The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

The old man dropped his head in his hands. “God in Heaven, where am I going to get a thousand men with winter coming?” He looked up angrily. “Round up their ringleaders. Clap a bunch in jail. The rest’ll come around.”

“May I suggest,” said Bell, “a more productive course?”

r /> “No! I know how to crush a strike.” He turned to Lillian, who was watching him intently. “Get me Jethro Watt. And wire the Governor. I want troops here by morning.”

“Sir,” said Bell. “I’ve just come back from the camp. It’s gripped with fear. Watt’s police will, at best, provoke a riot and, at worst, cause vast numbers to drift away. Troops will make it even worse. You can’t force decent work out of frightened men. But you can attempt to alleviate their fright.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bring in Jethro Watt. Bring five hundred officers with him. But put them to work patrolling the line. Blanket it until it is apparent that you, not the Wrecker, control every inch of track between here and Tunnel 13.”

“That’ll never work,” said Hennessy. “Those agitators won’t buy it. They just want to strike.”

Lillian spoke up at last.

“Try it, Father.”

And so the old man did.

Within a day, every mile of track was guarded and every mile scoured for loose rails and buried explosives. Just as had happened in Jersey City, where Van Dorn operatives had arrested various criminals swept up in the search for the Wrecker’s accomplices, here, in the course of hunting for signs of sabotage, track crews discovered several weaknesses in the track and repaired them.

Bell mounted a horse and rode the twenty-mile line. He returned by locomotive, satisfied that this newest stretch of the cutoff had been transformed from the most dangerous in the West to the best maintained. And the best guarded.

THE WRECKER DROVE A trader’s wagon pulled by two strong mules. It had a patched and faded canvas top stretched over seven hoops. Under the canvas were pots and pans and woolen cloth, salt, a barrel of lard, another that held china dishes packed in straw. Hidden under the trader’s cargo was an eight-foot-long, ten-by-twelve-inch freshly milled mountain hemlock railroad tie.

The trader was dead, stripped naked and tossed off a hillside. He was nearly as tall as the Wrecker, and his clothes fit the Wrecker reasonably well. A hole bored the length of the squared timber was stuffed with dynamite.

The Wrecker followed a buggy road that likely had started out as an Indian trail long before the railroad was built and a mule-deer track before then. While steep and narrow, the road unerringly found the gentlest slopes in a land that was harsh. Most of the remote settlements it touched upon were abandoned. Those that weren‘t, he avoided. Their hardscrabble residents might recognize the wagon and wonder what had happened to its owner.

Here and there, the road crossed the new railroad, offering an opportunity to drive the wagon onto the tracks. But every time he neared the cutoff line, he saw patrols, police riding horseback and police pumping handcars. His plan was to drive his wagon along the tracks at night to the edge of a deep canyon, where he would replace an in-place crosstie with his explosive one. But as afternoon waned and the slopes darkened, he was forced to admit that his plan would not succeed.

Isaac Bell’s hand was obvious in the precautions, and the Wrecker cursed yet again the killers he had hired in Rawlins who had botched the job. But all his cursing and all his regretting would not change the fact that Bell’s patrols meant that he could not risk driving the wagon on the tracks. The railroad cut was narrow. Much of it consisted of sheer rock on one side and a steep drop on the other. If he ran into a patrol, there was no place to hide a wagon, and, in most places, no way to drive it off the tracks at all.

The hemlock crosstie weighed two hundred pounds. The spike puller he needed to remove an existing tie weighed twenty. The puller could double as a crowbar to dig out the ballast, but he couldn’t drive spikes with it, so he still needed a hammer and that weighed another twelve pounds. He was strong. He could lift two hundred thirty pounds. He could lift the hemlock tie with the hammer and puller lashed to it and hoist it to his shoulder. But how many miles could he carry it?

Unloading the tie from the wagon, it felt even heavier than he had imagined. Thank God it hadn’t been creosoted in coal-tar distillates. The wood would have absorbed another thirty pounds of the dark liquid.

The Wrecker leaned the tie against a telegraph pole and roped the spike puller and hammer to it. Then he drove the trader’s wagon behind some trees a short distance from the tracks. He shot both mules with his derringer, pressing the muzzle to their skulls to muffle the reports in case a patrol was nearby. He hurried back to the tracks, crouched and tilted the massive weight onto his shoulder. Then he straightened his legs and started walking.

The rough wood dug through his coat, and he regretted not taking a blanket from the wagon to cushion his shoulder. The pain started as a dull ache. It sharpened quickly, biting deep. It cut into the muscle of his shoulder and ground against the bone. After only half a mile, it burned like fire. Should he put it down, run back to the wagon, and get a blanket? But then Bell’s patrols could find it lying by the rails.

The Wrecker’s legs were tired already. His knees began to shake. But his shaking knees and the awful pain in his shoulder were soon forgotten as the weight compressed the bones in his spine, squeezing nerves. The nerves radiated a burning sensation into his legs, shooting sharp pains through his thighs and calves. He wondered if he put the tie down and stopped to rest whether he could lift it again. While he debated the risk, the decision was made for him.

He had carried the tie for a mile when he saw a creamy glow in the sky up ahead. It brightened quickly. A locomotive headlamp, he realized, coming fast. Already he could hear it over the sound of his labored breathing. He had to get off the tracks. There were trees close by. Feeling his way in the dark, he descended the slope of the roadbed and careened through them. The headlamp threw crazy beams and shadows. He pushed in deeper, then knelt down carefully, tipping the massive crosstie down until its end rested on the ground.

The relief of having the weight off him was an almost overwhelming pleasure. He leaned the other end of the tie against a tree. Then he sagged to the ground and stretched out on the pine needles to rest. The locomotive grew louder and roared past, drawing a train that rattled with the peculiar higher pitch of empty cars. It passed too quickly. Too soon, he had to stand up, tip the crushing weight onto his shoulder, and struggle up the slope to the rails.

The heel of his boot caught on the head of the rail as he tried to step between the tracks. He felt himself pitching forward, falling face-first. He fought to regain his balance. But before he could get his feet under him in the headlong rush, the weight pushed him down. He twisted frantically to get out from under the tie. But the weight was too massive to escape entirely. A sledgehammer blow crushed his arm, and he cried out in pain.

Facedown on the roadbed, he wrenched his arm out from under the tie, knelt as if in prayer, heaved it onto his aching shoulder, stood up, and pressed on. He tried to count his steps but kept losing track. He had five miles to go. But he had no idea how far he had staggered. He started counting ties. His heart sank. There were almost three thousand ties for every mile of track. After a hundred, he thought he would die. After five hundred, he was almost destroyed by the realization that five hundred ties was no more than a fifth of a mile.

His mind began to scatter. He imagined carrying the tie all the way to Tunnel 13. Through the stone mountain all the way to the Cascade Canyon Bridge.

I’m the “Hero Engineer”!

Giddy-headed laughter dissolved into a sob of pain. He felt himself drifting out of control. He had to shift his thoughts away from the pain and the fear that he could not continue.

He drove his mind toward his early rote training in mathematics and engineering. Structure-the physics that made a bridge stand or fall. Struts. Ties. Foundation piers. Cantilever arms. Anchor arms. Live loads. Dead loads.