I recrossed the railroad tracks and walked a hundred yards south. I knew where the timber trail was. I had crossed over it and back twice a day for two months. Even in the night I had no trouble finding the head of the trail which led down into the gorge and back up to the timber slope on the far side. Except on this night I wasn’t going to climb up on that side again. My work lay at the very bottom of the chasm, where the trestle pilings sunk their heads into the solid earth beside the rapidly flowing Yellow Tongue River.
Nothing moved. There was not a single sound in the world as I started down the narrow trail. It was so utterly still that when a distant owl hooted, I started. I wondered if there were guards down here in the cool depths, or above me on the trestle with their rifles trained on me. It seemed extremely doubtful. What would they be guarding against? Besides, I was so deeply lost in shadow now that no one above could see me unless I lit a lamp or struck a match.
Which was exactly what I intended to do – but not just yet.
The river snaked past, dark and swift. The eons of following its course were what had carved the gorge out of primal stone. The river would flow on, long after any man-made structure had rotted and fallen away.
I nearly walked into one of the massive pilings, so dark was it in the bowels of the gorge. I felt the thick timber and paced carefully ahead, finding its mate. I looked up at the complicated bracing of the trestle overhead.
These two, I decided, would do it.
Crouching, I opened the coal oil can, tossing the lid away – there wouldn’t be another use for that. I began splashing the coal oil on the spars, drenching them, first one then the other. What was left I spread in pools around their bases. I looked up once more at the huge dark web of timbers above me, nodded to myself and lit a match. The first match extinguished itself in the puddle of oil. I tried a second and it fizzled as it hit the ground, then sparked, then brightened and flared. As I backed away I watched as yellow-bright flames began to lick their way up along the piling. Then the puddled coal oil at its base blossomed into a hot rose and simultaneously the second piling caught.
One low cross-beam had already begun to smoke and within moments the dry new timber was burning hotly. The flames lighted the adjacent stone wall of the gorge with weird red light and the dark smoke began to rise like an evil ghost weaving its way through the intricate structure overhead, climbing toward the sky.
I got out of there as fast as I could.
I made for the foot of the trail, glancing back once across my shoulder to see that the flames were climbing higher and higher, spreading flame and heat traversely along the bracing timbers as they devoured lumber and creosote. The night was ablaze and I was caught in the glare of my own deed. I could hear distant shouts now and I raced on up the trail, falling once to bang my knee painfully on a rock.
Cresting the head of the trail I could see tiny figures racing toward me from the camp. I raced toward the safety of surrounding shadows, leaving the hot glare of my crime behind me. By the time the first man had reached the head of the trail I was deep in the shadows of the pine woods. Bending over I breathed deeply, filling my aching lungs with huge gulps of cold air.
Men from all across the camp in all stages of dress were rushing toward the trestle. Why, I couldn’t say. It was obvious that there was nothing anyone could do to save the structure now. Flames had reached as far as the timbers supporting the rails themselves. Great leaping red and yellow spirals of flame sheeting the night sky. Smoke stretched up to the stars, shutting out their silver light. I had done that, but I had no pride in it. It was the work of many months by many men, and that part of it I regretted. That was all that I regretted. I did not regret the harm I had done to the railroad.
I started on through the smoky darkness, having no fear of being seen or halted. There were so many men running around in confusion that no one had time to give me a second glance.
I was arrogant with overconfidence. And out of luck. Making my way back toward the camp again I walked almost directly into one of the many men who could recognize me in those conditions. It was Tom, one of Alton McCallister’s bodyguards. It was the third time we had met and I saw his head turn. Our eyes met and he strode toward me. Tom was wearing a buffalo coat and a black slouch hat. His hand held a rifle. I stopped and stood still to meet him as the flames rose higher into the night sky. For a moment he paused, unsure of himself as I marched directly toward him, my hand raised as if in greeting.
Then Tom was sure and he shouted, a cry unheard above the general uproar. I didn’t wait to see what he would do next, I lowered my head and charged into him and we hit the ground, Tom’s rifle flying free as I chopped a short right into his jaw.
