by John Jakes
A tiny superior smile edged Gashlin’s mouth. His fingers dipped into the pocket of his checked waistcoat, and he pulled out a cigar. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do a thing at the railroad camp since you’d already gone. Anyway, your boss Hamilton had plenty of men with guns. I just wanted to have a talk with Cole here. I didn’t think you’d be on the scene.”
“I’m leaving,” Rome told him. “But I think the sheriff will be looking for you in a little while. I’ll be with him. I want it to be legal.”
Gashlin shook his head. “The paper won’t stand up in court.” His fingers dipped down into the waistcoat again. Rome observed him carefully. Controlled as it was, Gashlin’s tone still revealed more than a trace of anxiety. The paper could finish him, and he knew it.
“I’ll take my chances,” Rome said. “And get your hands up where they belong.”
Gashlin shrugged. “I only want to light my cigar.”
The fingers reappeared, holding a pepper-pot derringer.
Rome tried to move fast. He swung the pistol toward Gashlin, but the other man slid the tiny gun across the table. “All right, Yancey.” The youngster’s eyes flared wildly as the derringer fell into his lap. He fumbled for it.
Rome swung his gun back again, the finger whitening on the trigger. He had no time, and Yancey was back in power, his young eyes full of kill-lust as he brought the derringer up from beneath the table. Gashlin was smiling; Yancey’s face broke into its idiot grin. He had no time …
A ragged burst of piano music came through the window, cut off abruptly by the thunder of Rome’s gun exploding three times. Yancey dropped the derringer on the table with a loud thump, then sat back, his eyes bulging. Blood poured out of the hole Rome had blown in his neck. Slowly, he toppled to the floor.
Rome whirled. The last fragments of the confession were curling into black ash. Gashlin tossed the match onto the table. He kept smiling. “Do you want to kill me, too, Mr. Rome?”
From the first floor, the drunken landlady began to shout. Rome cursed and ran to the door. He did want to kill Gashlin, kill him where he stood, but he had to get away. The foundation had fallen, the bottom had tumbled out, and the hole had grown death-deep. He was caught now, more than ever.
He crashed against the landlady coming up the stairs, knocking the lamp out of her hand. There was a rattle of glass, then a leaping of flame as she screamed again. He bolted through the door and vaulted onto his mount, digging his heels in savagely. He thundered away through the darkened streets, out toward the end-of-track. Behind him, hoarse shouting filled the night. The moon had vanished; the world lay dark as he rode.
The gun, the law of the gun, he thought. You couldn’t outwit it, you couldn’t beat it. In the end, it trapped you; you returned to it, and it destroyed you.
He had actually killed a man. The hoofbeats echoed it. Killed a man, killed a man, killed a man … The wind screaming in his ears sang it to him. Nothing remained but force, animal force. He knew it was wrong, but the other way had failed.
The end-of-track camp lay in darkness. The guards challenged him and he called out to identify himself as he rode past. He ran up the steps of the office car, pushed the door open, and faced Ben Hamilton, his heart beating furiously, his mind whirling.
“I killed Yancey, Ben. I shot him, I killed him, I couldn’t help it. …”
His nerve broke, and he sank onto the chair before Hamilton’s desk. He cradled his head on his arms, letting the dry sobs shake him, letting the strained emotions break loose.
He was no gunslinger. He was no fast-draw man. He worked for the railroad. He had a job. But they were killers. Ruthless …
He worked for the railroad … my God … the railroad … the wheels … round and round … killed a man … and round … killed a man and round and round … killed, killed, killed …
It took Ben Hamilton nearly an hour to quiet him down.
When Rome began to talk coherently once more, Hamilton drew the story from him.
Rome felt a sense of calm slowly returning. The familiar interior of the old car with its closed-in atmosphere of protection soothed his nerves. “I’m just not the man to handle a gun like that,” he said wearily. “I thought times were changing. I thought you could work out differences in other ways.”
“Back East, maybe. The country out here’s slow to change. You ought to know that.”
“I’m a killer,” Rome said, as if he hadn’t heard the other man.
