To the men watching from the work train sidelined at the bottom of the canyon, it looked as if the freight hurtling overhead had developed a mind of its own and decided to fly. Years later, survivors would swear that it soared for an amazingly long way before gravity took charge. Several found religion, convinced that God had intervened to help the freight train fly just far enough that most of it overshot the work train when it tumbled down the mountain. At the time, however, what most saw when they looked up at the terrible thunder was a 2-8-0 Consolidation locomotive toppling off the edge of a cliff and rolling at them with fifty boxcars and gondolas that swept trees and boulders from the slope like a long black whip.
Most remembered the noise. It started as thunder, swelled to the roar of an avalanche, and ended, hours later it seemed, in the sharp, rending clatter of steel and wood raining down on the stationary work train. None forgot the fear.
ISAAC BELL WAS ON the scene within hours.
He wired Hennessy that the wreck was very possibly an accident. There was no evidence that the Wrecker had tampered with the rails. Admittedly, the heavy Consolidation had so battered the point where she jumped the track that it was impossible to distinguish for sure between deliberate removal of spikes or an accidental loose rail. But meticulously filed Southern Pacific Railway police reports indicated that patrols on horseback and handcar had blanketed the area. It was unlikely, Bell concluded, that the saboteur could have gotten close enough to strike at the Diamond Canyon Loop.
Livid because the wreck had unsettled his workforce, Hennessy sent Franklin Mowery, the civil engineer he had hauled out of retirement to build the Cascade Canyon Bridge, to inspect the wreck. Mowery limped along the ruined bed, leaning heavily on his bespectacled assistant’s arm. He was a talkative old man-born, he told Bell, in 1837, when Andrew Jackson was still president. He said he had been present when the first continental railroad linked east and west lines at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869. “Nearly forty years ago. Time flies. Hard to believe I was even younger that day than this rascal helping me walk.”
He gave his assistant an affectionate slap on the shoulder. Eric Soares, whose wire-rimmed glasses, wavy dark hair, expressive eyes, broad brow, narrow chin, and thin, waxed handlebar mustache made him look more like a poet or a painter than a civil engineer, returned a sly smile.
“What do you think, Mr. Mowery?” asked Bell. “Was it an accident?”
“Hard to say, son. Ties smashed like kindling, no piece large enough to register tool marks. Spikes bent or snapped in two. Reminds me of a derailment I saw back in ‘83. String of passenger cars descending the High Sierra, the rear cars telescoping into one another like that caboose over there rammed inside that boxcar.”
The tall detective and the two engineers cast sober eyes on the caboose stuffed into the boxcar like a hastily packed suitcase.
“What will you report to Mr. Hennessy?” Bell asked.
Mowery nudged Eric Soares. “What should we tell him, Eric?”
Soares removed his glasses, glanced about myopically, then dropped to his knees and closely examined a crosstie severed by a locomotive drive wheel.
“As you say, Mr. Mowery,” he said, “if they did pull spikes, no tool marks survived.”
“But,” Mowery said, “I’d venture the old man is not going to want to hear that slack maintenance was the culprit, is he, Eric?”
“No, Mr. Mowery,” Eric answered with another of his sly smiles. Their friendship, Bell noticed, seemed based on Mowery acting like an uncle and Soares the favorite nephew.
“Nor will he welcome speculation that hasty construction could have resulted in a weakness exploited by the fast-moving heavy locomotive, will he, Eric?”
“No, Mr. Mowery.”
“Compromise, Mr. Bell, is the essence of engineering. We surrender one thing to get another. Build too fast, we get shabby construction. Build too scrupulously, we never get the job done.”
Eric stood up, hooked his glasses around his ears again, and took up the older’s chant.
“Build it so strong that it will never fail, we risk building too heavy. Build it light, we might build it too weak.”
“Eric’s a metallurgist,” Mowery said, chuckling. “Speaking of essence. He knows forty types of steel that didn’t even exist in my day.”
Bell was still studying the telescoped wreckage of the caboose stuffed inside the boxcar when an intriguing idea struck him. These men were engineers. They understood how things were made.