Tom grunted, tried to knee me and then wriggled free enough to unleash a barrage of short blows at my head. He was on his back and, without leverage, his blows had little effect. A sharp left did land solidly on my ear and set bells to ringing in my skull, but I had better position and better leverage. I threw a fisted right hand into his neck and followed with another that landed solidly on his temple.
Tom’s eyes rolled back and he lay still. I rose panting from the dark earth, flung his rifle away into the woods and started on my way again, my legs a little wobbly from the brief exchange. Everyone was rushing in the opposite direction, away from the camp and the locomotive. There was an eerie glow across the railroad camp, the earth was red and the fronts of the log buildings appeared black through the drifting smoke.
I reached the locomotive in minutes and mounted the iron steps to the cab. The engineer was there wearing regular street clothes. He had apparently rushed down to the locomotive to stand ready for orders. He started to shout at me, but I showed him my pistol. He backed toward the coal tender, his hands raised, eyes wide.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked in a trembling voice.
‘Fire this thing up,’ I ordered.
‘I can’t …’
‘You’d better!’ I said, cocking my pistol. ‘If anybody asks you, tell them the boss wants the train backed away from the trestle, just in case.’
He decided against arguing with me and set to work, starting a blaze in the firebox. While we waited for a head of steam to build up, I ordered him to step down to the ground with me. He looked around excitedly, hoping for help, looking for somewhere to run. I nudged him with my pistol.
‘Uncouple the Pullmans. I just want the locomotive.’
‘We can’t back up if we do that,’ he said with terror-stricken eyes.
‘We’re not going back,’ I told him. ‘We’re going ahead.’
‘We can’t. …’
‘Yes, we can. Who knows, maybe the trestle will hold. Unless you just want it here and now,’ I said, gesturing again with my revolver.
He didn’t like that any better and within seconds he had uncoupled the cars from the locomotive. No one was paying any attention to us as far as I could see. The trestle was a quarter of a mile ahead and everyone’s eyes were on the raging flames. Still, you never knew. I kept searching the surrounding night with my eyes, expecting anything.
‘Now what?’ the engineer asked.
‘Now we’re going to take a ride. Just you and me.’
‘Listen, mister, I got a wife and kids—’
‘Get this locomotive rolling!’ I hissed. We climbed back up into the cab and the engineer stood staring at the pressure gauge. He was delaying and I knew it. ‘That’s enough steam to get it moving, isn’t it?’
‘Normally I need—’
‘Quit stalling. That’s enough steam, get us rolling!’
I thought he was going to continue arguing, but probably he could see that there was no point in it. Yanking back on the heavy gear lever and levering down the huge iron braking bar I saw him swallow a bitter curse as we felt the first jerky movement of the drive wheels.
‘Open it up, Engineer. I’m in a hurry to reach my destination.’
‘Hell’s where you’re bound!’ he shouted back frantically.
; ‘Likely,’ I agreed.
The train started slowly to pick up speed. Far away I saw someone turn and point at the locomotive as smoke rose from its stack to mingle with the smoke of the fiery night. No one else seemed to notice that the train was moving, driving relentlessly toward the flaming trestle over Yellow Tongue Gorge.
‘Open the throttle wide, Engineer!’ I yelled. ‘Then jump.’
‘I can’t jump!’ he screamed back.
‘You can. You’ve got a wife and kids, you say: if you want to see them again, jump now before it’s too late.’
He looked once more at me, once at the gun I held and turned and leaped off into space. I saw him land, roll and lie flat on his face against the snow-patched earth. I didn’t wait any longer myself. I leaped from the opposite side of the cab, landing roughly on the ground. The wheels of the locomotive seemed to thunder past bare inches from my head, but I was clear and up and running in a staggering, lurching jog-trot toward the woods.
