Chapter 14

Taking the train from Rusty Nail to Rock Springs, Bowen Flannery, Bill Cruzan and Billy Todd Carver made it a point not to sit close together. When they arrived at Rock Springs, they left the train separately and walked away in three different directions. Flannery stopped at the station ticket counter long enough to read the train schedule. Then he walked on.

Ten minutes later the three met behind the rail express station and looked out upon a large rail yard filled with crates, stock pens and empty freight cars. At the far end of the yard stood a large building where insulated cars stood with their doors open, their cargos of fresh produce being unloaded onto four-wheel express wagons pulled by mules.

‘‘I can’t tell you how humiliating this is, stealing ice,’’ said Flannery, bitterly, ‘‘after making a career of stealing cash and gold.’’

‘‘Ice is almost the same as gold these days,’’ Billy Todd said. ‘‘Leastwise, the railroads all treat it that way.’’

‘‘Ice or gold, it makes no never-mind. If this is what it takes to get us to our big job, let’s bite down and get it done,’’ said Cruz, looking all around for a workman’s handcar not in use along the rails. ‘‘Dang, this sure is a busy place. How does anybody find their way to jake and back?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Flannery, ‘‘but I’m counting on all this ‘busy-ness’ to get us out of here— riding in plain sight with a load of ice.’’

Spotting a handcar first, Billy Todd nudged Cruz and gestured toward a four-man work crew who had just stepped down from one and walked away, their picks and shovels over their broad, sweat-stained shoulders.

‘‘Good show, Billy Todd,’’ said Flannery, seeing the handcar, then looking back toward the insulated produce cars. Beside the produce cars stood a thick-looking stone building with no windows and only one large door. Above the door a sign read: WARNING—ICEHOUSE—KEEP DOOR LOCKED.

‘‘All right, let’s get started,’’ Flannery said, putting a plan together on the spot. ‘‘Cruz, do you still have that rail detective badge?’’

‘‘Sure I do.’’ Cruz grinned. ‘‘I wouldn’t take nothing for it.’’

‘‘Give it to me. We’re going to put it to use,’’ said Flannery. As he held out his hand for the badge, he looked from the icehouse to the workmen’s handcar, searching out a track switch that would connect the two.

‘‘What’s the plan?’’ Cruz asked, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, seeing Flannery already had something worked out.

Badge in hand, Flannery said, ‘‘Short and simple. You two grab that handcar and meet me at the icehouse. I have some lock picks. I’ll get us inside.’’ With no more to say on the matter, he turned and walked away toward the icehouse.

‘‘Short and simple suits me,’’ Cruz said. He and Billy Todd shrugged at one another and walked away in the opposite direction toward the handcar. . . .

Moments later, at the produce dock, the foreman of the freight handlers looked down the track from the insulated car door and watched the handcar roll along the track beside him. ‘‘What’s this . . . ?’’ He let his words trail, seeing a man in the dark suit standing at the front of the car, a rifle cradled in his arm, a shiny detective’s badge on his lapel. ‘‘There’s getting to be more detectives than there are freight hands these days,’’ he growled under his breath. Seeing the man with the badge look up and stare him squarely in the face, the foreman gave a toss of his head and turned back to observing his crew. ‘‘Keep moving! There’s nothing that concerns us out there.’’

Billy Todd and Cruz stood pumping the car handle up and down, keeping the handcar rolling at a quick yet safe pace through the busy rail yard. Without turning to face the other two, Flannery asked over his shoulder as they rolled on, ‘‘Billy Todd, did you relock that door the way I told you to?’’

‘‘I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,’’ Billy Todd said, as if offended Flannery would even ask. Gazing at Cruz across the up-and-down pumping handle, he gave a wink. On both sides of the handcar sat large blocks of ice, wrapped in insulated covers. Even under the thick, quilted covers the ice dripped steadily.

As the handcar rolled on, out of the yard and along the rails out of Rock Springs, Flannery took a pocket watch from his vest and looked at it, calculating how long it would take them to get to Rusty Nail and how many times they would have to get off the tracks onto a siding to allow other trains to pass.

‘‘All right, it looks like we’ll be in Rusty Nail before nightfall with any luck,’’ he said, taking off his suit coat and rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘‘We’ll take turns on the handle and keep up a fast pace.’’

‘‘We had better travel fast,’’ said Cruz, eyeing the large blocks of ice beneath the covers, ‘‘else, instead of ice, all we’ll bring back is a bucket of cold water.’’

They rolled on.

Ten miles out of Rock Springs as the handcar sped down a long, steep decline, on a ledge above the rails, Neil Deavers gazed down and adjusted his binoculars until he could recognize Flannery’s face among the three. Taken aback for a moment, he pulled the binoculars away from his face, bat-ted his eyes and said, ‘‘I’ll be damned.’’ Then he raised the binoculars again and said to Davis Dinsmore, who sat atop his horse beside him, ‘‘All this time we’ve been looking everywhere for Wallers, there goes Bowen Flannery, right under our noses!’’

