behind him.
“You might get your wish,” Liam commented as he slid off the saddle and they scrambled up the rock outcropping that gave both of them a view down onto the track clearing. “They didn’t seem too smart to— Oh, no!” Liam gasped, covering his mouth in horror as he saw what Mason saw: Holly Sanders and two other people crouched in panic over a bleeding man. “They shot Mr. Arlington!” His voice was a whispered yell, full of shock and fear. He looked up to Mason with panicked eyes. “How could they have shot Mr. Arlington like that? Mr. Brooks had the key to the safe. Mr. Arlington didn’t know nothin’!”
Mason didn’t know what to say. His brain was churning through options, working furiously to find some way out of this. One thing was clear from the chaos below: these men weren’t killing by plan, they were killing by panic. Panic was far more dangerous than clever, and from the looks of the safe dumped out on the packed earth just a few yards away, and the yelling going on between the bandits, things had gotten out of hand.
Within minutes, Bucky Wyler came up crouching behind Mason, rifle ready in his hand. “Aw criminey,” he muttered as he took in the scene, “what now?”
“Act fast. Too much longer, and things will go from bad to worse.” Mason looked over his shoulder at the four other men coming up the path, motioning for them to come closer but to keep down.
“Worse already, if you’re asking me.” Bucky settled onto his stomach and pulled his rifle up to rest on the rock. “What do we do? There’s too many of ’em down there to shoot.”
“You can’t shoot.” Mason grabbed Bucky’s arm. “There’s young’uns down there.”
Bucky palmed his hat off his head. “Kids?”
“Orphans. Handful of ’em. That’s one of the agents on the ground.”
“Mr. Arlington’s not dead, is he? We gotta get down there.” Liam looked as if he’d burst down into the clearing in two seconds if Mason didn’t do something. He scanned the scene again, grasping for any tactic.
“Bucky, can you shoot the safe?”
The man squinted through his gunsight. “Yep, but it’s not likely to do much.”
“It’ll be distraction enough.”
Just then, in the worst possible timing, the children came piling out of the car. There was an old woman trying to hold them back from the gruesome scene, but the orphans were too wild with panic for one old woman to keep them corralled. Mason swore under his breath. Even Bucky’s sharpshooting was too much of a risk with all those youngsters about.
“Get back in the car!” The woman with Holly Sanders stood up and waved the children off. When the youngsters only rushed at her, she moved as quickly as she could away from the injured man. Thankfully, they followed, putting a bit of distance between themselves and the bickering robbers, who were now circled around the safe.
It didn’t take long to figure out who was in charge. The other three were clearly muscle; only one of them seemed to be shouting commands. “There’s our man,” Mason said as he pointed to the leader. “If we could take him out...A shot in the leg ought to do the trick.”
Bucky settled in to line up his shot, following Mason’s thinking. “Then we can pick off the rest.”
“Just do something! Mr. Arlington’s bleeding bad.” Liam was growing frantic.
Mason was out of options. He looked at Bucky and gestured back toward the now dozen armed men behind them. “Give each of them a target—wounding only, no killing in front of those youngsters. Understood?”
As Mason started to move, Liam grabbed his leg. “What about me?”
“You stay here. You’ve been brave enough already.”
“No!”
Mason couldn’t say he was surprised, and he didn’t have time to argue. “Are you good at sneaking?”
“The best.”
Mason pointed to the most likely spot for some accomplice to be hiding horses. “Head on over there and look for horses.” He tossed the lad the bosun’s whistle from his vest pocket. He used it for shooing away stray dogs, and the thing always made Ace crazy. Maybe it would rile up the bandits’ horses if they had any. “Blow this all around to spook them and then run back here but be careful. Someone’s bound to be guarding them.”
The boy caught the whistle with one hand. “Got it.”
Mason picked his way down between the rocks toward the rail line, still unsure how he was going to draw the men. He was almost in range when the biggest of them said, “How about I go get the horses and we haul that safe outta here?”
Not a lot of brains there, Mason thought to himself as he imagined the robbers attempting a getaway while dragging a heavy safe through the Nebraska countryside. Their lack of speed would be compounded by the obvious tracks.
The leader surprised him by consenting. “Just go get the horses. Jake,” he shouted, pointing at another man, “get that hat full of loot, and fer Pete’s sake get Miss Prissy and them brats back in the car.”
Mason waited until the last possible moment, weighing every stride the big man took toward the horses—and Liam—with every child who stepped back onto the train. Bucky must have followed his thinking, for just as Mason cocked his pistol Bucky’s shot rang out, pinging loudly against the safe to ricochet into the woods over Mason’s left shoulder. From behind him the
bosun’s whistle sounded; Liam had found the horses. Run, kid. Mason sent him a mental message as shouts went up from all corners of the clearing and from other passengers who’d had enough sense to stay inside the railcars. The leader turned in the direction of the shot long enough for Mason to burst from behind the rock cropping, shouting himself.
In the two seconds it took the leader to turn, Mason fired. The bullet tore into the man’s pant leg just above the knee, sending him to the ground. Half a dozen shots came from the ridge above, sending the place into a frenzy. Hoping Bucky was as good a shot as usual, Mason sprinted across the clearing to grab Holly Sanders by the waist and nearly haul her into the railcar behind the other woman and children. The fallen robbers managed a small volley of return fire, but even a sharpshooter would have a hard time hitting the men hid up in the rocks. When the bosun’s whistle echoed again from the safety of the rock outcropping, Mason let out the breath he’d been holding for the boy.
There was a moment of stunned stillness. The robbers had used up their ammunition. Bucky and the others were surely trained on each of the fallen men, ready to fire if one of them made a move. Mason left Miss Sanders at the railcar with the children—most of whom were screaming by now along with half the passengers—and rushed to crouch at the still body of Mr. Arlington.
One hand on the man’s bloody chest told Mason nothing could be done. “Rest in peace, Arlington.”
* * *
Holly watched in horror as Sheriff Wright took off his jacket and laid it carefully over Mr. Arlington’s face. The man was dead. Shot for the crime of trying to let the bandits go, for trying to save the children from harm. The cruelty of it seemed to pummel Holly’s lungs, and her steps wobbled as she made her way toward the sheriff.
“Lord
