Shouting at the top of his lungs, Pierce extended his arm and jabbed his index finger repeatedly towards the engine.
“Someone get that idiot out of there!”
Clark bounded the short distance to the cab and pulled himself up as Dutch and Lijuan spun around towards the roaring herd whose gentle ambling about became a frenzied turmoil. Cauley was shouting at his two men who were still mounted to keep the animals under control, but it was too late.
A solitary bull stamped its hooves into the ground and suddenly bolted down the gap and the chain reaction had begun just like the bellowing. The nearest animal chased after the first one and a moment later the entire pack of livestock became a living breathing wave sweeping down the gap as the cowpunchers on their mounts were rendered powerless to stop them.
Dutch continued to watch as the herd thundered by, the ground shaking underneath their feet, but Lijuan was distracted by the scene in the cab as the whistle grew silent. Clark had his arms up under Coburn's arms and was wrestling to get him down, but the man was having none of it. In his slurred voice he was demanding why the brakeman was doing this to him when they had a train to run. A second later as Clark moved to drop him to the ground, the drunken engineer pivoted and seized hold of him, and the pair plunged downward.
As they struck the ground, Clark broke Colburn's fall when the engineer landed on him, but they all heard the crack as Clark's skull hit a half-buried rock along the rail bed. The man's eyes rolled upward, and then his lids closed over them as he passed into the oblivion of unconsciousness. Colburn attempted to rise to his feet, but suddenly they failed him and he dropped on his ass to the ground. With a shrug, he reached in and took out his flask unscrewing the cap and let his whiskey flow freely down his throat before promptly passing out once more.
Cauley was in motion now, racing past Mrs. Keegan, who had left her spot standing over her husband’s shoulder while he ministered to Farnsworth and was kneeling next to Clark to see what she could do for him. The foreman was frantically untying his horse, and so were the other men that had been working to clear the rail bed. He was letting out a string of curses as the last of the herd swept by them all on their mad run.
As they charged away, the group was now aware of the shouting and even cheering that was coming from the passenger car as the travelers witnessed the spectacle, some considering it an almost a form of entertainment, oblivious to the danger that had just been unleashed.
Lijuan shouted to Cauley as he and all his men charged past her, “You’ll never catch them! It’s hopeless!” Over his shoulder he called out, “I have to try before-” but his words were lost to them as his steed carried him down the gap.
Dutch turned and looked at his sister, wondering if the blood had drained away from his face in the way it had from Lijuan’s.
“Oh, my god David …” her voice trailed off, but there was no need for her to finish the words that had slipped from her trembling lips. He shook his head as the rear of the herd and the pursuing Calico men were growing ever smaller down Stanton’s Gap.
“What are we going to do? We have to do something!” she shouted, putting her shock in check and drawing upon the strength the Wildes held and their ability to rise to the occasion when called for.
Dutch never got a chance to answer as an angry voice filled the air. Pierce was crossing his arms in anger.
“It’s not up to us to do anything. It’s on those rannies to bring their precious cattle back under control!”
Dutch reached out to grab Lijuan’s shoulder but it was too late, she had gone into full hellcat mode and was snatching Pierce by the lapels of his jacket and pulling him close, his derby falling to the ground, astonishment mushrooming on his face.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve set into motion here?”
“Unhand me if you wish to keep your contract with the GWR!”
Lijuan bared her teeth as she shook the man to his core. "You think I care about that? You paid those rannies to labor for you when they should have been proceeding on with their trip to the stockyard. Then your drunken engineer spooks them into a stampede!"
“Miss Wilde!” he shouted as he pulled himself free. “I am quite aware of these events, as I was present for them. Yes, I did pay them, and yes, it was our man that started the cattle to running, but so?”
“Didn’t you hear what I told Cauley? They’re never going to catch them, certainly not in time!” her eyes were protruding now, cold and flinty.
“In time for what?”
