CHAPTER 9
By noon, the storm over the Sierra Nevadas had strengthened into a true blizzard. A man caught out in it wouldn’t have been able to see his hand in front of his face and would have been hopelessly lost if he went more than two steps from shelter.
In Donner Pass, the snow drifted so high against the sides of the snowsheds that it began to pile up on top of the structures. The drifts grew deeper and deeper until the sheds were completely covered and looked like a huge snake winding along underneath the thick carpet of white.
The sheds were sturdy structures, built to withstand a great deal of weight. But a storm such as this came along once in a decade. Maybe even less often. As it dumped more and more snow on the sheds, the timbers supporting the roof began to groan under the burden.
Then, half a mile east of the Summit Hotel, one of those timbers gave way with a rending crack. The roof sagged, and then another support timber broke. The roof split apart. Tons of snow poured through the jagged opening. More boards splintered. The collapse spread until snow and debris were piled six feet deep on the tracks for more than a hundred yards.
The rumble generated by that catastrophe echoed from the surrounding mountains, even though those slopes couldn’t be seen in the blizzard. The echoes were a long time dying away, and before they did, they caused a shiver to run through some of the deep drifts high above the pass.
Inside the hotel, Herman Painton came to the little room where Juniper Jones sat hunched over his telegrapher’s key and said, “You sent for me?”
A few minutes earlier, Juniper had looked out into the lobby, seen one of the maids going by, and asked her to find Painton. He stood up now and handed the hotel manager the message he had copied down when the key began to chatter.
Painton read the printed words and looked up with a worried frown on his face. “The line wants me to check the tracks again.”
“Yeah,” Juniper said dryly. “I know.”
“I just checked them a few hours ago!”
“The storm’s gotten a lot worse since then. The line has an eastbound that’ll be pulling into Sacramento pretty soon. They need to know whether it can get through.”
“Your telegraph is still working. That means the storm isn’t too bad.”
“Just because the lines are up don’t mean the tracks are clear,” Juniper pointed out. “You know that, Herman.”
Painton’s frown deepened. He was in a bad spot, Juniper thought. Although technically an employee of the hotel, during the winter when there was only a small staff up here, Painton also served as the railroad’s superintendent for this station. If the line wanted him to check the tracks, he had little choice but to carry out the order.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Painton asked.
“Me?” Juniper said. “I work for the telegraph company.”
“But you’re also my friend, aren’t you? A man doesn’t need to be out in weather like this by himself.”
Juniper grimaced. Painton was right about both of those things. Juniper knew it, but he didn’t have to like it.
He liked it even less because of what had happened earlier that morning, when he thought he had seen something out there in the storm . . . something that shouldn’t have been there.
But Painton looked so miserable that Juniper sighed and said, “All right, I’ll come with you.”
He wasn’t going unarmed, though. He turned back to the desk, opened a drawer, and took out the long-barreled Remington.
“What do you need that for?” Painton asked, puzzled by his friend’s actions.
“I’ll just feel better havin’ it along,” Juniper said. He shoved the gun in his waistband. It was awkward carrying it there because of the long barrel, but he didn’t have a holster for the revolver. He reached for his heavy coat, which was hanging on a nail.
A few minutes later, the two men left the hotel and started walking east along the tracks. They were bundled up against the cold and wore caps with fleece-lined flaps that pulled down over their ears. Each man carried a pair of snowshoes.
Juniper hoped they wouldn’t need the snowshoes. If they had to leave the tracks, they were pretty much dead, anyway. They wouldn’t survive long in this howling storm.
Painton carried a lantern, too; otherwise it would have been pitch black inside the snowsheds. The drifts were high enough to cover them and cut off any light from outside. A dusting of white that had sifted through cracks in the structures covered the tracks here and there, but that much snow wouldn’t cause any trouble for the locomotives.
Juniper stuck his hand inside his coat so he could reach the Remington if he needed to. The circle of light cast by the lantern upraised in Painton’s hand didn’t seem to extend very far. The flickering glow moved along with them, which meant darkness closed in behind them.
