The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Part 12

A cold glitter came in Kit's light blue eyes. The muscles of his lean, square jaws worked nervously. His right hand dropped caressingly on the handle of his pistol.

"That's the proper caper, Kit. Why didn't you think of it before?

Rustle, d.a.m.n you, an', ef you're any good, mebbe so you can git to 'Frisco afore frost comes, or anywhere else you likes. Rustle! By jiminy, I've got it; I'll jes' stand up that thar Overland Express. Them fellers what rides on it's got more'n they've got any sort o' use for.

What's the matter with makin' 'em whack up with a feller! 'Course they'll kick, an' thar'll be a whole pa.s.sle o' marshals an' sheriffs out after you, but what o' that? Reckon Old Blue'll carry you out o' range.

He's the longest-winded chunk o' horse meat in these parts. Then you'll have to stay out strictly on the scout fer a few weeks, till they gits tired o' huntin' of you, so you can slip out o' this yere neck o' woods 'thout leavin' a trail.

"An' Lord! but won't it be fun! 'Bout as much fun, I reckon, as doin'

'Frisco. Won't them tenderfeet beller when they hears the guns a-crackin' an' the boys a-yellin'! Le' see; wonder who I'd better take along?"

Scruples? Kit had none. Bred and raised a merry freebooter on the unbranded spoils of the cattle range, it was no long step from stealing a maverick to holding up a train.

With a man of perhaps any other cla.s.s, a plan to engage in a new business enterprise of so much greater magnitude than any of those he had been accustomed to would have been made the subject of long consideration.

Not so with Kit. Cowboy life compels a man to think quickly, and often to act quicker than he finds it convenient to think. The hand skilled to catch the one possible instant when the wide, circling loop of the lariat may be successfully thrown, and the eye and finger trained to accurate snap-shooting, do not well go with a mind likely to be long in reaching a resolution or slow to execute one.

So Kit at once began to cast about for two or three of the right sort of boys to join him. Three were quickly chosen out of his own and a neighboring outfit. They were Mitch Lee and Taggart, two white cowboys of his own type and temper, and George Cleveland, a negro, known as a desperate fellow, game for anything. It needed no great argument to secure the co-operation of these men. A mere tip of the lark and the loot to be had was enough.

The boys saw their respective bosses. They "allowed they'd lay off for a few days and go to town." So they were paid off, slung their Winchesters on their saddles, mounted their favorite horses, and rode away. They met in Silver City, coming in singly. There they purchased a few provisions.

Then they separated and rode singly out of town, to rendezvous at a certain point on the Miembres River.

The point of attack chosen was the little station of Gage (tended by a lone operator), on the Southern Pacific Railway west of Deming, a point then reached by the west-bound express at twilight. The evening of the second day after leaving the Gila, Kit and his three compadres rode into Gage. One or two significant pa.s.ses with a six-shooter hypnotized the station agent into a docile tool. A dim red light glimmered away off in the east. As the minutes pa.s.sed, it grew and brightened fast. Then a faint, confused murmur came singing over the rails to the ears of the waiting bandits. The light brightened and grew until it looked like a great dull red sun, and then the thunder of the train was heard.

Time for action had come!

The agent was made to signal the engineer to stop. With lever reversed and air brakes on, the train was nearly stopped when the engine reached the station. But seeing the agent surrounded by a group of armed men, the engineer shut off the air and sought to throw his throttle open. His purpose discovered, a quick snapshot from Mitch Lee laid him dead, and, springing into the cab, Mitch soon persuaded the fireman to stop the train.

Instantly a fusillade of pistol shots and a mad chorus of shrill cowboy yells broke out, that terrorized train crew and pa.s.sengers into docility.

Within fifteen minutes the express car was sacked, the postal car gutted, the pa.s.sengers were laid under unwilling contribution, and Kit and his pals were riding northward into the night, heavily loaded with loot.

Riding at great speed due north, the party soon reached the main travelled road up the Miembres, in whose loose drifting sands they knew their trail could not be picked up. Still forcing the pace, they reached the rough hill-country east of Silver early in the night, _cached_ their plunder safely, and a little after midnight were carelessly bucking a monte game in a Silver City saloon. The next afternoon they quietly rode out of town and joined their respective outfits, to wait until the excitement should blow over.

