The Trainwreckers

Book 4: Guns of Samuel Pritchard

by Sean Lynch

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Gunfighting legend Sam Pritchard tracks down a notorious train saboteur—and nearly goes off the rails—in this fast-paced Western adventure from acclaimed author Sean Lynch. . . .
 
DEMENTED. DERANGED. DERAILED.
 
1875. The escalating rivalry between the two major railroad companies takes a dangerous—and deadly—turn when a train is deliberately derailed. Many are killed. More are injured. And Marshal Samuel Pritchard's longtime friend is crippled for life. The mastermind behind the train wreck claims to be the infamous Civil War criminal Jem Rupe, aka “The Trainwrecker of Platte Bridge.” There's just one problem: Rupe has been dead for ten years. . . .
 
With an oath of vengeance on his lips—and a pair of Colt .45s on his hips—Pritchard sets off to find the trainwrecking fiend, whether it's really Jem Rupe or some copy-cat maniac. Either way, he'll have to ride the rails with some pretty deranged characters—crooked railroad tycoons, ruthless bounty hunters, trigger-happy gunfighters—before he reaches the end of the line. There's just one way to stop a mass transit murderer . . . and that's dead in his tracks.
 
“A riveting thriller that bristles with hard-boiled authenticity.”
—bestselling author Mark Greaney on Thy Partner's Wife
 
“Sean Lynch spins a tale that is fast, fun and realistic.”
—bestselling author James O'Born on Like Hell

Release date: October 26, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Atherton, Missouri. May, 1875.

“Atherton!” a voice shouted from outside the café. “Smokin’ Joe Atherton! I know you’re in there! Come out and face me you yellow, backshootin’, son-of-a-bitch!”

“Good lord,” Idelle exclaimed. She instinctively pulled her infant son closer and looked anxiously across the table at the faces of her husband, David “Ditch” Clemson, and her brother, Samuel Pritchard. “Who’s that shouting in the street? And what on earth does he want with you, Samuel?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Pritchard drawled around a forkful of eggs.

It was early morning, and the trio were seated in Perkins’s Diner, across the town square from the marshal’s office. Ditch Clemson, Atherton’s mayor, was leaving on the morning train to Kansas City to attend a meeting between a pair of railroad executives and a number of other mayors in the region. Ditch’s wife Idelle and six-month-old son Samuel, named after her brother and Ditch’s lifelong friend, town Marshal and Jackson County Sheriff Samuel Pritchard, had risen to share breakfast and see her husband off at the train station.

“Whoever he is,” Ditch said, “he sounds riled.”

“I know you can hear me!” the voice outside continued. “Come out of that café, you gutless trash! You hearin’ me, Atherton?”

“I reckon he does,” Pritchard observed.

Samuel Pritchard, formerly known under the alias Joe Atherton, sighed, wiped his mouth, and withdrew the napkin tucked into the collar of his button-front shirt as he pushed himself from the table and rose to his full, six-and-one-half-foot, height. He scooped up his Stetson from where it rested on the back of his chair and placed it on top of his head, covering the bullet scar on his forehead over the right eye.

Only twenty-nine years old, Pritchard had left Atherton as a teenager. He’d fled his hometown after his father, Thomas Pritchard, was lynched by Atherton’s corrupt mayor Burnell Shipley, their home was burned, the family’s lumber business was stolen, and his mother was forced to wed Shipley to prevent the murders of her only son and nine-year-old daughter, Idelle.

But instead of keeping his word to Samuel’s mother and sparing her son’s life, Shipley’s hired lawmen took him to the banks of the Missouri River, bound him, placed him on his knees, and executed the big youth with a .36 caliber ball to the forehead. Ditch Clemson watched the horrific scene play out from nearby woods, and wept as the murderers buried his friend in a shallow grave and rode off.

When Ditch dug the body up, intending to re-bury the corpse next to his father’s grave, he was dumbfounded to discover his friend was still alive. The lead ball skirted Pritchard’s skull beneath the skin and exited on the opposite side, creating what appeared to be a through-and-through head shot. In reality, the injury was only a flesh wound that merely knocked the big teenager out.

