By the sheerest of coincidences, Longarm had been in Globe, Arizona Territory, when the wire had come into the depot that the train out of Phoenix had been robbed. Globe was about two hundred miles east of Phoenix, a mining and garrison town that had been a stopover for Longarm on his way back to Denver from a job in New Mexico. The wire had been sent by the conductor, who’d tapped into the telegraph line by the side of the track with his emergency sending device, getting out word that the train had been robbed some forty miles west of Globe and that the engineer and fireman had been killed. It turned out later that the engineer had not been fatally wounded, but then neither was he in condition to drive a train.
Longarm immediately commandeered an engine and a stock car from the railroad and bought four horses from a livery. There was an army post ten miles outside of town where he could have got more and better mounts, but he didn’t have the time to spare. He had no help and no deputies. He was the only officer, outside of the U.S. Army, with total jurisdiction throughout the territory. The town marshal’s authority extended no further than the city limits. The sheriff was the law only in the county where he’d been elected. It was for this very reason that the Marshal’s Service had been created, and Longarm had set out solo without the slightest thought of seeking help.
What with one thing and another, four hours had passed by the time he reached the motionless train where the robbery had taken place. After that, more time had been wasted while he’d tried to organize the passengers and train crew into a manageable body that could supply him with information. The passengers were understandably excited and frantic, since some members of the gang had gone among them robbing them of small amounts of cash and what jewelry they’d had. Some of the women had been fondled and kissed, and more than one man had been clubbed with a revolver.
With patient questioning Longarm was finally able to get a picture of the gang. It took only a few descriptive words about the man who seemed to be the leader for Longarm to realize that he was dealing with Jack Shaw. His heart sank. Shaw was a handful, not only because he was tough and ruthless and intelligent, but because he’d been a lawman and could think like one. There was no question it was Shaw. The crew and passengers described a tall, spare man who looked, in the words of one passenger, “about as lean and hard as a skillet lid.” That could have described a lot of men, but the clincher was the birthmark on Shaw’s right cheek. It was a little bigger than a silver dollar, red in color, and roughly heart-shaped. More than one man had regretted calling Shaw Cupid or asking whose valentine he was. He had immediately drawn the conductor’s attention by the businesslike way he’d gotten into the mail car and then into the safe. The conductor said, “He went at it like he knew what was in there, that we were carrying a payroll. That man had advance word that there was a good chunk of money on this train. I’d stake my life on it.”
And more than one had. The bandits had attacked when the train had stopped for water at a regular stop along the way. The engineer and the conductor had been rash enough to draw their guns and fight. They hadn’t fought long, not against eight determined killers. After the outlaws had gotten the train stopped, Shaw and two other men had turned their attention to the mail car, leaving the rest of the gang to terrify the three coaches of passengers. At one point, when it appeared some of the women might be raped, the conductor had appealed to the man with the birthmark to intervene. He had, to the point of shooting at one of his own men and telling the rest in no uncertain terms that their job was to disarm the passengers and then to get outside and watch from defensive positions.
Longarm asked about the outlaw Shaw had shot. The conductor shrugged and said, “Oh, he wasn’t hurt all that bad. But it had a salutory effect on the rest of that murderous bunch. They hopped to their jobs Johnny quick and no mistake.”
But there had been a dead outlaw. The conductor thought that the engineer or the fireman had killed him. “I can’t say,” he explained. “The guns was goin’ off like firecrackers. You never heard such a racket in your life.”
The conductor was anxious to get his train into Globe and see about the wounded, several of whom were passengers. Longarm unloaded his horses, along with the provisions he’d thrown together hurriedly in Globe, and made ready to take up the trail. The small train he’d brought from Globe pushed forward and hooked onto the engine of the train that had been robbed. It would be slow going, but Longarm’s train would have to back all the way to Globe towing the other one.
But before he left, Longarm had the conductor hook into the telegraph wire again. There was a troop of Arizona Rangers outside of Phoenix, and he had the conductor wire their commander details of the robbery and word that he, Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, was taking up the chase and would try to leave sign along the way for them to follow. He told the Rangers to get to the site with all possible speed and follow him as best they could. He added, “Leader is Jack Shaw. Have reason to believe they will head south for Mexico, but can’t be sure.
Don’t think it wise to try and intercept their line of flight as Shaw very smart and unpredictable. Suggest you begin at scene of robbery.”
After that there was nothing to do but take up the chase. He added such provisions and water as he could out of the train larder and the freight cars. It was an incomplete and unwieldy load, but speed was of the essence. So he took what he could, threw it on a horse, and got underway. It was vital that he stay on a hot trail. Once it cooled, Shaw could make off in any direction. Longarm had no doubt that his final goal was the Mexican border, but there was absolutely no way of telling at what point he’d choose to cross. Notifying the law along the border would do no good, since they would be looking for a will-o’-the-wisp who might go silently and invisibly in any direction.
Longarm rode away from the train, knowing he had already lost valuable time, but still hurrying all he could. A short distance into the crags and gullies of the foothills of the Mescal Mountains he found the first two bodies. Both had been shot in the back. One of them had been Original Greaser Bob. The other one Longarm didn’t recognize, just as he hadn’t recognized the outlaw who’d been killed at the train. That was another habit of Jack Shaw’s. He seldom used the same men on consecutive holdups, or even the same men ever. Jack Shaw was a very careful and secretive man, and it was said that a lot of the men who went out on jobs with Shaw had a bad habit of never being seen again.
More than one sheriff or deputy had been heard to comment that Shaw was doing more to clean up the country than when he was wearing a badge. There was even talk that Jack Shaw wasn’t a man who liked to share, but just as quick as such word would get around, Shaw would pull a job with three or four partners and every one of them would swear by the man. Longarm had been a full thirty hours tracking the gang through the Mescals before he’d broken out into clear country. For a few miles the sign was plain. The party, now reduced to five men, had been heading due south. Then, in a patch of rock, the sign faded. Longarm spent a frustrating three hours until he located the bunch heading east. Then they’d turned south again and entered the Santa Teresa mountain range. If anything, it was rougher going than the Mescals. He lost his first horse there, a little dun that he’d known was too soft from livery life to stand the kind of pace he’d forced it to maintain. He turned the horse loose and tried to herd him down into a little draw which appeared to have grass and water. The dun was frightened, but the off-the-trail excursion led Longarm to an interesting discovery. He found an outlaw known as Hank Jelkco. It surprised Longarm because the man was known to be a smalltime cattle thief down along the border. Train robbery, as near as Longarm had heard, was a little out of his line. But the discovery of the body cut the party he was chasing down to four. Longarm had a pretty good idea that it was going to get smaller as it went along.
Jack Shaw didn’t like to share.
