Counterfeit Lawman

CHAPTER SEVEN

Flat along the pile of steel rails, Isaac Scott found himself unable to grab for the six-shooter pinned under his body. He rolled onto his back, expecting to feel a dozen bullets slam through him.

“Don’t shoot,” he croaked out.

“Please, I need your help.”

Ike blinked and sat up. His hand rested on his pistol butt. Craning about, he saw Lily standing forlornly beside the flatcar, wringing her hands.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you get away from the railroad bulls?”

“They caught Mama. Please. You helped us before. We—I—need you.” The redhead looked up, her bright green eyes welling with tears. She reached out imploringly, then drew her hands back and crossed them over her breast. “You’re the first man who’s ever helped us without wanting anything from us.”

Ike’s heart went out to her, but something about the way she gestured made it seem as if she had practiced the moves, rehearsed the words, had expert direction to wring the most emotion possible from him. He remembered she and her mother were actresses.

“Climb up here and—” Ike lost his balance when the train surged. The engineer finally got up enough steam to pull out of the yard. He held out his hand to her. “Jump on. The train’s leaving.”

“Mama! She’s been caught again, and they’ll hurt her. That terrible man named Kinchloe trapped her trying to move our belongings.” Lily ran alongside the accelerating train. Ike tried to pull her aboard, but she yanked free and stepped away.

He stared at her as the train gathered speed. Without thinking, he rolled off the flatcar. With a thud, he landed hard. Only Lily tugging on him kept him from rolling the wrong way and being chopped to mincemeat under the grinding steel wheels. She helped him to his feet. When his eyes focused, he found himself impaled on her bright green stare. Lily clutched his arm and pulled him closer. Their bodies pressed together. Ike wasn’t sure if the pounding heart he felt was his or hers.

“You’ve got to help. You’re the only one in this terrible town that’s shown us the smallest bit of charity.”

“I saw the Grand Palace,” Ike said, still shaken from his fall. “And I think I saw Zachary. He was onstage and collected money and—”

“Please!” Lily shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Mama needs our help.”

Ike regained his senses and looked around, hunting for any sign that the railroad bulls had spotted them. Other than a few men obviously from train crews, no one stirred in the shadow-cloaked yard.

“Let’s go,” he said, not sure where. Lily steered him toward a large warehouse on the far side of the tangle of tracks and switches. He let her pull him along until even the dull ache behind his eyes faded away.

He might not be thinking as fast as needed, but he wasn’t in a daze any longer.

They slipped past a large, partially opened door. Tracks branched away from the main line. Three boxcars were pushed to the rear of the huge warehouse, sliding doors open and crates piled all around waiting to be loaded.

“How’d she get nabbed again?” he asked.

“Oh, pish and twaddle,” Lily said. “Excuse my language. She makes me so mad sometimes. We should have run like frightened rabbits, the way you did, but she hid and tried to rescue our scenery and luggage. That cyclorama is so important to her. It’s becoming too much of a nuisance, and we should leave it behind.”

“The thick roll of canvas? It has a background on it?”

“When it is properly installed, a spring mechanism unwinds from one side, pulls the scenery across the rear of the stage and rewinds on the other side. We perform according to the scenery. There’s a woodlands where I do a ballet dance. Madragora, it’s called. I dance like an insect sampling nectar from a flower. Mama choreographed it herself. Then—”

“Never mind,” Ike said. He steered her to a safer spot out of sight. The warehouse was strangely deserted. Freight trains left the rail yards at all hours, and he doubted Schofield was a man to allow slackers to work for him.

“You’re right. We must save Mama.” She smiled almost shyly as she looked up at him. “I’d like to show you the dance sometime. It’s quite . . . stimulating.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said, pulling her deeper into shadows as the tramping sounds of boots crunching against cinders outside alerted him to a half-dozen men entering the warehouse.

“What are we going to do?”

Ike shushed her and pulled her around stacks of boxes. The work crew passed by without noticing them, intent on their job of loading the crates into the three freight cars across the warehouse. Stepping lightly, he pulled Lily along behind. She tried to jerk free, but he refused to let her go.

“Are you sure she’s in here somewhere?” Ike held the woman close, feeling the heat of her body and the soft gusting of her breath against his cheek.

“I’m positive,” Lily said. “I saw her disappear through the far door. That one over yonder! Kinchloe and his sidekick followed her. There was no way they missed seeing her.”

