by Wesley Ellis
“Alex Starbuck would help him if he were still alive.”
Friendel finished his first brandy and downed the second in one gulp. He smacked his thin, bloodless lips together and sighed contentedly. “When you see Bonaday again, tell him old Adderly Friendel says hello and that if he needs a little cash, he should come by and pay me a visit. My son is already rich and a man can’t take his money with him. Tell old Bonaday that money can’t buy health, and when that’s gone, a man hasn’t a damn thing any longer.”
Ki stood up. “I’ll tell him,” he said. “And thank you for your time.”
The sick old man nodded weakly. “Thanks for the excuse to have the second brandy. Cuts the pain, you know.”
Ki nodded. “I know.”
The next day, they caught a riverboat up to Sacramento and boarded the Central Pacific Railroad for the trip over Donner Pass and down into Reno.
“I’d rather take a damned coach any old day,” Bonaday grumped, “but there aren’t any lines running this way anymore.”
“The train is faster,” Jessie said.
“A coach is a more dependable way to travel,” Bonaday argued. “If the locomotive’s boiler blows up or even springs a leak, we could be stranded for days. But if one of the horses in a stage team breaks its leg, the other five horses will still carry you on through.”
Jessie had no wish to argue the point. Bonaday was a stage-line operator and bound to be partial to the old Concord coaches and their slower way of travel. Having already done more traveling than most people did in an entire lifetime, Jessie had used both conveyances and would take a train anytime over a stagecoach. First-class railroad passengers like they were could be assured of warm and luxurious travel compartments as well as the freedom to dine elegantly. And it certainly broke the tedium to be able to move around freely. On a stage, you might be pressed into a coach with eight other passengers and a few mail sacks thrown in for good measure. Coaches were rough and dusty. However, Jessie thought it unwise to point out the deficiencies of stagecoach travel to Bonaday. Besides, his point had been well taken when he had stated that there were many routes that could never be serviced by a railroad due to the high costs and low financial returns. Many unwise railroad companies had built track into the latest boomtown only to find that, by the time the line was completed, the ore had run out and the town was being deserted. Out west, towns birthed and died faster than mosquitoes.
Jessie enjoyed the ride over the Sierras. She watched as the train pulled into the low western foothills and then began the very serious climb up through Auburn. A few hours later they passed through Bloomer Cut, where thousands of Chinese had blasted and chopped their way through a granite ridge. Jessie viewed with interest the little railroad stops called Butte and Cisco where more Chinese had died during the bitter winters of railroad construction. It occurred to her that her father’s steel was under the train they rode, and that made her very proud. She remembered how, when she was a small girl, Alex Starbuck had often told her stories about the bravery of the Chinese who had replaced many striking Irishmen at this end of the line. There had been a lot of strife over that, and many men simply had not believed the small, thin Chinese could stand up to the brutally hard work. Those men had been proven very wrong. Many of the disgruntled strikers had gone over to the Union Pacific Railroad. Happier on flat land, they had belted down track westward out of Omaha, Nebraska, fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne across the northern plains. The transcontinental railroad had been one hell of a race and a great piece of history.
“Excuse me,” Daniel Bonaday said, interrupting the silence, “but did you recognize those two men who were sitting three seats down and watching us?”
“No,” Jessie said. “I’ve been too busy admiring the scenery. The higher we get, the more beautiful these mountains become. Were the men friends of yours?”
“Nope, but I thought maybe they knew you and Ki. They kept looking over this way.”
“I saw them,” Ki said. “And I noticed that, too. But you have to understand that Miss Starbuck attracts a lot of stares from young men.”
“Yeah, I can see how she would,” the stage-line operator conceded. “I guess that was it after all. I’ll have to admit I am jumpy as hell and suspicious of everyone. I’ve had two attempts on my life in Nevada. My boy, he’s had one.”
“And you have no clues as to who is trying to kill you?”