Juniper looked over his shoulder and saw a speck of light that marked the location of the railroad platform adjacent to the hotel. It seemed lonely in the murk.
“Everything looks fine,” Painton said as they followed the tracks that made a long, gentle curve through the pass.
“So far,” Juniper said.
“You really are spooked today, aren’t you? What put a burr under your saddle?”
Juniper hesitated. Painton had been around the mountains long enough that he’d probably heard of the Donner Devil, too, but what would he think if Juniper admitted that he believed he had seen the creature? Would he decide that the telegrapher had gone mad, maybe from being stuck up here at this isolated post?
Juniper didn’t want his friend to think he was crazy. Yet, he felt a compulsion to share his suspicions. Maybe Painton had noticed something odd, too, and was just as wary of talking about it....
Before Juniper could say anything, Painton stopped short and exclaimed, “Oh, dear Lord!”
Juniper saw the same thing. A couple hundred yards ahead of them, faint gray light filtering into the snowshed revealed a wall of snow blocking the tracks. Broken beams stuck out of the barrier like toothpicks.
“There’s your answer for Sacramento and Reno,” Juniper said. “Won’t be any trains gettin’ through that for at least a week.”
“It’s going to take more like a month to clear that away and rebuild the shed,” Painton said with devastation obvious in his voice. “Juniper, this is terrible—”
He didn’t get any farther because Juniper grabbed his arm and said, “Listen!”
Both men heard the rumble that was slowly but steadily growing louder. They stared at each other, eyes growing wide with terror, and yelled the word that everyone who lived in the mountains during winter dreaded above all others.
“Avalanche!”
They turned and sprinted toward the hotel. Both cast aside the snowshoes so they could run faster. The rumble turned into a roar. The ground trembled beneath their feet.
It wasn’t easy running on railroad tracks. They had covered fifty yards and the noise around them was deafening when Painton’s foot caught one of the ties and sent him sprawling forward. He dropped the lantern. It bounced ahead of him and somehow didn’t break. It even stayed lit.
Juniper saw the mishap from the corner of his eye and slowed for a second. He didn’t know if Painton was hurt or just stunned, but the hotel manager wasn’t scrambling back to his feet like he should have been. Juniper stumbled to a stop and swung around.
His heart was pounding so hard from fear it seemed like it was about to burst from his chest. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to keep running. Unguessable tons of snow were about to come crashing down on the shed at any second.
But Painton was having trouble pushing himself even to hands and knees as he shook his head groggily.
Biting back a curse at his own foolishness, Juniper sprang to Painton’s side, reached down to grasp his arm, and hauled him upright.
“Let’s go!” Juniper yelled over the roar that was like the world ending.
And that was what it seemed to do as the two men staggered and ran toward the hotel. The snowshed’s roof exploded inward, and a huge wave of white swallowed everything.
* * *
It was midafternoon when the train reached Sacramento. Because of geography, the route from San Francisco went down the coast, then back north again on the other side of the bay for a considerable distance before turning west toward California’s capital city. Sacramento was the last major stop before the tracks began the climb into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, although there was a small depot at Folsom, west of Donner Pass.
Smoke, Denny, and Louis had eaten their midday meal in the dining car, then returned to their compartment. Louis complained of being very tired. Weariness was one of the symptoms of the heart ailment that had plagued him ever since he was born. Smoke had advised his son to rest, while he and Denny walked up the train to the club car.
They got cups of coffee and sat down in one of the booths. Smoke sipped the strong black brew and said, “I worry about your brother.”
“So do I,” Denny said, “but it would be better if you don’t let him know you’re worrying. Louis is determined to live as much of a normal life as possible.”
“I don’t blame him for that. Determination’s a good quality to have.” Smoke chuckled. “Although your mother has been known to say that in me it’s more like mule-headed stubbornness.”
“I come by it honestly, then.”
That brought an outright laugh from Smoke. “You said that, not me.”
Denny grew more serious as she went on, “Louis doesn’t want to be coddled.”
