Bear Claws

by Robert Lee Murphy

  “Wait.” Will followed him. “I’ll help.”

  “How?” The Chinese youth kept walking.

  “I can carry tea. The men will be extra thirsty when they finally get their break. I was in your way. I caused the problem.”

  “Problem caused by big Mac, not you.”

  “But I want to help.”

  The Chinese youth stopped and turned abruptly. Will had to duck to keep from being leveled by the swinging pole and the bucket.

  Will threw up his hands. “Whoa. You don’t have to knock me down just because I caused you to fall.”

  A grin creased the Chinese youth’s lips. He bowed again. “Apologies.”

  “Apology accepted. Now can I help? My name’s Will Braddock, by the way.”

  “Chung Huang.” The youth bowed slightly. “Come.” He turned and led Will up the narrow path through the snow.

  They circled the large wooden maintenance facility and disappeared into a snow tunnel. Chung Huang didn’t say anything as he led Will deeper into a maze hollowed out beneath the drifts. Small shacks lined each side of a wide pathway carved through the packed snow. Each shack was set back into the snowbank. Dim light filtered through a roof of snow that over-arched the pathway from bank to bank.

  Chung Huang opened a door into one of the shacks and stepped inside. He laid his pole and buckets on the wooden floor beside a potbellied stove standing in the center of the room. A metal stovepipe passed upward through the roof of the structure. Will surmised it penetrated on through the snow above. Along the walls Will counted eight sets of double bunks. Even though water dripped from the wooden ceiling, the hut was warm.

  An elderly man, the only other occupant, stirred a pot on the stove.

  Chung Huang bowed to the older man. “Prease to present, Will Braddock.”

  The old man nodded to Will.

  “Hsi Wang is cook for our gang,” Chung Huang said.

  “How do you do,” Will said. He didn’t know whether or not to shake hands.

  Hsi Wang nodded again and continued stirring the pot.

  “Each gang has its own hut?” Will ask.

  “Yes. Cholly Clocka pays head man wages for gang each week. Head man gives money to cook for food, then pays gang members from what is left.”

  On the stove next to the pot containing the food, a pot of tea boiled. Chung Huang scooped the tea into his barrels with a ladle.

  “This is a very confining, gloomy place to live,” Will said. The only light in the hut came from candles and the glow from the stove.

  Chung Huang shrugged. “Snow gone soon. Then nice.”

  “Do you get any time off?”

  “Sunday.”

  “And what do you do on Sunday?”

  “Read books.”

  “Read books?”

  “Yes, read on Sunday. Old men smoke opium. Me . . . no. Don’t like it.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  Chung Huang filled one bucket with steaming tea and started on the second. “Me . . . long time. I join gang last summer.”

  “Did you come from China?”

  “No. San Francisco. I send money to my auntie.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Chung Huang completed filling the second bucket and stooped to lift the pole. Will bent to help.

  “No, my job,” the Chinese youth said. “You bring cup.”

  Will took the tin cup Chung Huang lifted from his belt and handed it to him.

  They returned to the snowbank where Chung Huang served tea to the shovelers. Will couldn’t imagine the tea being hot by the time they’d walked back through the cold weather with it, but the workers smacked their lips with pleasure as they sipped the lukewarm beverage. The Irish supervisor MacNamara stood to one side, slapping his whip against his boot and sipping from a pocket flask. Whiskey no doubt. He glared at Will and Chung Huang. Will stared back.

  Strobridge had commented on the train ride this morning about another benefit of using Chinese workers. They stayed healthier by drinking tea instead of the creek water that the Irish consumed. Boiling the tea water killed the germs that plagued those who consumed untreated water.

  “Break’s over!” MacNamara shouted. “Back to work!”

  Chung Huang picked up his pole and empty buckets and headed back toward the snow tunnel. Will followed.

  Whoom!

  An explosion shook the ground beneath Will’s feet. Looking up, he watched a cloud of snow erupt skyward, then float back down, above the location of Summit Tunnel.

  Chung Huang pointed up the slope, beyond the maintenance facility. A thin column of black smoke hung in the air, beside a small shack nestled amidst a rocky formation. “Nitroglycerin,” he said.

