CHAPTER 10
Smoke’s misgivings grew stronger as half an hour passed and the train hadn’t started moving again. He and Denny returned to the compartment to find Louis awake after a nap that had left him looking refreshed and stronger.
“You have a copy of the railroad schedule, don’t you, son?” Smoke asked.
“I do,” Louis responded with a smile. “I’m very organized, as you know.” He reached inside his coat and found the folded schedule, which he held out to Smoke.
“We met the cutest little boy in the club car,” Denny said. “When Pa just called you ‘son,’ it reminded me of him.”
“I remind you of a little boy?” Louis frowned. “I wonder if I should be insulted.”
“Not at all, silly. I didn’t say you reminded me of him. It’s just that Pa called him ‘son,’ too.... Never mind. The boy was very interested in cowboys. He said his father had been one . . . but was dead now.”
“That’s terrible. How old was he?”
“Seven or eight, I’d say.”
“So his mother couldn’t have been very old.”
“A few years older than us, I suppose.” Denny said. “It depends on how old she was when she had him. Why are you curious about that?”
“I was just thinking . . . I mean, if there’s a young, pretty widow on the train . . . I assume that she was pretty?”
Denny pointed a finger at him and told him disapprovingly, “You’re the one who’s terrible.”
“Twenty minutes,” Smoke said as he slapped the schedule against the palm of his other hand.
Both his children looked at him and said, “What?”
“Twenty minutes,” Smoke repeated. “That’s how long the stop here in Sacramento was supposed to be. And since we were late leaving San Francisco, I reckon normally the engineer would try to move faster at every stop and shave a few minutes off of that time, to get us back closer to being on schedule. This delay will throw us behind even more.”
Before Louis or Denny could comment on that, a knock sounded at the door of the compartment. Smoke swung around and opened it to find the conductor standing there.
The man touched a finger to the brim of his cap and looked uncomfortable as he said, “Sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Jensen, but there’s a problem.”
“Donner Pass is blocked, isn’t it?” Smoke asked.
The conductor looked surprised. “How’d you know that?”
“Because I can tell how hard it’s snowing here, and if it’s coming down like this in Sacramento, it’s likely to be a lot worse up in the mountains.”
“The storm started last night,” the conductor said, nodding, “and it’s just gotten worse as the day’s gone on. A telegram came through a little while ago saying that there’d been an avalanche. Some of the snowsheds were destroyed, and the tracks are completely blocked.”
“Oh, no!” Denny said. “Was anybody hurt?”
“I don’t think so, Miss Jensen. The telegrapher and another fella who works up there at the Summit Hotel were almost caught in it, but they made it to safety by the skin of their teeth.”
“The hotel’s all right?” Smoke asked.
“As far as I know. The snowsheds collapsed just east of there. They’re buried for at least a quarter of a mile. That’s how wide the avalanche was.”
“Then the train could go that far,” Smoke pointed out.
“Yeah, but what would be the point?” The conductor spread his hands. “The bosses can’t even start thinking about getting a work train and a repair crew up there until the storm stops, and who knows how long that will be? Sometimes those blizzards settle in and don’t budge for days. Once they can start clearing the track, it’ll take a week or more to get it in good enough shape to use again.” The blue-uniformed man shook his head. “The line has decided that this train’s not going any farther. It’s going to pull onto a siding and sit right there in Sacramento for the time being.”
“But it’s nearly Christmas!” Denny exclaimed. “People need to get home to their families.”
“Believe you me, I know, Miss Jensen. I’ve been hearing an earful about it since I started passing along the news. But blizzards and avalanches don’t stop for holidays.”
Smoke’s face was grim as he said, “What about some other way to get through the mountains?”
“Not by train. I hate to say it, but you folks are stuck here. The railroad is offering free passage back to San Francisco. For those who’d rather wait and see just how bad the situation is, they’re willing to put folks up in hotels for a few days—”
Smoke stopped him with a gesture. “I’m not worried about that. My children and I can get rooms here in town. I just don’t like the idea of being away from home for Christmas. My wife will be expecting us.”
“You can get a wire through to her and let her know what’s going on,” the conductor suggested. “The wires are still up, or at least they were a little while ago. Might be a good idea to go ahead and do it, though. With a storm like this, you can’t ever tell what else might happen.”
Smoke nodded and said, “All right. Thank you.” He managed a smile. “I know this isn’t your fault.”
“You know what they say—everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it!”
The conductor moved on to deliver the bad news to more of the passengers. Smoke turned to his children. Louis said, “Mother’s going to be disappointed. This was going to be the first Christmas that Denny and I were home to stay.”
“I know. Your uncles and your cousins were going to be there, too.”
“Spending Christmas in a Sacramento hotel room,” Denny said. “That doesn’t sound very festive at all. But I suppose we’ll have to make the best of things.”
“I suppose,” Smoke said, but a frown creased his forehead. The wheels of his brain had already started to turn.
The conductor had said that unless they wanted to return to San Francisco, they were stuck here in Sacramento for the foreseeable future. But that might not be the case. Accepting that meant giving up, as far as Smoke was concerned.
And Smoke Jensen had never cottoned much to giving up.
There had to be some other way....