Of course the telegraph soon started the hue and cry. Officers from Silver, Deming, and Lordsburg were soon on the ground, led by Harvey Whitehill, the famous old sheriff of Grant County. But of clue there was none. Naturally the station agent had come safely out of his trance, but with that absence of memory of what had happened characteristic of the hypnotized. The trail disappeared in the sands of the Miembres road.

Shrewd old Harvey Whitehill was at his wits' end.

Many days pa.s.sed in fruitless search. At last, riding one day across the plain at some distance from the line of flight north from Gage, Whitehill found a fragment of a Kansas newspaper. As soon as he saw it he remembered that a certain merchant of Silver came from the Kansas town where this paper was published. Hurrying back to Silver, Whitehill saw the merchant, who identified the paper and said that he undoubtedly was its only subscriber in Silver. Asked if he had given a copy to any one, he finally recalled that some time before, about the period of the robbery, he had wrapped in a piece this newspaper some provisions he had sold to a negro named Cleveland and a white man he did not know.

Here was the clue, and Whitehill was quick to follow it. Meeting a negro on the street, he pretended to want to hire a cook. The negro had a job.

Well, did he not know some one else? By the way, where was George Cleveland?

"Oh, boss, he done left de Gila dis week an' gone ober to Socorro," was the answer.

Two days later Whitehill found Cleveland in a Socorro restaurant, got the "drop" on him, told him his pals were arrested and had confessed that they were in the robbery, but that he, Cleveland, had killed Engineer Webster. This brought the whole story.

"'Foh G.o.d, boss, I nebber killed dat engineer. Mitch Lee done it, an'

him an' Taggart an' Kit Joy, dey done lied to you outrageous."

Within a few days, caught singly, in ignorance of Cleveland's arrest, and taken completely by surprise, Joy, Taggart, and Lee were captured on the Gila and jailed, along with Cleveland, at Silver City, held to await the action of the next grand jury.

But strong walls did not a prison make adequate hold these men. Before many weeks pa.s.sed, an escape was planned and executed. Two other prisoners, one a man wanted in Arizona, and the other a Mexican horse-thief, were allowed to partic.i.p.ate in the outbreak.

Taken unawares, their guard was seized and bound with little difficulty.

Quickly arming themselves in the jail office, these six desperate men dashed out of the jail and into a neighboring livery stable, seized horses, mounted, and rode madly out of town, firing at every one in sight. In Silver in those days no gentleman's trousers fitted comfortably without a pistol stuck in the waistband. Therefore, the flying desperadoes received as hot a fire as they sent. By this fire Cleveland's horse was killed before they got out of town, but one of his pals stopped and picked him up.

Instantly the town was in an uproar of excitement. Every one knew that the capture of these men meant a fight to the death. As usual in such emergencies, there were more talkers than fighters. Nevertheless, six men were in pursuit as soon as they could saddle and mount. The first to start was the driver of an express wagon, a man named Jackson, who cut his horse loose from the traces, mounted bareback, and flew out of town only a few hundred yards behind the prisoners. Six others, led by Charlie Shannon and La Fer, were not far behind Jackson. The men of this party were greatly surprised to find that a Boston boy of twenty, a tenderfoot lately come to town, who had scarcely ever ridden a horse or fired a rifle, was among their number, well mounted and armed--a man with a line of ancestry worth while, and himself a worthy survival of the best of it.

The chase was hot. Jackson was well in advance, engaging the fugitives with his pistol, while the fugitives were returning the fire and throwing up puffs of dust all about Jackson. Behind spurred Shannon and his party.

At length the pursuit gained. Five miles out of Silver, in the Pinon Hills to the northwest, too close pressed to run farther, the fugitives sprang from their horses and ran into a low post oak thicket covering about two acres, where, crouching, they could not be seen. The six pursuers sent back a man to guide the sheriff's party and hasten reinforcements, and began sh.e.l.ling the thicket and surrounding it. A few minutes later Whitehill rode up with seven more men, and the thicket was effectually surrounded. To the surprise of every one, a hot fire poured into the thicket failed to bring a single answering shot. Whitehill was no man to waste ammunition on such chance firing, so he ordered a charge.

His little command rode into and through the thicket at full speed, only to find their quarry gone, gone all save one. The Mexican lay dead, shot through the head! Kit's party had dashed through the thicket without stopping, on to another, and their trail was shortly found leading up a rugged canon of the Pinos Altos Range.

