The bandits in the lead jerked the door to Hill’s car open and rushed inside, to be met by the thundering explosion of twin ten-gauge barrels hurling buckshot at them.
Four more men went down, shredded and almost cut in half by the horrendous power of the express gun.
The seven men remaining alive dove off the train out of the connecting door to the cars, and began running as fast as they could back up the tracks to where they thought their horses were tied.
They slowed and looked around with puzzled expressions when they came to Johnny’s dead body.
“Where the hell are the hosses?” one of the men hollered, whirling around and looking in all directions.
From thirty feet behind him, Smoke said, “They’re gone, you bastards!”
The robbers turned and saw Smoke and Pearlie and Louis standing there, side by side, their hands full of iron.
“There’s only three of them, boys, let’s take ‘em!” one of the men shouted.
“Uh-uh,” came a voice from behind the outlaws. Cal stood there just outside the engine, his Colt in his hand. “There’s four of us,” he said, a wide grin of fierce anticipation on his young face.
Nevertheless, the outlaws swung their pistols up and opened fire.
In less than fifteen seconds it was all over and every gunman lay either dead or dying next to the train. Blood pooled and saturated the dry earth of the tracks.
Smoke and Pearlie and Louis approached the group of bodies on the ground cautiously, kicking pistols and rifles out of reach of the wounded men who were groaning and writhing on the ground.
Cal said softly, “Dagnabit!” as he glanced down at his thigh, noting a thin line of red where a bullet had creased his upper leg, burning rather than tearing a hole in his trousers.
He quickly turned to the side so his friends couldn’t see the wound, calling, “I’m just gonna go on up and make sure the engineer is all right.”
When the engineer looked at the blood staining Cal’s pants leg, Cal shook his head. “Don’t say nothin’ ‘bout this to my friends, all right?”
The wounded engineer just grinned, having heard what Pearlie and Smoke had said about Cal being a magnet for lead. “I promise not to say nothin’, if you’ll be so kind as to build me a cigarette while we wait for the steam to build.”
TWO
Carl Jacoby sat staring out of the train window next to his seat, sweat beading on his forehead and running down his cheeks as he thought about just how fast with a gun Smoke Jensen and his friends had proved to be.
Jacoby was one of Johnny MacDougal’s best friends . . . or at least he had been until Jensen and his men had shot his friend down in the streets of Pueblo, Colorado, last year. Jacoby hadn’t been there, being sick with the grippe at the time, but he’d been told Jensen had shot Johnny down in cold blood without even giving him a chance to clear leather.
Being also hopelessly in love with Johnny’s older sister, Sarah, Jacoby had at once told the family he would do anything they wanted to help them get even for Johnny’s untimely death. He’d hoped this would endear him to Sarah, but she hadn’t seemed to notice him when he made the offer just after her brother’s funeral. She’d been quiet and kind of off in her own world, as if she was thinking of something else.
Old Angus MacDougal, eaten up with grief and the need for vengeance, had questioned Sheriff Wally Tupper about where Jensen and his friends had been heading after they’d killed his son. Sheriff Tupper had said that one of the men, a Cornelius Van Horne, was a famous Canadian railroad builder.
Angus had done some checking, and afterward he’d sent Carl up to Canada to follow Jensen and his men and to let the old man know when they headed back to the States so he could avenge his son’s death.
He’d told Jacoby to stay out of Jensen’s way, not to brace him or to let him know he was being watched, but just to keep an eye on him and make sure they didn’t leave Canada without Jacoby knowing about it.
Jacoby had done so gladly, sure that no one could have bested Johnny in a fair fight, him being the quickest man with a short gun Carl had ever seen—that is, until the gunfight he’d just now witnessed.
He was watching out the window as Jensen and the three men with him went up against outlaws who outnumbered them two to one. He’d gasped in disbelief when he’d seen the cowboys blow the outriders off their feet without even breaking a sweat.
Hell, he thought, sleeving sweat off his forehead, I was watching Jensen when he drew and I still didn’t see his hand move it was so fast, and the gents with him were just a hair slower, if that.
He didn’t think the outlaws would’ve gotten a single shot off if they hadn’t already had their guns in their hands, and still they hadn’t managed to draw blood from Jensen or any of his friends.
Jacoby shook his head, remembering how many times he’d been tempted over the past six months to just step up to Jensen and draw his gun and shoot the bastard. His stomach grew queasy at the thought of what would have happened had he been so foolish—he’d be lying dead and buried in the godforsaken wilderness above the border, that’s what. He snorted. Hell, as fast as Jensen is and as slow as I am, he’d have had time to build and light himself a cigarette and still could’ve shot me deader’n yesterday’s news.
He turned his head from the sight of the men from the train picking up the dead outlaws’ bodies and stacking them in an empty boxcar, and thought about what he was going to do next. He knew that if he continued on his mission for Angus MacDougal, sooner or later he would have to go up against Jensen and his friends, and that thought scared him half to death.
On the other hand, if he quit now and headed back to Pueblo with his tail between his legs, he was sure Sarah MacDougal would never give him another look—at least not the kind of look he’d want her to give him. She’d more than likely think him a coward and a fool, and would never again give him the time of day.
