The train slid away as though drawn by a giant, invisible string.
Yakima hunkered low over Wolf’s neck, slitting his eyes as the wind blasted his hat brim against his forehead. “No,” he spat between gritted teeth as the train gradually outdistanced him. “Goddamnit, no!”
Chapter 16
Wolf must have thought Yakima yelled “Go!” instead of “No!” because from somewhere deep in his wild heart, the stallion found another reserve of bronco strength.
Bounding out over the sage and plowing over stunt piñons as though they were paper, he widened his stride a few more inches, phlegm and spittle flying back from his nose like rain, hooves hammering like the locomotive’s own steel pistons.
Chewing his lower lip, his green eyes blazing with a savage fire beneath his bent hat brim, Yakima watched the train suddenly stop stretching out away from him and, as though the locomotive had suddenly been shoved into reverse, fall back toward his left.
“That’s it, Wolf. That’s it, boy,” Yakima ground out through gritted teeth as he and the stallion approached the train from ahead of the caboose, slanting toward the third passenger car.
Inside the second car, sitting next to the window and facing Lowry Temple and the car’s rear, Faith sat still as a statue, numb by all that had happened.
A voice rose above the rumble of the heavy wheels beneath her feet and the low hum of conversation around her. “Jesus Christ, some crazy damn cowboy . . .”
Faith opened her eyes and glanced out the soot-stained window, and a frown bit into her forehead.
“Look at that,” said someone behind her. “What’s he tryin’ to do—board without payin’?”
“That’s one way to do it!” laughed another man.
Faith saw the rider behind the thin veil of wafting steam and wood smoke, racing toward the train on a blaze-faced black stallion.
“Gonna kill that horse,” someone muttered on the other side of the car, as the horse and rider closed on the train to ride parallel, falling back gradually while inching ever closer to the tracks.
The smoke wafted away from the rider’s low-canted head around which a white bandage was wrapped, and the black brim snapped up to reveal two jade green eyes in sharp contrast to the high, wide cheekbones and coffee-colored skin. Faith’s heart rolled, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d leaped to her feet and bounded over Kooch Manley’s knees to claw at the window, which had been closed against the flying soot and cinders.
She got it down quickly and poked her head out.
“Yakima!”
The wind, rife with wood smoke, tore the scream from her lips.
“Dios!”
Garza barked. “What the hell?”
“It’s the damn half-breed!” Temple had lunged to his feet and now, peering out the window, jerked Faith back with one arm and threw her brusquely into her seat.
He grabbed a revolver, thumbed back the hammer, and stuck his arm out the window. He angled the gun back along the train and slightly out to where Yakima and Wolf were still inching toward the thundering train car. They’d fallen far enough back that Faith could see only Wolf’s bobbing, blaze-faced head.
“No!”
she screamed, bounding back up from her seat, clawing at Temple’s back. Garza smashed the back of his hand against her face, throwing her over her seat’s outside armrest and into the aisle.
Outside the train, Yakima saw the arm snake out the window, the silver-plated revolver glistening faintly in the day’s waning light. He jerked his head down as the gun barked, sounding little louder than a hiccup amidst the rumbling of the car and the clattering of the wheels over the seams.
Yakima ducked again as once more the revolver stabbed flames toward him, puffing smoke. Wolf jerked to one side.
Yakima glanced at the caboose drawing up on his left. A brass rail ran along the top. As the cutthroat’s gun belched once more, the slug piercing the crown of Yakima’s hat, the half-breed crawled up from his stirrup to set both his boots on the saddle. In one motion, he dropped Wolf’s reins and threw himself up and left toward the pitching caboose’s roof.
He found the cool, brassy rail, and he tightened his fingers, glancing down as Wolf fell back and swerved away from the thundering train. Yakima’s knees slammed against the caboose’s wooden panel, and he winced at the pain shooting up and down his legs.
He looked up at the rail and clenched his teeth as he drew himself toward it, the long muscles in his forearms bulging, his biceps swelling to the size of wheel hubs. The pistol barked twice more, one slug tearing into the side of the caboose while the other drilled the slack of the half-breed’s right cuff.
When he got his chest above the caboose’s roof, he swung his legs up and over the rail, closing his mouth as the wind sucked the air from his lungs and nearly tore his hat from his head, whipping his hair around wildly. He palmed his Colt and tugged his hat down lower on his head, looking up at the roofs of the other cars jostling to and fro under the wisping wood smoke.
“Well, you made the train . . . ,” he growled uncertainly, on his hands and knees, steadying himself with the rail to his left. The wind hammered his cheeks and eyes.
Faith’s captors were in the car just ahead. He’d try to get into the first car in the train’s combination, then make his way back.
Yakima started forward. As he gained the vestibule between the caboose and the passenger car, he rose to his feet and glanced into the narrow gap between the cars below.
The cutthroats hadn’t come out after him. He drew back, then lurched forward, easily leaping the gap between the cars and landing atop the roof of the next car, bending his knees. Crouching and holding his arms out for balance, he strode forward along the narrow iron walkway. He moved quickly, fighting the wind and balancing himself against the car’s violent sway.
