Hell's Jaw Pass

Book 2: Wolf Stockburn, Railroad Detective

by Max O'Hara

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The building of the transcontinental railroad is the story of America itself. Full of great dreams—and greater dangers—it required bold vision, back-breaking work, and one brave man to stop the baddest of the bad men every step of the way. His name is Wolf Stockburn, railroad detective . . .



NEXT STOP, HELL. ALL ABOARD!



The killers are organized—and ruthless. One by one, they slaughter a railroad crew at Hell's Jaw Pass in Wyoming Territory. No survivors. No mercy. To ensure the rail line's completion, Wells Fargo sends their best detective, Wolf Stockburn, to the nearby mining town of Wild Horse. It's a rowdy little outpost full of miners, outlaws, and downright killers smack in the middle of two of the largest ranches in the territory. It's also as close to the pit of hell as Stockburn has ever been . . .



Train holdups, ranch wars, slaughter—this little boomtown's got it all. Stockburn's not sure he can trust anyone here, even the deputy's daughter. This pretty gal isn't just flirting with Wolf, she's flirting with disaster. And that disaster comes with a hail of bullets, and—before it's all over—a lot of blood on the tracks . . .

Release date: July 27, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 332

Sample

Spotting trouble, Wolf Stockburn reached across his belly with his right hand and unsnapped the keeper thong from over the hammer of the .45 Colt Peacemaker holstered for the cross-draw on his left hip.

He loosened the big popper in the oiled scabbard.

Just as casually, riding along in the Union Pacific passenger coach at maybe twenty miles an hour through the desert scrub of central Wyoming, he unsnapped the thong from over the hammer of the Colt residing in the holster tied down on his right thigh. He glanced again at the source of his alarm—a man riding four rows ahead of him, facing the front of the car, on the right side of the aisle.

He was in the aisle seat. An old couple in their late sixties, early seventies, sat beside him, the old man against the wall and idly reading a newspaper. The old woman, wearing a red scarf over her gray head, appeared to be knitting. Occasionally, Stockburn could see the tips of the needles as she tiredly toiled, sucking her dentures.

Most folks would have seen nothing out of kilter about the man in the aisle seat. He was young and dressed in a cheap suit—maybe attire he’d purchased second-hand from a mercantile. The left shoulder seam was a little frayed and both shoulders were coppered from sunlight.

The young man wore round, steel-framed spectacles and a soot-smudge mustache. Stockburn had gotten a good look at him when the kid had boarded at the last water stop, roughly fifteen minutes ago. Something had seemed a little off about the lad as soon as Stockburn had seen him. Wolf wasn’t sure exactly what that had been, but his seasoned rail detective’s suspicions had been activated.

Maybe it was the pasty, nervous look in the kid’s eyes, the moistness of his pale forehead beneath the brim of his shabby bowler hat. He’d been nervous. Downright apprehensive. Scared.

Now, the iron horse was still new to the frontier West. So the kid’s fear could be attributed to the mere fact that this was his first time riding on a big iron contraption powered by burning coal and boiling steam, and moving along two slender iron rails at an unheard-of clip—sometimes getting up to thirty, thirty-five miles an hour. Forty on a steep downgrade!

That could have been what had the kid, who was somewhere in his early twenties, streaking his drawers. On the other hand, Stockburn had spotted a telltale bulge in the cracked leather valise the kid was carrying, pressed up taut against his chest, like a new mother holding her baby.

Adding to Stockburn’s caution, a minute ago the young man had leaned forward over the valise he’d been riding with on his lap. The kid had reached a hand into the valise. At least, Stockburn thought he had, though of course he didn’t have a full-frontal view of the kid, since he was sitting behind him. But he had a modest view over the kid’s left shoulder, and he was sure the kid had shoved his hand into the grip.

As the kid had done so, he’d turned his head to peer suspiciously over his left shoulder, his long, unattractive face pale, his eyes wide and moist. He’d looked like a kid who’d walked into a mercantile on a dare from his schoolyard pals to steal a pocketful of rock candy.

He’d run his gaze across the dozen or so passengers riding in the car, the train’s sole passenger car for this stretch of rail, between the town of Buffalo Gap and Wild Horse. His eyes appeared so opaque with furtive anxiety that Stockburn doubted the lad would have noticed if he, Stockburn—a big man—had been standing in the aisle aiming both of his big Colts at the boy. Wolf didn’t think the kid even noticed him now, sitting four rows back, in an aisle seat, staring right at him.

