The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

Shattered telegraph poles dangled from their wires. Two hundred yards of track were buried in mud, rock, and crushed timber. Had the coupling to the passenger car snapped, too? Or had the tender dragged it into the ravine with it? Where the detectives’ car had been was a jagged mound of trees. Bell rubbed the rain from his eyes and stared harder, hoping against hope. Then he saw it. It was still on the road, shattered wreckage held in place by fallen trees thrust through its windows like knitting needles in a hank of yarn.

Bell cupped his hands to shout across the debris-strewn gouge in the mountain that had been railroad tracks. “Eddie! Are you O.K.?”

Bell cocked his ears for an answer. All he could hear was a river tumbling through the ravine and steam hissing from the wrecked engine. He called again and again. Through the rain, he thought he saw a familiar flash of white hair. Eddie Edwards waved one arm. The other hung limp at this side.

“Busted up,” Eddie shouted back. “None dead!”

“I’m going ahead. I’ll send a doctor on the wreck train. James. Quick!”

The boy was white as a sheet. His eyes were round with shock.

“Handcar. Move. Now!”

Bell led the way out of the leaning cab to the front of the precariously balanced engine. The handcar was intact. They untied it from the pilot and carried it, slipping and stumbling over fifty feet of rock that had tumbled onto the rails. Minutes later, Bell was pumping the handles and pedals with all his strength.

Fifteen miles up the line, they came upon a freight train waiting on a siding. Bell ordered the locomotive unhitched, and they drove it backward the last ten miles to Tunnel 13. They thundered through the tunnel. The engineer slowed her as they emerged into the yard, which was crowded with material trains that had been barred from crossing the weakened bridge. Bell was surprised to see a heavy coal train parked on the bridge itself. The black cargo heaped on fifty hopper cars glistened in the rain.

“I thought the bridge can’t bear weight. Did they fix it already?”

“Lord, no,” replied the engineer. “They’ve got a thousand hands down at the piers, working round the clock, but it’s touch-and-go. A week’s more work, and the river’s rising.”

“What’s that coal train doing there?”

“The bridge started shaking. They’re trying to stabilize it with down pressure.”

Bell could see that the main staging yard on the far side of the bridge was also packed with trains. Empties, with no way back to the California shops and depots. Having all hands working at the piers explained the eerie sense of a deserted encampment.

“Where’s the dispatch office?”

“They set up a temporary one on this side. In that yellow caboose.”

Bell jumped down from the locomotive and ran to the caboose, Dashwood right behind him. The dispatcher was reading a week-old newspaper. The telegrapher was dozing at his silent key.

“Where is Senator Kincaid?”

“Most every one’s down at the town,” said the dispatcher.

The telegrapher opened his eyes. “Last I saw, he was heading for the Old Man’s special. But I wouldn’t go there, if I was you. Hennessy’s hoppin’ mad. Somebody sent him four trains of coal instead of the traprock they need to riprap the piers.”

“Round up a doctor and a wreck train. There’re men hurt at a landslide fifteen miles down the line. Come on, Dash!”

They ran across the bridge, past the parked coal train. Bell saw ripples in the rain puddles. The weakened structure was trembling despite the weight of the coal train. A glance over the side showed that the Cascade River had risen many feet in the nine days since he left for New York. He could see hundreds of workmen ganged on the banks, guiding barges with long ropes, dumping rock in the water, trying to divert the flood, while hundreds more swarmed over new coffer dams and caissons being sunk around the piers.

“Have you participated in many arrests?” Bell asked Dashwood as they neared the special on its raised siding. Train and yard crews were changing shifts. A row of white yardmen’s lanterns and signal flags were lined up beside Hennessy’s locomotive, the lanterns glowing in the murky light.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Bronson let me come along when they captured ‘Samson’ Scudder.”

Bell hid a smile. The ironically named Samson Scudder, a prolific second-story man who weighed ninety pounds dripping wet, was known as the sweetest-natured crook in San Francisco.

“This one’s poison,” he warned soberly. “Stick close and do exactly what I say.”

“Should I draw my firearm?”

“Not on the train. There’ll be people around. Stand by with your handcuffs.”

Bell strode alongside Hennessy’s special and up the steps to Nancy No. 1. The detective he had assigned to guard the car since Philip Dow’s attack was covering the vestibule with a sawed-off.

“Senator Kincaid aboard?”