Dutch walked past his sister and drew close to the man who was now dwarfed by Dutch’s bulky frame, and he was forced to look up now instead of down as he had been when speaking to the petite Lijuan.
“In time for reaching the town of Stanton’s Gap! Once they run the length of the gap it’s only a straight shot of a couple of miles across the open plain to town!”
Lijuan in a fury shouted, “Where they will sweep in onto the main street that opens out to that plain and trample to death scores of men, women, and children who have gathered for the celebration! Our sisters are there!”
“And the woman I love!” Dutch added with a shout, causing Lijuan to pause just for a second and look at him before turning her attention back to Pierce who seemed to be physically wilting right before their very eyes.
“You understand now, don’t you? There are hundreds of people that are gathered there for the celebration! They’ll never all be able to get clear of that herd!” she shouted as Mrs. Keegan who was still attending to Clark let out a gasp.
The railroad man’s eyes were blinking rapidly now as he was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.
“Maybe … maybe the herd will tire itself out before they ever reach the town.”
“And maybe a foot of snow will fall in Tombstone on the Fourth of July, but I’m not betting on it! I know cattle and I know stampedes! It’s our family business,” Lijuan huffed.
“Good heavens, good heavens,” he stammered as he began pacing about, rubbing his hands together before turning to the Wildes.
“You’re right. We have to do something, but what can we do?” Dutch bent his head down in concentration as Lijuan anxiously looked down the gap, hoping for an answer from her brother. The stampede had disappeared completely from view and every minute was bringing the chance of a catastrophe coming to bear almost inevitable. She balled her fists in frustration.
“David, we can’t let them reach town … the girls … all those people. We can’t let them reach that town!”
“Yes, please what can we do?!” Pierce was crying out in a pleading voice as Dutch looked on.
There was no question in his mind that the awful truth of what the man had helped unleash had crystallized for him. The pompous dandy he had been before was now gone. If crowds of revelers fell before the hooves of the herd, and if any survivors found out Pierce's role in it, a lynch mob would loop a rope around his neck before the sunset. If any of his family perished, he knew Lijuan would take matters into her own hands, and any vigilantes wouldn't get a chance to loop his … loop … loop!
Suddenly Dutch drew a breath as he looked up with a face that seemed to shine. He made eye contact with his sister, and she gave him a hopeful, questioning gaze.
“You’ve got something, David! I can see it!”
He dropped down on his haunches and snatched a stick that was lying nearby, and began to draw a straight line in the sand as Lijuan, Parker, and Pierce crowded over his shoulders.
“I just remembered something about the town of Stanton’s Gap. This line here is the railroad tracks as they approach the town!” He quickly drew a large square to mark the position of the town. “Now just before it reaches the town, it begins to loop like this!" Dust kicked up as he continued the line representing the tracks making a natural curve just before the square. "Then they start to straighten out again near the train station and that new hotel those city slickers from San Francisco built a couple years ago, and the tracks continu
e on where they have the spur line leading into the stockyard!" he hastily made circles in the sand to represent the two buildings.
“What’s all this got to do with the cattle?” young Parker asked in an uncertain tone as Dutch looked up at him. He noticed Pierce’s blank look as well.
“The cattle can’t go bursting onto the main street of town where the all the celebrants are going to be if there is a barrier between the street and the Longhorns!”
Lijuan reached up with her hands and slapped them down hard on his shoulders clasping them, her face a study in glee.
“God damn brilliant! I’m not even sure Golden Girl could have come up with that!” she bubbled as she used her pet name for Cassandra.
“I still don’t follow,” Parker said, showing his palms with an accompanying shrug.
“The train!!” the two Wilde siblings yelled in unison. Just then they became aware of a rider charging toward them from the gap, the mount’s muscles rippling as it propelled the rider along. In seconds, to Dutch’s astonishment, Bright Feather drew up next to them and leaped off her horse.
“Bright Feather! What … how?”
