“A man never talks about a lady in a saloon, Bartel.”
Bartel’s face was mottled red and he was digging his fingers into Ethan’s, trying to pry loose his grip. He failed.
“Mrs. Murphy is a lady,” Ethan ground out. “You hear me?”
Bartel nodded.
Evans grabbed Ethan’s arms. “Let him go, Wilder. He didn’t mean nothing.”
“I don’t want to hear anyone mention her name, not in here, not anywhere…even in church. If I do…” He released Bartel so suddenly that he sprawled on the tabletop for a second before staggering to his feet.
“Wilder,” Bartel snapped as he fussed with and straightened his coat front. “What the hell’s got into you?”
Ethan looked at the faces of the men glowering at him. He needed these men. He needed their business, and yet here he was…
“I’ll take care of the railroad. You take care of getting the cattlemen here.” He snatched up his hat from the table. “Look, I’m a little short-tempered these days…”
Bartel stuffed his shirtfront into his waistband again and tugged down on the front of his vest. “Sure, I understand, but—”
“I gotta go.” He needed to get out of here before he said or did something he regretted.
“When will you be back? The cattlemen will be here next Monday to talk about shipping schedules and rates and such.”
Ethan was already moving toward the doorway, talking over his shoulder as he went. “I’ll be back in a few days.”
Ethan pushed through the doors to the outside. He was headed for the end of the track or, as it was commonly known, Hell on Wheels.
Ethan spent the night on the open prairie mostly because he wasn’t up to facing Billy and the other railroad men yet. He’d kept a cold camp, just some water from his canteen and a piece of beef jerky for dinner. Sleep, what little he’d gotten, was filled with dreams about a blue-eyed woman with fire in her hair.
The morning dawned gray and cloudy, like his mood. That was the whiskey and regret. An hour or so later he rode into the sprawling hodgepodge that was the end of the track. It was a small city nestled against the treeless hills. They had close to eight hundred men on the payroll: graders, track layers, wood choppers, mule skinners and surveyors among others.
As Ethan made his way between tents, he spotted the work train up ahead. It sat cold and black and silent with flat cars and bunk cars strung out behind it like a serpent’s tail. A small herd of cattle grazed on the grass nearby. They, too, belonged to the railroad. Eight hundred men demanded meat every day and, when antelope or buffalo weren’t available, steers were slaughtered.
Smoke rose steadily from the stove in the cook tent. In the distance Ethan spotted the survey team headed out on horseback to stake out the next leg of the track, while close at hand, graders were busy leveling the land in preparation for the ties to be set.
There was shouting and cussing, lots of cussing; words that would make a nun run for cover.
The men worked as a team, each knowing his job, each doing it almost without instruction. Except today, Ethan realized. While most men were working, there were some sitting around, lounging almost, on crates and barrel tops, sipping coffee as though they were in the lobby of the Inter-Ocean Hotel in Cheyenne, instead of building a railroad.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded of one of the men sprawled on the ground near the telegraph car.
The man came quickly to a sitting position and had the good grace to look a little sheepish. “Waitin’ on rails, Mr. Wilder,” he said, touching two fingers to the brim of his woolen cap.
“Rails?” Ethan shifted in the saddle, scanning the area. Not a rail to be seen anywhere. What the hell? “Where’s Billy?” he demanded.
“Over to his tent, I suppose,” the man replied, nodding his head in the general direction.
Ethan didn’t need anyone to tell him where Billy’s tent was. But why was Billy in his tent when he should have been working, and more importantly, where the hell were those rails?
Ethan rode the few yards and dismounted quickly. Shoving aside the canvas flap, Ethan ducked inside.
Head down, Billy was seated at the walnut traveling desk they used for paperwork and keeping documents.
“All right, Billy,” Ethan said, not bothering with polite civilities, “what’s all this about no rails? I made arrangements and—”
“—and they aren’t coming.” Billy looked tired and drawn and old for his twenty-four years. His dark-blond hair fell over his forehead and brushed the collar of his brown shirt. “I was writing you a letter about it.”
