Edge fired the Winchester from the hip and for an instant the area of yellow light doubled in size, to the sound of shattered glass as his bullet smashed into the swinging kerosene lamp.
Then a man screamed as flaming oil was sprayed against his flesh, hair and clothing.
Martin’s tiny gun cracked, the bullet tunneling uselessly through the frosty air outside.
The second lamp remained intact until it hit the crate and bounced to the floor of the car, to spread fiercely burning oil in every direction.
‘Jesus!’ the old man wailed.
‘Use the blankets!’ Edge yelled at him as he lunged away from the corner, angling the rifle upward.
With both doors open the sounds of the train’s downhill motion were stridently loud. The burning man was still screaming. The air-fanned flames inside the car roared greedily.
The half-breed blasted shots at the roof. Chips of timber rained down as the bullets punched holes to admit tiny shafts of moonlight.
With curses ripping from his trembling lips, Silas Martin raced to the crate, grabbed a blanket in each hand and began to beat at the fire.
Edge uttered no sound as he pumped the lever action of the rifle and squeezed the trigger. Five times in all. No human voice rose above the roar and clatter to indicate that any of the bullets had hit an unseen target. The burning man was no longer screaming his searing agony.
Martin began to win against the fire, his curses choked off as the billowing smoke was sucked into his lungs. He was in a frantic world of his own as he raised each arm in turn and brought the blanket flailing down on the flames. So that he vented a gasp of alarm when the half-breed leaned close to yell in his ear, ‘Give me a hand, feller!’
This said, Edge moved to the crate and started to push against it. The old man hesitated only a moment, then abandoned his fire-fighting to add his weight and strength to that of the half-breed. Suddenly he was struck by a fearful thought.
‘You’re not going to...’
But Edge straightened up before the crate was in danger of tipping out of the car.
‘No, I’m not,’ he answered, snatching up the Winchester and climbing on the crate.
The area of flames had spread on the car floor and Martin grabbed the blankets and started to beat at them again.
Edge hooked one hand over the side of the roof as his hat was whipped off his head, the thong cutting into his neck. His long hair blew across his eyes but he was still able to see through the waving strands.
Two men lay on the flat roof of the boxcar, held by the total inertia of death. One had a hole in his cheek which had spilled a pool of blood that was beginning to freeze. The other was hairless and almost naked, his exposed flesh charred matt black by the fierce flames which had killed him.
The two survivors were on the roof of the car behind, moving with a splayed leg gait and arms out to the sides as they balanced on the swaying surface. They had their backs to Edge and did not dare check behind them for fear that such a move might upset their equilibrium and send them toppling over the side.
Edge had ample time to lodge the rifle safely under the weight of the nearest corpse and then to use both arms to haul himself up on to the roof. Then to sprawl out prone and, with the unburned body as a rest, take aim along the car roofs.
It needed only one shot, fired by a man who did not have to consider for a moment the morality of what he was doing.
Two men had attempted to steal from him and he had punished them. That should have been the end of it. But the law of the hobo jungle did not accept this. So friends of the injured men had tried to reap revenge on their behalf. Their failure had cost them two lives and their only weapons. Edge had survived, still in possession of the means to assuage his own desire for vengeance.
This is how his thoughts would have run had he applied his mind to the subject. Instead, he simply muttered, ‘Meet fire with fire,’ and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.
The hobo in the lead was crouched to leap from one car to the next. Edge’s bullet drilled into the back and smashed the spine of the second man. Who arched his body and was driven forward - to slam into the first one.
There was just a single scream - short-lived, as both men were pitched down between the cars - to bounce off the couplings and be cut in half by the first set of wheels to make contact with their flesh.
‘They coming back?’ Silas Martin shrieked fearfully.
‘Maybe there’s a ghost of a chance,’ the half-breed muttered.
