The Coming of Cassidy, Clarence E. Mulford [best free novels .txt] 📗

the city and now were returning to the station where their horses were waiting to carry them over the two hundred miles which lay between their ranch and the nearest railroad-station.

For a change the city had been pleasant, but after they had spent several days there it lost its charm and would not have been acceptable to them even as a place in which to die. They had spent their money, smoked “top-notcher” cigars, seen the “shows” and feasted each as his fancy dictated, and as behooved cowpunchers with money in their pockets. Now they were glad that every hour reduced the time of their stay in the smoky, jolting, rocking train, for they did not like trains, and this train was particularly bad. So they passed the hours as best they might and waited impatiently for the stop at Sandy Creek, where they had left their horses. Their trip to the “fence country” was now a memory, and they chafed to be again in the saddle on the open, wind-swept range, where miles were insignificant and the silence soothing.

The fat man, despairing of reading, watched the card-players and smiled in good humor as he listened to their conversation, while the dyspeptic, nervously twisting his newspaper, wished that he were at his destination. The baggage-room door opened and the conductor looked down on the card-players and grinned. Skinny moved over in the seat to make room for the genial conductor.

“Sit down, Simms, an’ take a hand,” he invited. Laughter arose continually and the fat man joined in it, leaning forward more closely to watch the play.

Lanky tossed his cards face down on the board and grinned at the onlooker.

“Billy shore bluffs more on a varigated flush than any man I ever saw.”

“Call him once in a while and he’ll get cured of it,” laughed the fat man, bracing himself as the train swung around a sharp turn.

“He’s too smart,” growled Billy Williams. “He tried that an’ found I didn’t have no varigated flushes. Come on, Lanky, if yo’re playing cards, put up.”

Farther down the car, their feet resting easily on the seat in front of them, Hopalong and Red puffed slowly at their large, black cigars and spoke infrequently, both idly watching the plain flit by in wearying sameness, and both tired and lazy from doing nothing but ride.

“Blast th’ cars, anyhow,” grunted Hopalong, but he received no reply, for his companion was too disgusted to say anything.

A startling, sudden increase in the roar of the train and a gust of hot, sulphurous smoke caused Hopalong to look up at the brakeman, who came down the swaying aisle as the door slammed shut.

“Phew!” he exclaimed, genially. “Why in thunder don’t you fellows smoke up?”

Hopalong blew a heavy ring, stretched energetically and grinned: “Much farther to Sandy Creek?”

“Oh, you don’t get off for three hours yet,” laughed the brakeman.

“That’s shore a long time to ride this bronc train,” moodily complained Red as the singing began again. “She shore pitches a-plenty,” he added.

The train-hand smiled and seated himself en the arm of the front seat:

“Oh, it might be worse.”

“Not this side of hades,” replied Red with decision, watching his friend, who was slapping the cushions to see the dust fly out: “Hey, let up on that, will you! There’s dust a-plenty without no help from you!”

The brakeman glanced at the card-players and then at Hopalong.

“Do your friends always sing like that?” he inquired.

“Mostly, but sometimes it’s worse.”

“On the level?”

“Shore enough; they’re singing ‘Dixie,’ now. It’s their best song.”

“That ain’t ‘Dixie!’”

“Yes it is: that is, most of it.”

“Well, then, what’s the rest of it?”

“Oh, them’s variations of their own,” remarked Red, yawning and stretching. “Just wait till they start something sentimental; you’ll shore weep.”

“I hope they stick to the variations. Say, you must be a pretty nifty gang on the shoot, ain’t you?”

“Oh, some,” answered Hopalong.

“I wish you fellers had been aboard with us one day about a month ago. We was the wrong end of a hold-up, and we got cleaned out proper, too.”

“An’ how many of ‘em did you get?” asked Hopalong quickly, sitting bolt upright.

The fat man suddenly lost his interest in the card-game and turned an eager ear to the brakeman, while the dyspeptic stopped punching holes in his time-card and listened. The card-players glanced up and then returned to their game, but they, too, were listening.

The brakeman was surprised: “How many did we get! Gosh! we didn’t get none! They was six to our five.”

“How many cards did you draw, you Piute?” asked Lanky.

“None of yore business; I ain’t dealing, an’ I wouldn’t tell you if I was,” retorted Billy.

“Well, I can ask, can’t I?”

“Yes you can, an’ did.”

“You didn’t get none?” cried Hopalong, doubting his ears.

“I should say not!”

“An’ they owned th’ whole train?”

“They did.”

Red laughed. “Th’ cleaning-up must have been sumptuous an’ elevating.”

“Every time I holds threes he allus has better,” growled Lanky to Simms.

“On th’ level, we couldn’t do a thing,” the brakeman ran on. “There’s a water tank a little farther on, and they must V climbed aboard there when we stopped to connect. When we got into the gulch the train slowed down and stopped and I started to get up to go out and see what was the matter; but I saw that when I looked down a gun-barrel. The man at the throttle end of it told me to put up my hands, but they were up as high then as I could get ‘em without climbin’ on the top of the seat.

“Can’t you listen and play at th’ same time?” Lanky asked Billy.

