05 Ironhorse (11 page)

“Maybe it’s just some Indians don’t like train coaches,” I said. “Shooting at the little houses on wheels.”

“Might be.”

“Some superstitious Comanche, thinking this coach is some kind of bad sign,” I said.

“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “Seems like maybe we’re dealing with a lone shooter, though, Comanche or otherwise.”

“Yeah, there’d be more bullets coming, that’s for sure.”

“There would.”

Another shot rang out, followed by another.

“Same rifle, all right,” Virgil said.

Another shot hit the platform rail.

“Whoever it is,” I said, “they’re peppering the hell out of us.”

We coasted for a bit longer, and there were no more shots being fired.

“Maybe they’re done,” I said.

We were traveling slow, so slow I thought the coach was going to stop.

“Maybe we passed them by, maybe—”

Virgil gave me a sharp nudge to my shoulder; he heard something.

“Uphill platform,” Virgil said quietly.

I turned around and trained my attention to the door between the platform and us. I did not say another word. I listened. Except for the sound of the wheels on the track, it was quiet. I heard nothing, but Virgil had heard something, and it appeared there were some others, or somebody, now on board with us.

36

THE DOOR ON
the uphill end of the coach was closed shut, and if there were now others aboard, we could not see them. We could not see much of anything. Even though the clouds had for the moment parted and some moon was out, the coach was dark. I could make out only vague outlines: the seats, the windows, and the dark movement of the land passing by the windows. I stayed down low to the floor with one eye peeking around the coach seats, focused toward the darkness up the aisle. The coach was starting to roll faster. We would need to work the brake or we could, and most surely would, get rolling too fast downhill, too fast out of control.

I whispered, “Need to get on that brake, Virgil.”

Just as I finished speaking, the door opened. Virgil did not react by taking a shot, and neither did I. Virgil would never shoot into the dark. He would shoot only when he knew whom, or at least what, he was shooting. Regardless, whoever opened the door did not step into the door frame; the open door was just that, an open door, and whoever opened it remained—at least for the moment—off to the side. We continued to pick up speed. A breeze was now moving through the open doors as the coach leaned slightly on an eastward turn downhill.

“Who goes there?” a deep, raspy voice called out.

We knew that voice. The voice was that of Bloody Bob Brandice. Bob caught a piece of lead in his throat prior to going to prison in Huntsville.

“Virgil Cole.”

There was a long pause before Bob replied. His voice was low and quiet.

“Virgil Cole?” Bob grumbled.

“That’s right.”

There was another long pause.

“Bullshit.”

“No bullshit, Bob.”

Bob paused again, even longer than the time before. He had heard Virgil say his name out loud, and this gave him pause.

“Virgil Cole,” Bob said slowly. “I heard it was you. When I heard it was the great and mighty Virgil Cole, that you were the lawman aboard, I thought, well, if it ain’t my lucky day.”

“I wouldn’t be too reliant on luck, Bob,” Virgil said.

“Looked around for you for a spell, Cole, when I got out. Never laid eyes on ya,” Bob said, “and now this.”

“Now this,” Virgil replied.

“Now this,” Bob said again.

“Last I heard you was west in mining country, suckled up with some lilac whore.”

Virgil did not reply.

Bob laughed, a raspy, snarly laugh.

“I’ll be go to hell,” Bob said.

“I don’t believe you have a choice, Bob,” Virgil said.

Virgil stood center aisle with his shoulders facing squarely toward the door.

There was a long silence, and Bob said slowly, “Fuckin’ Virgil goddamn Cole.”

“That’s right,” Virgil said, “and Everett Hitch.”

Bob laughed again, this time a loud, booming, raspy laugh.

“What the fuck you two tamers doing?” Bob said. “I heard there was some law on this night train, but I’d’a never figured it’d be a couple a right-minded saddle tramps the likes of you two. But it goes to figure, lilac bubble-bath do-gooders would be sitting on velvet seats, ’specially you, Cole.”

Virgil whispered to me, “Any second now.”

37

BOB LAUGHED LOUDLY
again. He was enjoying himself. I suppose this encounter had been a long time coming for Bob, considering Virgil was the one responsible for the lead in Bob’s throat and his however many years spent in Huntsville.

“Yeah, you got soft,” Bob said. “Probably eating cakes and candies, too.”

