Free Two in the Field by Darryl Brock Page A

weapon. A few yards away a big man stood silhouetted against the cars. The long-barreled revolver he held was trained on Slack. I had no doubt that it could quickly shift to me.
    “You ain’t sendin’ me to jail, Brawley.” Slack crouched low, further reducing his small target area. “There’s bastards like you in there get their fun picking on little men.”
    “Who said jail?” The big man had a high, husky voice. “You’re threatening a railroad employee right here on railroad property.”
    “Use your gun then,” Slack snarled, and charged forward.
    No!
I reached out too late to pull him back.
    Brawley’s boot caught him in the chest and sent him spinning to the ground with a yelp of pain. I took a step forward, but the revolver swung toward me.
    “Don’t push—” Brawley began, but he’d underestimated Slack, who with a snakelike slither shot forward on his belly andsank the point of his hook in Brawley’s boot. The big man bellowed and tried to pull away, teetering off-balance as Slack yanked hard on the hook. By then I’d leaped forward. I had a good angle at Brawley. Fishplate met cranium with a solid thud and he folded to the ground as if he’d been etherized.
    Slack snatched up the revolver. “We gotta move!”
    Shouts came from ahead where men were jumping from cars. Slack squeezed the trigger and a
crack
sounded over the rumble of the wheels.
    “C’mon!” As if he’d forgotten his injured rib, Slack darted between two of the boxcars, grabbed the bottom rung of a steel ladder with his hook, swung himself up on the coupling brace, hooked the opposing ladder and swung to the ground on the other side. I followed, not nearly so nimbly. “Hurry!” he urged. Temporarily shielded from our pursuers, we sprinted until we were abreast of the car we’d been in. “Throw me!” he yelled. “Now!”
    I grabbed him beneath the armpits and tossed him bodily through the opening. Rolling with the impact, he was instantly on his feet and yelling instructions. The train was moving fast. I had a matter of seconds. Concentrating on what he told me, trying to ignore the knife-edged wheels just below, I ran all-out and reached for the rung beside the door. The ground beneath me was bumpy. The car was jiggling. My fingers couldn’t get good purchase.
    “Jump!” Slack yelled.
    As I made another clutching try at the rung, I vaulted feet forward into the air as if trying to clear a bar, a gargantuan leap of faith. My hand closed around the rung as my calves hit the bottom of the doorway, and for a terrifying instant I teetered backward. Slack grabbed my shirt and held on until I could work myself in.
    I hugged the rough floor like a lover.
    “Always throw yourself forward,” he lectured. “On your back or belly, don’t matter, but flatten out and go forward. Easier with the cars coming at you, of course, but we didn’t have that choice.”
    Right then just being alive was enough.
    He looked around pleasurably as if we were in a luxury hotel. “This should be good till morning. Brawley got our cardboard and water but we got these soft bags.”
    “When he comes to, won’t he telegraph ahead?”
    “And say what?” Slack laughed. “That two men he had the drop on—one half his size and the other he can’t identify—drilled his foot and dented his head?”
    “But we’re carrying his pistol now,” I said. “Doesn’t the railroad worry about things like that?”
    “Oh, if this was a cushion run, they might make a search at the next stop,” he said offhandedly. “But, hell, there’s no shortage of guns on the freights.” He hefted Brawley’s and informed me that it was a wartime navy .36 originally designed for paper cartridges with powder and ball, now converted to take metal shells. “This’ll scare some off, but with Brawley so anxious to settle my hash, I’m thinking to pick up a .45 short-barrel Peacemaker.”
    “Where?”
    “Anywhere,” he replied. “They’re sellin’ fast as Colt