“I wasn’t countin’ on takin’ the gun away from him,” the brakeman continued, “for I was too busy watchin’ for the slug to come out of the hole. Pretty soon somebody on the outside whistled and then another feller come in the car; he was the one that did the cleanin’ up. All this time there had been a lot of shootin’ outside, but now it got worse. Then I heard another whistle and the engine puffed up the track, and about five minutes later there was a big explosion, and then our two robbers backed out of the car among the rocks shootin’ back regardless. They busted a lot of windows.”

“An’ you didn’t git none,” grumbled Hopalong, regretfully.

“When we got to the express-car, what had been pulled around the turn,” continued the brakeman, not heeding the interruption, “we found a wreck. And we found the engineer and fireman standin’ over the express-messenger, too scared to know he wouldn’t come back no more. The car had been blowed up with dynamite, and his fighting soul went with it. He never knowed he was licked.”

“An’ nobody tried to help him!” Hopalong exclaimed, wrathfully now.

“Nobody wanted to die with him,” replied the brakeman.

“Well,” cried the fat man, suddenly reaching for his valise, “I’d like to see anybody try to hold me up!” Saying which he brought forth a small revolver.

“You’d be praying out of your bald spot about that time,” muttered the brakeman.

Hopalong and Red turned, perceived the weapon, and then exchanged winks.

“That’s a fine shootin’-iron, stranger,” gravely remarked Hopalong.

“You bet it is!” purred the owner, proudly. “I paid six dollars for that gun.”

Lanky smothered a laugh and his friend grinned broadly: “I reckon that’d kill a man if you stuck it in his ear.”

“Pshaw!” snorted the dyspeptic, scornfully. “You wouldn’t have time to get it out of that grip. Think a train-robber is going to let you unpack? Why don’t you carry it in your hippocket, where you can get at it quickly?”

There were smiles at the stranger’s belief in the hippocket fallacy but no one commented upon it.

“Wasn’t there no passengers aboard when you was stuck up?” Lanky asked the conductor.

“Yes, but you can’t count passengers in on a deal like that.”

Hopalong looked around aggressively: “We’re passengers, ain’t we?”

“You certainly are.”

“Well, if any misguided maverick gets it into his fool head to stick us up, you see what happens. Don’t you know th’ fellers outside have all th’ worst o’ th’ deal?”

“They have not!” cried the brakeman.

“They Ve got all the best of it,” asserted the conductor emphatically. “I’ve been inside, and I know.”

“Best nothing!” cried Hopalong. “They are on th’ ground, watching a danger-line over a hundred yards long, full of windows and doors. Then they brace th’ door of a car full of people. While they climb up the steps they can’t see inside, an’ then they go an’ stick their heads in plain sight. It’s an even break who sees th’ other first, with th’men inside training their guns on th’ glass in th’ door!”

“Darned if you ain’t right!” enthusiastically cried the fat man.

Hopalong laughed: “It all depends on th’ men inside. If they ain’t used to handling guns, ‘course they won’t try to fight. We’ve been in so many gun-festivals that we wouldn’t stop to think. If any coin-collector went an’ stuck his ugly face against th’ glass in that door he’d turn a back-flip off ‘n th’ platform before he knowed he was hit. Is there any chance for a stick-up to-day, d’y think?”

“Can’t tell,” replied the brakeman. “But this is about the time we have the section-camps’ pay on board,” he said, going into the baggage end of the car.

Simms leaned over close to Skinny. “It’s on this train now, and I’m worried to death about it. I wish we were at Sandy Creek.”

“Don’t you go to worryin’ none, then,” the puncher replied. “It’ll get to Sandy Creek all right.”

Hopalong looked out of the window again and saw that there was a gradual change in the nature of the scenery, for the plain was becoming more broken each succeeding mile. Small woods occasionally hurtled past and banks of cuts flashed by like mottled yellow curtains, shutting off the view. Scrub timber stretched away on both sides, a billowy sea of green, and miniature valleys lay under the increasing number of trestles twisting and winding toward a high horizon.

Hopalong yawned again: “Well, it’s none o’ our funeral. If they let us alone I don’t reckon we’ll take a hand, not even to bust up this monotony.”

Red laughed derisively: “Oh, no! Why, you couldn’t sit still nohow with a fight going on, an’ you know it. An’ if it’s a stick-up! Wow!”

“Who gave you any say in this?” demanded his friend. “Anyhow, you ain’t no angel o’ peace, not nohow!”

“Mebby they’ll plug yore new sombrero,” laughed Red.

Hopalong felt of the article in question: “If any two-laigged wolf plugs my war-bonnet he’ll be some sorry, an’ so’ll his folks,” he asserted, rising and going down the aisle for a drink.

Red turned to the brakeman, who had just returned: “Say,” he whispered, “get off at th’ next stop, shoot off a gun, an’ yell, just for fun. Go ahead, it’ll be better ‘n a circus.”

“Nix on the circus, says I,” hastily replied the other. “I ain’t looking for no excitement, an’ I ain’t paid to amuse th’ passengers. I hope we don’t even run over a track-torpedo this side of Sandy Creek.”

Hopalong returned, and as he came even with them the train slowed.

“What are we stopping for?” he asked, his hand going to his holster.

“To take on water; the tank’s right ahead.”

“What have you got?” asked Billy, ruffling his cards.

“None of yore business,” replied Lanky. “You call when you gets any curious.”

“Oh, th’ devil!” yawned Hopalong, leaning back lazily. “I shore wish I was on my cayuse pounding leather on th’ home