“Could you make a sword that starts short and gets longer?” he asked.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You were talking about telescoping and steel, and I was wondering whether the blade of a sword could be hidden inside itself then extended to make it long.”
“Like a collapsible stage sword?” asked Mowery. “Where the actor appears to be run through but the blade actually retracts into itself?”
“Only this one would not retract. It would run you through.”
“What do you say, Eric? You studied metallurgy at Cornell. Could you make such a sword?”
“You can make anything, if you’ve got the money,” Eric answered. “But it would be difficult to make it strong.”
“Strong enough to run a man through?”
“Easily strong enough to thrust. Strong enough to pierce flesh. But it could not endure lateral impact.”
“Lateral impact?”
Mowery explained. “Eric means that it would not stand up to whacking it sideways in a real sword fight against a real sword.”
“The beat,” said Bell. “A sharp blow to push your opponent’s blade aside.”
“You compromise strength in the interest of compactness. Two or three short lengths of steel joined cannot be as strong as one. Why do you ask, Mr. Bell?”
“I was curious what it would be like to make a knife turn into a sword,” said Bell.
“Surprising,” Mowery said drily, “to the fellow on the business end.”
The bridge builder took a final look around and steadied himself on Eric’s arm.
“Let’s go, Eric. No putting it off any longer. I’ve got to report to the old man exactly what Mr. Bell reported, which is exactly what the old man doesn’t want to hear. Who the heck knows what happened. But we found no evidence of sabotage.”
When Mowery did make his report, an angry Osgood Hennessy asked in a low, dangerous voice, “Was the engineer killed?”
“Barely a scratch. He must be the luckiest locomotive driver alive.”
“Fire him! If it wasn’t radical sabotage, then excessive speed caused that wreck. That’ll show the hands I don’t tolerate reckless engineers risking their lives.”
But firing the engineer did nothing to calm the terrified workmen employed to finish the Cascades Cutoff. Whether the wreck had been an accident or the work of a saboteur, they didn’t care. Although they were inclined to believe that the Wrecker had struck again. Police spies reported that there was talk in the camp of a strike.
“Strike!” echoed the apoplectic Hennessy. “I’m paying them top dollar. What the hell else do they want?”
“They want to go home,” Isaac Bell explained. He was keeping close track of the men’s mood by polling his covert operatives in the cookhouses and saloons and visiting personally to gauge the effect of the Wrecker’s attacks on the Southern Pacific labor force. “They’re afraid to ride the work train.”
“That’s insane. I’m about to hole through the last tunnel to the bridge.”
“They say that the cutoff has become the most dangerous line in the West.”
Ironically, Bell admitted, the Wrecker had won this round, whether he intended to or not.
The old man dropped his head in his hands. “God in Heaven, where am I going to get a thousand men with winter coming?” He looked up angrily. “Round up their ringleaders. Clap a bunch in jail. The rest’ll come around.”
“May I suggest,” said Bell, “a more productive course?”
“Sir,” said Bell. “I’ve just come back from the camp. It’s gripped with fear. Watt’s police will, at best, provoke a riot and, at worst, cause vast numbers to drift away. Troops will make it even worse. You can’t force decent work out of frightened men. But you can attempt to alleviate their fright.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bring in Jethro Watt. Bring five hundred officers with him. But put them to work patrolling the line. Blanket it until it is apparent that you, not the Wrecker, control every inch of track between here and Tunnel 13.”
“That’ll never work,” said Hennessy. “Those agitators won’t buy it. They just want to strike.”
Lillian spoke up at last.
“Try it, Father.”
And so the old man did.
Within a day, every mile of track was guarded and every mile scoured for loose rails and buried explosives. Just as had happened in Jersey City, where Van Dorn operatives had arrested various criminals swept up in the search for the Wrecker’s accomplices, here, in the course of hunting for signs of sabotage, track crews discovered several weaknesses in the track and repaired them.
