"A runaway, you figure?"
The bulky shoulders were shrugged while the puzzled frown remained on the fleshy face of the bartender. "Mr. Flohr fears this. When he has told me to come to the law office and bring the sheriff, he takes a telescope up onto the roof of the depot building, Mr. Edge. The better to see the train that is coming so fast to town."
Linder was having to speak louder to make himself heard above the relentlessly rising volume of sound from the approaching locomotive—that masked the noise of everything else that was taking place outside the law office. Speeding wheels clattered along track, steam rushed from outlet valves, slipstream roared along the sides and over the top of the locomotive and in imagination it could seem possible to hear the crackle of the cordwood that was blazing in the firebox and even the straining of metal plates against their rivets as they were subjected to pressures they were not designed to withstand.
"Maybe while he's up there, Flohr will figure out a way to—"
"I can't hear what you're saying, Mr. Edge!" the bartender roared, but made no move to get closer to the cell in which the half-breed was imprisoned—instead felt the compelling need to leave the law office and see what inevitably was going to happen now that there was no sound of screeching brakes.
And he submitted to this overwhelming urge to satisfy his eager curiosity just as Edge said around the bobbing cigarette:
"Was remarking that the railroadman might get ideas above his station, feller."
It was a bad joke made at a bad time, but was heard by nobody. Just as there was no one in a position to see Edge's mirthless grin of exposed teeth and glittering eyes as he spoke the unheard words into the tumultuous barrage of sound that filled the Calendar night. To reach a crescendo of evil pandemonium over a period of stretched seconds, which subsided a great deal faster than it erupted and was followed by an enormous surrounding peace punctured at irregular intervals by sounds in isolation.
There was just the locomotive that had been repaired at the Calendar depot a few dark hours earlier. Minus the string of cars as it thundered back to town at a raging speed that placed it in danger of derailment over every yard of track as rails and ties and spikes and even rock bed beneath the permanent way vibrated. Threatened to bend, shift, fly free or collapse under the hurtling weight of what everybody in town now knew to be a runaway. This fact made patently evident as the engine came around the final curve of the track, left the moon-shadowed base of the south west facing cliff of Trio Bluff and started down the final straightaway to town. Fifty, sixty, seventy or maybe even a hundred miles an hour. It was impossible for anybody who saw the engine, smoke and steam streaming out behind, to guess at the speed it was making as it closed from the arrowhead shaped point of the bluff with the buffer of sand in a box at the end of the line.
Many watched, spellbound and seemingly rooted to the spot where they were at the moment they realized the engine was not going to halt. While others whirled from hurrying toward the depot to break into faster runs away from it. And a handful, seeing the danger without being fascinated by it, pulled at or shouted at those who were reluctant to move or were mesmerized.
The speed of the engine that suddenly looked much bigger than it was, could now be felt as well as seen and heard—the vibrations it created transmitted from track to street. And the ground and some of the buildings which stood on it trembled as if from the initial shock wave of an earthquake.
Then the cowcatcher hit the buffer and both—never constructed to withstand a fraction of such an impact—were destroyed in a part of a second. Pieces of splintered timber and shards of shattered metal hurled high into and through the air in a spray of exploded sand.
And the pace of the runaway at last was reduced. But only marginally at first, after the wheels had left the rails and were captured by a far harsher element of drag as the rims bit into the hard-packed dirt of the street.
Two of Calendar's citizens were dead by then, a man hit in the heart by a piece of metal that penetrated his flesh with the velocity but not the neatness of a bullet, and a woman who took a blow on the head with a length of wood hard enough to shatter her skull. Their screams of fear were immediately curtailed and they had no time to vent agony. More than a score of other people continued to utter their vocal responses to the horror of the runaway as, without exception now, they all raced to clear the path of the engine. Which maintained a high rate of speed as much by thrusting momentum as by the power of steam under pressure as its entire length and all eight wheels left the track. For twenty yards or so, the engine continued to run straight and if there had been time for them to consider it, the people who had angled to either side might have felt relief that they were safe.
But then the two pairs of leading wheels suddenly wrenched away from the straight. This as the engine roared across the front of the restaurant, trailing dust as well as smoke and steam now. And the engine veered to the left, visibly slowed by the switch from track to dirt—seemed on the point of smashing through the false front of the Cottonwood Saloon, perhaps to come to rest in the wreckage of what had once been the Linders' place or maybe to run itself to a standstill in the open country out back. But the wheels had turned too sharply, to demand that the engine take a curve that was impossible to achieve.
The damaged front of the engine clipped the far front corner of the saloon, crushing the too-terrified-to-move Otis Snyder who had been intent on plunging into the alley beside the place before the engine slowed to the side. The two wheels on the right side buckled under the weight of the reluctant-to-turn length of engine and the entire thing tilted in the direction of the buckled wheels—and the diagonally opposite rear one came clear of the ground. When, just for a moment, the drive wheels maintained traction before the forward thrust was transferred to the side and the engine's center of gravity changed. And it rolled. Onto its side, over on its back, on its other side and back up onto its wheels again. But only to go through the same destructive turn once more after the drive wheels, fed less power, failed to move the engine forward against the skewed around and buckled steering wheels.
