The Iron Star (Part 2)

 

Chapter Two – The Ambush

The year was 1883, and by midafternoon the plains had gone quiet in the way that meant trouble.

Eli Mercer felt it before he saw anything wrong. The wind dropped. The steady rhythm of the rails changed pitch, the hum beneath his boots slipping into an uneven clatter. He rested his hand on the railing and scanned the cut ahead—a narrow stretch where the track passed between low stone walls and scrub.

Too tight. Too exposed.

He turned just as the engineer leaned out of the cab, concern sharp on his face.

“Track looks—”

The explosion tore the rest of the sentence away.

The world jumped sideways. Steel screamed. The Iron Star lurched as if struck by a giant hand, its forward cars bucking hard as the rails beneath them gave way. Eli was thrown against the railing, ribs barking in protest, as the train ground itself into a shrieking halt amid a cloud of dust and steam.

Then came the gunfire.

Shots cracked from the ridge above, precise and confident. A guard near the water car spun and dropped without a sound. Windows shattered. Passengers screamed and ducked as bullets punched through wood and glass.

“AMBUSH!” someone yelled, needlessly.

Eli was already moving.

He rolled behind a stack of crates, brought his rifle up, and sighted the ridge. Men on horseback crested the rocks—six, maybe eight—wearing dust-colored coats and hard expressions. They fired in disciplined bursts, not the wild shooting of raiders but the controlled violence of professionals.

Hired guns, Eli thought. And not cheap ones.

The lead rider raised his arm, signaling. The shooting paused just long enough for Eli to see his face: lean, scarred, smiling like this was exactly where he wanted to be.

Cal Jarrick.

Eli recognized him from wanted posters and half-whispered stories. A man who sold violence by the job and always delivered it clean.

The firing resumed, heavier now.

Guards scrambled to return fire, bullets snapping off stone and iron. Eli took a shot, saw a rider tumble from his saddle, then ducked as a round sparked off the rail inches from his head.

“Protect the passengers!” Eli shouted. “Fall back to the armored cars!”

Some listened. Some froze. A few ran the wrong way.

Smoke poured from the engine, its boiler hissing angrily. The train was alive and wounded, and every man aboard it knew it.

Then a new sound joined the chaos—war cries, sharp and rising, cutting through the gunfire like knives.

Eli looked west.

Figures surged out of the grass and gullies, moving fast and low. Not the outlaws. Warriors, faces set and focused, rifles and bows raised as they charged—not at the train, but at the men attacking it.

For a heartbeat, everyone hesitated.

Then the plains erupted.

Jarrick’s men wheeled in surprise, some firing wildly, others breaking formation to meet the new threat. Bullets flew in all directions now, a three-sided storm of lead and shouting. Horses screamed. Dust turned red and brown beneath pounding hooves.

Eli swore under his breath.

“This just got complicated.”

He fired again, covering a group of passengers scrambling toward the armored car. A woman fell, tripped by her skirts, and Eli ran to her, hauling her up as a round tore through the ground where her head had been.

“Inside!” he barked, shoving her through the reinforced door.

A guard slammed it shut behind them.

Outside, Red Hawk rode hard along the edge of the fight, reading it the way other men read maps. He saw the outlaws’ discipline falter, saw the train guards regroup, saw the sealed freight car at the center of the Iron Star—thick walls, extra locks, men dying to protect it.

That was the heart of it.

He raised his hand, signaling his warriors to shift their attack. They peeled away from the outlaws and pressed toward the train, firing at guards, forcing them back from the freight cars.

Eli spotted the movement instantly.

“No,” he muttered. “Damn it, no.”

He ran, bullets snapping past him, and skidded to a stop near the sealed car. Two company men lay dead at its door, blood soaking into the dust. The lock had taken a round and hung twisted, half-broken.

From the ridge, Cal Jarrick watched it all unfold, laughter lost in the noise.

“Let ’em fight,” he said to no one in particular. “We’ll take what’s left.”

The ambush had done its work. The Iron Star sat crippled and bleeding, surrounded by enemies who wanted the same thing for very different reasons.

And the plains, patient as ever, drank in the noise of 1883 like it had been waiting for it all along.