David Healey - Rebel Train

And then Flynn pulled the trigger.

The .54-caliber ball ripped through the other man’s body. The clothes touching the muzzle smoldered after the blast. The gory hole in his back, torn by the large ball of lead, was big enough to swallow a fist. Overhead, the ceiling was splashed with blood. Gilmore’s body slumped to one side and Flynn shoved it off.

“That was close,” he said. He was breathing hard. It had been a tough fight, maybe not the toughest of his life, but he didn’t want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t been able to reach the pistol in time.

Nearby, a woman was gasping in astonishment at the life-and-death struggle she had just witnessed. He could also hear Mrs. Parker. “Oh my,” she kept repeating in shock. “Oh my.”

“Shut up, woman,” Flynn snapped. “For the love of Christ, shut up.”

Mrs. Parker didn’t need to be told twice. She touched her fingertips to her lips and fell silent.

A moment later, the door to the car flew open and Captain Fletcher rushed in, followed by Hazlett and Pettibone. All three had their revolvers out. The blast from Flynn’s horse pistol had left the air sulfurous and tinged with blue smoke, and the three soldiers squinted to see through the haze.

Flynn jerked his chin at a seat nearby, where Benjamin was still struggling with the ungainly bulk of the attorney. Pettibone walked over, reversed his Colt, and clubbed Prescott behind the ear with the butt of the pistol. Prescott went limp, and Benjamin managed to wriggle out from under him.

“You should have shot that fat bastard,” Hazlett said. Pettibone ignored him. Going to Gilmore’s body on the floor, he rolled it all the way over with the toe of his boot.

“Yup,” he drawled. “He’s a dead ’un. Half his guts is on the ceiling.”

Mrs. Parker whimpered again.

Hazlett grinned down maliciously at Flynn, who still on his knees in the aisle, rubbing his throat. “What’s the matter, Irish, can’t handle the civilians?”

“Go to hell,” Flynn said wearily, and reached up to grab Pettibone’s offered hand. Back on his feet, Flynn looked around and quickly assessed the situation. Gilmore was dead. Prescott was on the floor, shaking his head groggily. Terrified, Mr. and Mrs. Parker cowered in their seat. The faces of the other passengers ran the gamut from looks of horror to blank stares as they tried not to meet the raiders’ eyes.

One face, however, was not there.

“Someone’s missing,” Flynn said. “I saw the door open to the next car.”

“It’s the woman,” Benjamin said. “The one who was with him. She’s gone.”

“She’s probably planning to jump off the train,” Flynn said. He limped toward the door. “I’m going after her.”

“Brave man,” Hazlett said sarcastically.

Flynn found the Le Mat and holstered it, thinking he wouldn’t need it against a woman. He opened the door to the howling, open air. The train was still flying at a reckless speed. Seeing the ground rush past in a blur, he doubted the woman had jumped. That would be suicide. There was only one place she could be.

Flynn crossed the bucking platform toward the next car, which carried the passenger’s baggage. None of the raiders had explored the freight car because they had been too busy keeping the passengers in line and ripping up rails.

Flynn tried the door. It wouldn’t budge, so he hit it with his shoulder, this time throwing his weight into it. The door popped open.

He stepped inside, but couldn’t see a thing. The interior was nearly pitch black. What little light there was leaked in from around the shades drawn over the windows and from the cracks under the rear door, which opened toward Lincoln’s car.

Flynn squinted into the darkness. “Come out, ma’am,” he said. “Save us both the trouble.”

No answer came. Not that he expected one.

Swearing under his breath, Flynn stepped into the blackness. He kept the Le Mat in its holster. There had been enough bloodletting for one day, he thought, and Flynn had no intention of shooting a woman.

Carefully, he moved deeper into the car. Like a blind man, he became acutely aware of smells: oiled leather, dust, moldy canvas. The place needed a good airing out.

A sound, somewhere ahead. He paused, listened. Heard only the clacking of wheels on rails. The swaying motion inside the dark car was disorienting.

“Come out, woman,” he snapped impatiently.

There. That noise again. A swishing of skirts? Sounded like it was behind him.

Flynn spun, his hand on the revolver.

Nothing.

Unnerved, he shuffled toward the windows. After what he had just been through, he was in no mood for a game of cat and mouse with the woman, whoever she was.

He reached toward a window, intending to let some light in, when he felt the cold touch of razor-sharp steel against his throat.

Flynn froze.

“Greer!” Schmidt shouted. “Look at that!”

Ahead of them on a siding, an old Grasshopper-type engine sat under steam. The nickname fit the locomotive’s insect-like appearance. The Grasshopper was small and much slower than the new locomotives, but it was one of the workhorses of the B&O, pulling freight on local routes and spurs to towns off the main line. The old locomotive was still much faster than the hand-powered car.

They coasted up to the Grasshopper. The crew was made up of old-timers, white-haired and bearded, and they watched the arrival of the hand car with curiosity.

“Greer?” said one of the men who knew the conductor. “What are you doing here? On that thing? We just saw the Chesapeake go by like a bat out of hell.”

“My train’s been stolen,” Greer said, jumping down from the hand car. Quickly, he explained what had happened. Less than a minute later, Greer, Schmidt and Frost were aboard the Grasshopper locomotive, which had been uncoupled from its load of freight cars.

“Better take this,” said the engineer, pressing a revolver and a handful of cartridges on Greer. Frost was holding onto the shotgun taken from the track crew.

“Get the word out now,” Greer said. “If a telegraph gets through to Frederick Junction or Harpers Ferry, they can stop the sons of bitches up ahead.”

“You can count on us, Greer,” the other engineer said. “I’ll take this hand car in to Mount Airy. They’ve got a telegraph there. Now give ’em hell!”

Flynn held very still as the cold knife blade touched his throat. In the dim light he could just see the gleaming steel of the stiletto, and beyond it, the flinty eyes of the woman who wielded the knife.

His hand slipped toward his revolver.

“None of that,” she said, pressing the blade tight to his windpipe. “Don’t move. Now tell me what happened. I heard a gunshot.”

Under the circumstances, Flynn wasn’t about to confess he had killed her companion. “There was a fight,” he managed to say, easing each word out of his throat as if squeezing it around the knife blade.

Still, she pressed the dagger closer. He felt the outer layer of skin break, in the same way that strands of a taut rope sever at the touch of a sharp blade.

“Is Charlie alive or dead?” she demanded.

Flynn decided to tell the truth, not knowing if it would get him killed or not. “Dead,” he said.

“The damn fool. I told him it would never work. That we ought to wait. But he and that lawyer got it in their heads that they could rush you. Is Prescott dead, too?”

“No.”

“Well, he deserves to be.”

The pressure of the knife blade against his throat eased, although the stiletto was still within a flick of a wrist of cutting his throat. Flynn was glad she didn’t ask who had killed Charlie.