Beneath the Burning Timber: The Wanted Outlaw Who Died to Save His Blood

Eleanor looked at the shotgun in her hands. The barrels were plastered with black coal muck; if she fired with mud in the bores, the iron would rupture like a dry gourd, taking her face with it.

"We don't shoot," she murmured. "We don't want Danner running this way until that wire is hot."

"Then what do we do?"

"You're his chief deputy, Tom," Eleanor said, turning her head to look him squarely in the eye. "Walk up that embankment. Tell him Danner sent you to cut the telegraph wire before the old woman in the belfry tries to tap it."

Tom looked down at his filthy coat, his trembling hands, and then at the silver star pinned over his breast. "He saw me in the graveyard, Eleanor. He saw me drop my gun."

"Ross was fifty yards back, and Mae took him out of the saddle before he could blink," she said, her voice hard as quartz. "He thinks you were ducking the scattergun. He doesn't know you turned."

The boy swallowed hard. He took three deep breaths, his jaw tightening until the muscle bulged against his cheek. Slowly, deliberately, he unpinned the silver star from his vest, wiped the black coal dust from the metal against his trousers, and pinned it back over his heart.

"Wait until I'm on the platform," Tom whispered.

He stood up from the ditch.

He didn't crawl or sneak. He climbed the shale embankment with the long, loose-jointed stride of a young man who belonged in those boots, his black hat pulled low, his right hand hooked casually into his gun belt.

"Ross!" Tom hailed as he topped the gravel ties of the rail bed.

Deputy Ross jumped, nearly dropping his pipe into the mud. He swung the shotgun around with his good right arm, his eyes wide and bloodshot from the pain of his shoulder.

"Tom? Holy God, boy, you gave me a turn! What's happening at the church?"

"Danner's got them pinned," Tom said, walking steadily toward the water tank without breaking his stride. "The old woman’s got a buffalo gun in the tower, but the giant is finished. He's bleeding from the belly like a stuck hog."

Ross spat into the ballast. "Good. The bastard shot my horse out from under me. What are you doing down here?"

"Danner thinks the widow might have known about Daniel's tap on the wire," Tom said, reaching the foot of the ladder. "He told me to go into the line shack and cut the battery leads."

Ross frowned, his brow furrowing beneath his wet hat brim. "Daniel's tap? What are you talking about? Daniel Hayes was a sod-buster, not a wire-man."

"Daniel was a surveyor for the Union Pacific for four years, Ross," Tom said, placing his boot on the first rung of the platform. "He helped string this exact line in '72."

Ross’s eyes flickered. Something in Tom's voice—or perhaps the absence of his holster and revolver—set off a spark of suspicion in the older deputy's mind.

"Hold on, Tom," Ross said, rising slowly from the kerosene drum, his shotgun leveling toward the ladder. "Where's your sidearm?"

"Dropped it when that buffalo gun went off," Tom said without missing a step, climbing to the third rung. "The slug took the leather clean off my hip."

"Step down, Tom."

"Ross, don't be a damn fool—"

"I said step down!" Ross barked, backing away two paces, his finger tightening on the front trigger. "Danner told me nobody comes near this platform without him giving the word! You look queer, boy. Your eyes are wild as a mustang's."

From the edge of the ditch behind him, Eleanor rose like a specter from the black mud.

She didn't use the shotgun. She carried the short-handled iron spade she had dragged through the coal tunnel. She covered the ten paces across the gravel bed in three silent, lunging strides, her boots soundless on the wet cedar ties.

Before Ross could turn his head at the sound of the crunching ballast, Eleanor swung the flat of the heavy iron spade with both arms, putting the entire weight of her back and shoulders into the blow.

The iron blade struck Ross squarely across the side of his skull with a sickening, hollow thump.

The deputy’s knees buckled instantly. He collapsed into the ditch like a sack of wet salt, his shotgun discharging into the mud, sending a plume of black gravel and smoke ten feet into the gray air.

"Get the door!" Eleanor gasped, dropping the spade and clutching her bruised shoulder.

Tom leaped from the ladder, threw his weight against the padlocked cedar door of the line-tender's shanty, and tore the rusted iron hasp clean out of the rotted jamb.

Inside, the small room smelled of battery acid, cedar dust, and kerosene.