She threw her arms around him as Lijuan took a step back, her lips parting slightly, as any trace of her jubilation drained away.
“Thank God you’re safe! I was riding out to meet you and Lijuan when I saw the stampede! I feared you had been caught in the canyon when they swept through it!”
His mouth fell open and a deep concern swept his features. “Now wait a minute! You weren’t in the gap during that stampede, were you?”
Before she could answer, Dutch was distracted by a firm grip on his arm and he spun around to face the very pale looking Pierce as Bright Feather and Lijuan briefly eyed each other before turning their attention back to Dutch.
“Please, sir! What about using the train?!”
“We have to hurry! The train is still going to be faster than the cattle but they have a good head start. Now it’s just as I said … we take the train to town and bring it to a stop right here!” he dropped back down on his haunches and used the stick to put a big X across the track across from where the town would be.
“Yes! Stopping it on the loop would be the perfect barrier! By god, I think you’ve got something there, man!” Pierce said, slapping Dutch on the back and smiling for the first time since the Wildes had come upon the train.
Dutch pushed his palms down in front of him trying to tamper down the man's enthusiasm. "Hold up, now. There are a lot of challenges here. First up we've got no train crew. They are all incapacitated, and the only thing I ever learned about trains is how to couple and uncouple them when I was tasked with helping out on an Army train a couple years ago."
“That’s not a problem, sir!” Parker chirped. “Mr. Pierce here has been with the railroad for fifteen years! He can run the train!” Dutch shifted his eyes towards Pierce, but the man lowered his to avoid his gaze.
“While that is true,” he began slowly. “All of them have been office work starting when I was a station agent selling tickets. Worked my way up, I did, but …”
“-but you don’t know shit about running a train, right?” Lijuan said, her arms crossed, she didn’t wait for him to answer but instead pivoted around to her brother.
“I can do it,” she said flatly without a hint of bravado.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
"You are going to drive the train?" Bright Feather blurted out skeptically, and with far more of an edge of sarcasm than she intended. She instantly regretted it as Lijuan put her hands on her hips, her lips curled in a frown.
"Yes! I can do it! David, while your troop was deployed up in Wyoming last summer, I was dating an engineer with the Western Cross line. I rode with him several times on his run between Alamieda and Desert Bluffs. In the cab, he showed me how to run the train. He let me drive it several times!"
For a brief moment, she smiled brightly. "It was fun!" Then her dourness returned as she shook her head. "I never got a chance to tell you about it because you are so busy with your duties at the fort … and other distractions," she finished as she looked at Bright Feather side-eyed as she walked past the Indian woman and pointed towards the front of the train.
“However, it doesn’t mean a damn thing with that mound half cleared. Even if we put every one of those ladies and gentlemen in the passenger car to work we would never clear it in time. That herd could almost be through the gap by now!”
Dutch cleared his throat and looked at Bright Feather. By his look alone she tensed. The pair knew each other’s moods and facial expressions well enough by now after their nearly five years together.
"That's another of the challenges I mentioned a minute ago. Beautiful and Graceful one, if you can really run this train, then we're going to have to back it up to the switch and take her over the old route up and along the mountainside.
Dutch’s pronouncement was met with a funeral silence that ended when Parker burst out with the obvious. “Excuse me, sir, but Mister Farnsworth said the trestle might not be safe! It may have been damaged! You can’t take those rails!”
Pierce drew a step closer. “The lad is right. If that trestle should fail while you are on it, then it would prove to be a suicide mission!”
Dutch and Lijuan looked at each other and then turned to Pierce, "I speak for both of us when I say our sisters are back in that down with hundreds of others. Our family would risk our lives any day, any hour, any minute for each other. We may die trying but we're doing this!" as he finished he could see the fear in Bright Feather's eyes for him, but he knew she would not try to stop him with what was at stake.
