nearly out of cigarettes. Clarence Middleton said to buy him a pack too. A train whistle squealed and Hanford Mobley said that might be the train for Tampa and called to Matthews to hurry and catch up and he and Clarence set off at a jog.
“Think it’ll rain?” the clerk said as he handed over the two packs of smokes and laughed at his own lank humor. Roy Matthews grabbed up the cigarettes and threw a bill on the counter and hastened from the store just as the rain assumed a new intensity. At the next corner he had to wait for a few cars to go by and the train whistle blew again and he saw a locomotive huffing steam on one of the sidings in preparation to move out, but the train was a long freight carried facing north, not the passenger transport to Tampa.
And then through the rainy gloom he saw Bob Baker. With him were three other men, none of whom he recognized except to know with absolute certainty that they were cops too. They were coming from the parking lot at the south end of the station and he figured they must have only just arrived. All four were without raincoats and all carrying shotguns and keeping the breeches dry under their arms. Roy Matthews backed away from the curb and stood under the awning fronting a real estate office at his back and slipped his hand under his coat to the Colt automatic and pushed the safety off with his thumb.
The cops paused at the far end of the depot and conferred and every man checked his pocketwatch. Now Bob Baker pointed and two of the cops went off around the corner of the building and Roy Matthews knew he had sent them to cover the depot’s trackside doors. As Bob Baker and the other cop started for the front of the station a man approached them with his hands deep in his raincoat pockets and his head down against the rain and he didnt see them until he was almost on them and then he saw the guns and stopped short and backed against the depot wall. Bob Baker said something to him and gestured for him to go on and the man nodded jerkily and hurried away. Now Bob Baker and the other cop paused at a depot window and the other cop carefully peered inside and then turned to Bob Baker and nodded and they both checked their watches yet again.
And now here came the store clerk around the corner and clutching an umbrella and looking intent. His face brightened on seeing Roy Matthews under the awning. “Hey, mister!” the clerk said, and held up a sheaf of dog- eared dollar bills. “You give me a ten-dollar bill and probably thought it wasn’t but a one. Here’s you change.” Roy Matthews barely glanced at him before turning his attention back to the other side of the street. The clerk stood there with the rain running off his umbrella and his handful of money extended toward Roy Matthews and nothing in his experience told him what to do now.
Bob Baker and the other cop stood waiting by the front door and Baker kept looking from the front door to the pocketwatch in his hand. The freight whistle keened again and let a great blast of steam and the locomotive lurched forward and the couplings of the cars behind sent up a great clash and clamoring of iron and the cars shuddered one after the other as the train began to move. Roy Matthews saw a pair of men scurry from the bushes fifty yards south of the depot and clamber up onto the side of an empty stockcar. The bigger of the men clung to a slat and struggled with the door and now pushed it partly open and both tramps slipped into the car. The door slid back again but remained open just a little.
Roy Matthews walked quickly down the street and when he was a block north of the depot he jogged across the road and scaled a low wooden fence as lithely as a cat and dropped into the railyard. He loped to the siding on which the freight was slowly rumbling past and ran alongside the cars and looked over his shoulder and saw the cattlecar with the partly open door coming up behind him. He half-expected to hear the warning shout of railroad bulls but this was no big city railyard plagued by tramps and hobos and no warning shout came nor did any bull appear. The train was picking up speed now and here came the car he wanted and as he ran alongside he grabbed a slat near the door and swung his feet up and planted them against the edge of the door and he pushed hard and the door slid open enough for him to wriggle himself into the car feet-first.
The two tramps were standing up and looking at him as he lay gasping on the floor. “Pretty neat trick, mister,” the bigger one of them said. “But this here car’s spoke for, so you can just roll your ass right back out again.” The floor of the car was littered with dirty hay and smelled of cowshit.
Roy Matthews sat up, his breath slowing, and looked at him.
“Ah hell, Bosco,” the other tramp said. “It aint no need to be like that. It’s plenty room for him.”
“Fuck him,” Bosco said, and advanced on Roy Matthews. “Now you gone jump out or I gone throw you out?”
Roy Matthews stood up and stepped away from the open door and pulled out his .45 and cocked the hammer. He pointed the gun in Bosco’s face and said, “Now you gone jump out or I gone kick your dead ass out?”
Bosco stood fast.
“I dont care either fucken way,” Matthews said. “I’ll count three.”
“Hold on,” Bosco said.
Roy Matthews said, “One…”
Bosco raised a hand as though he might deflect the bullet as he stepped back and snatched up his bindle. He went to the door and stared out at the passing world a moment and then glanced at Matthews and then tossed his bindle and leaped after it and was gone.
Roy Matthews put up his pistol and told the other tramp he was welcome to stay. The tramp said he’d as soon stick with his buddy if it was all the same to him. Matthews shrugged and said to suit himself. As the tramp took up his bindle and went to the door Matthews asked if he knew where this freight was headed. The tramp said Jacksonville.
Roy Matthews smiled. “No shit?”
“No shit,” the tramp said. Then looked out of the car and picked his spot and jumped.
Hanford Mobley thought their luck was running just swell. According to the ticketseller the Tampa train would be arriving in eighteen minutes. The man punched out three tickets and passed them through the arched window to Mobley and then counted out his change.
As Mobley scooped up the money he heard Clarence say “Shit!” He turned and saw Clarence leap over a bench and bolt for the trackside door and he was looking back over his shoulder just as Freddie Baker came in though the doorway with a shotgun at port arms. Clarence turned face-front just in time for Freddie to hit him full in the face with the stock of the shotgun like a boxer throwing a right cross and the sound was like a shingle splitting. Clarence’s feet ran out from under him and for an instant he was completely supine in the air before the crashed to the floor like a full sack of feed and with an explosion of breath.
Waiting passengers scattered shrilling from their benches like birds flushed from a roost.
“Duck down, mister!”
Mobley heard the words clearly through a woman’s scream and caught a sidelong glance of the ticketseller dropping out of sight behind the counter and he knew the voice even before he turned and saw Bob Baker pointing a pump action .12 gauge at him from a distance of ten feet. And beside him Joel Padgett with a shotgun pointed at him too.
“You can live or you can die, sonny,” Bob Baker said. “You dont put them hands way up right now, I know which it be.”
Hanford Mobley gave an instant’s thought to making a fight of it, to jumping aside as he drew his piece and they’d just see who lived and who died—and then remembered that the safety of his .45 was on and knew he’d never fire a shot before Bob Baker and Joe blew his head off.
He put his hands way up.
The store clerk came across the street to the depot to see what all the excitement was about and learned that the Palm Beach County high sheriff and his deputies had just captured two members of the notorious Ashley Gang. A porter told him that the sheriff had asked the little one over there getting the chains put on him hand and foot where the other two were and the bandit had said it’d be a cold day in hell before he ever ratted.
The clerk presented himself to the Palm Beach sheriff and said he’d seen something that probably didnt have anything to do with this but he thought he ought to know it anyway—and he told Sheriff Baker about the man he’d seen jump aboard the freight train.
Fifteen minutes later Sheriff Baker had contacted the Duval County Sheriff and given him a thorough description of Roy Matthews—who was yet but an unidentified suspect. The Duval sheriff said he’d post men at the freight yard to watch for the train’s arrival and agreed not to arrest the suspect right away if they saw him. Rather, they would do as Sheriff Baker suggested and follow him to see if he might lead them to the fourth member of the holdup team. The Duval sheriff said he’d be in touch as soon as he had something to report.
Bob Baker now borrowed a car from the high sheriff of Hills-borough County so the Padgett brothers could
