Midnight Rider (Ralph Cotton Western Series) (20 page)

“Go shut that damned lunatic up!” he said in a hushed growl.

Spiller slipped quietly out of the car. Rochenbach turned back to the safe, pencil stub and stethoscope in hand, and turned the dial slowly to his right.

Grolin grinned and let out a breath of relief when he watched Rock write a third number on the door near the dial and straighten up and pull the stethoscope from his ears.

“Is that it?” he said in a hushed tone, stepping forward.

“Yep,” said Rochenbach. “It’s all yours. He took the big iron handle with both hands and swung the big steel door open.

“Holy Moses!”
Grolin shouted. He turned to Lionel Sharp, who stood holding the lantern, and said, “Here, give me that!”

In his excitement, he shoved Rochenbach’s big Remington down into Sharp’s coat pocket and snatched the lantern from his hand. “Everybody stay behind me!” he said, hurrying forward, seeing the light of the lantern spill into the dark safe, revealing shelf upon shelf of small wooden crates.

Looking back at the men crowded behind him, Grolin spotted the Stillwater Giant and waved him forward.

“Open one of these, Giant. Let’s take a look,” he said in an excited voice.

The Giant stepped inside the huge safe, picked up the nearest ingot crate and slammed it to the floor. The lid of the crate split and came ajar. The Giant stooped down, ripped the lid the rest of the way off and threw it aside.

“My God! No, Giant, don’t!” Grolin yelled. But he was too late to stop the Giant, who stood up and turned the crate upside down at chest level. The men stared wide-eyed as sawdust packing spilled out of the crate, followed by a downpour of gold ingots that clunked and rang and bounced and slid away all over the floor of the safe.

“Put it all back in the crate!” yelled Grolin to the
men as they feverishly scrambled and snatched up the spilled ingots. “We don’t split it up until we’re away from here!”

“Want me to open some more?” the Giant asked.

Grolin just gave him a burning stare.

Rock slid one of the ingots to the side and stood with his boot covering it until the men moved forward to put the ingots back into the crate. Then he stooped down, picked up the ingot, dropped it down his boot well and stood up quickly.

As the men gathered close together, dropping ingots back into the crate, Rock reached out unseen, lifted his Remington from Sharp’s coat pocket and slid it into the belly holster beneath his coat. In the young man’s excitement over the gold, the missing weight of the big gun went unnoticed.

“Everybody back away!” Grolin shouted, waving his rifle across the front of the men, forcing them out of the huge safe. “We’re going to get these crates out of here and loaded on the wagon! Everybody’s going to get what’s coming to them! But not until we’ve cleared the hell out of here.”

Rochenbach sat back out of the way atop a stack of empty cooperage barrels. In the glow of a lantern, he watched the men hurry back and forth across the loading platform carrying the small but heavy crates of gold ingots. On one trip back from the wagon, Casings swung over to him in spite of Grolin, Spiller and Frank Penta standing watching near the Treasury car door.

“Are you going to be all right once we’re done here, Rock?” Casings asked.

“I’ll make out,” Rock replied.

“There’s a posse riding the train we stole the car from,” he said. “So watch your step.”

“A posse?” said Rock. “How do you know that?”

“They had six horses saddled and ready in the freight car,” he said, nodding toward the car sitting behind the Treasury car. “They’re still there. Grolin told a new man to scatter them before we leave here with the gold.”

Rochenbach stared toward the freight car and ran the information through his mind. Was this something the Denver field office might have done, sent extra guards out with the shipments, even before the Thursday date he’d given them?

“I still meant what I said, about us working together, the three of us,” said Casings, cutting into his thoughts. “Don’t think this big job changes anything between us.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Rock. “Make sure you and the Giant both get through this thing. We’ll get back together down the trail.”

“Good,” said Casings. His voice lowered a notch. “I got the name of Grolin’s contact at the mint.” He passed a guarded glance over his shoulder toward Grolin and the others.

“You did?” Rochenbach was surprised. “How’d you get it?”