  “Nitroglycerin?” Will looked at his companion.

  Chung Huang nodded. “Shack belongs to chemist, James Howden. My cousin works there as his assistant making nitroglycerin.”

  A muffled pistol shot caused Will to look back toward the shack.

  “May be problem there,” Chung Huang said. “Shot came from inside shack.”

  “Let’s go see,” Will said.

  Chung Huang dropped his pole and raced past the maintenance building.

  Will chased after him. Behind the building a winding path climbed toward the shack. Will, the faster climber, reached the plateau ahead of Chung Huang, just as the door of the shack flew open. A short man stepped through the doorway, saddlebags in one hand and a pistol in the other. He looked directly at Will with eyes partially concealed beneath the brim of a bowler hat. A scar ran down his left cheek. Paddy O’Hannigan!

  CHAPTER 23

  Paddy had arrived in Truckee the day before. He’d avoided the railroad yards in the bustling new town. He had business with the Central Pacific, but nothing he intended to pay for, and not in Truckee. It made sense not to let anyone connected with the railroad get a good look at him.

  He hitched a ride with an old Irish teamster heading back up the wagon road to Donner Summit. Even though the railroad tracks were now connected through to Truckee, the CP was not yet offering regular service. Most freight still moved across the Sierras by wagon, just as the teamsters had done it for twenty years hauling supplies to the silver mines in Nevada, and more recently construction materials for the railroad.

  The teamster had been glad for the company and hadn’t charged Paddy anything. He’d told Paddy it was a pleasure to talk with someone on the slow, steep climb—someone who understood the tribulations of a fellow immigrant from the Emerald Isle.

  The climb from Donner Lake to Donner Pass took the better part of the day. The road snaked back and forth through one hairpin curve after another. Snowdrifts lined the road in those places except where the shear drop precluded the snow’s accumulation.

  The teamster told Paddy he’d hauled supplies for the CP from the very beginning. He claimed his team of mules knew the road so well they didn’t need a skinner. But he fussed at them all the way anyway. “Up Charlie! Up Elmer! Git a move on thar! Not too close that cliff’s edge, mind you. Up, I say! Pull!”

  Paddy sliced an end off his tobacco plug with his Bowie knife. He grinned when he saw the driver examining the knife out of the corner of his eye. He chewed his tobacco wad, spitting off to the side of the wagon from time to time, and let the old man do most of the talking. Paddy extracted the information he needed about his destination by pretending to be fascinated with the experiences the old man related about the construction work on the railroad while he’d driven his rig alongside the route of the tracks over the years.

  “Well now, you say they used nitroglycerin to blast them tunnels up yonder,” Paddy said. He pointed across the steep slope that rose above the wagon road to where the tracks wound around the mountainside.

  “Yep. They stopped me up here at the summit more than once. Held me there, they did, until they finished their blasting and all the rubble rolled down the mountainside. Good thing, too. Ever once in a while them rocks landed on the wagon road. Bee
n kilt for sure.”

  “That nitro’s dangerous, I understand.”

  “Well, I aim to tell ya it is. They keep it stashed away from the tracks in a separate shack. Thataway I ’spose if it blows up, wouldn’t be too many folks hurt.”

  “But that shack couldn’t be too far away, or they couldn’t get to it without a lot of bother.”

  “Oh, the shack where they mix the stuff sits on a rocky outcrop right above the Summit Pass tunnel.”

  Paddy parted ways with the teamster at the top of the pass. He waved goodbye to the talkative old driver and watched the wagon roll away down the road. “Sure, and I thank ye, old timer,” he muttered. “Ye made my job a lot easier, and that’s for certain.”

  Paddy traveled light. He only carried a pair of saddlebags. What few personal belongings he owned were stashed in the bottom of one pocket. The other pocket was empty.

  He stepped off the road and found concealment in a thick stand of fir trees. He shivered in the cold air of Donner Pass, even though morning sunlight bounced off the snowbanks. Only a light breeze blew across the summit. He wouldn’t want to be up here in bad weather. Wagons and groups of riders on horseback passed along the road at irregular intervals. Finally, he saw what he needed. A solitary rider approached.