“Sure I do. But no proof.” Bonaday lit a fat cigar and puffed until the smoke was thick enough to sting Jessie’s lovely green eyes. “No goddamn proof, Miss Starbuck. But it’s the same ones that are competing against me for the right to service the other side of this here mountain range.”
Ki cleared his throat. “Mr. Bonaday, would you be so kind as to remove yourself until you are finished with that cigar? The smoke is bothering Miss Starbuck.”
“It is?” One look at Jessie told him that Ki was right. “Well, damn me anyway for being such a lout! Sure I’ll step outside on the platform and finish my smoke. I used to smoke such good cigars that women loved the smell of them, but lately...”
“Thank you,” Jessie said, wishing the man would quit talking and move outside. His cigar smelled like burning buffalo chips.
It took a few minutes for the air to clear after Bonaday had gone, and Jessie was not above using a newspaper to fan the air briskly. “That’s another advantage of trains over coaches. In a coach, a man addicted to bad cigars has nowhere else to go and smoke.”
Ki agreed. He would have opened a window, but it was too cold outside, and the skies were lead-gray and threatening. It was February and though it had been a mild winter so far, there were still patches of snow on the ground at this elevation and no doubt a whole lot more up on Donner Pass.
“What do you think?” Jessie asked. “Is the man imagining things or do you really believe that someone is trying to kill him and his son?”
“I guess we’ll soon find out,” Ki answered. “The smartest thing to do is play it safe and assume their lives are in danger. If that proves untrue, then so much the better. It sounds to me as if his opposition is winning, and that means murder would be unnecessary.”
“I agree. But we must watch him carefully. We owe him a great debt.”
They each watched the mountain. They saw the snow patches become a solid blanket and then thicken as the locomotive worked brutishly hard to pull them ever higher toward the great Summit Tunnel where the Central Pacific and the Chinese had almost been defeated—would have been defeated if they had not dared to use nitroglycerine to speed up the blasting of their final tunnels over the top.
“I’d better go and see if Bonaday wants to join us for supper,” Ki said. “He’s had time to finish that cigar by now. Besides, he must be half frozen after this amount of time on the platform.”
“‘I’ll go ahead and meet you both in the dining car,” Jessie said.
Ki moved down the aisle in the direction that Bonaday had taken. He was reaching for the door of the coach when he happened to look through the grimy glass and see two men trying to lift Bonaday’s inert form and preparing to throw him headlong off the train.
“Stop!” Ki shouted as he slammed outside into a buf feting wind. He had no choice but to lunge for the unconscious Bonaday, and that gave the pair the opportunity they needed to chop him with their gun barrels.
Ki grunted with pain. The platform was ice-cold and slick. Bonaday was hanging over a low guardrail, almost ready to topple onto the tracks where he might even be run over by the train. Ki felt hands beating at his head. One man managed to get his thick, powerful fingers around Ki’s neck and started choking the life out of him. Ki knew that he could not hang onto Bonaday and have any chance of survival. He released the unconscious stage-line operator and gave him a desperate shove in hopes that he could at least send Bonaday flying far enough away from the train that he would not be cut in half by the wheels.
Ki was on both knees and his head was exploding with pain. But now h
is hands were free and he bent his fingers to his palms. With the last of his strength, he drove his rigid knuckles up and into his closer assailant’s testicles. The man screamed in agony. Ki looked up to see the second man reversing his pistol to fire. Ki lunged at the man’s knees and sent him backpedaling wildly. One minute the man was fumbling with his weapon, the next he was bent halfway over the rail and fighting for his balance. Ki grabbed his knees and heaved upward. A scream erupted from the man’s lips and then died as he tumbled over backward and dropped under the moving train.
The first man still held his ruined testicles in one hand but there was a knife in his other. He swept in on Ki, who felt the blade slice through his jacket and score across his ribs. Ki knew that he had no strength left. The earlier blows to his head had left him dizzy. He felt the powerful man jerk his knife back and set himself to deliver the killing thrust. Ki twisted at the very last instant and the knife tangled in his jacket.
The man’s breath was foul and hot; it came in short bursts of steam that were swept away by the icy wind. “Goddamn you!” he roared, trying to tear his knife free.