Stockburn’s imposing size wasn’t the only thing distinctive about him. He also had a distinct shock of prematurely gray hair, which he wore roached, like a horse’s mane. It stood out in sharp contrast to the deep bronze of his ruggedly chiseled face. He wore a carefully trimmed mustache of the same color. He wasn’t currently wearing his black sombrero; it sat to his left, atop his canvas war bag, which the barrel of his leaning .44-caliber Winchester Yellowboy repeating rifle rested against. His head was bare.

When the kid’s quick survey of the coach was complete, he turned back around to face the front of the car, his shoulders a little too square, his back too straight, the back of his neck too red.

He was up to something.

Stockburn started to look away from the back of the kid’s head then slid his gaze forward and across the aisle to his more immediate right, frowning curiously. A pretty young woman was staring at him, smiling. She sat two rows up from Wolf, in a seat against the other side of the car. The two plush-covered seats beside her were empty.

She was maybe nineteen or twenty, wearing a burnt-orange traveling frock with a ruffled shirtwaist and burnt-orange waist coat and a matching felt hat, a little larger than Wolf’s open hand, pinned to the top of her piled, chestnut hair. Jade stones encased in gold dangled from her small, porcelain pale ears.

She was as lovely as a Victorian maiden cameo pin carved in ivory. Her deep brown eyes glittered in the bright, lens-clear western light angling through the passenger coach’s soot-streaked windows.

Stockburn smiled and looked away, the way you do when you first notice someone staring at you. It makes you at first uncomfortable, self-conscious, wondering if you’re really the one being stared at so frankly. Certainly, you’re mistaken. Wolf’s gaze compelled him to look the girl’s way again.

Her gaze did not waver. She remained staring at him, arousing his curiosity even further.

Did she know, or think she knew, him?

Or, possibly, she did know him but he didn’t recognize her . . . ?

He smiled more broadly, holding her gaze now with a frank one of his own, one that was tempered ever so slightly with an incredulous wrinkle of the skin above his long, broad nose. That made her blush as she turned timid. Cheeks coloring slightly, she looked down and then turned her head back forward.

But the smile remained on her rich, full lips, which were the color of ripe peaches . . . and probably just as cool and soft, Stockburn couldn’t help imagining. They probably tasted like peaches, as well.

He chuckled ironically to himself. Get your mind out of the gutter, you old dog, he admonished himself. This girl probably still wears her hair in pigtails at home, and you’re old enough to be her father—a disquieting notion despite its being more and more true of late.

Stockburn returned his attention to the back of the shabby-suited lad’s head. He looked around the car—a quick, furtive glance. He thought he probably saw more in that second and a half gander than the suited lad had in his prolonged one.

Wolf counted fifteen other passengers. Five were women, all older than the chestnut-haired cameo pin gal. A young woman, likely a farmer’s wife, sat directly in front of Wolf, rocking a baby he guessed wasn’t more than a few months old. She and the child were likely enroute to their young husband and father who’d maybe staked a mining or homesteading claim somewhere farther west.

A couple of men dressed like cow punchers sat nearly directly behind Stockburn, three rows back, at the very rear of the car. An old gent with a gray bib beard was nodding off on the other side of the aisle to his right. The rest of the men included a preacher and several men dressed in the checked suits of drummers.

One could have been a card sharp, because he was dressed a little more nattily than the drummers, but he probably wasn’t much good with the pasteboards. You could tell the good ones by the way they carried themselves—straight and proud, usually smiling like they knew a secret about you and wouldn’t you just love to know what it was?

This fellow, around Stockburn’s age, with some gray in his sideburns, was turned sideways and laying out a game of cards, furling his brow and moving his lips, counseling himself, as though he were still learning the trade. Like his suit, his pinky ring had likely come from a Montgomery Ward wish book.

He wasn’t a train robber. Stockburn knew his own trade, and he could usually pick a train robber out of a crowd. At least, seven times out of ten he could.

The two men behind him might be in with the lad near the front. He couldn’t tell about the others, including the old couple. Just being an old, harmless-looking married pair didn’t disqualify them from holding up a train. Stockburn had arrested Jed and Ella Parker, married fifty-three years, who’d preyed on passenger coaches for two and a half years before Wolf had finally run them down.

They’d enlisted the help of their forty-three-year-old son, Kenny. Kenny had been soft in his thinker box, as the saying went, but he, Ma, and Pa had gotten the job done, stealing time pieces and jewelry and gold pokes as well as pocket jingle from innocent pilgrims.

