Friends and Enemies Page 2

  “The one with the curly blond hair is going to jump on the train!” Veronica clamored. “He looks very strong.”

  “I suppose he missed the train back in Rapid City,” Patricia called out. “I hope he has a ticket. They won’t let you ride the train without a ticket.”

  Robert yanked open the brown leather dufflebag under his seat and pulled out a Colt .44 single-action engraved pistol with carved ivory grips.

  “What are you going to do with your presentation gun, Daddy?” Little Frank questioned.

  “Your mother’s going to keep it under her lap robe.”

  “Do you expect trouble, Robert?” Jamie Sue asked.

  Robert jammed the gun into his wife’s hands. “Keep this out of sight. Don’t use it unless you must. You kids stay seated! Girls, be smart. We’ve got some snakes to deal with. Little Frank, if you have to use that bat, don’t bunt. Go for a home run.”

  The train suddenly braked. The passengers lunged forward. Robert loosened his black tie and swung out into the aisle. He plucked up the Denver newspaper, pulled out his holstered .45 pistol, then scooted to the back of the crowded railroad car. Most of the passengers were picking themselves and their belongings off the floor with shouts, whimpers, and curses.

  “Daddy!” Veronica called out. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Be patient, darlin’,” he called back. “You’ll know, when it’s time.”

  Robert leaned against the back corner of the train car, the newspaper hiding the drawn revolver. The rear door banged open and a masked gunman with curly blonde hair barged in and shouted, “Everyone sit still! Don’t nobody try to be a hero. Hold your hands way up high in the air and all you’ll lose is some dollars and jewelry!”

  Men gasped.

  Women trembled.

  Girls screamed.

  And the moment the gunman relaxed his thumb off the hammer of the single-action revolver, Robert lunged toward him.

  The man never saw the barrel of Fortune’s revolver fly through the air, but he felt the skull-cracking pain as it creased his faded gray hat. The man sprawled on the aisle of the railroad car.

  “Everyone keep seated!” Robert yelled. “There are at least two more!”

  He lugged the man behind the last seat just as the train came to a complete stop. Another man burst in the front door of the train car waving a short-barreled shotgun. Reddish-yellow trail dust covered his brown hat and worn leather vest. “Butch?” he yelled.

  Robert stepped out in the aisle, his hands in the air, still holding the newspaper. “Is he the blond man?”

  “Where is he?” the dark-haired gunman snarled. He took a step down the aisle, pointing his gun straight at Robert Fortune.

  “He’s back there, mister,” Robert pointed. “I think he bumped his head on something.”

  The passengers were perfectly quiet as if they were all holding their breath in unison, waiting for the gallows door to drop.

  “What do you mean, bumped his head?”

  His hands still in the air, Robert moved to the far side of the car opposite the downed gunman. “Yes, sir, I think he hurt himself. Do you want me to take a look at him?”

  “You stay away and keep your hands in sight!” the man growled. “Get over in that far corner. I don’t want anyone in this car moving a muscle. You all understand?”

  “Yes, sir …” Robert mumbled and edged to the back of the car. I surely hope he falls for this humble routine. There’s no threat in this car … just take your finger off that trigger. Relax the hammer. You have us all buffaloed. That’s it … let the gun sag toward the floor.

  When the gunman barged down the aisle, the passengers scooted close to the windows like henhouse chickens with a dog in the coop. That is, all but Veronica and Patricia who, along with Little Frank, had their backs to the gunman and their eyes on their father. Robert nodded at them.

  Veronica’s polished black lace-up boot stayed neatly tucked under the train seat until the gunman reached her row. A swift kick tripped the man. Patricia jumped up and stomped on the man’s right hand with an identical boot, pinning his wrist to the floor. Little Frank’s homemade hickory bat doubled off the back of the man’s head. The gunman dropped unconscious in the aisle.

  The passengers’ cheers muzzled to silence when the front door of the car crashed open again.

  “What are you doing?” a winded, wild-haired third gunman screamed as he crashed into the car. His bandanna drooped down, revealing a sagging brown mustache, an unshaven narrow face, and angry brown eyes.