“Smitty,” Ike said, distracted. The workers suddenly stopped loading the crates into the nearest boxcar when a freight handler cried out.

Ike forced Lily to sit on a box and silently admonished her to stay put. He made his way between the stacks to peer out at the boxcars. The man—it had to be their foreman—chewed out a worker who had dropped a large box.

“You’re drunk!” the foreman roared. “I oughta fire you right now. You coulda kilt the lot of us. Get that loaded into the car right now, and be more careful.”

“I ain’t drunk. I had one or two ’fore I showed up, but I ain’t drunk.”

Ike wondered at the rest of the men’s reactions. They all shied away from the foreman and the clumsy freight handler as if the two men had the pox. Huddled together, they whispered. A short man, visibly trembling, edged away farther, then ran. Ike had seen angry foremen before, but this one didn’t lash out with his fists. The fear caused by the man chewing out his probably drunk worker was out of proportion.

“Gimme a hand, if it’s that important,” the worker said. He bent and lifted, grunting as the heavy crate came off the floor.

“Be careful with it,” the foreman called. Ike saw another man inside the freight car. He was as nervous as those on the warehouse floor, but he came over and pointed. The crate was lifted up and then slid across the boxcar’s floor with a noisy, grating sound. Only when the careless worker backed off did the man inside heft the box. He disappeared. Ike heard the crate being set into place.

“Keep going. We got three cars to load in the next couple hours. The train leaves at dawn, and the freight’s gotta be on it. If it’s not, you’ll all regret the day you were born.” The foreman berated the others and got them working, moving long, slender crates from the pile.

Ike started to return to where he’d left Lily, then reconsidered. Nothing made a whit of sense to him. He slipped around to the rear of the mountain of crates being loaded. Peering at them, he saw illegible markings where a description of the contents should have been stenciled. Ike pressed his hand against one of the long, narrow crates, then pushed hard. He failed to budge it. Whatever was inside weighed more than a casual shove moved easily.

A pry bar laying on the floor gave him a chance to find out what was going on. Using the notched end, he lifted the wooden lid on the nearest box. When he had opened a space large enough to reach through, he moved closer. This was crazy. He ought to pull off the top, but the creaking nails as he opened the crate this far clawed at his senses. If the foreman heard the ruckus, he’d come to investigate.

Screwing up his courage, Ike reached inside the box. He recoiled, then settled down. His nerves were getting the better of him. He had touched something warm and stringy. He pulled out a handful of wood shavings, then pushed it back in. It took a little digging around blindly before he touched cold metal. With a heave, he pulled up whatever was being shipped to get a good look at it.

“Rifles,” he whispered. Hastily returning the weapon to its place, he closed the crate the best he could without making undue noise. Before he returned to Lily, he sought out the other crates like the one dropped by the careless workman.

The lid popped free when he used the pry bar. The smell making his nostrils flare confirmed his suspicion. Gunpowder. Ammunition. Lots of ammo, enough rounds to fight an entire war. Ike stepped away and did a quick count. If the crates between him and the railcars were all rifles, more than a thousand rifles were being shipped. The large amount of ammo would keep those rifles firing for a good, long time.

He hunkered down, thinking hard. Not knowing where the weapons and munitions were being shipped robbed him of any definite proof of what was going on. The only thing that came to mind was a supply for all the army posts along the rail line. This many rifles would arm a half-dozen cavalry posts, maybe more.

He had heard the Warm Springs Apaches had fled into Texas from an Arizona reservation. Soldiers could fight off those Apaches until they were captured and returned to distant homes. Or maybe the shipment was intended to cross the border into Mexico. They not only fought the Indians but sniped at each other across the Rio Grande, one army unit pitted against another, in the beginning of a new civil war. The official Mexican government had the means to buy enough guns to fill three freight cars.

And the rebels? Whoever backed them might have enough money, too.

Ike made sure the lid was secured on the ammo box before working his way back through the stacks of merchandise to where he had told Lily to wait. He sagged in despair when she wasn’t sitting quietly on the box where he had left her. Helping her was nothing less than a sure way of getting killed. His luck had been running high, with Marshal Granger finding the badge and the documents Augustus Yarrow carried. Confusing him for the deputy got Ike away from a lynch mob.

