BY: JuSTIN GIBBS aND MaSON CraWFOrD
126
One of the women stepped forward and smashed the butt of her pistol into his face. She peered at him over her red bandanna, blond locks of hair framing her face as she pressed the revolver to his chest. Her voice was low and controlled. “Do you want us to know who you are?”
The man’s eyes widened, and he shook his head frantically.
“Very good,” she said as she relieved him of his money clip.
“Any trouble back there?” Parker called. He had jammed the door to the adjoining car shut and taken up a position at the rear, away from the passengers. Across from him was another robber with a thick build and bright red hair, toting a shotgun; he had taken up position at the window across from Parker.
“Just some folks who aren’t accustomed to being robbed,” the blonde woman called back.
“That's good!” Parker shouted. “They generally have more to take! “He turned back to the red-haired man. “Alright, we’re almost to the horses.
I’m giving the signal.” With that he opened his window and waved a spare bandanna. The train immediately began to slow.
Mitchell realized there must be another accomplice with a gun on the engineer. He shook his head at the madness of it all.
Parker leaned out his window and began shooting at the car behind them, quickly emptying one pistol and then the next. The red haired man was firing his shotgun out the opposite side. Whenever one of the men stopped to reload, the blonde woman would run to that side of the car, lean out the window, and provide covering fire, ensuring that the hail of bullets never fully let up as the last woman kept an eye on the Doc and the other passengers. Together, they kept a steady stream of fire raining down both sides of the train, keeping the Guard pinned in their car.
The blonde woman let out a sharp hiss and clutched her arm. A shot from one of the guardsmen in the other car had winged her. Parker turned his head briefly. “We’re slowing, it’s time!” He pointed
at Mitchell. “That one’s a doctor; grab him and another hostage, and we'll make him patch you up once we're in the clear.”
The woman gestured to the Doc and the argumentative man in the fine suit. “You two are coming with us. Any of the rest of you get any ideas, you’ll end up coming along too.”
Mitchell swallowed hard and looked around. It didn’t look like anyone else was going to be putting up much of a fight. And why should they? The bandits weren’t interested in them.
As the train slowed to a near halt, the blonde bandit shoved Mitchell and the other man out of the car and off the train. The doctor hit the ground in a hard roll, coughing and spitting dust out of his mouth as he came to a stop. The bandits hopped down more gracefully, as if it were second nature to them, and took up positions around the train car containing the Guild Guard, guns firing all the while.
Not far from the train, Mitchell could see a dozen horses tied to a few of the barren, twisted trees that dotted this bleak landscape. A single bandit was waiting near them, no doubt a guard of some sort.
Three more bandits came jogging up from the front of the train, guns drawn, bandannas hiding their faces. They quickly joined their accomplices in keeping a steady stream of lead flying at the car containing the guardsmen. Mitchell counted eight outlaws total: six assaulting the train car, one with the horses, and the wounded woman that had been put in charge of him and the other hostage, as well as keeping a wary eye on the passenger car.
Mitchell occasionally saw a guardsman quickly stand up to take a shot or a red-sleeved arm fire blindly out of a window now and then, but it looked like the outlaws were doing a good job of keeping everyone in the guardsman’s car pinned down. Parker shouted orders at the other bandits, coordinating their fire so that it never let up; while some reloaded, others always picked up the pace.
“Alright, time for the fun part,” he grimaced as he began to sprint along the stopped car. As he did so, he pulled glass jars of sickly looking liquid from his coat and tossed them, one at a time, through the shattered glass windows of the stopped car.
Parker quickly jogged back to his fellow bandits as they provided covering fire, diving behind a rough mound of dirt near Mitchell. It was hardly necessary; the guardsmen had completely ceased any attempts to return fire. “That should do it,”
Parker panted.
It dawned on Mitchell what Parker had done when he caught a rancid pickle smell on the wind.
He recognized the smell of formaldehyde from his training in medicine. “Oh, the poor bastards,”
he muttered.
Parker flashed him a wicked grin. “Figured we’d save the coroner the trouble.” He motioned to the other bandits to cease fire and listened, but the guardsmen had fallen silent. “Think it was enough to kill ‘em?”
The doctor shook his head.
“Amelia,” Parker called to the blonde woman.
“Go take care of the express car. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
The woman nodded and sprinted away, past the car containing the guardsmen and toward the next one in line.
Once she was out of range, Parker carefully peeked out from behind his cover. “Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in the air and you won’t be harmed!”
There was no response from the car, only shuffling sounds and the crunch of broken glass under moving weight.
“The name’s Parker Barrows,” he shouted.
“You’re probably familiar with my work. I don't kill guardsmen when I don't have to, but you folks aren't giving me much of a choice here.”
128
“I’ve seen the wanted posters!” The wheezing voice belonged to a woman. “Why would you let us go? We know who you are!”
“Because killing people makes it less likely that people will just give up. It's bad for business.
