Savage Guns

TWO

At Smoke Jensen was leaving Big Rock, back at his ranch, Sugarloaf, his wife, Sally was sitting on a flat rock, high on an escarpment that guarded the north end of the ranch, protecting it from the icy blasts of winter. Sally had discovered this point of vigil, which she called Eagle Watch, shortly after she and Smoke were married and moved here into the High Country, to start their lives together.

Reached by a circuitous and often hidden trail, Eagle Watch was covered with a mixture of pine and deciduous trees that were green all year, while also providing a painter’s palette of color in the spring when the crabapple and plum trees bloomed, and again in the fall when the aspen and maple leaves changed. In addition, the meadow itself was blanketed with wildflowers of every hue and description.

Sally had come up here in her first week at the ranch to write a letter to her father back in Vermont, to try and give him an idea of what she felt about her new home:

Smoke and I make our debut here in this wonderful place where the snowy mountains will look down upon us in the hottest summer day as well as in the winter’s cold, here where in the not too distant past the wild beasts and wilder Indians held undisturbed possession—where now surges the advancing wave of enterprise and civilization, and where soon, we proudly hope, will be erected a great and powerful state, another empire in the sisterhood of empires.

It was very much like Sally to express her thoughts in such a poetic fashion. She was a young woman of education and passion, sensitive to the rugged beauty of the home she shared with her husband, and filled with unbridled enthusiasm for their future. The letter had been written some years earlier, and since that time, Colorado had become a state. But though dated, the letter still remained appropriate to the way Sally felt about this place.

From here, Sally could see the house Smoke had built for them, a large two-story edifice, white, with a porch that ran all the way across the front. It had turrets at each of the front corners, the windows of which now shined gold in the reflected sunlight. Also in the compound were several other structures, including the bunkhouse, cook’s shack, barn, granary, and other outbuildings. She could also see much of the thousands of acres that made up Sugarloaf Ranch.

Abandoning her contemplation of the ranch, she turned her attention to the road that ran from Sugarloaf into Big Rock. There, she saw a plume of dust, then, just ahead of the plume, a galloping Appaloosa. She smiled at the sight—Smoke was coming home at a gallop.

Mounting her own horse, Sally started back down the trail toward the ranch compound. Though the trail down was too steep to allow a gallop, her horse was sure-footed and nimble enough to traverse the distance rather quickly, thus allowing her to reach the house before Smoke. Dismounting, she climbed up onto the wide porch so she could watch his arrival.

The road, which on the state and county maps was called Jensen Pike, ran parallel with a long fence, before it turned in through a gate that had the name of the ranch fashioned from wrought-iron letters in the arch above. But, as Sally knew he would, Smoke did not come through the gate. Instead, he left the road, then urging Seven into a mighty jump, sailed over the fence almost as if on wings. After successfully negotiating the fence, he galloped into the compound before pulling the horse to a stop and leaping down from the saddle.

“Seven, you are the greatest horse in the world!” Smoke shouted, patting the hard-breathing animal on its forehead.

Sally laughed. “You said that to the other three horses you named Seven, and the two you named Drifter.”

“They were the greatest horses in the world too,” Smoke said.

“Don’t be silly. There can only be one greatest,” Sally reminded him.

Smoke held up his finger and waved it back and forth. “No, that’s the schoolteacher in you talking,” he said. “If you love horses, you know there can be as many greatest horses as you want.”

Again, Sally laughed. “All right,” she said. “I guess I can’t argue with you on that. How was your trip to town? Did anything interesting happen?”

“Not really.”

Sally arched her eyebrows. “Not really? That means something actually.”

“Tell me, woman, when I think something, do words just appear on my forehead for you to read my thoughts?” Smoke teased.

“Yes,” Sally said. “Now tell me what happened.”

Smoke told Sally of his confrontation with Emmet Clark, finishing with the fact that he’d let Clark ride away.

“Oh, Smoke, do you think that was smart?” Sally asked.

