He handed the Giant the big Belgium’s reins as the wagon turned a wide circle and rolled away along the trail bordering the cliff.
“Try not to wear him out first thing,” Casings said to the Giant.
“I won’t,” the Giant said. He took the powerful horse’s reins, but did not step up into the saddle. He had ridden there in the wagon to save the horse’s strength, knowing the toll his enormous size and weight could take on an animal in a short period of time.
After a moment of silence, Casings turned in his saddle and looked at him beside him, almost at eye level, even with the Giant standing on the ground.
“You’re worried, ain’t you?” Casings said.
“Not about this job,” the Giant said. “But yeah, I’m worried some.”
They both looked off up the grade toward a thick stand of trees, where they knew Grolin and his men were waiting in the darkness.
“He’s all right,” Casings reassured him. “You know Grolin’s not about to harm him so long as he needs him to open the safe.”
“I know,” said the Giant, “but that time is running out. What’ll happen after he opens it?” He let out a tense breath. “Anyway, where is he? I don’t like the way things are going.”
“Neither do I,” said Casings, “but I’m betting Rock has things under control. Let’s not forget who we’re talking about here.” He grinned and added, “Rock is no shrinking violet.”
The Giant spread his wide, big-toothed grin in response.
“I haven’t forgot,” he said fondly. “I know he kept me from getting bit by rattlesnakes.”
“I was there,” Casings reminded him. He stared both ways along the uphill grade, feeling the excitement of the job closing in around him.
The Giant stood in silence for a moment until apprehension slipped back into his mind.
“But damn it, where is he?” his deep voice burst out as if he were no longer able to contain it.
“Shhh, take it easy,” said Casings. “Rock is all right. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s on the train, coming this way right now.” He nodded toward the black-purple distance.
“So, you think Grolin believes us about the Hercules Mine money?” the Giant asked.
“About halfway,” Casings said. “Grolin’s no fool. But he saw that this was a case where he couldn’t accuse us of something without blaming Rock. He couldn’t afford to do that—not now anyway.”
“I hope you’re right,” the Giant said.
After a moment of silence, Casings said, “Yeah, so do I.”
“There’s the signal!” the Giant said suddenly, pointing farther up the grade where Grolin and his men were able to see out over the treetops and catch the first glimpse of a train rounding into sight from the west.
“It’s about damn time,” said Casings, reaching up and pulling his faded bandanna over the bridge of his nose. “Get your mask on,” he said to the Giant, as if the big man’s size alone wasn’t enough to identify him.
Giant pulled his mask up. He’d had to tie two bandannas together end-to-end to comfortably encircle his big head. He wore the knot across the bridge of his nose, a point of each bandanna hanging down covering either cheek, still exposing his big, grim mouth.
“Ready to ride,” he said, swinging up atop the big Belgium draft horse. Casings struck a match, cupped his hand behind it and waved it slowly above his head. Then he blew it out, dropped it and looked the Giant up and down. Noting the two bandannas, he chuffed and shook his head a little as they turned the horses toward a thin, winding path leading down to the rails.
At the high end of the long incline, Grolin saw the flare of the match and lowered the lantern he’d used to signal Casings and the Giant. He killed the lantern light and handed it over to Lambert Kane, one of the two Kane brothers seated in the wagon beside him. Lambert took the lantern and stood it on the floor of the buckboard between his boots.
“Take it on down, Bobby,” Grolin said to the younger of the brothers.
“You heard him, little brother, let’s roll,” said Lambert, a long shotgun standing from his thigh.
The younger man slapped the reins to the wagon horses’ backs and sent them bolting forward.
“Yeehiii! Yes, sir, brother Lamb!” he called out above the pound of hoof and the creak of wagon. “Let’s go make ourselves rich!”
“Make our mama proud!” said Lambert, grinning, bouncing and swaying on the hard wagon seat.
“Make our pa smile down upon us, rest his soul!” said Bobby, the buckboard sliding a little sidelong on the steep treacherous path.
“Or up at us,” said Lambert.
“Whichever the case may be!” said Bobby, the wagon rumbling on.
Stupid rube bastards…, Grolin told himself as the wagon disappeared down the dark hillside. He’d already made a mental note—he needed to thin out his crew once this job was finished. Wait! What the hell was he thinking? he corrected himself. After this job, he was out of this frontier squalor for good.
Damn right.… He bit the tip off a cigar, stuck it in his mouth and turned his horse to the same trail, now that those inbred Kane idiots were far enough down to not run over him.
In the glow of firelight from the open grate on the engine’s big iron boiler door, the train engineer looked over his shoulder at the fireman, Tom Bratcher. As the train slowed down with a lurch and started up the long uphill grade, Bratcher stood with a shovel in his hands, wearing a pair of elbow-length leather stoker gloves.
“I’ll fill her some more, you want me to,” Bratcher said.
Neither man heard Pres Casings and the Stillwater Giant ride up alongside the slowing train and scramble from their saddles onto the front platform of the disguised U.S. Treasury transport car.
“She’s as good as you can make her for now,” said the engineer, Odell Cheney, above the roar of the rails and the billowing fire in the boiler furnace.
“All right, then,” said the fireman. He shoved the iron door closed with the toe of his boot and stuck his shovel in its slot on the wall.
“You best go wake the captain,” Cheney said over his shoulder. “He said we should wake him at Signal Hill.”
“I’ll do it,” said Bratcher, taking off the long, thick gloves and hanging them beside his shovel. “I don’t know what he’s doing here, to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t even know if he’s a real army captain, him and his boys not wearing uniforms. It don’t seem right.”
“Just wake him up,” said Cheney. “I’m learning that what’s right at breakfast is wrong by suppertime these days.”
Shaking his head, the fireman stepped out of the engine, walked around the walkway and into a mail car.
“Ain’t nothing like it’s supposed to be no more,” he grumbled under his breath.
He walked through the middle aisle of the loaded mail car and out onto its rear platform. On either side of the train, he saw the night moving slower and slower past him. The train shuddered beneath his feet.
When he’d walked past a freight car to a passenger car, Pres Casings and the Giant slipped from the shadows and went to work. Casings tied a safety rope around the Giant’s waist and tied the other end of it to the handrail. The Giant stepped down between the two cars holding a can of oil and stood over the iron link pin connector that held the cars together. He stooped and poured the oil down into the connector while Casings watched from the swaying platform. Then he grinned, raised an arm and made a muscle.