Hamilton jabbed a finger at him. “The important thing is to get out of sight. We’ll fix a place for you to hide in one of the boxcars. Then we’ve got to get the Kansas & Western rolling through Warknife.”
Rome nodded. “Maybe these’ll help.” He fished the three papers from Gashlin’s office out of his pocket, shoved them across the desk, and explained briefly what they were and how he had gotten them.
Hamilton read them, then laughed.
“By God, this may be our break.” He got to his feet quickly. “Come on, let’s get you under cover. They may be looking for you soon.”
It was cold in the boxcar, cold and dark. He slept huddled among some old blankets Hamilton had collected in the camp. The first night he rested fitfully, lying awake for hours listening for the drum of hoofs in the distance. The night air remained still.
When dawn gashed the east with gray streaks, he realized they wouldn’t be coming. The Thompson killing still stood; they would be hunting for him on that count. But Gashlin probably figured Yancey could be forgotten. There were a hundred others like him to be bought anywhere in the West.
Toward noon, while Rome hunched in the boxcar playing solitaire with a worn-out deck furnished by one of the Irish section hands, he heard the sound of horses. He slid the door open a fraction of an inch, peered out and saw a big man, evidently the sheriff, with a party of horsemen from Warknife drawn up in front of the office car. They were conferring with Hamilton. Presently, they rode out again, back toward the town.
Hamilton made his way across the sprawling camp to the boxcar. “Looking for you,” he reported. “About Thompson. Told them you’d gone—lit out of here last night after we saved you from stretching the rope. They don’t seem to feel too bad about it. They’ve quieted down, and the sheriff doesn’t like lynchings. They figure somebody else will catch up with you.”
“What now?” Rome asked quietly. He gestured at the boxcar’s interior. “Do I have to stay cooped up in this damn place when I should be out clearing myself?”
Hamilton’s eyes bored into him. “Can you do that?”
There was silence for a moment. Then Rome shook his head. “Gashlin’s free and I’ve got nothing on him.”
“Nothing but those papers. They aren’t incriminating, but they may help.”
“You got an idea?”
“Yeah,” Hamilton said. “Right now, you wait.” Without another word, he stalked back across the camp. After Cookie brought Rome his noon meal, he saw Hamilton ride out in the direction of Warknife.
Wait. …
The hours stretched on, dull, colorless, relieved only by an unwanted nagging fear about which he could do nothing. He was trapped. He had no alternative but to wait, as Hamilton had said. Even then he didn’t have an idea in the world of how to clear himself. Maybe he would have to ride out permanently. With a sick feeling, he realized that he might always be a hunted man. Something had to break. …
Ben Hamilton returned right at sundown, riding directly to Rome’s car. He was grinning as he swung up, passing Rome a cigar. “This is it, boy! I think we’ll be laying track within two days.”
“What happened?”
“I took the papers to the sheriff.”
“What for? They won’t put anybody in jail.”
“That’s true. The sheriff himself told me he can’t touch any of the ranchers, or Gashlin. The papers are strictly legal. But he didn’t like the idea of the ranchers double-dealing Warknife like that. A lot of people really do want the railroad. Now the wor
d’s going to spread.”
It spread rapidly; Rome heard it secondhand from the men who came back after an evening in Warknife. The town was reacting; rising on its haunches; wondering, voicing questions, even hurling accusations. As individual citizens had once fused into a single mass of hatred directed at Rome, now they were uniting against the trickery of a few. They began to wonder about Gashlin’s statement of Rome’s attempted bribery.
“Everybody, and I mean everybody, knows about them papers,” one of the men reported. “ ’Course, with Job Thompson dead, there ain’t much said against him. But the others are getting laid low. The small ranchers didn’t have any idea those three and Gashlin was sinking their chances of shipping beef by rail.”
The voices rose, became angrier. The news carried back to the dim, lonely boxcar where Rome waited.
“Gashlin’s about five hundred percent more unpopular than before. People don’t like being shoved around because of him … they’re starting to cuss the stink—and him.”
