It was easier than I ever would have expected to follow Stark. At first, he was heading south through the town of Pullman, past the Arcade, and the stables. He dallied. Perhaps he wanted to resist the colonel’s order, or perhaps it was just to be ornery. The night was dark, without a moon. There was a slight breeze that caused the trees and bushes to sigh a little, rustling with their heavy load of summer greenery.
At the stables he went in to get a lantern to take with him. I could see him talking to a man inside, smoking a cigar with him. Eventually he came out, still smoking. I could follow the scent, even if I couldn’t see him. When we got south of the town, he started to walk along the tracks. If I were seen, it would have been cause for remark, a woman walking alone there. Occasionally the yards of houses backed on to the tracks. They were small workers’ houses, with fences to partition off the sound and dirt of the trains. Usually though, banks of gravel rose on both sides of the tracks. Four or five multiple lines ran parallel to each other, and every now and then there was a switch box.
There was no one to see me, and it turned out that, on the two occasions when there was another person on guard, I was warned by Stark himself. Meeting one of them was reason for him to stop and pass the time of day, maligning the military with curses and foul-mouthed jokes, so loud it was easy for me to slip by and get ahead of them while they were talking. I waited for him further south and followed after he passed again.
He paid no attention to the colonel’s instruction to stay off the tracks. He walked along the outside track—which I assumed must be the extra one, not used by the Diamond Special, which was due to pass on its way to St. Louis. I stayed above the bank of gravel. It was harder walking, as there were unpruned and thorny bushes all along the way. I found it was all too easy to get to the edge and send a spurt of gravel flying down. One time Stark looked back when he heard that, but I expect he thought it was a rabbit or some other small animal.
I assumed that he had gotten to the part of the track he was to patrol when he stopped and used the end of his cigar to light his lantern. Before that, he had found his way by starlight. It was a clear night, even if there was no moon. He used the lantern to do a thorough examination now, as he walked along. I thought to myself that he was afraid of Colonel Turner. Afraid of what he might do if the Diamond Special was wrecked along Stark’s part of the track. He was much more attentive to his task than he ever would have let other men know he would be. I followed him for a mile or more before I was confident that no one else could hear us. I was about to confront him when suddenly his lantern went out. He had shuttered it.
I stopped and heard what had caught his attention. There was the sound of scraping and digging. The track carried occasional echoes. Someone was up ahead. Suddenly the light flashed back on. I hurried as quietly as I could and found myself behind the silhouette of Stark, his gun drawn and pointed at Raoul LeClerc, who was crouched beside the tracks. Here several sets of tracks ran in parallel. Raoul was on the second set in. I realized this must be for the Diamond Special as there was the faint sound of a whistle off to the north of us. The train was coming and Raoul was placing the stick of dynamite under the track. He had a spool of fuse long enough to give him time to get away.
“Get away from there,” Stark growled.
Raoul finished placing the stick and his face was devilish, in the harsh illumination of the lantern, as he edged away from it. I heard the shriek of a whistle in the distance and the irregular hum that comes from an approaching train.
“Hah, dynamite, is it?” Stark sounded pleased. “Well, isn’t that something. The ARU is gonna blow us up. Guess the colonel won’t like that a bit. Move away from it . . . over here . . . that’s it. Guess I’ll be a hero when that blows and I bring you in for it. Just bring that fuse over here a ways, like you was planning.”
“No, you can’t let it blow up,” I said.
Stark pointed his gun at LeClerc, who was still crouched near the ground, but off the tracks now. “Oh, it’s you is it,” Stark said to me. “Guess you was helping him, wasn’t you? Guess that’ll teach the colonel about listening to complaints from ladies from the city, won’t it. Oh, yes. That’ll make me the one with the complaint this time.”
“What are you doing?” I could hear the rumble of the train faint in the distance, but getting stronger. “You have to get the dynamite out of there.” I started to move towards it, but there was a shot from Stark’s gun and the dirt at my feet sprayed up in my face.
“You just stay where you are, missy.” He wanted it to explode.
“The train is coming, you can’t let it blow.”
“Watch me.”
“Raoul, how could you? This won’t do anything except make Stark look good, don’t you see? You’ll destroy everything. You’ll ruin the strike!”
The light from the train was a pinprick in the distance as the crouching man looked warily back and forth between me and the man with the gun. “It’s over. Debs in jail, the army taking over. They won’t even remember us without this.”