  Little Frank dropped the bat and slouched next to the window, his back to the gunman. The girls spun around and plopped down on both sides of their mother.

  The furious gunman dashed toward them. “What happened to Clinton?”

  Veronica clutched her mother’s arm and stared down at the man sprawled in the aisle. Her shoes tapped on the floor with the rapidity of a young child needing a quick trip to the privy. “I think he tripped,” she replied.

  At the back of the car, Robert lowered his right hand toward his holstered revolver.

  “He tripped?” The gunman glanced toward the back. “Keep those hands up high!” he shouted. He slowly worked his way down the aisle of frightened faces and raised hands. His eyes on Robert, he reached down and plucked up the baseball bat and waved it at Little Frank. “You bushwhacked him!” he screamed.

  “Don’t threaten my children,” Jamie Sue replied in a nervous, yet soft voice.

  “What did you say, lady?” he gunman bellowed.

  Robert moved up the aisle.

  “Stay where you are, mister,” the gunman roared. Once again, he waved the bat at Little Frank. “Where in Hades is Butch?”

  Jamie Sue’s lower lip quivered. The girls clutched each arm. Lord, sometimes we have to be bold against evil. And this man is evil. She cleared her throat. “I told you, don’t threaten my children, and don’t curse at them,” she blurted out.

  He spun around to face her and the girls. Robert inched his way up the aisle. “Shut up, lady!” His hands sagged in disgust. “I’ll cuss when I want to, and I’ll threaten anyone I choose. What are you going to do about it, shoot me?”

  Only the barrel of the presentation revolver peeked out from under the multicolored lap blanket. The gunman never saw it at all.

  But he heard the blast from the firearm.

  Smelled the acrid gunsmoke.

  And felt the two hundred grain bullet rip through his right boot and plow a hole through his foot as it exited into the rail car floor. His scream made every hair on the back of Robert’s neck stand on edge. He drew his own revolver and charged.

  The gunman staggered back. He collapsed to his knees and grabbed his bloody boot. “Lady, you shot me in the foot,” he cried. “I can’t believe you’d shoot me! What kind of woman would just up and shoot a man like that! Why did you have to shoot me?”

  Robert shoved the man to the floor and held a gun at his head. “Mister, never … ever … threaten that woman’s children.”

  As if orchestrated by a secret signal, the passengers stood up and cheered again.

  Tears trickled down the man’s grimy cheeks as he clutched his bleeding foot. The train conductor and fireman burst into the car.

  “What happened!” the conductor called out.

  “These men frightened our children,” Jamie Sue replied. “We do not tolerate such behavior.”

  “This ain’t no good!” the wounded man wailed. “She jist sat right there proper like and then shot me! What’s this world comin’ to? Train robbin’ ain’t no fun anymore!”

  The passengers disembarked slowly. Most waited among the boulders and trees as the train crew toted the injured and unconscious gunmen to the caboose, where they were chained into leg-irons.

  Robert Fortune assisted them, then hiked over to his family perched on a log worn slick by wind and weather.

  “They telegraphed back to Rapid City. We have to wait for the sheriff to come out and pick
up the train robbers.”

  “They didn’t actually rob anyone,” Little Frank added.

  Robert plucked up his suit coat from Jamie Sue’s lap and slipped it on. “Thanks to you three and Mama …”

  “It was you, Daddy,” Veronica insisted.

  “If you wouldn’t have encouraged us, we wouldn’t have done anything,” Little Frank added.

  Patricia bit her lip. “I was too nervous even to be scared,” she admitted.

  “I suppose it looks rather rash and foolish to others, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” Jamie Sue added. “I pray that’s the last such adventure we have to go through.”

  A short man with a pin-striped gray wool suit ambled over to the log. His hair was the color of the thick gray clouds. “I couldn’t believe my eyes back there on the train. I’ve never seen a family like this before. The husband coldcocks one robber, the kids pounce on the next, and the wife shoots the third! This is the most lethal family in the West. Where did you all learn to respond to crisis like that? You struck so quickly and thoroughly. There was no hesitation whatever.”

