Midnight Rider (Ralph Cotton Western Series) (16 page)

“Me neither,” said the Giant.

“Sounds like you two are really sold on Avrial Rochenbach.”

“We call him Rock,” said the Giant.

“So I hear,” said Grolin, still puffing.

Casings gave a shrug.

“You told us to keep an eye on him and tell you what we think,” he said. “I figure you want the truth.”

“I do,” said Grolin, “so give it to me.”

“The man is
damn good
at what he does,” said Casings. “He opened that safe like it was never locked. When we found Bonham and Batts murdered and robbed, he threw right into the chase with us. When we caught up to Macon Ray and his men, Rock took them down while Giant and I kept the other three busy.”

“I see,” said Grolin, listening intently. “Let me ask you this. If he’s so good, where the hell’s the money?”

Casings and the Giant looked at each other.

“When we found them, the money was gone,” said Casings. “That’s all we can tell you about it.”

“And you’d both tell me the same thing, if I had Penta and a couple of the boys work on your fingers and toes with a ball-peen hammer?” Grolin asked.

Casings withstood the harshness of the threat, feeling no real rage behind the gang leader’s words.

“There’s no other way we can say it, boss,” Casings said. “It’s all the sweet gospel truth.”

Grolin stared them down and puffed on his cigar. He wasn’t about to get any stronger with the Giant in his office, nobody covering him with a rifle or shotgun. If they were lying to him, he’d find it out in due time.

“It’s near suppertime. Both of you get chowed down and tend to your horses,” he said. “Get yourselves some rest and be ready to ride out tonight.”

“Yeah, the big job…,” Casings said, smiling.

“Every job we do is a big job,” said Grolin dismissingly. “You’ll know where you’re going once you get there.”

Outside his office, Grolin stood on the landing at the handrail as the two men walked down the stairs toward the bar. He looked at the bar and gave a nod to Denton Spiller and a young gunman named Doyle Hughes, who stood flanking Rochenbach, rifles loosely in hand.

“Your turn, Rochenbach. Let’s go,” Spiller said, stepping back from the bar and gesturing Rock and Hughes to the stairs.

Rochenbach took his time, downing his shot glass of rye, timing it so he would cross paths with Casings and the Giant as they came across the floor.

“I said, let’s go,
damn it
!” said Spiller. He started to grab Rochenbach by his arm, but the look Rochenbach gave him stopped him cold.

Above them, Grolin watched with a slight grin, seeing how expertly Rochenbach managed to take Spiller’s temper to the boiling point, then defuse it as he saw fit.

You’re good, Rock. That’s for sure,
Grolin told himself, watching Rochenbach turn from the bar and walk over to the staircase.

Rochenbach and the two riflemen stopped until Casings and the Giant stepped off the bottom stair and walked toward the bar. In passing, Rochenbach’s eyes met Casings’ for only a second. But in that second he saw Casings reassuring him that everything was all right. Grolin had no problem with them trying to
retrieve the money—he had bigger plans in the making, Rochenbach decided.

Climbing the stairs behind Spiller, Rochenbach stared up at Grolin. When the three men topped the stairs and Spiller started toward the office door, Rochenbach stopped cold and looked at Grolin.

“Tell me, Grolin,” he said, as Spiller turned around facing him, “am I working for you, or am I a prisoner here?”

“What a thing to ask, Rock,” Grolin said cagily. “Of course you’re working for me.”

“Then why am I walking between these idiots?” Rock asked. “I know my way around.”

Spiller and Hughes started to flare up, but Grolin stopped them both with a raised hand.

“All right, Dent, you and Hughes go back to the bar. We’re good here.”

Spiller stared coldly at Rochenbach, but he turned and gave Hughes a nod. Rochenbach and Grolin watched the two walk back down the stairs.

Grolin chuckled and said, “One word from me, Rock, Spiller would love to gut you.” He turned, stepped over and opened his office door. “Why do you keep him so stoked up?”