Just like Virgil said he would, Bob stepped out quick. He managed to get a shot off, but Virgil shot him, twice. Bob dropped his rifle in the aisle and staggered back to the platform rail. He leaned on the rail like he was bellying up to the bar.

“You fuck,” Bob said. “Aww . . .”

“Slow us down, Everett,” Virgil said.

The wind was moving through the coach, and we were rolling pretty fast now. I thought about what Whip had said, about going too fast. I stepped out onto the downhill platform and turned the brake wheel. The brakes engaged, making a screeching, grinding sound, and sparks shot out from the undercoach. I let up some, maintaining a pressure that was firm but not too hard. The last thing we needed was for the chain to break. I looked back through the coach. Virgil was standing square in the aisle, facing Bob. Bob was still standing next to the platform rail. After a moment, the coach started to slow.

Virgil took a few steps toward Bob and stopped.

“What are you doing on this train?” Virgil said.

“I ain’t on the train. Fact is, I’m in a goddamn coach with two holes in me ’cause you just shot me.”

“You shot first.”

“I did at that.”

“You had a choice.”

“I did at that,” Bob said, “and a goddamn good choice I made. If I knowed for a fact it was you, you lilac son of a bitch, and Hitch I was shootin’ at, I would’a took better aim! Fucking do-gooders, the both of ya.”

We were now traveling slowly, but the wind was whipping through the coach. I stepped into the coach just behind Virgil.

“Hell, fuck,” Bob said quietly. “Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.”

Bob turned slightly, facing directly toward us. It looked as though he was shot high in the chest and high in the side. Which was consistent with Virgil’s style and pattern, tight and high. Virgil always shot high on the body. As long as I had been with Virgil, I never saw him put a bullet in a man’s gut.

Bob leaned over and spit. “Shit.”

He was holding his side with his left hand just under his armpit. His other hand held on to the platform rail, and his body moved ever so slightly with the rhythmic side-to-side motion of the coach as we continued rolling.

“Y’all,” Bob said, “are most likely teetotalers, too, I ’magine.”

Bob moaned and leaned back on the rail. A blast of wind whipped through the coach, and the door between Bob and us slammed shut, and the remaining glass in the door shattered. In an instant Bob was no longer standing there. Virgil and I moved quickly up the aisle with guns ready. We opened the door and stepped onto the platform, but Bob was gone.

“Stop us, Everett,” Virgil said. “Get us stopped.”

We were still rolling pretty fast. I turned the brake wheel some more, and we started to slow again, but I had to take it easy.

“What the hell was he doing?” I said. “Don’t make good sense, don’t seem practical, Bob coming up this track, Virgil.”

“Good sense ’n practical don’t have nothing to do with Bloody Bob Brandice.”

Virgil did not want to take any chances with Bloody Bob being on the loose. Since it was, in fact, Bloody Bob we’d encountered, Virgil didn’t want to leave him to do more of what Virgil knew firsthand Bob was capable of doing.

“I guess the fact we’d been identified as being on this train and the fact there was a lone coach drifting down the track was good enough for Bob to start shooting,” I said.

“That’s right,” Virgil said. “And if it just happened to be nuns or children he shot, so be it. Makes no difference to Bloody Bob who he shoots. If he didn’t get me and he killed somebody else, he’d just put ’em on a spit and have ’em for late supper.”

38

VIRGIL WANTED BOB
done. It seemed with the two high holes in his upper body Bob would not survive, but Virgil knew Bob was a tough man. Bob had survived more than a few deadly skirmishes, including a previous one with Virgil. Eleven years earlier outside of Amarillo, Virgil shot Bob in the neck.

“You think he was just coming after you, and that’s that?”

Virgil shook his head.

“Bob’s bloodthirsty,” Virgil said. “Like a mountain lion. He knew what was south was of no interest to him. North proposed promise, proposed possibilities.”

“Killing you being one of those posed possibilities.”

“The other, getting to the kingpin, staying on the trail of the one-armed preacher, the conductor culprit who most likely left him. But Bob’s a killer of the first order. He didn’t know it was me in this coach, too dark to determine that for sure, but he didn’t care.”

Virgil picked up the rifle Bob had dropped on the floor.