Rome felt small satisfaction. Maybe the rails would stretch out. Maybe the Kansas & Western would roll. But Job Thompson’s killing remained bloody on his hands.
Three mornings after Hamilton took the papers into Warknife, more riders came to the camp. After they left, Hamilton didn’t appear so Rome made his way to the office car. Hamilton was busy at the desk when he entered.
“Dammit, Mark, you’re not supposed to be roaming around. Somebody might ride in here any time and spot you—”
“I just wanted to find out what those men were doing here.”
Hamilton grinned. “The whole town’s busted wide open. Drew and McMaster gave back the money Gashlin paid them and tore up the papers. Cathy Thompson plans to do the same. It appears she didn’t have any idea that old Job was part of a deal involving bribery.”
“That means something—”
“You’re right it means something. Gashlin’s sore as hell.” Hamilton fingered the green metal cash box on top of the desk. “But I bought the right-of-way through all three spreads. Public opinion just got too strong. I heard those three families were almost social outcasts. Like they had leprosy or something. We’re going through, starting now.”
That made Rome feel better. The wheels were turning again. New life was being pumped into the Kansas & Western. He glanced out the window and saw it. Men bustled about busily. Track foremen were assembling their crews; flatcars were being loaded.
“I think maybe we’ve got this thing licked,” Hamilton said at last.
“I wouldn’t count on it a hundred percent.”
“Why not?”
“Gashlin will still try to stop us. And this time it won’t be with paper deals. He’ll use guns and dirty tactics. We ought to expect it and get ready.”
Hamilton studied him. “We will. Maybe it’ll be a good thing. In one way it scares the hell out of me— we’re cutting our time pretty thin as it is. But maybe we can draw Gashlin into the open and get rid of him once and for all.” He paused. “The situation’s backwards now. Gashlin’s out, we’re in. He’ll fight for sure. But we’re in.”
“All except me,” Rome said quietly. “I swear to you, Ben—somehow I’ll get that Thompson thing cleared up.”
“Your chance’ll come.”
Rome nodded. “Right now I want to work.”
“All right. We’re going to hit this thing hard. Day and night. I’ll put you on nights.”
“I want to be out on the track. I want to help put those rails down myself, Ben.”
“Good enough. Only don’t expect to do that all the time. We may need extras in everything, foremen, engineers. We’ll be working on a rough schedule.”
“Suits me.”
Hamilton slapped him on the shoulder. “Get back to your damned boxcar and wait till dark. Then you can get busy.”
Rome thought of Gashlin all afternoon, wondering how and when the strike would come. When he got hold of him … well … He thought about that a lot. The bitterness feeding in him, gnawing at his mind, changed him. All he wanted was Gashlin before him and a gun in his hand. Rome wondered if he would be strong enough to keep from murdering the man the first time he laid eyes on him, the first time he was unprotected.
Noise filled the camp. Whistles shrilled and flatcars began to move up the line about a quarter of a mile, pulled by the small switch engines. Hoarse shouting echoed everywhere. Smoke wisped in the sky, and soon from the west came the clang of hammers.
At four o’clock a storm came smashing down from bloated gray clouds. At six, in the rain, Rome was swinging a hammer, driving in spikes. Behind him the switch engine bored a yellow tunnel of light through the downpour, wreathing the working men in a ghostly aura.
The rain kept coming down, soaking into the parched ground. Hamilton drove the men, working them twenty-four hours a day. Rome’s muscles ached almost unendurably when the’ dawn came, but he went back to his duties after a two-hour rest. His clothes didn’t dry out. His head swam, and when he slept again, he swung a hammer in his dreams. He knew he was getting sick, but he didn’t care.
The Kansas & Western was going through. …
They drove the rails across Drew’s spread, then McMaster’s, then through Warknife. Rome stayed completely hidden the night they laid track through the town. The next day they were beyond the eastern outskirts and he was eager to work again. He argued with Hamilton and finally won, working through the day, too, stopping only about seven hours for sleep when he got too feverish.
