HALFWAY TO ABILENE late the next day, Harry Frost watched through his field glasses as a large chuck wagon, drawn by six powerful mules, stopped next to a freight car parked on a remote Texas & Pacific Railway siding. The siding served an enormous ranch ten miles away that was owned by a Wall Street investment combine in which Frost held a controlling interest. Six gunmen dressed like cowboys were riding with the wagon. They dismounted, unlocked a padlock, slid open the boxcar door, and wrestled heavy crates stenciled HOLIAN PLOW WORKS SANDY HOOK CONN into the wagon.

Frost raked the endless empty miles of brush and grass with the field glasses, checking as he had repeatedly that there was no one in sight to interfere. Prairie speckled with brown clumps of mesquite grass rolled to the horizon. Clouds, or perhaps low hills, rose in the west. He spied, eight or ten miles north, a single spindly structure that could be either a windmill to pump water or a derrick to drill for oil. The tracks gleamed in a straight line east and west, edged by a ragged ribbon of telegraph wire strung along weathered poles.

They finished loading the chuck wagon. It trundled west on the rutted dirt track that paralleled the railroad, guarded by the men on horses. The Thomas caught up two miles from the siding. Up close, the appearance of the horsemen would cause any peace officer worth his salt to draw his guns for they looked less like cowboys than bank robbers. Their hands lacked the calluses and scars of range work. They wore six-guns in double holsters low on the hips and packed Winchester rifles in saddle scabbards. Surveying the three men in the Thomas, the hard-bitten gang turned expectantly to a tall man in their midst. Harry Frost had already spotted him as the leader with whom he had communicated through an intermediary he trusted from the old days.

Frost asked, “Which of you was in the Spanish War?”

Four men in campaign hats nodded.

“Did you fire the Colt?”

They nodded again, eyes still shifting toward their leader.

“Follow me. There’s a creek bed where we can mount the guns.”

No one moved.

“Herbert?” Frost said amiably. “My fellows in Chicago tell me you’re one tough outlaw. Can’t help but notice that everyone’s looking at you like you’re about to impart some wisdom. What’s on your mind?”

Herbert answered by drawling, “We was debatin’ why instead of shootin’ at flyin’ machines we oughtn’t to take your money now, and your auto, and your machine guns, and if you don’t give us no trouble, allow you all to hop a freight back to Chicago—you bein’ only three, us bein’ six.”

Gripping the stock in one powerful hand, Harry Frost raised a sawed-off double-barreled ten-gauge from between his boots.