The Great Train Massacre by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.; Johnsto]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

“I gotta take a leak,” Ladue said.

“Well, hell, do it. It’s dark enough so that no one will see you. Not that you’ve ever worried about that.”

“What if they come while I’m pissin’?”

“How long you plannin’ on pissin’?” Hellman asked.

“Till I’m through.”

“If you had started doin’ it when you started talkin’ about it, you’d be done by now,” Hellman said.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” Ladue began relieving himself.

The two men were waiting just inside a line of trees no more than one hundred feet from the private car.

“You ’bout finished?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, ’cause here they come,” Hellman said.

“You sure that’s them?”

“There’s two men and a woman, just like he said.”

Hellman was able to point out the two men and a woman because there was a lamppost near the private car, and the three were passing through the patch of light.

“We goin’ to shoot from here?” Ladue asked as he buttoned his trousers. “On account of it seems to me that this is pretty far away.”

“We’ll get a little closer, but we need to shoot ’em before they get out of the light. Shoot the one that’s wearin’ the gun first.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Ladue said.

Both men pulled their gun, and they heard the trill of a woman’s laughter as the three approached.

“Now!” Hellman said, and both men fired.

Concurrent with the sound of the gunfire, Matt heard a bullet whiz by.

A second bullet kicked up dirt in the rail ballast very near him.

“Get down!” Matt shouted as he made a lightning-quick draw. He couldn’t see the shooters because they were in the dark. However, he had seen the flame patterns made by the muzzle flash, and using that as his reference point he fired twice.

“Move quickly out of the light,” Matt said, and John and Mary Beth did so.

Matt also moved out of the light, purposely going to the opposite side from John and Mary Beth, then, with gun in hand, and using the dark for cover, he moved, cautiously, toward the place where he believed the shooters to be.

When he got close enough, he saw two men lying on the ground, and approaching them, leaned over for a closer examination. Both were dead.

“It’s all right,” he called back. “There’s no danger now.”

He looked down at them for a moment, then walked back toward John and Mary Beth. John had his arms around his daughter.

“Are they dead?” John asked.

“Yes.”

Not wanting to leave John and Mary Beth unprotected, he had them come with him when he reported the shooting to the sheriff.

“You again?” Sheriff Ames asked, when Matt reported having killed two men.

“He didn’t have any choice, Sheriff,” John said. “It was either Mr. Jensen kill them, or they would have killed us.”

“Who are you, and why would they have wanted to kill you?” Sheriff Ames asked.

“My name is John Gillespie. You may have heard of me.”

“Why should I have heard of you?” the sheriff asked. Then he frowned. “Wait a minute. The John Gillespie? Are you telling me that you are the industrialist John Gillespie?”

“Yes.

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