Besides,” he added, his voice taking on a lighter tone, “if you keep shooting blind like that, you might hit one of my horses! Do you know how much the Guild charges for a good horse these days? It’s robbery!”
There was a tense moment before the woman shouted, “You’re out-numbered!” It sounded desperate. “Surrender now and I’ll see that you get a fair trial. I won’t give you another chance.”
“A fair trial?” Parker scoffed. “Why would I want that? They’d hang me! You could at least offer a crooked trial.”
Mitchell felt everything go silent. The bandits were pressed flat against the ground or crouched behind whatever cover they could find, guns trained on the car. He held his breath. In the distance, one of the horses snorted.
Then the silence was shattered by gunfire.
Guardsmen kicked open the doors of the train car and rushed out from both sides. Their companions still inside the car stood up and started shooting.
Their faces were all a hideous, metallic black, and it took Mitchell a moment to realize that they were wearing gas masks.
The ground exploded in puffs of dust as bullets ricocheted off the dry ground like falling rain. The first guardsmen out the door were immediately gunned down, and their bodies were now blocking their way for those behind, but the bandits had precious little cover in the open, desolate ground.
Parker kept up a steady stream of fire, fanning the hammer of his smoking gun as he showered the car with lead. There was an explosion from down the line, and then Amelia came running back, a sack in her hands.
“We’ve got it!” Parker shouted. “Let's get the hell out of here!”
As they turned, one of the bandits took a shot to the head and dropped like a rock. Parker cursed but didn’t go back for her.
Suddenly, there was a hand gripping Doc’s shoulder and a gun in his ribs as he was forced to his feet. His captor pushed him toward the horses, and he saw the other hostage being dragged along with him.
The red-haired bandit with the shotgun stood like a sentinel as they retreated, laying down fire with his shotgun until everyone else had made it to the horses. Bullets whined as they flew past the man's head, one opening up a long cut on his cheek. He didn’t even flinch until Parker called for him.
“We’ve got hostages!” Parker shouted back at the guardsmen as the gang rode off, shooting over their shoulders. “Follow us and they’re dead!”
It struck Mitchell that the Guild probably didn’t care much if he lived or died. Without horses, he wasn’t even sure how the guardsmen would follow them, even if they were so inclined.
As they rode out, Mitchell thought he saw a black jackal in the distance, watching him.
The man in the fine suit was named Leo, and he would not stop scowling. He scowled at the horses, the outlaws, and even at Mitchell. He scowled at the dust, as if upset that it dared to be kicked up and land on his fine clothing.
At first, he had tried making vague threats about how well-connected he was in Malifaux city, but the Barrows Gang simply ignored him. Mitchell thought he caught a half smile on Parker’s face during one of Leo’s longer tirades. When that failed, he turned to bribery. He offered huge sums of scrip, pardons (through his connections, of course), and all manner of unreasonable things. Finally, he tried to find common ground with the bandits.
“I’m a criminal too, you know.” Leo licked his lips and glanced side to side.
This finally got Parker’s attention. “Oh?”
Leo beamed a smile on his thin, bloodless lips. “Oh, yes! I handle funds for the Guild, and sometimes, things go missing, if you know what I mean.”
“Let’s say I don’t.” Parker replied, his face darkening.
“The Guild has vast resources, as I’m sure you know, and someone needs to direct it, oversee it. There are so many different accounts funding all sorts of things from civic projects to legal fees.
Money flows from one account to another every day, and it frequently crosses my desk. If some guardsman’s pension disappears every so often, who notices?”
“The guardsman, I would imagine.” There was ice in Parker’s voice, and Mitchell shot Leo a desperate look of warning that was entirely ignored.
He couldn't understand why the self-professed criminal kept babbling.
“Oh, no, that’s the beauty of it. It’s all one big fund, you see. It’s not for any one guardsman in particular. If it comes up short, why, there must have been an accounting error somewhere.” Leo grinned. “Honestly, I’ve probably stolen more money than any one of you. And without any blood or guns.” He wrinkled his nose. “No dust or any of this hostage business. It's a completely victimless crime, but it's a crime none-the-less. So, you see, we’re not so different, you and I.”
Parker stopped his horse and turned to look at Leo.
Leo seemed to take this as a sign to go on. “I could show you. It’s really very eas-“
Leo’s words were cut off as Parker whipped out one of his six-shooters and put a bullet right between Leo’s eyes. The sound of the shot thundered and was swallowed by the wind.
Mitchell yelped and dove from his horse, scrambling over to Leo. He put his bound hands on the man, feeling for a pulse. He may have been a drunk and a failure, but he was still a doctor. He had sworn an oath to save lives, but there was no life to save here. “You… you killed him.”
Parker nodded. “That was sort of the point of shooting him.”
“B-but why?”
Parker regarded Mitchell for a moment from atop his horse, his duster fluttering in the dry wind. “A man who takes from others, and who doesn’t earn his living, doesn’t deserve to live.”
