Slocum's Silver Burden

Let's Make a Deal

“You aren't mad at me for turning you over to Collingswood?”

“Mad? Not really. It surprised me, I have to admit.” She pressed a bit closer. He felt her hot breath against his throat and the beating of her heart through her breast and thin dress. “It is almost impossible to find a man with such integrity.”

“I worked for the railroad. I gave my word.”

“That's what makes you so different. Too many men see a promise made as a sometime thing.”

“I don't work for the railroad any longer.”

“No duty to either Mr. Collingswood or the Central California Railroad,” she said. “You aren't beholden to them anymore?”

Slocum put his hands around her slender waist. He felt the heat from her body. It matched his own.

“Not a bit. What about you? You still have your job.”

“I never promised to find the silver or make sure it ended up in the bank vault owned by the railroad.”

“Do tell,” he said. He pulled her closer until they both gasped for breath.

“I want someone who can give me his word, and I'll know he can keep it.”

“Unlike Jackson.”

“We can work together.”

“Can I trust your word?”

“We can spit in our palms and shake on it,” she said.

“That's not good enough. I know you're a crook.”

“What more can I do to show you I can keep my word if we agree to be partners? What can seal the contract?”

Slocum caught his breath as her hand wormed its way between their tightly pressed bodies and began inching down from his chest to his belly, and then even lower until she gripped the growing bulge at his crotch.

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SLOCUM'S SILVER BURDEN

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

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PUBLISHING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / December 2014

Cover illustration by Sergio Giovine.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“You lied to us, Jackson.” The tall, rangy, unnaturally ashen man dressed like a placer miner hefted his rifle and moved it in his partner's direction.

“Shut yer tater trap, Drury.” The second of the four men waiting nervously beside their horses put down his field glasses and glared at the former miner. “Jack's not the kind to lie 'bout something this big.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Jackson said. He hitched up his gun belt as he glared at Drury. The man had been the weak link ever since he'd recruited him from the saloon along San Francisco's treacherous Barbary Coast. If he hadn't come along with this job, Drury would have been shanghaied for sure, all pale and shaking the way he did.

The truth was he had saved all three of his partners from different fates far worse than waiting for a train that never seemed to be on schedule. Drury had a bad drinking problem and made it worse chasing the dragon in opium dens along Dupont Gai. A stint on a China clipper's two-year trip to the Orient as a deckhand might have improved his lot in life, but nothing would change his sour disposition or volatile anger.

As much of a naysayer as Drury was, their lookout was worse in his way. Baldy Wilson was a suck-up, and nothing Jackson said was ever wrong. When they had started planning this robbery, all Baldy wanted to do was sit around, drink, and tell everyone how great it would be to get rich, and how it was all Henry Jackson's brilliance that was going to dump a ton of money into their laps. Jackson wanted Baldy to shut up and find out the information they needed from the railroad agent in Oakland, but Baldy had proven untrustworthy. He was as likely to spill his guts about the robbery to the station agent, boasting of the haul they would make, as he was to find the information about grades and engine speeds.

For that, Jackson had reluctantly relied on the fourth man in their small gang. Pierre Montague gave him a queasy stomach. The man's dark eyes never blinked, always watched, and no emotion showed through. If Jackson had to pick one of the gang most likely to shoot him in the back and take his share, Montague was it. In spite of the man's name, he wasn't French or even Acadian. Rumor had it that his ma had no idea who his pa was, but she wanted it to be a dashing Frenchie she had met in New Orleans. Montague had been born aboard a paddle wheeler on the river, churning hard for Natchez, a father or even a namesake nowhere to be found.

Other gossip claimed that Montague had popped out of his mama's womb and immediately kicked her into the muddy river to drown. Jackson doubted it, but given what he knew about the man, he understood how such a story could arise. Still, Montague had a way with the ladies and had romanced that general store owner's wife into giving them supplies they could never have paid for. Not having to steal the gear and victuals made them just a tad more invisible.

After they got around to robbing the train, they had to vanish fast. While sweet-talking his own lady, he'd learned that the Central California Railroad had a low tolerance for getting robbed. There was even talk that the vice president in charge of this line from Sacramento to Oakland had personally tracked down two inept robbers by himself, skinned them alive, and then tossed them into San Francisco Bay, where the saltwater brined them up for the sharks to eat. Jackson had never caught sight of David Collingswood, but he had quite a reputation. In spite of what Tamara said about him being a pussycat, the reputation was a powerful one, though it looked as if easy living in San Francisco had turned the man soft and careless.