Below, the wheels hammered, clattering over the seams.
He was near the middle of the car when he stopped suddenly. A head rose over the car’s far end, at the top of the left-side ladder. A dark, pocked face appeared, and the Mexican’s lips stretched back from his teeth. He snaked an arm over the top of the car, aiming a long-barreled Remington at Yakima.
Crack!
The bullet sizzled over Yakima’s head, and he dropped to a knee, quickly aiming his Colt and firing. His slug sparked and clanged off the ladder, and the half-breed pulled his head down out of sight.
Yakima looked behind.
Another head appeared over the top of the ladder at the car’s other end—the big, round, balding head of a middle-aged man. He flashed a silver eyetooth, his little eyes sparking as they found Yakima, and he began snaking his own pistol over the roof.
Before the man could level his revolver, Yakima whipped around and snapped off another shot. That slug ricocheted off the riveted tin at the edge of the roof and flew wide. The older gent flinched and triggered his pistol, the slug whining an inch over Yakima’s head.
Yakima fired two more shots, the first one sailing wide as the car lurched, fouling his aim. But the second slug must have torn into the big man’s ear, because he howled and, jerking his head sideways, dropped straight down the ladder and out of sight.
Behind Yakima, another pistol barked, and he clamped his jaws together as the bullet burned across his right shoulder blade, tearing his shirt. He whipped around, dancing sideways, as the Mexican fired again from the car’s other end, the bullet sailing off into the wind and landscape whipping past in a tan blur.
Yakima triggered a return shot, his anger and the pain in his shoulder throwing his aim off. The slug skidded off the first car farther up the swaying, rumbling line to ping off the locomotive’s smoke-stack.
Automatically, he fired again, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
He cursed. His only other weapon was the Arkansas toothpick in the sheath thonged around his neck and hanging down between his shoulder blades.
He looked up to see the Mexican grinning as he stepped onto the roof of the passenger car, holding his gun out in his right hand. Yakima considered reaching for the toothpick, but reconsidered. The Mexican had him dead to rights.
If the man was sporting, however, Yakima might have another chance. . . .
Yakima thrust his arms forward, lifted his hands, and beckoned the man with a challenging stare. “No fun in shootin’ an unarmed man, is there, amigo?”
The Mexican stood at the end of the car, balancing himself with one arm flung out and squinting down the barrel of his long-barreled Remington. He tipped his head back and sideways, and pooched out his lips, sizing up Yakima like a boxer taking an opponent’s measure. He teetered back and forth with the car’s sway, his long hair dancing around his homely, aggressive face.
Suddenly, he twirled the Remy on his trigger finger, dropped it into his holster, and stepped forward, squaring his shoulders and holding his hands out, palms down, drilling Yakima with his challenging, black-eyed gaze.
Yakima stepped forward in much the same pose, the smoke-laced wind swirling back from the locomotive threatening to throw him to either side while the car lurched and swayed beneath his moccasins. The Mex moved toward him, his grin widening as he thrilled to the fight, showing a devil’s mouth of rotten, twisted, tobacco-stained teeth.
He opened his raised hands slightly, flung his right toward Yakima, then pulled it back and fired his left. The punch landed with a solid smack high on Yakima’s right cheek, and Yakima delivered the same to the Mex, whose eyes snapped wide with surprise as he stumbled back.
He staggered too far right, and, with the car lurching this way and that, he put his left foot down quickly to keep from going over the side. As he did, Yakima stormed forward and landed a savage haymaker on the man’s jaw and followed it up with a solid left that laid the man’s eyebrow open like a swipe from a butcher knife.
“Mierda!”
the Mex screamed as he fell hard and hit the car’s roof on his back, the back of his head slamming down with a ring.
A killing fury burning through him, Yakima didn’t give the Mex a chance to gather his wits much less rise before he slammed a knee onto the man’s chest. The man blinked, terror glistening now in his eyes, as Yakima hammered first a right cross to his face, then a left, both blows landing solidly.
He swung his right fist back once more.
Before he could ram it forward, the Mex bucked up suddenly and Yakima, caught off balance and off guard, flew sideways, hitting the top of the car on his back. As the Mex heaved himself to his feet, blood streaming down from his cut brow, Yakima rolled toward the car’s left edge, then quickly regained his feet.
The Mex lunged toward him, howling. Yakima ducked. The Mex’s right arm whistled over his head.
Yakima slammed his right fist against the man’s chin, then jabbed the left against his nose. As the Mex staggered back toward the other side of the car, Yakima smashed his nose twice more, until he felt the flesh give beneath his fist and saw blood wash across the man’s face, as though he’d been struck with a wine flask.
The man fell to the roof and rolled over the edge with a scream, reaching up with one hand to grab the lip. He caught it with his other hand, and hung there.
Inside the car below, Faith gasped as something fell down over the window on the opposite side of the aisle from her and Lowry Temple, blocking the dusky light.