Ki’s hand slipped into his jacket and found his tanto blade. He pulled the thin but razor-sharp blade from its lacquered sheath and drove it between the man’s ribs. The man’s eyes bulged and he lifted to his toes. His mouth formed a circle and, with an incredible effort, he threw his weight against Ki and they both crashed over the railing and flew into space.
Ki felt the wind hammer his body. He stared downward, certain that he would fall under the train and be cut in half by the iron wheels. But instead, he and the man locked with him in mortal combat were sent spinning over the edge of a steep ravine. When they hit the mountainside, Ki instinctively rolled into a ball and let his body absorb the punishment, softened only by the heavy snowfall. He crashed down through brush until he struck a pine tree and almost lost consciousness. He heard the lonesome shriek of the train whistle as the locomotive entered Summit Tunnel near the top of Donner Pass. And then there was nothing but a chill, deadly silence.
Ki knew that if he did not force his battered body into motion, he would quickly freeze to death. He took some snow and scrubbed his face hard and that cleared his head. He managed to crawl to his feet and stand. When he looked up the slope, he saw that he had rolled almost fifty feet down the mountainside. Not more than a dozen yards away, he saw the still body of the man who had carried him over the railing. Ki trudged over to him through deep snow and rolled him onto his back. The man was one of those who had been studying them on the train. Otherwise, he was a complete stranger.
Ki searched the dead man’s pockets and was not surprised that the assassin had carried nothing that could identify him. Ki removed the man’s heavy leather jacket, which was large enough to slip over his own. There was also a pair of warm gloves stuffed in the pockets, along with a gun. Ki figured he could make use of both.
Without a backward glance, Ki began to climb the snowy mountainside. It was very steep and slippery, and for every step up, he slid a half step back. Even so, he was in such superb physical condition that he quickly reached the railroad tracks. Just a few yards east, the black hole of the tunnel swallowed the tracks. To the west and back down toward Sacramento, the tracks were already icing over again after having been thawed from the weight and friction of their eastbound train. Ki wanted to go east. There was a train station at Donner Summit and he could reach it before night fell and the temperature plunged to zero.
Instead, he turned back west toward Sacramento. He had to look for Daniel Bonaday on the slim hope that he had tossed the man far enough out from the railroad tracks to save his life. Bonaday had been unconscious and even though it had only been a minute or two between the time he had gone over the rail and Ki’s own sudden fall, the distance would be nearly a mile. Ki stepped onto the tracks and forced himself into a run. He ran lightly, but even so each stride brought jabs of pain into the center of his battered head.
He found Bonaday lying faceup in a snowbank. The man was breathing, but his pulse was rapid and shallow and his skin was ice-cold and marble-white. Ki dragged him onto the tracks and laid him out across the railroad ties. He removed the assassin’s leather coat and covered the old stage-line operator before he dashed into the woods and began to gather up the driest firewood he could find. Ki was going to build a hugh bonfire right on the tracks. Sooner or later, either another train would come upon them, or Jessie would find a way to get help.
Ki looked up at the sky. The tops of the pine trees were beginning to sway and the heavy stormclouds were rolling east. The weather looked bad. More snow was coming and that was the last thing he needed. Ki knew that he would find a way to wait out and survive a blizzard, but he was not sure that old Bonaday would be strong enough to do the same.
One thing was for sure. If they ever got to Reno, he would never question the man’s suspicions again.
Jessie was tired of waiting for Ki and Daniel Bonaday to join her. She had nearly memorized the railroad dining menu. All around her other passengers were eating scrumptious meals—veal, beef, roast chicken, and fresh fish.
“Excuse me,” she said, getting up from her seat. “I’m going to go look for my lost companions.”
The porter smiled. “Your table will be waiting when you are ready.”
“Thank you.”
Jessie hurried out of the dining car and back into the first-class coach. She had expected to see Ki and Bonaday and became concerned when she did not. Beckoning another porter, she said, “Have you seen the two gentlemen who were accompanying me?”
