“Soon,” Sid said. “The sun will rise and we will stop for rest before returning in the direction that we have come.”
“This station is close?” Bardwell asked.
“Yes,” Sid replied. “We will rest for a few hours and then we must tend to the business that has brought us this far from our homes.”
The lawman didn’t ask what this business was that the clansmen would have out here and this far.
After unsaddling his mount, one of the clan started off in search of limbs that could be broken up for a fire. Sid and the others remained behind to arrange camp, kicking away fallen leaves and needles of pine.
“So this is it?” Bardwell asked.
“Yes,” Sid answered. “We will eat and rest for a time. Come high median, we will build a large fire to destroy the iron rails.”
“Destroy the rails?” Curtis asked.
The clansman nodded. “Yes,” he said. “This is our reason for escorting the two of you this far. We will damage the track as much as two men can before we turn our efforts to the trestle bridge that crosses the gorge ahead.”
Bardwell now understood the reason for the kindness the clansmen had shown thus far. The lawmen were as much an escort for Stewart’s men as they were to provide in showing Bardwell and Curtis the way.
“Why do you destroy the rails?” Bardwell asked.
Sid answered, “The iron horse replenishes the city that holds us under oppression. Anything that we can do to slow their effort will provide a relief if only temporary.”
“They will rebuild anything that you destroy here,” the younger lawman said, adding to the conversation as the four men gathered to have an early supper under the trees.
“Yes,” the clansman said. “They will, but anything that we can do to relax the pressure they keep to our throats will be appreciated.”
Bardwell sat back in thought before he spoke again. “How many of these locomotives do they have in the city?” he asked.
The clansmen looked to each other. Sid gave the answer. “Only one, as far as any of us is aware?” Sid continued, “There was a day when the city had many, but time has taken a toll on the antiquated machinery of our fathers.”
“Is there communication between this place and the city?” Bardwell asked.
Sid shook his head. “I don’t believe so, but there is no way of knowing for sure?”
“When would you expect the iron horse to be making a pass through these parts?” Bardwell asked beginning to form a plan in the recesses of his mind.
“Tomorrow night,” Sid said. “Or the following morning, if they are keeping to their schedule?”
“Look,” Bardwell said. “My partner and I are in no real hurry, nothing that won’t keep for another day? How about we remain here with the two of you and run that locomotive off the tracks for good?”
Stewart’s men looked at each other for a time. Sid broke the silence in answering for the both of them. “We had only planned to take up the rails and dynamite the bridge,” he said. “That was our instruction when we volunteered to guide you, gentlemen.”
“If these folks are fucking with you ‘all,” Curtis added. “Why don’t we raise a little hell out here and give them a taste of their own medicine?”
“I like that,” the clansman said. “What do you have in mind?”
“Pullman or freight,” Bardwell asked. “Or will it be a combination of both?”
Stewart’s men looked to each other nodding their heads, finally agreeing on an answer to the question. “It should be freight,” Sid said. “Being midweek?”
“You reckon that it will be guarded?”
“I reckon not,” the clansman answered, looking into the small fire. “Should be just the engineer?”
The coffee was boiling. Curtis grabbed up their can and poured himself and Bardwell a cup. There was plenty of cold bacon and biscuits from the morning previous.
“Then we take the train gentlemen,” Bardwell said. No one said anything more for a good piece. It wasn’t like a man of the tin star to purposely cause trouble, but after being inside of the fortified city—and seeing the goings on first hand—he figured that he’d earned a little time in the gray area of the written words of the law.
Everyone around the fire nodded his agreement.
“How far to the top of the grade?” the lawman asked.
“A thousand paces,” the clansman said. “It might be less, why?”
“The iron horse will run at its slowest when it crests the grade,” Bardwell said. “My partner here and I will step aboard and see about bringing it to a stop at that point?”
“Then we rest and make ready,” the clansmen agreed. The lawmen did also, stretching out for a nap in the grass as the daystar rose, in an icy gray sky through plumes of volcanic ash in the atmosphere many rods away in the northern mountains.
***
Wood was cut and stacked alongside the raised bed where the iron rails ran through the mountain along with everything that would burn as there was only one axe between them. Leaves and needles of pine, sticks, bark and branches were all piled high in making ready for the coming night.
A bar of iron was produced midday that would pull up the rails, which were then laid upon the combustible materials awaiting nightfall.
“Does someone want to explain to me why it is that we’re all doing this work for?” Curtis asked.
“If these fires get hot enough to soften the iron,” Bardwell said, “The rails will bend and distort making them useless to anyone trying to make repairs to the track.”
Curtis struck a sulfur match and put the flame to the stub a cigar he had been chewing for some time now. “You want to light it now?” he asked.
“No,” Bardwell cautioned. “Let’s get hold of that locomotive before we go lighting this ablaze. Smoke rising up through the trees might just get that engineer to worrying?”
“I got you,” Curtis said, stamping the match in the dirt.
“Sid,” the lawman asked. “You fellows got any more of that dynamite?”
“Yes, Sir,” the clansman answered. “Why is that?”