Ditch nursed his friend back to health, and the pair fled Missouri for Arkansas to join the Confederate Army. Pritchard, fearing for his mother’s and sister’s lives if word got back to Atherton that he was still alive, enlisted under the alias Joe Atherton, the name of his hometown. He also began a lifelong habit of daily pistol practice and was never again without at least a pair of revolvers. He swore an oath that nevermore would a gun be aimed at him without the ability to shoot back.

After a series of harrowing adventures as Confederate guerilla raiders, Ditch and Pritchard went south to Texas after the war and parted ways. Ditch found success as a cattle rancher, while Pritchard was recruited into the Texas Rangers on the basis of his reputation as a mankiller and his uncanny ability with all manner of firearms, particularly those of the one-handed variety.

Before long, Joe Atherton became known far and wide as Ranger “Smokin’” Joe Atherton because it was said anyone who went up against him would soon find themselves, “smokin’ in hell.” The actual number of men Pritchard, under the moniker Joe Atherton, put down as a Confederate guerilla and Texas Ranger wasn’t known, but nonetheless a subject of heated debate in saloons, gambling halls, and bordellos ranging from Chicago to San Francisco and all the way from the Dakota Territories to the Pecos River.

After a decade of rangering for the Republic of Texas, Pritchard’s reputation only grew. And after the murder of his beloved fiancée, Caroline, he re-joined Ditch and avenged her. Only then, more than ten years after fleeing their home as boys, did the duo, now battle-hardened men, return to Missouri. There they faced-down the ruthless Burnell Shipley, the man who’d ruled Atherton like a feudal warlord since the day they’d fled, and his mob of badge-wearing, hired gunmen.

When the dust settled after the Battle of Atherton, as it had since become known, Shipley and all of his hired guns were dead. But so was Pritchard and Idelle’s mother, Dovie, and Ditch’s brother, Paul. All that Shipley had stolen was returned to its rightful owners, and peace and prosperity reigned once more in the sleepy river town of Atherton, Missouri.

Samuel Pritchard was finally able to abandon the alias Joe Atherton and resume his God-given name. After Ditch was elected Atherton’s mayor, he persuaded his huge friend to assume the duties of Atherton’s town marshal. Pritchard reluctantly agreed, and pinned on the star primarily out of a desire to remain close to his sister and Ditch, the only family he had left. And since the birth of his nephew Samuel in December, Pritchard’s protective instincts only increased. He was also, again reluctantly, elected sheriff of Jackson County, since Atherton was the county seat.

But there were many who refused to forget the name Smokin’ Joe Atherton, despite the fact that Pritchard no longer used it. To such men, motivated by a desire for notoriety, revenge, spite, or a craving to earn a man-killing reputation of their own, the fact that Smokin’ Joe Atherton was now a small-town lawman named Samuel Pritchard, and no longer a gunfighter, mattered not a whit.

Serving alongside Pritchard in his duties as town marshal and county sheriff were two deputies; Toby “Tater” Jessup, a portly, middle-aged, good-natured, former liveryman who mostly tended to the caretaking of the office and jail and who rarely carried a gun, and Count Florian Strobl, an expatriate Austrian nobleman and professional duelist who had come to Atherton to kill Pritchard to collect a bounty. After Pritchard spared Strobl’s life, “The Count,” as Tater teasingly called him, became fiercely loyal to the towering young lawman.

“You’d better get your sorry ass out here and face me,” the voice outside hollered, “or I’ll start a-shootin’ up your hogwallow of a town! You listenin’, Atherton?”

As if to punctuate his words, a pistol shot rang out. The sound startled little Samuel, nestled in his mother’s arms, who began to cry.

Pritchard took a second to adjust the hang of his dual holsters, each containing a Single Action Army revolver chambered in a .45 Colt and suspended from separate, cartridge-laden, belts. The revolvers sported custom, five-and-one-half-inch barrels, which he couldn’t know wouldn’t be offered by the Colt factory as regular production items called the “Artillery Model” for another few months. He’d won the guns in a shooting contest in Abilene, Kansas, against a martinet Yankee pistoleer.