“A letter!” Ethan paced the two steps over to the tent opening and turned. “You shouldn’t be writing me letters. You should be on the train back to Chicago to find out what’s wrong. You should—”
“Don’t tell me my job. I’m writing you a letter because you were supposed to be back here two days ago and there’s no telegraph in War Bonnet!” Billy surged to his feet, his hands curled into tight fists below the rolled-up cuffs of his faded brown shirt. “I’ve wired Anderson’s in Chicago and they say they are temporarily out of rails and they won’t have any until the thirtieth.”
“The thirtieth!” Ethan echoed. “That’s too late. We’ve got to make the two-hundred mile mark by the fifteenth or that damned bank will be screaming foreclosure. I wish to hell we’d never borrowed from a bank and stuck with using investors.”
“We ran short. We didn’t have a choice.” Billy’s round face was drawn down in a deep frown. “We’ve got fifteen days to lay ten miles of track.”
“Well, what are you doing about it?” Ethan paced over to the tent flap and back again, all of two long strides.
They faced off like a couple of lions over a piece of meat. Each man glared at the other. As usual, it was Billy who broke the tension. He settled in his chair and, reaching behind him into an opened trunk, produced a bottle of Irish whiskey.
“A little early in the day for drinking, don’t you think?” Ethan said, dropping down on the cot.
“It’s not early. It’s late. I haven’t been to bed yet.” Billy poured a hefty amount in a tin cup and offered the bottle to Ethan, who refused.
Elbows on knees, Ethan willed himself to be calm. “Tell me what’s happening?”
“I wish to hell I knew.” Billy sipped the whiskey, winced and put the cup down on the desk. “A few weeks ago we were having trouble getting spikes. You remember.”
“Yeah, but we took care of that,” Ethan replied. “I wired the San Francisco foundry and they said they had mistakenly overshipped to another buyer. The spikes showed up.”
“A week late.” Billy came around the desk to stand by the tent opening, his back to Ethan. He lifted the flap and looked out. “Since then,” Billy continued, “there’s been more trouble.” He let the flap fall and turned back to his friend. “Think about it, Ethan. That last shipment of tools, saws and such never did show up. The supplier swore up and down they had been shipped but no one could find them. We finally had to buy stock from a different company.”
Ethan snatched off his hat in an agitated gesture and rifled his hand through his hair. “Yeah. Cost us twice as much.”
“Burt Hockmyer over at Anderson’s says they lost our order.”
“Ridiculous. Anderson’s have been shipping to us since we started this job almost a year ago. I could practically set my watch by their deliveries.”
“Exactly.” Billy went back to the desk.
“Well, we damned sure can’t build a railroad without rails.” Ethan was looking at the canvas-covered floor trying to figure out how he was going to overcome this latest in a string of obstacles. He was so close to winning—except for a certain piece of land.
“I know that.” Billy toyed with the metal cup of whiskey, but didn’t take any. “What I’m wondering is, how come we’re having all this trouble sudden like?”
“What are you saying? You think there’s some kind of conspiracy or somet
hing?” Ethan met his friend’s gaze straight on. “Why? If we don’t make this thing go and the banks have to foreclose, they stand to lose. Everyone loses if we don’t finish.”
“I know all that. I’ve sat here all night trying to figure the damned thing out.” Billy came over and sat down beside Ethan on the cot. “It just doesn’t make sense.” He glanced over at Ethan sitting shoulder-rubbing close. “At least you got the land, so that much is taken care of.”
“I might as well tell you…” Ethan looked down at the floor again, then back to Billy.
“Tell me what?”
“I didn’t get the land.”
Billy sat unmoving for a long minute. “Okay,” was all he said.
“Okay?” Ethan paced away, spurs jingling. He knew he’d failed and he wanted someone to tell him so, penance, he supposed. The tent fluttered in the morning breeze. The sound of a couple of mule skinners discussing the fine points of wrangling with a couple of mules, carried through the tent walls. “We can’t do without that land and you sit here saying, ‘Okay’?”