The Parkers had lost their Kansas farm to a railroad and had decided to exact revenge while entrepreneuring an alternative family business. Jed and Kenny had been as polite as church deacons. Ella, on the other hand, had cursed a blue streak, jumping up and down and hissing like a devil, as Stockburn had locked the bracelets around her wrists.

If the detective business did one thing for you, it taught you that you never really knew about people. Even when you thought you did.

Hell, the cameo pin gal might even be in cahoots with the lad with the lumpy valise. Maybe she’d smiled at Wolf earlier because she suspected what line of work he was in, and she’d been trying to disarm him, so to speak. Stockburn didn’t think she was a train robber, but he’d been surprised before, and it had nearly gotten him a bullet for his carelessness. He wasn’t going to turn his back on this pretty little gal, which wouldn’t be hard, as easy on the eyes as she was.

When the train slowed suddenly—so suddenly that Stockburn and everybody else in the passenger coach became human jackknives, collapsing forward—Stockburn was not surprised. His heart didn’t even start beating much faster than it had been when he’d just been riding along, staring out at the sage and prickly pear, going over the assignment he had ahead of him—running down the killers who’d massacred a crew of track layers working for a spur line near the Wind River Mountains.

Wolf could tell by the violent abruptness of the stop that the engineer must have locked up the brakes. That meant there was trouble ahead. Maybe blown rails or an obstacle of some kind—a tree or a telegraph pole felled across the tracks.

The brakes kicked up a shrill shrieking that caused Stockburn to grind his teeth against it. Gravity pushed him up hard against the forward seat in which the young mother had slipped out of her own seat and fallen to the floor.

The baby was red-faced, wailing, and the mother was sobbing, staring up at Wolf with holy terror in her eyes.

The train continued slowing, bucking, shuddering, squealing, throwing Wolf forward and partway over the seat before him. He felt as though a big man were pressing down hard against him from behind, one arm rammed down taut against his shoulders, the other clamped across the back of his neck. He wanted like hell to reach for one of his Colts in preparation for what he knew was coming, but at the moment gravity overwhelmed him.

“Oh, my God—what’s happening?” the young mother screamed.

The young mother and the child were a nettling distraction. Stockburn’s attention was torn between them and the young lad near the front of the train. That danger was bored home a moment later as the train finally stopped, and the big bully, gravity, finally released its iron-like grip on Wolf’s back and shoulders. While Wolf stepped into the aisle, moving around the seat before him to help the young mother and the baby, the lad whom Wolf suspected of chicanery bounded up out of his own seat.

He, too, stepped into the aisle but without chivalrous intent.

He raised an old Schofield revolver and tossed away the valise he’d carried it in. He fired a round into the ceiling and bellowed in a high, reedy voice, “This is a holdup! Do what you’re told and you won’t be sent to hell in a hail of hot lead!”

At the same time his words reverberated around the car, evoking screams from the ladies and curses from the male passengers, another man—this one sitting at the front of the coach and on the same side of the aisle as Wolf—leaped to his feet and swung around, giving a coyote yell as he pumped a round into his old-model Winchester rifle. He was a scrawny coyote of a kid with a pinched-up face and devilishly slitted eyes.

Stockburn hadn’t seen him before because he was so short that Wolf hadn’t been able to see him over the other passengers. He doubted the kid was much taller than your average ten-year-old. He wore a badger coat and a bowler hat, and between his thin, stretched-back lips shone one nearly black, badly crooked front tooth.

“Do what he says and shut that baby up back there!” the human coyote caterwauled at Stockburn. He couldn’t see the baby nor the mother, but the baby’s screams no doubt assailed the ears of everyone on the coach, because they sure were assailing Stockburn’s. “Shut that kid up or I’ll blow its head off!”

Instantly, Stockburn’s twin Colts were in his hands. He aimed one at the coyote-faced younker and one at the taller, bespectacled youth with the Schofield. “Drop those guns, you devils! Wolf Stockburn, Wells Fargo!”

Both youths flinched and shuffled backward a bit. They hadn’t been expecting such brash resistance.

“S-Stockburn?” said the bespectacled younker in the shabby suit. He was aiming the Schofield at the rail detective but Wolf saw the hesitation in the kid’s eyes. That same hesitation was in the coyote-faced kid’s eyes, as well. They might have leveled their sights on him, but he had the upper hand.

For now . . .

“Wells . . . Wells Fargo . . . ?” continued the bespectacled youth, incredulous, crest-fallen. One of his clear blue eyes twitched behind his glasses, and his long, pale face was mottled red.

