As they stepped out into the cold rain drenching the Wyoming prairie, Longarm realized that this was going to be one hell of a tough night.
CHAPTER 11
Longarm barely remembered the little combination depot and coal and water station at Lookout. If he was in luck, he would find a competent telegraph operator who could relay a message back to Billy Vail about the vital information he'd just gained from his captives.
Longarm had to prod his prisoners hard to get their horses ready to leave the ranch. The wounded man named Fergus was especially difficult and argumentative.
"I'll probably bleed to death in the saddle before we reach that train!" he wailed.
"You'll bleed to death for sure if you don't climb into that saddle and quit talking," Longarm warned. "Because I'll shoot you again."
Ned Rowe was more cooperative. He decided that Longarm had bought his story, and now was trying hard to be cooperative. Longarm saw little reason to change the man's false impression of things and risk turning cooperation into desperation.
"Damn, it's cold!" Ned exclaimed, tightening his cinch.
"Quit jawin' and mount up," Longarm said.
"I sure wish that we could at least wait until tomorrow morning," Ned groused. "We could freeze to death before we reach shelter."
"That's a chance we'll just have to take." Longarm snapped, watching the heavy rain sheet off the roof to cascade across the barn's open doorway like a waterfall.
"I can't get on my horse!" Fergus choked. "Not with this bad shoulder."
Longarm watched the man struggle. Each time Fergus started to lift his leg over his cantle, he lost his balance and fell back.
"All right," Longarm said, starting to go over to help the man.
He was still on his way over when Fergus made his move. "Yaw!" he shouted, leaping into the saddle and booting his horse through the barn door and out into the heavy rain. In less than two seconds, the man had vanished.
"Damn!" Longarm swore. He mounted his horse. "Dismount!"
"What?" Ned cried.
"I said dismount!"
Ned dismounted, and Longarm grabbed his horse's reins.
"Hey!" Ned shouted. "Are you leavin' me?"
"I'll be right back," Longarm yelled. "And you'd better be here."
Longarm shot out of the barn dragging Ned's saddled horse. He was furious at the wounded man for making a run for it in such bad weather. Before he'd galloped across the yard, the rain had soaked him to the bone. It took him no more than three or four minutes to overtake Fergus, who was bent over his saddle horn and riding for his life.
When the wounded man saw Longarm overtaking him, he cursed and tried to urge his horse into a gully running strong with rainwater, but the animal skidded to an abrupt halt and Fergus lost his seat. The wounded outlaw spilled headfirst into the gully and rolled down into the muddy torrent.
"Come on, get out of there before you drown, you damned fool!" Longarm ordered.
"No! You have to shoot me again, you big bastard! I ain't going to hang for that train wreck!"
"That's up to a judge!" Longarm yelled. "But if you want to save the taxpayers some money, then I will shoot you!"
Longarm drew his Colt, took aim, and fired. His bullet ripped away Fergus's empty holster and the man yelped in fear, then came scrambling out of the gully like it was crawling with rattlesnakes.
"Get on your horse!" Longarm ordered.
"I can't! Remember?"
Longarm was wet, chilled, and miserable. He used a second bullet, which sent Fergus's Stetson flying back into the gully. "I won't be suckered a second time," he warned.
Fergus found a way to mount his horse. Longarm led him and the other spare horse back through the driving rain to the barn.
"All right, Ned! Come on out of there and let's ride!"
No answer.
Longarm drew his six-gun again and dismounted. He expected that Ned might be waiting to ambush him with a pitchfork or a hay hook. But Longarm was mistaken because, after a few frantic moments of searching, it was clear that Ned Rowe had escaped into the stormy night.
Longarm was fit to be tied. He now realized that, in his rush to overtake Fergus, Longarm had forgotten that there was a third horse belonging to the man he'd killed. And it was this horse that Ned had used to bolt for freedom.
"Dammit!" Longarm swore, slogging through the mud searching for Ned's tracks.
But the rain was coming down too hard and there was no telling in which direction Ned had chosen to run.
"He got clean away, didn't he?" Fergus said with a twisted and triumphant leer.
"Yeah, he did," Longarm replied. "I haven't got time to hunt him down tonight, but I'll find him later. Just like I'll track down Eli Wheat."
"You might not be so lucky a second time with Eli," Fergus said as Longarm remounted. "You go lookin' for them boys, they'll kill you, and I hope to hell I'm there to watch you die."
"You won't be," Longarm promised, for he had already decided to turn his prisoners over to the sheriff in Rock Springs, who was a man that could be trusted. "Let's ride!"
If anything, the rain came down harder as they rode through that awful night in the direction of the station at Lookout. A few hours before dawn, rain turned to sleet. A faint gray dawn hugged the eastern horizon and showed Longarm the railroad tracks.
"Let's go!" he urged, reining west.
"Lookout is back toward Laramie," Fergus argued. "We missed it by riding too far west."
"Then what's the next depot?"
"There ain't nothing left at what used to be the Miser depot. So the next depot is Rock Creek. But that's another seven or eight miles!"
"Then we'd better put the spurs to these ponies," Longarm said, booting his tired sorrel into a gallop across the sloppy ground that paralleled the tracks.
The westbound train overtook them before they could make it all the way to Rock Creek. Longarm heard its eerie whistle blow, and reined his horse up to see the locomotive lumber toward them in the distance. The ground was rising toward Rock Creek and the train was moving slow, its stack spewing smoke into the sleet.
"What are you gonna do now?" the wounded man crowed. "We lost the damned race."
Longarm knew that there really was only one thing that he could do and that was to stop the train. "Let's ride up on those tracks."
"What?"
"I said come on!" Longarm ordered, dragging along the horses and scrambling up on the roadbed.
"That train won't stop!" Fergus shouted with rising panic in his voice. "It'll think we're train robbers and it'll run us the hell down!"
"No one lives forever," Longarm replied, dismounting and hauling Fergus out of the saddle. He ripped the man to his knees, drew his six-gun, and said, "Lay down across the rails."
"What?"
"Lay down!"
Fergus lay down on the wet tracks. He was at the end of his rope, hurt, confused, and weakened by loss of blood, his mental and physical reserves gone.
"You gonna let him run me over!" Fergus screamed as the train moved inexorably closer. It was close enough already that the tracks were shaking and the horses were snorting nervously.
"I want more names!" Longarm called over the sound of the approaching train. "I want all the names or this train is going to cut you into three messy pieces!"
"Oh, Lord!" Fergus howled, his eyes wild. "First you shoot me, now this!"
"Names!"
With one eye on the looming locomotive and another on Longarm, Fergus spat out the names like bullets from the muzzle of a Gatling gun. "Big Tom Canyon. Hawk Jenkins. Two-Fingered Earl. Shorty Hamilton. Bob Orr. Indian Red Lopez! That's all I know. Please, don't do this!"
Longarm planted his boot firmly on the back of Fergus's neck and turned the horses loose to run a short ways off, where they stood heads down and rumps to the driving sleet.
Longarm raised his hand in the frontier signal of peace and said to his prisoner, "Well, Fergus, we'll just let the engineer decide your fate."
Fergus howled and screeched like crazy until the train began to slow. If it hadn't, Longarm would have let the man up, and then he'd have jumped on board and forced the engineer to stop.