Recovering my wits I slowed to a steady walk, holstered my gun and walked on. Turning my head I saw no one pursuing me. All eyes had been on the roaring flames engulfing the trestle. Now as the men became aware of what was going on, their heads turned toward the roaring behemoth bearing down on them, uncontrolled, unstoppable.
The iron horse trundled on relentlessly; eyeless and witless, it surged past the helpless railroad crews and forward on to the flame-engulfed trestle, pawing its way through the flames and curlicues of black smoke, an implacable brute. From the moment the carrier wheels touched the blackened timbers of the trestle and an agonized, splintering sound rose into the dreadful night, it was obvious that the burned-out trestle could never withstand the terrible weight of the onrushing iron behemoth, and as the drive wheels pawed at the fire-shimmering rails, the structure began to crack and wither beneath it.
In moments the entire trestle was buckling and blackened timbers fell, shredded into the depths of the stony gorge. Then the locomotive, striving to rush onward as its designers had intended, lost purchase and it dropped its head and fell in stunned surrender to the rocks below, sending up sparks and shrieks of metal upon stone as a death dirge as men halted in their rush toward the gorge and watched the dying machine destroy the remaining blackened timbers and land far below with a crescendo of shrieking roars which filled the long canyon with echoes of its death. Steam rushed from its ruptured boiler and filled the gorge, white smoke chasing black until the last throb of its engine ceased.
My path was well-lighted. Flames had brightened the sky to the colored brilliance of a fiery sunset. I passed Tom. He was on his hands and knees, shaking his head. He looked up at me, but made no move to impede my passing. There was nothing he could do and we both knew it.
I found my black horse waiting where I had left it. For a change he was not watching me patiently to see what devilry I had planned for him. He was nervous, pulling at his tether. Firelight danced in his dark eyes. I soothed him with my hand, untied him and swung aboard. Then we were away, weaving through the dark pine forest while the sky continued to glow brightly and drifting smoke to obscure the stars.
We were away, riding south. Where we were bound I did not know, but there are times in life when it is more important to get away from a situation rather than to travel to a particular destination. This was one of them.
Come daylight I was still in the saddle. I was weary and the black horse tired of carrying me over wild country. I swung down and let him rest while I tried to cobble some sort of plan together.. Casper, down in Wyoming was the biggest town on my route, but I didn’t think we could make it that far the shape we were in. My best hope was to try to find some fair-sized town between here and there, one that at least had a hotel of some kind and lie up there. I still had most of my money with me. With luck and economy, perhaps even enough to tide us over until spring. I might even be able to find some kind of work around town.
I swung aboard the black again and we began our plodding way southward. It was not the direction I would have chosen as free man. But I was not a free man, not yet, and so with each mile I rode farther and farther away from Nina.
I found the town in a driving rainstorm which, if it continued until dark, would become a snow storm. I saw no signs to advise me what it was called; perhaps it had no name. It was only a ramshackle collection of log huts and shacks with two or three sawn-lumber buildings, each as unimpressive as the last, but from the awning of the middle building hung a wind-blown shingle reading ‘Hotel’ and I decided that the town, such as it was, was close enough to heaven for me.
With the horse put up in a rickety stable, I registered at the hotel desk. I asked the man what the name of the town was, and he told me, Skogie, and waited for me to laugh. I didn’t even smile. I thought it was a fine town, Skogie, with a fine dry hotel and a fine mattress on which I rested my weary head and slept for a long, long time.
I rose to find by the dawn’s light a new fall of snow, maybe eighteen inches of it. I looked out my window at it for a long time, pleased with myself. I was going nowhere. I had enough money in my pocket to become a temporary resident of Skogie, enough money to feed myself and keep warm. I might even buy myself a new shirt and a new pair of jeans, a hat – after I had eaten and rested a little more. My plan was to become as indolent as possible for awhile. Let it snow all it wanted to, I couldn’t care less!
