Ralph Compton Straight Shooter Page 3

  “You got that right,” Wes snarled. Despite all of the effort he put into sounding as menacing as possible, neither of the other men at the table appreciated it.

  “So, what’s the hitch?” Mose asked.

  Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Hitch?”

  “There’s gotta be a hitch. Always is.”

  “I suppose you could say there are hitches, but nothing that you wouldn’t expect for such a job.” Glancing back and forth between Mose and Wes, Jimmy spoke in a voice that issued from him like a gurgling current bubbling up from an oily pool. “This train is guarded well. Upward of a dozen armed men onboard and even a few men on horseback who ride alongside the tracks to watch for robbers or any other sign of trouble.”

  “How many men on horseback?” Wes asked.

  “Don’t rightly know, but the Sioux said there were enough to warrant keeping their distance. That’s saying a lot for Sioux.” Jimmy poured the cards from one hand into another and back again. “There’s plenty of men who talk about this train. When it rolls down the track with an escort that size, it’s hard to miss. But it ain’t trying to sneak anywhere. It’s just doing its job and it does it well. Ask any of a dozen men who work on the railroad at those stations and they’ll tell you plenty of stories.”

  “How do we get at that money?”

  “There’s no telling what the money itself is kept in. I’ve heard tell that it’s in a safe so thick it takes extra coal shoveled into the engine just to get it moving down a track. Could be held in lots of smaller safes, but however it’s stored it’s got to be tough to crack.”

  After taking a swig of beer, belching, and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Mose said, “Them are some mighty big hitches.”

  “I like him,” Jimmy said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah,” Wes said. “And he does bring up a good point. If you’ve been sitting here as long as you were saying before, why is it you’ve still got this little piece of information under your hat? You’ve known about it for some time.”

  “It’s been something of a pet project of mine,” Jimmy replied. “Didn’t seem worth my time at first. After all, you don’t need someone like me to tell you there’s a fat load of cash sitting in a federal reserve. Anyone with eyes in their head can see that train is hauling something valuable when it rolls by with all them guns protecting it.”

  “So what have you got to offer?”

  “I can tell you what the inside of the train looks like, for one.”

  Wes looked over to Mose, and the big man nodded appreciatively back at him. Noticing the bigger man wasn’t looking directly at him, Wes realized his partner was actually admiring one of the dancing girls on the large stage. He left Mose to his simpler pleasures and leaned forward with both hands pressed flat against the table. “How’d you get inside that train?”

  “I have my methods,” the scout replied. “Let’s just say it’s one of the reasons men like you pay to talk with me over drinks. Speaking of which, I’m getting parched.”

  “Mose,” Wes snapped. “Get the man a beer.”

  Happy for any reason to go back to the bar and brush against some more working girls along the way, Mose excused himself.

  “I can tell you what car the money is in,” Jimmy explained. “I can also tell you the best time and place to get it.”

  “When exactly is the train due to leave Omaha?”

  “That’s another little tidbit you’ll need to pay to find out.”

  “All right,” Wes sighed. “How much do I need to pay?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Five hundred dollars?”

  “It sure ain’t pesos,” Jimmy said.

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “That’s too bad. I imagine you’ll at least triple your investment even if you don’t get around to opening one of the large safes.”

  Wes’s mouth almost started to water. “Is that price why you haven’t sold this yet?” he asked.

  “Partly. I’ve told this same story to a few others recently, but they didn’t have the money, either. Told me they’d be back as soon as they got it, though, so I figured I’d make myself comfortable in this here town until they arrive. Reckon it won’t be too much longer before I can move on.”

  “How much will it take for you to stay here and keep your mouth shut?”

  “Why, keeping silent wouldn’t serve me very well, being in this particular line of work and all,” Jimmy said.

  After a prolonged sigh, Wes said, “I want to buy the rest of that story. That is, if you can guarantee it’s true.”

  “I don’t guarantee much, but what I say is as close to gospel as you can get. If you didn’t know that already, you wouldn’t have come so far to buy me my drink.”

  Speaking of which, Wes could see that Mose had paid for the drinks and was making his way back to the table. Wes wanted to get some more discussion in before the bigger man came along to ruin it as he had before. “All right,” he said. “I can pay you a hundred now and the rest after I get it.”

  “A hundred may be good enough to hold me over most of the time, but I’m itching to get moving again. You’ll have to do better.”

  “Don’t you have anything else you can part with for a cheaper price?”

  “No.”

  There was no way for Wes to know if Jimmy was being forthright in that regard or merely reeling in the fish that was already on his hook. Either way, Wes did know he couldn’t exactly force the scout to part with anything he wasn’t willing to give him. Closing his eyes as if he were about to sacrifice his firstborn, Wes said, “Make it two hundred.”

  “Two fifty.”

  Glancing toward the bar, Wes saw that his partner was now talking to a woman in a red dress who was either one of the saloon’s working girls or mysteriously attracted to oafish bears in desperate need of a bath. Turning back to Jimmy, he said, “Fine, I can pay half now, but I want something more than just your word.”

