CHAPTER TWO

That night, Kade, ensconced in the train yard shadows, watched the lights go out in the Harvey Girl dormitory and wondered which window was pretty Mattie Wainwright’s. He also watched the gas lights go out in the Harvey Mountain House Restaurant’s kitchen for the night and wondered if unwanted night visitors would show up there or at their refrigerator car with its fresh produce and meats, which had arrived at mid-day, the same time Miss Wainwright had been dropped off.

He was in the train yard now to guard against miscreants who again may have been hired, presumably by the jealous local restaurant owners, to loot in the dead of night. That had happened often enough of late that he and his deputies had it marked as a hot spot needing extra patrol, like the saloons and pool hall with their troublesome patrons. The full moon made him wonder if that would deter the repeat thieves, or if they thought it would help in their getaway. He settled back to find out.

As the stars and moon waned, footsteps crunching gravel gave him his first clue. To be sure he wasn’t going to shoot Harvey restaurant staff maybe coming early to get ready in the kitchen to serve an off schedule incoming train, he stayed motionless, his six-shooters at the ready. He had learned early in his lawman career that if he made the first time the last time, there generally wasn’t a next time by anybody else. Might seem harsh by eastern standards, but here in the West with its gunslingers, train robbers, bank robbers, crooked gamblers, horse thieves, claim jumpers, and assorted other outlaws, it kept the populace as safe as he could knowingly make them.

Since the Harvey chefs were the only ones, as far as Kade knew, who had a key to the refrigerator cars, he wanted to know how other people were gaining access, and watched with interest. Counting the night raiders, he recognized none of the men as Harvey staff or railroad men assigned to Raton, but for sure they had a key. How they got it, he didn’t know. Maybe a disgruntled busboy paid well to make a wax impression of the key that a chef somewhere on the line had carelessly left unattended? Or a chef making extra money on the side by selling the fresh produce and ingredients? Possibly, but that would be for Santa Fe Railway security to figure out. For sure it would be the last time this key was used by this gang of thieves.

As one of them waved in a horse drawn wagon in which to stash all the goodies, Kade waited until they were busy loading, and for him to be certain there was only one man standing lookout that he first had to contend with and not another one elsewhere he had missed seeing. Satisfied that there were just the five of them, he raised his pistols and put a fast and definite end to the theft. The repeated gunfire reverberated off the town’s buildings all the way down main street, as if it was Independence Day fireworks.

Some lights came on in the Harvey men’s and women’s dormitories and a few houses