Ironhorse

40

We left the coach where it had stopped and walked on down the track toward the fire. With the recently slain bandits, Virgil and me had plenty of weaponry choices. I carried my Colt and two other long-barreled Colts. Virgil had the .44 Henry rifle Bob dropped in the aisle and a second Colt in his belt.

“Least with Bob shot up, gone, hopefully dead,” I said, “and Woodfin cut like that, we have two less gunmen to deal with.”

“We do,” Virgil said.

“Vince is shot up, too,” I said. “No telling how bad, how deep. Might be he’s dead.”

“Might well be,” Virgil said.

“Ear shots are damn sure painful.”

“They are.”

“Hard to stop the bleeding,” I said, “and the pressure on the brain.”

“Don’t know he’s even got one.”

“Well, if he don’t bleed to death,” I said, “he’ll most likely go crazier than he already is.”

We continued walking, following the track toward the fire ahead and the halo of light from Half Moon Junction just beyond. There was no more rain now, and the moon was showing full in the sky as we made our way closer to the fire.

“That’s the coaches burning for sure,” I said.

“It is,” Virgil said.

As we got closer we could see the fire was a single coach engulfed in flames, but the wood was nearly consumed and the flames were getting lower.

“The governor’s car,” I said. “The Pullman.”

“Is,” Virgil said.

“Let’s hope him and his wife are not inside,” I said.

“Yep,” Virgil said. “Let’s.”

As we got closer we could see the other cars were safe.

“The Pullman’s separated from the cars behind,” Virgil said.

The other coaches were disconnected from the burning Pullman and were sitting fifty or so feet farther down the rail.

“Must have been disconnected on the move,” I said.

Avoiding any possibility of being spotted by anyone, we skirted off the tracks, moved into the trees, and continued on closer to the burning Pullman and back section of the train. As we neared the coaches we could see there were lamps burning in the fifth and sixth car and the caboose, but there was no one moving about. We stopped, staying out of sight in the woods when we were parallel with the coaches. Even though the windows were fogged over, there was no movement inside the fifth and six coaches.

“Don’t see nobody,” I said.

“Ramp’s out.”

The stock car door was open and its boarding ramp was extended.

“Made off with our horses,” I said.

“They did.”

“Half Moon looks to be not but a quarter a mile there.”

Virgil and I moved on a ways past the coaches, stepped out of the woods, and walked toward the caboose.

“Look here,” I said.

There was a line of muddy footprints where passengers departed the coaches. The tracks tapered off to the south, toward Half Moon Junction.

The back door of the caboose was wide open. I looked in; there was nobody inside. We moved on, looked inside the stock car, and as figured, all the horses, including Virgil’s stud and my lazy roan, were gone. We walked through the sixth coach to see if there was anything significant to reckon with, but it was eerily empty; even the bodies of the first two that got killed, Redbeard and the fellow with the two Schofields, had disappeared. Virgil’s cigar was still in the ashtray where he had left it when this whole rhubarb went down. He picked it up and flicked the ashes off with his finger. I produced a match from the matchbox the undertaker had placed in my coat and handed it to Virgil. Virgil dragged the tip of the match across the back of the seat and lit his cigar. After he got it going good he waved the match in the air and flicked it away with his middle finger.

“That was a good horse,” Virgil said. “Good saddle, too.”

“It was,” I said.