Betina Krahn

by The Soft Touch

  Bear stopped in the middle of sorting the papers on the desk and looked up. The flame visible in her eyes burned all the way to his soul. She expected him to fail and she wanted to be there to see it. For one fleeting moment, he experienced a deep sinking sensation. Was it already too late? Staring at her, recalling the warmth and tenderness he had once touched inside her, he shook off those despairing thoughts. He was going to build this railroad or die trying.

  By the time they set off from Great Falls, heading south and east, their party included Bear, Halt, Diamond, and Nigel Ellsworth, their newly appointed engineer. Following the prepared track bed, they reached the construction camp by mid-afternoon. There were tools scattered hither and yon, an abandoned, half-cleared work site nearby, and not a man to be seen.

  Bear called out as he dismounted, but got no response. He and Halt stalked through the camp, ducking into the four tents and locating two warm bodies. When the men were dragged out into the warmth of the afternoon sun and lay sprawled on the ground, it was immediately apparent that they were in no condition to work. The smell of stale whiskey reached Diamond, yards away.

  “Falling-down drunk!” Bear grabbed one by the collar and pulled him up onto his knees. “What the hell happened here? Where’s Johnson?”

  “He run off,” the miscreant declared. “Th’ rest hightailed it back t’ town.”

  “Where did he go?” Halt demanded.

  The fellow shrugged, swayed, and squinted against the sun. “Some fellers rode in t’ camp an’ talked to ’im. Next thing we knowed, he was packin’ it in.”

  “What fellers?” Halt demanded. “Think, man! Was one of them tall an’ lean—dressed fancy an’ smokin’ a cheroot?” Bear didn’t have to see the wretch’s nod to know the answer.

  “Beecher.” Bear stalked toward the edge of the small camp with his hands on his hips, and stood staring at the wind-ruffled prairie grass. “He got to Johnson—bought him off or ran him off, or both. No wonder he was so damned smug this morning. Without an engineer, he figured we would be—” Feeling Diamond’s gaze on him, he squared his shoulders and strode back to his new engineer and ordered him down from his horse.

  “This is where you start to work, my friend.” Bear indicated the roadbed they had just ridden along on their way from town. “What do you think? Can we start building on it tomorrow?”

  “I—I—don’t see why not.” Ellsworth adjusted his spectacles and collected himself. His knees wobbled slightly as he made for the track bed, walked up and down it, and toed out a few clumps of dirt and rock. “The foundation seems solid enough. I suppose we should … check the base and see what we’re on. I’ll need some surveying equipment.”

  “Get started,” Bear ordered. “We’ll see you get what you need.” He glanced up at Diamond, his mood grim, then turned to Halt. “We’ll have to get the men together and send a crew out here. We have to get the cars switched and recoupled tonight. I want to be ready to start laying track at first light.”

  Long after dark, that night, two hulking figures slipped down the dark alley between the land office and the Sweetwater Saloon. They were admitted to the back door of the saloon, where they stood by the door, letting their eyes adjust to the light of the storeroom. Sitting in the midst of those barrels, kegs, and crates of bottles, was a makeshift planking desk spread with a map of the surrounding territory. And poring over that map was Lionel Beecher.

  He looked up and pinned them to the spot with a murderous glare. “Sikes and Carrick. What the hell have you two been doing?”

  “We had to help switch cars an’—”

  “Not that, you numskull—what have you been doing to sabotage McQuaid’s railroad? Or did you forget what I’m paying you to do?”

  The two glanced at each other and jammed their hands into their trouser pockets. “Wull … we jus’ got here,” the one called Sikes offered.

  “Cretins. I’m surrounded by cretins.” Beecher wheeled on one of his stone-faced gunmen. “You see what I have to put up with?” Then he turned back, gliding around the desk toward his beefy henchmen like a diamondback ready to strike.

  “There were a thousand things you could have done to prevent his damned crane and rails from even reaching here. Uncouple a car or two—cut a brake line—set something on fire—do I have to think of everything?”

  “Wull—we dumped one o’ them carloads o’ steel,” Carrick offered.

