Chapter 6

It didn't take long for word of this latest adventure of ours to get around town. The result was that a number of women bought guns and practiced shooting them. I have no idea how much this served to slow down the violence in Deadwood, but anything would help. Whatever else resulted, at least the marshal was happy.

I now had a regular job in the restaurant and a part-time job guarding gold shipments by ox-drawn wagon. The gold guarding job came along about one or two times a month, and it was a welcome source of revenue. At this point, the restaurant business was falling off as people moved out of town. Gold was only being found in the deep mines that required a professional crew and heavy original investment to obtain, so there were very few jobs around that did not involve wage work in a mine.

We didn't know how much longer the restaurant could stay open with the low rate of customers stopping in. Mrs. Weston still insisted on maintaining a high quality in her food, so it was getting harder to pay for that. Hell, we might have to move if things didn't pick up pretty damned soon.

One night, the fire alarms went off all over town. We jerked our clothes on and rushed out to see what we could do to help fight the fire. It turned out that there was not much we could do. The fire was already raging close to our home and the fire brigade was completely overwhelmed with the magnitude of the flames. We rushed back into the house to salvage what we could in the short time it looked like we had. We piled our stuff in the middle of an adjacent vacant lot to wait out the fire. I was not able to rescue the safe, but I figured that it was OK since there was nothing in it but gold coins.

At that point, I did rush to Hanson's Livery Stable to rescue my stock that was boarding there and to help Mr. Hanson save what we could. We managed to move all the stock to a safe location, and that's all we could do but wait out the fire. I went back to stay with Annie and her mother while we watched the fire rage. It was a difficult time for all of us, but particularly bad for Mrs. Weston, as we watched the fire completely destroy the restaurant and our home. The fire was so hot that nothing could survive except the safe containing our gold.

It was late in the next afternoon before the ashes had cooled enough to let me investigate the safe. The safe showed the effects of the fire and of falling from the second floor, but it had withstood the fire well enough that the key worked. I opened the safe and found that most of the bags were nothing but charred residue, though the gold coins seem to have come through the fire without damage.

We were now presented with a gut-wrenching decision. There was nothing left of the restaurant or our home that could be salvaged. For practical purposes, all we could do was simply walk away from a disaster. At least, we were better off than most people because we did have our gold reserve. Our choice was whether or not to stay in Deadwood.

We could see that for our purposes, Deadwood was a lost cause. Most of the people who had been customers of Mrs. Weston's restaurant were now destitute, and had no prospect of improving their plight if they stayed in Deadwood. Under those circumstances, even Mrs. Weston could see the futility of trying to reopen her restaurant. Therefore, it seemed to us that our only logical choice was to leave Deadwood for a more hospitable location.

Our thought was to move south, and Mrs. Weston suggested that we head for Kansas City. Annie didn't care, and I just didn't want to go back east, so we agreed to give Kansas City a try. There was no way to hide the fact that I was transporting a significant amount of gold when we boarded the stagecoach to carry us to the nearest railway station. The safe was too awkward to handle, so I switched to a strongbox that had carrying handles to make it a little easier to move around.

Unfortunately, some lowlifes became aware of the strongbox and its contents and decided to relieve me of the drudgery of transporting it. We had only gotten about five miles out of Deadwood when said lowlifes jumped the stagecoach. I suppose it was fortunate that we three were the only passengers, because I would have hated to endanger innocent bystanders.

The bandits probably thought they would have easy pickings because I was the only man in the coach along with the two women. I had spoken to the driver and shotgun guard before we left Deadwood, and I had promised them each a $25 bonus to get us to the railroad station safely. On top of that, Annie and I were armed with pistols, and all three of us had shotguns. I would not say that Mrs. Weston was a good shot, but you don't have to be a good shot when you're using a 10-gauge double barrel shotgun!

The bandits gave up without much of a fight when they found themselves facing four shotguns. The shotgun guard fired the first shot from our side, but it was only a moment later before the rest of us opened up. We were all using breach loading shotguns, so we had no trouble with reloading. By the time each one of us had fired both barrels, the bandits were hightailing it for greener pastures. I don't know that they ever fired a shot at us, but I was still happy to pay out the $25 bonus to the two men when they delivered us to the railroad station.

I checked the strongbox into the express car and watched as it was chained to an eye-bolt fastened to the floor of the car. Nobody was going to run off with that strongbox without some way of breaking the chain! We three took our places in the passenger car nearest the express car. I figured that even if everybody in the train crew was honest, there was no point in taking stupid chances.

The conductor was not surprised when we kept our pistols and shotguns with us as we took our seats. The route south toward Kansas City ran through some rough country, and I was expecting trouble, just on principle. I was right, too.

The train was struggling up a hill, moving no more than two or three MPH, when two men came crashing through the vestibule door with drawn pistols. I didn't hesitate, and the moment I recognized that they were bandits I drew my pistol and began shooting. They were caught completely by surprise, and I managed to kill one and severely wound the other before they could get any shots off.

Suddenly, I realized that the train had stopped moving! That's when I heard gunshots from outside our passenger car. I didn't know what was happening in cars farther toward the rear of the train, but I was very concerned about what might be happening at the express car. I told my wife and mother-in-law to be ready for trouble and not to be reluctant to use their shotguns. I yelled that everybody else in the car should get down on the floor between the seats unless they wanted to help fight bandits.

Most of the passengers ducked, but a couple of men pulled their guns to help in the defense of the car. I'm sure they felt pretty secure when they saw the two women with their shotguns held at the ready. Meanwhile, I took my shotgun and headed toward the express car.

I went out the vestibule door and stood in that small enclosure on the platform while I tried to see what was going on toward the front of the train. About this time, the door to the baggage car opened, and I saw the conductor. He started to jump back the moment he glimpsed me, but I shouted that I was a passenger, not a bandit. He cautiously looked at me and recognized me as being the man who had gotten on the train with a shotgun in hand.

He waved me into the baggage car and asked what I was doing there. I told him what I had done to the bandits that had entered my car, and he thanked me for my quick reaction. He did say that there were probably bandits on the other two passenger cars, but he didn't have any idea of what was going on there. I told him about hearing the gunshots coming from that direction, and he got an unhappy look on his face.

I asked what he knew about what might be going on at the express car, but there was an explosion that drowned out his answer. We both new what that meant: the bandits had blown open the door of the express car with dynamite. What we didn't know was the fate of the express man inside the car. Hopefully, he was still alive, but there was only one way to find out.