“Grolin let it slip,” Casings said. “But it makes sense that he’s the man who gives Grolin his information. It’s Inman Walker. He’s secretary to the mint superintendent. He knows everything that’s about to happen there.”

Rock made a mental note of the name.
Information received…,
he told himself. Not enough to act on, but a start. Now he needed to verify it.

“After I thought about it, I remembered seeing Walker’s picture in the
Denver News
,” Casings said. “I recalled seeing a man with a beard leaving Grolin’s office one night. Without the beard, it was Secretary Walker. I’m certain. Come to think of it, his beard didn’t look completely natural. It could have been a disguise of some sort.”

“Good work, Pres,” Rock said. “Now get going. Grolin’s looking over here, about to bust a gut.”

Casings only nodded, turned and went back to the Treasury car.

Rochenbach leaned back on the cooperage barrels and stared across the platform at Grolin and the others.

As the men finished stacking the gold crates onto the wagon and tying the load down, Shaner stood beside Grolin, cradling his rifle, the hammer cocked, his finger over the trigger.

“I’m thinking this brazen bastard won’t try to make a run for it, boss,” he said to Grolin. “Do you think he figures he’s still got something coming, after Hughes catching him tipping somebody off?”

“I don’t know,” said Grolin, staring across the platform at Rochenbach. “If I was him, I’d be cutting out of here something fast.”

“Yeah,” said Spiller, “he has to know that one of us is going to kill him, now that he’s done what we needed him to do.”

“So you would think,” said Grolin, his brow narrowed in contemplation. “This man has troubled me ever since I first laid eyes on him. I can’t figure his angle in all this.”

Frank Penta chuffed, also staring over at Rochenbach.

“Maybe he just figures he’s done his job. Now he wants what was promised to him for doing it,” he said to Grolin.

“Frank, are you worried about getting your cut of the gold?” Grolin asked Penta without taking his eyes off Rochenbach.

“No, I’m not,” Penta said.

“Then don’t worry about his cut either,” Grolin snapped. He turned from Rochenbach and looked at the wagon, the load tied down, ready to go. The men walked over to their horses a few yards away.

“You asked,” said Penta, “so I told you.”

“To hell with this,” said Grolin. “Shaner, tell him to go with you to turn those horses loose. Take him out of sight behind the freight car and shoot him in the head.” He paused, then added, “Wait until we’re all out of sight. If Giant sees what you’re up to, he’ll go crazy. He acts like
Rock
is his long-lost brother.”

“I’ve got it covered,” said Shaner. “I’ve wanted to shoot this bastard ever since I met him.” He hiked up his coat collar and lowered the hammer on his rifle to keep from alerting Rochenbach of his intentions.

Across the platform, Rochenbach watched Shaner walk toward him.
Here we go…,
he told himself,
standing up off the empty barrels, picking up the lantern.

“Rochenbach,” Shaner said, “Grolin says to go help me unload the horses from the freight cars and turn them loose.”

“When do I get my cut?” Rochenbach asked, walking along beside the rifleman toward the freight car. “I want to get away from this bunch quick as I can.”

Shaner chuckled and said, “Yeah, we all love you too, Rochenbach. You’ll get what’s coming to you soon enough.”

Rock looked over and saw Grolin and the other two walk to their horses as the wagon turned on the ramp. By the time Rock stepped forward and slid the freight car door open, both the freight wagon and the horsemen had faded out of sight into the darkness. A dead silence fell over the empty depot and the long moonlit loading platform.

Stepping inside the freight car, Rochenbach held the lantern up and looked at the saddled horses standing in a row gazing back at him.

Stopping at the sound of the rifle hammer cocking behind him, Rochenbach turned to face Shaner.

“Before you pull that trigger,” he said calmly, his right hand on the butt of the Remington, “you’ve got to tell me something.”

“No, I don’t,” said Shaner, taking aim on Rock’s forehead from only a few feet away.

