There was a surreal glow coming from the work lights that the crew used so that they could see to load the water, check the fuel, and who knew what else. The old train depot was to my right, its tile roof looking like it had escaped the Southwest, and beyond the tracks I could see the Virginian Hotel, a three-and-a-half-story Renaissance Revival building that was a little incongruous in a town of less than five hundred.
Owen Wister had used the hotel for the title of his book and Medicine Bow for the setting of his quintessential western, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains, and even though he actually had written the novel in Philadelphia and had never written another about the West, the book was credited with raising the genre from pulp to true literature.
Making my way to the nearest end of our car, I tried to keep quiet so that I wouldn’t disturb anyone, but I needn’t have bothered since about half the train was out smoking and talking near the adjacent track.
I wasn’t looking for conversation, so I climbed back up and got out on the other side, away from the town proper.
“Takes a while, getting used to sleeping on a train.”
A glowing ember illuminated the covered face of the sheriff of Laramie County.
“I guess so.”
There was a pause. “You guess so, huh?”
I stood there for a moment more, looking at McKay, the tip of his cigar glowing orange, and then started toward the front of the train. “I’ll see you later, Sheriff.”
He spoke quietly, but I still heard him. “Yes, you will, Deputy.”
Figuring if I couldn’t be alone, at least I could learn something, I walked up to where the crew was pulling the spout from the water tank on the back of a tanker truck.
The closest workman turned and looked at me. “You’re not allowed up here.” He gestured toward the operation. “It’s the union and insurance stuff—they don’t want anybody around in case something happens.”
“What, you’re afraid I might drown?”
“Son, that’s 23,500 gallons of water and a lot of very hot steam under a lot of pressure, and seein’ as how we’re operating an antiquated piece of equipment, you never know what might happen.”
I didn’t move.
He pushed his engineer cap back. “Foamer, are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Foamers, that’s what we call train buffs—the guys that get all excited about trains and start foamin’ at the mouth.”
I stared up at the big beast humming and blowing like some living thing. “Well, I can see the attraction, but for me it’s just a part of where I’m from; my family has a ranch up on Buffalo Creek in the northern part of the state and I used to hear these trains going by the place when I was a kid.” Laughing at myself, I told him something I hadn’t told anyone in a long time. “I jumped one when I was six years old, rode it all the way to Livingston, Montana. A switchman in the rail yard saw me and stopped the train and called my family to come and get me.”
He adjusted his glasses and looked me down and up. “You been somewhere since then?”
“Overseas.” I studied the locomotive; it was easier that way. “And a couple of places nobody’s ever heard of.”
He extended a hand. “John Saunders. I’m the engineer of this train.”
“Walt Longmire, freight.”
He nodded at me and then at his battered, steel-toed work shoes and started off toward all the commotion. “Well, c’mon.” He smiled as he turned back when I didn’t follow. “This ain’t the interesting part.” He headed off again, and I followed after him as we ducked under the surface hose, passed the tender, and approached the steps that led to the cab of the Union Pacific 8444. “You ever been in the cab of one of these things?”
“Nope.”
He started up the ladder. “Well, I’m breaking about every rule in the book by bringing you up, but it ain’t like anybody from the line is gonna be out here in the middle of nowhere this time of night.”
I followed him up the ladder and stepped inside, where another man sat on the seat to the left. He extended a hand. “Rich Roback. I’m the fireman.”
We shook.
“You one of them sheriffs?”
“Deputy.”
“How come you aren’t drunk like the rest of them? You ain’t a Mormon, are you?”
I smiled. “Nope.” I looked at the backhead of gauges, levers, handles, and other instruments that I didn’t even have a name for. “Jesus . . .”
Saunders chuckled. “Looks complicated, doesn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Any questions?”
I thought I should ask something just as a courtesy, so I pointed at a brass handle. “What does that do?”
“That’s the train brake.”
I pointed to one above it. “And that red one?”
“Engine brake for the drivers and tender.”
I pointed at the only gauge that looked familiar. “Speedometer?”
“Yeah, added in the fifties. She went a hundred and twenty in her prime.”
“That’s pretty fast.”
“This ol’ girl isn’t in a walker just yet.” Roback laughed. “She’s faster than you want to go, I can tell you that.”
“What did they do before the fifties, to tell how fast you were going?”
Saunders laughed this time. “Nobody cared—it wasn’t like there were any speed limits. You kept a schedule and ran as fast as you needed to keep it.”
I pointed to a lever. “This?”
“Throttle—forward is off, backward is full.”
I noticed a large handle in front of Roback. “What’s that?”
“Firing valve; it’s what introduces oil into the burner down there. Nobody shovels coal anymore.” The fireman patted the lever. “She’s been converted to a heavy heating oil so as not to set the countryside on fire every time she heads down the tracks.” He gestured toward the tender behind us. “That’s about six thousand gallons of oil back there, and when you’re whistling along in front of it with close to five hundred tons and that’s just the weight of the loco and tender—it’s kind of hard to forget.”
