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I pull my bandana up over my nose and mouth. It slipped after the heist, when we were hooting and hollering with glee, but I need it now. The air around me is thick with dust thrown up by dashing hooves. The temperature is rising steadily. In an hour, the only thing capable of surviving out here will be lizards and flies. It hasn’t rained for weeks. It probably won’t rain for months more either. The seasons on this hunk of dirt are hot, and get hotter every year.
Shouldn’t really be possible to survive here, but we make it work. Right now, we’re riding for the shade of camp made at the edge of the dust plain. Soon as we get there, we’ll tear it down and move to one of our hideouts. It’s going to be a good few weeks, with enough gold and dinari to carouse, drink, dance, and live like only outlaws can.
“Rion!” My second in command, Paris, calls out to me. He’s lanky, blue eyed, and blond haired. Real good-guy looking type. Real deceptive appearance. Ain’t more of a lawless bastard in any of the four corners of this place, unless you count me.
“What?!”
“There’s something on the tracks!”
Something on the tracks usually means someone on the tracks. Someone good and dead. On a day like this, it’s a toss up to say whether the heat or the train will get them first. We usually don’t check those scenes out. A train’ll turn a man into meat chunks, gristle and bone in seconds, and that’s not a sight I’m interested in encountering right now. The smell sticks to you, gets in your clothes and your mouth, makes it hard to breathe, and I’m in too good a mood to ruin this day with that shit.
Paris is closer than I am, and when I don’t respond, he nudges his paint mare over toward what’s probably a fairly grizzly scene. I figure we’re going to get a full run down of the carnage screamed across the desert any second now, but what he calls out surprises me.
“It’s a woman! And she ain’t been hit yet!”
His shout carries clear across the plains, a good quarter mile, over the thundering of hooves on hard ground. A woman? I might be an outlaw, no-good son of a bitch with a price on my head and hell waiting for me when I die, but I’m not so far gone I won’t rescue a woman who needs it. Whatever she did to get herself put on those tracks, it wasn’t as bad as anything we’ve done in the last hour, I’m sure.
I spur Gus into a gallop. We don’t do much good, but I’m pretty sure I can hear the train in the distance and I don’t want to hear a woman die. A woman’s scream has a way of getting into your soul and sticking there, rotting away like a piece of meat stuck between your back teeth.
“You got a knife!?” Paris calls the question out. I’d ask where his is, but I saw him stick it between a lawman’s shoulder blades, and I’m guessing he left it there.
“Yeah, I got a knife,” I say, pulling my horse up beside the tracks, where sure enough, there’s someone tied down. The iron is already starting to dance with the approaching train. It’s still a ways off, but they get on top of you quicker than you think, four hundred thousand pounds of hell on wheels that ain’t stopping for man or god.
A flash of long, dark hair plaited into a braid and muddy gingham blowing in the breeze coming down the valley is enough to confirm Paris’ assumption. It’s a girl alright, and she’s not happy about her situation.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!” She screeches at the top of her lungs, screaming at all of us. She’s hoarse, like she’s been hollering for a while. Her eyes are wide with panic. There’s something pathetic about her, helpless like a little deer. Ain’t no way I’m leaving her to her fate, and I got to get her off these tracks before the train gets here and smears us both into the next life.
“Stay back boys, keep an eye out and try not to let my hat get shot off my head.”
“HELP ME!”
The girl’s scream goes through me like a hot knife through an eye. I’ve heard, seen, and done a whole lot of bad in my life, but I swear there’s something about a distressed innocent’s cry that claws at your heart, even a dead one like mine.
“Easy, girl,” I say, getting down on my knees beside the tracks. The boys gather round, keeping an eye out. Usually when someone does something like this, they want to watch the show. I’d put money on there being a pack of worthless men up on the ridge above the tracks, and if any one of them is handy with a rifle, we’re in danger of being picked off.