“Lijuan, I’m going to be your fireman stoking that boiler until it’s a version of hell on wheels so we can get up speed. Let’s get up there and start getting it ready! Bright Feather, I need you and the lad here to go get those people off this train! Pierce, mount up on my horse, he’s better with a stranger riding him than Lijuan’s would be and ride back and throw the switch so once we get this train backed up we can start heading up the grade!”
“Righto!” he shouted already bolting for the horse as Parker hurried off. As Lijuan scrambled up into the cab he took a moment to clasp Bright Feather’s hands.
“Don’t worry about that trestle.”
“I saw it, Dutch, it doesn’t look right!”
“Don’t worry! I’m going to live to be sitting next to you on that stage when you get your medal! You can count on it!”
Above them, Lijuan poked her head out the window by the engineer's seat and called down to them.
“All aboard the 4:10 to hell!”
Dutch pulled Bright Feather close, kissing her deeply before forcing himself to let her go and join Lijuan in the cab. As he pulled himself in, he took a last look at his woman running after the young conductor.
***
Inside the passenger car, despite many of the windows having been opened by the travelers, it was becoming very hot and stuffy with hazy blue cigarette and cigar smoke floating everywhere leading tempers to begin to flare. Instead of enjoying the renowned celebration in Stanton’s Gap, they had been stuck motionless for quite some time. The sudden excitement of the cattle being spooked and running off had waned as quickly as it had come on.
Into this environment, Parker bounded as he climbed up the step and threw open the door to the interior. Almost all the faces swung in his direction with expectant looks on their faces, save those who still held their angry grimaces at the situation.
“The Grand Western Railroad begs your forgiveness, but we need to ask that everyone vacate the car as quickly as possible but in an orderly fashion. Ladies first, of course!”
The words had barely finished tumbling out of his mouth when the reaction it triggered was instantaneous. Cries of anger and protests rumbled through the length of the railcar as one fastidiously dressed man in a top hat leaped to his feet and slammed his fist on the back of the seat in front of him.
“Now s
ee here! This is unacceptable! We are supposed to have been in Stanton’s Gap by now and you stand before us asking us to get out this car? I hope you are not suggesting we help you clear that landslide now that you’ve lost your cowpokes!”
Suddenly a woman’s shriek nearly shattered everyone’s eardrums that were gathered around her. She had been looking out the window but now was on her feet like the man, gesticulating wildly out the window.
“Indians! Indians!”
Most of the woman and children joined her in her screams along with a couple men as Bright Feather entered the car and pushed her way past the teen conductor.
“Do as he says! Everyone out now!” Her shouts were immediately followed by someone gasping their surprise that she could speak English.
“Balderdash! I do not take orders from a woman, let alone a savage!” Top hat man barked.
Anger coursed through her and she felt her pulse quicken. There was no time for this with the cattle drawing ever closer. A blast from the whistle told her that Dutch and Lijuan were ready to move the train. Bright Feather had been an unofficial Wilde long enough to take a cue from them and improvise in the only way that would get results.
Until this moment she had forgotten about the bow and quiver prize still slung on her back. In seconds she snatched the bow, along with an arrow. As the shrieks grew louder, she let the arrow fly. The screams fell away to a stunned silence as the arrow neatly carried the man’s top hat off his head pinning it to the back wall of the railway car. Bright Feather wasn’t done yet though. To her shame, she shared the same blood as her uncle, Black Hawk, who was waging a never-ending war against the white men and women of Arizona in his attempt to drive them from their ancient lands. It was time for the name of Black Hawk to finally do some good!
"Leave this car now if you want to live! On the other side of that gap lies Black Hawk and his band of Omegas! We intend to take this railroad as a prize to show even the mighty iron horse will fall before his might! He sent me to warn you that you will die on this train if you go forward. He sent me as his messenger to give you a chance to live by showing mercy if you leave this train! It is the train he wants! Not you! Stay on it and die!"
Sing The Death Song: Dutch Wilde & Bright Feather Western Adventure (Half Breed Haven Book 6) Page 7