* * *
Alma Lewiston stood outside the door of the compartment and took a deep breath as she gathered her courage. A big part of her would rather have been sitting in the club car, talking and flirting with Frank Colbert.
But Fate had dropped Smoke Jensen practically into her lap. She had barely been able to believe it when the tall, broad-shouldered man in the cowboy hat had stood up and introduced himself to that young mother, giving the name of the very man she was looking for! She couldn’t allow this opportunity to help Gordon slip away from her.
Anyway, Frank had turned surly and mean once he found out the train wasn’t going on through the mountains after all. Alma didn’t care; she didn’t have any business on the other side of the Sierra Nevadas.
Judging by Frank’s reaction, though, he had something waiting for him over there, and it was important.
Not as important as saving her husband, Alma thought. She took a deep breath, then lifted her hand to knock on the compartment door.
It opened before she could do so. The man she wanted to talk to stood there with a small carpetbag in his left hand.
He looked like he had been about to step out of the compartment, but he stopped short when he saw her. He cocked an eyebrow as Alma slowly lowered her hand.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked.
“You’re Mr. Jensen, isn’t that correct?”
“It is. I’m Smoke Jensen, if that’s who you’re looking for.”
“My name is Alma Lewiston. Mrs. Gordon Lewiston.”
Clearly, the name didn’t seem to mean anything to him. Jensen raised his right hand to his hat brim and ticked a finger against it politely.
“My pleasure, Mrs. Lewiston. How can I help you?”
“You know my husband,” Alma said.
Jensen frowned slightly and shook his head. “Gordon Lewiston, you said? I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize the name.”
“You met him yesterday in San Francisco.”
“Not that I recall.” His frown deepened. “Wait a minute. Are you talking about—”
“You broke his arm,” Alma said.
Jensen’s air of polite affability vanished. His face hardened as he said, “That was his choice, not mine. Fact of the matter is, I did my best not to hurt him, until he came at me with a knife. I figured it was best to take it away from him as quickly and efficiently as I could.”
“And now he’s locked up. He’s going to be sent away to prison, and . . . and he’ll die there.”
“Because he’s addicted to opium,” Jensen said flatly.
“You know that about him, and yet you’d condemn him to death for nothing more than a botched robbery!”
A younger man appeared at Jensen’s shoulder and asked, “Is something wrong, Father?”
“No, just having a talk with this lady here.” Jensen addressed Alma again. “Did you follow me onto this train?”
“Yes,” she answered bluntly. “I had to talk to you.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. I’ve already given my statement to the police. It’s out of my hands.”
“No, it’s not,” Alma insisted. “If you sent a telegram to the authorities in San Francisco right now and told them that you want to drop all the charges against Gordon, they would probably let him go.”
“Maybe, maybe not. He’s been accused of a couple of crimes, and the law can go ahead with the case against him whether I press charges or not.”
“But the case is based entirely on your statement.” Alma couldn’t keep a note of desperation out of her voice. “If you took that back . . . if you told them you were wrong about what happened . . .”
“That would be lying,” Jensen said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lewiston. I’m not going to do that.”
“You don’t understand. Gordon’s not really a criminal. He’s not even a bad man. He only did it because of the opium, and he wouldn’t be using the damn stuff if he hadn’t gotten himself shot in Cuba!”
“He was in the war?” Jensen asked.
“That’s right. He wasn’t one of Teddy Roosevelt’s fancy Rough Riders. He was just a soldier who signed up because he wanted to do the right thing.”
Jensen looked at her for a long moment, then said, “I won’t take back the statement I gave to the police, but I’ll tell you what I will do. I know a very good lawyer in San Francisco. I’ll send him a wire and ask him to look into your husband’s case and represent him if he thinks it would do any good. I’ll pay his fee, too.”
Alma caught her breath and said, “Do you think that will do any good?”
“It can’t hurt anything,” Jensen said. “Maybe instead of putting him in prison, they could send him somewhere else. Some kind of hospital, maybe.”
“Do such things even exist?”
“I don’t know,” Jensen admitted honestly. “But it’s worth a try, don’t you think?”
Alma swallowed hard. She wanted to hate this man standing in front of her, but somehow she couldn’t. Her instincts told her that Smoke Jensen was a good man, that he genuinely cared about Gordon’s situation and wanted to help.
Whether that was actually possible or not remained to be seen.
“Thank you, Mr. Jensen,” she said.
“I’ve got to send some wires anyway. If you want to come along with me to the telegraph office, I’ll get in touch with that lawyer I told you about.” He turned and handed the carpetbag to his son. “You and Denny go on to the hotel and get rooms for us, all right? I’ll see you there.”
A young, very pretty blond woman came up behind Jensen, too. “Are you sure about this, Pa?” she asked. “I mean, that man did try to rob and kill you.”
“When I first met Monte Carson and Pearlie, they were working for men who wanted me dead,” Jensen said. “They got second chances and turned out to be two of the best friends I ever had. Not saying it’s the same thing here, but this fella Lewiston struck me as a pretty poor excuse for a badman.” He glanced at Alma. “No offense, ma’am.”
“None taken,” she assured him. “You’re right. Gordon’s a pretty poor excuse for just about everything. But I love him.”
“Sometimes that’s all a fella needs to justify helping him—the love of a good woman.”