And what had he done but come right back onto the property of the man who had whipped up the frenzied mob? Ike scowled at that. If Granger was right and the railroad owner was responsible for hiring the mob, why? Why had Schofield taken such an interest in a man he thought was nothing more than a freeloader sneaking a ride on one of his freight cars?

Schofield had to suspect he was Yarrow and that the Arkansas deputy was hot on his trail. Ike remembered what the bookseller had said about the dime novels. That lawman hero went after crooks responsible for crimes not usually noticed by most folks.

Like smuggling guns? Lots of them?

The soft hiss of cloth caused Ike to whirl around. His hand flashed to his six-shooter. It was halfway out of the holster when he froze. Lily had taken refuge amidst taller stacks of boxes.

“You scared me,” he said, dropping the six-gun back into the holster and coming out of the gunfighter’s crouch. Ike was more surprised at the way he instinctively spun to throw down on the woman. Every move had been smooth, easy and quick. He was no gunfighter, but the motion had been natural, as if he had practiced for long hours.

It was a good thing he hadn’t fired. He had used a pistol often enough to know he wasn’t that good a shot. Spraying lead all over the warehouse might have endangered Lily, but he was more likely to have missed. The loud reports would have drawn the workmen like ants to a picnic. He didn’t have to be a genius to know how impossible fighting them all off would have been.

They didn’t even have to carry guns. All the foreman needed to do was crack open a crate and every last one of them would have a rifle along with enough ammo to ventilate him.

“You scared me,” she said, her hand going to her breast. “I don’t like being alone. Not in here, not with Mama out there somewhere.”

Ike looked over his shoulder, as if the crew by the freight cars were sneaking up on him. He heaved a deep breath and took Lily by the hand.

“It’s dangerous even being in this warehouse.”

“Then let’s find my mother and get out!” Lily jerked free. “You don’t have to help us. You . . . you can go on your way. You were hiding on that flatcar to get away.”

Ike wasn’t going to deny it. He wasn’t quite sure why he had let her pull him off. Staring at her, he tried to remember a more beautiful woman and failed. Her eyes flashed, and her cheeks burned with emotion. Her auburn hair was in wild disarray. If an angel came to earth, he thought this was the way she would look.

“I don’t even know your name. I heard your ma call you Lily.”

“Lily Sinclair, sir. And my mother’s name is Catherine Sinclair. Well, not exactly. That’s not really her name.”

“What?”

“Her given name’s Daisy.” She smiled winningly. “She’s Daisy, and she named me Lily. But Catherine is her stage name. She’d considered something French. Sandrine, perhaps. That’s quite exotic, but—”

“Miss Sinclair, I don’t care about any of that. All I want to do is rescue your ma and get out of here before we get mixed up in a mess beyond solution.”

“You ought to be on the stage yourself, sir. You are overly dramatic, if I may say so.” She studied him closely. “Dramatic and quite romantic, actually. Your heroism is not pretend or playacting, is it? You are quite brave.”

“Where did you see her enter the warehouse? Back there?” He pointed deeper into the towers of crates.

“Yes, back there. I think. She ducked through a door, and the railroad detectives trailed behind. I am sure they caught her. There wasn’t any way they missed seeing her, they were so close on her heels.”

Ike herded her in front of him. They wove in and out of the stacks until they reached the far back wall, where a door stood partially open. A cool night breeze worked past the door frame, causing the door to sway to and fro fitfully.

“Yes, here, definitely. She . . .”

Ike ignored Lily rambling on about seeing her mother come this very way. A familiar sight poked out. He pointed.

“Our cyclorama!” Lily started to run to it, but he held her back. He pressed his finger against his lips to silence her, then drew his six-gun and advanced.

She pressed close behind. He knew nothing he said or threatened would keep her out of danger’s way. Better that he knew where she was than have her running around making things worse.

With a quick whirl around the corner, he leveled his gun. Again he lowered the weapon and returned it to his holster. Lily pushed past him.

“Mama, you frightened me so!” The two women embraced.

Ike kicked at the cyclorama and saw their luggage and other gear tossed about haphazardly.

“Why’d you leave me behind like that?” Catherine Sinclair demanded. “I thought you’d run off with . . . him.” She eyed Ike. A mocking smile came to her ruby lips. He saw what Lily would look like in another twenty years. “Not that I’d blame you. Give him a bath, a haircut and a shave and he’d clean up nicely, I think. But the mustache must go. Definitely, it must be shaved off.”