“I don’t know,” said Rock. “I suppose because it’s so easy to do.”

Rochenbach followed Grolin inside the office. He took off his hat and stood at the front of his desk as Grolin walked around behind it. Grolin gestured toward a chair. Rochenbach seated himself as the outlaw leader sat down behind his wide oak desk.

“I’ve got no questions for you about the Hercules Mining money,” Grolin said. “I figure anything Casings and the Giant didn’t tell me, you won’t tell me either. Anyway, it was a fluke, that much money being in the safe.”

“Fluke money still spends,” Rock said.

“Forget it,” said Grolin. “The job was a practice run to see if you could open a Diebold safe.”

Rochenbach only stared at him, confident.

“From what everybody tells me, you’re the best,” Grolin said.

“Obliged,” said Rock. “But practice run or not, I hate losing that much money.”

“So do I,” said Grolin, “but it’s over and done. I can’t let it distract me from something bigger.” He stuck his cigar in his mouth and stared knowingly at Rochenbach.

“So we’re all set?” Rochenbach asked.

“Yep, Thursday night—four days from now, we ride,” said Grolin. “There’s a big shipment coming out. We’re going to be waiting for it.”

“All right,” said Rochenbach, perking up in the chair. “Tell me all about it.”

“Nothing to tell,” Grolin said. He grinned and puffed on his cigar. “I’ve got everything covered. Now get out of here. Take a few days, rest, relax, enjoy everything the Lucky Nut has to offer. Come Thursday, be ready to ride out and make us both rich.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Rochenbach said, standing, putting his hat on and turning toward the door.

On the landing, Rock looked down at the bar but saw that all of Grolin’s men were gone.
All right…,
he told himself, heading down the stairs. He would find Casings and the Giant later. Right now he needed to report to his field superior, let him know that Thursday was set for the robbery. Other details he’d have to pass along as they came to him—
if
they came to him, he thought. If not, he was on his own. But that was all right. He was used to working alone.

Leaving the Lucky Nut, Rochenbach walked his dun to the livery barn. He slung the horse’s saddle over a rack and hung its bridle on a wall peg. He grained and watered the hungry animal and wiped it down with a handful of clean straw. He walked the dun into a clean stall and pitched a fresh pile of hay at its hooves. Patting its muzzle, he turned and left, his Spencer rifle in hand.

After a meal of elk steak, beans and biscuits at Turk’s Restaurant, he drank a cup of hot coffee, paid for his meal and left. As he walked along the dark street back to his room at to the Great Westerner, he thought about how he hadn’t run into any of Grolin’s men—which was good, he reminded himself, entering the hotel lobby. Next door at the Lucky Nut, banjo and twangy piano music spilled out into the chilled night air as he closed the hotel door behind him.

Instead of going up the stairs to his room, Rochenbach slipped quietly through the hotel’s main hallway and out the back door into a long alleyway that
would take him to the rear of the telegraph office unseen.

At the back door of the darkened building, Rochenbach looked all around, covered in the darker shadow of the doorway. Seeing nothing in the empty alleyway, he turned and deftly picked the door lock.

When he’d slipped inside and closed the door behind him, he looked around at the empty office and walked straight to the operator’s desk.
Thursday…,
he told himself, wishing he had more information to pass along. All right, it wasn’t much.
But it’s a start,
he reminded himself again. He leaned his rifle against the wall.

Instead of sitting down, he bowed over the telegraph operator’s desk and clicked on the switch standing atop a brass-trimmed, oak battery case. He made three quick taps on the operator’s key to ensure that both the key and the sounder were working properly. Then he clicked in the private identification code of his field supervisor.

Satisfied that the identification code was on its way, he quickly followed up, tapping out a six-word message in Morse code:
Train ride… Thursday night… all aboard.
He waited in the silence of the dark office for five minutes, then retapped the message. He stared intently at the sounder, waiting for a reply of any sort.