“I don’t know if it was smart,” Smoke said. “You are the smart one of the family. But I think it was right. I believe him when he said that he is a man of honor. And I respect honor.”

“That’s because you are a man of honor,” Sally said. “Take care of Seven and wash up. I’ll have dinner ready soon.”

Esmeralda County, Nevada

A brilliant streak of lightning lit up the night sky and in its flash, Bobby Lee Cabot could see the four men who were with him, their ponchos pulled about them, scrunched down in their saddles. It was raining hard, and Bobby Lee readjusted his own poncho as he waited with the others alongside a railroad water tank. Under the frequent flashes of lightning, the steel tracks of the Nevada Central Railroad glistened in the rain.

“What if the train don’t come?” Conklin asked.

“The train comes ever’ night,” Dodd answered. “What makes you think it won’t come tonight?” Frank Dodd was the leader of the group. Dodd was just under six feet tall with broad shoulders and powerful arms. In his middle forties, he had spent more than half his life in prison. In a prison fight, another inmate had cut off half of his left eyelid, as well as a piece of his upper lip, leaving him permanently scarred. That same encounter had left the man who scarred him permanently dead.

“What if this here train don’t have no money on it?” Conklin asked.

“What if I just put my boot up your ass for askin’ so damn many dumb questions?” Dodd replied irritably.

“I’m just askin’ is all.”

“Well, don’t ask.”

The five men were waiting alongside the track halfway between Lone City and Cloverdale, Nevada. They were here, in the middle of the night in the middle of a rainstorm, because their plan was to rob the train when it stopped for water. Actually, it was only the plan of the other four. Unbeknownst to the others, Bobby Lee was a railroad detective with the Western Capital Security Agency. He had worked his way into the gang in order to find a way to bring them to justice.

Shortly before departing on this train robbery expedition, Bobby Lee sent a letter to Herman Wallace, the sheriff of Esmeralda County, notifying him of the gang’s intentions. In the letter, he asked Sheriff Wallace to be riding in the express car with enough deputies to end the train robbing spree of Frank Dodd, Walter Conklin, Wayland Morris, and Jules Stillwater.

That would go well for Bobby Lee, who had spent six months tracking them, then getting himself into position to stop the bandits. He was sure that the railroad company would give him a bonus for his part, but it wasn’t the bonus that motivated him. It was the satisfaction of taking out a gang of robbers who had been a thorn in the side of the railroad for the better part of two years.

The rain stopped and some of the clouds rolled away, revealing a full moon, which illuminated the area almost as bright as day.

“This ain’t good,” Conklin said. “Moon bright like it is, they’re goin’ to be able to identify us.”

“You think they ain’t goin’ to know who we are?” Dodd asked.

They heard the train whistle in the distance.

“All right, boys, get ready. It’ll be here soon,” Dodd said.

They waited a moment longer until they could hear the puffing of the steam engine as the train worked its way up the long grade, approaching the water tank. Now the great head lamp was in view, but as the moon was bright, the lamp was projecting no visible beam of light. When the train rounded a curve, it exposed its entire length so they could see all five cars behind it, every window of each passenger car showing light. As the train grew closer to the water tower, it began braking.

“Wait until it comes to a complete stop,” Dodd ordered.

With a squeal of brakes, the train stopped. Then the relief valve began opening and closing, each cycle emitting a loud puffing sound. The fireman left the engine, then climbed up onto the tender and reached up for the water spout.

“All right, they ain’t payin’ no attention to us now,” Dodd said. “Let’s ease on down there.”

As the others approached the train, Bobby Lee dropped back behind to be in position. Any moment now, the car doors would open and Sheriff Wallace and his deputies would be waiting. They would confront the robbers and if Dodd tried to make a run for it, Bobby Lee would be in position to stop him.

“Conklin, you and Wayland get up into the engine cab. Make sure that engineer don’t suddenly decide to take off,” Dodd ordered.