“What the hell do you want me to say?” Billy straightened. “I know it’s my fault. You put me in charge of buying the land in the first place and I missed that one.” He went to where his saddlebags were piled in the corner with his saddle. “Let me get a few things together and—”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ethan demanded.
“I’m going to get the land.”
“If Molly won’t sell to me, what the hell makes you think you can do something I can’t?” Ethan paused. “I’m sorry, kid.”
“I know.”
Ethan sat down beside Billy again and gave his partner an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “We’ll work it out.”
“We always do,” Billy agreed, straightening as he spoke. “There’s no way we’re gonna let this dream slip away from us now, not when we’re so close. We’ve been planning this a long time.”
“Yeah, kid. A long time.” It was true. They’d talked of building a railroad ever since that first week working on the U.P. Two men who had nothing and no one in this world, except a railroad, a dream, a thing to give them identity.
“If I have to build the last fifty miles with my own damn hands,” Billy told him fiercely, “that’s what I’ll do.”
“Not while I’m around you won’t.” A smile tugged at Ethan’s mouth. “You think I’m gonna let you have all the fun? This isn’t any worse than Gettysburg, and if we can get through that alive…”
Billy slapped his knee and stood in the way of men who want to change a subject before they got too emotional. “Okay. First things first. We want to tackle the supply problem or the land problem?”
“Supplies,” Ethan told him. “If we don’t get ’em, the land won’t matter. Molly would be glad to hear me say that, I suspect.”
Billy was busy rummaging in the camel-backed trunk behind the desk. “Molly? Who’s Molly? You mentioned that name a minute ago.”
“Molly Murphy,” Ethan replied, instantly thinking of the woman and the kiss. “She owns the ranch we need, or rather her husband does.”
“What’s he say?”
“Nothing. He’s not there.”
Billy produced what appeared to be a clean shirt from the trunk. He tossed it on the end of the cot, the red plaid dim from too many washings. Billy pulled his shirttail free of his trousers and started working on the buttons. “When will the husband…Murphy, be back?”
“Don’t know.”
“And the wife, does she know?”
“She doesn’t know, either.” Ethan glanced over at his friend. “Can you believe it? That son of a bitch ran out on her months ago. He left a woman and a kid to fend for themselves while he’s off chasing gold. She’s raising chickens and selling the eggs and growing vegetables and doing a damned fine job of surviving against the odds.” There was an unmistakable note of pride in his voice.
Billy shrugged out of his dirty shirt and reached for the clean one. “Sounds like you got to know her pretty well.”
Ethan’s head came up with a snap. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Look, Billy, if you’re saying something—”
Billy stopped him by holding both hands up in unconditional surrender. “Whoa! I only meant she sounds special. You’re not usually so…patient about things. What’s got you so riled?”
“Nothing!” Everything: taking a woman’s land, having no choice about it, remembering the look in her eyes when she’d ordered him off the place, knowing he’d have to go back there and see her and…
Ethan stormed outside and headed for the campfire by the cook tent. He needed some coffee, some breakfast. He needed distance from these memories.
Billy followed along, tucking his clean shirt in as he went.
Ethan snatched up a cup and a gray metal plate from the stack on the end of the plank table before getting in the chow line. Billy joined him.
The day was warming fast and there was a sage-scented breeze out of the north. Overhead the sky was pale blue, dotted with puffy white clouds that would probably turn into thunderheads late in the afternoon.
Breakfast was cornmeal mush, bacon, biscuits and coffee. “I hate cornmeal mush,” Ethan told the cook sharply.
“Since when?” Mulroon, the camp cook asked, looking surprised and more than a little annoyed.
“Since always,” Ethan retaliated, holding out his plate for the mush just the same. He’d been eating it every day for the last seven months.
“Well, we ain’t in New York and this here ain’t no Delmonico’s, you know,” Mulroon said in the way of sharp-tongued cooks, waving Ethan along with the business end of a ladle.
