Free Slocum's Silver Burden by Jake Logan Page A

behind and saw why. The locomotive crested the grade and sent plumes of billowing white smoke up from its stack. Slocum heard the change in the clangs and bangs from the engine. It had been straining before it hit the pass. Now it let out a relieved whistle and gathered speed on the downside—directly behind Slocum.
    He bent low and got as much speed from his horse as he could. The tracks hummed as the locomotive gathered speed, having nothing but downgrade in front of it. Slocum winced as the engineer spotted him and began using his whistle to warn him away. Slocum urged his horse to greater speed. A quarter mile ahead lay a cleared area where workers must have camped. The mare strained now, lather flecking her heaving flanks. The engineer never tried to apply the brakes. It would take a mile to stop—and Slocum would be long dead by then. His only hope was the clearing.
    â€œCome on,” he shouted in the horse’s ear as he bent over. “We can make it.”
    He charged for the clearing. And then Jack’s horse let out a horrendous shriek that was almost human in its agony. The horse cartwheeled through the air past him. The cowcatcher on the front of the locomotive had served its purpose of clearing away anything that might otherwise be knocked down and pulled under the engine, fouling its wheels or derailing it.
    Slocum rode faster. He felt the heat from the steam engine, cringed at the repeated whistle blasts, and rode for his life. The clearing was only a few yards ahead. A few. So close.
    Hot cinders spewed from the smokestack and burned at his neck. He was a goner, run over as the horse had been.

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    Slocum screamed, but the cry disappeared in the whine of the steam engine rushing past. He fell from horseback, and the mare galloped on. For a moment, Slocum lay stunned, then realized he hadn’t been run over by the train. The clatter of its steel wheels already receded down the tracks as it raced on toward the Oakland depot. He flopped back and stared upward, watching billowy white clouds string out into feathery strands and then vanish, leaving behind only sky. Pure blue. Clear. Sky.
    He was still alive.
    Forcing himself to sit up, he held out his hands. They were steady enough. He’d had more than one close shave in his day, but this one had come closer than most. Bits of Jack’s horse were strewn about where the train had struck it and severed its front legs. A frantic neighing drew his attention to the back of the clearing. Trees boxed in his mare. He heaved to his feet and spent the next half hour calming the horse from its narrow escape with death. By the time he mounted and headed back up the slope, he was once more determined to find Tamara and the silver and take them both back to San Francisco. When he reached the pass again, he dropped off his horse to check for vibrations in the rail. Only warm steel stretched under his fingers.
    He led his horse through the pass and looked down the western stretch of track. He understood why the train robbers had chosen this section. Even riding down was something of a chore, but he kept the horse moving. The mare shied once or twice, forcing Slocum to look over the brink and down into the deep canyon on one side of the track. The other side presented some difficulty in riding because of the thick undergrowth and steep stone wall rising more than twenty feet above his head.
    When he reached the spot where Jack had to have robbed the train, he found ample evidence of how the gang had waited in a clearing and where the tracks were newly repaired from being twisted around by a car that had run away out of control. He reenacted the robbery—where the gang had attacked, how the last two cars had been unhooked, the way those cars had rolled backward down the incline.
    Slocum tried to figure out where the mail clerk had gone. The only possible direction he could have gone, unless he was one of the gang, was down into the canyon. No one