“I’ll go along with you,” Ditch said, standing up.

“You will not,” Pritchard said, putting his massive hand on his medium-sized friend’s shoulder. “You’ll stay right here and look after my sister and nephew, who also happen to be your wife and son.”

“But Samuel—”

“But nothin’,” Pritchard cut him off. “You ain’t even heeled. You’re stayin’ here, and that’s final. We don’t know if that fool outside is alone? Might be, he’s got a confederate hidin’ out of sight with a rifle? You fetch Dady Perkins’s scattergun from the kitchen and be prepared to use it if anybody gets past me and comes into this diner with hostile intent.”

“Okay,” Ditch said, recognizing the wisdom in his friend’s words. He’d fought too many battles alongside Pritchard to remember, and trusted his friend’s judgment over all others in such matters.

Dady Perkins overheard Pritchard’s admonition from behind the café’s counter and wordlessly handed her double-barreled shotgun over to Ditch. He automatically broke open the action and checked the loads.

“What are you going to do, Samuel?” Idelle asked, as she soothed her crying son.

“Why, go outside and have a word with that irate feller,” he answered, heading for the diner’s door. “What else?”

“Put your backs into it, you lazy curs,” the man on horseback said around his wad of tobacco. He withdrew a watch from his vest pocket and glanced at its face. “Train’ll be here any minute.”

“Mighty easy for you to say,” one of the men working on the tracks retorted, “a-sittin up on that big ole horse, pretty-as-you-please.”

“That’s how it goes when you’re in charge,” the mounted man said. He was tall and obese, and sat upon a huge draft horse beneath a fancy felt top hat sporting a rattlesnake band and turkey feather. “You get to sit up on a horse in the cool mornin’ air and watch others scratch in the dirt like Chinamen. Get paid a lot more, too.”

The others grumbled and cursed but continued working.

A dozen men, all armed, were uprooting a section of railroad track a couple of miles west of the town of Sugar Creek, which was twelve miles southwest of Atherton. It was hard work, as a portion of the track they were dislodging lay partially across the bridge spanning Rock Creek. The bridge had been replaced and upgraded by the Missouri Pacific Railroad, formerly the Pacific Railroad, less than a year before. The men’s horses were tied to trees concealed in the woodline, fifty yards away.

“How much more of this iron rail do you want us to dig up?” another man said, pausing to lean on his prybar and mop his face with his handkerchief. “We’ve already dug up durn-near twenty feet worth of track?”

“Keep on diggin’ until I say otherwise,” the Big Man in the top hat answered. “I’ll let you boys know when you’ve pulled up enough rail. And hurry the hell up.”

Pritchard stepped out of the diner into the bright morning sunlight. It was early May, and still cool in the mornings. Twenty-five feet from the doorway, standing in the middle of the street, was the owner of the voice he’d heard from inside the diner.

“You the feller who interrupted my breakfast?” Pritchard asked him.

“You’re damn right I am,” said the man.

Calling the voice’s owner a man was a stretch. He was no more than eighteen or nineteen years of age, but looked much younger, and stood perhaps five-feet-six-inches in height. He had a scrawny build, a narrow face, and close-set, dark, eyes. His hat was pushed forward on his head, and his weak chin jutted out defiantly. He wore a pair of low-slung, holstered, pistols, tied down to his thighs with leather cords. Both bony hands were poised above the butts of his revolvers.

Pritchard slowly stepped off the plank boardwalk and into the street. “I presume you’re also the feller who fired that pistol shot I just heard?”

“You’re damn right I did,” the man sneered.

“The discharge of firearms within Atherton’s town limits is strictly prohibited,” Pritchard said, “unless done so in the course of self-defense or to put down a sufferin’ animal. It would appear you’ve done neither.”

“I don’t give a damn about your bog-trot of a town’s stupid laws,” the man spat.