CHAPTER FIVE
HE ROLLED over on to his back and turned around to use his feet to push the two bodies off the roof. The thuds of dead weight hitting snow at the trackside were masked by the much louder sounds of the speeding train.
‘Edge?’ Martin yelled, the terror of being left alone sending his voice to a falsetto pitch.
‘Relax, feller!’ the half-breed called.
‘Thank God,’ the old man rasped, then raised his voice, ‘The fire’s out!’
‘Heat’s off here, too. For awhile.’
But the blazing cord wood in the locomotive’s firebox continued to bellow smoke up and out of the balloon smokestack and, as the rails came out of a curve at the start of a straightaway, the acrid black vapor began to stream along the car roofs and envelope the half-breed.
Holding his breath behind lips clamped tightly closed, he crawled to the rear of the roof and climbed carefully down the iron rungs of the ladder. Outside, clinging precariously with one hand to the cold metal, the swaying motion of the car seemed to be emphasized.
The coupling was of the link-and-pin type and Edge allowed himself a low grunt of satisfaction when he saw this. Then he dismissed all futile thoughts from his mind as he swung from the ladder to place a foot firmly on the tail drawbar of one car and the front bar of the next. Beneath his splayed legs the neatly aligned ties rushed by in a blurring optical illusion which made them appear to be formed into one continuous length of timber.
With his right shoulder braced against the rear of the boxcar carrying the crate, he worked the lever action of the Winchester. And rested the muzzle against one side of the link as he squeezed the trigger.
The report was deafeningly loud between the walls of the cars. The bullet bit into the metal and ricocheted. The recoil jolted him from fingertips to shoulders.
Another futile thought tried to enter his mind - of the certain death that would come to him if he fell on to the track. He had to make an effort to drive it from him. The fear which expanded from the pit of his stomach to engulf his entire body was colder than the air whipping in around the trailing corners of the leading car. Hot beads of sweat pumped from his pores and immediately became icy on his flesh.
A spot of silver showed on the link and he rested the rifle muzzle on this to explode another shot. Six times he fired at the metal and on each occasion he endured the sweating fear of sudden, bloody death. But his well developed muscles held him balanced and none of the ricochets came close to spinning into his legs.
The expanse of silver metal grew over the grease blackened link. But the coupling held firm until, gripping a ladder rung again, the half-breed began to stamp on the bullet weakened iron. When it snapped, he made no vocal sound. Simply worked saliva into his fear parched mouth and spat it down at the track.
The train was still steaming down the grades of the Continental Divide’s eastern slopes, so there was little strain on the fractured link. And the line of boxcars was still strung together when Edge tossed his empty rifle in through the doorway and then lowered himself from the roof and swung in its wake.
An anxious, strangely white-faced Silas Martin demanded, ‘What on earth has been going on out there?’
Not until he was in the partial shelter of the car, with both doors still open to the night, did the half-breed realize how cold he was. Before he even acknowledged that he had heard the question, he dragged both doors closed, shutting out most of the icy draughts and a lot of the noise. Then he sat do
wn and hung his own two blankets over his shoulder. He had to blow into his cupped hands for more than half a minute before his fingers were flexible enough to take shells from his pocket and feed them through the loading gate of the Winchester. The smell of burnt timber was very strong, but less cloying than the stench of charred flesh which had briefly assaulted his nostrils on the roof.
‘Four gone, six to go,’ he said.
What?’
‘Hobos, feller. When we reach level ground or start on an upgrade, this car’ll be the caboose.’
‘There are more of them ready to try to kill us?’
‘There are more of them,’ Edge answered evenly. ‘The old timer and the red haired feller ain’t in any condition to make it over the roofs. Figured it best not to take a chance on the other four.’
Still bitterly cold, but no longer having to keep his teeth clenched to stop them from chattering, the half-breed got stiffly to his feet and slid open the door far enough to push his head through. He looked forward first, and the thong cut into his throat again as his hat was blown off. His lips curled back from his teeth when he saw that the downgrade ended at the start of a long trestle bridge a half mile away. A river, swollen and fast flowing with melted snow, rushed angrily around the bridge supports far below. On the far side the ground rose, the railroad curving gently to left and right again to minimize the effect of the grade.
