EVENTS OUT OF the ordinary were happening at places far distant from each other.
At Bad Mountain the night station agent, Bud Hughes, listened to the clatter of the telegraph instrument, wrote down the orders. They confused him. Brought his isolation sharply to his mind. The Oriental Express, crack train from Puget Sound to the East, was due at its normal seven-ten. What wasn’t normal was the mixed freight, Number Ten, behind the Express, to be given through clearance all the way to St. Paul. And half an hour behind the freight a Special had the same prerogative. For these three trains all westbound traffic was to be held off the main line.
Bud Hughes swore. Outside, rain spattered against the bay windows. The platform boards glistened with wet. The yard lights swelled, bloomed behind the wet curtain. It was cold for June. Up here they said if you don’t like the weather, wait fifteen minutes. He was tired of waiting. He hated Bad Mountain, longed to go back to Chicago. He was alone here, cut off from knowing anything that was going on in the world. All he heard was what came over the wire, through the little box in front of him, through the clicking key.
Now it was spitting out his call letters again. He opened the key, took down this new unprecedented message. Stop the Oriental at Bad Mountain. The Express never stopped here. He looked up at the grimy wall clock. In only five minutes the proud train would come thundering through the yards. He had to hurry. Had to go out in the damn rain. Had to set the board.
Far away in the hub of Spokane another night dispatcher drowsed at his post. The sudden clatter of his instrument waked him. Then shocked him. He heard the order to stop the Oriental Express at Bad Mountain. No one but he had the authority to give that order. Nobody in the whole system.
He jumped at the key, pounded it, beat out the Bad Mountain call signal, followed it with Acknowledge, Acknowledge. He didn’t have to watch the key. His eyes nailed on the desk clock before him. Seven-six. At seven-ten the Express would slam through Bad Mountain.
One mile west of Bad Mountain a man in wet clothes climbed down a telegraph pole carrying a jumper and a portable key. He was grinning. He had just sent the order to stop the Express. Then he had cut the wire short of the insulator. The line now hung to the ground. He ran along it, climbed the next pole, cut the full section away, climbed down. He was rolling up the section when the clicking in the rails told him the train was coming. He dropped into the brush beyond the right-of-way, stayed there until the cars rattled by. Then he walked to his horse, looped the wire over his saddle horn, rode out through the driving rain. It would take longer to replace a full section than merely to repair a break.
In Spokane, the dispatcher was losing his mind. His finger on the key was light, frantic, repeating the Bad Mountain signal, repeating, repeating. He got no response. He followed the clock. Ten after seven. Eleven after seven. Twelve after seven. Too late now, whatever was happening. He sent a call boy with a message to repair. Either Hughes at Bad Mountain was not at his post or the line was broken.
Hughes was not at his post. He had scrambled to set the board, the lights, against the oncoming Express. Now he stood in the rain on the platform, waiting.
Eli Sommers was engineer. Had been engineer of the Express since the train was inaugurated four years ago. He knew all about the huge locomotive. But he had nothing to say about the makeup of the cars snaking behind. And nobody had told him about the gold shipment. He knew it was a miserable night, a strong east wind pelting rain in his face, and that he had to sit there and take it, keep his head poked out the side window of the cab. He didn’t want to run headlong into some stupid cow maybe wandered on the track. He knew that in a minute or two the lights of Bad Mountain would rise at him out of the night, flash past.
Across the cab the fireman was also peering out, watching for obstructions from his side. Both men saw the signal ahead go red. The fireman shouted a warning. Sommers hit the brakes. The shout blended with the squeal of metal. Sommers cursed Seattle. The schedule the men there set up was tight. Every minute counted. An unexpected stop at Bad Mountain would have them running late.
Back in one of the through sleepers, Abe Calhoun, the conductor, stood by the washroom talking to the porter. He set himself against the first pull of the brakes, glanced at the sluicing windows, pulled his silver turnip watch, read seven-eight.
“Bad Mountain.”
He said it aloud, idly. He knew every town, every stop on the line, the entire timetable of the Express, by heart. He was inordinately fond of his train. The best in the west. Felt every throb and shudder like a heartbeat. Sommers, he felt, was touching the brakes, slowing her over the yard switches. He was startled that the braking continued, speed kept dropping. He turned, pulled open the door, went out to the platform. Wind, rain, cinders rushed around him. He went down the open steps between the cars, caught the handrail, leaned out. The station lights showed ahead. He saw the board set against them. No doubt now that they were going to stop.
They would run late. That was bad. It was his personal boast that only once had the Express come into St. Paul late. That time a snow avalanche had buried the tracks in Painter Canyon. The weather was bad enough tonight. A river ran off the stiff bill of his uniform cap. But rain wouldn’t account for this break in schedule.
