Reborn in 1878: America's Number One Bandit

Chapter 26 Hijacking the Train

In the darkness, the steel behemoth roared as it moved through the night.

The wheels struck the rails with a monotonous clanging sound.

Besides the coal-fired locomotive, there were only three carriages attached to the back.

The first and last two sections were guard cars, and the middle section was the payroll car, which carried cash.

Most of the guards were slumped in their seats, snoring loudly.

In the middle pay car, Arthur Jennings, the pay manager for the Southern Pacific Railroad, tossed and turned, unable to sleep.

Holding a glass of whiskey, he gazed out the window at the rapidly receding wilderness in the flickering kerosene lamplight of the carriage, a sense of foreboding creeping over him.

He remembered Jesse James and his gang of bastards in Texas, who loved to rob trains.

I heard things aren't much better here in California.

However, the thought of the more than twenty fully armed security personnel the company had provided made Jennings feel a little more at ease.

These men are all skilled recruits from veterans, well-equipped and experienced; they should be more than capable of dealing with ordinary petty thieves.

I've been in California for three days now, and the wages for all the construction sites on the south shore of the Golden Gate Strait have been paid smoothly. The journey has been uneventful.

"Maybe I'm overthinking it."

Jennings took another sip of his drink, the alcohol easing his tense nerves considerably.

All he wants now is to finish paying out salaries on the North Shore as soon as possible and then go back with the generous bonus.

His young and beautiful lover gave birth to a big, healthy baby boy last month.

He had had enough of his old, fat, and complaining wife.

Once I get back, I need to find a way to divorce her, preferably one where she gets a smaller share of the assets, and I can't let her cause too much trouble.

Just as Jennings was contemplating his own romantic escapades...

"Boom!"

A loud bang suddenly came from under the carriage!

Immediately afterwards, Jennings felt as if the whole world had turned upside down.

The wine glass slipped from his hand, and his body was violently thrown into the air by an irresistible force.

Amidst a dizzying spin and a piercing shriek as metal tore apart.

This carriage flew up like a toy kicked away by a giant!
His last consciousness was when his head slammed heavily against the roof of the carriage.

The amount of explosives that Lawson's assassins planted under the railway tracks was far too much.

The violent shockwave blasted the sturdy rails, twisting and deforming them like pretzels.

The locomotive derailed, rolled on the ground, plowing a deep trench, and finally overturned, causing the steam pipes to burst.

All three carriages were also destroyed, derailing and overturning into piles of rubble on either side of the tracks.

The security personnel hired by the Southern Pacific Railway at great expense were completely disoriented by this sudden disaster.

Several unlucky individuals were hit directly by the thrown heavy objects and immediately lost consciousness.

The rest were all battered and bruised, completely disoriented.

Inside the overturned carriage, chaos reigned.

The assassins under Lawson's command would not give them a chance to regroup.

More than thirty Winchester rifles spewed flames of death.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The dense gunfire echoed through the valley.

Bullets rained down like a storm of steel, pelting the two overturned guard carriages.

The wooden structure of the carriage was as fragile as paper in the face of rifle bullets.

The bullets easily penetrated the car walls, ricocheting wildly in the confined space and reaping lives.

"Enemy attack! Counterattack! FUCK! My leg is broken!"

Where are they? I can't see them!

"Where's my gun? Help!"

The guards were trapped in the twisted and deformed carriages, unable to even locate the enemy, and became sitting ducks.

Occasionally, a few scattered shots were fired back, but they only managed to send up a few sparks on the rock face in vain.

This was a one-sided massacre.

In less than five minutes, the gunfire subsided.

The two guard carriages were riddled with holes and there was no further movement from them.

……

"Wow!"

A bucket of icy stream water was poured onto Arthur Jennings' face.

He jolted awake from his unconsciousness.

Jennings felt something soft and sticky beneath him.

With great effort, he lowered his head, and after seeing where he was lying, he vomited up all the food he had eaten the night before.

He was lying on a pile of corpses.

Those twenty-odd armed guards had all turned into cold corpses. And before him...

More than thirty dark figures wielding long spears silently surrounded him.

The guns seized from the guards had already been hung on their saddles.

The huge safe, filled with money, was also dragged out of the deformed carriage and placed next to the pile of corpses.

One of the robbers pressed the still-smoking muzzle of his gun against Jennings' forehead.

"Listen, fat pig."

The robber spoke with a heavy Irish accent:
“I’ll give you two choices.

First, open that damn safe for us, and you'll live.

Second, we'll blow it open ourselves with explosives, and you'll die.

Choose.

Jennings felt a heat in his crotch, and a warm current flowed out uncontrollably.

There's absolutely no choice.

He stumbled and crawled to the safe, and with his hands trembling as if he were having a Parkinson's attack, he turned the combination lock and opened the heavy iron door.

The moment the door opened, Lawson, who was possessing the bandit, had a glint in his eye.

Inside the safe, stacks of coins wrapped in oil paper were piled up.

There are Morgan silver dollars that gleam with a beautiful silver sheen.

There are Mexican eagle dollars with eagle designs, as well as a small number of high-denomination paper US dollars.

The robbers immediately stepped forward, poured all the money into several huge sacks, and quickly counted it.

"Boss, we've struck it rich! We've got about 25,000 yuan in total!"

Lawson was overjoyed; at least his efforts hadn't been in vain.

He mounted his horse and sent his elite guards, carrying several large bags of heavy wealth, into the dark wilderness.

On the way, the huge sum of money was quickly split up.

Most of the money was handed over to more than twenty British assassins who had been waiting there.

They will split up, disguise themselves as ordinary travelers and businessmen, and travel in batches via different routes to the Sausalito port.

They then took a ferry and eventually met up in San Francisco.

Breaking it down into smaller parts makes the target smaller and less likely to attract attention.

The newly formed Irish bandit gang didn't enter any towns; instead, they plunged directly into the vast wilderness and went into hiding.

Since both the "wolf pack" and the "hyenas" are lurking in Marin County, then this new, even more frenzied group should lurk in Sonoma County.

Lawson gave them a new name – “Slutty Dogs”.

Hmm, the next gang will be called "Heavy Responsibility".

After the robbers left.

Arthur Jennings sat dejectedly at the accident scene, which was littered with corpses.

Like a dog whose spine has been removed.

They're all dead. More than twenty guards, all of them are dead.

He was the only one who survived.

He didn't know how to explain things to the company when he got back.

At best, he will be fired.

In severe cases, they might even be mistaken for accomplices of the robbers and brought to court.

The sound of horse hooves came from far away.

Five or six men on horseback, carrying oil lamps, arrived.

The leader was a middle-aged man.

“I am Sonoma County Sheriff Brody.”

He dismounted and looked at the hellish scene before him, his brows furrowing deeply: "God, what on earth is going on?"

"Sheriff?"

Jennings screamed as if he'd seen a savior: "Why are you only arriving now? The robbers are long gone!"

Sheriff Brody ignored his complaints and asked, "Did you see what the robbers looked like? How many were there?"

"They were all wearing masks! There were more than thirty of them!"

Jennings, panting, said, "But I can tell! That accent is Irish! It was those damned, drunken Irish bastards who did it!"

"The Irish?"

Sheriff Brody's brow furrowed even deeper.

The grocery store in town that was looted was also run by a group of thugs who spoke with Irish accents.

It seems they are the same group of people.

Damn it, when did such a lawless gang appear in Sonoma County?

Just then, the sound of horses' hooves came from the darkness again.

(End of this chapter)