Sundown Express

Excerpt:

1889

 Prologue: Special delivery

 Hillsdale, Wyoming: Mid-morning

The sound arrived first. The distinctive rumble of a train roaring over steel rails. Like distant thunder, the wind carried the sound to the ears of all the expectant passengers at the Hillsdale Station. Sheriff Leroy Henderson frowned. Something was wrong. He knew it and, based on the faces of the other passengers, expectantly waiting on the platform, they knew it, too.

A train was coming, but it was coming from the wrong direction.

Like many of the citizens of the town, Sheriff Henderson had turned out to watch the inaugural run of the brand-new train dubbed the Sundown Express. With a speed approaching seventy miles an hour, they had braved the unusually sweltering August heat just to catch sight of the mighty locomotive speed east through their small southern Wyoming town destined for Vermillion, South Dakota. Henderson had even taken pity on Edward Curtis, a swarthy prisoner who liked to rob trains but was destined for trial as soon as the judge returned to town. Handcuffed to Henderson’s left wrist, even Curtis sensed something.

“I thought the paper said the track was gonna be cleared for the Express,” Curtis said.

“That’s right,” the sheriff said. The lawman removed his hat and used his neckerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead and neck.

The sound grew louder. From a distance, through the shimmering heat waves rising from the flat land, a dark shape moved.

A handful of the people stepped forward to the edge the platform, curious. Without warning, Curtis stepped forward, craning his neck over the heads of the passengers. The movement yanked Henderson’s wrist, but the lawman didn’t really care. He wanted to see, too. He recognized the distinctive shape of a train approaching. The plume of smoke rose from the stack and caromed into the wind.

Henderson glanced over his shoulder at the ticket clerk. The scrawny little man frowned from behind his spectacles, absently scratching his hair as he scanned his schedule.

“Jack,” Henderson called to the clerk, “what train is this?”

“I don’t know. There ain’t a train due from the east until the Express crosses into South Dakota. At least not on my schedule.”

Curtis grunted and stepped back. “Schedule or not, that train’s almost here. And it ain’t slowing down.” He gestured with his chin. “I think it’s the Express.”

Henderson gawked at the outlaw. “How do you know?”

“The speed. I ain’t never heard anything move that fast.”

“There ain’t a turnaround for a hundred miles,” the sheriff scoffed. “Only way for it to be the Express was if it were going backwards.”

Jack the ticket clerk let out an exasperated laugh. “But why would it be going backwards?”

First to pass was the caboose it’s distinctive gold-and-red paint confirming Curtis’s assertion. The words “Sundown Express” was emblazoned on the sides of the passenger cars. The train never slowed as it passed the station. From the open doors of a boxcar, a shape was tossed through the air. Henderson didn’t need but a glance to recognize it as a bound and gagged man. The body hurtled past the collection of startled passengers, rolled several times, partly demolished the wooden ticket booth, and dislodged the discombobulated clerk from his seat.

As if emerging from a frozen sleep, the passengers reacted while the train’s cars continued to whistle by in a blur. Chaos erupted with them screaming and hollering, feet pounding up and down the rail station’s wooden boards.

Moments later, the train had passed on, steaming towards Cheyenne. In its wake, a stunned silence remained. A few folks murmured in awe at what they had witnessed. A young boy who had been knocked to the floor by the flying body cried. Henderson, hardened by the Great Unpleasantness, stood speechless. It was only the moaning of the victim that roused him from his stupor.

Lying on his back, the man raised his bloodied bald head a fraction then lowered it, staring grey eyes fixed upon oblivion.

Needing no prompting, the paling clerk righted himself and, in an ungainly scramble, backed away from the corpse.

Sheriff Henderson unlocked the handcuff and attached it to a porter’s carriage handle. “Stay put,” he told his prisoner.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ Curtis said. He stood rooted in place and gazed west at the rapidly disappearing Sundown Express, something akin to respect showing on his face.

Henderson ran over to the wrecked ticket stand and lowered himself to one knee beside the portly man dressed in a blood-stained dun-colored chalk-stripe suit. There was a big patch of blood on the victim’s vest, a gut shot, which didn’t bode well. He pressed a finger to the body’s neck to detect a pulse then desisted as it was clear all life had departed.

“Is he, is he dead?” Jack asked as he steadied himself on what remained of the ticket booth.

The lawman nodded solemnly. “What the hell’s this?” He reached for a large envelope that was tied to the dead man’s neck by a taut leather cord. It read simply: “For Senator Madison.”

“Is that a message?” Jack said.

“No,” Curtis said, his lips curling over his teeth into a wide grin. “It’s a ransom.”