by Tim Marquitz
Jasmine nodded. “I’ll get it.”
“Thanks.” Nina’s shoulders slumped as she worked to catch her breath, feeling grateful for just a moment’s rest, but worried all the same.
“You okay?” Pa asked.
She nodded, and her father squeezed her shoulder, leaving his hand there while Jasmine carried the coal across the cabin. Pa sat her on the lip of the bed where she and Manning had been snuggled warm and safe not so long ago.
“Catch your breath, Nina girl. You done good.” He gave her shoulder a last rub then limped off toward the far end of the car.
Nina pulled her hat off and looked at it. The thing was as beaten and full of holes as she felt. She laid it down beside her and tried to still her mind for a bit.
Something tugged on her shirt and she opened her eyes, not realizing she’d had them shut. Rachel Buell held out a damp rag. Nina took a long look at the girl. Wide-set eyes sat above a long, straight nose. She was pretty. Spitting image of her mother, Clara, who’d died gruesomely—but died fighting.
Nina nodded. “Thank you.”
The girl returned the nod. Nina wondered at the overwhelming sadness, confusion, and anger that would come to her later, out of the clear blue, when the full weight of losing both parents would hit like a rock to the head. She wanted to hug Rachel, but what had any of Pa's hugs done for her after her own mother's death?
Only prove you were loved, she thought. That someone actually cared.
Nina started to reached for Rachel, but she’d already turned away, pulling up her torn skirts and sticking fast to Jasmine's heels as though she were the black prostitute’s shadow. Nina regretted the missed opportunity, then wiped the rag across her stinging neck. She needed to stop thinking of Jasmine as some mere soiled dove. The woman had proven to be much more than that.
She scrubbed at her neck a tad vigorously. She was damn annoyed with Liao Xu; that much was sure, and she decided it wasn’t yet time to take it easy. She tossed the dirt-soiled rag on the bed, took up her hat, and followed them to the armored car.
Inside, she stopped near the gun turret to look at George Daggett’s dirt-crusted boots, then glanced up at the scalawag. Even in the wan light she could see his screw-mouth curl beneath his brambly mustache, as well as the lump on his cheek from Manning having laid into him back in the tunnels beneath Fort Bluff. George looked down at her, but there was no mistaking the distant stare that seemed to look someplace beyond—beyond her, beyond everything.
“Like fuckin' Cumberland. We’s fuckin’ biting bullets from Billy Yank all day. They kept comin’ at us and comin’…” He chuckled, face smoothing as he made a connection. “Mahone wasn’t about to give up that hill, though. Hell no. He said, ‘Today we stand…today we stand.’ So we dug in round this big regal church. Mase, he was off on one of his special missions, so the fellers started looking to me. Goddamn, that was some fightin’. Hey, you think the Black Robe, you think maybe he’s our church?”
“What?” Nina wasn’t quite following George’s rambling.
“The priest. Mathias. Maybe we need to dig in ‘round him and fight these bastards off.”
“Might be something to that.” Then Nina headed out to the back deck and the rear of the train where Father Mathias and Pa watched Red Thunder string together some salvaged blast balls made by the erstwhile Lester “Woodie” Woodruff. She noted how he was braiding the wicks all together, reminding her of a makeshift boleadoras like gauchos used when running cattle.
The priest looked over as she stepped onto the deck. “And not without some small sacrifice, it seems,” he said.
“I reckon I got pecked a bit. What's going on here?”
“Lincoln tells us there's another bridge coming up. We're going to remove the option of pursuit for Liao Xu’s monstrosity.”
“Gonna blow it up,” Pa said, shrugging on a threadbare, bloodstained overcoat.
Nina glared up the tracks at said monstrosity. It had taken the straightaway like an iron stallion, pistons and rods churning in frantic rage, billowing exhaust like a dark cape, blacker than night. It couldn’t be more than a couple miles distant, maybe less. “How long you think we've got?”