“No, ma‘am,” the colored porter said with a solemn shake of his head. “I thought they was in the dining room with you, Miz Starbuck.”
“No, they weren’t. Would you please help me find them? You search the train to the rear and I will go forward all the way to the coal tender if necessary.”
It took a full half hour, but by the time the train had rolled to a standstill at the Donner Summit station, Jessie knew the awful truth. Ki and Daniel Bonaday were not on the train. She grabbed her heavy coat and a small valise and raced off the train into the station, which was little more than a small telegraph office. A potbellied stove was glowing cherry-red and the room seemed overheated after the outdoors cold. There were two heavily bundled men sitting on bare wooden benches near the stove. They had packs and they watched her with interest as she slammed the door behind her and strode toward the counter.
“We have to stop the train and go back,” she said quickly. “There are at least two passengers missing—friends of mine. And I think there are two more men missing as well.”
The telegraph operator, who doubled as a stationmaster, laid down a tattered copy of a month-old San Francisco newspaper. “I’m sorry, ma‘am, but the train can’t go back. There’s another train coming through in four hours. The eastbound you just got off has to be off the track on a Reno siding or the next train can’t get past.”
“I don’t care about that! There are four men out there somewhere. They can’t be more than ten or fifteen miles back. We have to find them.”
“I’m sorry. Couldn’t stop the train even if I wanted to. There’s a storm a-comin’ and we need to get the eastbound passengers off this mountain. We send the train back, we might get it stuck. Risk a lot of lives. Can’t be done.”
Jessie wanted to scream in frustration. She understood that she was whipped and she had not thought about how her request might endanger everyone’s lives. It was not uncommon for trains to get bogged down in Sierra blizzards or even knocked off the tracks during a sudden avalanche.
“The temperature is falling,” she said. “I can’t wait four hours. It might be too late by then. And it will be dark.”
“Sorry, ma‘am, but there ain’t a thing I can do to help you.”
Jessie spun around, hands knotted in her pockets. There had to be some way to get back down the tracks. “Do you have one of those handcars that you use to repair the tracks?”
“Sure, it’s on the siding. But it takes two strong men to work it and I sure ain’t going out in this weather. Besides, I got to stay here and operate the telegraph.”
Jessie spun around and studied the two men sitting on the benches. “Are you men willing to help?”
They exchanged unenthusiastic glances. “We just want to get on the damn train and down to the Sacramento Valley where it’s warm, ma‘am.”
“But you heard me! There are two men, maybe four, just west of here who need help!”
“Not our problem,” said the other man. They were both full-bearded and looked to be in their thirties and very likely brothers. “Like the stationman said, it’s mighty damn cold and windy out there. A fella could freeze on one of them damn little handcars. Sorry.”
“Damnit!” Jessie choked. “All three of you disgust me! Never mind, it’s downhill and I’ll do it myself!”
“Hey, now wait a minute, lady, that there handcar is the property of the Central Pacific Railroad! You can’t take it.”
“Try and stop me, mister!” Jessie yelled, slamming the door and lowering her head to step out into the wind.
She found the handcar and had to scrape two feet of snow off it before she could climb on top. Jessie grabbed the handle and tried to push it down, but the handcar faced a very slight incline before it reached the main track and it must have weighed a thousand pounds.
“Uhh!” she grunted, jumping up on the handle and trying to bear down on it with all her weight.
The handle began to sink but the handcar barely moved. When Jessie had the handle as far down as it would go, she tried to lift it, and now her weight was of no advantage. The handcar was stuck and even though she strained until perspiration popped out across her forehead and froze like ice pellets, the car refused to budge. She wanted to cry, to scream, to tear into something or somebody. She lay gasping for breath, trying to decide what to do next.
“Aw, hell,” one of the brothers said to the other as they stepped forward to help. “We ain’t gentlemen but mama didn’t raise us to be no-accounts either. Get off there, ma‘am, and we’ll see if we can get this damned thing to the main track for you.”