When no reply came, he tapped out the same message for a third time, hearing nothing in the silent office but the click of the telegraph key and the steady tick of a large clock hanging on the far wall.

Now what?
he asked himself. Had the message gone through, gotten relayed on to its proper receiver? If
so, why had his field office or even the supervisor himself not acknowledged him by now?

All right, send it again.

He began tapping out the message again—the same six words, once, twice, threes times. Then he straightened up from the desk and stared at the sounder, waiting. Still nothing. Too bad, he told himself. It was time to go.

He picked up his Spencer rifle from against the wall and started to reach out and tap in his own identification code, signaling that he had ended his message. But just as his fingers started to touch the key, the sounder suddenly came to life, tapping out a short unidentified message, meaning it could have come from anyone anywhere within range on the open wires.

Leaning back over the desk, Rochenbach listened closely, so as not to miss the message when it repeated itself. As soon as the tapping started again, he began translating the Morse code into words. But before he could get the first word spelled out, he heard something close behind him and he swung around, his rifle in hand.

“Quick, but not quick enough!” said Doyle Hughes, watching as Denton Spiller slammed the butt of his rifle full force into the side of Rochenbach’s head.

Staring down at Rochenbach as he lay sprawled and unconscious across the operator’s desk, Spiller grinned and lowered his rifle to his side. Next to Rochenbach, the telegraph key sat in silence, tipped over on its side, a wire having been pulled loose from the sounder.

“You can’t believe how good that felt,” he said to Hughes over his shoulder.

“You seemed to enjoy it
really
well,” Hughes replied in the darkness, stooping down, picking up Rochenbach’s rifle from the floor. He chuckled. “I don’t ever want you carrying a mad-on like that at me.”

“This bastard had it coming,” said Spiller. He reached out and turned off the battery switch. “The only reason he’s alive is that Grolin needs him. Soon as he’s finished with him, he’s all mine.”

Hughes stepped in closer and looked at a trickle of blood running down the side of Rochenbach’s face.

“Let’s hope you haven’t knocked his brain plumb out of his ears,” he said.

“He’s all right,” said Spiller. “What did you hear him saying on this thing?” He nodded down at the telegraph key.

“He was spreading the word to somebody,” said Hughes, “telling them our big job is all set for Thursday, the way I figure.”

“Are you sure?” Spiller said.

“
Train ride, Thursday night, all aboard,
” Hughes said, repeating Rock’s message. “What does that sound like to you?”

“Tickles the hell out of me,” Spiller said, glaring down at Rochenbach. “Let’s get this bastard up between us, drag him out of here. See what Grolin wants to do with him now.”

“Man!” said Hughes. “I hope this ain’t going to change our plans any.”

“I can just about promise you it won’t,” said Spiller, reaching down, grabbing Rochenbach by the
shoulder of his wool coat. “Grolin might walk away from that Hercules money, but he’s not going to pass up a chance at the kind of money we’re fixing to make.”

“That’s good to hear,” said Hughes. Seeing Rochenbach’s hat lying on the floor, he started to bend down and pick it up. But Spiller stopped him.

“Leave it,” he said. “He’s not going to need a hat, not for long anyways.” He reached his boot out and kicked Rochenbach’s slouch hat away.

Rochenbach awoke flat on his face in the dark, the sound of a large parade drum pounding inside his swollen head with each beat of his heart. He felt the vibration, the rumble and clack of steel rails racing along beneath him. Turning his face enough to look up, he saw the flare of a match followed by a glow of circling lantern light.

“Well, now, looks like our
tough guy
is finally waking up,” said Spiller, seated on an empty nail keg near Rochenbach’s throbbing head. “Can I get you something for the pain,
hoss
?” he asked, feigning concern. “I know how it feels getting smacked with a rifle butt, remember?” He patted the Winchester rifle lying across his lap.

The circle of lantern light clearly revealed Spiller’s cruel grin. The shadowy faces of the other men stood in a half circle behind him. At the far end of the car, he saw the black shadowy outline of horses.