The coyote-faced youth swallowed down his own apprehension and glowered down the barrel of his cocked carbine at the big rail detective. “I don’t give a good two cents who you are, Mister Stockburn, sir. If you don’t drop them two purty hoglegs of your’n, we’re gonna kill you and ever’body else aboard this consarned train—includin’ the screamin’ sprout!”

The passengers had settled down. Most had, anyway.

A few women sobbed, and the baby, still on the floor with the mother to Stockburn’s left, was still wailing. The other passengers were in their seats and merely casting frightened glances between the two gunmen at the front of the coach and Stockburn standing near the feet of the mother with the crying baby, in roughly the center of the car.

Stockburn kept his two silver-chased Colts aimed at the two firebrands bearing down on him with a rifle and a hogleg, respectively.

“Children,” Stockburn said tightly but loudly enough to be heard above the baby’s wails, “you got three seconds to live . . . less’n you lower those guns and raise your hands shoulder-high, palms out.”

Sliding his gaze between the two would-be train robbers, on the scout for a deadly change in their eyes, knowing these two were too green-behind-the-ears not to telegraph when they were about to squeeze their triggers, Wolf stretched his mustached lips back from his large, white teeth and barked, “One . . . !”

Both younkers flinched. Fear passed over their features. Their hands holding their guns on Wolf shook slightly.

“Two . . . !” Stockburn barked.

Again, they flinched. Both men’s faces were pale, their eyes wide. No, they hadn’t expected this. They hadn’t expected this at all. They’d expected to come in here and fleece these defenseless passengers as easily as sheering sheep, then they’d be on their way to the nearest town to stomp with their tails up. “Apron, set down a bottle of your best labeled stuff and send in your purtiest doxie!”

Stockburn shaped his lips to form the word “Three” but did not get the word out before the coyote-faced lad slid his enervated gaze past Stockburn toward the rear of the car, shouting, “Willie! Roy! Take him!”

A black worm flipflopped in Stockburn’s belly when he saw the two men dressed as drovers behind him lurch up out of their seats, cocking the hammers of their hoglegs.

Ah, hell . . .

Like any experienced predator, human or otherwise, when the chips were down, all bets placed, Wolf let his instincts take over. What he had here was a bad situation, and all he could do was play the odds and hope none of the passengers took a bullet.

He squeezed the triggers of both his Peacemakers, watching in satisfaction as the bespectacled youth, who triggered his Schofield at nearly the same time, screamed as he flew back against the coach’s front wall. The coyote-faced lad screamed, as well, but merely fired his rifle into the ceiling before dropping it like a hot potato and falling back against the front wall, shielding his face with his arms, screaming, “Kill him! Kill him!”

As the guns behind Wolf roared loudly, he dropped to a knee in the aisle, wheeling hard to his right, facing the rear of the train now as the two “cow punchers” triggered lead through the air where his head had been a heartbeat before. All the passengers were yelling and screaming again, and the baby was wailing even louder, if that were possible.

Stockburn intended to take the two men at the rear of the car down as fast as possible, before a passenger took a bullet. He shot one of them with the second round out of his right-hand Colt. The man jerked back, acquiring a startled expression on his thinly bearded, red-pimpled face, as he triggered one more round in the air over Wolf’s head before collapsing, Wolf’s bullet instantly turning the bib front of the shooter’s poplin shirt red.

Wolf shot the second “puncher” with the third round out of his left-hand gun, for that kid—they were all wet-behind-the-ears, snot-nosed brats, it appeared—ducked and ran for the back door, triggering his own gun wildly. Fortunately, that bullet only hammered the cold wood stove in the middle of the car before ricocheting harmlessly through a window on the car’s north side, evoking a scream from the girl with the cameo-pin face but otherwise leaving her unharmed—so far.

Straightening, Stockburn aimed both Colts at the kid running out the rear door as the kid twisted back toward him, raising one of his own two hoglegs again. Wolf hurled two more rounds at the kid, his Peacemakers bucking and roaring fiercely, smoke and flames lapping from the barrels.

The kid yowled and cursed as, dropping to his butt on the coach’s rear vestibule, he swung to his left and leaped to the ground, out of sight. A gun barked in the direction from which he’d disappeared. The bullet punched a hole through the back of the car and pinged through a window to Stockburn’s right.

Cursing, Wolf ran out onto the vestibule. Swinging right, he saw the kid running, hunched over as though he’d taken a bullet, toward where three other men sat three horses about fifty feet out from the rail bed. Those men were holding the reins of four saddled horses.

Apparently, those were the men who’d blown the rails. They were trailing the horses of the four robbers in the coach. Or the four who’d been in the coach.