Citizens began peering out of doors and windows. The scrawny young man noticed the onlookers and a smile began to spread across his face.

“What’s your name?” Pritchard asked.

“Name’s Delbert Greaves,” he answered, elevating his voice for all to hear. “Folks’ll be rememberin’ it after today.”

“Do you have a problem with me?” Pritchard said.

“Damn right,” Greaves said. “I hear tell Joe Atherton is the fastest, deadliest, gun hand around. Folks say he’s quicker than buttered lightnin’ and can shoot out the eye of a bouncin’ jackrabbit. Ended scores of pistoleros, they say. Been hearin’ that kinda talk since I was in short britches.”

“You don’t look long out of short britches today,” Pritchard said, “and I don’t go by the name Atherton anymore.”

Greaves’s smile vanished, and his face reddened. “I heard tell about that, too. Heard you’d gone yeller and took up another name. Samuel Pritchard, you calls yourself now. Sheriff of Jackson County, and marshal of this here town of Atherton, I’m told.”

“Pritchard happens to be my real name,” Pritchard said.

“Maybe it is,” Greaves said, “and maybe it ain’t. I didn’t come lookin’ for Marshal Samuel Pritchard. I come south from Iowa lookin’ for Smokin’ Joe Atherton.”

“And your business with him?”

“I’m gonna put him into the boneyard.”

“Any particular reason?” Pritchard asked.

“Even if I had one,” Greaves smirked, “it ain’t gonna matter none to you. Not when you’re lyin’ down in the dirt, spittin’ out your last breath.”

“I know your reason,” Pritchard said, “even if you don’t.”

“Oh yeah? Whyen’t you tell me, Atherton?”

“I already told you once,” Pritchard said, “that ain’t my name. Your reason for bracin’ me is the same as many others who’ve braced me before. Loud-mouthed little nobodies from nowhere, full of blusteration, who think that because they can shoot a tin can off a rail fence, or plug a defenseless drunk in the back, they’re pistoleers and mankillers to be feared and respected. Fools who believe if they end me, they’ll become somethin’ besides a loud-mouthed little nobody.”

“You callin’ me a nobody?”

“Don’t have to,” Pritchard said. “That’s what you are, and you know it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here in Atherton’s streets actin’ the fool and callin’ me out.”

Greaves’s face tightened and his fingers twitched over the walnut stocks of his revolvers. “I’m done talkin’,” he said. “It’s time to slap leather.”

“Fair enough,” Pritchard said. “How about we draw on the count of three?”

“Suits me,” Greaves said. “Get ready to die, Smokin’ Joe Atherton.”

“One,” Pritchard said, looking past Greaves and winking.

“I’m ready for you,” Greaves said. His entire body was tensed like a compressed spring.

“Two,” Pritchard said.

Deputy Florian Strobl brought the butt of one of his nickel-plated, Chamelot Delvigne revolvers squarely down on Delbert Greaves’s skull. While Pritchard engaged him in conversation, Strobl silently crept up from behind. At Pritchard’s signal, the agile deputy brained the would-be gunfighter, who collapsed instantly to the street.

“Zat should take ze piss and vinegar out of him,” Strobl said in his aristocratic Austrian accent.

Pritchard walked over to the unconscious Greaves and removed both of his revolvers. He handed them to Tater Jessup, who’d emerged from the marshal’s office.

“Lock this lunkhead up,” he directed his deputies. “We’ll bring him before Judge Pearson this afternoon.”

“What’re you gonna be doin’,” Tater grunted as he and Strobl lifted Greaves, “while we’re a-luggin’ this here prisoner off to jail?”

“I’m walkin’ Ditch and Idelle to the station,” Pritchard said, as citizens receded through their doors and windows and resumed their tasks. “He’s got a train to catch.”

Pritchard held his nephew while his sister Idelle hugged her husband. They were at the railroad station, situated at the outskirts of Atherton. Little Samuel chortled and tugged on Pritchard’s star.

“You be careful on the road, Ditch Clemson,” Idelle cautioned her husband. “You come back to me just as soon as you can.”

