Counterfeit Lawman

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

You’re a hero.” Lily Sinclair snuggled closer, her grip on Ike’s arm leaving red finger marks. She rested her cheek on his shoulder, then pulled back. “Sorry. I don’t want to get cosmetics on your coat.”

Ike laughed. He was so dirty after the gunfight with Lester Buchanan and traipsing through the desert that it might take two baths to get all the grime off. Then he glanced down and saw another problem, one that Lily knew all too well being an actress. She’d rubbed the makeup from her face and slowly turned from an old lady into a young one. Her bare cheek glowed with vitality unexpected in any septuagenarian.

He saw that her wig was askew from her saving him from too much notice back at the Eagle Pass depot. With a tentative touch, he pushed it back into place to hide a strand of her red hair poking out from under.

“We have to be careful. Schofield will kill me if he gets the chance.” Ike hesitated to add that Lily was also in danger. Even if Schofield hadn’t recognized her, she had come to Ike’s defense.

“It’s not him who worries me,” Lily said. “His right-hand man, Kinchloe, saw me up close when he chained us in the warehouse. He never got a really good look at me on the platform because I tried to keep my face turned away, but he knows. I know he knows.”

Ike touched his lips and remembered the kiss Lily had given him.

“Good tactics the way you distracted . . . him,” he said.

“I know how to play to the audience, and I also know when to focus attention on other actors. I am well-known as a generous actress when it comes to sharing the marquee billing.” She looked smug and self-satisfied as she spoke. “That was a difficult performance because we were center stage and neither of us should have been in the spotlight.”

“Getting back on the train was a mistake,” he said after a long consideration. But events flowed along like a river over flood level. Fighting the flow was possible only if a course had been laid out in advance. Ike was only too aware that he was a leaf swept on the river, going wherever the current took him. That had to change.

“What else could we have done? It was apparent from what the Eagle Pass marshal said that you weren’t at the end of your trip. And for the audience to buy me as your mama, getting back on board was all we could do.”

Ike chuckled, remembering how Lily had outmaneuvered Schofield into revoking his invitation to travel in his Pullman car. An old woman chattering about her toddler son’s every picayune incident as if it were a major milestone in the history of the world convinced any railroad executive used to being the center of attention that he’d made a mistake with his offer. She drew too much attention for both of them to simply disappear.

The situation became perilous, in spite of this minor victory. It’d have to change. He was tiring of looking over his shoulder, waiting to be caught—or worse. Ike stared at Lily and realized she was in more danger because of everything she’d gone through.

“Where’s your mother?”

She looked up, bright green eyes flashing. Her lips thinned, and she shook her head as if denying something he hadn’t even said.

“Mama is still in San Antonio. She refused to leave the cyclorama and our costumes and . . . our lives.”

“Did you intend to leave her behind?” Ike saw the answer in the way she crossed her arms and silently folded into herself. Lily had wanted to leave and had done so. Her mother was too tightly bound emotionally and professionally to their possessions. For the first time, Ike wished Lily were more like her mother. If she had stayed in San Antonio, she’d be safe. Aboard the train, death lurked with every click of the wheels and whine of the steam whistle.

He turned at the sound of someone tromping forward from the back of the car. Ike touched the butt of his six-shooter when he recognized Smitty. Schofield’s henchman looked down at them and sneered, but he never slowed. He disappeared through the door leading forward to the first passenger car.

“They check on the engineer,” Lily said. “It’s as if threatening him can make the engine pull faster.”

Ike wondered if that was the real reason.

“Did you get a look at the other cars? Behind Schofield’s Pullman? I think I saw a few freight cars, but I haven’t had much chance to be sure.”

“There are three freight cars, then the caboose. That’s not so unusual. One might be a mail car, or Schofield can be shipping important cargo north.”

“This isn’t his track,” Ike said. “And I overheard him saying . . .” He dropped his face down again as Smitty swung along the aisle, returning to the distant Pullman car. Ike waited until the railroad bull was gone, then looked over his shoulder to be sure. He had the feeling that locking eyes with the gunman would spark an immediate showdown.

“What did you hear, Deputy?”

“Ike,” he said. “Only call me Ike.”

“Very well,” Lily said, grinning. “I love playing out a secret plot in real life rather than doing it on stage. This way I don’t know how it’s going to end. With a script, unless I improvise, of course, there’s always a conclusion penned by some loco writer.” She pursed her lips as she thought. “It hardly seems like much of a script now that Schofield and the others, all the passengers on the train, really, know your true identity.”

Ike let her ramble on. If anything, it bothered him that he didn’t know how this was going to end. Dealing with men like Schofield too often ended in disaster. Ike had known Augustus Yarrow for only a short while. Dead. And he had never even met Gregorio. Dead. Adding himself to that list wasn’t something to relish.

A quick look at Lily made him all the more eager to settle matters right away. She blundered into trouble, considering it all a lark. Life wasn’t a stage play, but she played out her role thinking there’d always be a happy ending.

