their starting before he released the engine crew.
“Let’s go, Bill!” Lantry called under the train.
“Shut up, you fool!” Reb lashed out at him.
Doc glared a species of frenzied exasperation. “Damn yuh, whut’re yuh pickin’ on me fer?” he snarled.
“Let it go!” the Sundance Kid told him fiercely, and Lantry subsided.
A fusillade of shots scattered them as a man at the caboose opened fire with the dead brakeman’s rifle. “Shove off!” Reb ordered them harshly, returning the fire without aim; but he did not himself move, holding the reins of Carver’s pony. The rest started away. A rod apart, however, the Sundance Kid wheeled his mount.
“Dammit,” he ejaculated admiringly; “that’s guts, fella, but it ain’t brains—”
Reb waved him on. Carver was coming now. He dragged one leg. Reb got down to help him mount. In a moment they came on. Guns cracked along the train after them, but they were soon beyond range.
“Bad hit, Bill?” Reb asked Carver.
“Naw.” The latter was disgusted. “My own fool fault. I whaled away at a flash—an’ stood still myself. He got me in the thigh.” He was busy trying to tie up his flesh wound as he rode.
“Reb, yuh don’t even need us birds,” the Sundance Kid said, with a grin. “That was clean as a hound’s tooth. How’d yuh do it?” He referred to the stopping of the train single-handed.
“Why, I walked forward through the cars an’ climbed over to the cab, is all. There wasn’t nothin’ to it.”
Others looked their homage, and Reb was pleased. He had surprised himself, be it said. But there was little time for these reflections now. The sun was up. They struck off across the high Laramie Plains.
An hour before noon came the words all had been expecting.
“They’re after us!”
A band of riders could be seen coming down from a break in the Laramie Mountains, four or five miles to the east. They were not from Wilcox. This meant telegraphing—a general alarm. The fugitives swung west and pushed on.
It soon became evident the posse had fresh horses. Steadily they drew up.
“We got to stand ’em off, or git fresh nags ourselves!” Doc Lantry burst out excitedly. No one answered him. There was no ranch in sight. There wouldn’t be. The answer was plain.
The pursuers were only a half-mile behind now, spread out like Indians. They came on with deadly intent.
“Cowboys,” gritted the Sundance Kid tersely. “Joe Hazen’s gathered ’em from around Casper.”
Within the hour the first shot was fired from behind. It went wide, but its warning was unmistakable. Reb Santee’s face was as untroubled as ever, but his mouth had hardened. He led the way into a rocky ravine and pulled up. There was a little pool, a few pitiful tufts of grass.
“Get in the rocks,” Reb directed.
There was no time to waste. Grimly ready, they crawled away, four of them with rifles. Lonny Logan stayed to guard the ponies. Santee worked back to a large rock overlooking their trail. A rattlesnake buzzed and he circled it, all his attention fixed on the matter in hand.
He had almost reached the rock when the smash of a gun brought him around, crouched. A group of horsemen were outlined against the sky on the southern edge of the ravine. They had circled with incredible speed, and were firing down. A rattle of hoofs took Reb’s glance to the horses of his friends, brought a grunt to his lips. The shots of Hazen’s men had scattered the ponies. They all clattered out of the defile except one, fighting the bridle to which Lonny Logan clung desperately.
A volley from several points in the ravine dispersed the posse. They ducked away, while powder smoke drifted among the rocks; but the damage had been done. Lonny’s pony kicked him, tore loose. Logan picked himself up and lunged for cover, cursing. They were afoot.
It did not daunt them. The cowboys fell back and set up a raking fire on the edges of the ravine. The outlaws replied with interest.
Bill Carver crawled near Santee, his bloody leg awkward. “Dang it all—now I am in a mess!” he growled ruefully. “I couldn’t git away if I had a fifty-foot road an’ a week to do it in.”
“Keep yore chin up,” Reb advised him, sighting at a far movement and firing quickly. “We’re safe, holed up here.”
“Yeh,” Carver returned dryly. “It won’t be lead that gits us.”
