A STAGECOACH WAS standing empty and with the horses slumped restfully. Despite the long line of grade which swept out of the east, there was a lack of ties and steel rails, and the stage had brought notables to inspect the work. Men sweated and strained, worrying a deeply embedded boulder squarely in the path of progress. One man alternately puffed and chomped on a frayed cigar, exhaling smoke and short, concise orders at the same time. Built after the manner of a butter tub, shoulders bulging a dark red jacket, he swung about, stared incredulously, then charged toward Montana, bellowing a greeting.
“Bill Abbott, as “I’m a sinner! What in ten thousand tribulations brings you to this Sodom of sin and sorrow?”
Montana was off his horse, encased in a massive bear hug, returning the steel-trap grip of big fingers. A rare smile creased his lips.
“Mike! The sight of you makes up for a long and weary ride!”
They had soldiered together in the early days of the war, a couple of thousand miles distant from that spot; then, as now, Mike McNamara had been a driver, an officer at once feared and loved by his men. It came as no surprise that he was the general superintendent for the Border and Western Railway, still driving to speed the construction. Momentarily relaxed on a remaining spot of grass where the sun shone warm, he heard Montana’s tale, listening in silence but puffing ever more explosively at the cigar. Montana recognized the signs.
“Sure and this is my lucky day, finding you—and the Good Lord knows I can use some luck! A few weeks ago, in a weak moment, I allowed myself to be talked into taking this job, and it’s turning out to be too much for the likes of me! I need you to help me, Bill—to get to the bottom of a broth of deviltry that rolls thick as fog in the valley and is just as hard to pin down or grasp!
“On the surface there’s no trouble. The railroad’s building, years ahead of what anyone had expected or even hoped—and you know what it will do for so wide and wild a land! Only I have a feeling in my bones, a sense of trouble—and when it crawls in the belly and twists in the mind, it pays to heed it! But I’ve no time to sniff it out, and in my position I’d be poorly fixed to do so. Now you, on the other hand—”
“Whoa up now, man,” Montana protested. That McNamara must have solid reasons for his suspicions he did not doubt, but that was beside the point. “I know nothing of railroading. Besides, I’m here to visit a friend—another friend, who owns a ranch and is as suspicious of the railroad as a chicken of a coyote. There could be what a lawyer would call a conflict of interest.”
“There would be no conflict,” McNamara assured him. “My job is to build a railroad, and to deal fairly and honestly with everyone. If this rancher has the wind up, then you’ll help me as well as him by finding what’s in the wind! All that I want is for you to go to Duarf and sniff around. I’ll bet the shirt off my back that there’s a devil’s brew being mixed, to hurt the ranchers and the railroad alike—only I can’t get at what it is! But I mislike having my nose held and such a brew forced down my gullet! All that I ask is that you find the trouble and deal with it. You’ll have a free hand and top wages, and what is wrong with that?”
Montana came to an elbow, a spark in his eyes betraying his interest. He had swung, the day before, to have a look at Duarf, and at first glimpse it had been disappointing. The town certainly was busy, and outwardly as brawling and rich as any of the fabulous gold camps of the Territory. Yet somewhere there had been an air of falseness, the intangible about which Mike McNamara had complained. Within an hour he’d had enough, kept from riding out only by a sudden downpour which had turned the dusty streets to lakes and rivers.
The storm had passed as quickly as it had come, and then it had happened—so small an episode that no one else had noticed; nor had it registered, he was sure, in any heart or mind other than his own. But it had been a soul-stirring moment. He was, Montana reflected, all too susceptible to the rustle of a petticoat, the witchery in a woman’s eyes.
The lady had been riding in an open carriage with another man; it was a smart new turnout rarely to be encountered west of the big river, drawn by a team of high-stepping, matched bays. Though a lover of good horseflesh, Montana had given scant attention to the team. They had been hemmed in by a stalled freight wagon, hub-deep in mud, while a stagecoach came splashing and crowding past on the narrow, crooked street. The strains of a discordant organ wafted through the open doors of a saloon and dance hall.
The girl had looked his way, and their eyes had met. The vision, imprinted on his mind, was clearer than a tintype. Brown hair piled beneath a perky bonnet, framing a small and wistful face. For all the clearness in his mind, Montana could remember no other details except for her eyes.
