Hell on Wheels (A Fargo Western #15)

by John Benteen

  The gun’s report was lost in the thunder of the locomotive. So was the roar of Fargo’s Winchester as, holding on with left hand, he worked its lever, aimed and fired with his right, poking the rifle around the corner of the locomotive’s boiler. He felt searing heat this close to the jacket of the engine, and he heard two more bullets ring off of steel. But he himself hosed four in the direction of the hidden gunman, almost as fast as machine gun fire, snapping the gun back and forth with his hand through the lever, then jerking it to his shoulder. He had no hope of hitting, but his fusillade was enough to make the hidden gunman up there on the ridge jerk his head down. And then the train was pounding past; inside the cab, Whitmore had not even noticed, and he never slowed. Fargo clung to the step, sweating despite the wind washing over him. He’d never make a run on a cowcatcher again. A man’s body, against that circle of black iron, was too damned much like the bulls-eye of a target. And, of course, if the gunman had scored, there wouldn’t have been enough of him left to find a bullet hole in. After the wheels had minced him, everyone would have concluded that he simply lost his grip and fell off.

  Then, at last, they had pulled into Felspar. The train rolled to a stop as a brakeman jumped off and threw a switch to shunt them on to a sidetrack to the smelter. Fargo, too, swung off the cowcatcher and climbed up into the cab. He’d ride the rest of the way inside.

  ~*~

  The day’s runs were over, the locomotives parked inside the train shed, being serviced and inspected by Whitmore’s crews, under the supervision of Whitmore himself. Fargo, always curious, eager to learn, tagged along, admiring the thorough way in which every valve and bearing was checked, wiped down, oiled, packed where needed.

  The shed was an enormous wooden building, with spurs fanning off the main track for the parking of locomotives, wrecker and snowplow. There were repair facilities with cranes, coal dump and water tower: all in all, combined with the track, a tremendous investment. No wonder Whitmore was in debt up to his eyeballs, needing every dollar he could make. Railroading, even short line railroading, Fargo saw, was something no one entered on the cheap. He could imagine what a financial blow the loss of a whole train and the repairing of the tunnel had been to Whitmore. When you had all this to finance, plus a payroll of twelve men …

  In Whitmore’s office, after everyone had gone, Fargo poured himself another drink of bourbon. “Like I was saying, Neal,” Whitmore went on, “just about everybody can do everybody else’s job, except run a locomotive. For that, there’s only me and Tom Gitlin. With the tight schedule we operate on, I give everybody some time on the road, some time in the shop, except me and Tom. We’re both on the throttle all day long.”

  Fargo nodded. He had sized up all of Whitmore’s men today, and they stacked up high. Men, he judged, to ride the river with—or the high iron. Still, appearances were deceiving and there was no point in taking chances. “That’s a good idea, Will. You got a work schedule posted somewhere?”

  “Sure. On the wall out yonder.”

  “Tear it down,” Fargo said.

  “What?” Will Whitmore stared at him.

  “I said, tear it down. Keep on shuffling crews. But from now on, make sure nobody knows what job he’s got that day until half an hour before work starts. Fifteen minutes if you can cut it that close.”

  “Fargo, I can’t do that. These men have got to plan—”

  “So have you,” said Fargo. “All right, Will, they’re all good men. You trust ’em every one. Well, I’ve known men that felt the same way about their wives when everybody else in town was laughin’ at ’em. You see what I mean?”

  Whitmore’s brows went up. “You think one of my own men might sell me out, sabotage my rolling stock?”

  “I don’t think anything,” Fargo said. “All I know is this: if a man never knows which train he’ll be on when, he’s not gonna do anything to cause that train to wreck. Because he’ll never know if it’s his own neck he’s riskin’ or not. It’ll keep ’em honest, Will, whether they want to be or not. Maybe they’re all straight, but maybe there’s one bad apple in the barrel; you never know. That way they’ll all be straight. And the ones that are won’t bitch. Because they’ll know it’s for their own safety.”

  Whitmore considered this. Then he said, “All right, it’s done. Fargo, by God, you don’t miss a trick.”