Ethan helped himself to some extra crisp bacon and three biscuits. There was no honey, but there was butter. Butter. Molly loved butter, she’d practically cried when—
“Hey, Ethan, you gonna stand there all day or what?” Billy nudged him with his elbow.
Ethan snapped out of his musings. “No.”
There were a couple of dozen men seated at the picnic-style tables. Ethan headed for the far side of the eating area and settled on a makeshift bench made of a plank, straddling two empty nail kegs that was out of earshot of the men. Ethan held his plate out in front of him. His cup of coffee rested beside his right hip near his .44.
Billy sat Indian fashion on the ground, leaning back against one of the barrels. “When do you want to leave?”
“Right after breakfast.” Ethan ate the mush because he was hungry and because it was there. He’d learned to do a lot of things he didn’t like over the years. “I’ll go to Chicago and see what’s wrong at Anderson’s, then I’ll go by the bank and see if we can get an extension on the loan payment.”
“We’re gonna need it. There’s no way we can lay ten miles in five days. All we’ll need are a couple of weeks. Even one would make the difference,” Billy added. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Like you said, it’s better business for them if we finish than if they foreclose. Sure you don’t want me to come?”
“No. You stay here. Keep the men working. Have them keep grading and readying the roadbed.” The day was already warming, the sun made Ethan squint. He pulled the brim of his hat down lower and shifted around a bit until the sun fell on his shoulders and back, warming muscles through the dark-green cotton. A herd of antelope grazed about a mile away, well out of rifle range. Animals always seemed to know exactly how far that was.
A couple of workers strolled past. “Mr. Wilder. Mr. Trumble,” they said almost in unison.
“Boys,” Ethan answered with a nod. To Billy he said, “Once we get the supplies moving again, I’ll go back and get the land.”
Billy craned his neck around to look at his partner. “What are you going to do different? I mean you were gone four days and—”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.” He had to figure something out, some way to redeem himself with Molly and get the land. It was untenable but it was the hand he’d been
dealt.
Ethan cleared his throat and straightened. Needing to change the subject, he said, “I met with the businessmen in town. That guy Bartel is a blowhard of the first order, but enthusiastic. He sees dollar signs in his sleep, I’ll warrant. Land is already going up in price and I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned most of it.”
“Well, railroads do that for a town,” Billy muttered, tossing a chunk of biscuit toward a flock of sparrows pecking at crumbs nearby. The birds fluttered away but came immediately back. “Don’t I remember you writing to Bartel?”
“Yeah. Anyway, he’s got the cattlemen organized for us, which is good…assuming we’re there in time for the spring calf shipping. Otherwise…” He let the implication linger.
Billy scrambled to his feet enough to perch on the bench beside Ethan. “I still don’t see why you don’t let me go see this Molly person about the land while you’re in Chicago. Luke Thompson could handle things here.”
Yes, Ethan thought, Thompson was a first-rate foreman and could probably run the work just fine. It made more sense to let Billy do what he’d said, but Ethan had his own unfinished business with Molly Murphy that had nothing to do with the rail road. Fleetingly, he thought about sending Billy to Chicago, but most of the suppliers had made their deals with Ethan. He wanted to look them in the face when he explained what the hell was going on.
Chapter Eleven
Billy stopped midmotion. “I’m gonna argue this one with you, Ethan. I can handle Chicago.”
“I know you can, but you can handle this work better. You know the men better than I do. They trust you and you know who to count on…when to push and when to back off. We’re a team, right?”
“Yeah, but I need to help.”
“I know. You’ve been helping ever since that day at Brandy Station.”
When the war had started lots of men on both sides had formed their own companies, but, as the war had raged on, the ability to get the job done became more important than family connections.
Ethan got the job done. He’d led an elite band of hand-picked cavalry that had raised havoc with Lee’s forces at Five Forks, Brandy Station and Gettysburg, to name a few. Ethan had risen through the enlisted ranks all the way to brevet major and Billy to brevet lieutenant. They’d been ordered into a joint flanking mission in support of General Stoneman.
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