  Paddy spit out his tobacco chaw, making a dirty brown scar in the snow. He drew his revolver, stepped out of the trees in front of the rider, and pointed the pistol at the man’s chest. “Hold it,” he said. “Get down. Slow and easy like, don’t ye know. And keep yer hands up.”

  The rider stepped from the saddle and raised his hands. He wore a heavy wool coat. If he were armed, the weapon would be beneath the coat’s long tail. It wouldn’t be easy for him to reach it.

  “Lead that horse over into them trees,” Paddy said. He followed the rider. “Sure, and that’s far enough. Don’t turn around.”

  “You can have the horse,” the man said. “Just don’t shoot me.”

  “Sure, and I’ll have the horse.” Paddy hit the man hard over the head with his pistol butt. “And I’ll have whatever money ye’ve got on ye, and that nice warm coat, too.”

  After leaving the knocked-out rider concealed in the trees, it took Paddy only a few minutes to find the explosives shed exactly where the teamster told him it would be. The stiff winds that regularly blew across the summit scoured most of the snow away, providing a decent path for riding. Paddy guided the stolen horse up to the side of the shack and dismounted. He lifted the saddlebags off the horse’s rump and stepped around to the front of the building. He drew his revolver and opened the single door.

  A diminutive Chinaman, dressed in a blue jacket and trousers, looked up when Paddy stepped inside. Paddy motioned with the pistol for the man to raise his hands. The Chinaman was alone in the tiny structure. A workbench extended the length of one wall. Glass bottles of various sizes lined shelves above the workbench. Three large barrels stood along the opposite wall.

  “Speak English?” Paddy asked.

  The Chinaman nodded. “Yes.”

  “James Howden . . . the chemist. He here?”

  The Chinaman shook his head. “Gone to Sacramento.”

  “This the nitroglycerin shack?”

  The Chinaman’s pigtail bobbed when he nodded again.

  “Sure, and yer gonna show me how to mix the chemicals to make nitroglycerin. Understand?”

  Another nod.

  “Well get to it! Mix a sample in that little bottle there so’s I can see if it works.” Paddy pointed his revolver at the smallest bottle on the shelf.

  The Chinaman took a glass beaker to the barrel labeled nitric acid and measured liquid from it. He returned to the workbench and poured the acid into the small bottle. It smelled and looked like strong horse urine.

  The Chinaman brought a beaker of sulfuric acid from the second barrel and added an equal amount of it to the bottle. Paddy snorted. This stuff stunk of rotten eggs.

  From the third barrel the man brought back glycerin. He poured the thick glycerin slowly into the bottle. Paddy hoped the Chinaman knew what he was doing.

  The Chinaman sealed the bottle with a cork, rocked it back and forth gently, and set it on the workbench. The three chemicals combined, coating the interior of the glass with an oily, yellow film.

  Paddy noted the quantities of each chemical the Chinaman had measured. Now he knew how to mix nitroglycerin. At least, he thought he did.

  “Test it,” Paddy said. He waved to the open door with his pistol.

  “What?”

  “Throw it out there. Let’s see if it explodes.”

  The Chinaman carried the bottle to the open door and threw it far down the slope.

  Whoom!

  The explosion shook the tiny shack. The snow pack where the bottle landed erupted in a powdery cloud. A thin column of black smoke rose from the site.

  “Sure, and that’s the stuff all right.” Paddy smiled. “Now put some of each chemical in separate bottles and seal them.” He pointed to larger bottles.

  The Chinaman filled the three large bottles, pushed a cork into each, and sealed them with paraffin wax. Paddy wrapped the bottles with his spare clothes and placed them in the saddlebags.

  The explosion would have alerted the workers in and around the maintenance facility. Maybe they would think it was just an accident, or a test. But, no use taking a chance on the Chinaman sounding an alarm. Paddy shot him in the thigh.

  “Agh!” The man doubled over and grasped his wound. Paddy whacked him over the skull with the pistol barrel. The Chinaman crumpled.