  “I come close sometimes,” Fargo said. He had not told Whitmore about the ambush and saw no reason to. “Now, I want some other information. Everything you can tell me about both the C & W and Hawk Morrison.”

  “Well, I can tell you about the C & W, all right. I worked for ’em for ten years before I left ’em.” Whitmore’s face twisted. “Fargo, there ain’t no better people than railroaders. I mean the people that actually lay the track and run the trains. They do a hard, dangerous job, and I’m proud to be one. But the managements of railroads—That’s something else.”

  He stood up, began to pace his office. “It takes a lot of money to build and run a railroad. You see what I’ve got invested in only this thirty miles of track right here. Well, it takes zillions more to run a big line like the C & W. And the only way you get those zillions is to go to the banks and the big financial manipulators, people like Boss Tweed and Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan and all the faceless men at them desks in their offices in New York and Chicago. The railroad men don’t own the railroads, the banks and speculators do. And you can’t get a man that don’t know the difference between a hotshot freight and a highball varnish, or a boiler and a hotbox, to listen to railroad common sense. They don’t see the railroads as the lifeblood of this country, the veins and arteries. They see the railroads as great big cows, waiting to be milked. And if it goes on the way it’s goin’ now, fifty years there won’t be any railroads left. They’ll all be milked plumb dry …

  He paused, draining his glass. “Well, the C & W’s in the hands of people just like that. Train whistles don’t stir their souls like they do you and me. Only dollars do. All they know is black ink and red ink. Me, I held down the Division Super job here in Idaho for nigh on five years. I tried to run it like a railroad man. Then Hawk Morrison came in as yardmaster and finally as my assistant. Well, Hawk’s a smart boy. He knows railroadin’, he knows fightin’ ... he was a poor boy down in Texas and he first got his toehold in the business ten years ago in a war over a right-of-way down there. When the railroad couldn’t buy a right of way at the price it wanted, it sent in gunmen to beat the price down. Hawk did a good job, and he started to rise, and he never looked back. By the time he got to Idaho, he knew what the brass hats wanted: black ink on the profit sheets, and never mind how it gets there. He knew what he wanted, too: money, lots of it, and power.” Whitmore sat down, eyes circled with weariness, and poured himself another drink. “Soon as he hit Junction City, he laid court to Ellen—the boss’s daughter. Got her pretty well hooked on him. Then I had that trouble with Rawhide Blaine about theft in the yards. My investigation showed that Hawk was likely mixed up in it, too. But Ellen loved him, and when I started to blow the whistle on him, she begged me not to, and, like a fool, I kept quiet, gave him another chance. Then I left the railroad to set up the Cayuse Mountain Line. I begged the C & W to do it, but they wouldn’t take the chance. Anyhow, soon as I quit the railroad to do it myself, Hawk dropped Ellen like a hot potato. It turned out he had about three other girls on the string all along, and was only playing up to her because he thought I could help him. It broke her heart, and that was when I really hated Hawk Morrison.”

  Whitmore sipped the whiskey. “Well, I got Cayuse Mountain into operation and the railroad saw it had turned down the most profitable thirty miles of track in railroad history. They dickered with me and I wouldn’t sell. Then Hawk went to ’em and told ’em he’d get the line somehow, if they’d make him vice-president. And that’s when the pressure really came on up here. Hawk courted Ellen again, and she told him to take a flyin’ leap at the moon. So he turned nasty. He rehired Rawhide Blaine and put him
in charge up here. He fired a lot of ordinary railroad detectives and guards and brought in top-notch gunmen. He spent a lot of the railroad’s money …”

  “I don’t think so,” Fargo said.

  Whitmore looked at him.

  “Not money that will show up on their profit and loss sheets. You said he and Blaine had been mixed up in yard thefts. Me, I’ve got a hunch that’s why he laid down that rule about not selling passages in a caboose when a man’s in trouble. I think Hawk Morrison laid down that rule to make sure no Pinkerton or special agent or anybody that wasn’t his own man ever got close enough to find out what was going on.”

  Fargo chewed his cigar. “A railroad like the C & W, it would take a lot of paperwork to get ’em to turn loose of twenty thousand dollars cash. Right?”