“He ain’t goin’ to go nowhere with the fireman up on the tender like that,” Conklin said.

“Just do what I told you to do,” Dodd said. “Stillwater, you and Cabot come with me.”

The two men rode down to the engine cab, then with guns drawn, yelled up at the fireman.

“You! Put your hands up!” Conklin called out.

“Where’d you come from?” the fireman shouted, his words audible over the rhythmic rush of the steam relief valve.

“It don’t make no never mind where we come from.”

“What’s goin’ on here?” the engineer called down from the cab. He stuck his head out through the window, but when he saw the two armed riders, he jerked back inside.

“Huh, uh, Mr. Engineer,” Conklin called up to him. “If you don’t want the fireman kilt, you better stick your head and arms back out the window and keep ’em there where we can see you.”

The engineer complied.

While that was going on, Dodd and Stillwater approached the express car. With Bobby Lee remaining slightly behind the other two, Dodd banged on the door with the butt of his pistol.

“You boys in there got two choices!” he shouted. “You can either open the door and not get hurt, or keep the door closed and more’n likely get kilt when I blow up the car with dynamite!”

“Oh, they are going to open the door all right,” Bobby Lee said aloud, though saying the words too quietly to be heard. He chuckled at the thought of Dodd being surprised when the sheriff and his deputy made their sudden, and unexpected, appearance.

But it wasn’t Dodd who was surprised. It was Bobby Lee. When the door to the express car opened, there was nobody there but one frightened express agent. Where was Sheriff Wallace?

It took very little persuasion for the express agent to pass down two large cloth bags. Dodd opened them and looked down inside, then let out a shout of joy.

“Yahoo! Boys, these is all twenty-dollar bills! There’s gotta be a couple thousand dollars or more! Come on! Let’s get out of here!”

Conklin and Wayland came back from the engine, and the robbers made ready to ride away. Before they left, though, Dodd turned back toward the train and shot the express agent, who grabbed his chest, then fell to the ground from the car.

“Why did you do that?” Bobby Lee yelled in shock and anger. “You didn’t have any call to shoot him.”

“He seen our faces,” Dodd replied. “Come on, let’s go!”

Bobby Lee started to ride away with the other four, but he stopped, then turned and rode back to the train. Dismounting, he hurried over to the still form of the express man. He put his hand on the express man’s neck to feel for a pulse, but there was none. The man was dead.

Damnit! He thought. This didn’t have to happen. Where was the sheriff? Where were his deputies?

By now some of the passengers had stepped down from the train, and three of the men, holding pistols in their hands, approached Bobby Lee.

“Mister, shooting him was dumb enough,” one of the armed passengers said. “But coming back here to gloat over what you done is ’bout the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Bobby Lee stood up. “Is the sheriff on board this train?” he asked.

“Don’t need no sheriff. I reckon we can handle you till we get you to town,” the passenger said.

“No, you don’t understand. My name is Bobby Lee Cabot. I’m with the Western Capital Security Agency. I told Sheriff Wallace about this robbery. This was supposed to be a setup to capture the robbers.”

“Well, if you and the sheriff are such good friends, then I reckon you two can get it all worked out when we get to town. Get his gun, Joe.”

The passenger named Joe pulled Bobby Lee’s pistol from his holster. Bobby Lee offered no resistance. There was no sense in it. The man holding the gun on him was right. It would be all worked out once he and Sheriff Wallace got together.

“What are we going to do with him?” one of the men asked.

“I say we hang him,” another suggested.

“Look here!” Bobby Lee said, suddenly frightened over the possibility that he might be lynched right here, before he could clear himself. “I told you, I wasn’t with them!”

“Mister, do you take us for fools? We saw you with them.”

“Yes, I was with them, but I was setting a trap for them. I thought the sheriff would be on this train and he could arrest them.”

“A likely story.”

“I say let’s hang him.”