  Paddy stepped outside and froze. A man ran up the slope toward him.

  Will Braddock!

  CHAPTER 24

  When Will saw Paddy raise the pistol and cock the hammer, he dove behind a large rock outcropping. Paddy fired. The bullet ricocheted off a boulder, showering Will with slivers of granite. Will scooted farther down the slope, deeper into the jumble of rocks. A second bullet zinged past his head and buried itself into a snowbank, with a swish.

  Chung Huang reached the plateau and dove into the rocks alongside Will. When he landed, his broad-brimmed straw hat fell down his back. The chin strap kept him from losing it.

  “Giddup!”

  Will heard Paddy’s shout and eased his head above the rocks in time to see the Irishman slap his horse’s flanks with the reins and disappear around the back of the shack. Paddy came back into view above the shack, riding up the slope toward the trees. The snowdrifts were less deep on the windswept summit, which would give Paddy a good start, but when he reached the deeper drifts at the tree line, he would have to slow down.

  “Come on,” Will said. He raced toward the shack. Chung Huang pulled his hat up and followed.

  They stepped into the small explosives building. The chemist’s assistant lay on the floor. Blood soaked the man’s trouser leg. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow.

  “No!” Chung Huang dropped to the floor. “Cousin Ming, speak to me.”

  Will grabbed a rag from the counter and handed it to Chung. “Press this onto the wound to stop the bleeding. I’m going after Paddy.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes, I know him.”

  Will drew his pistol from its flapped holster. He quickly checked the loading in each cylinder and the seating of each percussion cap. “You stay with your cousin. Help will be here soon.”

  As Will stepped through the open door, he saw groups of workers struggling up the slope through the snow. He slipped along the side of the shack and peered behind it. Paddy, approaching the tree line, paused before riding beneath the cedar trees, raised his pistol, and fired at Will. The bullet flew high, thumping into the wooden-walled shack above Will’s head.

  “Humph.” Will snorted. Paddy can’t shoot. That’s good.

  Will raised his revolver, braced his forearm against the edge of the shack with his free hand, took aim, and fired at Paddy.

  Paddy’s bowler hat flew off his head. He turned back a
nd fired another shot at Will. This shot flew wide of the shack. Paddy kicked the horse in the flank and disappeared into the trees. Will raced across the rocky summit past an air vent that he suspected was the one connected to the central opening that extended down through the solid granite into Summit Tunnel, a hundred feet beneath him.

  Will stopped at the tree line. Paddy’s path led farther up the mountain through the deep snow. Will would have the big trees to hide behind if Paddy should fire at him again. But could Will catch the Irishman on foot? He might, if he had Otto’s snowshoes. But he didn’t.

  Ahead of him, Will heard Paddy urge his horse forward. Why was Paddy struggling through the snow in the forest? Riding down the wagon road would have been easier.

  Then it dawned on Will. It would be a simple matter for the CP officials to telegraph down to Truckee and set a posse out to catch Paddy when he got down to Donner Lake. Paddy was up to no good and knew he’d have to evade capture. But what was he doing here in the first place? And what might it mean for the Union Pacific?

  The deep snow soon soaked Will’s trousers and filtered into his boots. His feet grew colder. On foot he wasn’t going to catch Paddy.

  “Whew.” Will blew out his breath. A cloud of steam hung in the frigid air in front of his face. He jammed his revolver into his holster and turned back.

  Will reached the explosives shack just as two Chinese workers carried Chung Huang’s cousin out of it on a stretcher. They crossed the snow field and headed down the slope toward the tracks.

  Chung Huang stepped out of the shed and raised his eyebrows at Will.

  Will shook his head. “Snow’s too deep. I couldn’t keep up with the horse.”

  Chung Huang nodded.

  “How’s your cousin?”

  “Flesh wound.”

  “Passed clean through?”

  “Yes,” Chung Huang said.

  “He’ll be fine then. I know.” Will unconsciously rubbed his left bicep where the wound from the arrow still throbbed when he thought about it.

  “Also, has bad lump on head,” Chung Huang said. “Ming say man hit him with gun after shooting him.”