Every mile he had come so far, every escape, meant nothing. This was the real test: to climb back up the embankment. It was only twenty feet, but each foot could have been a mile. The combination of the weight he was carrying and the distance he had come and the steepness of the embankment seemed insurmountable.
As his strength failed, he saw his dreams of wealth and power fading before his eyes. He slipped and fell, then struggled to his feet again. If only he had killed Isaac Bell. He began to realize that he was battling Bell more than the tie, more than the cutoff, more than the Southern Pacific.
The nightmare of Bell stopping him gave him the strength to rise. Inch by inch, foot by foot. Attack: Angriff. Beat: Battutaangriff. Lunge: Ausfall. Parry: Parade. Double feint: Doppelfinte. Twice he fell. Twice he got up. He reached to the top and staggered on. If he lived to be ninety, he would never forget that gut-wrenching climb.
The pounding of his heart was growing louder and louder, so loud that he eventually realized it couldn’t be his heart. A locomotive? He stopped dead in the middle of the tracks, stunned and dismayed. Not another patrol. Thunder? Lightning flickered. He was hearing the rumble of thunder. Cold rain began to fall. He had lost his hat. Rainwater streamed down his face.
The Wrecker laughed.
The rain would drench the patrols, chase them indoors. He laughed deliriously. Rain instead of snow. The rivers were rising, but the tracks would not blocked by snow. Osgood Hennessy must be delighted. So much for the experts predicting an early winter. The railroad president had given up on the meteorologists and had actually paid an Indian medicine man to predict the weather, and he told Hennessy that the snows would come late this year. Rain instead of snow meant more time to complete the cutoff.
The Wrecker steadied the tie on his shoulder, and spoke aloud.
“Never.”
A huge bolt of lightning lit everything stark white.
The tracks curved sharply, clinging to the narrow cut. Below was a dizzying view of a rampaging river at the bottom of a deep canyon. This was the spot. The Wrecker dropped the hemlock tie, loosened the ropes that held his tools, and pried up the spikes on both sides of an existing tie and set them carefully aside. Then he scrabbled at the crushed rock with the spike puller, loosening the sharp stones. He raked them out from under the tie and spread them carefully so they didn’t roll down the embankment.
When he had dug the ballast away, he used the puller as a lever to work the tie out from under the rails. Then he shoved his hemlock tie with the dynamite in it into the space and began scooping back the stone ballast, packing it under the tie. Last, he hammered in the eight spikes. With the tie securely under the rails and the ballast carefully spread, he attached the trigger, a nail wedged under the rail into a hole drilled in the tie.
The nail rested in the wood an inch above a fulminate-mercury detonator. He had calculated carefully, driving a hundred nails to measure the force, so that a patrol walking the ties or a handcar rolling on the rails would not press the nail deeply enough to detonate the explosive. Only the full weight of a locomotive could trigger the detonator.
One last brutal task remained. He tied his tools to the crosstie he had removed, tipped it onto his shoulder, and rose on shaking legs. He staggered a quarter mile from the trap he had laid and heaved tie and tools down the cliff where no patrol could see it.
He was reeling with exhaustion, but his heart set with icy resolve.
He had crippled the cutoff with dynamite, collision, and fire.
He had shaken the mighty Southern Pacific by derailing the Coast Line Limited.
So what if Bell had twisted his New York attack to Hennessy’s advantage?
The Wrecker raised his face to the storming sky and let the rain cleanse him. Thunder pealed.
“It is mine!” he roared back. “Tonight I earned it.”
He would win this final round.
Not one man on the work train would survive to finish Tunnel 13.
31
A THOUSAND MEN MILLED ABOUT THE CUTOFF CONSTRUCTION camp at dawn. Twenty cars of wooden benches stood empty behind a locomotive venting excess steam. The men stood in the rain, preferring the cold and wet to shelter on the work train.
“Stubborn bastards!” Hennessy raged, watching from his private car. “Wire the Governor, Lillian. This is insurrection.”
Lillian Hennessy placed her fingers on the telegraph key. Before she tapped, she said to Isaac Bell, “Is there nothing else you can do?”
