I throw a leg over the edge of the car, grappling for the ladder. Crawford’s already transferred to the ladder of the next car—a boxcar—and is climbing to safety. I can’t let him get away, not when he’s seen Jesse and has a description he can give Rose.
I stow my pistol and leap to the boxcar’s ladder. I connect with it hard, nearly missing my grip. I slide a rung or two. When I grab tight, my shoulder flares with heat and my bruises ache, the rails flying by below. I pull myself against the rungs and draw one quick breath before scrambling to the top of the car.
Unlike the passenger cars, the boxcar roof is flatter than an open plain. This is like running across the floor of a barn, and I gain on Crawford, who’s still limping from his injury in Wickenburg.
He jumps to the following boxcar, the wind snatching his hat as he goes. It floats over Chino Valley and I lose sight of it as I jump to follow him. This second boxcar’s got its side door open, and Crawford swings over the edge, propelling himself through the doorway.
I don’t got a notion where he thinks he’ll go next. There ain’t nothing but two flatcars left to the train. He’s as good as trapped.
I do as he did, grabbing the lip of the boxcar above the open door and swinging myself down and inside.
My feet hit the floor of the strangest boxcar I’ve ever seen. Half the bed’s been converted into what can only be described as a portable hog ranch. The place stinks of pigs and rotten food, and the beasts are mulling about in an honest-to-god pen, built right here in what otherwise looks like a work car. A maintenance foreman’s tools fill the rest of the bed, hanging on the walls and lying atop cargo crates.
Crawford’s standing barely two paces away, a sledgehammer in his hands.
He knew what he’d find in these tight quarters. Him and the boys got on the train way up north, had plenty of time to case every last car. It ain’t him that’s trapped. It’s me.
He swings the sledgehammer, and I dive to the side, rolling past Crawford and deeper into the crowded car. The hammer collides with the door frame. Wood goes flying. I go for my pistol, but before I can draw, the sledgehammer’s coming at me again. I dive a second time, losing my hat, grappling like mad for a weapon of any kind as I regain my footing. There’s a crate of rail ties. My hand closes over one of the iron spikes, and I barely got time to yank my hand clear of Crawford’s next blow. He swings again, and the sledgehammer crushes the wooden crate. Spikes go spilling free.
“I told him you weren’t worth it the very first day!” he screams. “But God does he love you. Yer the worst out of any of us, and still he cares for you most.”
I dodge another blow, find my back up ’gainst the far wall of the train.
“What happened, Murphy? Did ya find their gold and think you could take it all for yerself? Or maybe you started fancying that city girl. Diaz is gonna gut her, you know that?”
He raises the hammer again, but it’s growing heavy, and I can see his aim. I sidestep it quickly, and when the hammer strikes the wall of the car, it lodges in the wood. He yanks, trying to retrieve it. I drive the iron spike into the back of his hand. As he roars in pain, I kick him in the gut. The force is enough to yank the hammer free of the wall, but his grip slips from the handle. The sledgehammer clatters to the floor of the car as Crawford topples backwards, colliding with the hogs’ pen.
Finally, I got time to go for my pistol, but so does Crawford. We both pause, fingers frozen beside our holsters.
“You might fool Boss,” Crawford snarls, “but you ain’t fooling me. Yer as sinful as the rest of us, Murphy, maybe more so.”
“Yer right,” I tell him. “I’m a killer. I’ll prolly burn in hell with the rest of y’all. But I’m gonna go out doing the right thing.”
I draw my weapon, same time as him.
I can immediately see he’s got me beat, and I dive to the side, squeezing my trigger even though I know my aim’s off. But he counters my move, trying to sight me as I lunge away, and he leans into the line of my shot. His bullet flies wide, and mine catches him in the neck.
Eyes flashing, Crawford falls against the wooden pen. It creaks under his weight, then buckles completely, and the mob of hungry pigs closes in. It’s the same burial as Hobbs’s and Jones’s, and while Crawford mighta deserved it, that don’t make it any easier to watch.
I holster my pistol and turn away. The open doors of the boxcar are reinforced with slats of wood that create a giant X, and using ’em as foot-and handholds, I’m able to work my way back toward the car’s roof. When I pull myself up, I find myself face to face with Jesse.
“Yer still here?”
“What?” he shouts.
“I told you to go back!”
“Back where? I couldn’t hear you over the wind.”
I grab him at the arm and tug him toward the rear of the car. “Climb down!”
He tries to protest, and I shove him hard. He obliges.
On the flatbed, we’re sheltered from the worst of the wind. I peer ’round the boxcar. Prescott waits to the south, still hidden from view, but we’re coming up on the stretch of trail that leads to the hideaway.
“You gotta jump,” I say to Jesse. “Rose sent two men to the house.”
The color blows clear outta Jesse’s face. It’s like he’s been shot in the gut. “You said you weren’t followed.”
“I didn’t think I were, but he tricked me, Jesse. That’s what he does. I shoulda seen it coming. I’m sorry. But you gotta go now. Jump, and you can make it to the horse easy, ride back.”
“Not in time, though,” he says. “Not if he sent ’em this morning.”
“So you ain’t gonna try?”
His Remington is in his hand faster than I can blink. “Is this a double cross?” He holds the weapon in close to his chest, barrel pointed at mine. “You send me into a trap while you waltz off with Rose?”
“What? No! Crawford’s dead in that boxcar, I swear it.”
A wrinkle forms on his brow—there just a second and gone. He’s putting it together. I got no reason to lie. If it were a trap, I’d have shot him already or walked him straight to the enemy.
“And you’ll . . .” His gaze drifts toward the boxcar, toward wherever Luther Rose is prowling.
I nod. “I promise I’m telling the truth, Jesse. I promise it on my mother’s life. On yer unborn child’s.”
He stuffs the pistol away and claps the side of my face with a palm. “You done good, kid.” For the briefest moment I feel like I’ve found the father I always wished for. The kind that challenged me, but in ways that make me better, not in ways that beat me down.
But then there’s the gunshot.
And the blood that flies from Jesse’s shoulder.
And his hand falling away from my cheek as he falls.
I whip ’round to see Rose standing on the boxcar roof. “Murphy—son!” he shouts over the wind. “You draw your pistol and shoot that bastard in the head.”
I crouch low beside Jesse. He’s exhaling in short bursts through the pain, but it ain’t a fatal blow, not if he gets to help.
Do it, Murphy, I hear. Do it right now, and all will be forgiven.
I can feel Rose’s weapon aimed at my back.
I grab the front of Jesse’s shirt, heave him to his feet.
I draw my pistol.