Bell mounted a horse and rode the twenty-mile line. He returned by locomotive, satisfied that this newest stretch of the cutoff had been transformed from the most dangerous in the West to the best maintained. And the best guarded.
THE WRECKER DROVE A trader’s wagon pulled by two strong mules. It had a patched and faded canvas top stretched over seven hoops. Under the canvas were pots and pans and woolen cloth, salt, a barrel of lard, another that held china dishes packed in straw. Hidden under the trader’s cargo was an eight-foot-long, ten-by-twelve-inch freshly milled mountain hemlock railroad tie.
The trader was dead, stripped naked and tossed off a hillside. He was nearly as tall as the Wrecker, and his clothes fit the Wrecker reasonably well. A hole bored the length of the squared timber was stuffed with dynamite.
The Wrecker followed a buggy road that likely had started out as an Indian trail long before the railroad was built and a mule-deer track before then. While steep and narrow, the road unerringly found the gentlest slopes in a land that was harsh. Most of the remote settlements it touched upon were abandoned. Those that weren‘t, he avoided. Their hardscrabble residents might recognize the wagon and wonder what had happened to its owner.
Here and there, the road crossed the new railroad, offering an opportunity to drive the wagon onto the tracks. But every time he neared the cutoff line, he saw patrols, police riding horseback and police pumping handcars. His plan was to drive his wagon along the tracks at night to the edge of a deep canyon, where he would replace an in-place crosstie with his explosive one. But as afternoon waned and the slopes darkened, he was forced to admit that his plan would not succeed.
Isaac Bell’s hand was obvious in the precautions, and the Wrecker cursed yet again the killers he had hired in Rawlins who had botched the job. But all his cursing and all his regretting would not change the fact that Bell’s patrols meant that he could not risk driving the wagon on the tracks. The railroad cut was narrow. Much of it consisted of sheer rock on one side and a steep drop on the other. If he ran into a patrol, there was no place to hide a wagon, and, in most places, no way to drive it off the tracks at all.
The hemlock crosstie weighed two hundred pounds. The spike puller he needed to remove an existing tie weighed twenty. The puller could double as a crowbar to dig out the ballast, but he couldn’t drive spikes with it, so he still needed a hammer and that weighed another twelve pounds. He was strong. He could lift two hundred thirty pounds. He could lift the hemlock tie with the hammer and puller lashed to it and hoist it to his shoulder. But how many miles could he carry it?
Unloading the tie from the wagon, it felt even heavier than he had imagined. Thank God it hadn’t been creosoted in coal-tar distillates. The wood would have absorbed another thirty pounds of the dark liquid.
The Wrecker leaned the tie against a telegraph pole and roped the spike puller and hammer to it. Then he drove the trader’s wagon behind some trees a short distance from the tracks. He shot both mules with his derringer, pressing the muzzle to their skulls to muffle the reports in case a patrol was nearby. He hurried back to the tracks, crouched and tilted the massive weight onto his shoulder. Then he straightened his legs and started walking.
The rough wood dug through his coat, and he regretted not taking a blanket from the wagon to cushion his shoulder. The pain started as a dull ache. It sharpened quickly, biting deep. It cut into the muscle of his shoulder and ground against the bone. After only half a mile, it burned like fire. Should he put it down, run back to the wagon, and get a blanket? But then Bell’s patrols could find it lying by the rails.
The Wrecker’s legs were tired already. His knees began to shake. But his shaking knees and the awful pain in his shoulder were soon forgotten as the weight compressed the bones in his spine, squeezing nerves. The nerves radiated a burning sensation into his legs, shooting sharp pains through his thighs and calves. He wondered if he put the tie down and stopped to rest whether he could lift it again. While he debated the risk, the decision was made for him.
He had carried the tie for a mile when he saw a creamy glow in the sky up ahead. It brightened quickly. A locomotive headlamp, he realized, coming fast. Already he could hear it over the sound of his labored breathing. He had to get off the tracks. There were trees close by. Feeling his way in the dark, he descended the slope of the roadbed and careened through them. The headlamp threw crazy beams and shadows. He pushed in deeper, then knelt down carefully, tipping the massive crosstie down until its end rested on the ground.