“No,” another passenger said. By now several other passengers had come down from the train. The passenger who called out was a tall, silver-haired, dignified-looking man. “I saw it too, and this man isn’t the one who did the shooting.”

“What difference does it make who did the shooting? He was with them, that’s all that matters as far as I’m concerned.”

“If you men hang him, you are going to have to shoot me as well. And you’ll be doing it in front of every other passenger on this train. Do you want a double murder on your hands?”

“What? No, what are you talking about? Hanging this fella wouldn’t be murder. It would be justice.”

The silver-haired man shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be justice, it would be lynching. The only way I’m going to let you do that is if you shoot me first. And I think that even you would admit that shooting me would be murder.”

“Maybe the old geezer is right,” one of the original three men said. “I ain’t no murderer.”

“Me neither,” the second of the three said.

The spokesman of the group acquiesced. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s get some rope and tie the son of a bitch up. We’ll turn him over to the sheriff as soon as we get to Cloverdale.”

“Thanks, mister,” Bobby Lee said to the man who had stopped the lynching.

“Don’t thank me, mister,” the man replied. “I hope you do hang. The only thing is, I want to see you legally hanged—I don’t want to see these good men get into trouble because of you.”

Bobby Lee offered no resistance when the armed train passengers bound and gagged him like a trussed-up calf, then threw him bodily and painfully onto the floor of the express car. More gently, they lifted the messenger into the car with him. Then one of the armed passengers climbed into the car to keep an eye on their prisoner.

With two short blasts on the engine’s whistle, followed by a series of jolts and jerks, the train got under way again.

“Mister, you picked the wrong train to rob,” his guard said, his glaring eyes gleaming in the glow of the car lamp. “Yes, sir, there was some of us on board who won’t put up with nothin’ like that.”

Bobby Lee wanted to explain to him about his plan to set up a trap for Frank Dodd, to prove to him that he was indeed an employee of the Western Capital Security Agency, but the gag prevented him from talking. There was nothing he could do now but lean back against the side of the car and make himself as comfortable as possible for the remainder of the ride.

Bobby Lee Cabot was twenty-four years old. He was a slender man, with more strength than his appearance suggested. His hair was sun bleached, and his eyes were a cross between gunmetal gray and sky blue. Women found him rather appealing, and men weren’t intimidated by him. That sort of low-key combination worked well for him in his profession as a private detective, because it enabled him to blend easily with his surroundings.

The first part of it had worked well. He had been accepted into Frank Dodd’s gang. Perhaps it had worked too well, because not only had he convinced Dodd and his men that he was one of them, but the train passengers were equally as convinced.

It was late at night, and there would be another two hours before they reached Cloverdale. As a result, Bobby Lee’s guard fell asleep. Bobby Lee worked himself out of the ropes, and removed the gag. Then, quietly and carefully, he took the gun from the sleeping guard’s hand. Having freed himself, he returned to his position against the side of the car.

It was just after dawn as the train began braking for its approach into Cloverdale. The guard, awakened by the change of sound and motion, stretched and yawned, then suddenly realized where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.

“What the hell?” he shouted in alarm, when he saw that Bobby Lee was sitting against the side of the car, holding the pistol. The would-be guard threw his arms up. “No, mister, don’t shoot! I’ve got a wife and kids! Don’t shoot!”

“Relax,” Bobby Lee said, returning the guard’s gun to him. “I’m not going to shoot you. I told you, I’m not one of outlaws. I want to see the sheriff. I plan to get this all straightened out.” He handed the pistol back to the guard. “I believe this belongs to you.”

Cloverdale was awakening to the new day when the train arrived. The stagecoach was waiting for any passengers who might need a connection to the nearby towns that weren’t served by the railroad. Freight wagons were already beginning their morning runs, stores were opening, and citizens were moving about. Word that the train had been robbed was quickly spread through the town so that soon, a rather substantial crowd had gathered around the depot to watch, sadly, as the messenger’s body was taken down.

