“I do no such thing!” Carrie insisted. “And I don’t like the way you are talking to me.”
“Yeah you do. You like it a lot. Otherwise you wouldn’t be showin’ off like you are.”
“I’m not showing off.”
“You aren’t? Then what did you come out here for? Did you come out here just to put a burr under my saddle?” Travis walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Or did you come out here so I could make you a woman?”
“Make me a woman? What does that mean?” Carrie asked with another laugh. “I’m already a woman.”
“No, you ain’t.” Travis pulled her to him. “You ain’t a woman until you’ve had a man. Like me.” He pulled her to him and forced a kiss on her.
She fought against him. When he pulled his lips away, she shouted, “Pa! Pa!”
“Shut up! You want your pa to come runnin’ out here?” Travis slapped her hard, and blood came from her lips.
“Pa!” she screamed again, but that was as far as she got before Travis, acting spontaneously, picked up the hammer he had been using to adjust the iron wheel rim, and hit her hard. She went down without a sound.
“Get up,” Travis said. “Get up and don’t be screamin’ no more.”
“She ain’t goin’ to be gettin’ up,” Frank said. He had been out in the corral, but was drawn back to the barn by the young girl’s scream.
“Yeah she is. Get up,” Travis said again.
“Travis, take a look at her. Take a good, close look at her.”
Travis looked down at the young girl and saw that her eyes and mouth were open, but she was totally still. There was a very dark bruise on the side of her head where he had hit her with the hammer.
“Oh damn! Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn! Frank, I’ve kilt her! What am I goin’ to do? I didn’t mean to kill her. I was just tryin’ to get her to shut up.”
“Carrie!” a man’s voice shouted. “What is it? What are you calling me for?”
Chance Carter, a man in his early forties, stepped into the barn and saw the body of his daughter lying on the ground. He saw Travis and Frank looking down at her.
“My God! What happened?” Chance asked in agonized shock.
“She—uh, I didn’t mean—uh, I didn’t think I hit her that hard,” Travis said.
“You did this? You did this?” Chance asked.
“I was just funnin’ with her,” Travis said weakly. “Then she started screamin’ and I wanted her to stop.”
“You murderer!” Chance turned and started back toward the house.
“Mr. Carter, listen to me!” Travis called after him. “I didn’t mean to kill her! I just wanted her to stop yelling is all! It was an accident!”
Without any reply, Chance ran into the house.
“What’s he goin’ to do, Frank?”
“I figure he’s goin’ after a gun. And I figure he’s goin’ to come back out and commence shootin’.”
Frank took the hammer from Travis’s hand, then hurried up to the big house. He stood alongside the door, with his back up against the wall, and waited until Chance Carter came back outside.
“You son of a bitch, you killed my daughter,” Carter shouted, starting toward the barn with a double barrel shotgun in his hand.
So intent was Carter on extracting retribution from Travis, he didn’t see Frank step out behind him. Frank brought the hammer down hard, and Chance dropped to the ground.
Frank got down on his knees beside the rancher and hit him again and again with the hammer. He didn’t stop until blood, bone, and brain matter was pouring out of the wound.
“I think you can quit now, Frank,” Travis said.
Frank stood up and looked at the bloody end of the hammer. “Yeah.”
“What do we do now?”
“We get our guns and get out of here,” Frank said.
“How we goin’ to get out of here? The only horses Mr. Carter’s got is team horses. He ain’t got no saddles.”
In the distance they heard the whistle of a train.
“We’ll take the train,” Frank said.
“Like as not, it’s a freight train this time of day,” Travis said.
“All the better,” Frank replied.
Poncha Pass, Colorado
The freight cars bumped and rattled through the night, the thunder echoing back from Poncha Pass. On the 2-4-2 locomotive the steam gushed from the drive cylinder like cannon fire as it labored mightily to negotiate the grade. But five cars back, Frank and Travis Slater, who had hopped onto the freight when they fled the Carter ranch, could hear nothing of the engine.
The car had been empty when the two brothers jumped onto the train, but just before nightfall, two other men climbed into the car.
“You think the brakeman saw us?” one of the two men asked.
“Nah. Anyway, I think it’s Doodle. He’s a good one. He don’t ever throw you off,” the other said.
In the dim light, the two new men saw Frank and Travis sitting in the forward part of the empty car, their backs braced against the front wall so no matter how much the train lurched and jerked, they were able to keep from being tossed about.
“Hello, boys,” one of the newcomers said with a friendly greeting. “Been on the train long, have you?”
“Not too long,” Frank answered.
“My name’s Zeke, my partner here is Mickey. We know most of the riders, but I don’t think we’ve ever run across you two before.”
“No, this is our first time.” Frank pointedly did not give their names.
Zeke chuckled. “Don’t want to tell me your name, huh? Well, no matter. Sometimes when folks is down on their luck, they don’t like to give away their names. That’s fine with Mickey and me.”
“How many times have you hopped a train on this line?” Frank asked.
“I’d say twenty, maybe thirty times, wouldn’t you, Mickey?”
“Thirty times for sure. You might recall, one time we done it two times in the same week.”
“Yeah, I do recall. So this is your first time, is it?” Zeke asked.
“Yes,” Travis answered.
“Well, there’s some things you need to know. If you’ll listen to me, I’ll be learnin’ you some of them things.”
“We’re listenin’,” Frank said.
“The first thing is, you got to know what kind of car to hop, and you got to know how far it’s goin’,” Zeke said. “I mind the time Jimmy Peal ... You remember him, don’t you, Mickey?”
“I remember him well. He was a big man, maybe six feet four inches tall, or so,” Mickey said.
“Yes, that’s the one I’m talkin’ about,” Zeke said. “Well, sir, Jimmy Peal once hopped onto a car and the door got shut on him so’s he couldn’t get out. The car went all the way to New Orleans, it did, and when they opened it up down there, well, they found Jimmy Peal dead. He’d done starved to death.”
“He died of thirst,” Mickey corrected. “As big a man as he was, it would’ve took him a long time to starve to death. But it don’t take hardly no time at all for a man to die if he don’t have no water.”
“We’re sure goin’ slow now,” Travis said. “Why, I could walk faster than this.”
“That’s ’cause we climbin’ up Poncha Pass,” Zeke explained. “But we are near ’bout to the top now. You wait till we get over the top, then you’ll see.”
“I’ll see what?”
“You’ll see us speed up. The train will be goin’ lickity split an’ I wager you’ll be a’ wantin’ to grab ahold of somethin’ so as to be able to hang on.”
The train reached the top of the pass, then started down, gathering speed as the peaks lurched behind them in an increasingly faster rush.
“How fast you think we’re a’ goin’ anyway?” Frank asked.
“Goin’ downhill like this? I’d say thirty-five, forty miles an hour. Maybe even faster,” Zeke said.
“Damn, I ain’t never gone this fast before,” Frank said.
“So, this is the first time you two boys ever jumped a freight, is it?” Mickey asked.