Violence of the Mountain Man. William W. Johnstone

sighed. “Well, I reckon we’d better check,” the stationmaster said. “Sanchez?”

      An elderly Mexican was moving luggage around and he looked up. “Sí?”

      “Get Chavez and you two come with me.”

      “Chavez, Señor Travelsted quiere que nosotros vayamos con él,” Sanchez called out in Spanish.

      Van Arndt went out with Travelsted and the two Mexican employees.

      “Where’d you see him last?” Travelsted asked.

      “Let me see,” Van Arndt said, scratching his chin. “I believe the engine was sittin’ right about there,” he said, pointing to a place on the track. “And ole Gibbs, after he seen the little girl, or else thought he seen the little girl, went around in front of the engine. So I reckon right about there is where I seen him last.”

      “The track is too dark to see from here. Let me get a lantern and we’ll take a closer look,” Travelsted said.

      “A lantern I brought, Señor Travelsted,” Sanchez said.

      “Walk up there ahead of us, Sanchez, and hold the lantern down low so we can get a good look at the track,” Travelsted ordered, stepping down from the platform and walking up the ties between the twin rails.

      Sanchez went a few feet up the track, then summoned Chavez over and gave him the lantern. Chavez went on ahead for a few feet. Then he stopped dead in his track.

      “Madre de Dios, Sanchez, es un hombre muerto,” Chevez said with a gasp. “El tren mutiló su cadaver!”

      “What did he say?” Travelsted asked.

      “He has found a man’s body, but it has been mutilated by the train,” Sanchez translated.

      Van Arndt, Travelsted, and Sanchez moved up to stand by Chavez, who was holding the lantern in a way to illuminate what was left of the body. The body had been completely split into two halves, from head to crotch, with half lying on one side of the track and half on the other. Blood and intestines were everywhere, as well as brain matter from the severed head.

      Whereas Chevez and Sanchez stared at the remains in morbid fascination, Travelsted turned away, then began to throw up.

      “My God,” Travelsted said. “This is awful.” He looked at Van Arndt. “What did you say your friend’s name was?”

      “He said his name was Gibbs. Donnie Gibbs. But he wasn’t my friend exactly. We was just on the train together is all,” Van Arndt said. “Like I told you, all we done is, we just ate supper. Then, after supper we come back outside, and was standin’ here talkin’ when he said he seen a little girl crawlin’ across the track. That’s when he went up to the front of the train lookin’ for it.”

      “Should we look for the baby?” Sanchez asked.

      “You can if you want to,” Travelsted said. “But I don’t think there was a baby. If so, the mother would have come to me to ask about it.”

      “Sí, I think so too,” Sanchez said.

      “I’ll send a telegram back to all the stations along the line and try to find out if anyone knows anything about this man Gibbs. In the meantime, Sanchez, you and Chavez pick him up. We can’t leave him on the tracks like this.”

      “Pick him up? Señor, we cannot pick him up,” Sanchez replied. “He is in many pieces. We will have to scrape him up.”

      “All right, then scrape him up,” Travelsted said.

      Chapter Four

      Frisco, Colorado

      The ill-fitting blue suit that had literally screamed prison issue was gone, replaced by a pair of denim trousers and a white shirt. The clothes, like the black hat and the brown boots he was wearing, were new. Van Arndt had used Gibbs’s money to buy himself new duds to include a new pistol and holster. He had bought a new horse and saddle as well, but rather than ride the fifty miles to Frisco, he had taken the train, buying passage for his horse in the attached stock car.

      Stepping down from the train, Van Arndt saw a town that was alive with commerce. The streets were filled with the traffic of wagons, buckboards, and horses. Men and women moved up and down the boardwalks, and went in and out of the many stores that fronted Center Street. Across the street from the depot, a new building was going up and men hammered, sawed, and shouted at each other. Next to the depot was a large holding pen, and though it was almost empty at the moment, the ground was redolent with the droppings of thousands of cattle deposited over the last several months. This was both visual and olfactory evidence of the cattle commerce carried on at the Frisco railhead.

      Retrieving his horse from the attached stock car, Van Arndt led the animal down the street to a livery, where he made arrangements for it to be boarded. Then he walked back up the street to the Railroad Hotel, which was just across from the depot, and there, he took a room. After that, he went to the bank to have a look around at the way the bank was laid out. If this little bank really did have one hundred thousand dollars, as Gibbs had stated, than Van Arndt intended to relieve it of that burden.

      He chuckled to himself as he realized how he had just thought of it as “relieving the bank of its burden.”

      The bank was unremarkable in that it resembled all the other banks in all the other towns Van Arndt had seen. Just inside the door was a table, on which there were bank deposit slips and counter drafts. A little farther back were the tellers’ cages.

      “May I help you, sir?” one of the tellers asked, seeing Van Arndt standing by the table. “Do you wish to make a deposit?”

      “I might,” Van Arndt replied. He stepped up to the cage and handed the teller three twenty-dollar bills. “But first, I would like to have these bills changed into tens, if you don’t mind.”

      “Why, I don’t mind at all, sir,” the teller said, taking the money and making the change.

      “I have a lot of money in the bank in Denver,” Van Arndt said. “I plan to buy some cattle while I’m here, and so I would like to move my money to this bank. But I’m a little worried.”

      “Worried? May I ask what you are worried about, sir?” the teller asked. “Perhaps I can ease your fears.”

      “Well, I’m sure you can understand why I’m worried,” Van Arndt said, continuing the charade. “It’s just that the bank in Denver is rather substantial, and I am absolutely certain that my money is safe as long as it is there. Please don’t get me wrong, sir,” Van Arndt said obsequiously. “I truly mean no insult, but you must admit that this is a rather small bank, and I just imagine you don’t have a lot of money on deposit.”

      “Well now, that’s just where you are wrong, sir,” the bank teller said. “It just so happens that we have well over one hundred thousand dollars on deposit right now. And at least eighty thousand dollars of that money is deposited in one account.”

      “Is that a fact?”

      “Yes, sir, it is a fact,” the teller insisted.

      “That must be quite a wealthy man, to have so much money in one account.”

      “I think he represents an industry that is wealthy,” the teller said. “But he is not in the least worried about the safety or efficiency of our bank. So, I’m sure you can see that, regardless of the size of your account, we will quite able to handle it.”

      All the time the teller had been talking, he had been counting out money. “There you go, sir,” he said, shoving a small pile of money through the teller’s cage. “Sixty dollars in ten-dollar bank notes.”

      Van Arndt picked up the six ten-dollar bills, folded them over, and stuck them in his pocket.

      “Well, I thank you very much,” he said. “You have been very helpful. I’ll be returning to Denver