“I’m only going to Kansas City,” Ditch reminded her. “Ain’t like I’m going off to California. I’ll be back day after tomorrow on the afternoon train.”

“I know,” Idelle grumbled. “I still wish you didn’t have to go.”

“Got no choice,” Ditch said. “I’m the mayor of this town, remember?”

“What’s this trip all about?” Pritchard asked.

“A meetin’ has been called by a big railroad boss, John Brody, and some of the mayors in western Missouri,” Ditch explained. “It’s to be held in Kansas City, where Brody’s railroad company is headquartered. A representative from the governor’s office is supposed to be there, too.”

“What’s it all about?” Pritchard asked.

“It’s no secret there’s going to be a new railway line cutting across the state. A lot of federal money is on the table. The two biggest railroad companies in these parts, the Missouri Pacific and the Brody Line, are competing amongst themselves to see which one of ’em gets the lion’s share of that big government contract. Depending on how the contest shakes out, a lot of towns with rail lines running through them now could potentially see their lines pulled or diverted. Other towns, currently without rail lines, might get themselves one or find their existing tracks, if they have ’em already, expanded.”

“Sounds to me like the two railroad companies are playin’ a winner-take-all poker game?”

“That’s exactly right, Samuel,” Ditch agreed. “The owner of each railroad company is hoping to force the other to sell out or fold before the contract is formally awarded. It’s a well-known fact that neither Brody nor Jason Gould, the owner of the Missouri Pacific, has a reputation for a willingness to compromise or share. It’s also a well-known fact that neither one of them is above dealin’ from the bottom of the deck to win.”

“That explains why you’re goin’ to Kansas City, all right,” Pritchard said.

“Got no choice. This is a case of either being at the dinner or on the menu. The new governor, Hardin, claims he’ll take into consideration the recommendations of the local town mayors when it comes to deciding which of the two railroad companies should be awarded the government contract. I guess we’ll find out if that’s true.”

“If it is,” Pritchard said, “it explains why Brody is a-courtin’ all you mayors in Kansas City. He wants your endorsement.”

“It ain’t just Brody who’s extendin’ invitations to all the mayors,” Ditch said. “Jason Gould invited all of us to Saint Louis next week, presumably for the same reason. Both of those railroad bosses are a-tryin’ to curry our favor.”

“It’s a courtship, all right,” Pritchard said. “But I get the feelin’ if you mayors choose the wrong suitor they’ll be hell to pay from the one who lost out. And the other railroad who gets the contract,” he finished. “I reckon the victorious railroad boss won’t go easy on the towns that didn’t endorse his line.”

“That pretty much sums it up,” Ditch said. “Brody and Gould are both powerful and vengeful men. You don’t get to be a railroad baron by forgivin’ those who trespass against you. Neither one will balk at crushin’ those mayors and towns who stand against ’em, if that’s how the chips fall.”

“You’ll do right by Atherton,” Pritchard said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “You’ve always had a noggin for business, Ditch.”

Pritchard wasn’t idly complimenting his friend. After the war the two young men, along with Ditch’s brother Paul, pooled their stakes and headed south to Texas. Together they bought twenty-thousand acres of dirt in Taylor County, just south of what would one day become Abilene. They also bought four-hundred head of cattle.

Not long after that, circumstances occurred that led Pritchard to the Texas Rangers. Ditch and his brother prospered in the cattle business. A few years later, joined once again by Pritchard, the Clemson brothers drove over three-thousand head of Texas longhorns north to Abilene, Kansas, where they sold the herd and made their fortunes.

“I’m gonna need every bit of that business sense in Kansas City,” Ditch conceded, “and then some. This ain’t just my decision; it’s a decision the rest of the mayors and I will have to agree on. United we stand, divided we fall.”

“I’m sure you’ll convince the other mayors to do the right thing,” Pritchard said.