  “What else can I give you?”

  “Give me at least part of what you were gonna tell me. For this much money,” he added while removing a bundle of cash from his pocket and showing it to him, “it had better be more than some tale about your Sioux friends.”

  For the first time since the conversation had started, Jimmy seemed to take him seriously. “That sounds reasonable.” He squinted for a few moments and then leaned forward. “Hand over that money.”

  Gritting his teeth, Wes gave him the roll of money.

  After turning the wad over in his hand, Jimmy said, “Your best bet is to hit that train at a particular time while it’s at a station. I won’t go into any more than that, but you’d be wise to be a ways off when you do it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’d need either a whole lot of men or an aversion to drawing breath if you were going to take a run at that train head-on. If you had someone who could fire at a few specific points from a distance with a good rifle, it’d make that job a whole lot closer to manageable. The larger caliber you can get, the better because you’ll only get one shot to put your men down.”

  “That could make this job manageable enough for two men to pull it off?”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to part with it all,” Jimmy warned.

  Knowing better than to argue, Wes said, “If this ain’t a job that I can pull off with what I got, I can’t use whatever you do want to part with. You’ve always been on the square, Jimmy. At least let me know if I’ll be able to put any of this information to use.”

  Jimmy thought long and hard before nodding. “Two men should be able to come away with a good amount of money if they do it right. Not all of the money, but enough to put smiles on their faces. That one with the rifle had better be a real straight shooter, though. Otherwise, both of you are dead.”

  “Don
’t worry about that,” Wes said. “Just be sure to keep the rest of this story under your hat until we come up with the rest of that money.”

  “I don’t control when men come along to have a word with me. If someone has enough to pay my price, then I’ll tell them what I know. If that happens, you can have most of your money back.”

  “Most?”

  “Well, I already told you more than you knew when you walked in here,” Jimmy said as he calmly pocketed the two fifty. “That’s worth somethin’. All you gotta know is that the rest of what I got to say is worth a whole lot more.”

  “You’ve got a lot of my money,” Wes snarled. “And I’m not the sort who likes to just hand it over for nothing.”

  “You’ll be getting a lot more than nothing. We both know that much.”

  “Just so long as you don’t give it away to anyone else that comes along.”

  Mose approached the table with a beer in each hand. He set one down in front of Jimmy and hoisted the other to his mouth.

  Jimmy took the beer and held it aloft. “I’ll give you two days.”

  “It’s a deal,” Wes said.

  Mose sat down and showed them a drunken grin. “Whatever deal you made, I’ll drink to it!”

  Chapter 3

  There was a steady stream of folks walking down the busiest street in Cedar Rapids. Many of them were paired up, talking to husbands, wives, or children. Some were in larger groups. Proper families. Aldus Bricker watched them extra close so he could avoid being tripped up by some little kid who stepped into the street or wandered in front of someone with someplace they needed to be.

  In his younger days, Aldus didn’t think very highly of children. He understood parents were proud of their young’uns, but, not having any of his own, Aldus only saw most children as noisemakers in short pants and frilly hats. He would never be cruel to a child, but he wouldn’t spare much time to comfort one, either. That was in his younger days. Now that Aldus was hip deep into his thirties, he saw things a bit differently.

  He smiled at the two little girls who scampered in front of him when he crossed the street and even offered a quick “Watch yourself, now,” instead of looking past them as he might an insect buzzing around his head. When they made it to the boardwalk on the other side, he kept watching for a second or two to make certain they didn’t trip or fall. The mother of those two girls was hot on their heels, and she gave Aldus a quick smile before wrangling her children. He didn’t get another glance from any of them, which suited Aldus just fine. The ladies weren’t being rude. They were just being like most everyone else.

  Aldus wasn’t a handsome man. He stood just a bit shorter than the average fellow with the stocky build of a boxer and the face to match. While he did have his share of scars, they blended in almost completely with his rough features and weather-beaten skin. The beard covering his chin was just thick enough to be considered brushy, but not overly so. His hands were thick with calluses and his fingers were swollen after years of being balled up and knocked into other boxers’ chins. He’d spent years in the ring. Some fights felt as if they took years in themselves. Now, his nose a worn crooked line and his ears puffed and misshapen, Aldus was forging another path.

  He didn’t need to know street names or intersections as he turned at the next corner and continued on. Aldus knew Cedar Rapids the way he knew several other towns. The places he needed to go were etched into his memory like so many tracks laid down in his head. He walked the track to the post office now, opened the door, and tipped his dented bowler hat to the bespectacled gentleman sitting behind a short counter.

  “Fine mornin’ to you,” Aldus said.

  “That you, Mr. Bricker?”

  “It is. You got anything for me?”

  The fellow behind the counter had thinning gray hair and a hooked nose that was almost long enough to make contact with his upper lip. He stood up, pushed his spectacles up as far as they would go, and went over to a row of pigeonholes on the wall. “There’s a few letters for you. All arrived in a bunch.” Picking up a small bundle, he flipped through to the last one, examined the number scribbled on it in pencil, and nodded. “Yep. Looks like they were sent on the twenty-seventh of last month.”