“We have to get out of here right now,” Ike said. He turned to retrace the path to the door, but Catherine caught his arm and spun him around.

“Not without our props, sir, not without our costumes! The Sinclair sisters will not be denied their performance.”

“Sisters?” He looked to Lily. She smiled weakly and shrugged her shoulders.

“The cyclorama is the pièce de résistance of our act. That means—”

“I know what it means, and there’s no way we’re lugging that canvas roll out of here. It must weigh a hundred pounds. More.”

“Well, then at the very least we must retrieve our costumes. There are only three steamer trunks of them. We also need our personal belongings. Two carpetbags are filled with those. And our makeup kits, of course.” As she spoke, Catherine pointed.

“We’re leaving it all. If we try to drag any of it out of the warehouse, we’ll be caught. Do you remember how I found you the first time?”

“Why, yes, you found us delightful, I am sure,” Catherine said.

“I found you and Lily chained up like animals,” he said harshly. “If the railroad bulls catch you again, it’ll be worse, much worse.”

“Well, that may be,” Catherine said, “but we simply cannot do without our props.”

“And costumes,” Lily added. “What ever would we do without them? We don’t have a penny to our names to replace what’s taken years to accumulate. Leaving behind the very things that make us our daily bread isn’t possible. Not at all.”

“My—Lily—is right. Everything that is for our livelihood is locked up in this warehouse.” She batted her eyelashes at him and smiled winningly.

Ike looked from the older woman to her daughter. Lily tried to look innocent but was close to laughing out loud. She had seen her mother use this ploy on men before.

“How did you avoid the railroad detectives that trailed you here? Your daughter said Kinchloe and his henchmen must have nabbed you.”

“I knew they followed me, so I took refuge in an empty crate. I pulled down the lid and peered out until I was certain they had left. It’s a good thing I haven’t performed my ablutions of late or applied perfume. They would have sniffed me out like bloodhounds.” She made a face. “They are nothing more than mongrels. Yes, mutts, worthless dogs who—”

“Sir,” cut in Lily, “Mama is right about our belongings. They are valuable. We can’t leave anything behind. If we don’t take what we can now, we stand to lose it all.”

“This storage room’s not locked up,” Ike pointed out. He swept his arm around to show how wide open the warehouse was. “They can’t use any of your costumes themselves. No one’s going to buy your clothing. We clear out, and when they find you’re gone, they will dump it.”

“Dump it! No!” protested Catherine. “They can’t! Everything we own is valuable.”

“I think he means we hang around and wait to see what they do with our props and other belongings. If they throw it out, we wait for the right time and reclaim it. That’s a safer way, isn’t it?” Lily batted her eyes in his direction and dimpled enough to set his heart racing.

“That’s it exactly. Now let’s get out of here and find somewhere safe to wait them out.” Ike felt increasingly uneasy. The hairs on the back of his neck popped up and a chill passed down his spine. He spun around, going for his six-gun. He had it out and searching for a target when a bullet ripped past his arm.

The shooter was atop a stack of boxes.

“A railroad bull!”

Ike wasn’t sure if he yelled the warning or if Lily did. He was too busy trying to get a good shot at the detective. A second round came his way before he felt secure enough to squeeze his own six-shooter’s trigger. Both the cinder dick’s and his rounds missed their targets, but his caused the bull to duck back. From the raucous sound that followed, the man had fallen off his perch and crashed into something wooden on the far side.

A stream of blue cussing filled the warehouse. The man screamed about getting splinters in his back.

“What’ll we do?” Catherine clung to his arm. He shook her off.

“That way. Run. Get out of here and hide.” He grabbed Lily and pulled her along behind him as he tried to reach the door. Catherine blundering about would distract the men who had to be swarming in their direction, drawn by the gunfire.

“Mama, not that way. You can’t—”

“Outside. Get out of here. I’ll decoy them away from you and your ma.”

Ike hesitated as he looked at her. He pulled her close, planted a big kiss on her lips, then pushed her away. She looked startled, recovered her composure, smiled and then ran out the door.

If Ike was going to die, the taste of her lips against his was a way to check out a bit better than he ever had expected. Two detectives rounded the stack of crates. Ike fired point-blank at them. Then he and the ladies lit out in opposite directions, twisting this way and that through the freight waiting to be shipped.