The relief of having the weight off him was an almost overwhelming pleasure. He leaned the other end of the tie against a tree. Then he sagged to the ground and stretched out on the pine needles to rest. The locomotive grew louder and roared past, drawing a train that rattled with the peculiar higher pitch of empty cars. It passed too quickly. Too soon, he had to stand up, tip the crushing weight onto his shoulder, and struggle up the slope to the rails.
The heel of his boot caught on the head of the rail as he tried to step between the tracks. He felt himself pitching forward, falling face-first. He fought to regain his balance. But before he could get his feet under him in the headlong rush, the weight pushed him down. He twisted frantically to get out from under the tie. But the weight was too massive to escape entirely. A sledgehammer blow crushed his arm, and he cried out in pain.
Facedown on the roadbed, he wrenched his arm out from under the tie, knelt as if in prayer, heaved it onto his aching shoulder, stood up, and pressed on. He tried to count his steps but kept losing track. He had five miles to go. But he had no idea how far he had staggered. He started counting ties. His heart sank. There were almost three thousand ties for every mile of track. After a hundred, he thought he would die. After five hundred, he was almost destroyed by the realization that five hundred ties was no more than a fifth of a mile.
His mind began to scatter. He imagined carrying the tie all the way to Tunnel 13. Through the stone mountain all the way to the Cascade Canyon Bridge.
I’m the “Hero Engineer”!
Giddy-headed laughter dissolved into a sob of pain. He felt himself drifting out of control. He had to shift his thoughts away from the pain and the fear that he could not continue.
He drove his mind toward his early rote training in mathematics and engineering. Structure-the physics that made a bridge stand or fall. Struts. Ties. Foundation piers. Cantilever arms. Anchor arms. Live loads. Dead loads.
The laws of physics ruled how to distribute weight. The laws of physics said he could not carry the crosstie another foot. He drove that madness from his mind and concentrated instead on fencing moves, the light, airy motion of a sword. “Attack,” he said aloud. “Beat. Lun
ge. Parry. Riposte. Feint. Double feint.” On he plodded, the weight pounding his bones to jelly. Attack. Beat. Lunge. Parry. German intruded. Suddenly, he was mumbling the engineering terms from his student days. Then shouting the language of Heidelberg when he learned to kill. “Angriff. Battutaangriff. Ausfall, Parade. Doppelfinte.” He imagined someone humming in his ear. Attack: Angriff. Beat: Battutaangriff. Lunge: Ausfall. Parry: Parade. Double feint: Doppelfinte. Someone he could not see was humming a tuneless ditty. It grew shrill. Now he heard it right behind him. He whirled around, the weight of the crosstie nearly spinning him off his feet. Harsh acetylene light blazed on the tracks. It was a police patrol pumping along on an almost silent handcar.
A sheer rock wall pressed against the right-of-way on his left. To his right, the mountain dropped sharply. He sensed more than saw a steep drop. The feathery tops of small trees piercing the dark indicated it could be as much as twenty feet down. He had no choice. The handcar was almost on top of him. He dropped the tie over the edge and jumped after it.
He heard the tie hit a tree and snap the trunk. Then he smashed into a springy tree, knocking the wind out of him.
The humming dropped in tone. The handcar was slowing down. To his horror, they stopped. He could hear men talking fifteen feet above his head and saw beams of flashlights and lanterns. They dismounted. He could hear their boots crunching on the ballast as they strode the rail bed, shining their lights. A man shouted. Abruptly as they had appeared, they left. The handcar creaked into motion and hummed away, leaving him fifteen feet down the steep embankment in the dark.
Moving cautiously, hunched over on the slope, digging his boots in, he felt in the dark for the crosstie. He smelled pine pitch and traced the odor to the broken tree. Several feet down, he bumped into the square end of the tie. He felt for his tools. Still tied on. He looked up the slope. The rim of the rail bed towered above him.
How would he climb up it carrying the tie?
He tipped it on one end, worked his shoulder under it, and struggled to stand.
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