  “Lord, yes. Money like that, you got to go all the way to Chicago to get permission to spend.” Whitmore’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talkin’ about the twenty thousand Hawk was offering you.”

  “Uh-huh. And he didn’t even know I was in Idaho until the night before. And he had that money in his safe.” Fargo grinned coldly. “My guess is, Hawk Morrison is runnin’ damned scared. He’s likely been stealin’ the railroad blind right along and coverin’ it up. And using the money to finance all this pressure he’s laid up against you. He’s got to get this line for the C & W so he’ll be their fair-haired boy, get a big promotion, draw a big bonus, and be moved out before the roof can fall in on him. Once he’s in the saddle as a vice-president, he can cover his tracks and pin the blame for theft on somebody else. But time is runnin’ out. And from now on, Hawk will be playin’ damned rough.” Again that grin, exactly like a wolf scenting game.

  Whitmore stared at him and shivered a little. “What do you aim to do?”

  “Play rougher,” Fargo said.“Hit Hawk Morrison on every front, fast and hard. We can’t afford a whole lot of guards and gunmen. Morrison can. Okay, I’ll damned well give ’em something to guard and get ’em off our neck. I reckon you got some dynamite left from clearin’ out that tunnel.”

  “Yeah, but ... Fargo, I won’t stand for anything illegal. If you’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, the C & W would wind up havin’ us all in jail.”

  “You don’t know what I’m thinkin’,” Fargo said, “and you don’t need to know. Nobody else is gonna know, either, I promise you.” Fargo’s lips thinned. “Listen, Whitmore. You’re in a war. You hauled six bodies out of that wreck down in the gulch. Don’t that mean anything to you? How many more you want to die that way?” His voice was terse, clipped. “You’re payin’ me to keep you runnin’ and make sure you don’t lose your railroad. Okay. Either I work in my own way or you get your money back and I don’t work at all. Which way you want it?”

  Whitmore stared down at his desk. Presently he said, as if talking to himself, “God. You ought to have seen those bodies. The hogger and the smoke died slow and hard, pinned in the cab. The steam scalded ’em.” With sudden resolution, he stood up, fished a key from his pocket and threw it on the floor. “I think I just lost the key to the powder house. God knows where. If anybody finds it, turn it in. Me, I’m goin’ home.” And he left his office.

  Fargo waited until he was gone. Then he bent, picked up the key and stood there for a moment, chewing his cigar and juggling the key in his palm and grinning.

  Chapter Six

  Trains had their place, Fargo guessed, but himself, he was cavalryman to the core. For rough country like the Coeur d’Alenes and the kind of work that lay ahead, give him mules—good old half-jackass mountain jugheads that could go all night and never, even in the worst terrain, stumble and fall. Which last advantage, considering that one was packed with dynamite and blasting caps, was not to be taken lightly.

  Fortunately, Whitmore owned four good ones, broken to ride, kept both for light drag-pan grading around the track and inspection and repair work along the base of the trestling which supported much of his trackage. But Whitmore did not know, did not want to know, that Fargo was riding out in darkness on one mule and leading another, which was only lightly loaded. Neither did Whitmore know that Fargo had stolen two excellent eight-day clocks from his house. Railroad men lived under the tyranny of time, and there was not a room in the Whitmore bungalow that did not have such a clock in it. Whitmore had no knowledge, either—nor did anyone else—of the time Fargo had put in working by lamplight in his repair shop most of the night.

  Now, with rifle in his saddle-boot, shotgun slung, Fargo cut a wide circle around the town, swung back southeast through the hills, paralleling the main track of the C & W that ran from Felspar to Junction Flats. In the starless hours before dawn, it was slow going—until he finally struck the old pack and wagon trail that had once been the main supply artery to Felspar before the opening of the larger mines and the coming of the railroad. Decades old, hardly used any longer, it was overgrown and steep, but it took him in the direction he wanted, and it was separated from the C & W line itself by rough country and plenty of timber for cover. After striking the trail, he made better time.