Whitehill divided his party. Three men followed up the bottom of the canon on foot, five mounted flankers were thrown out on either side. At last, high up the canon, Kit's party was found at bay, lying in some thick underbrush. It was a desperate position to attack, but the pursuers did not hesitate. Dismounting, they advanced on foot with rifles c.o.c.ked, but with all the caution of a hunter trailing a wounded grizzly. The negro opened the ball at barely twenty yards' range with a shot that drove a hole through the Boston boy's hat. Dropping at first with surprise, for he had not seen the negro till the instant he rose to fire, the Boston boy returned a quick shot that happened to hit the negro just above the centre of the forehead and rolled him over dead.

Approaching from another direction, Shannon was first to draw Taggart's file. Taggart was lying hidden in the brush; Shannon standing out in the open. Shot after shot they exchanged, until presently a ball struck the earth in front of Taggart's face and filled his eyes full of gravel and sand. Blinded for the time, he called for quarter, and came out of the brush with his hands up and another man with him. Asked for his pistol, Taggart replied:

"d.a.m.n you, that's empty, or I'd be shooting yet."

Meantime, Whitehill was engaging Mitch Lee. In a few minutes, shot through and helpless, Lee surrendered.

It was quick, hot work!

All but Kit were now killed or captured. He had been separated from his party, and La Fer was seen trailing him on a neighboring hillside.

At this juncture the sheriff detailed Shannon to return to town and get a wagon to bring in the dead and wounded, while he started to join La Fer in pursuit of Kit.

An hour later, as Shannon was leaving town with a wagon to return to the scene of the fight, a mob of men, led by a shyster lawyer, joined him and swore they proposed to lynch the prisoners. This was too much for Shannon's sense of frontier proprieties. So, rising in his wagon, he made a brief but effective speech.

"Boys, none of our men are hurt, although it is no fault of our prisoners. A dozen of us have gone out and risked our lives to capture these men. You men have not seen fit, for what motives we will not discuss, to help us. Now, I tell you right here that any who want can come, but the first man to raise a hand against a prisoner I'll kill."

Shannon's return escort was small.

But once more back in the hills of the Pinos Altos, Shannon found a storm raised he could not quell, even if his own sympathies had not drifted with it when he learned its cause. His friend La Fer lay dead, filled full of buckshot by Kit before Whitehill's reinforcements had reached him, while Kit had slipped away through the underbrush, over rocks that left no trail.

La Fer's death maddened his friends. There was little discussion. Only one opinion prevailed. Taggart and Lee must die.

Nothing was known of the prisoner wanted in Arizona, so he was spared.

Taggart and Lee were put in the wagon, the former tightly bound, the latter helpless from his wound. Short rope halters barely five feet long were stripped from the horses, knotted round the prisoners' necks, and fastened to the limb of a juniper tree. Taggart climbed to the high wagon seat, took a header and broke his neck. The wagon was then pulled away and Lee strangled.

With Cleveland, Lee, and Taggart dead, Engineer Webster and La Fer were fairly well avenged. But Kit was still out, known as the leader and the man who shot La Fer, and for days the hills were full of men hunting him.

Hiding in the rugged, thickly timbered hills of the Gila, taking needed food at night, at the muzzle of his gun, from some isolated ranch, he was hard to capture.

Had Kit chosen to mount himself and ride out of the country, he might have escaped for good. But this he would not do. Dominated still by the fatal curiosity and covetousness that first possessed him, later mastered him, and then drove him into crime, bound to repossess himself of his hidden treasure and go out to see the world, Kit would not leave the Gila. He was alone, unaided, with no man left his friend, with all men on the alert to capture or to kill him, the unequal contest nevertheless lasted for many weeks.

There was only one man Kit at all trusted, a "nester" (small ranchman) named Racketty Smith. One day, looking out from a leafy thicket in which he lay hid, saw Racketty going along the road. A lonely outcast, craving the sound of a human voice, believing Racketty at least neutral, Kit hailed him and approached. As he drew near, Racketty covered him with his rifle and ordered him to surrender. Surprised, taken entirely unawares, Kit started to jump for cover, when Racketty fired, shattered his right leg and brought him to earth. To spring upon and disarm Kit was the work of an instant.

Kit was sentenced to imprisonment at Santa Fe. A few years ago, having gained three years by good behavior, Kit was released, after having served fourteen years.

However Kit may still hanker for "a big, fat, four-year-old, long-horned bank roll," and whatever may be his curiosity to "do 'Frisco proper," it is not likely he will make any more history as a train robber, for at heart Kit was always a better "good man" than "bad man."