In Bell’s opinion, the men bunched in the rain did not look stubborn. They looked afraid. And they looked embarrassed to be afraid, which said a lot for their courage. The Wrecker had erased innocent lives by dynamite, train wreck, collision, and fire. Death and injury had attended attack after attack. Men had died in derailments, the tunnel collapse, the ditched Coast Line Limited, the runaway railcar, and the terrible explosion in New Jersey.
“The patrols have inspected every inch of rail,” he answered Lillian. “I don’t know what I can do that they haven’t done already. Short of riding on the cowcatcher to check it myself …”
The detective spun on his heel, strode from Hennessy’s car, crossed the rail yard at a rapid pace, and shouldered through the crowd. He climbed the ladder on the back of the work train’s tender, nimbly crossed the heaped coal, and jumped on the roof of the locomotive’s cab. From the vantage of the pulsing machine, he could see sullen track layers and hard-rock miners spread from one end of the yards to the other. They fell silent. A thousand faces were rising toward the incongruous sight of a man in a white suit standing on the locomotive.
Bell had once heard William Jennings Bryan address a crowd at the Atlanta Exposition. Standing in front near Bryan, he had been struck by how slowly the famous orator spoke. The reason, Bryan told him at a later meeting, was that words bunched up as they moved through the air. When they reached the back of the crowd, they arrived at a normal cadence.
Bell now raised his hands. He brought his voice up from deep within. He spoke slowly, very slowly. But every word was a challenge thrown in their faces.
“I will stand watch.”
Bell reached slowly into this coat.
“This locomotive will steam slowly to the railhead.”
Slowly, he drew his Browning pistol.
“I will stand on the cowcatcher on the front of this locomotive.”
He pointed the pistol at the sky.
“I will fire this pistol to signal the engineer to stop the train the instant I see danger.”
He squeezed the trigger. A shot echoed off the roundhouse and shops.
“The engineer will hear this shot.”
He fired again.
“He will stop the train.”
Bell held the weapon pointed at the sky and continued speaking slowly.
“I will not say that any man unwilling to ride behind me is the lowest coward in the Cascade Mountains.”
Another shot echoed.
“But I will say this … Any man unwilling to ride should go back to where he came from and live in the care of his mother.”
Laughter rumbled from one end of the yard to the other. There was a tentative surge of movement toward the train. For a second, he thought he had convinced them. But an angry voice bawled, “You ever work on a track gang?” And another voice: “How the hell will you know if something’s wrong?” Then a big man with a beefy red face and hot blue eyes clambered up the tender’s ladder and stalked across the coal to where Bell stood atop the locomotive’s cab. “I’m Malone. Track boss.”
“What do you want, Malone?”
“So you’re going to stand on the cowcatcher, are you? You don’t even know enough to call the engine Pilot by its proper name, and you’re going to spot what’s wrong on the rails before it blows you to kingdom come? Cowcatcher, for the love of God … But I’ll give you one thing: you got guts.”
The foreman thrust a callused hand at Bell.
“Put ‘er there! I’ll ride with y
ou.”
The two men shook hands for all to see. Then Malone raised his voice, which carried like a steamship horn.
“Any man here says Mike Malone won’t know trouble when he sees it?”
None did.
“Any of youse wants to live with his mother?”
With a roar of laughter and a thousand cheers, the workmen jumped aboard the train and crowded into the wooden benches.
Bell and Malone climbed down and mounted the wedge-shaped pilot. There was room to stand on either side, hanging into a rail just under the locomotive’s headlamp. The engineer, conductor, and fire-man came up front for orders.
“How fast you want to go?” the engineer asked.
“Ask the expert,” said Bell.
“Keep her under ten miles a hour,” said Malone.
“Ten?” the engineer protested. “It’ll take two hours to get to the tunnel.”
“You prefer a shortcut over a cliff?”
The train crew trooped back to the cab.
Malone said, “Keep that pistol handy, mister.” Then he grinned at Bell. “Just remember, if we hit a mine or jump a loose rail, we’ll be the first to experience the consequences.”