  Dawn came, and he still held to it, totally alert, not forgetting to watch the ears of the animal he rode; they would warn him of the approach of anybody else traveling this route long before he himself could see or hear them. Once they did, and Fargo, as the sun rose, pulled over into the timber, dismounting, holding the muzzles of both animals so they could not bray. Presently a rider passed, leading a horse on which was slung the carcass and antlers of an elk. When the hunter was safely by, upwind, Fargo mounted, rode once again.

  At noon he halted. Having grained the mules to keep them quiet, he watered them and tied them, stowing the pack at a safe distance, handling it gingerly. According to his calculations, he should be just about in position. From his pocket he took a map, also stolen from Whitmore. It had been made by C & W engineering crews when this track was laid, and showed all the main features of the country. Verifying his position by a bald-faced peak in the distance, Fargo took from the packs a canvas-wrapped bundle, not heavy, but bulky. He carried it in his arms as if it were a baby as he worked his way up a wooded slope, and when he reached the crest laid it down as if it were full of the most delicate and precious china. Then, though the day was cool, he mopped the cold, clammy sweat which bathed him from his face. Lying down on his belly, he wormed up to where he could see the forward slope and took his field glasses from their case.

  On the flat, in the valley below, the wooden water tower with its pipe, which carried water from some mountain creek above, stood like a lonely sentinel. Beyond it, the track spiraled down a steep grade. Fargo watched the tower steadily for several minutes, but there was no sign of life, no guard anywhere around. He had not expected one. Until now, Whitmore had had no way of fighting back.

  Then, somewhere not far away, a locomotive whistle made its mournful howl. Down the slope, Fargo saw twin plumes of gray-black smoke coiling against the sky and coming nearer. Then a train crawled into view, a long string of box and loaded coal cars, making slow going up the hill, despite the fact that in addition to the engine in front, a helper-locomotive was pushing from behind.

  Fargo waited. Presently the train reached the level. It crawled to the water tower, halted. Fargo watched as brakemen unslung the tower’s water pipe and filled the tender. Then the train moved on until the rear engine was also under the pipe and filled.

  Fargo watched all this with rapt interest. It was just as he’d guessed when they’d passed this isolated tower on the train-ride up, he and Ellen. A pair of locomotives hauling and pushing a long, heavy freight, used a lot of water. They refilled here routinely after the climb up the slope before making the final run into Felspar.

  Fargo chewed an unlit cigar and waited. Presently the pipe was hooked back in place. Snorting and puffing like a pair of overweight bull buffalo, the two locomotives moved the freight train out. Fargo followed it with his glasses until it disappeared from view.

  Once more, he watched the water tower for
a while. Still no sign of life. Time to get to work, he thought. God help him if he’d miscalculated and some hidden gunman put a bullet in that bundle.

  Hefting it carefully, he went down the slope, keeping to cover. Presently, in a clump of brush at the foot of the hill, only a few dozen yards from the tower, he put down the bundle, opened it, and went to work.

  First, deftly, he capped each of the four sticks of dynamite, which were wrapped together tightly with copper wire. One of the stocks protruded from the bomb a half-inch further than the others.

  Next he took out the detonator and loaded that. He had made three, one a spare, in the machine shop earlier in the night. It was a quite simple and effective mechanism: A short length of malleable bronze tubing, with one flared end fitted tightly over the capped end of the protruding stick of dynamite. The other, threaded, somewhat resembled the breech of a shotgun barrel.

  The striker was nearly as simple: another length of tubing with one end threaded to fit over the first, the other end tightly capped. Halfway down its length, small holes had been bored through its sides and carefully smoothed and lubricated. Fargo crammed a powerful section of coiled spring into this tube, compressing it against the cap. Then he slipped a small metal pin through the holes in the side of the tube to keep the spring in place. Under this he slipped in a metal disc, just a little smaller than the inside of the tube, to which had been welded a ten-penny nail.

  Next he took a ten-gauge shell from the bandolier on his chest and checked its percussion end carefully for any flaw. He slipped the shell into the first piece of tube, a lug inside catching the brass rim, holding its wadded end a half inch from the dynamite cap. Then, carefully, he screwed the other mechanism, the spring compressed, onto the first. The point of the ten-penny nail rested lightly, like a firing pen, against the priming charge on the back of the shotgun shell.