“You sure this train's the one, Jackson?”

He glared at Drury.

“Why don't you just step up on that swayback nag of yours and leave if you got doubts? Splitting the money four ways is better than five.”

“Yeah, Drury. Leave. It's better 'n listening to you bad-mouth Jack the way you do,” piped up Baldy. “If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have any notion at all 'bout what the train's carryin'. He got the information straight from the horse's mouth.”

“Yeah,” Drury said, sneering. “That bitch of his looks more like a horse than a woman. Might be 'cuz all she says to him is
nay
.”

Jackson considered his options. Drury was egging him into a fight for some reason. It might be nothing more than a nasty disposition, or he might be angling to get acknowledgment from the others that he was the gang leader. Jackson looked at Montague and not Baldy for support. Baldy would follow whoever called himself the boss. Montague had to back any play against Drury.

He moved so Montague stood behind Drury. Only then did he square off, push back his coat to rest his hand on the side of his holster. If Drury made the slightest twitch, he'd be a dead man. Jackson had put up with the constant bitching long enough. Insulting Tamara bothered him less than the way Drury made a play to take over.

“We do all the dirty work and risk our necks, and she gets an equal share,” Drury said. “Where's the justice in that?”

“Without her telling us about this shipment out of Virginia City, we'd still be sitting in a saloon and getting drunk, bragging on what we've done, not how rich we can be. How rich we
will
be.”

Drury pushed back his coat, ready to throw down. At that instant Baldy cried out, “There's the train! I see the smoke from its stack. We got to get down there, Jack. We don't want to miss our chance.”

“This is the steepest grade before the train gets over the hills and heads down into Oakland,” Jackson said.

“I don't care if it's highballin'. I can rob it blindfolded.”

“We got to ride. Now,” said Montague.

Jackson saw that Montague held his rifle so a single round from it would shatter Drury's spine. He wished Montague would pull the trigger. Three of them could rob the train just fine.

“Might be you got it right for a change, Jackson,” said Drury. “Let's find out if there's so much as a silver dollar on the train.”

“I'm seein' a whale of a lot of trouble,” Baldy said, his eyes pressed to the lenses of his field glasses. “There must be a half-dozen armed guards on top of the train. Never seen 'em ride like that before.”

“The grade's close to three percent. That'll shake them up,” Jackson said, shoving Drury out of the way. The back of his neck prickled as he waited for the man to back-shoot him. When the expected bullet never came, he said, “We know what to do. Don't worry about the guards. Montague will take them out. Right, Pierre?”

All he got from the man was a grunt. Montague moved forward, flopped on his belly, and levered in a round. He took a slow breath, let it out, and fired. Jackson saw a guard on the roof of the mail car jerk about and fall off the train, hidden by the cars. On the far side was a steep cliff. If the guard tumbled down that, he was a goner, even if Montague's shot had only wounded him.

Montague wasted no more time. He fired slowly, accurately, taking out a guard with every shot. Where the man had learned to shoot like that hardly mattered to Jackson. Not riding into the gun barrels of a half-dozen railroad guards did. He galloped hard. The engineer had twigged to the robbery and had his fireman working overtime to feed the boiler. Jackson had asked around enough to know the engineer had a better chance of blowing a valve than he did of gaining speed on this steep slope.

Keeping low, he ducked a few rounds making their way toward him. Montague proved himself to be a real sharpshooter. No guard got a second shot at any of the men galloping for the mail car. When the sniper's rifle fell silent, Jackson knew they were almost rich. All that separated them from a couple hundred dollars each in silver was a thin wooden door.

“Open up and we won't hurt you,” Jackson called out, trotting alongside the slow-moving train. “We just want what you're carryin'.”

A shrill scream like that of a frightened woman came from inside the car. Then holes began appearing in the door as the mail clerk foolishly fired through the wood.

Jackson counted. At six, he motioned to Drury and Baldy. They shot off the lock on the door and swung it back along its track as Jackson rode up and shoved his six-gun into the frightened clerk's face. The man was hardly out of his teens. From the look of his face, he had either a bad case of acne or a mild one of smallpox. Each pimple had turned fiery red in his fear. The man's eyes were big and wide, and a bit of drool worked from the corner of his mouth.

“Drop it or I'll drop you.”

The clerk looked down to see how he fumbled with the six-shooter in his hands. He was trying to load it without opening the gate. All the shells had tumbled to the floor and rattled about as the train ground to a halt. Montague was still doing his job, getting the drop on the engineer and his brakeman.