“No.” The ground began to shake with the approach of the train and the whistle shrieked much closer now, as the light came towards us.
“That’s right, they’ll remember,” Stark sneered. If they remembered the explosion they would overlook his crimes. “Now, light it.”
Raoul bent to do that, striking a match.
“No.” I took a step forward, and Stark swung around to aim at me, as Raoul scrambled up the gravel bank to get away. Stark swung back to fire towards him and began to follow. Just then a doubled-over figure slid down the side and rushed behind Stark as the light from the train grew larger and larger, blinding me for a minute. It was Joe O’Malley. He stamped out the flame of the fuse and jumped towards the dynamite to get it out from under the track. Raoul had gotten away, disappearing into the darkness.
“Nooo . . . you . . . ” Stark slid back down the embankment to stop Joe, but I had Whitbread’s heavy revolver out and cocked.
I yelled at him, “Stop or I’ll . . . ” but he turned and lunged towards me instead. His face was contorted with rage as he loomed up at me. I’ve never experienced such a wave of hatred coming straight at me. He was screaming like a banshee, looked like he would tear me limb from limb. I fired, but he kept coming, like something inhuman, screaming with rage at me. He hated me. I fired again, and again. When he was only one foot away from me, a round black spot appeared on his forehead, and all the muscles in his face suddenly contorted. He dropped to the ground, writhing for a moment, then was silent.
The screech of the train whistle, and merciless clacking of the wheels pounding towards us, reached me through a fog. Joe O’Malley, with the dynamite in one hand, pulled me up the embankment. Before we could reach the top, the train was rushing past down below, and gravel was spitting out at us. Joe pushed me face down, and covered me to shield me from the flying stone. As the train rumbled by in a powerful rush I kept twitching as I pictured Stark coming at me again, in the dark. Like a nightmare, it was inescapable.
Finally, the train was gone and Joe stood up. “Quick, there’s another train.” He pulled me up by the arm. I rose but suddenly my legs were gone, all sense of them gone, and they seemed to disappear from under me. He pulled and half-carried me over the top and just then there was another rumble of a huge powerful set of cars barreling through the night, only with no whistles or lights, like a ghost of the Diamond Special. Joe pulled me into a crouch and we looked down on it. “But Stark,” I said. Suddenly I realized this ghost train was on the second set of tracks, where he had fallen. “Stark.” I was appalled and started to get up, but Joe pulled me back down.
“No, come, we must get rid of this, we can’t be found with it, don’t you see?” He held up the dynamite with the fuse trailing from it. He slid down to the side of the track to retrieve Stark’s lantern, then scampered back up and said, “Come.”
I looked around but there was no sign of Raoul LeClerc. He had abandoned us without a second thought. I was stunned by the callousness of his actions. Meanwhile, Joe took me by the forearm and hurried me away into the night. Fortunately, he knew this area like the back of his hand. I kept imagining Stark’s enraged face and when I would see it, I would run from it. I might have had a hard time keeping up with Joe O’Malley, but I was so determined to get away from that scene on the tracks—to escape the crazed look on Stark’s face—that I ran and ran, pausing only when forced to by Joe, who was watchful. He did not want us to be seen. At last we were racing across the mud flats, but in the warm, dry weather they were not muddy, only dusty and cracked. We ran quickly and easily, the warm air rushing past us like a curtain disturbed by the wind. We ran past the huge brick shed and down to the brink of Lake Calumet where Joe propped me on a large rock, half leaning, half sitting. I found myself shaking.
Searching around, he picked up a smaller rock and tied the stick of dynamite to it. Then he took a step back and stretched his arm back for the throw. Incongruously, he reminded me of an athletic figure on a Greek vase. He hurled the rock out into the night and we heard it plop and splash as it landed. Then he doubled over to get his breath.
I was still shaking. “Stark,” I said.
“He’s gone. That second train is the one that’s full of men with guns to protect the Diamond. It runs with no lights on the second track, it would have hit him but they wouldn’t notice.”
“Oh, God.” I retched then. When I was done, he wet his handkerchief in the lake, then handed it to me to wipe my face. I was trembling.
“He killed Mooney,” Joe reminded me. “He shot the detective and would have killed Gracie if he could. He would have killed you and me, right there. If the train was wrecked from the blown-up tracks he would have gotten away with it all.”
I gulped air. “And Brian—he killed your brother.”
Joe straightened up and stepped away from me. “No, not that. ’Twas I killed Brian.”