This power was lessened because the fire box door had sprung open and flaming cordwood spilled out. Scalding water gushed from the boiler tank, too. And steam hissed from safety valves. Much that was vital to the running of the locomotive incapable of operating while it was rolled through a three hundred and sixty degree turn. Then another. And another. The engine going diagonally across the street from the saloon toward the church. Burning and scalding a woman and two men caught out in the open and unable to shelter from the downpour of flames and water. And setting fire to the roof of the bakery between the barber shop and the church.
The cacophony of sound was as loud as ever and was comprised of different combinations of noise now—of destruction rather than of speed as the stricken locomotive came finally to rest. Like some once-proud beast taken out of its element to be brutally slaughtered after putting up a valiant fight. It lay on its side, cabin outside the arched porchway of the church and crumpled smokestack pointed at the law office next door. The engine crackled and hissed and snorted and spat, for several moments almost totally hidden in the outpourings of its own vapors. Then it exploded.
Just as the cries of the injured, the screams of the terrified and the anger of those demanding an end to the bedlam started to be heard through the din, every other sound in the world was blotted from hearing or shocked into nonexistence by the massive roar of the engine blowing itself apart. Upwards and outwards the smoke and the flame billowed and leapt. Touching much but harming nobody. Scorching some building fronts was all. But an instant later, ragged pieces of metal plating and sheered off bolts, shards of glass and complete components were hurled through the suddenly hot, no longer clear night air. Amid fountain sprays of sparks. None of this going so far and wide as the fire and smoke, but spreading more damage.
The unambitious Bruno Linder was decapitated by a toothed whe
el that sliced through his flesh as he knelt beside a woman who had fainted. His head rolled to a halt at the front of the saloon before his blood gushing torso toppled to the ground. As the woman recovered only to be plunged back into unconsciousness by this new shock.
Flohr, still clutching his telescope, was almost cut in half by one of the stricken locomotive's drive wheels as he raced, trance-like, toward the explosion. And the wheel that had killed the railroadman continued to roll, slick with his blood, until it smashed through the doorway of the hotel.
Three other Calendar citizens were injured by flying debris and a number of buildings had windows blown out by blast. And the church was on fire, the blaze started by a vicious shower of sparks. While a few feet away, there was a jagged hole where the window and frame of the law office had been—caused by the torn free smokestack as it smashed from engine to building like a massive artillery shell.
The harsher and louder sounds of the train wreck and its havoc were diminished and voices, many of them calm, could be heard again through the crackle of flames consuming the church timbers and the clicking noises of hot metal cooling—plus the less strident screams and not so demanding moans of the injured and afraid. This as smoke from the fire at the church rolled and billowed across the street more thickly than had that from the locomotive a little earlier.
People ran from the places where they had taken shelter from the out-of-control engine to give help to the wounded and cover the dead. To begin to fight the fire and to find out if their near and dear ones not immediately seen were all right.
All this taking place out in the open while, inside the law offices, Edge struck a match on the rear wall of his cell and relit the part-smoked cigarette angled from a side of his mouth. Then rose from the cot rock steady on his feet as his heavily bristled face continued to be totally impassive. The ice cold glint in his narrowed eyes presenting the truth about the state of his feelings as he reached forward with an unshaking hand to push open the door of the cell. Stepped through and went to the closet in which he had seen Glenn Royale stow his gear. He took out just his Colt which he slid into the holster and his Winchester which he canted to his left shoulder.
He had to stoop to do this for the free standing closet had been toppled over and broken open. Just as Cy Meek's desk and the chair in front of and behind it had been knocked off their legs. But they had been crushed and splintered by the hurtling smokestack after it smashed in through the window and before it came to rest against the bars of the center cell. Had hit the bars with enough force to snap some and bend others. The damage severe at the point of impact and less so to either side. But the bending effect nonetheless transmitted across the entire width of the partition by horizontal bars. The distortion pronounced enough for the tongue of the lock to be drawn out of the bracket so that the half-breed had been able to swing open the door without need of a key.
It was not a way he would have chosen to set himself free for the smokestack might have crashed into and through the bars of his cell. And any one of the fragments of window glass that now crunched beneath his booted feet might have severed a vital artery. But in a situation such as this, it was never his way to concern himself with what might have been. There had been too many occasions when he could have been blown to bits, crushed to death or seen his life's blood pouring out of him. And if to escape death yet again was his lot, then he accepted it without pause for thought upon it. And took advantage of the bonus of freedom and the opportunity this provided for him to have some control over the outcome of his next run-in with violence.
Which he guessed would not be long in coming. But did not arrive with Glenn Royale as the young deputy appeared at the hole in the wall where the law office window had once been. To peer into the darkness of the no longer lamplit interior from an area spread with flickering light from the burning church.
"Mr. Edge?" he called tentatively.
"Guess your boss is going to be real mad about the mess in here, feller."
"Why, how—" Royale started, his voice shrill with startlement.
"The runaway train came around the hill instead of over it. But she sure as hell blew."