  “Not successfully, I take it,” Beecher sneered.

  “McQuaid—he made us stay up half the night haulin’ it back up on th’ car,” Sikes declared with injury, as if still smarting from the imposed indignity of manual labor.

  Beecher stared at the pair. “I see. So you decided not to make any more work for yourselves.” He brought a fist crashing down on the desk and they flinched. “Well, the free ride’s over for you idiots. I want to see some disruption, some trouble, some chaos, and I want to see it now—tonight!”

  Sikes and Carrick looked at each other, then back at him.

  “Tonight?” Sikes asked.

  “It’s kinda late …” Carrick said.

  “Of course it’s late … and dark … and quiet,” Beecher said with ominous control. “That’s when sabotage gets done—when it’s late and dark and quiet and nobody can see what you’re doing!”

  “Whadda we do?” Carrick asked, scratching his head, thinking.

  Beecher nearly strangled on his own tongue. “What will the bastards be using to work? Whatever the hell it is, get rid of it!”

  EIGHTEEN

  Two days later, down two miles of new track, Bear jumped down out of the sliding door of the kitchen car and noticed the sound and steam from the crane’s engine—which had started up only a short while before—was all but stopped. The crane had been moved in front of the engine and was now the leading car of the train. In its present position, it was being used to lift rails from the closest flatcar, swing them forward, and lower them onto the track bed.

  Hurrying to the work site, he found a dozen men standing around and sitting on the stacks of wooden ties dumped beside the track bed. A thin, rhythmic clanging was coming from two men pounding a steel spike into the tie that would hold a rail segment in place … while the others in the crew watched.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Yeah,” the foreman of the crew said, coming down off the stack of ties, scowling. “We’d be makin’ dimes aplenty on them spikes—except, we ain’t got tools to do it with. Our spike mauls are gone. All except them two.”

  “That can’t be, there were plenty of—” Bear looked back at the two men who were working, and at the men who were standing around empty-handed. The tools! He bolted for the equipment car with the foreman close at his heels. Half an hour later, empty barrels, wrecked crates, and strong language were all flying from the open door of the ransacked tool car.

  Spike mauls—the sixteen-pound hammers used to set spikes—weren’t the only things missing. There were only a handful of picks and no shovels left in their cache of tools. The logging chain, rail tongs, puller bars, and gauge bars were missing, and all but a few of the bolt wrenches, ballast forks, and replacement handles had been taken. Several of the wheeled barrows were missing … as were the wheels intended for the half-assembled handcar stored in the second boxcar.

  “Who the hell was on watch last night?” Bear demanded of Halt, who scratched his head then remembered.

  “That’d be Carrick. He had to take a second night of watch when that fella on th’ forward crew mashed ’is foot.”

  Bear tore through the camp looking for Carrick and found him lounging on a pile of wooden ties on the far side of camp. “Where the hell were you last night?” he roared, seizing Carrick by the shirt front and hauling him upright. “While you were on watch, somebody broke into the tool car and made off with half our equipment!”

  Carrick paled slightly under his sunburned skin. “I-I-I—didn’t see n-nothin’.”

&n
bsp; “The hell you didn’t!” Bear loomed over him and gave him a shake.

  “I’m tellin’ ya—I didn’t see ner hear nothin’.” He swallowed hard. “I swear.”

  Bear searched the man’s sullen face for a long, acrid moment. If the bastard was involved in the theft, would he be stupid enough to still be lounging around camp? Bear sensed that the wretch wasn’t as dull-witted as he seemed, but that was no proof that he had stolen the tools … or helped Beeeher do so. He released Carrick.

  “If you didn’t hear or see anything, it was only because you were asleep on watch. I won’t keep a man on the payroll, that I can’t trust. Pack up your gear and clear out.”

  Carrick jumped to his feet as Bear turned away. “It wasn’t my fault I got stuck on watch two nights runnin’. Ever’body nods off now an’ agin—it ain’t fair, McQuaid!”

  Bear paused but refused to turn around. “Collect your pay, Carrick, and clear out!”