‘‘Let me see!’’ said Dinsmore. Reaching for the binoculars he added, ‘‘Let’s go get him! You know those others are Hole-in-the-wallers too!’’

‘‘Take it easy!’’ said Deavers, giving up the binoculars and watching Dinsmore stare down eagerly, gritting his teeth as he did so. ‘‘We’ve got Flannery. But he’s small coins. Play our cards right, keep him at arm’s length and he’ll lead us right to Memphis Beck and the rest of the gang.’’

‘‘Play our cards how?’’ Dinsmore asked, lowering the binoculars and handing them back to Deavers. ‘‘Every time we try keeping one of these slippery rats at arm’s length, they slip through our fingers!’’

‘‘You do want Beck, don’t you?’’ Deavers asked in a condescending tone. ‘‘After him kicking your nuts up into your belly?’’

‘‘You know damn well I want him,’’ Dinsmore said, his face reddening a little in shame. ‘‘I haven’t forgotten what he did to me. You don’t have to remind me.’’ He raised a wrist that still had one of the handcuffs around it that Beck had put there. ‘‘Every time I look at this I remember what he did to me.’’

‘‘Then you need to settle down,’’ said Deavers. ‘‘We’ll keep back and stay on Flannery’s trail. Like all these men, every trail leads to Memphis Beck.’’ He pulled his horse back and turned it toward the path leading away from the ledge. Looking back he asked, ‘‘Are you coming?’’

‘‘Oh, yes,’’ said Dinsmore, raising the single handcuff and adjusting in on his wrist, ‘‘you can bet I’m coming. I can taste Beck’s blood so bad I can hardly stand it.’’

On the handcar, Flannery said as they sped along downhill, ‘‘Don’t look up, but I just caught a flash of something high up there on the hillside.’’

Cruz almost looked up, but then he stopped himself and asked with a concerned expression, ‘‘A rifle, do you suppose?’’

‘‘Awfully bright for gunmetal,’’ Flannery said, his face slightly lowered, but his eyes tilted upward, searching the hillside from under his brow, scanning the small, rocky ledge protruding out of it. ‘‘Leastwise if it was a rifle, whoever was holding it sure missed their chance,’’ he added as the handcar rolled around into a long curve and out of sight from the hillside. ‘‘We’re safe for now.’’

The three let out a tense breath. ‘‘Dang, I’d hate to get killed stealing a handcar load of ice,’’ Billy Todd said.

‘‘I’d hate to get killed stealing anything,’’ Cruzan added.

‘‘I’d hate to get killed playing checkers, far as that goes,’’ Flannery said. He studied the long, tall hillsides above them as the handcar sped on. ‘‘Maybe it was nothing back there. But we’re going to treat it like somebody’s tailing us, just in case.’’

‘‘I always move like there’s somebody tailing me,’’ said Billy Todd.

‘‘So you do, Billy Todd, and so do we all,’’ said Flannery, still combing the hillside. ‘‘I say it only as a reminder. . . .’’

In the darkest corner of the barn, Beck and the rest of the men had taken turns throughout the day digging a six-foot-deep hole and layering the bottom of it with clean straw. Suelo Soto had not helped with the digging. Instead he and Clarimonde had sorted through the supplies they’d brought in from the buggy the night before.

Opening the small wooden crates stuffed with packing straw, the two removed glass bottles of nitric acid, sulfuric acid and thick, pure glycerin, which Soto examined closely before closing them tightly. ‘‘Pure and perfect,’’ he said with a smile, holding his thumb and finger out for Clarimonde to see as he rubbed them together. Clarimonde stared, expressionless, but at the same time she was paying close attention.

From another stuffed packing crate Soto lifted a bag of baking soda, a thermometer, a large glass separating funnel, a glass flask and glass measuring beakers. ‘‘When the ice arrives we will need water that has been boiled free of salts and minerals,’’ he said to Clarimonde. Raising a finger for emphasis, he added, ‘‘It must be pure, cooled and sealed, for our purposes.’’

She said with slight reluctance, ‘‘Do you want me to boil it?’’

Soto chuckled. ‘‘Of course I want you to boil it. Are you afraid of boiling water?’’

‘‘No, I just meant, what if I don’t get it boiled pure, the way you said it has to be?’’

‘‘Let me worry about that,’’ Soto said. ‘‘Do as I tell you, and stop being so afraid.’’

‘‘I will,’’ Clarimonde said, noting all the while that he seemed to enjoy knowing that she was frightened of this powerful and dangerous knowledge of his. ‘‘Should I go do it now?’’

Soto looked at her in disgust. ‘‘Yes, do it now! Do it and keep your mouth shut to everyone. No one needs to know how to do this but me.’’