He worried. He’d been uneasy ever since Spokane, since they changed the regular makeup of cars. Now they hauled three extras, hooked just behind the tender, ahead of the usual dozen sleepers. The one in the middle was a baggage car. Its doors had been barred even before the train was made up. He didn’t know what it carried. The other two were coaches jammed with men. His orders were not to collect tickets in either. But he had looked through the glass window of the one ahead of the sleepers, had been shocked at the arsenal of rifles in the racks over the seats.
Something was going on on his train that he did not know about it, and Abe Calhoun resented it. He wondered if this unscheduled stop had anything to do with the armed men.
In the forward armed coach Sidney Blood wondered the same thing, but not in total ignorance. He stood up, shouted down the car.
“Get ready. Pull those blinds down. Don’t anyone raise them or shoot until I say to.”
The blinds ran down as if they were one. This was a picked crew, brought in from all over the west. Sidney Blood approved the quick response, the way the men reached for rifles, checked the action. Not a railroad man, Blood had still ridden this right-of-way back and forth enough to feel he knew every dip and lurch. He knew this was Bad Mountain. Not Painter Canyon.
Painter Canyon was twenty-five miles yet. Rough miles. A long, laborious grade to climb that took its toll of speed. They would not use brakes going into Painter Canyon. But maybe Lassiter and Cassidy were not going to wait to hit them there, where the train would be almost at a standstill. This might be the hit. At Bad Mountain.
He was already moving, pulling open the door, bucking the wind on the platform. The conductor looked over his shoulder. He did not know Blood.
“Better go back inside. We don’t stop here.”
“We are stopping.” Blood put his head back in the coach, gave his order, felt for the gun under his arm. Outside he saw the platform slide past. He dropped off the train. The engine stopped even with the station. Steam leaked from around the cylinders, rose in a white cloud through the rain, the spreading fog. The coach lights were dark now. The windows went up. From them forty rifles covered both sides of the train. The same would be true in the second coach. Clyde Turk had charge there. A steady man, Turk.
The conductor was hot footing it toward the lighted station. He was not expecting a holdup. Blood was. He stayed in the shadow of the stopped train, his eyes on the foggy shadows of the yard. Nothing moved there to bother him.
The engineer now ran toward the station. The station agent came out, waving a sheaf of orders in his hand. Both train men were shouting about their right-of-way, about being stopped. The agent shook a flimsy paper at them. Blood ran toward them, snatched at the message. Read it.
MEET WESTBOUND PAINTER SIDING EMERGENCY GIVE RIGHT OF WAY.
Abe Calhoun swore a protest, saw the gun in Blood’s hand, choked.
Blood looked at the agent. “When did you get this?”
“Five minutes ago …”
“Check with the dispatcher?”
“No …”
“Check now.”
Nobody argued with Blood’s order. They ran into the station. But Hughes hit the key. Found it dead. He wasn’t alone now. But he liked this less than loneliness. He pounded the key as if he could bring the instrument to life by sheer physical force. Nothing happened.
The conductor sounded uncertain. “The storm …?” He did not really believe it.
Breath rushed out of Sidney Blood. “Storm hell. The wires are cut.”
The three looked at him again, at the gun he held carelessly. Hughes bristled.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Special agent. Wells Fargo.”
For the conductor things began to fall into place. The unexplained extra cars. The armed men. He looked wise.
“So we’re carrying a shipment.”
Blood did not correct him. The man could be one of Cassidy’s bunch. The engineer, the station agent could be. The railroad had found other employees in the outlaw’s pay.
Well, the first play had been made. Cut off here in the mountains they might as well be on the moon. The Talking Wire, as the Indians called it, was dead. There was no quick communication. Blood was grimly satisfied. He did not show it. He told Hughes,
“Route out a crew, send it both ways. Find the break and fix it.”
They had lost seven minutes now. The cattle train with the gold was bearing down on them. Twenty-three minutes behind now. Too close for comfort.
“Let’s roll.” He touched the engineer’s arm, ran to the locomotive.
The conductor, responsibility for his train riding him, panted up, shouted at the engineer. “I don’t know what’s happened, but when you hit Painter Siding we’ll have to go in the Hole, wait for the Westbound. We can’t take a chance.”
That, Blood told himself, was exactly what Cassidy wanted. The train stopped. A sitting duck. Out away from nowhere. It offended him that a handful of renegades thought they could challenge the might of the great Wells Fargo network. They would learn. They would ride into the firepower of Blood’s eighty loyal fighters. And at last he would have Lassiter.
“I’m going to ride the engine. Just in case.”
He climbed into the cab behind the engineer. The conductor ran back along the cars, shooing the curious passengers back on board, waving signals at the brakemen and porters gathered on the platform. He turned, gave the highball, waited until the long train lurched into movement. Then he scrambled up the steps.