When he turned his attention toward the second half of the train, two heads were quickly withdrawn into the car carrying the hobos. Then Edge pulled back out of the slipstream, his mirthless grin broadening.
Silas Martin was sitting on the crate, wrapped in two charred blankets and an undamaged one. Anxiety continued to cut deep lines into his pale, waxy face smudged with soot on the forehead. The danger and exertion of putting out the fire had weakened him and he looked much older.
‘You enjoy killing, don’t you?’ he asked.
Edge leaned against the partially open door. ‘I enjoy staying alive, feller,’ he corrected. ‘Lot of the time it works out I have to kill to stay alive. So I guess maybe you could say I enjoy killing.’
‘I’m not criticizing, you understand. As far as the men who attacked us are concerned. But the others? And the brakeman will be left behind, too. They could die of exposure out here in the mountains.’
‘Or they could be picked up by the next train through, feller. The brakeman let the hobos aboard.’
Martin shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘All I do know is that I’d feel better about all of them if they had been intent on stealing Mai Lin’s body.’
The sounds of the train’s progress altered tone as the wheels rolled on to track stretching out over the trestle bridge.
‘You value that more than your life?’ Edge growled.
‘Of course not. But it just seems to me you are too free with other people’s lives.’
‘Not free, feller,’ the half-breed responded as he turned toward the gap in the door again. ‘On this job I come at five dollars a day.’
Air rushed around his head and billowed his long hair. The boxcar was halfway across the bridge and the broken link of the coupling continued to hold. Then the note of the locomotive’s roar altered in pitch as it started up the grade, the pistons and drive shafts protesting at the extra strain.
The engineer held his throttle full open as the fireman stoked greater heat under the boiler. The speed dropped noticeably but the drive wheels maintained their traction on the sloping rails. One by one the string of cars were hauled off the wooden bridge and up the incline.
The coupling held.
Edge waited and watched and experienced a moment of doubt when the caboose started uphill, adding its weight to that of five boxcars pulling against the broken link. But then he snatched a look forward and pursed his lips. There was something like a mile of switch-backing track to the crest of the rise, which allowed ample time and distance for his plan to take effect.
It happened less than a minute later, as the train snaked out of a left hand curve to take a right. The link sprang open with a creak of tortured metal, then snapped cleanly where it hooked around the pin.
The locomotive, relieved of belter than half its payload, lunged into a spurt of acceleration. The freed cars rolled a few feet under forward momentum, then halted briefly and started to move in reverse: gaining speed with every foot of downgrade they covered.
Metal screeched on metal as the engineer and brakeman realized that something was badly wrong. The locomotive, already fighting the upgrade, came to a shuddering, steam-hissing halt in less than fifty feet.
Edge remained sure footed, braced against the partially open door. But Silas Martin was hurled painfully to the floor when the car thudded hard against the one ahead.
In the caboose, the brakeman worked frantically at his wheel, locking and then releasing the blocks which spat showers of sparks across the track each time they touched the rims. But the free-wheeling cars were thrusting too hard, bringing to bear every ounce of their freight’s weight. So that even when the brakes locked the wheels, the speed of the runaway string of cars did not slacken.
From the locomotive cabin, the engineer and fireman stared in horror. Silas Martin forced the door wider to stand beside Edge and began to shake his head and clench and unclench his fists.
The half-breed muttered: ‘Stupid sonofabitch.’
The runaway cars had thundered around the bend, their wheels maintaining a grip on the rails. The caboose started out across the straight, level bridge, pushed to an even higher speed by the final thrust of the heavily laden cars still on the slope. Heads showed at the doorway of the car carrying the hobos. The distance was too great for their expressions to be seen, but the four watchers aboard the stalled section of the train could sense terror, like a palpable presence, emanating from the car.
