This was one of the original chapters from Kirkham’s POV – ditched it because nothing exciting happens to poor Stone unless he’s with the lads.
Lieutenant Johnson kept up a solid stream of curses for the entire time it took the Pacific Express to clear the rock cut. His squad had dismantled the barricade in only fifteen minutes, but it took another fifteen to thread the train through the side of the mountain. The boom of the trestle exploding behind them didn’t improve the lieutenant’s mood any.
Agent Reginald Kirkham paid no attention to Johnson, except to frown when the volume grew annoying. An educated man had no need to resort to such language, and he thought it spoke poorly of the man’s self control. Kirkham busied himself readying the gelding for travel. He had to catch up with those two reprobates before they disappeared again. The Bureau still hadn’t managed to figure out how they did it, but following each robbery, Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid just faded into the background. Obviously, they either had either an impenetrable hideout, or alter egos that could stand scrutiny. He planned to find out which.
The army squad had complained at the presence of the horse within their boxcar. They’d changed their tune now that the payroll was likely halfway across the mountain range. Suddenly, every man wanted a horse, and every man wanted to go haring off after the outlaws. Kirkham had bought the mustang before they loaded the train. The animal was purported to be an excellent trail horse. He’d need a sure-footed horse if those two had taken to the mountains — and if they were half as good as they were supposed to be, they’d taken to the mountains.
His assignment was to trail the outlaws to whatever hideout they were using, and to approach them if possible. Kirkham thought little of the latter idea. Some desk-bound bureaucrat back at the Capitol figured one special agent could easily overpower two of the worst the West had to offer, even somewhere back of beyond with two to one odds. Kirkham had no great hankering to get shot, so he planned a lengthy period of observation instead.
The train had pulled clear of the cut and stopped, per Kirkham’s orders. He slid the door to the boxcar open. Lieutenant Johnson slammed a fist against the wall of the car.
“Blast it, Kirkham! I ought to appropriate that animal in the name of the army. We can track down those two hooligans faster than any Washington city slicker.” His scowl darkened as Kirkham pretended he’d heard nothing and led the horse down the ramp to the tracks.
Johnson leaped down in front of the horse, causing it to shy back against the boxcar. That was entirely too much! Kirkham took two steps and shoved a finger underneath the man’s nose. He had a difficult time making it a finger instead of a fist.
“You had this entire plan explained to you by the governor himself, Johnson. I don’t care what you think, but you’ll get out of my way or you’ll find yourself in irons.”
The lieutenant did raise a fist, and then thought better of it, and stepped back. Kirkham didn’t spare him a second glance, but mounted up and urged the horse into a canter. It’d be useless back-tracking to the trestle — or what was left of it. He knew pretty much where the outlaws had lain in wait. What he needed to figure out was where they were headed. To that end, he needed to pick up their trail on the dry riverbed.
He took a deep breath as he left the train behind. The crisp mountain air cooled off his temper some. Sure, he could have used a few extra riflemen as backup, but he’d prefer men who were better at creative thinking than at following orders. Maybe he’d gotten spoiled working in Washington, surrounded by the cream of the Bureau. It had taken them nearly a year to track the outlaws this far. He’d hate to imagine how long it would have taken if he’d had Johnson and his squad helping instead of his pick of the Bureau statistics team.
Perhaps his boss had been right; perhaps he did need to get out in the field and see how the world really worked. Although if that army squad was any indication, most people in the “real world” were about as observant as a lump of coal. If any one of those men had paid attention during the robbery, instead of shouting empty threats and useless curses, they’d have been able to successfully creep up on whichever one of the two had holed up in the rocks. Kirkham had figured out early on that the other outlaw was actually underneath the trestle: the bottle of nitroglycerin so pointedly mentioned had been positioned at the bottom of the explosive bundle, not at the top. Once he’d noticed that, he’d watched the shadows at the bottom of the ravine. He’d spotted the arm reaching out to haul the payroll box between a couple of crossbars, and felt a grudging respect for their ingenuity.
Kirkham thought about it as the horse picked its way down the side of the mountain. He’d requested this assignment because of that grudging respect, and he was about to learn whether he was as good an agent as he actually thought he was. Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid were the best at what they did. Even though Kirkham abhorred the idea of breaking the law, he admitted that fact, and admitted that they had to possess significant intelligence to be the best. The two outlaws had managed to outwit banks, trains, and stage lines for over ten years. Bankers who bragged of their impenetrable defenses unlocked their doors to find the safe emptied. Railroad presidents who’d plotted supposedly top-secret deliveries found their trains diverted and robbed.