  Diamond had just visited the kitchen car, poured a cup of coffee, and was carrying it up the track for Bear. It was a desperate measure; much too desperate to suit her. For two days she had hardly seen or spoken to him. He had come back to their car after she had retired for the night and left at daybreak each morning. Since he made it a practice to take meals with the crews, she was left with only rare public glimpses of him as he rode back and forth between the crews preparing the roadbed and the crews laying track.

  She knew he was desperate to see progress and their first two days had not been especially encouraging. Two miles in two days … at this rate they wouldn’t make Billings for six months. And they had less than three months before they would have to deal with the threat of snow. And, if Beeeher was to be believed, the government land office might even now be moving to deny the MCM the land it was promised, because the track those land grants had been promised on wasn’t finished. Bear had to lay track in record time and begin rail service. His only hope lay in picking up the pace as the men settled into a routine.

  She had just surfaced from her preoccupation with calculating just how many miles they would have to lay each day, to look at the pile of empty barrels and crates that lay beside the tracks. She didn’t see the wooden crate sailing out of the open boxcar door. It shot across her path, hitting the cup she held and pouring hot coffee down her front.

  “Owww!” She lurched back and frantically pulled the hot, wet fabric away from her skin. “Ooooh—hot—owwww!”

  Bear appeared in the open door and in an instant was on the ground. “Are you all right?” He hovered awkwardly as she fanned her blouse. When it was clear she wasn’t badly injured, he vented his accumulated tension in the worst possible way. “What the hell were you doing out here, anyway? You’re not supposed to be—”

  “Bringing you a cup of coffee,” she said, with more than her scalded skin stinging. “You can be sure I won’t make that mistake again.” She thrust the empty cup into his hands and started back down the track to their car.

  “Diamond, wait! I didn’t mean—” He hurried after her and pulled her to a stop just as Halt jumped down from the tool car, along with the crew foreman.

  “Not a single maul left!” Halt called irritably. “Whoever took ’em knew right what would shut us down prop—” He caught sight of Diamond’s stained blouse and red face and Bear’s taut grip on her and stopped.

  “Somebody broke into the tool car and stole our hammers, rail tongs, pull bars, and gauge bars,” Bear said, his grip softening. “I was angry and I didn’t see you out there. I’m”—he took a deep breath—“sorry about your clothes.”

  She looked from Bear to Halt, nodded, and headed for the car. A short while later, after she’d changed her blouse, she heard Halt and Bear enter and head for the desk at the far end of the car. When she stepped out of the sleeping compartment, finishing her buttons, she stopped dead.

  Bear was strapping on his revolver.

  “Ye cannot do this, lad.” Halt planted himself between Bear and the door with his fists on his hips. “He’d like nothin’ better—the lyin’ thievin’ bastard—than to have ye drop everythin’ an’ come gunnin’ for him.”

  “I’m not going gunning for him,” Bear said with a growl. “I’m going to get those tools back. They had to have left tracks.”

  “You’re no Indian or army scout,” Halt said, gesturing to the rocky prairie. “Ye could waste weeks out there searchin’, and still find nothin’. Except trouble.”

  That reasoning seemed to take hold as Bear struggled for control. “Fine. Then I’ll go into town and see if I can find some more tools.” Halt blocked his way yet again.

  “Ye don’t need barkin’ steel to find hammers.”

  “This is just in case.” Bear’s gaze hardened as he rested a hand on the walnut handle of his revolver.

  “In case what?” Diamond asked, though she already knew the answer. “In case you run into Beecher and his hired guns?”

  “A man has to protect himself and what is his,” Bear said, eyes narrowing.

  “Well, I may be just a silly, sentimental female … but in my opinion, a few hammers—an entire trainload of hammers—wouldn’t be worth dying for.”

  “She’s talkin’ sense, lad.” Halt felt Bear ease and released his grip on Bear’s arms. “I’ll go to town instead … talk to the stationman at the Chicago Milwaukee and St. Paul, see if they can spare a few mauls an’ gauge bars. You got a bigger job right here … findin’ a way to make sure Beecher don’t sneak up on us agin.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Diamond said to Halt. When Bear looked at her with a scowl, she folded her arms and would not be denied. “I have a blouse to take to the laundry.”