  Standing at the counter, Aldus drummed his fingers expectantly. “Uh-huh. That’s good to know.”

  “Just a bit more than two weeks ago, I reckon,” the other man said as he squinted toward the ceiling and tapped the corners of the letters against his chin. “Fifteen days, actually.”

  “Thanks for—”

  “I’m sorry,” the man quickly said. “Make that sixteen days.” Now that he’d solved his mystery, the man gladly handed over the letters. “Do you have anything that needs to be delivered?”

  “Not yet, but I will before leaving.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Shouldn’t be long,” Aldus replied. “Less than a week. That is, unless things go better here than they did the last time.”

  Tapping a finger to his temple as if he were tipping an unseen hat, the man said, “You know where to find me.”

  “Sure do. Thanks!”

  As the man behind the counter got back to the bit of nothing he’d been doing before, Aldus wished he knew the postal worker’s name. While he could remember a lot of things, names seemed to escape him most of all. He could blame that on the amount of traveling he did and the vast number of faces he saw along the way, but in the end it didn’t really matter. Aldus knew what he knew and he accepted the things he didn’t know. It was a simple system, too simple for some, but it worked for him just fine.

  There were four letters in the bundle, and Aldus couldn’t help himself from looking at each in turn while he walked down the busy street. Each was addressed with a familiar, flowing script that was just as neat and uniform as newsprint. The handwriting didn’t have the cold, blocky shapes of a newspaper’s articles, but each letter was crisp and precise. He smiled widely and squinted at the letter until his name took shape.

  Aldus knew how to read for the most part, although he couldn’t just pick something up and see what had been written the way most folks could. When he’d been in school as a little one, he used to whine that reading made his eyes ache, and when his father cursed him for being weak, he complained that he didn’t like being cooped up in a room with the teacher and all them other children. His eyes wandered from the blackboard simply because it took so much effort to make sense out of what was there.

  It took a fairly long spell before he could recite and recognize the alphabet. Even then, reading didn’t come as easy to him as it did for everyone else. Sometimes the words made sense. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they looked the way they were supposed to. Other times they were a jumble of nonsense. By the time he gave up on schooling altogether, Aldus could make just enough sense of written language to get the general idea of what it meant. Normally such a thing was a chore that he avoided through a series of simple tricks and halfhearted explanations. Those were the times when it worked in his favor to look like a piece of meat that had been gnawed on and spit out. Folks weren’t too surprised when they had to explain things to a man who looked like him. When he picked up his letters, however, Aldus couldn’t help remembering the taunts from his father cursing him for being a common idiot.

  He was retracing his steps down the street when he spotted a post supporting the awning of a store with folded blankets and sundries in the window. He leaned against the post, took the first letter out, and carefully placed the rest in his back pocket. The paper he unfolded was crisp and clean. He lifted it to his nose, hoping for a scent more provocative than ink, but was pleased well enough when he caught a hint of sweetness. It could have been his imagination or a scent from some other store nearby, but he liked to think it was a small sample of the hand that had written those perfectly formed words.

  He recognized his name at the top of
the letter, and his heart swelled.

  He couldn’t help looking all the way down to the bottom of the page where the name Bethany stood out like a splash of color in an otherwise drab world.

  When he went back to the body of the letter, much of what had been written appeared as just a bunch of pretty lines. After a bit of careful scrutiny, however, he made out a few portions of sentences and then a batch of words here and there. She was doing well and hoped he was doing the same. There were some troubles with one of the children. She was almost done with the quilt she’d been working on. One of her children was sick.

  Aldus stopped when he got there and reread that part several times. The harder he stared at the letter, the more irritated he got. Soon the letters seemed to dissipate before his eyes like so much smoke being scattered by a passing breeze. His temper flared and the muscles in his forearm flexed, but he stopped himself before making a fist. If he damaged that letter in any way, he’d never be able to forgive himself. Knowing it was a lost cause to try reading any more at this point, he folded the letter and eased it back into its envelope.

  The frustrations faded quickly, shoved aside like the pains he felt in his knuckles or the twitches plaguing his back from time to time. Every one of them was no pleasure to bear, but they were a part of him and he was no longer the crying little boy who was too weak to carry on beneath their weight. Besides, all he needed to do to put those particular frustrations behind him was find a quiet spot where he could study the letters and soak up what they had to tell him. Hearing from Bethany was like that for Aldus. No matter what else was going on at the time, seeing her sweetly written words was like feeling a gentle hand brushing against his battered face.

  He smiled at that thought. The smile didn’t falter in the slightest when he heard a gunshot crack through the air in the distance. Aldus quickened his pace toward the sound of gunfire until he could spot two wagons parked in a lot at the town’s northern perimeter. The first wagon was about half as tall as a stagecoach and built up on both sides with stacks of wooden cases and a narrow space down the middle that was accessible by a set of steps that folded down from the back. The second was a covered wagon similar to the ones driven by any number of folks heading west for better lives.