There was a red wooden handle hanging by a chain. “What’s that?”
“The whistle.” He leaned out the cab, looking back to where the crews were finishing up their work. “You wanna pull it two times?”
“Sure.” I pulled the chain twice. “Loud.”
“Yeah, well, it’s going to get a lot noisier.” Roback started feeding the oil into the burner, and the great engine began churning louder than a 707. “You might want to get back there where it’s a little more comfortable.”
“Thanks for the tour.”
Saunders came over as I climbed down. “You can come up and visit us again, if you don’t mind climbing over the tender.”
I waved good-bye and, noticing that the crews had already pulled away and that there was no one else trackside, I started back at a clip. I jogged down the line and was about to turn and climb up the ladder to my car when something struck me hard on the side of my head, and that’s the last thing I remember.
—
Parking at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center was usually a headache, but it wasn’t much of a problem at this time of night, the only signs of life being near the emergency room entrance. I turned and looked at Dog, the only occupant of my daughter’s house who had elected to join me. “They don’t allow dogs.”
He stared at me with soulful eyes.
“It’s not my fault.”
He continued to stare.
“They aren’t going to buy the service dog thing.”
I felt guilty abandoning my backup. “We’ll have a ham sandwich tomorrow, I promise.”
It was a bit of a relief walking in the front entrance as opposed to the ER and asking the receptionist at the fr
ont desk where, exactly, I needed to go.
Arriving on the fourth floor, I approached the nurses’ station to find a Cheyenne city police officer leaning on the counter, chatting up a pretty nurse with too much makeup. “Howdy.”
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for room 426.”
The youngish patrolman turned around, giving me a hard look. “Then you need to talk to me.”
I sighed, pulled my badge wallet from my jacket pocket, and flipped it open. “Walt Longmire, sheriff, Absaroka County.”
He studied it, then looked up at me. He was so young, I wondered if he shaved. “Mind if I ask why you are interested in room 426, Sheriff?”
“Ask all you want, but I’m not sure myself.”
“It’s awfully late.”
“I’m a night owl. . . .” I read his nameplate. “Officer Keith.”
He gestured down the hall to my left. “Help yourself.”
“You mind if I ask why you’re not doing your duty and guarding the prisoner?”
His face turned a little red. “Um, because he’s had a heart attack and looks like he might croak in the next five minutes?” He shook his head. “And he’s handcuffed to the bed rail and has a catheter.”
The room was at the far end of the hallway on the right. It was easy to spot since it was the only one with a chair by the door.
I gently pushed it open and, letting my eyes adjust to the dimly lit room, stepped inside. I guess there were privileges when you had spent half a century behind bars, a corner view in the last room you would ever occupy being one of them. My attention settled on the bed, where he lay surrounded by a ton of machinery, all of it focusing on keeping a man alive that I’d just as soon be dead.
I stood at the foot of the bed and watched the shallow rise and fall of his labored breathing.
He looked a lot more fragile than I remembered from our last meeting in Cheyenne four years earlier, and I wondered what it was that had kept him alive, a man who should’ve died a long time ago.
Of course, when you finally sit down at the table, the game is already crook.
House rules, and it never loses in the end.
Ever.
5
I woke up on the side of the tracks just as the engine of an eastbound freight rumbled by a couple of yards away.
I stayed still with my arms outstretched and watched the train pass, my hat skipping down the ballast roadbed in the wind it kicked up, finally sliding to a stop in a cluster of sage. I took a deep breath as the fifty or so cars raced by, causing the swirling snow to blow in a tunnel-like vortex that chased after the train like a borehole. It disappeared with a long, low whistle, and I stood stiffly in the dark and cold.
“Well, hell.”
Wavering a little, I saw that the buildings on the side of the track were dark, and all the vehicles that had been around when the crew had been refueling were gone. I looked toward the town of Medicine Bow but could see only one set of lights, just to the right of the grand hotel.
I stooped to pick up my hat and noticed that my paperback was lying in the sage along with it. Placing the one on my head—although for some reason it didn’t seem to fit as well as it should—and the other in my waistband at the small of my back, I crossed the tracks.
The snow was falling gently, not really amounting to much but giving a clear indication of the temperature as I stumbled forward, hugging myself and wishing I had my horsehide jacket.
The light had come from the Shiloh Saloon. I climbed the concrete steps and pushed open the door. Stepping into the life-giving warmth, I suddenly felt a little dizzy.
“Hey, you all right?”
I tried to speak, but my voice caught in my throat and I just stood there, leaning on the coat tree.
“If you’re drunk you’re gonna have to get out of here.”
Doing my best to appear normal, I turned toward the three men seated on bar stools and the heavyset woman behind the bar and croaked, “Howdy.”
The bartender raised a hand to her mouth. “Jesus.”
Evidently, I wasn’t persuading them of my normalcy. “Um . . . I could use a little help.” I started to lean backward and felt the world slipping away.