“The thought had occurred to me,” Bell said drily. “But, fact is, I’ve had every foot of this line scoured for the past two days. Handcar, on foot, horse patrol.”
“We’ll see,” said Malone, grin fading.
“Would you like these?” asked Bell, offering his Carl Zeiss binoculars.
“No thanks,” said Malone. “I’ve been inspecting track with these eyes for twenty years. Today’s not the day to learn something new.”
Bell slung the binoculars strap over his head so he could drop the glasses and draw his pistol to fire a warning shot.
“Twenty years? You’re the man to tell me, Malone. What should I look for?”
“Missing spikes that hold the rails to the ties. Missing fishplates that join the rails. Breaks in the rails. Signs of digging in the ballast in case the bastard mined it. The roadbed’s newly laid. It should look smooth, no dips, no humps. Look for loose rock on the ties. And whenever we round a bend in the road, look extra hard ‘cause the saboteur knows that around the bend is where the engineer will never see it in time to stop.”
Bell raised the binoculars to his eyes. He was acutely aware that he had persuaded the thousand men behind him to risk their lives. As Malone had observed, he and Bell, riding in front, would take the brunt of an attack. But only at first. A derailment would tumble them all to their deaths.
32
THE TRACKS HUGGED THE EDGE OF THE MOUNTAIN ON A NARROW cut. To the left rose sheer rock, scarred by drills and dynamite. To the right was air. The drop-off varied from mere yards to a quarter of a mile. Where canyon floors were visible from the tracks, Bell saw treetops, fallen boulders, and raging rivers swollen by the rain.
He scanned the tracks a hundred feet ahead. His binoculars had modern Porro prisms that intensified the light. He could see the offset spike heads clearly, eight driven into each tie. The chocolate-brown squared timbers flowed under him with numbing regularity.
“How many ties per mile?” he asked Malone.
“Two thousand seven hundred,” answered the foreman. “Give or take.”
Brown tie after brown tie after brown tie. Eight spikes in each. Each spike securely embedded in the wood. Fishplates holding each joint, half hidden by the bulge of the rail. The ballast, sharp-edged crushed stone, glistened in the rain. Bell watched for dips in the smooth surface. He watched for loose stone. He watched for loose bolts, missing spikes, breaks in the gleaming rails.
“Stop!” shouted Malone.
Bell triggered his Browning. The sharp crack of the gunshot resounded off the rock wall and echoed across the canyons. But the engine kept rolling.
“Fire!” Malone shouted. “Again!”
Bell was already squeezing the trigger. The drop was steep along this bend in the road, the canyon floor below littered with boulders. As Bell’s second shot rang out, the brake shoes struck with a bang and a hiss, and the locomotive slid to a halt on screeching wheels. Bell hit the ground running. Malone was right behind him.
“There!” said Malone.
Twenty feet ahead of the train, they stopped and stared at an almost imperceptible bulge in the ballast. Whereas the freshly laid crushed stone presented a smooth, flat incline from the ties to the edge of the cliff, here was a gentle bump that rose a few inches higher.
“Don’t get too close!” Malone warned. “Looks like they’ve been digging here. See how it didn’t settle like the original?”
Bell walked straight to the bulge and stepped onto it.
“Look out!”
“The Wrecker,” said Bell, “would make absolutely certain that nothing less than the weight of a locomotive would detonate a mine.”
“You seem mighty sure of that.”
“I am,” said Bell. “He’s too smart to waste his powder on a handcar.”
He knelt down on a tie and looked closely. He passed his hand over the crushed stone.
“But what I don’t see are any signs of recent digging. These stones have been sitting awhile. See the coal dust undisturbed?”
Malone stepped closer reluctantly. Then he knelt beside Bell, scratching his head. He ran his fingers over the coal dust crusting in the rain. He picked up some chunks of ballast and examined them. Abruptly, he rose.