“We'll get our chance well before that thing gets to us.” Pa's foot had taken to healing well, and he was mobile enough, able to put a decent amount of weight on it. According to Pa and Father Mathias—neither of them doctors—it wasn’t broken. “I’ve had a heap worse than this. Just came at a wretched time is all,” Pa had told her once they’d boarded the train and had a chance to look everyone over. Still, she hated to see him traipsing around on it, acting like it was right as rain.
“Why don't you get inside, Pa. Give your foot a rest?”
“My foot is right as rain, thank you.”
“Then at least sit down.”
“Your daughter’s right, Lincoln,” Mathias said. “No need to push yourself. ‘I pray that all may go well with you, and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.’ The Book of John.”
“Never could argufy the words of the Evangelist,” her pa said, but she could tell it was grousingly, though he hid it well enough.
Jasmine retrieved a folded blanket from one of the bunks, and Pa sat against the door frame, removed his boot and rested his foot on it. To Nina it still looked god-awful.
Red Thunder sat on the deck cross-legged and seemed to meditate, and everyone was quiet for a spell. Jasmine and Rachel sat just on the other side of the car door, while the priest and Pa quietly watched the pursuing train. Nina couldn't take her eyes off the murderous thing, either. Just the sight of it filled her heart with dread. She turned and put her back to the railing.
“Up yonder near side is Dog Hill Summit,” Pa said, breaking the silence and cocking his head northwards at the dark outline of a mountain. “At the rate we're going, should be about twenty-some-odd-minutes till we hit the next bridge. Made a couple runs up and down Dutch Flat when the rail line was just gathering wool.”
“I take it you’ve been around the Sierra a long while?” Mathias asked.
“Oh, yes. Yes, I have, all the way up through Fur Country. After my long engagement with the HBC I was what they called an avant courier.”
“We call your kind ‘dog face,’” Red Thunder said without opening his eyes.
“I’ve heard that a time or two. Better than being called ‘dog meat,’ I suppose.”
“Why dog face?” Jasmine asked, leaning through the doorway.
Pa smiled at her and ran his fingers through his scruffy brown and gray beard.
“Can we outrun it?” Nina asked. “Liao’s train?”
“Well…we'll need to slow down near Crystal Peak. Strobridge has to know that. If we can't derail Liao, that's where he’ll catch us.”
Nina crossed her arms, resisting the urge to turn and look.
Mathias raised his hands, still regal even with his sprung collar and mess of chestnut hair flung out like an exploded cactus. “Have faith, good people. Believe that this will work. Nina's expedition into the coal mound will not have been in vain.”
“I'd love that to be true, Father,” said Pa.
“It can be true.” Mathias took the gilded key from his coat pocket and rubbed it between his thumb and index finger.
Red Thunder opened his eyes and looked over, but it was Jasmine, still sitting just inside the armored car’s threshold, who spoke up. “What does that open?”
“I’ve heard some of you refer to this as the Taiping Jing. You would be mistaken; however, it does open the Taiping Jing’s reliquary…well, a small vault actually in Lake’s Crossing.”
“They renamed that place,” said Pa.
“Indeed, after the hero of the Mexican War, the gallant soldier’s soldier, General Reno. I studied his exploits at the Battle for Mexico City and also Chapultepec—”
“Sorry, Father,” Pa interrupted. “You can indulge us with a history lesson later. I thought Strobridge was supposed to give you the Ta
iping Jing, not some key.”
“That’s the deal I heard,” Nina added.
“That's correct, but deals are often fleeting things, hardly fair, stretched thin by time and circumstance. I was happy to at least procure this.” He waved the key, lantern light glinting off its surface.
The nightmare train blew its hellish whistle, and drew Nina’s eyes from the key. Her mouth went dry, and she patted her head and neck to keep her hands busy. On a more practical note, the birds had done less damage than she thought. Lots of nicks and cuts—her scalp was sore to the touch in spots—but she'd live.
“Was it the cross or the key that chased off them birds?” Nina said, confused. “I mean, if that ain’t the Taiping Jing—”
“This is simply an instrument of the Taiping Jing, a linked artifact, if you will, with considerable power of its own. Both this key and the Taiping Jing are tools of peace and balance, forever linked.”
“Peace? So, why is Liao Xu dead set on them? What can he do with ’em?”
