The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

“There!” said Malone.

Twenty feet ahead of the train, they stopped and stared at an almost imperceptible bulge in the ballast. Whereas the freshly laid crushed stone presented a smooth, flat incline from the ties to the edge of the cliff, here was a gentle bump that rose a few inches higher.

“Don’t get too close!” Malone warned. “Looks like they’ve been digging here. See how it didn’t settle like the original?”

Bell walked straight to the bulge and stepped onto it.

“Look out!”

“The Wrecker,” said Bell, “would make absolutely certain that nothing less than the weight of a locomotive would detonate a mine.”

“You seem mighty sure of that.”

“I am,” said Bell. “He’s too smart to waste his powder on a handcar.”

He knelt down on a tie and looked closely. He passed his hand over the crushed stone.

“But what I don’t see are any signs of recent digging. These stones have been sitting awhile. See the coal dust undisturbed?”

Malone stepped closer reluctantly. Then he knelt beside Bell, scratching his head. He ran his fingers over the coal dust crusting in the rain. He picked up some chunks of ballast and examined them. Abruptly, he rose.

“Shoddy work, not explosives,” he said. “I know exactly who was in charge of laying this section and he is going to hear from me. Sorry, Mr. Bell. False alarm.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

By then, the train crew had disembarked. Behind them, fifty workmen gawked, and others were piling off the cars.

“Everyone back on the train!” Malone roared.

Bell took the engineer aside.

“Why didn’t you stop?”

“You caught me by surprise. Took me a moment to act.”

“Stay alert!” Bell retorted coldly. “You’ve got men’s lives in your hands.”

They got everyone back on the train and rolling again.

The ties slid by. Squared timber after squared timber. Eight spikes, four on each rail. Fishplates securing the rails. Sharp-edged crushed ballast glistened in the wet. Bell watched for more bumps in the flat surface, disturbed stone, missing bolts, absent spikes, cracks in the rails. Tie after tie after tie.

For seventeen miles, the train trundled slowly. Bell began to hope against hope that his precautions had paid off. The patrols and constant inspections had ensured the line was safe. Only three miles to go and then the men could return to work, boring the vital Tunnel 13.

Suddenly, as they rounded a sharp curve that rimmed the deepest canyon on the route, something unusual caught Bell’s eye. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was at first. For an instant, it barely penetrated.

“Malone!” he said in a whipcrack voice, “Look! What’s wrong?”

The red-faced man beside him leaned forward, squinted, his face a mask of concentration.

“I don’t see nothing.”

Bell raked the tracks with his binoculars. Bracing his feet on the pilot, he held the glasses with one hand and drew his pistol with the other.

The ballast was smooth. No spikes were missing. The ties …

In seventeen miles, the work train had crossed fifty thousand ties. Each of the fifty thousand was a chocolate-brown color, the wood darkened by preservatives absorbed in creosoting. Now, only a few yards ahead of the locomotive, Bell saw a wooden tie that was colored yellowish white-the shade of freshly milled mountain hemlock that had not been creosoted.

Bell fired his pistol again and again as fast as he could pull the trigger.