“I don’t do that, do I? I always figured it was best to just let him do whatever he feels like he’s up to. He ought to know what he can and can’t do better than anybody else.”
“Yes, but sometimes he can be mule headed, too.” Denny shook her head. “I’d rather break a horse or pull a cow out of a mud hole or even swap lead with rustlers than try to deal with somebody’s feelings.”
“You mean like the feelings you and Brice Rogers have for each other?” Smoke said, cocking an eyebrow quizzically.
Denny’s face instantly flushed a little. “What are you talking about? Brice Rogers is a pain in the rear end, and I’m sure he feels the same way about me. It can’t get much simpler than that.”
“Maybe so,” Smoke said, thinking about how Denny and the young deputy U.S. Marshal had worked together to break up the gang of outlaws responsible for him being wounded and laid up earlier in the year.
“Seemed like the two of you got along all right when you needed to.”
“Yeah. To keep from getting killed. But it doesn’t go any further than that.”
“Oh,” Smoke said, nodding. He wasn’t convinced by what his daughter was saying, though. Not for a second.
Denny was saved from having to explain herself even more by a new arrival. A small boy who was walking through the club car stopped beside the table in their booth and stared at Smoke. He was about eight years old, slender, with brown hair and a few freckles. He wore a suit and a shirt with a stiff collar, but from the way he moved his head around uncomfortably and pulled at the collar, he didn’t care for the garb.
“Howdy, son,” Smoke said to the youngster. “Do I know you?”
Instead of answering directly, the boy said, “You look like a cowboy. Are you a cowboy?”
“I am. I have a ranch and I work with cows all the time.”
“My pa was a cowboy. But he’s dead now.”
“I’m mighty sorry to hear that. What’s your name, son?”
“Bradley,” the boy said. “But I’d rather folks call me Brad.”
A woman came along behind the boy and said, “Bradley, stop bothering those people.” She smiled at Smoke and Denny. “I’m sorry, my son doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with coming up to complete strangers and annoying them.”
Denny said, “He wasn’t annoying us. I think he’s adorable.”
Smoke got to his feet, pinched the brim of his hat, and said, “We were just having a talk about cowboys, ma’am. No harm done at all. You’ve got a nice polite boy there.”
The woman smiled. “Well . . . I’d like to think he is, most of the time.”
She was young, probably in her midtwenties, and quite pretty, with light brown hair and a nicely shaped body in her dark gray traveling dress. She went on, “My name is Melanie Buckner.”
“I already told ’em my name,” the boy said.
“I’m Smoke Jensen,” Smoke introduced himself, “and this is my daughter, Denise. We call her Denny. At least I do. Her mother still calls her Denise most of the time.”
Brad said, “Would you rather be called Denny?”
She smiled at him. “Most of the time.”
“But Denny’s a boy’s name.”
“Well, I like to ride horses and rope cows and shoot guns, so a boy’s name suits me just fine.”
Brad’s eyes got wide. “But you’re a girl.”
“I know. And it really annoys some of the hands on my pa’s ranch that I’m better at those things than they are.”
Melanie Buckner put her hands on her son’s shoulders and said, “I think we’d better go now, Bradley. It was very nice meeting you folks, and again, I’m sorry if Bradley made a pest of himself.”
“Don’t think a thing in the world of it, ma’am,” Smoke assured her.
He sat down as the woman and the little boy went on their way. “Friendly little shaver,” he commented.
“I wonder what happened to his father,” Denny said.
“I didn’t reckon it would be polite to ask.”
“No, probably not.”
A couple of minutes later, the conductor came through the club car and announced, “We’ll be rolling into Sacramento very shortly, and we’ll be stopped here while I check on the weather and track conditions up ahead.”
Smoke looked out the window and saw that the snow was coming down at a faster rate now. He had been over the Donner Pass route several times and knew that the snowsheds and the barrier walls could handle quite a bit of snow.
But avalanches were always possible, and as the train bumped and jolted a little as it slowed for its stop at the Sacramento depot, he knew that he didn’t have a good feeling about this journey.