‘‘I—I wouldn’t know what to tell anybody if I tried to,’’ Clarimonde said, standing and turning toward the barn door.

‘‘Yes,’’ Soto said to himself as she left, ‘‘stupidity is the thing I admire most about a whore.’’

On her way to the house in the moonlight, Clarimonde heard a team of horses pulling a buckboard wagon along the path toward the front yard. From the front porch she heard one of the men call out to the others inside, ‘‘Flannery’s back with the ice! Everybody get out here. Let’s lend them a hand.’’

‘‘It’s about time,’’ another voice called out. ‘‘We expected you three hours ago."

Clarimonde hurried forward and stopped in time to see Flannery and the other two men jump down from the wagon. Behind the wagon stood their horses, which they had picked up in Rusty Nail on their return trip through town. ‘‘We thought we were being followed,’’ said Flannery, ‘‘so we made some moves for caution’s sake.’’

‘‘How did it go?’’ a voice asked.

‘‘Smooth as virgin’s lace.’’ Flannery grinned in the moonlit night.

‘‘Smooth, ha,’’ said Cruzan, he and Carver jumping down from the wagon. ‘‘We’ve traveled by horseback, train, handcar and buckboard! I’m dizzy from it.’’

‘‘You were dizzy to start,’’ Flannery called out, walking back, untying his horse.

‘‘But did you get the ice?’’ Beck called out from the porch, stepping down, already noting the large blocks, the quilted insulated covers, as he stepped forward.

‘‘We most certainly did,’’ said Flannery, leading his horse forward, reaching over into the buckboard and throwing back the wet covers. ‘‘It’s nearly half the size we started out with, but there it is.’’ He slapped a hand on a dripping ice block, causing water to spray in every direction.

Seeing Clarimonde standing nearby looking on, Beck asked her, ‘‘Well, ma’am, will this be enough to do the job?’’ Having decided that she knew nothing about the process, he watched her expression to see how she would handle the answer.

Coolly, she managed to look him squarely in the eyes and say, ‘‘If it’s not, I suppose we’ll have to get some more, won’t we?’’

Beck liked the way she handled it. He smiled. ‘‘Yes, ma’am, I suppose we will, now that we know Flannery has such a knack for getting it.’’

Soto had heard the buckboard rolling toward the yard and walked over from the barn. Stepping in beside Clarimonde, he looked at her, then at Beck, then at the large blocks of ice.

‘‘Is that going to be enough?’’ Beck asked, gesturing a hand toward the buckboard.

Before answering Beck, Soto looked at Clarimonde and said, ‘‘Get inside and get the water boiling.’’ Then looking back at Beck, he said without answering him, ‘‘Get it to the barn and get it into the ground. As soon as I finish setting things up and the water cools, we’ll start making the first batch.’’

‘‘Tonight?’’ Beck asked, considering the darkness inside the barn. ‘‘By lamplight?’’

‘‘Yes, by lamplight,’’ Soto said smugly. ‘‘I could do this with my eyes closed if I wanted to.’’ He stared after Clarimonde as she hurried away up onto the porch and into the house. Then he turned without another word to Beck and walked away.

Stepping in beside Beck, Kirkpatrick said quietly, ‘‘He thinks a lot of himself, doesn’t he?’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ Beck replied, watching Soto walk toward the barn. ‘‘Much more than I’m starting to.’’

‘‘What about this woman?’’ Kirkpatrick asked. ‘‘Is he holding her against her will?’’

‘‘I believe he is,’’ said Beck. ‘‘But she’ll never say so. He’s got her too scared. She doesn’t know whom to trust.’’

‘‘What are we going to do about her then?’’ asked the Tall Texan. ‘‘We can’t risk her running away while we’re in the midst of this big job.’’

‘‘She’s not going to run away,’’ Beck said. ‘‘She knows it’s not in her best interest. I’ve felt her out. This woman knows how to take care of herself.’’

‘‘I hope you know what you’re talking about, Memphis,’’ said Kirkpatrick.

"So do I, T," said Beck, watching Clarimonde fade from the moonlight into the purple darkness. A few seconds after the barn door closed, he raised a hand, rubbed the back of his neck and looked all around the hill-encircled land.

‘‘What is it, Memphis?’’ the Tall Texan asked. ‘‘You look like something’s got you spooked.’’

‘‘I don’t know what it is,’’ Beck said. ‘‘All evening I’ve had a feeling we’re being watched from somewhere far off. Didn’t feel it before tonight. Then all of sudden there it was.’’

‘‘We’ve got ourselves well guarded here,’’ said Kirkpatrick. ‘‘There’s nobody going to slip in here on us without our knowing it.’’

Beck shook off the feeling. ‘‘You’re right. I must be more strung tight about this big job than I thought.’’ They turned toward the house, yet his eyes still searched the dark purple horizon.