The Killing Shot. Johnny D. Boggs

tender, smashed to pieces, lay atop the locomotive, which had been turned into nothing more than a pile of twisted black metal that looked as if it had been blown apart by ten howitzers. The express car and two passenger cars had slid off the rails and fallen onto their sides before the caboose had flown over the rails, splintering the last coach.

      “Which one’s got the money, Cap’n?” Harrah asked.

      “Express car.” Chaucer answered for Pardo. “The one that’s burning like hell.”

      Pardo’s eyes smarted. Damned car was going up like a tinderbox. Wood crackled, and Rafael screamed for mercy.

      “The money,” Harrah said. “The Army money. It’s burning—”

      “Check on Lacy and the horses, Ma.” Pardo’s voice was soft. He wet his lips, shoved the Colt bitterly into the holster. “Tell Phil we won’t have need of the buckboard.”

      Chaucer snorted again.

      “One more snigger, and I’ll bury you here, too.” Pardo spit again, before turning to Harrah. “All right, boys. Might as well go check out the passenger coaches before they go up in smoke, too. Salvage something out of this mess.”

      He slid down the hill and made a beeline for Soledad, Duke, and what once had been Rafael. When the engine’s boiler blew, it had sprayed slivers of wood and steel like grapeshot. The bay gelding had caught most of the blast. Rafael had gotten an unhealthy chunk. Only something short of a miracle had protected Duke, Soledad, and the other horse, not to mention Pardo, his mother, and those watching from the hilltop.

      Blood poured from both corners of Rafael’s mouth, his nose, and what looked like a thousand holes in his body. His left arm was gone at the elbow, and a piece of metal three inches wide and two feet long stuck out of his groin like a saber. Pardo knelt beside him and slowly lifted his head to find Soledad.

      Tears streamed down the tall Mexican’s face. He crossed himself, and made himself look at Pardo. He mouthed something in Spanish. Pardo didn’t know what he had said for sure, but he knew what he had to do.

      Slowly, he drew the Colt, thumbed back the hammer, and shot Rafael in the head.

      “Sorry, amigo,” he told Soledad, as he stood, shoving the revolver into the holster.

      “Gracias.” Soledad wiped his eyes with a gloved hand. “With your permission, I will take my brother back to the home of my blessed mother.”

      “Take your time.” That was proper. He liked the Mexican for that, for thinking of his mother. Family was important. The most important thing, maybe, next to money and dead Yankees. “We’ll see you in the Dragoons.”

      Pardo was moving again. Seemed like he was always moving. He saw the fireman, half-buried in debris, his neck broken, and wondered if he’d find the engineer somewhere beneath the rubble, probably his hands still pulling on the brake. The engineer had died game, which is more than he could say about the fireman. Or Rafael. Or Ma’s bay gelding.

      He slid down with an avalanche of stones, dirt, and pieces from the train, feeling the heat from the roaring fire, put his hand on the smashed wood of the second passenger coach, or maybe it was the caboose. Hard to tell amid all this ruin. A fire had started licking its way down the smashed wood. Behind him, The Greek was riding his dun horse down the butte, letting the horse pick its own path downhill, keeping his Sharps cradled across his saddle. Harrah and Chaucer were checking the first passenger coach. Mostly Harrah. Chaucer had kept his distance from the wreck. Now Duke ran over to help.

      Pardo swallowed and looked into what once had been a window of the second coach. He saw a dead man’s face, and walked on, then stopped, frozen.

      Harrah had climbed out of the ruins of the first coach, stopping to mop sweat off his face with a calico bandana. Behind him rose a small arm, so white, so stained with blood. The scene completely mesmerized Pardo.

      The fingers stretched out, fell on Harrah’s shoulder, and Harrah screamed.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Charleston’s whores came out that morning to serenade the Kraft brothers.

      A couple of strumpets, Deputy U.S. Marshal Reilly McGivern decided, could actually sing, so well that he found himself humming a few bars of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” when deputies Gus Henderson and Frank Denton led L.J. and W.W. Kraft, arms and legs chained, out of the jail and toward the black-barred prison wagon waiting for them at the corner of Stove and Second streets. Deputy Slim Chisum, who was the definition of the word cautious, climbed into the wagon’s driver’s box and thumbed back the hammers of his sawed-off twelve-gauge.

      Reilly pulled open the door at the back of the wagon and waited.

      Next, the whores started “Oh, My Darling, Clementine,” which everyone seemed to be singing that year. Reilly hated that stupid song and tried to hum “Lorena” instead, but he couldn’t keep it up because of the whores, who crowded Charleston’s streets while other residents, the kinds usually seen on the streets in the daylight, gathered along the boardwalks—keeping a respectable distance, naturally, from the whores—to watch the show.

      It had turned hot that morning, and the air stank of the smoke pouring out of the stamp mills along the river. Reilly shot a glance at the rooftops, spotting the sheriff’s deputies and town marshal’s men in position, rifles ready, and made himself relax. K.C. Kraft wouldn’t try anything today. Not here. The only threat out in Charleston, he thought with a grin, was a case of the clap.

      He kept his left hand on the door.

      Marshal Zan Tidball had spent a lot of money on this prison wagon, and Reilly had decided it would pay for itself once he got the Kraft brothers to Yuma. If he got there. It was a black wagon—except for the freshly painted yellow wheels, and silver words, U.S. MARSHAL, ARIZONA TY., on the left side—with a wood bottom, housing an iron jail on the bed that would soak up the Arizona heat like the sand swallowed water. The iron bars allowed a breeze, at least, and they could chain the brothers to the floor if needed.

      Marshal Ken Cobb, who typically oversaw the district that covered Cochise and Pima counties, had instructed Reilly to transport the prisoners in the wagon along the San Pedro River north to Contention City, where they would board the train to Benson, then catch the Southern Pacific all the way to Yuma, where they would deliver the two Krafts to the warden at the territorial pen.

      Simple enough.

      Except everybody in Arizona Territory knew about it, including K.C. Kraft, the third, and meanest, brother, who hadn’t been captured or killed. So Reilly had thought of something better, although he hadn’t gotten around to telling Cobb or Marshal Tidball, or anyone else. Hell, Reilly never had been good at following orders.

      “All right, ladies,” he said easily. “Let’s make room for the gentlemen.”

      He wore blue trousers tucked inside black, $15 stovepipe boots inlaid with green, four-leaf clovers; a mustard and brown-checked collarless shirt; faded blue bandana; and a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned hat the color of wet adobe. A six-point star hung from the lapel of his gray vest, and a long-barrel Merwin, Hulbert & Co. .44 fit snugly on his right hip, six shells for easy access on the tooled leather holster. He turned so that the Krafts couldn’t reach the revolver, and let the whores keep singing.

      L.J. Kraft climbed into the wagon without a word, but W.W. stopped to hold out his manacled hands.

      “How about taking these bracelets off, Mac?” W.W. showed his yellow, crooked teeth.

      Reilly stared.

      “Hell,” W.W. said, “I just want to feel Matilda’s tit-ties before I take my leave, and don’t want to hurt her none with this iron.”

      Somewhere in the crowd, Matilda giggled.

      “That iron,” Reilly said, “stays on till you get to Yuma.”

      “You ain’t Cupid,” W.W. said, and climbed