  “He’s the most arrogant, stubborn, insensitive man alive.” She continued her enumeration of Bear’s shortcomings to Halt as they bounced and rattled along-beside the tracks in a wooden freight wagon that had definitely seen better days. Halt glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

  “And inconsistent,” she added, gripping the wooden seat to steady herself. “One minute he’s reasonable and logical and the next he’s a raging wild man—a barbarian—ready to battle the whole world, hand to hand.”

  “Now, there I have t’ disagree,” Halt said. “Stubborn, yes. Arrogant … maybe. Insensitive … well, ye’d be a better judge of that, I suppose, bein’ a wife an’ all. But inconsistent? He’s as reliable as sunrise, Bear McQuaid is. If he gives ’is word, the job is as good as done. And he’s fair-minded to a fault. Treats all men—great an’ small—like he’d want to be treated.”

  “Ahhh,” she said with an arch look. “Then there’s the problem. He treats women a good bit different … as if we can’t be trusted to use the right end of a spoon.”

  Halt chuckled and shook his head. “He does seem a bit pigheaded, where females are concerned. But that’s jus’ him, ye see. Independent as a hog on ice. Determined to do things fer himself. The Central and Mountain is ’is life’s dream. He saved ever’ penny for years … ate corn bread an’ beans three times a day … slept out under th’ stars … worked till he dropped an’ then worked some more. It means more to ‘im than anythin’ in the world.”

  Quiet descended as each of them looked out over that rolling sea of prairie grass and conjured images of Bear’s determination … one from memory, one from imagination. She sensed there would never be a better time or a better person to ask the questions that had been weighing on her for two weeks now.

  “The MCM appears to have potential … to be a sound investment. Why was everyone so reluctant to lend you and him money?”

  Halt sighed. “Bankers. They want control. Bear wouldn’t give it up.”

  “Not even to get the money he needed?”

  He chuckled. “Not even then. He’s … peculiar … that way.”

  “Peculiar.” She clamped a hand on her hat to keep the wind from taking it and said a mental “Amen.” “Halt, how long have you known him?”

  Halt thought for a moment. “Seven, eight years. L
ong enough. I’m not sure I should tell ye this … but … he’s not been much of a ladies’ man.”

  She huffed disbelief. “I saw him and that Silky woman together.”

  “She’s a friend, pure an’ simple.”

  “As I’ve said before, nothing involving Bear McQuaid is pure or simple.”

  “Except you,” Halt said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

  “Me?” She looked away, but her ears were burning for more.

  “With you, it’s about as simple as it gets b’tween a man and a woman.” He leveled a look of amusement on her. “He wants ye.”

  She reddened and stiffened, hoping he couldn’t tell that her heart was thumping. “Well, of course. By marrying me, he acquired a huge fortune.”

  “I’m not talkin’ about yer money, lass. He told Vassar straight up, th’ first time Vassar suggested ye as an investor, that ’e wouldna romance a woman for money. And he’s a man o’ his word. More’n once he went to make ye a business offer … took ye our maps and plans. Somehow, he never got around to it.” He shook his head. “I think ’e just didn’t want to ask ye. It scalded ‘is pride to have to ask ye for somethin’. Th’ man does have pride.”

  “In abundance.”

  Two words were all she could manage. What Halt was saying about him seemed to mesh with her own observations. Proud. Independent to a fault. And he had indeed brought her their maps and plans … the very ones she had seen that last night … With the slightest nudge, she could believe that he might have intended to ask her for a loan but got tangled up in his own stubborn pride and independence instead. He wanted her. She stared at the wooden buildings appearing over the next rise, desperate to trust what Halt was telling her and terrified that if she did, she would just be asking for more heartache.

  When they reached Great Falls, they went straight to the train station and located the stationmaster. He was a wiry, nervous sort of fellow who kept his hand pressed to his stomach as if he were always on the verge of dyspepsia.

  “Sorry, can’t sell any tools … against regulations.” He slowly backed away. “Have a devil of a time keeping our own crews supplied.”