“Stay here,” he said, standing and spinning around her. He looked down into her bright eyes. For a change, they looked up at him without guile. She reached up and pressed her hand against his chest.

“Be careful, Ike.” Her lips hardly moved.

He stepped into the aisle, trying to decide which way to go. Since Smitty and the others were at the back of the train, he went forward. He pushed through the doors into the lead passenger car. Most of the men here slept, heads propped against the wall and snoring. One man in particular made more noise than the clacking of train wheels along the rails. Ike opened the front door, only to run into the conductor. The man pushed him back into the car.

“No call for you to go up and bother the engineer. Not unless you want to take a turn shoveling coal into the boiler.”

“My leg cramped up. All I wanted was to get some exercise.”

The conductor looked at him and cocked his head to one side. “You looking for another robber to run to ground?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Ike said. He had no quarrel with the conductor, but he wanted the man to look the other way while he poked around.

“There’s no one left aboard who looks suspicious.” The conductor eyed him significantly, obviously putting Ike into that very category. “I never got a good look at the robber you shot down,” the conductor said. “But I don’t remember anybody getting off the train there. Every trip up to Marfa, I count heads. One less is all there was after we pulled out of Eagle Pass.”

“I see. That must be the man who—”

“That accounts for the robber. Nobody else.” The conductor started to press him, but Ike feigned a leg cramp. “If we got another outlaw on the train, he’s biding his time.” The conductor shook his head vigorously, denying any of the remaining passengers fit the description of another robber. “You’re wasting your time prowling around.”

“Better go set myself down again. The leg’s getting worse.” Ike needed to scout out everything the railroad owner did to better make plans for bringing him to justice.

“You need help?” The conductor started to support him.

“No thanks. It doesn’t hurt as much if I put some weight on it.” Ike hobbled away, left the car, then paused. Going back to the Pullman car gained him nothing. Even spinning the tallest tale ever, he wouldn’t get past Schofield and his detectives to see what was in the freight car just beyond.

All that awaited him once he was out of sight of the other passengers was a bullet through the heart.

He swung around and climbed the iron rung ladder to the roof. The sudden gust of wind as he poked his head over the roof overhang almost knocked him from the train. Ike pulled his hat down more firmly and tried again. Ready for the blast of air this time, he wasn’t bowled over. He climbed the rest of the way and lay flat on the roof of the third passenger car for a moment, then got to his feet. Walking along the roof took some skill. He wished he had learned to break broncos instead of dealing seconds off a deck of cards. Such a job required balance and anticipation of odd, unexpected jerking movement this way and that. Not for the first time he recognized how much he had missed. This was a part of his life totally lacking, having spent most of his life in Houston doing citified things.

Mostly he had done things sure to get him arrested by the likes of Augustus Yarrow.

Arms outstretched like a tightwire walker, he eased along the roof until he came to the next car. This was Schofield’s Pullman. Even if he hadn’t counted back to it, he would have known. The roof was made from fine wood and had ankle-high brass rails along the sides for decoration. A quick step took him onto its roof. He balanced, bent to use one rail for support, then walked slowly toward the rear. He paused when he came to a skylight.

A quick look down showed the poker table had been placed directly under it. Four men sat around the table. From his bird’s-eye vantage point, he read all their cards. He fought the urge to watch since Kinchloe bet heavily on three kings. Smitty, across the table from him, held four deuces.

He almost fell when the train lurched. He rocked away and realized his arms had passed over the skylight. Ike held his breath, fearing he had given himself away. As if from a thousand miles away he heard Smitty say, “Damned birds flying overhead. Makes the light flicker.”

Kinchloe said something, then play resumed. Ike edged around the skylight and stopped at the next space between the Pullman and the first freight car. He couldn’t read the numbers on the freight car but would have bet against Smitty that this was one of the three railcars being loaded in the warehouse.

“Guns, ammunition,” he said softly. Ike bent his knees and took the big step. He landed on the freight car and fell face forward. He caught himself, then wiggled to the side and peered down. Reading upside down, he saw he was right. The numbers he remembered painted on the side of the car back in the San Antonio warehouse matched these.

Schofield was moving three cars loaded with rifles and ammo—enough to start a new War Between the States. If he’d had his wits about him, he could have told the marshal in Eagle Pass. If it hadn’t been an illegal shipment, Schofield wouldn’t be accompanying the guns along a rail line owned by Southern Pacific. But Ike hadn’t thought of it, or even known the cars were connected to the passenger cars then.

I was busy, he thought, smiling ruefully. He spun about on his belly and wiggled back, then stopped. The train stopped in Marfa to take on water and probably coal. That wasn’t done quickly. He’d have time to find the town marshal and see Schofield and his men arrested.

If there were rifles and ammunition in the cars.

He thought that was true. If it wasn’t, and his impersonation of a real deputy came out, he’d spend the rest of his natural life in the Detroit Federal Prison. He ran his fingers under his collar. Prison might be the lesser of punishments to expect. Schofield had tried to hang him before. If he came across him alone, Ike was a goner.

