Midnight Rider (Ralph Cotton Western Series) by Ralph Cotton

Author:Ralph Cotton [Cotton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101580011
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-04-02T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Leaving the Lucky Nut, Rochenbach walked his dun to the livery barn. He slung the horse’s saddle over a rack and hung its bridle on a wall peg. He grained and watered the hungry animal and wiped it down with a handful of clean straw. He walked the dun into a clean stall and pitched a fresh pile of hay at its hooves. Patting its muzzle, he turned and left, his Spencer rifle in hand.

After a meal of elk steak, beans and biscuits at Turk’s Restaurant, he drank a cup of hot coffee, paid for his meal and left. As he walked along the dark street back to his room at to the Great Westerner, he thought about how he hadn’t run into any of Grolin’s men—which was good, he reminded himself, entering the hotel lobby. Next door at the Lucky Nut, banjo and twangy piano music spilled out into the chilled night air as he closed the hotel door behind him.

Instead of going up the stairs to his room, Rochenbach slipped quietly through the hotel’s main hallway and out the back door into a long alleyway that would take him to the rear of the telegraph office unseen.

At the back door of the darkened building, Rochenbach looked all around, covered in the darker shadow of the doorway. Seeing nothing in the empty alleyway, he turned and deftly picked the door lock.

When he’d slipped inside and closed the door behind him, he looked around at the empty office and walked straight to the operator’s desk. Thursday…, he told himself, wishing he had more information to pass along. All right, it wasn’t much. But it’s a start, he reminded himself again. He leaned his rifle against the wall.

Instead of sitting down, he bowed over the telegraph operator’s desk and clicked on the switch standing atop a brass-trimmed, oak battery case. He made three quick taps on the operator’s key to ensure that both the key and the sounder were working properly. Then he clicked in the private identification code of his field supervisor.

Satisfied that the identification code was on its way, he quickly followed up, tapping out a six-word message in Morse code: Train ride… Thursday night… all aboard. He waited in the silence of the dark office for five minutes, then retapped the message. He stared intently at the sounder, waiting for a reply of any sort.

When no reply came, he tapped out the same message for a third time, hearing nothing in the silent office but the click of the telegraph key and the steady tick of a large clock hanging on the far wall.

Now what? he asked himself. Had the message gone through, gotten relayed on to its proper receiver? If so, why had his field office or even the supervisor himself not acknowledged him by now?

All right, send it again.

He began tapping out the message again—the same six words, once, twice, threes times. Then he straightened up from the desk and stared at the sounder, waiting. Still nothing.

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