“Shoddy work, not explosives,” he said. “I know exactly who was in charge of laying this section and he is going to hear from me. Sorry, Mr. Bell. False alarm.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
By then, the train crew had disembarked. Behind them, fifty workmen gawked, and others were piling off the cars.
“Everyone back on the train!” Malone roared.
Bell took the engineer aside.
“Why didn’t you stop?”
“You caught me by surprise. Took me a moment to act.”
“Stay alert!” Bell retorted coldly. “You’ve got men’s lives in your hands.”
They got everyone back on the train and rolling again.
The ties slid by. Squared timber after squared timber. Eight spikes, four on each rail. Fishplates securing the rails. Sharp-edged crushed ballast glistened in the wet. Bell watched for more bumps in the flat surface, disturbed stone, missing bolts, absent spikes, cracks in the rails. Tie after tie after tie.
For seventeen miles, the train trundled slowly. Bell began to hope against hope that his precautions had paid off. The patrols and constant inspections had ensured the line was safe. Only three miles to go and then the men could return to work, boring the vital Tunnel 13.
Suddenly, as they rounded a sharp curve that rimmed the deepest canyon on the route, something unusual caught Bell’s eye. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was at first. For an instant, it barely penetrated.
“Malone!” he said in a whipcrack voice, “Look! What’s wrong?”
The red-faced man beside him leaned forward, squinted, his face a mask of concentration.
“I don’t see nothing.”
Bell raked the tracks with his binoculars. Bracing his feet on the pilot, he held the glasses with one hand and drew his pistol with the other.
The ballast was smooth. No spikes were missing. The ties …
In seventeen miles, the work train had crossed fifty thousand ties. Each of the fifty thousand was a chocolate-brown color, the wood darkened by preservatives absorbed in creosoting. Now, only a few yards ahead of the locomotive, Bell saw a wooden tie that was colored yellowish white-the shade of freshly milled mountain hemlock that had not been creosoted.
Bell fired his pistol again and again as fast as he could pull the trigger.
“Stop!”
The engineer slammed on the brakes. Wheels locked. Steel screeched on steel. The heavy locomotive slid along on the massive force of its momentum. The weight of twenty cars shoved behind it.
Bell and Malone leaped off the
pilot and ran ahead of the skidding locomotive.
“What is it?” the track foreman shouted.
“That tie,” Bell pointed.
“God Almighty!” roared Malone.
The two men turned as one and raised powerful arms as if to stop the train with their bare hands.
33
THE ENGINEER THREW HIS JOHNSON BAR INTO REVERSE.
Eight ponderous drive wheels spun backward, showering sparks and slivers from the rails. For a moment, it looked as if two strong men were actually stopping a Consolidation locomotive. And when it did grind to a stop with a ground-shaking shudder, Isaac Bell looked down and saw his boots planted firmly on the suspect crosstie.
The tip of the pilot was hanging over it. The leading wheels of the engine truck had come within two yards of it.
“Back her up,” ordered Malone. “Softly!”
GENTLY SCRAPING AWAY THE ballast from either end, Bell discovered upon close inspection that the suspect tie had a round wooden plug like a whiskey barrel bung. It was the diameter of a silver dollar and almost indistinguishable from the timber’s end grain.
“Move everyone farther back,” he told Malone. “He packed the tie with dynamite.”
The triggering device was a nail positioned to set off a detonator. There was enough dynamite to blow rails out from under the locomotive, which would have tumbled off the cut and dragged the whole train down the side of the mountain. Instead, Bell was able to wire back to Osgood Hennessy that the Van Dorn Detective Agency had won another victory over the Wrecker.
Hennessy moved his special train to the head of the line, where the miners and trackmen who had arrived safely were hard at work boring through the last hundred feet of Tunnel 13.
EARLY NEXT MORNING, OSGOOD HENNESSY called Bell onto his private car. Lillian and Mrs. Comden offered coffee. Hennessy was grinning ear to ear. “We’re about to hole through. We always do a ceremony on the long tunnels where I clear the last stone. This time, the hands sent a delegation demanding that you take the last poke for what you did yesterday. It’s a big honor, I’d accept it if I were you.”
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