Bounty - Episode Four
This story contains language and sexual themes and is not suitable for anyone under 18 or anyone who is offended by such.
If you want to start at the beginning, you can read episode one here.
The door to the express car opened on creaky hinges, the sound magnified by the subdued silence surrounding the train. Some passengers were too afraid to move from their seats and sat ramrod straight, their heads facing forward. Those who couldn’t pass up good entertainment had their faces pressed up against the window panes at the group of outriders approaching.
Henry exited the express car first, his left arm wrapped around the neck of the train engineer and his pistol pressed against the man’s sweaty temple with his right.
“You got a family?” Henry asked, his voice cutting through the tense atmosphere
“Y-Yes, sir,” the engineer said, his voice quivering. He licked his lips. “Wife and two daughters.”
“You wanna see ‘em tonight?”
“Y-Yes, sir,” he said.
“Then don’t do anything stupid and you’ll be just fine.” Henry’s tone softened slightly, but the threat still lingered.
“O…Okay,” the engineer said. Sweat beaded his forehead and dribbled down the side of his ashen face.
Sarah followed behind Henry, her own gun trained on the messenger, who walked with his hands in the air and a burgeoning piss stain on his trousers. Her voice was steady as she asked, “How about you?
“J-J-Just my momma,” the messenger said. He couldn’t have been much older than Sarah, though he looked younger with his smooth cheeks and thick curls.
“You love her?”
The messenger nodded, his expression fraught with fear.
“Then keep quiet and she won’t have to bury you.”
The messenger’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. He finally settled on nodding to indicate he understood her threat.
Surveying the scene, Sarah counted ten outriders surrounding the train. Harris had taken cover on the flatbed car that separated the express car and the passenger car. He was sandwiched between two large wooden crates. Lefty was nowhere to be seen, but Sarah knew he was a resourceful man. It wouldn’t surprise her if he’d managed to sneak off into the woods and had taken up a post behind a thick tree.
The man leading the pack of outriders was rail thin, his wispy hair poking out from a black cowpuncher hat. His duster coat and trousers were wrinkled from hard riding and he pointed a rifle at the engineer and messenger.
“Put your weapons down,” he said in a gravelly voice. “This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed.”
“You’re right,” Henry said from behind his hostage. “We haven’t killed anybody. Might have a man with a bullet in his leg and another with some bruises, but nobody’s dead. And it’ll stay that way,” he promised. “So long as you let us leave and take these two with us.”
“We can’t do that,” the posse leader said.
“We’ll release them unharmed when we’re far away from here. You have my word.”
“You’re robbing a train,” the posse leader said. “Your word don’t mean shit. Besides, there’s more of us than there are of you.”
“You sure about that?” Henry said. “You only see two of us, but there’s plenty of cover out here. Why do you think we chose this place to stop the train?”
That unnerved the posse leader. Sarah saw the rifle waver slightly as he stole a nervous glance at the forest surrounding them.
Harris took the opportunity to peek over the edge of a crate. He removed his pitiful disguise, tossing the sack to the floor and, before the posse leader had a chance to refocus his gaze on Henry and Sarah, Harris shot him in the neck.
Blood spurted from the wound and the posse leader toppled from his horse, falling to the ground with a loud thud. The rifle discharged into the air and scared the horse so badly it neighed and took off, its mane splattered with its rider’s blood.
“Goddammit!” Henry shouted as chaos ensued.
The remainder of the posse started firing their guns with reckless abandon. Sarah shoved her hostage into the express car and backed inside the car to take cover, peeking around the door frame to shoot at the posse.
Goddamn him!, Sarah thought as she fired her pistol aimlessly. She spotted a posse member braving the gunfire attempting to climb onto the flatbed. Harris, his back to him, was completely unaware. Everything moved in slow motion as Sarah contemplated letting the posse member do the dirty work of eliminating Harris. She could pretend not to notice him climbing over the metal rail.
But the dilemma was decided for her when a shotgun blast rang out, blowing a hole through the posse member’s chest. He fell backward to the ground, his mouth hanging open in surprise. His finger reflexively squeezed the trigger of his weapon and the bullet hit Harris in the arm. He let out a shout of surprise and pain.
Lefty emerged from the forest, shotgun extended. He stepped over the bodies of several posse members, some dead and others dying, their blood staining the ground.
The gunfire ceased, but the air smelled of gunpowder. Henry, still clutching his hostage, stood up. The engineer had pissed himself during the shootout and a strange mewling noise emanated from his lips, puncturing the eerie silence.
“That all of them?” Harris said, his left hand pressed on the gunshot wound on his right arm.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Sarah demanded, stepping out of the express car and onto the platform. “Why the fuck did you shoot him?” She gestured at the dead posse leader.
Harris shrugged his good shoulder with nonchalance. “How else did you think we were gonna get out of this?”
Sarah opened her mouth to respond, but Henry, who released the engineer and stepped out from behind him, put out a hand to stop her. “She’s right, son,” Henry said, “there was no need to shoot him.”
“We were outnumbered,” Harris said as Henry stepped up onto the flatbed. “I did what needed to be done.”
“I was handling it.”
“You were jawing,” Harris argued.
“We were negotiating.”
Harris scoffed.
“I was trying,” Henry said, raising his voice, “to get us out of this without anyone getting killed.”
“We’re all alive, aren’t we?”
Henry gestured at the body-ridden landscape around them. “They aren’t.”
“You were just delaying the inevitable,” Harris said. “You weren’t gonna talk us out of nothing!”
For the second time that day, Harris received a slap across his face.
“You might be my son, but don’t forget that I’m in charge.” Henry poked himself in the chest. “I make the decisions.” He shook his finger at Harris. “If I tell you to jump, you ask me how high. You don’t make decisions of that magnitude without my say so. Got it?”
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Episode 4! Stay tuned for Episode 5!