“Don't kill me!”

“Get the coupling,” Jackson bellowed. The words had barely left his lips when the metallic grinding told him Montague had done his part again.

The locomotive pulled a lighter load now and shot forward, hit the top of the grade, and vanished over the summit in seconds. What he hadn't counted on was the mail car and caboose, once free of the rest of the train, rolling back downhill. For a moment, the mail car stood still, then began the inexorable trip back down the steep hill it had just scaled.

“Get on the car. Set the brake! It's rollin' away from us!”

Jackson's order accomplished nothing. Both Drury and Baldy were on the ground. Montague had dismounted to work at the coupler. He let out a loud curse and started riding after the escaping cars. Jackson rode close enough to see the metal rungs driven into the front of the car. He had done some bulldogging in his day and figured this couldn't be much different. He judged the distance, got his toes square in the stirrups, and launched himself.

He misjudged the distance and crashed into the car, sliding down the rough wall. Frantically, he grabbed for the ladder. At the last possible instant his fingers curled around a rung. The rusted metal cut into his hand, but he hung on grimly. With a powerful jerk, he swung himself around. His toes dragged along the ties and cinders in the roadbed. Every time he hit one of the ties, he was almost jolted from his grip. Through sheer will, he got one foot under him and kicked hard. This sent him up high enough to grab a second rung. From there he pulled himself up far enough to secure a foothold. In seconds he scrambled up to the roof and found the handle for the car's handbrake.

His back screaming in protest, he fought to turn the rusted wheel. He dug his toes into the roof, got purchase, and finally felt the brake turn a fraction of an inch. Another, another, and then it broke free. He almost pitched from the roof as the wheel made a half circuit. Then he felt the metal grinding down into the wheels. Tortured hot metal smells rose, and a shower of sparks from the wheels shot back toward his three partners. They veered away to keep from being set on fire.

Then he heard cries of fear from the caboose. The three men riding in it jumped, hit the ground with loud thuds, and lay still. A second later the mail clerk shot from the door beneath Jackson's feet. His scream continued for quite a spell. He had picked the wrong spot to escape and had jumped out over a fifty-foot drop into a rocky ravine. Jackson tried to see what happened to the clerk, then decided his stomach wasn't up for seeing guts and brains smeared all over the hillside.

He pushed harder on the brake to slow the deadly downhill slide. The mail car came to a grating halt, but it was still coupled to the caboose. Jackson barely jumped before the caboose tipped over and derailed, taking part of the mail car with it. From the far side of the railroad tracks, Jackson sat up and stared. It looked as if a giant hand had reached down from the sky and plucked away the back half of the mail car, leaving the front still on its wheels on the tracks.

“You all right, Jack?”

“Yeah, I am.” Jackson got to his feet. Baldy handed down his reins. “That was one hell of a wreck.”

“We mighta lost the vault over the cliff,” grumbled Drury. “You could have kept everything all upright on the tracks.”

Jackson touched the six-shooter in his holster. A single shot would be all it took, but he saw that Drury was ready for such a move. Even with all the money from the mail car waiting for them, he stirred up trouble. His dark eyes looked like burning coals set in a pasty white face.

Montague rode up, then jumped into what remained of the car. By the time Jackson reached the torn-off rear of the car, Montague had opened the vault.

“How'd you do that so fast?” Jackson hopped up. “I reckoned it would take us an hour to open the vault if the mail clerk wouldn't do it.” He snorted. There wasn't any way the mail clerk would open anything, including his own coffin lid.

“It was smashed open.” Montague's voice was small, tiny, timid.

“What's wrong? The vault empty?” Jackson pushed past his partner and stared. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

Drury and Baldy joined them. They all stared at the take, then at each other.

“There must be a ton of silver there,” Baldy finally said. “We're rich. Dammit, we're rich!”

He began dancing around, whooping, hollering, and swatting his floppy-brimmed hat against his thigh.

“Why're you so quiet? Both of you?” Drury went to the safe and ran his fingers over the silver bars stacked inside. “I know metal. This is the real thing. What's wrong?”

“There must be a couple hundred bars there,” Montague said. “How are we gonna take it all?”

Jackson sucked in his breath. This was an embarrassment of riches he had never expected. From what Tamara had said, the shipment would be good, maybe a few hundred dollars. He had hoped for a thousand. But this?

“What's your problem? We struck the mother lode,” Drury said, happy for the first time.

“You got a pack mule with you? No? Well, neither do I. None of us expected to be starin' at so much silver.”