Dark beneath long lashes, they had seemed troubled yet saucy. For twenty-four hours now they had haunted him, full of sadness and appeal, as though she turned despairingly to him for help.
Before he had had any chance to give it, the buggy had crowded past the stage and gone on, taking her with it.
He’d stood, breathing as if from a hard run; then, as though awakening from a trance, he’d shoved his way through the congestion of the street, trying to glimpse the buggy. But it had disappeared.
Discreet inquiries had told him nothing. No one had seen such a woman or her companion. It could be that she had been just passing through, brightening the muddy, rutted streets for one fleeting moment, then gone forever.
He might be clutching at straws—but McNamara’s words changed everything. He could look things over as well from the town as from the ranch, and this was a legitimate reason for making it his headquarters. He had seen her there, and there was still a possibility that he might find her again.
“You’ve talked me into it,” he informed McNamara. “Now, if you’ll give me the low-down as to what this railroad is all about—”
Evening shadowed the land as he headed toward the town a second time. The sun had set, and twilight softened the harsh newness of construction. A creek moved sluggishly, even sullenly, spanned by a high trestle, lacking only the rails to make it a railroad bridge. It blurred to vagueness at the far shore.
The hurry and confusion of the day seemed to have been left behind. This was a peaceful hour, a time for contemplation, for searching the soul. Tomorrow he’d have to ride out to the Half Moon Slash, to have a talk with Jeb Bowen—
A scream rent the night, coming with the suddenness of a loon crying on a wild lake, holding the same eerie quality. Montana’s horse had started across the trestle, and the sound seemed to come from under his feet—a woman’s high cry.
Across the turbulent span of the years, including those of the war, Montana had become something of an expert regarding sounds, whether they emanated from the muzzle of a gun or were torn from a gasping throat. But never had he heard a sound at once so poignant, so chilling and heart-rending as now welled from beneath the trestle.
It was an automatic reaction to steady and reassure his dancing cayuse, and in the doing his own nerves were controlled. There was half a score of feet beneath the trestle, with the water flowing below. Down from the saddle, he hesitated as the last of the sound echoed away. Then he lowered himself over the side, hanging from the end of a tie, then dropping.
He struck yielding mud with bent knees, rocking on the balls of his feet, his eyes narrowed against the darkness. Enough light remained for him to glimpse the object which must have caused the outcry. The sight raised his own hair like the hackles of a wolf.
It was a man, hanging, swinging before his eyes, turning slowly in the wind. Montana recoiled as the rope twisted and a face glared into his own.
The rope was fastened to a tie above, lifting thinly, tautly, from the twisted neck of the victim. The lynched man’s hands had been tied behind his back, so that he could not climb or ease the pressure of the noose. He had been suspended there deliberately to kick away his life, not granted even the doubtful boon of a broken neck.
Steady nerves had been toughened to a likeness of steel in other unchancy situations across the years, and he needed them now, as he stared at the twisted face. The yellow skin, which seemed to grimace, appeared to be that of a Chinaman.
The Border and Western Railroad was building west. Racing to link up with it, heading east, came the Prairie and Pacific. Those were facts which Montana had learned that afternoon, though he was far from understanding them, and they did not make sense.
The Prairie and Pacific employed Chinese coolies as laborers.
He needed only a single look to be certain that the scream must have been induced by the sight of the dead man. Turning, Montana saw the girl.
She poised as if for flight, her scarlet mouth still open from the cry which had dribbled to a soundless bubble. One hand was raised, as if to fend away the horror which danced before her eyes. They were wide with terror, filled even more poignantly than the day before with conflicting emotions.
He judged her age to be twenty, and as his eyes had confirmed the day before, she would be an exotic creature anywhere, and-doubly so at such a time and place. Montana clutched at his wavering reason, disbelieving his eyes. For she too appeared to be Chinese.
Her skin had a slight tint like fine parchment, and her hair was as dark as the water which swirled past the deep-driven piles. Today she wore an elaborate robe, richly embroidered, on which the gaping jaws of a golden dragon sniffed at her ankles.