“I’m gonna try,” Ditch said. “It ain’t but a few hours by rail to Kansas City, and all the other mayors from these parts will be joining me on the same train. I hope to spend the trip conferring with them. I’d surely like to convince everybody to hold off on choosing between one of the two railroads until we’ve had an opportunity to meet with both Brody and Gould, and hear their separate offers.”

“Mind your cards when dealing with John Brody,” Pritchard said, dodging one of Samuel’s pudgy hands that was tugging on his nose.

“You’ve had dealings with Brody before?”

“Met him once,” Pritchard said. “He was one of Cottonmouth Quincy’s clients. He paid Cottonmouth’s hired guns to buffalo landowners off their properties and to thump or shoot any of his rail workers, mostly Chinese folk, who got outta line. That oughta tell you all you need to know about John Brody.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ditch said.

“I tried to have a warrant sworn out for his arrest after the Cottonmouth affair,” Pritchard went on, “but that fell apart when Governor Woodson left office. Now I can’t even try. Brody has too much money and clout with the new four-eyed governor, Charles Henry Hardin.”

“Good morning, Mayor Clemson,” Doctor Mauldin greeted them. He nodded to Pritchard and tipped his hat to Idelle.

“You taking the train today, too?” Ditch asked Atherton’s only physician.

“I am,” Mauldin acknowledged. “I go into Kansas City a couple of times a month to pick up medical supplies, but this is a special trip. I’m going to interview a young physician. See if I can’t entice him to consider moving his practice from the big city here to Atherton?”

“Good luck,” Ditch said. “Lord knows Atherton could use another sawbones.”

Doc Mauldin was in his late sixties and the only doctor in Atherton. He’d made no secret of his desire to bring another to town to better serve Atherton’s growing population and ease the burden of his busy practice.

Ditch kissed Idelle, who took his son Samuel from her brother, and shook Pritchard’s hand. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, Samuel.”

“We’ll be here,” Pritchard said. He and his sister waved as Ditch followed Doctor Mauldin across the platform. There they boarded separate cars before the westbound train steamed off.

The train sped westward at the blistering speed of thirteen miles per hour. At that rate, taking into consideration the numerous stops in small towns and villages along the way to drop off or pick up passengers, freight, mail, or livestock, it would take at least three hours to traverse the approximately twenty-five miles to Kansas City.

Ditch was in the train’s second passenger car, which had been reserved exclusively for the use of the dozen or so mayors en route to the meeting in Kansas City. All other regular passengers had been relegated to the other cars. A thick cloud of pipe, cigar, and cigarette smoke filled the cabin, and despite the early hour, more than a few bottles were being passed around. The train had been underway from Atherton for less than an hour.

“It stinks, I tell you,” the mayor of Keytesville declared around his cigar. “I don’t trust them two crooked railroad barons any farther than I can sling ’em. They’ve got something up their sleeves. Why else would the owners of the two biggest railroads, The Brody Line and Missouri Pacific, be willing to pay for railway tickets, and a night’s stay at the fanciest hotels in Kansas City and Saint Louis, just to get us all together for a meetin’? The whole thing smells like a swindle, if you ask me.”

“It doesn’t cost the railroads anything to ferry us to Kansas City or Saint Louis to meet with their owners,” the Springfield mayor said loftily. “And since Brody and Gould also own the hotels they’ll be putting us up in, it doesn’t cost them much to host us.” He held up a bottle and cigar. “Brody was kind enough to pay for this private car, even if it is on Gould’s train, and stock it with smoked fish, cigars, and good whiskey. That was right hospitable of him, I say. I’ll bet when Gould finds out what Brody did for us, he’ll ferry us to Saint Louis in a train car twice as big and fancy as this one, with dancing girls and a brass band.” The other mayors laughed and emptied their glasses.

“What can it hurt to enjoy their hospitality?” the Springfield mayor continued. “Why not benefit from the two trips and listen to what each of them has to say? I suggest we bask in the bounty of our hosts while we can.”

“Easy for you to say,” the mayor of Westphalia challenged. “You’ve already got a passel of railroad lines runnin’ smack-dab through your city. Not to mention, your town’s big and important, li. . .