“Gregorio,” Ike mumbled. He had no idea what the man had known, but it had gotten him killed. And it had been powerful enough evidence for Augustus Yarrow to come all the way from Arkansas to investigate. That was the real question burning in Ike’s head. What crime was vile enough that Judge Parker’s lawman had traveled the length of Texas?

He had to be certain of the contents of at least one of the freight cars. Pulling himself to the edge of the roof, he hunted for the iron rungs leading down. Finding them was easy enough, but they didn’t bring him to a convenient door, unlike on the passenger cars. He pushed back and looked around. A smile came to his face, a big, broad one.

Riding the rails as he had done from Houston paid off. He had been in an empty freight car and remembered seeing an open ventilation hatch in the roof. Ike scooted over to the one in this car. It was locked. Tugging and twisting got him nowhere. In frustration, he drew his six-shooter and shot off the lock. The noise momentarily deafened him. He hadn’t expected the report to be so loud.

With a quick jerk, he threw open the hatch and peered into the car. Crates only a few feet below gave him a staircase down. Under his feet, around the crates through the broad cracks in the floor, he saw momentary flashes as ties raced past. The sparks from the wheels lit up the night. He reached into his pocket and touched a tin of lucifers, then he pushed them back into his pocket.

Wandering around a carload of ammunition with a lighted match was a sure way to get a one-way ticket to Heaven.

Ike fumbled about in the dark like a blind man. He ran his fingers over a splintery crate, found the lid and worried his fingers under it. Heaving, he broke away part of the lid when he failed to extract the nails. Forcing his hand into the hole, he fumbled around and pushed away wood chips. When he touched cold, sleek metal, he traced its outline.

“A rifle,” he said in satisfaction as he tugged gently on the trigger. He had to believe the other crates held rifles, too. The ones that didn’t were laden with ammunition. That only made sense. “A waste of time checking more of them. All a marshal’d need is one crate.”

Or he hoped that was so. Schofield had to explain why he was shipping three freight cars filled with arms. Ike doubted a bill of sale accompanied the shipment.

He climbed back up the mountain of crates and popped out of the hatch. He sat on the edge for a moment, legs inside the car as a new thought hit him. What if Schofield transported the rifles under a government contract? What if all the weapons were bought and paid for by the US Army? There were dozens of posts along the tracks if the more distant outposts deep in West Texas were willing to send a wagon to pick up their new rifles.

The conversation he had overheard between Schofield and Kinchloe made that unlikely. The way they talked, Schofield intended to do something illegal and never return to San Antonio. To abandon an entire rail system, even a small one, meant the crimes were immense.

And growing.

Blundering about, he pulled himself up and let the whistling wind evaporate the sweat drenching him. It had been close in the car. The dry desert air combined with the speed of the train cooled him until he felt presentable once more. He could hardly wait to tell Lily what he had found and that she was right about the cars.

With a heave he balanced precariously. Jumping forward to the Pullman car roof was easy. He was gaining expertise in running around on top of a swiftly moving train, just as he had learned how to pull himself up on tie rods under a freight car and ride along. This felt safer, in spite of the risk of falling off. Resting on the tie rods meant his back was only inches away from cinders and railroad ties as the train rolled along at top speed. A single slip then meant being torn apart.

Here, he felt like he walked on top of the world.

Moving carefully, he traversed the Pullman car roof and hopped to the third of the regular passenger cars. Ike enjoyed the freedom outside and decided to go one more car before dropping down to the platform between. Moreover, he avoided being detained by the woman whose ruby necklace he had recovered. Her gratitude embarrassed him.

He reached the front of the passenger car and swung around, feet kicking out to find the iron rungs mounted on the side. For some reason his foot kept slipping. With a grunt, he pulled back to the roof and looked down.

His heart skipped a beat. He stared into Kinchloe’s six-shooter. Even in the darkness the barrel looked big enough to drive a train down.

“You think you’re some kind of ape cavorting all around up there? You got no call being up there.” Kinchloe wiped his free hand on his coat. Ike realized why he hadn’t found purchase on the metal ladder. The railroad dick had been pushing his foot off whenever he tried to lower his weight.

“I was getting some air,” Ike said. His mind raced. He needed a better excuse than that. What he needed most was to figure out a scheme so that Kinchloe wouldn’t kill him. Avoiding the cinder dick and his partners had been his only idea. Now he was sorry he hadn’t gone into the third car and endured the woman with the ruby necklace’s admiration.

His best defense was being surrounded by passengers, and now he had played straight into Kinchloe’s hand.

“Why don’t you let me give you plenty more?”

Strong hands grabbed his leg and yanked. For an instant he clung on. Then he lost his grip on the edge of the roof and went flying out into space. As he fell, he saw the train race past. Lighted windows and painted letters and blurred faces rushed by.

Ike hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind from his lungs. By the time he painfully gasped in air again, the red lantern dangling from the caboose was a tiny dot. Then it was devoured by the absolute darkness of the desert night.