This was proved as the afternoon dragged by. Slugs slapped the rocks and screamed away, the fight was hot, but no one was hit. It was Joe Hazen, the deputy sheriff, who, just before sunset, fell to the rifle of Doc Lantry. It angered his companions. They made a determined rush on the ravine, their guns flaming, but were staved off.
“We can’t keep this up much longer, Reb,” the Sundance Kid declared. “We’re half-starved now. An’ there’ll be officers here—mebbe fifty men—in a few hours.”
“We don’t need more’n half that time, for what we’ll be doin’,” Santee responded. The twinkle grew brighter in his eye as his men grew more dejected. He knew just how tight this spot was: it could not mark him.
To add to their discomfort, clouds blew up with the dusk, rain began to fall, light at first and then in a deluge. An hour later the sky, the night, were inky black. It was still punctuated by red flashes. Cartridges were running low in the ravine.
“Gather the boys,” said Reb quietly, at last. “We’re leavin’.”
Before long they had collected at the upper edge of the ravine. A deep gash in the rock led away. “Now we got to duck an’ run for it,” Reb murmured. “An’ there won’t be no noise.”
They understood him. One by one they started off. Carver had no complaint to make, but Reb knew how he felt. He helped the man, a hand under his arm.
More than once they froze, ready for anything, in that stealthy advance. They dodged, they wormed ahead like serpents. They mistrusted every shadow. But they were not challenged. A quarter-mile from the ravine, Reb felt sure they had slipped through the cordon. Still the rain came down, soaking them—covering their escape.
“Now all we need is wings,” Flat Nose George muttered.
Reb thought it over. “We’ll hit north,” he decided. “There’s a freight road near the river.”
They were weary when they reached it. The men took turns toting the saddle-bags containing their booty.
“What’ll we do now—walk back to Wind River?” Doc Lantry broke out sneeringly.
“You hold on,” Reb told him thinly. Bill Carver was the one he was worried about. The man was suffering, feverish, but tight-lipped. He had to he half-carried.
It was Bob Leigh who stopped, a mile farther on, probing the darkness. “There’s a camp, ahead there,” he whispered.
“Shore,” returned Reb easily, softly. “Freighters.”
Suddenly they saw his plan.
“Wal, by Gawd!” Harve Logan breathed his gratification.
“Quiet, now,” Reb warned. “There can’t be no slip here.”
Cautiously they located the freighters’ horses, staked to graze. Their hides were sleek and wet. Reb released them and led them away, one by one. No sound, no movement came from the wagons under which the weary freighters slept.
“They’ll be one surprised bunch, come mornin’,” Bob Leigh chuckled, when they all held the hackamores of unsaddled mounts.
“We’ll hit the Platte, cross, an’ strike west,” Reb murmured his instructions. “Don’t try to run these plugs till we git well away.”
Softly they rode riverward. When they reached its bank, Doc Lantry burst out unguardedly: “Hell’s fire! It’s runnin’ a flood!”
The Sundance Kid whirled to blast him with invective. Before a word came, a disturbance sounded a hundred yards down the bank.
“Who’s there?” the challenge rang out—a voice of authority.
“Officers!” Reb bit off, cursing Lantry in his heart. “Into the drink, boys! We got to make it!”
They plunged in. Shots split the night behind them, excited cries echoed. The storm-swelled Platte swept them along with a silent, treacherous current. But the heavy draught horses swam powerfully.
Twenty minutes later Reb climbed his mount out on the north bank. The Sundance Kid followed. Bill Carver showed up, gasping but game. Soon they were all together again.
“This is too hot fer comfort,” Reb told them soberly, taking one of the heavy saddle-bags. “Here’s where we split up. We’ll go our own way, get good hosses wherever we can, gather on Ghost Creek as soon as possible, an’ divvy. Okay?”
They chorused low agreement, intent on nothing so much as getting out of the country. None needed to be told it was up in arms—that danger hemmed them in on every hand. A few minutes later they had separated, riding in different directions, and the nightcloaked bank of the sullen Platte was deserted.