From time to time those first few days I tried sitting at a desk they had in the shabby lobby of the hotel and composing a letter to Nina in Billings. I got as far as addressing the envelope easily. It was what to write on the blank sheet of paper staring up at me that got me tangled up. I still had no address; I was still on the run and a long way from Oregon. I could never go back to where she was. I just sat at the desk for long minutes, wondering if she had moved into town to live above that hairdresser’s shop. I wondered if Bobby had gone with her. I wondered if they had paid him that $500 reward on my head since it was he who had turned me in and Marshal Coombs who had lost me again … I wondered how her eyes sparkled in the starlight.
Then I would rise, crumple the never-begun letter and toss it away. Face it: I was nothing but a saddle tramp, a drifter, no matter what I used to tell myself about Oregon, about somehow buying a piece of land out there, settling down. I was no prize to myself; how could I ever expect a woman like Nina to have serious thoughts about me?
By the second week I was tired of being a layabout. I found a part-time job sweeping up and stocking goods in the general store. The man who hired me, one McCready by name, was holding the job open for his son who was back East studying, but he reckoned his boy wouldn’t be traveling with winter having set in.
My life settled into a routine. Mornings I cleaned up at the store for two hours or so then had a leisurely lunch. In the afternoons I worked another two hours. I felt like I was getting lazy and satisfied, but there wasn’t much else to do and the work paid my way. As a matter of fact at the end of the month I had more money than I’d had when I rode into Skogie. And I had managed to stay warm and fed! The deprivations of the previous month were just a memory.
Still, I kept an eye on any traveler arriving in town. I never knew which one of them might be a lawman or a bounty hunter with a wanted poster folded in his pocket. Not that there were many new arrivals in Skogie – it wasn’t the kind of place people came to if they had better choices. The days went by slowly, evenly. The weather held generally good although the streets of Skogie were deep in muddy goo and slush, and the skies were generally ominous and gray. I minded none of it. No one was looking for me; my life dull as it was, was settled and suited me just fine for the time being. I had at least a nodding acquaintance with most everyone in town and I felt welcome and safe there.
Now and then if the weather was good I’d take the black horse out to exercise him. At times I played a little penny-ante poker or drank a beer with the men. I flirted a little with the waitress and read a book or two. Life wasn’t good, but it was trouble-free which ca
n mean something if you’d been in a situation like mine. All in all I hadn’t a care in the world and was just waiting lazily for spring to come.
Which was why it was such a shock when I walked into Francee’s Golden West Restaurant and saw Alton McCallister occupying a corner table, his eyes locked on to mine.
ELEVEN
There was no doubt at all that the railroad boss recognized me immediately. Maybe someone had told him that I would be in for dinner. His arms were stiff, his hands red and blistered extending from the frayed cuffs of a once fine jacket. His eyes were bleary, his thin red hair uncombed, fringed across his forehead. He looked pale and haggard. The man had done some hard traveling, it seemed. I glanced around but saw no other railroad toughs.
I decided to get it over with and I walked to his table as his eyes glared at me with sheer hatred.
‘Hello, McCallister,’ I said. The scrape of the wooden chairlegs against the floor seemed loud. I looked around but no one else seemed to be aware of any confrontation among them. ‘Looks like you had a long ride.’
‘Ryan – I’ll curse you until you’re dead, and that won’t be long. Then I’ll curse you over your grave. You ruined me!’
‘Oh?’ I folded my hands together on the table. I had tilted back my hat to study McCallister more closely. He was a beaten man, I decided, but that didn’t make him less deadly.
‘My career is shot,’ he said, in a raspy voice unlike his formerly cultured baritone. Maybe the cold weather had had an effect on his throat. He leaned forward more intently. There was a cup of coffee in front of him but he paid no attention to it. ‘I had stock options in the Colorado Northern, too. They were contingent on completing the Yellow Tongue spur on schedule.’
‘And at the lowest cost possible,’ I said mildly.
‘Of course! What do you mean?’ he asked warily.
‘I mean you could have done an honest job of it and paid your workmen, but you got so greedy you had to make a little more and then a little more here and there, no matter that the men who were tearing their tendons and breaking their bones for the railroad weren’t getting paid.’
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