They cut timber and built the trestle over the cut on Thompson’s spread. Once at night, working under the eye of the locomotive behind them, Rome saw Cathy Thompson watching on horseback, Hamilton beside her. He kept his head down as he slammed another spike home. She didn’t matter. Even Gashlin had been wiped from his mind. The world consisted of the rails and the ties, the spikes and the watching yellow eye marking progress through the rainy darkness.
Men began to drop. The ones remaining worked harder than ever. The dispensary in the rear of the office car never closed, and the supplies of medicine dwindled. The men were sick, but a restless energy drove them on. Hamilton was often among them, swinging a hammer, cursing, as wet and as sick and as tired as they were. But, like them, he was proud of what they were doing, and it showed. It kept them going.
Nine days after they started work they were back on schedule and almost to the far boundary of Job Thompson’s ranch. Rome went back to the main camp east of the recently constructed trestle, trying to find some warmer clothes. The air had grown cooler, turning the wet ground into thick mud.
Rome was in the mess tent, downing a cup of hot, acidic coffee when one of the foremen came in and spotted him. “Hey, Mark—they’re short of iron up ahead. We’re loading a couple of flatcars. Can you take them up?”
Rome nodded and finished his coffee. He tramped through the drizzle toward the snorting switch engine. “Steam’s up,” the foreman called as Rome climbed into the cab.
He edged the throttle back, his hands moving with skill over the controls. The railroad man’s sense of precision, his sensitivity to the massive iron locomotive born of instinct as well as practice, took hold. Smiling, Rome leaned out and watched the track ahead.
The wheels turned, hissing, clacking, rattling off their song of triumph. They weren’t beaten. They were rolling west again. They were going through. He felt elated, even with the residue of fever and sickness to dull his senses.
He wasn’t making over eight miles an hour. But that was all right. The trestle would be coming up soon, and he hadn’t far to go after that. Just being in the cab, feeling the engine under his hands, made him feel immeasurably better. He thought suddenly of Cathy and wished that she were with him.
The seemingly endless rain slanted down through the headlight, cold and dreary. Rome didn’t care about the rain anymore. He jerked the cord, listened to the whistle scream its cry of conquest. He wiped his forehead and smiled again.
Á quarter of a m
ile east of the trestle, Gashlin struck.
The riders came out of the murk, half a dozen of them. They followed the train at a fast gallop. Rome whirled, jerking out his gun. He could make out the figure of Gashlin, leading the riders.
The locomotive rolled past a small gang of workers who dodged to avoid the oncoming horses. One of the riders shot at the railroadmen; Rome saw two of them go down. Then the locomotive swung around a bend. Rome hoped fervently that the men would summon help.
The train was rolling through the uncleared timber, the trestle coming up soon. Rome crouched in the cab with the pistons making a thundering sound beneath him. The wheels clacked as the riders swung onto the last flatcar one by one. Their guns were out as they advanced toward the cab through the rain. Gashlin carried a large dark parcel.
“Stop the engine,” he shouted to Rome over the roar. “Stop it on the trestle!” Rome triggered a shot and the attackers ducked. Rome spied a couple of rough, unfamiliar faces in the gloom. Gashlin had evidently added a few professional guns to his force. By the hellish glow of the firebox, Rome could see that Gashlin’s face was anxious. His back was to the wall. …
Rome debated the situation for an instant. They were not firing now but stalking cautiously because they wanted the locomotive halted on the trestle. Rome guessed what the parcel contained. Dynamite.
It would be a crippling loss; a valuable switch engine, and, more important, a key trestle that would take time to rebuild. They might never finish on time, and Gashlin would keep his business. …
“Stop this thing!” Gashlin roared, his voice ragged with desperation.
Carefully, Rome took aim and began firing. He slipped along the side of the tender, triggering his shots over the top. He had to time it carefully now, very carefully. Gashlin must be realizing that he couldn’t stop the train; he shouted orders to his men and they began firing from the flatcar nearest the tender.
One by one, Rome shot them down, all except Gashlin. It was a new sensation, feeling the power of the weapon in his hand. He took his time with four, only wounding them. The fifth clutched his stomach and screamed, his body arching backward and pitching from the flatcar, lost in the darkness and the rain.