Father Mathias raised his finger. “He can do absolutely nothing with them, but as long as someone with great faith and a good heart wields the relics, Liao can be countered. That is the heart of his desire for the Taiping Jing. Were he to possess it, he would be unstoppable.”
The whistle blew at them again; a high, plaintive wooo...WOO...wooo that trailed off in hot frustration. This time they all turned. The nightmare train chugged beneath the uncovered moonlight, rounding a bend and charging between two hills, red furnace glow beneath as though it ran on the fires of Hell itself. Nina swore the cylindrical body and frame twisted on the tracks, bulging, as if something inside strained against its mechanical confines.
Rachel stepped out onto the deck, wearing one of the woolen Army blankets around her shoulders. Her long hair whipped into her face. “What's it gonna do when it catches up?” she whispered, staring.
Father Mathias shrugged. “If we are caught, all you can do is pray, little sister. Liao Xu is known for his excessive cruelty.”
Rachel swallowed hard, the sound audible despite the noise.
The priest bestowed an awkward smile. “It may not console you much, but I’m certain he'll save the worst for me.”
Jasmine cut in, “I think we all prefer it when you tell us to have faith.”
They spent the next few minutes in silence, each one lost in their own musing, when the Magpie whistled three fat blats, as if taunting the oncoming juggernaut. Mathias chuckled as the sound of their running changed to a high-pitched hum. Land fell away and the pre-dawn glow off the horizon left them gazing out over a valley floor covered with trees. Even safely on the crowded deck, shoulder-to-shoulder with the others, Nina went cold. She'd never been keen on heights and pretty much shied away from the taller climbs her father fearlessly traversed. She took a step back and bumped into her pa as he stood up. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady himself.
“Here we go,” he said, pulling on his boot, then he nodded toward the bridge. “Time to blow these tracks. Clear the deck, folks.” He gave Nina’s shoulder a pat and hitched his head toward the inside of the car.
Red Thunder lifted the blast balls, mindful not to crack their clay skins against the metal guardrail. Without Woodie, no one knew how volatile his concoctions were, although Nina kind of wondered what it mattered if Red was going to toss them on the rails anyway. Still, she took a deep breath and moved back, following Jasmine and Rachel back inside the car. There was nothing left to do but trust things would work.
She sat down between Rachel and Jasmine, not wanting to engage George up in the turret again despite him yelling down if they were gonna blow the damn bridge or not. She ignored him. Talking to George Daggett made her feel more like to clout him in the beezer than have a conversation with his ornery ass.
She stared through the open door at the cluster of men on the deck, watched as Father Mathias lit the wick. Pa hobbled inside the car to join them. “You might want to back up.”
They all scooted, sticking fingers in their ears. Jasmine and Rachel both closed their eyes, but Nina couldn't resist watching. Red Thunder hung out over the rail and lowered the delicate contraption of clay-shell explosives. In a swooping motion, he tossed them high and hit the deck.
Nina rose up just in time to see the balls bounce, roll, and swing between the tracks before they shattered and went off. The train rumbled and shuddered. Pa yanked Nina down and a piece of shrapnel whizzed through the door, pinging off the wall behind her.
“I taught you better than that!” he grit his teeth at her.
“Sorry, Pa.”
After the explosions died down, they filed out to the deck to check the damage. Red Thunder and Father Mathias rolled over, watching pieces of bridge dangle and fall away into the darkness below. A huge section swayed and tumbled down, leaving an immense gap in the ties.
No way could a train pass over that.
They'd beaten Liao Xu a second time! But the relief that washed over Nina was short-lived. The bridge shuddered, and then again for good measure, threatening to shrug the Magpie off its iron-laden shoulders, as well.
Nina exchanged a terrified look with Jasmine. The tracks leaned slightly one way, then worked back the other, implying the possibility of a sickening free fall, before settling back into its wooden frame. They rolled onto solid land again with a shudder, and Nina breathed a sigh of relief.
“Yeah!” Pa shouted, pumping his fist in the air.
Jasmine joined him with a whoop of her own while Nina helped Father Mathias up and received a brief hug and some words in her ear. “A little faith, my daughter.”