Fortunately, two of the men were at my side in less than an instant. “Boy, do you know you’re covered with blood?”
I tried to laugh. “Yep, I woke up out there on the tracks about five minutes ago.”
“You got hit by a train?”
They sat me in a nearby chair. “No, I was on one.”
I could feel the blood that was frozen in my hair and on the side of my head start to thaw.
“You fell off a train?”
I stretched my jaw and heard popping noises. “Well, I had some help.”
The oldest of the bunch looked at the bartender. “Get him some whiskey and roll up that rag with some ice for his head.”
She gathered up the towel and filled it and then turned back to look at me from the liquor shelf. “Anything particular you like?”
On the high plains, it was a medical certainty that for any ill, whiskey was the remedy. Falling back on the old joke, I croaked, “Wet.”
One of the men, a tall, whip-thin cowboy, pried off my hat, tilted my head, and looked at the wound. “You did this falling off?”
“I was walking next to The Western Star—was getting ready to get back on after they fueled and watered her—when somebody hit me.”
“The sheriff train?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The older man took the ice pack from the woman and held it against my head. “Somebody must’ve coldcocked you, because that’s the only way I’d hit a big bastard like you.”
I knocked back the shot glass full of whiskey and winced.
“You’re gonna be all right.” She filled me another. “But you need stitches.”
I looked around the small room, my eyes still not focusing, maybe from the blow and maybe a little from the whiskey. “I’m feeling a lot better, really.”
“Like hell—every time you talk your head bleeds and winks at me.” I reached up to touch it, but she pushed my hand away. “Leave it alone. I’ve got a first-aid kit behind the bar. Let me see what I can do.”
As she went to fetch it, the shorter man studied me. “Son, somebody hit you that hard, they were lookin’ to kill you.”
“Could be.”
“Nothing but sheriffs on that train. You a sheriff, then?”
“No, sheriff’s deputy.”
“You make some enemies?”
“Evidently.”
The bartender arrived with the kit and pulled up another chair, turning it around and sitting on the back to give herself enough of a height advantage to work on my head. “Well, he didn’t use his fist.” I felt a tug, and she held a good-size splinter in front of my face. “Treated, so it must’ve been a piece of a tie or something. Good thing it’s bleeding like that, what with the creosote.”
“Can you get it so that it stops?”
She leaned back. “I can tape it up, but I’m not sure it’s going to hold.”
“You get the bandage on, and I’ll wedge my hat down over it to keep some pressure. I need to catch up to that train.” I looked at each of them in turn. “Anybody headed west?”
I started to stand, but the tall, skinny cowboy put a hand on my shoulder. “Easy, son. Easy.” He glanced back at a long-haired man in a velvet jacket and leather top hat who had been keeping to himself. “Hey, buddy, aren’t you headed west?”
The man was smoking and drinking a cup of coffee. “San Francisco.”
“Can you give this fella a ride?”
He seemed uninterested. “I don’t think so.”
I took a deep breath, which cleared my head a little. “The train stops in Wamsutter—I heard the
crew talking about it.”
He still didn’t look at me. “You’re a cop?”
“Kind of.”
He smiled and pulled at the hair that was below his shoulders. “Yeah, well, man, that shit ain’t gonna go over with the bunch I got on that bus.”
The tall cowboy looked at him hard. “Mister, this man needs a hand.”
“Then you drive him.” The hippie threw down the rest of the coffee and stubbed out the cigarette. “Not my problem, man.”
He walked past us and left, closing the door behind him. I looked at the others. “Anybody else headed in that direction?”
The cowboy shook his head and looked at his friend. “Your truck don’t go that distance, will it, Phil?”
He frowned. “Not in this weather.”
I tipped my hat to the cowboys and then to the bartender. “Thank you for your help, ma’am.” Then settling the beaver felt back on my head to increase the pressure on the bandages and to hopefully keep it on in the wind, I walked out the door.
It was still blowing snow, and I tripped down the steps, catching myself on the antenna of a sedan parked at the bottom. I spotted the hippie driver standing by a large silver Challenger bus with purple stripes. He was finishing the last drag on what I assumed was a cigarette but might have been something more potent, before opening the doors. “Hey . . .”
He dropped the cigarette and stamped it out. “Don’t do this to me, man.”
“Look, it’s ninety miles, and I need a ride, and for better or worse, you’re it.”
He shook his head. “No way, man, not with your being a cop—I mean you could be a narc—”
“I’m a deputy from a tiny sheriff’s department a couple hundred miles from here. I don’t have jurisdiction.”
“Don’t care, man.” He adjusted the leather top hat. “A pig’s a pig to the people on this bus.”
I sighed and looked down at him. “You know, a man hit me on the head earlier this evening, and I’m looking to take it out on somebody. I’d just as soon it be the guy that actually hit me, but it could be you.” I stood up straight, a hand holding the bifold door closed. “It’s ninety miles to Wamsutter; you’re going to take me there or I’m taking your keys and driving this bus myself.”
The Western Star Page 7