  “Did you ever live around snake country?” Jamie Sue quizzed.

  “No ma’am, not really.”

  “We lived for the past several years at Fort Huachuca in the rocky desert country of southern Arizona. We averaged killing a rattlesnake a week,” she reported.

  “Sometimes even in the house!” Veronica added.

  “At first it was terrifying, but as soon as you learn how to kill a snake, you find out it’s not so scary,” Jamie Sue explained. “You just do it quickly before the snake has a chance to think or harm you.”

  “Then you skin ’em, and tan the hides,” Little Frank added. “I sold them to soldiers for hat bands and such. ’Course, the meat was good too.”

  “You ate rattlesnake?” The man’s face turned pale.

  “Sometimes Mama would make a stew out of them, but I like them grilled right over the flames,” Little Frank explained.

  The man with the green face turned to Robert Fortune. “What do snakes have to do with these train robbers?”

  “You have to strike fast before they get a chance to think or harm you,” Robert explained. “Some things you have to do quickly, before you rationalize yourself out of them.”

  “Of course, train robbers don’t taste as good as snakes,” Veronica offered.

  “And when you skin ’em you can’t hardly get nothin’ for their hide,” Little Frank concluded.

  The man’s hat dropped. His face whitened.

  Robert grinned. “The truth of the matter is, this is a pretty stubborn family and we just don’t push around very well. Never have. Kind of an inherited characteristic.”

  “Yes,” Jamie Sue concurred. “All the Fortunes are that way.”

  “Fortune?” As the man retrieved his hat, Robert noticed he packed a small revolver in a shoulder holster under his suit coat. “Your name is Fortune?”

  “I’m Robert Fortune. This is my wife, Jamie Sue, and our children.”

  The man rubbed his round chin as if contemplating a weighty decision. “You related to that Deadwood bunch?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Robert laughed. “They have quite a reputation, don’t they? Are you a friend of Daddy Brazos or my brothers?”

  “Eh … well … I’ve never actually met any of them.”

  “I bet you read that book about my Uncle Todd and his ‘Flying Fist of Death’!” Veronica added.

  The man took several small steps backward.

  “It wasn’t all that dramatic. You know how those dime novels play things up,” Robert reported. “That was about the only time Todd had to face a gunman of the caliber of Cigar Dubois. Daddy Brazos, on the other hand, has made a lifetime gettin’ himself in and out of tight squeezes. He was the one who brought down Doc Kabyo and that gang.”

  “You don’t say?” The man cleared his throat. “Actually, I was hoping to meet the one called Samuel Fortune,” the man explained.

  “Uncle Sammy is a real gunfighter!” Patricia added. “He isn’t scared of anything. Some say he was the toughest man in the Indian Territory.”

  “They call it Oklahoma now,” Veronica corrected.

  “But it’s still a territory,” Little Frank added.

  “Sammy’s served his sentence in prison and retired from all that now,” Jamie Sue added. “The Lord has made him a changed man.”

  Robert leaned back on the log and surveyed the other passengers. A large woman chased a two-year-old boy, naked from the waist down, through the boulders. He glanced back at the short man. “Are you in the telephone business like Sammy?”

  Even though it was cloudy and cool, beads of sweat popped out on the man’s forehead. “Eh, no.”

  “Well, what do you do?” Little Frank quizzed.

  The man took out a soiled white handkerchief and sponged his forehead. “You might say I’m a retired bounty hunter.”

  “No foolin’, you used to be a bounty hunter?” Little Frank added. “Boy, that must have been an exciting life. I’d like to be a bounty hunter, but Daddy says all the important outlaws are dead or in jail already.”

  “When did you retire?” Jamie Sue asked.

  The man pulled out a gold-plated pocket watch from his vest and studied the time. “About thirty seconds ago,” the man mumbled.

  Robert glanced over at his wife, then back at the man. “You were after Sammy?”

