area. Yet no attack came. He could almost feel the stares of the grangers on his back when the wagons reached flat prairie again. Relaxing in the saddle and rocking with the gait of his horse, Danner considered the only remaining spot from which Tuso could launch a surprise attack—the low hills near Richfield—and the weakest of the three possible sites. Danner searched for a reason why Tuso would choose this spot, but he was unable to come up with an answer that made any kind of sense.
Twisting in the saddle, Danner glanced at the string of wagons and off to both sides. In every direction an appalling flatness stretched to infinity, a sea of wheat broken only by the narrow and sometimes meandering road. The gentle rustling of the wheat and the dust swirling upward with gusts of wind, emphasized the powder dryness of the prairie. A sudden chill hit Danner then, straightening him in the saddle.
Tuso could easily destroy these wagons and discourage all further rebellion, by the simple process of setting fire to the prairie. A single spark would start a holocaust sweeping across the plains, devouring all living things. Danner recalled a prairie fire he had once outrun and now he found himself scanning the plains for smoke. Tuso just might try such a stunt.
Far ahead of their position the first of the low hills took form. By the time he reached the area Danner rode tensed for trouble. The road curved to his left for a quarter of a mile before cutting back north and heading straight into Richfield. If trouble came it would be on this quarter-mile strip where Richfield remained shut off from view. Tuso's bunch couldn't pick off the grangers without getting in closer to the wagons.
Pulling up along the north side of the trail, Danner watched the hills while one by one the heavy grain wagons passed him by. Then he sent his mount trotting along the trail. He passed the wagons and Richfield appeared in the distance, with no signs of horsemen in between.
Danner exhaled slowly, feeling a tiredness spread over his body. He tried to figure out why Browder's hardcases hadn't hit them. No answers came to him and he gave up thinking about it when they reached the edge of Richfield.
For three days Danner led train after train into Richfield, each time without incident. Nor did he see any of Browder's gunnies in Richfield. Two round trips Thursday morning just about finished the job. The final trip Thursday afternoon required only four wagons.
At the siding west of the depot Danner sat slackly in the saddle while the last wagon was weighed. Olie Swensen and McDaniel stood near the last of the boxcars, bent over a tally sheet. The last wagon moved off the scales and alongside the doorway of the boxcar. Several grangers climbed to the top of the heavy wagon and began shoveling the grain into the boxcar. A bogus door reached almost to the top of the doorframe, holding the grain inside. It was over the top of this bogus door that the grain had to be shoveled.
Danner counted thirty boxcars in the string, then tried some rough, mental arithmetic. At 116,000 pounds per car, the train held somewhere around three and a half million pounds of wheat—a fortune in golden grain, representing a year's earnings for most of the farm families within fifty miles of Richfield.
Dust enveloped the grangers working on top of the wagonload. They were near the bottom of the bed now and only their heads and shoulders showed above the high sideboards. Soon Danner heard shovels scraping the bottom. Then it was all over and the doorway was sealed off completely. Dismounting, Danner approached Swensen and McDaniel; then the four sweat-drenched and dusty grangers who had emptied the last wagon joined them.
McDaniel was the first to speak, his voice filled with enthusiasm. 'We've just about pulled it off, Jeff, and not a sign of trouble from Browder.'
Danner nodded thoughtfully.
'Huh,' Olie snorted. 'I'll do my cheering when I see the amount of the bank draft from those Junction City people.' He mopped his bald head with a shirt sleeve, then stared at Danner. 'When will they start this train on its way?'
Danner squinted up at the late afternoon sun, then checked his pocket watch. 'Afternoon eastbound will be here in about twenty minutes. Anytime after that, probably within half an hour to forty-five minutes.'
Olie nodded sourly.
The sounds of footsteps on cinders brought Danner around in time to see Wainright come up—a harried Wainright with lines of bitterness burned deeper than ever in his face. He nodded to them.
'I realize this is rather late notice,' Wainright said, 'but I'm afraid you'll have to cancel this shipment, or at least postpone it until I can get some railroad agents here and stop these robberies against the line.'
Danner shook his head. 'The shipment goes through as scheduled.'
'No.' Wainright's mouth thinned. 'On top of everything else, we had a train derailed and looted earlier this week. I've decided there'll be no more big shipments until this trouble is stopped and the men responsible are jailed. We can't risk another big loss.'
'We ship as scheduled,' Danner insisted.
Anger washed across the countenance of Wainright, deepening the harsh lines already there. 'The railroad won't be responsible for any losses if you ship against our warning. It'll be your loss, nor ours.'
'Now wait a minute,' Olie Swensen exploded. 'We can't accept the risk of losing a year's crops.'
Wainright shrugged. 'The choice is up to you. If you want the railroad to stand good for it, you'll just have to let us hold the train here until our agents stop these robberies.'
McDaniel stepped in front of Danner. 'What about it, Jeff?'
'We ship—at least, you and I do. The rest can do what they want to. You know how many days and wagons it took to get that wheat here and loaded. It would take just as many men and wagons and days to take it back, and we still would be faced with the problem of disposing of it. But if we ship and the train should fail to pass Spaulding or reach Junction City on time, we could get to it before very much wheat could be hauled off.'
'I don't like it,' Olie snorted. 'We agreed to this plan of yours, thinking the railroad would guarantee safe shipment. It seems to me we better let them keep the train on a siding for a few days until they will guarantee it.'
Danner turned to Wainright then. 'Will you accept responsibility for the load within a few days?'
'Not until these bandits are behind bars.'
'That could take weeks, or months,' Danner countered. 'You could go broke refusing to accept freight for that length of time.'
'That's the way it is,' Wainright insisted.
'I still don't like it,' Olie fumed.
Danner spoke coldly. 'Then back out of it and start unloading—
Olie glared, stomped around in a circle and glanced at the other grangers. None of them liked it, but they liked backing down even less. One by one they nodded to Olie. But Olie wasn't ready to give in yet. He mopped his bald scalp nervously and paced some more. Then he turned to Danner and nodded sourly.
'All right. You win. But Billy here,' and he jerked his thumb at McDaniel, 'and Mr. Gustafson will go with the train to Junction City. They'll sell the load and bring back the bank drafts.' A not so subtle challenge filtered into his voice. 'Is that agreeable with you?'
Danner silently cursed the day when he had stood up before the grangers to suggest the plan.
How much easier it would have been to have let them do what they wanted, while he shipped his grain to Junction City.
Then McDaniel protested with a sharp cry. 'Jeff's got a right to come along and ramrod things. This is all his plan. If it wasn't for him—'
'Forget it, Billy,' Danner snapped. 'I'm going to catch the four-twenty to Junction City and make connections there with a train to Topeka. I have some personal business to 'tend to in Topeka that will take several days.'
'Huh?' Surprise loosened McDaniel's heavy features. 'You never mentioned—'
'I just now decided,' Danner said. 'It's something I should have done several weeks ago.'
'Then it's all settled,' Olie nodded with obvious satisfaction.
Danner grasped McDaniel by the shoulder and shook him lightly, his tight face relaxing slightly. 'Take care of yourself, Billy. I'll see you in a few days, as soon as I get back from Topeka. Tell Lona where I've gone, so she won't worry or wonder, and that I'll explain it to her when I get back.'
'Sure, Jeff,' McDaniel said uncertainly.