The lawman smiled. “I’ve been thinking that we might blow a culvert or two? That would slow down the rebuilding of the roadbed once they come up here looking for their missing train.”
Iron ran down a steep grade for two hundred paces before a hard, swinging curve to the left. Two tiny streams of water cascaded down the mountainside running through pipes under the roadbed. Over time, the water would begin to eat away at the rock foundation making it that much harder to rebuild.
Stewart’s man was soon back, with several of the red sticks with intentions of damaging the culverts.
“How much of that do you have?” the lawman asked.
The clansman smiled, “Twenty or thirty more?”
Nothing more was said just then. The animals had been left in the clearing the other side of the ridge to while away the afternoon grazing and taking on clean water. The four men—two clansmen and two lawmen—had done as much to destroy the track and bed as they could for one day. A dozen of the long iron rails lay on a bed of cut logs to be set ablaze later. A dozen more had been tossed over the side into the canyon below. Two culverts had been damaged beyond repair and later—during the dark of night—the trestle bridge would topple into the river gorge where it now stood.
As the sun dropped down into a dirty, smoke-filled sky, the four men were again at rest eating and talking over the plans for later in the night.
“Here in a little bit,” Bardwell said to the others. “My partner here and I will take us a walk up the line and wait out that locomotive. You get yourselves ready to light the fires and be off while we’re away.”
“What about our horses?” Curtis asked.
“Once we ease the locomotive down into the culvert,” he said. “We’ll mount up and ride across the bridge to the other side.” The lawman paused looking at the clansmen across the small fire. “You gentlemen might drop a stick or two of
the firecracker you got there down the throat of the iron horse. That should put it out of order for a long time to come.”
“What about that bridge? The clansman asked. “That was the reason Stewart sent us was to tear up that bridge.”
“You let us get across to the other side first,” Bardwell said. “Give the boy one of them firecrackers you got there. Don’t do a thing till we get off the bridge and then it’s yours to do what you want with it.”
“Agreed,” the clansmen said, nearly in unison.
After a good pull from the bottle was had all around, the lawmen started up the line to the crest of the hill. The clansmen walked in a downward direction to see what mischief more they could cause along the line.
“You know, Sir,” Curtis said, kicking rocks as the two walked along the darkened roadbed. “This is the shit that I like about you. You’re always raising hell wherever you go, you know that?”
Bardwell laughed. “What do you mean, Son?”
“Look,” Curtis said. “We’re Sacramento officers of the Tin Star and look at us, fucking shit up, destroying some dude’s private railroad?”
Curtis drew a deep breath. “What would our superiors say if they could see us now, huh?”
“You’re right,” Bardwell said. “We are Sacramento officers of the Tin Star, but…”
“But what…?”
“We’re fifty rods south of the border now,” Bardwell said. “And we’re lending a hand to some good folk that have helped us in kind?”
“I guess that you’re right, Sir,” Curtis said, as he continued along. “But you know what, Dan?” Curtis asked.
“No, what…?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, man.”
The old lawman smiled. He had known this about the boy all along. Franklin Curtis liked operating in the gray areas of the law just like he did. It was just their way.
Chapter Ten
Somewhere along midnight, the straining locomotive was heard making its way up the grades and through the mountain passes. Curtis struck a sulfur match putting it to a new cigar. Bardwell spit in the dirt along the roadbed.
“What’s the plan, Sir?” Curtis asked.
Bardwell looked down the rails gleaming in the dim starlight. The train hadn’t yet made it to the grade they were on.
“I don’t reckon they will be traveling with any sort of speed when they get here,” he said, kicking a rock from under his boot. “We should have no trouble climbing aboard?”
“That’s what I figure,” Curtis said, drawing on his smoke.
Minutes ticked by silently as the pair waited under a starry night sky. Nothing stirred in the woods nearby as if the animals somehow knew of the devastation that lay ahead.
“You okay with those two?” Curtis asked, nodding back in the direction of camp and the clansmen.
“Yeah,” Bardwell replied.
“That one fellow ever talk to you?”
“No,” Bardwell said. “Come, to think of it.”
“You reckon that he’s a mute?”
“Don’t rightly know, Son,” Bardwell said, spitting in the dirt and removing his watch. The young officer struck one of his sulfur matches to provide enough light to read the time. It was forty past eleven. The sounds of the struggling locomotive drew closer, down near the bottom of the grade.
“There she is,” Curtis said, pointing at the headlight rounding the bend and starting up the hill in their direction.
“We probably should give them a little room then, huh?”
Curtis turned for a clump of nearby bushes. Bardwell ducked behind the tall grasses that grew here at the trackside. The locomotive’s headlight would be centered on the rails out front and not give either of the lawmen away.
Against a backdrop of the purple night sky, the silhouette of the locomotive and its cars were seen struggling to make the grade. Black smoke boiled from the stack as the steam used to operate the pistons bellowed out from below.
“The damned thing is barely moving, Sir,” Curtis said, from across the track. “You reckon it can make it?”
Bardwell didn’t answer as the deafening mechanical sounds drew closer. The lawman turned to escape a jet of steam as the nose of the sleek black machine roared past still pointing skyward.