  “Eh … well …” He looped his thumbs in his belt. “A family in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, said that Samuel Fortune owed them $400 for the wrongful death of four horses and two mules. If he doesn’t pay, I’m supposed to arrest him and bring him back for trial.”

  “If Sammy truly owes them something, he will pay, I know that,” Robert said. “But they had better show up in person and have some proof of their accusation, because lots of folks want a piece of Sammy’s bank account nowadays.”

  “Are you really going to try to arrest my Uncle Sammy?” Veronica quizzed.

  “Can we watch?” Patricia pleaded. “Mama, you’ve got to let us watch.”

  The man wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Actually, I don’t think I’ll go to Deadwood after all. In fact, maybe I’ll ride back to Rapid City with the sheriff’s posse.” The man backed down the slope of the hill toward the train, his hat in his hand.

  The passengers were given the option of waiting out on the hillside or reboarding the train and waiting there. Most of them, like the Fortunes, remained out in the fresh air of the Black Hills.

  Little Frank tucked his boiled cotton shirt into his ducking trousers, and tugged his worn, wide-brimmed hat down low across his eyes. “Daddy, can I go look at the horses while we are waiting?” He stared toward the far end of the train.

  “What horses?” Jamie Sue queried.

  “The two horses that are going to Deadwood for the big race,” Little Frank reported. “It looks like they’re unloading them to give them some exercise.”

  Her narrow eyes pinched; her thin lips tightened. “I will not have my son hanging around that racehorse crowd,” she insisted.

  Robert reached over and hugged her narrow waist. “He only wants to see the horses, Mama, not run off and join the circus,” he laughed. “Besides, it will be a history lesson.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “And just how is this going to be a lesson in history?”

  Little Frank rocked back on the heels of his worn brown boots. His blue eyes danced. “The big gray is a descendant of Traveller, General Lee’s favorite. And the other is a descendent of General Grant’s horse, Cincinnati!”

  “Oh, my …” Jamie Sue reached up and tried unsuccessfully to tuck a wild strand of brown hair back under her straw hat. “I can see how this will be a horse race of epic proportions and national significance.”

  “Does this mean I can go watch them exercise the horses?” Little Frank pleaded.

  She reached over and brushed his hair off his forehead. “How ca
n I refuse such a historic event? It would be unpatriotic.”

  When Robert attempted to withdraw his arm, she clamped it around her waist. They watched Little Frank sprint back toward the livestock car.

  “The girls are right,” Robert admitted. “I should stop calling him Little Frank. He’s almost as tall as I am.”

  She pulled his hand over to hers and laced his calloused fingers in hers. “No matter what we call him, Daddy Brazos will call him Little Frank.”

  “Mama, we want to go for a walk too,” Veronica insisted as she stood and brushed down her lacy white cotton dress.

  Jamie Sue raised her thick dark eyebrows. “You want to go look at some horses?”

  “No, she wants to go look at that young blond boy with the curly hair that’s standing by the big lady and the half-naked little boy,” Patricia announced.

  “I do not.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “‘Cause I want to go see him too! So there!” Patricia stuck out her small, pointed pink tongue.

  “Please, Daddy,” Veronica begged, “can we just walk around?”

  He glanced at the milling crowd of impatient passengers. “As long as I can keep you in sight.”

  Patricia jumped up next to her sister. “Why do we have to stay in sight, Daddy? Little Frank doesn’t have to keep in sight.”

  “Because Little Frank isn’t one of the two cutest girls on the face of the earth,” Robert replied.

  Patricia and Veronica grinned and wrinkled their identical round, upturned noses in unison.

  “Daddy is one smooth talker, Mama,” Veronica beamed.

  “Yes, he is.” Jamie Sue drew his fingers up to her lips and brushed a kiss across them. “It’s a Fortune characteristic.”

  The girls held hands and giggled their way over to a stand of short ponderosa pines. Soon, they wormed their way close to the blond curly-headed boy.

  “Well, Daddy, you sweet-talked them this time, but they won’t fall for that forever,” Jamie Sue lectured.

  “Can you imagine what life’s going to be like when Veronica and Patricia are sixteen?” he said.