“Why do you suppose Inman Walker sent me here to check up on you guys?” Rock asked. Inside his
unbuttoned coat, his thumb slid over the hammer of his Remington.

Shaner’s rifle lowered an inch.

“What?” he asked, not trying to hide his surprise.

“You heard me,” said Rock. “Are you stupid enough to believe I just dropped in out of the blue? Walker sent me.” He stopped and said, “Or am I wasting my time? You don’t even know who Walker is?”

“Oh, I know Secretary Walker is our setup man in the mint,” said Shaner. “I’ve met him in person.” His rifle lowered another inch.

Information verified…,
Rochenbach told himself. Now to get out of here alive.

“Then you
know
why I’m here,” he said. “I’m here to find out why Walker didn’t get his cut from the Denver-Platte Canyon ore train robbery last month.”

Shaner looked puzzled and lowered his rifle a little more.

“You’re talking crazy,” he said. “We didn’t rob that train last month!”

“Maybe you and your pals here didn’t,” said Rochenbach. “But Grolin did the job. He had men from somewhere helping him. Maybe he held out on you and others. But it doesn’t matter. Walker expects to get his cut—so do I.”

“Damn!” said Shaner. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not, Rochenbach.” He lowered his rifle all the way to waist-high, the barrel pointing down at the floor.

Rochenbach stepped sideways to him. The Remington slid from his belly holster inside his coat, cocked at arm’s length.

“It doesn’t matter
now
,” he said quietly. He squeezed the trigger; the hammer fell. A streak of blue-orange fire belched from the open car door. The explosion caused the six horses to jerk against their tied reins. They whined and snorted fearfully in protest.

“Settle down, fellows,” Rock said to the skittish animals, walking toward them. “We’ve got a long ride ahead of us tonight.”

Along the seasoned loading platform, the sound banged like a forging hammer on steel and echoed off through the woods.

Two hundred yards up the winding rocky trail, Grolin jerked his galloping horse to a halt and swung in around on the trail.

“That was a pistol shot,” said Spiller, sliding to a halt, turning his horse beside him.

“Lionel Sharp?” Grolin called out to the new man.

“Right here, boss,” Sharp said, proud to hear Grolin call his name.

Grolin budged his horse over to him and said, “Where is that pistol I gave you to hold for me?”

Sharp patted his pocket and realized the Remington was gone.
Uh-oh…!

“I don’t have it, boss!” he said, his voice already trembling.

Grolin stared back into the darkness.

“Want me to go back and see what…?” Spiller said, his rifle in hand.

“I already know
what
,” Grolin said. “Adios, Shaner,” he said in the direction of the depot. He looked Sharp up and down, turned his horse and rode away.
Sharp started to turn his horse, but Spiller grabbed its reins.

“Not so fast,
fool
,” he said. “This is as far as you make it.”

Rochenbach pulled the gold ingot bar from his boot well and looked at it in the glow of the lantern light. The two-inch-by-three-and-a-half-inch shipping ingot glittered in the flickering light. He knew that the only purpose of an unmarked shipping ingot was its ease of transport and handling until it reached its final destination. There it would be resmelted, weighed, marked and stamped respectively.

He hefted the ingot in the palm of his fingerless leather glove. It looked right; it felt right.
Yet
… He reached down, pulled a knife from a sheath on the dead outlaw’s gun belt. He carved a corner of the soft metal, making the cut large enough to see into the core of its quarter-inch thickness.

He studied the ingot closely, noting to himself that for all its weight and glitter it was nothing more than a gold-plated utility slug—a bar useful for weight balancing and exhibition, nothing more.

Turning the plated ingot in his palm, he felt a sense of relief. It was good to learn that he hadn’t opened the
big safe door and allowed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gold to fall into the hands of thieves.

This was the reply to his telegraph. Without receiving his identification code at the end of his message, the Denver field office chose the safest and most reasonable action. They had replaced the gold shipping ingots with gold-plated slugs. How had they done that without Inman Walker knowing?