“Who done it?” someone asked.

“Frank Dodd, who else?”

When Bobby Lee was taken from the train, tied and watched over by at least two armed men, a gasp of surprise passed through the crowd.

“Ain’t that Bobby Lee Cabot?”

“What’s he doin’ all tied up like that?”

“Someone said he was ridin’ with Dodd.”

“You don’t say.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What do you mean you don’t believe it? They caught him red-handed is what they done.”

Sheriff Wallace arrived then, pushing his way importantly through the crowd. “Open up here, let me through, make way,” he called repeatedly. Anyone looking down from an elevated position would have seen the crowd parting, then closing in behind him as he made his way to the platform alongside the express car where the two armed passengers were holding Bobby Lee prisoner.

“Here he is, Sheriff,” one of the two armed passengers said. “We caught this fella red-handed, right after the train was robbed and the messenger was kilt.”

“I want to thank you men for bringing him in,” Sheriff Wallace said. “This will save me the trouble, and the county the expense of having to go after him.”

Sheriff Wallace was a very big man, six feet six inches tall. He had a round, bald head that sat on his shoulders with very little visible neck. His ears were so small that they seemed mismatched for his head. He wasn’t just tall. He was big, weighing right at three hundred pounds.

“What do you mean, save you the trouble of going after me? What’s this about, Sheriff?” Bobby Lee asked, surprised by the sheriff’s reaction.

“This is about bringin’ you to trial, findin’ you guilty and hangin’ you,” Sheriff Wallace said. “That’s what it’s about.”

“Sheriff, uh, maybe I ought to tell you something,” the man who had been watching over Bobby Lee said.

“What?”

The passenger cleared his throat and looked at the others. “Well, sir, I fell asleep while we was comin’ in this mornin’, and when I come to, this here fella was free, and holdin’ my gun.”

“You should have been more careful,” Wallace said.

“Yes, sir, but my point is, he could have got away only he didn’t. He give my gun back to me. It sort of makes you think, don’t it?”

“Think about what?” Sheriff Wallace said.

“Well, it makes you think about whether or not he’s guilty. I mean, if he was guilty, wouldn’t he have maybe kilt me, then got away?”

“Maybe,” the sheriff agreed. “Or maybe he just figured it would make him look innocent.”

The expression on the passenger’s face changed, from one of concern to one of anger over being used.

“Yeah,” he said, glaring at Bobby Lee. “Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t it.”

“Come along, Cabot,” Wallace said. “I’ve got a jail cell waitin’ for you.”

Bobby Lee was about to say something else, but he held his tongue when he decided that perhaps the sheriff was merely trying to protect his undercover status. He remained quiet until the sheriff took him down to his office.

“I have to confess that you had me worried there for a moment,” Bobby Lee said. “But I understand now what you are doing.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. You are protecting my identity. You are going to wait until they leave town before you let me out.”

“What do you mean I’m protecting your identity? You are Bobby Lee Cabot, and soon as we start the trial, the whole world is going to know who you are. And what makes you think I’m going to let you out?”

Again, Bobby Lee was surprised, and this time he was also worried. There was no one present but the two of them, so the sheriff had no reason to talk like this. “I expect you to let me out because of the arrangement we had.”

“What arrangement? What are you talking about?” Sheriff Wallace asked.

“Sheriff Wallace, you are beginning to make me uncomfortable. You know damn well what arrangement we had. We not only talked about it in some detail, I also sent you a letter, telling you about the robbery. I asked you to be in the car with deputies. If you had done what I asked, we could have stopped this,” Bobby Lee explained. “That messenger would still be alive, and you would have Frank Dodd and his entire gang in jail.”

“We never had any such conversation, and I did not receive a letter from you.”

“Of course you received it. You have to have received it. I sent it to you in plenty of time.”

“I don’t know what kind of trick you are trying to pull, Cabot, but you aren’t going to get away with it,” Sheriff Wallace said.