The lawman stepped from the concealment of the grass taking hold of a ladder just behind the cab and hoping the boy would be doing the same on the other side.
From his perch on the tender, the lawman could see well into the open cab. The firebox doors were opened wide. Two mutants swung logs of split wood into a raging fire. The engineer stood his station searching the glass ahead for the top of the grade. Dials and gauges pulsated with the constant throb of the boiler out front.
“What the fuck?” the nearest of the mutants asked, noticing the cowboy stepping down from the tender behind.
The lawman didn’t bother with an answer. He thumbed back the hammer and stuck his Colt in the gentleman’s gut before pulling him back into the open cab. The gentleman went overboard, rolling along the roadbed to a stop in the darkness there.
After hearing the shot, Curtis stepped down across the cab on his side. The young lawman—not realizing they were already on the high trestle—simply pulled the other of the firemen overboard. Three hundred paces to the bottom of the gorge that man surely fell to his death.
“Which one is the throttle?” Bardwell asked.
“Don’t hurt me, Mister,” the engineer said, under a tall blue and white striped hat. He was an older man and sweat ran down his grimy face. The grime from grease and oil did little to hide the lesions and open sores on the gentleman’s skin. Bloody pus mixed with the sweat running in rivers from his hat.
“Which one of these levers is the throttle?” Bardwell demanded. The lawman had no intention of causing harm to the old man. He would allow him to step off when they crested the ridge.
The engineer reached into a filthy pair of coveralls coming out with a snub nose revolver. Bardwell didn’t bother with a bullet and simply pulled the man out through the open doorway of the cab.
Searing heat poured out from the open firebox door. “Come on,” Bardwell said, turning to the cut wood riding in the tender behind.
The lawmen tossed fuel onto an already blazing fire. It must have been a hundred and thirty in the cab of the ancient iron horse. Bardwell released the catch and the firebox doors slammed shut. In no time, the heavy steel and iron glowed red-hot. Hand hammered rivets popped from their places as the stressed steel overheated.
“You know how to drive this thing, Sir?” Curtis yelled, watching the trees at the trackside pass in the night.
“No,” Bardwell said, turning knobs and closing valves.
“Then what the hell are you doing?” Curtis asked.
“Don’t know,” Bardwell said. “But it can’t help any?”
Curtis smiled from his side of the cab. “That’s what I like about you, Sir, always fucking shit up.”
With both speed and steam pressure rising, one of the dials in the cab shattered, glass went out the back of the open locomotive cab. Soon steam escaped from various seams and joints within the ancient machine. Gauges blew, overloaded as they were now.
“Looks like the top of the hill?” Curtis questioned.
Bardwell had a look forward through cracked glass as the locomotive crested the rise. He pushed the throttle lever wide open and nodded to the boy, but not before he pulled the lanyard overhead releasing steam into a great roaring whistle, signaling to the clansmen that they were near.
At the top, the train moved slower than it had when the lawmen climbed aboard. Bardwell and Curtis simply stepped off near the highest point and watched. As the last of the heavy tank cars rolled past, the train gained speed on its downward path to the blown culverts and missing rails.
“What the hell, are they hauling that would be so heavy?” Curtis asked, standing next to Bardwell. Both men continued to watch as the iron horse gained momentum after crest
ing the hill.
“Water,” Bardwell said.
“Makes sense,” Curtis replied. “Probably ain’t got no water in that fortified city, huh?”
A great moan went up to the heavens near the bottom of the hill as the runaway locomotive began to find the missing iron. From the sound of breaking stone and gravel, Bardwell reckoned that the iron horse continued to push and plow its way down the hill.
Timbers snapped taking the full weight of the train one by one. The locomotive finally found the blown culvert and nosed itself down into the wash with its cars continuing down the mountain. It sounded as if the very gates of Hell had swung open.
Iron and twisting steel screamed into the night, threatening to raise the dead if there were any nearby. The lawmen felt for the clansmen, as they were much closer to the action at the bottom of the hill.
“I hope them two found cover down there,” Curtis yelled, over the din and racket in the darkness below.
Overheated, the locomotive’s boiler finally let go sending steel and iron shrapnel high into the trees. Rivets and smaller pieces of the affair rained down several hundred paces up the hill where the lawmen now stood.
“Let’s go see about them,” Bardwell said, starting down the mountain along the darkened roadbed.
“Whew-we,” Sid said as the lawmen walked closer in the darkness. “You fellas sure did raise hell with that old engine, didn’t you?”
“That’s what this man does best,” Curtis said, laughing at the senior officer standing next to him.
“Well,” the clansman said. “They sure won’t be hauling this one down the hill for repair. Water from the broken tank cars ran along the roadbed in making its way down the grade.
“The loss of water should cause them a problem or two also, huh?” Bardwell said, biting off a plug of tobacco.
Curtis started away, along a dark path with the horses as Bardwell and the clansmen went over the rest of the plan.
“Wait for our signal,” the lawman said. “And then you are free to do what you wish with the trestle.”
The clansmen nodded their agreement.
“Well, gentlemen,” Curtis said, leading the animals closer. “It’s been nice, but we really must be moving along.”
Ain't No Law in California Page 7