The doctor's mouth fell open and he stared at Parker with a look of confusion. He considered pointing out the hypocrisy of what the bandit had just said, but that seemed like a decision that could be hazardous for his health, so he forced himself to shut his mouth.
Parker snorted. “I know what you’re thinking. But I earn my living. I earn it with my guns, and I earn it with my fists. If I steal from a man, he damn well knows it. And if he has issue with that, well, he’s welcome to try to take it back from me.”
Parker tugged on his reigns, turning his horse away from the Doctor and the corpse. “Come on Doc, we’ll be riding hard till sunset.”
Mitchell was still laying prone on top of the dead man; he had been forced to so that he could look for a pulse with his hands bound. There were no eyes on him as the gang readied their horses to move again, and beneath him, he could feel the hard bulge of a weapon in the dead man’s coat.
With shaking, tied hands he grabbed it and shoved it into his waistband before covering it with his shirt. It was a little flintlock, but lethal enough.
“Hurry it up Doc, it ain’t your job to bury the bastard,” the blonde woman called.
He climbed to his feet and sprinted back to his horse, where one of the bandits helped him back into the saddle. As they began to ride again, he felt the cold steel of the weapon digging into his side.
130
A day passed. Mitchell couldn’t tell where they were going. The long, rolling red hills seemed to have swallowed the little party. He sometimes couldn’t even get a good glimpse of the sun through the vast, swirling clouds of dust that robbed even the sky of its individuality, turning everything around them into a bleak, red nothing. Besides the odd, gnarled tree or bit of brush, the only thing Doc ever made out on the horizon was the hideous black jackal that he was now sure was following him.
Amelia had loaned him a bandanna to cover his mouth and nose from the dust after he had bandaged her arm. He pulled it down from his face and turned to her. “Is it just me, or is that jackal following us?”
“What jackal?” Amelia asked with a frown.
“It’s pure black... you must have seen it. I don’t have the eyes for this sort of business.”
Parker glanced back at them. “What’s all the chatter back there?”
“Doc’s seeing the black jackal,” Amelia called up to him.
Parker just scowled and turned away.
“What’s the black jackal?” Mitchell asked, looking confused.
Amelia shook her head. “Not really sure. One of the men who used to ride with us started talking about it one day. Nobody other than him ever caught a glimpse of it, but once it started happening, his luck turned. Everything that could go wrong for him did. He blamed it all on a black jackal only he could see, right up until the day he turned on us and Parker put a bullet in him. We thought he was going mad, but…” She shrugged.
Mitchell stared for a second, then burst out into a fit of nervous laughter. “Oh, is that all? Bad luck?
Well, you’re too late for that, you stupid mutt!” he shouted into the wind. He kept laughing until his guffaws had turned to tears.
It was another hard day’s ride through rough terrain before they came to the hideout of the Barrow’s Gang. Along the way, Mitchell had tried to get to know some of the gang. In part, it was a survival mechanism; if they knew him, he reasoned, then maybe they would be a bit more hesitant to kill him. In part, though, it was just something to help him whittle away at the oppressive monotony of the trip. If nothing else, it had convinced them that he was harmless, and that had led to them removing his restraints, allowing him to discreetly transfer the flintlock to the bottom of his medical bag.
He had tried to talk to the red-haired man Parker had called Mad Dog, but he never got more than a grunt out of the man. Eventually, Mad Dog had simply glared at him, and Mitchell had taken it as a sign to back off. Strangely, the man seemed to have just as few words for his companions. This surprised Mitchell, who had gotten to know all of the other outlaws at least a little, but not enough to risk pressing him.
The hideout of the Barrows Gang was an old, abandoned ghost town. The crumbling wooden buildings were slowly being swallowed by the red dust as the land did its best to wipe away the structures with which it had been marred. The town was built into a small ravine, not large enough to put it at risk for the flash floods Mitchell had been told were frequent in the rainy season, but enough to keep it from being visible on the horizon.
“What do you think, Doc?” Parker asked once they had arrived, spreading his arms and puffing out his chest. “Home sweet home! All of the conveniences of modern living. That there is the general store,” he said, gesturing to a building whose roof had caved in.
“...over there is our finest five star hotel...” Parker pointed at a half-burned building that was collapsing in on itself.
“...and, of course, our fully-stocked saloon.” The saloon was actually completely intact, and it even looked as if some recent repairs had been made to the old structure. The gang tied their horses to the hitching posts outside it and went in.
To the Doc’s surprise, the inside of the Saloon was luxurious. There were fine carpets spread out on the floor, though they had obviously been trampled with boots covered in that infernal red dust. An aethervox even sat in one corner.
Parker gestured to the back of the bar as the blonde bandit guided Mitchell inside. “Have yourself a
Parker gestured to the back of the bar as the blonde bandit guided Mitchell inside. “Have yourself a