“We ain’t got no guns,” Willoughby said. “Like you said, MacCallister took ’em. So, how are we going to do this?”
“I know where there’s a couple pistols,” Davis said.
“Where?”
“In a cabinet in the back of Rudd’s office.”
“They loaded?”
“Yes, they keep ’em loaded all the time. But if you can get Mr. Rudd to come out here, I can get hold of ’em.”
“How’m I goin’ to get him out here?”
“Here,” Davis said. “Put your hook under these railroad spikes. I’ll do it, too. We’ll see if we can pull a few of them up.”
Working together, they pulled up a couple of spikes, then were able to move the rail slightly out of line. “That’ll get his interest,” Davis said as he threw the spikes out into the adjacent woods.
Davis wandered off so that he wouldn’t be noticed. Then he waited as Willoughby went in to summon Rudd. A moment later, he saw Rudd come out of the depot, then stand over the track looking down at it and shaking his head.
“I’m glad it’s not the high iron,” Davis heard Rudd say, referring to the main line. “But even though this is a spur, it has to be fixed. We can’t be having cars run off the track here.”
With Rudd engaged, Davis went into the stationmaster’s office, opened the cabinet, and took out two pistols. Checking them quickly, he saw that both were loaded. He was back outside by the time Rudd returned from his inspection of the track.
“Did you get them?” Willoughby asked.
By way of answering him, Davis handed him one of the pistols.
“Let’s do it,” Willoughby said.
Falcon was standing by the front of the one wagon that had already been loaded, watching as the men loaded the second of the three. It wasn’t that he was too lazy, or too good to help with the loading; it was that he appreciated professionalism, and the three freight wagon drivers were professionals. They knew exactly how to load the wagons to get the maximum efficiency from the available space, and also where to place the weight in order to make the wagon ride better and to enable the team of horses to work more efficiently.
Falcon scratched a match on the weathered wood of the wagon, and was just holding it up to light the cigarette he had just rolled when a bullet slammed into the wagon just inches away.
Drawing his pistol and spinning in the same moment, he saw two men standing about twenty-five yards behind him. There was something familiar about them, though for the moment, he didn’t have time to consider what it was.
“Damnit, Davis, you missed!” one of the two men yelled. He fired his own gun even as he was yelling.
Falcon fired twice, and both men went down. With his gun held ready, he hurried toward them. When he got there, one was already dead, the other was dying. That was when he saw that they were the same two men who had tried to hold up the stagecoach between La Junta and Higbee.
“Damnit!” Falcon said angrily. “Are you crazy? I wasn’t after you. Why did you do this? You got yourselves killed for no reason!”
“It was supposed to be the other way around,” the one remaining outlaw said. This was the one with the mangled ear. “We was supposed to kill you.”
“What’s happening? What’s going on?” the wagon drivers called, and seeing Falcon standing over a couple of bodies, they hurried down to see, drawn by a morbid curiosity. By the time they got there, both outlaws were dead.
“I didn’t figure we would be hit until we were on the road on the way back,” Smitty said.
“They weren’t after the loads.”
“They weren’t?”
“No,” Falcon answered. “This had nothing to do with the loads. This was personal. These men were after me.”
“Damn, Mr. MacCallister, I hope you don’t take this wrong, but if you have crazy sons of bitches like these two tryin’ to kill you for no reason, just how safe are we with you?”
Chapter Thirteen
Seth Parker relieved himself.
“Damn, ain’t you got no more manners than to piss where we live?” Cletus Clinton asked.
“It ain’t like we’re livin’ here, we’re just campin’ here,” Parker replied as he aimed toward a grasshopper. He laughed as the grasshopper, caught in the sudden stream, hopped away.
“Yeah, well, I don’t like anyone pissin’ this close to where I’m sittin’, so next time you have to shake the lily, go some’ers else to do it.”
“I reckon I got a right to piss about anywhere I want to,” Parker replied with a growl.
Cletus pulled his pistol. “How’s this for a right? If you do it again, I’ll shoot your pecker off,” he said easily.
“We ain’t goin’ to get nowhere fightin’ amongst ourselves,” Bailey said. “Parker, you keep your mouth shut. We’re ridin’ for the La Soga Larga. That makes Cletus the boss.”