"Kid, we got the church and the bakery on fire!" Cy Meek bellowed from up the street. "Lend a hand here, why don't you!"
"But, sheriff—"
"He's either dead or he'll keep!" Meek cut in on the deputy.
"If he won't listen, he can't be told," Edge said. His voice calm, but the Winchester adding a tacit threat as he swung it down from his shoulder and across the front of his body, to take a two-handed grip on it. Not yet aimed at the unhandsome, no longer capable looking young lawman who remained undecided for a few moments more.
Then Royale rasped: "If I can't see nothin', I can't tell him nothin'."
"Much obliged," the half-breed said as the deputy turned and ran toward the fires and he moved forward, to swing a leg up and over what remained of the wall below what had once been the draped window. Brought his trailing leg over the same obstacle and then froze to the sound of a rifle shot and a shout.
A great many other people out on Calendar's only street were fleetingly held in unmoving attitudes by the twin sounds. Then heads were wrenched from side to side as the direction from which the unexpected shot and the accompanying shout had come was sought. Before almost everyone stared toward the northern end of the street. From where a man was running, his rifle held in a one-handed grip at arms length in the air with smoke still wisping from its muzzle. And in the silence, broken only by the crackle of flames, which had gradually settled over the town after the crack of the rifle shot, the running man's voice sounded with shocking clarity when he yelled: "Injuns! The Injuns! The Injuns are comin!”
Like everyone else in Calendar, Edge heard the frightened announcement. But he did not see the man who made it. And neither did the overweight Jason Spenser and the stockily built Eddie Marx. Who were watched in silence for long seconds by the half-breed as they hurried to harness the team to their wagon out back of the livery stable, some three hundred feet away from the rear of the law office and jail.
Edge covered two hundred and fifty of these feet in the moon shadow of the buildings, any sound he made masked by the chorus of raised voices out on the street. Then he paused, in moon shadow still and with questions and answers continuing to fill the night that was cold again out here beyond the reach of the flames. Waited until the two fast working salesmen had completed their chore and the florid-faced Marx moved around the front of the team to join the sad-eyed Spenser on this side of the garishly painted wagon.
When he went forward again, taking long strides, with the Winchester thrust out in front of him. Marx was already half up on to the footboard of the wagon and Spenser was rasping at him to hurry—when they both sensed danger. And the man on the ground started to swing around, reaching for a revolver that was pushed into the waistband of his suit pants at his belly. But the barrel of the half-breed's rifle clubbed him viciously across the side of the head and sent him into a reverse turn as he corkscrewed to the ground and vented a hissing sound of escaping breath.
This as Eddie Marx rasped an obscenity and reached with both hands for a rifle under the seat of the wagon. When Edge said:
"You heard the man, feller," and moved his Winchester in a bayoneting action this time-to smash the muzzle hard into the crotch of the hapless Marx. Who gasped and fell backwards off his insecure perch, empty hands clawing toward the source of his agony. And Edge swung away to the side as he used the rifle as a club again, but made contact with the stock against the side of this man's head while he was falling. So that Marx was unfeelingly unconscious as he slammed hard down beside his partner. "The Indians are coming and I'm starting to breath a little heavy," the half-breed added in a growling tone. "But without you there won't be any climax."
Chapter Eleven
MARX AND Spenser did not have rope as a stock in trade, but there was plenty of it in the livery and Edge used his
razor to cut as much as he needed from somebody's lariat. Then he cut this into three lengths and used two of these to lash the wrists of the unconscious men—behind their backs. The third and longest piece he used to link the prisoners together, by the wrists but with enough slack so that when they recovered they would be able to stand and to walk side by side.
All this took perhaps three minutes to achieve and while he was tying up the men the half-breed shot frequent glances about him— wary of being seen and even attacked by the local citizens rather than being concerned, right now, about the Arapaho. But only he moved stealthily out back of the buildings on the west side of Calender's one street. While the townspeople, calming and quieting down after an initial response that came close to panic, gravitated to the north end of the street. Beyond the wrecked locomotive and the blazing buildings—the fires that were consuming them no longer being fought with pails of water. So that the unchecked flames raged and roared, radiating a bright and constantly moving light that reached to and fell across the crowd of perhaps a hundred people gathered on the end of the street between the railroad depot and the row of railroad company houses.
People who, for some time may have been inclined to accuse the man who fired off his rifle and yelled the warning of seeing nothing more substantial than shadows out at Trio Bluff. But nobody did, for it had been realized that the locomotive which caused such terror, death and destruction had hurtled off the end of the track and into Calendar without a driver on the footplate. So had not been accidentally wrecked by somebody in a desperate attempt to warn the townspeople of an Arapaho attack.
Instead, the engine had been started toward town with a full head of steam and a roaring firebox with the deliberate intention of causing as much damage as possible. This as the initial blow of an Indian attack. But one that was not going to be started immediately, it soon became apparent.
But there was definitely activity out there under cover of the moon shadow from the south west facing side of the bluff. Just beyond the point where the railroad track curved and was lost to sight in the same area of darkness.
Edge: Arapaho Revenge Page 11