“He didn’t have a pistol. He’d have come at me with it if he did,” Virgil said. “He just had this Henry rifle he dropped. This Henry and a big-size bone-handled knife. He’s got his knife for sure.”

It started raining again, not hard rain, but it was coming down. By the time I got the coach stopped, we were at least a quarter of a mile away from where Bob had dropped over the rail. I secured the brake wheel with the foot latch, and we stepped off the platform and into the falling rain.

“You go up that side of the track, I’ll go up this side,” Virgil said. “And Everett? I don’t have to tell you, but I will anyway. With or without the Henry rifle, Bloody Bob Brandice is a slippery snake.”

The rain started to pick up some as Virgil and I took off, walking up the track. It was sure enough dark out, but Virgil and I had plenty of experience in the dark, and we both had good night vision. The peripheral vision being the key, looking at everything as opposed to looking at something, was the best method for getting around in the dark.

Virgil moved up on the west, and I was on the east. We stayed to the woods as we worked our way up the easement.

After about a hundred or so furlongs I could hear the Kiamichi to my right. It was a swift section of the river, and the moving water got louder as I kept walking. After a couple of hundred feet farther, a piece of the rapid river became visible and the water was crashing loud. I walked a bit farther and felt I was about to the place where Bob dropped off the coach platform.

I did not see any sign of Bob on or near the track. I kept walking, and the land I was walking on leveled out with the tracks. Still there was no sign of Bob. I figured by now I would see faint movement, ever so slight movement, and find Bob sprawled out on the track, dying.

I was sure I’d see that kind of movement I’d seen many times in the dark; movement with a little life left but waning, dying, like a wounded deer or Indian, or street gunman. On one hand, here in this life, but on the other, his life was slipping away, almost gone.

But Bob was nowhere to be seen. It started to rain hard again. The sound of the rushing river mixing with the rain made it hard for me to hear my footsteps. I stopped and turned around and turned around again, thinking I might see Bob, but saw nothing other than dark rain. I walked up and stepped over the east side rail and kept walking north. The railroad ties were slippery with the fresh rain on the oily timbers. I continued walking up the track. I looked over to see if I would see Virgil but saw nothing.

I kept walking, thinking I had to be past the spot where I would find Bob, when I stepped on something.

I stepped back quickly, not sure what I had stepped on. I looked down and could not see clearly, but I could tell it was Bob’s beaded buckskin satchel, the parfleche pouch Emma had mentioned, but there was no sign of Bob.

I picked up the pouch, and when I did I saw movement out of the corner of my right eye, toward the river. I stepped over the rail and moved toward the woods, toward the direction of the movement. I looked back to the west side, looking for Virgil, but I did not see him. I walked toward the tree line next to the river, and the sound of the white water got louder as I got closer. The trees were thick. I thought I saw movement again but was not sure. Knowing Bob still had his knife, it most assuredly would not be a smart move on my part to walk into the trees. I backed up toward the track, and within a moment I heard.

“Everett.”

I turned. It was Virgil coming down the track from the north. I walked toward him in the steady rain. He had his coat collar up and his hat snugged down low. Water was pouring off the brim.

“You see anything?” he said.

“I think he’s in those woods there by the creek, but I don’t know for sure. I found this.”

I handed Virgil the parfleche pouch.

“Not much inside. I felt some cartridges, a whetstone, I think some jerky.”

“As much as that goulash we ate in the Hungarian café at Dallas depot has worn off, I wouldn’t eat that jerky,” Virgil said. “Could be backstrap off his kinfolk.”

I was not able to make out the expression on Virgil’s face, but it was clear by his body language that he was not satisfied with the situation.

“We’re not going in those woods,” Virgil said.

Virgil stood and looked east toward the woods. He called out into the dark, rainy night.

“Bob Brandice! If you do not die in those woods, rest assured I will kill you!”

39

WHEN WE GOT
back to the coach it was still raining hard, maybe even harder since we had left the place where we’d been looking for Bob. I was starting to feel the wet cold in my bones, and I know Virgil was feeling it, too. We had been waterlogged for hours, and I was hungry. I know Virgil was as hungry, too, but he would not say so. If food were an option or if dry and comfortable were an option, he’d cover the option, but there was no need to ponder the possibility of food or staying very dry. Thankfully, though, after we’d traveled for twenty minutes or so the rain started letting up, and we could see a piece of the moon.