The last spurt of speed triggered panic in the minds of everyone riding the runaway cars. And the lone railman, who should have known better, surrendered to an impulse.
Had he waited for a few more seconds he would have felt the momentum ease as all the cars attained the level top of the bridge. But the brakeman went for broke too soon, spinning the wheel and leaning hard across it to force the blocks against the rims and lock the wheels.
Steam hissed furiously through the safety valves of the locomotive’s boilers, filling the snow blanketed valley with its sound. So that, for a long time the destruction of half a train seemed - to the quartet of watchers - to happen without noise.
The caboose came to a halt for part of a second. Then all five cars slammed into each other, their wheels jumping the rails. Two went to the left and two to the right. The caboose simply crumpled. The apex of the “V” formed by the jack-knifing cars reached out over the side of the unfenced bridge. And dipped down toward the white rushing water of the swollen river far below.
Because all sounds of the wreck were masked by hissing steam, the sight of the toppling cars took on an unreal quality to the watchers. The crash and fall seemed to happen too slowly, as if time had speeded up and was now correcting itself.
Two human forms slid from the hobos’ boxcar, arms flailing and legs kicking - as if the doomed men were trying to swim in mid-air.
Then the entire nose-diving wreckage exploded, was enveloped in a massive ball of broiling red and blue flame. The slopes of the valley trembled under the blast as the deafening report assaulted the ears of the watchers.
Minor avalanches tipped snow down the steepest slopes.
The ball of fire broke up into a rain of flames pouring out of a cloud of oily black smoke. Slipstream put out the flames long before charred pieces of the bridge, the cars and corpses plunged into the river.
Time slid by at its normal rate. The cold mountain air neutralized the stench of burning. Eardrums recovered from the shockwave of the blast. Moving snow halted and piled up.
‘Friction, I guess!’ a man said, shouting hoarsely above the hiss of steam. ‘Must have been explosiv
es in those army supplies ! Friction and a spark!’
Edge shifted his narrow-eyed gaze away from the fire blackened gap at the top of the trestle bridge, to look down at the oil-smeared face of the tubby engineer. The man was breathless, with shock and the exertion of running down the sides of the train from his locomotive.
‘Guess so,’ the half-breed agreed.
The engineer went to check on the drawbar at the rear of the car.
Martin began to glare hatefully at Edge, but brought his feelings under control when he met the glinting-eyed stare of the taller man.
‘Damn this penny-pinchin’ railroad for not using the knuckle couplers!’ the engineer snarled as he returned to the side of the car. ‘Link must have snapped like a dry twig!’ He gazed ruefully down at the yawning gap in the bridge, then struck an open palm with a fist. ‘And damn Riley, too! If he’d have left the damn brakes alone the friggin’ cars would have stopped safe as can be.’ He shook his head in non-comprehension. ‘Can’t understand it! Riley was a long service brakeman!’
Edge shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Sometimes a feller ain’t himself when he’s at a loose end.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE SIGN on the Union Pacific building proclaimed: BUTCHERVILLE. Which suggested a town. But it was not. It was comprised of a single depot building, one storey high, with a water tower on the roof, sited at the end of a boardwalk beside the track. A quarter of a mile to the north there was the house, barn and corral of a small farmstead, huddled in back of snow-covered fields.
No lights showed against the darkness of the buildings as the train slowed for its approach to the water halt, which was situated on an otherwise featureless plain twenty miles east of the Rockies foothills. Even when the engineer gave a shrill blast on his whistle, the buildings continued to stand in solid blackness against the shallow, powdery snow.
The high pitch blast of sound roused Edge and Silas Martin from sleep, the half-breed instinctively taking a firmer grip on the frame of his Winchester while the old man delved a hand under his coat.
EDGE: THE LIVING, THE DYING AND THE DEAD (Edge series Book 29) Page 5