Three still were though they were likely dead or headed that way. These three out here didn’t look any older or brighter than the four Wolf had swapped lead with. They appeared startled by the dustup they’d been hearing in the passenger car, and their horses were skitter-stepping nervously. One man was having trouble getting his mount settled down and was whipping the horse’s wither with a quirt.

They were all yelling and so was the kid who was run-limping toward them, tripping over the toes of his boots.

“What in the bloody tarnation happened?” one of the horseback riders yelled at the wounded kid running toward him.

“Wells . . . Fargo!” the run-limping younker screeched.

Another horseback rider pointed toward Wolf. “Look!”

The run-limping kid stopped and glanced warily back over his shoulder toward Stockburn standing on the rear corner of the vestibule, aiming his right-hand Colt toward the bunch while holding the other pretty hogleg straight down in his left hand. Stockburn shaped a cold grin and was about to finish the limping varmint when a girl screamed shrilly from inside the coach.

Stockburn’s heart leaped.

He’d forgotten that he’d left that sandy-haired little devil with that dead front tooth still alive.

He lowered his right-hand Peacemaker and ran back into the car, stepping to his right so the open door wouldn’t backlight him. Good thing old habits die hard or Wolf would have been the one dying hard.

A gun thundered near the front of the coach. The bullet screeched a cat’s whisker’s width away from Stockburn’s right cheek before thumping into the front of the freight car trailing the passenger coach.

Stockburn raised his Colt but held fire.

The nasty little sandy-haired devil with the dead front tooth held the pretty cameo pin girl before him, his left arm wrapped around her pale neck. He held his carbine in his right hand. Just then he jacked it one-handed and aimed it at Stockburn, spitting as he bellowed, “I’m takin’ the girl, big man! You come after me, she’s gonna be wolf bait!”

The kid backed up, pulling the girl along with him toward the coach’s front door, keeping her in front of him. She stared in wide-eyed horror at Stockburn standing at the other end of the car.

Her hat was drooping down the side of her head, clinging to her mussed hair, which had partway fallen from its bun, by a single pin. A red welt rose on her left cheek. The sandy-haired devil had slapped her. Her mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything. She was too scared for words.

Rage burned through Stockburn.

As the kid pulled the girl out the coach’s front door and then dragged her down off the vestibule, Wolf hurried forward, yelling, “Everybody stay down!”

He holstered both Colts and grabbed his Winchester rifle from where it now lay on the floor in front of the seat he’d been sitting in. He was glad to see that the young woman with the baby appeared relatively unharmed. She sat crouched back against the coach’s left wall, against the window, rocking the still-crying baby in her arms, singing softly to the terrified infant while tears dribbled down her cheeks.

Stockburn pumped a cartridge into the brass-breeched Winchester Yellowboy’s action, strode down the central aisle. The passengers were muttering darkly among themselves while another child cried and the old lady with the old man wept, the old man patting her shoulder consolingly.

Once they were all out of the carriage, the sandy-haired little devil started running toward the three men on horseback, pulling the pretty gal along behind him. The young robber Stockburn had drilled was toeing a stirrup and hopping on his opposite foot, trying unsuccessfully to gain his saddle and sobbing with the effort, demanding help from the others.

“Look out, Riley!” one of the men on horseback shouted, pointing at Wolf.

Riley stopped and swung back around. He pulled the girl violently up against him and narrowed his mean little eyes at Stockburn, showing that dead front tooth as he spat out, “I told you I’d kill her, an’ I will if you don’t—owww!” the kid howled.

The girl had spun to face him and stomped one of her high-heeled, black half-boots down on the toe of his own right boot. The kid squeezed his eyes shut and hopped up and down on his good foot before snapping his eyes open once more and then smashing the back of his right hand against the girl’s left cheek.

There was the sharp smack of hand to flesh.

The girl screamed, spun, and fell with a violent swirl of her burnt-orange gown.

“I’ll kill you for that,” Riley bellowed, raising his Winchester, his face wild-fire red with fury. “I’ll fill you so full of holes your rich old daddy won’t even recognize you, you McCrae whore!”

“Don’t do it, you little son of Satan!” Wolf narrowed one eye as he aimed down the Yellowboy at the kid. In his indignation at having been assaulted by the girl he’d been trying to kidnap, the little devil seemed to have forgotten his more formidable opponent with the Winchester. “Raise that carbine one eyelash higher, and I’ll send you back to the devil that spawned you!”

Riley snapped his gaze back to Stockburn, eyes narrowed to slits. A slow, malevolent smile spread his lips. “My father . . .