“George,” Pa called. “Go tell those fellas up front we did it. Tell 'em they can set a proper speed.”
Nina expected some kind of retort, but George just dropped down the short ladder, whooped “hot damn,” and hurried through the train car door.
“What now?” Rachel asked.
“Now we wait.”
Nina stood at the doorway, watching behind them and counting the moments as they made their getaway through the early morning hours. They rounded a shallow bend and took a path between two walls of solid granite. The sun was aching to poke its head up, and the dawning hues of copper and lavender bathed the high rock in subdued shafts of shadow and soft light.
Her stomach rumbled, but she closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the mountain air, ruined somewhat by the tinge of smoke and steel. She imagined James covered in coal dust by now, sweating dirty trickles down his lean body. It was a sad fact they'd only had a few hours to spend together. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with James Manning given a half hour more of privacy—and reckoned he felt the same way, given his stiff posture during their brief respite.
Another belly grumble interrupted the thought, and her mind wandered away and found instead a lump of fear in her breast. She wanted to believe they'd escaped Liao by destroying the tracks, but her gut told her something else for some reason, chasing away any last trace of pleasant thoughts. While everyone else had come inside to feel all lighthearted and victorious, she looked at Red Thunder’s back and his whipping hair as he stayed at the rail, looking behind them as if he suspected the same.
“What if it somehow made it across?” Nina asked.
The Nez Perce answered after a short pause. “A dark spirit that powerful…”
Pa came up behind her. He cast a worried glance up the tracks. “We've seen some strange things lately and that’s a fact. I hope you’re both wrong.”
Father Mathias had been sitting on a sideboard bench, leaning forward with his rosary in his hands. He looked up, his eyes dark and serious. “In addition to being excessively cruel, Liao is also exceedingly crafty.”
“Best not count our chickens then,” said Pa.
“How long have you known him?” Rachel's eyes were wide with wonder, asking a question Nina figured had been on everyone’s mind. What precisely was the account between these two mystery men who could work miracles bo
th astonishing and villainous?
Father Mathias lowered his head, and a shock of hair fell over his eyes. “We go back well before you were born, young lady. I'm told Liao Xu came out of nowhere, a spot of darkness that took our order by storm. He murdered three of my brethren before a formidable defense could be mounted. He was so very good with fire and light. An attempt to recruit him was made. The offerer was found hanged upside down from Palmer’s Cross on the slopes of El Ávila, disemboweled, his abdomen splayed open, his male organ in his own...” The Black Robe priest looked at the floor with a weak smile. “That was in the Year of our Lord Sixteen Hundred and Sixty-Seven.”
Rachel gulped. Jasmine looked horrified. Pa’s eyes narrowed in either disbelief or disgust, Nina wasn’t certain.
She had no idea where in Tarnation that was, but her mind grasped at the date, unable to imagine the truth of such a span of time. “You’re telling us that loony bastard is over two hundred years old?”
“I am telling you that.”
Everyone remained silent after that, waiting for the big train to appear—or not. Nina kept her eyes on the mountainous gap as it grew more distant. Their engine had slowed noticeably as they entered a long, slow bend.
Funny how she'd gotten used to the locomotive's mannerism in the short time they'd been aboard. The sounds beneath the whistles and chugs: the throttle valve and cylinders, the running gear, the brakes, all working in steam-compressed conjunction to keep their iron horsey on the rails. And even more of a demonstration now that Strobridge was furiously working her. She flashed to a memory of his thrusting hips and grinning face as he plowed away at Jasmine’s derrière back in the well room at Fort Bluff.
Nina forced the unpleasant thought away, looking at a low tangle of dense forest and brush as it ran north-eastward, breaking away from the Truckee River.
“Crystal Peak,” Pa said, nodding toward the mountain.
Nina and Father Mathias followed that nod as her pa continued, “We’re good and deep into Desolation Country. We'll cross under Crystal Range,” he swept his left arm out, “and the Truckee passes above, to the north, meets again just east of the peaks there. And then we’re bound for Reno. I figure we hold out another hour or two, should be free and clear.”