The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

“Like it says on your map. Now.”

47

HOUR AFTER HOUR, ISAAC BELL’S VAN DORN EXPRESS POUNDED up the steep approach to the Donner Pass. Cresting the summit at last, locomotive, tender, diner, and Pullman thundered between the stonework known as the “Chinese Walls” and roared through Summit Tunnel. Then it raced down the Sierra Nevada.

Gaining speed with every sloping mile, it topped a hundred five miles per hour. Even with another coal and water stop, Bell reckoned that at this rate they’d make Sacramento in an hour.

He wired ahead when the special stopped at Soda Springs. To save time changing locomotives, he asked the Sacramento superintendent to have a fresh engine standing by to race him north to the Cascade Canyon Bridge.

Bell kept making the rounds of his auditors, lawyers, detectives, and researchers, speaking repeatedly with every man on the train. They were closing in on the puzzle of which European bankers were paying for the Wrecker’s rampage. But how much closer was he to the Wrecker himself?

Ever since his father’s accountant had confirmed Charles Kincaid’s role as the Wrecker’s agent and spy, Bell had been mentally replaying the draw hand when he’d bluffed Kincaid on the Overland Limited. He recalled that he had bluffed the steel magnate James Congdon out of the hand first. That Kincaid had folded too had been more of a surprise. It was a smart fold. It had been the act of a calculating player, a player brave enough to cut his losses but a more cautious player than he had been all night. More cunning.

A strange phrase started churning in Bell’s mind: I am thinking the unthinkable.

ASTRIDE A CHESTNUT HORSE on a trail that overlooked his East Oregon Lumber Company, the Wrecker watched everything turn his way. The rains were arriving in earnest now. After many setbacks, his luck had changed. Snowstorms were sweeping the mountains to the north. Portland and Spokane were blizzard bound. But here fell rain, flooding the freshets, streams, and creeks that fed the Cascade River. “Lake Lillian” was topping its makeshift dam.

It was raining too hard to cut timber. East Oregon Lumber’s steam donkeys stood silent. The high-lead yarding lines, wire ropes that snaked logs to the mill, swayed idly in the wind. The greedy manager paced sullenly in his office. Mules dozed in the stables. Oxen huddled with their backs to the rain. Teamsters and lumberjacks sprawled in their bunkhouses, drunk on bootleg.

A Hell’s Bottom Flyer dugout canoe lay on the riverbank below the dam filled with rainwater. No work, no pay. Saloons rarely offered credit with winter coming on. Women never did.

The Wrecker turned his horse up the trail and rode the steep mile to Philip Dow’s cabin.

Dow did not come out to greet him. The Wrecker tied the horse under the lean-to, slung a saddlebag over his shoulder, and knocked on the door. Dow opened the door immediately. He had been watching through a rifle slit.

His eyes were feverish. The skin around the bandage that covered the remains of his ear was inflamed. Repeated douses of carbolic acid and raw whiskey were barely keeping infection at bay. But it was more than infection taking its toll, the Wrecker suspected. Dow’s failure to kill Isaac Bell and the subsequent shootout with the detective had left the assassin dangerously unbalanced.

“Powder, fuse, and detonators,” the Wrecker said, putting the bag down in the corner farthest from the fireplace. “Watertight. How is your hearing?”

“I can hear fine on this side.”

“Can you hear that locomotive whistle?” A Consolidation was blowing faintly nine miles down in the cutoff yards.

Dow cocked his good ear. “Now that you mention it …”

“You ought to have one of your boys up here with you so he can hear my signal to blow the dam.”

“I’ll leave the door open. I’m not deaf. I’ll hear it.”

The Wrecker did not argue the point. He needed to keep Dow in a loyal, cooperative frame of mind, and it was clear that in his current state a hulking, evil-smelling lumberjack inside his neat-as-a-pin cabin would provoke him to kill the man.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll tie down two whistles at once. You’ll hear them fine.”

The sound of simultaneously doubled locomotive whistles would fly up the mountain louder than winged banshees shrieking, “Blow Lake Lillian’s dam!”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“Do you believe that every trainman in those yards works for Osgood Hennessy?” the Wrecker asked enigmatically. “I’ll have two locomotives parked unattended at the edge of the yards. By the time anyone investigates why they’re blowing their whistles, you’ll have lit your fuse.”

Dow smiled. He liked that.

“You’re everywhere, aren’t you?” he said.

“Everywhere I have to be,” said the Wrecker.

Dow opened the saddlebag and inspected the explosives with a practiced eye.

“Blasting gelatin,” he said approvingly. “You know your business.”