“What are the chances of our getting held up?”
“Pretty good, I’d say. If I had to take a guess, I’d say we’re carrying about a fifty-thousand-dollar payroll—all combined—and maybe twice that in gold. Be a juicy haul for those so inclined.”
“They wouldn’t dare attack this train,” she kidded him. “Not with the famous Smoke Jensen on board.” She punched him in the ribs.
“Your faith in me is touching.” He rubbed the spot where she had punched him. “In more ways than one.”
The day melted into dusk and then full dark, the train chugging on uneventfully through the night. The passengers slept fitfully, swaying back and forth in their seats to the rhythm of the drivers on the tracks.
Smoke sensed the train slowing and opened his eyes. Being careful not to rouse Sally, he stood up and stepped out into the aisle, making his weaving way to the door. He stepped outside and stretched, getting the kinks out of his muscles. On instinct, he slipped the leather thongs from the hammers of his six-guns.
Smoke leaned over the side and saw the skeletal form of the water tower ahead, faintly illuminated by the dim light of a nearly cloud-covered moon.
Through the odor of smoke pouring from the stack of the locomotive, Jensen could almost taste the wetness in the air. A storm was brewing, and from the build-up of clouds, it was going to be a bad one.
He looked back at the lantern-lit interior of the car, the lamps turned down very low. The passengers, including Sally, were still sleeping.
The train gradually slowed and came to a gentle halt, something most experienced engineers tried to do late at night so the paying passengers wouldn’t be disturbed.
Smoke caught the furtive movement out of the corner of his eyes. Men on the water tower. With rifles.
One big hand closed around the butt of a .44. He hesitated. Were they railroad men, posted there in case of a robbery attempt? He didn’t think so. But he wasn’t going to shoot until he knew for sure.
He saw the brakeman coming up the side of the coaches and Smoke called to him softly just as he dropped to the shoulder. “My name’s Jensen, brakeman. Smoke Jensen. There are armed men on the water tower.”
The man’s head jerked up. “They damn sure ain’t railroad men, Smoke. And we’re carryin’ a lot of gold and cash money.”
“That’s all I need to know,” Smoke said. He leveled a .44 and knocked a leg out from under one gunman crouching on the water tower. The man fell, screaming, to the rocky ground.
Another gunman, hidden in the rocks alongside the tracks, opened fire, the slugs howling off the sides of the cars.
Smoke yelled, “Get these pilgrims down on the floor, Sally.” To the brakeman, who had hauled out a pistol and was trying to find a target, he called, “How far to the next water stop?”
“Too far,” the man said. “We got to water and fuel here or we don’t make it.”
“We’ll make it,” Smoke told him, pulling out his second .44 and jacking back the hammer.
One outlaw tried to run from the darkness to the locomotive. Either the engineer or the fireman shot him dead.
“How far is this payroll going?” Smoke asked, crouching down.
“All the way to the end of the line, up in Montana.”
He knew the end of the line, at that time, was near Gold Creek. They would change trains before then. Smoke plugged a running outlaw and knocked him sprawling; but it wasn’t a killing shot. The man jumped up and limped off. “Why in the hell doesn’t the railroad put guards on these payroll shipments?”
“Beats me, Smoke. But I’m damn sure glad you decided to ride my train for this trip.”
The pounding of horses’ hooves punctuated the night. The outlaws had decided to give it up.
“Let’s see what we got,” Smoke said, shoving out empties and reloading as he walked over to the man he’d knocked off the water tower.
The man was dead. He’d landed on his head and broken his neck. He walked over to the man the engineer had shot. He was also dead. The third man Smoke had dropped was gut-shot and in bad shape, the slug blowing out his left side, taking part of the kidney with it. He looked up at Smoke.
“You played hell, mister. What’s your name? I’d like to know who done me in.”
“Smoke Jensen.”
The man cussed. “Val sure picked the wrong train this time.”
“Val Singer?” Smoke asked.
“Yeah. You know him?”
“I know him. Me and him ...” Smoke broke it off as he looked down at the man. He was dead, his eyes wide open, staring at the cloudy sky. He looked over at the brakeman. “I winged another. Let’s see if we can find him.”
But he was gone. Smoke tracked a blood trail to where the outlaws had tied their horses. “He made the saddle. But as bad as he’s bleeding, he won’t last long. I must have hit the big vein in his leg.”
The fireman walked up, his face all dark with soot. “Lem, you wanna toss them bodies in the baggage car and keep on haulin’?”
“I ain’t having that crud in with me,” the guard to the gold shipment said, walking up. He had not taken part in the fight because in case of an attempted robbery, he was under orders not to open the doors to anyone. “Toss ‘em in with the wood and tote ’em that way.”
