Dutch abandoned his position and stuck his head out the open door of the locomotive and looked back, all the cars were now on the trestle. His gaze dropped down to below the bridge just as the first cracking and splintering of the weakened beams filled his ears. The far end of the trestle behind them began collapsing, beams shooting away in all directions, some impacting the side of the mountain, other dropping into the void below. In stunned silence, he watched as the twin rails in the collapsing section twisted into so much metallic spaghetti.
“What’s happening?!” Lijuan screamed as the locomotive continue to vibrate uncontrollably.
“You don’t want to know, Lijuan!”
Sure he was watching his own death approaching, he remained frozen in place, his heart racing at the sight of the second support pillar topple into the next one setting off a domino effect that was tearing the trestle apart as each pillar began to smash into the next. All of this was happening as the gap narrowed between the caboose and the bridge being ripped asunder.
"We're back on solid ground!" Lijuan shouted with a glee he knew she would not have if she was seeing what he was. Still, he took a moment to glance sideways to the left, happy to once more see the solid rock wall of the mountainside. It wouldn't matter though he knew if the trestle finished collapsing while some of the cars were still on it. They would either pull the rest of the train backward down into a horrific jumble of mangled bridge, railroad cars, and two bodies or if they somehow survived and lost some of the cars, it wouldn't help save the unwitting people of Stanton's Gap.
The train was rocking violently now and the collapse was nearly upon the caboose when Dutch let out a shout of triumph as first the special passenger car and then the caboose itself passed back onto solid ground just seconds before the entirety of the railroad trestle finished collapsing amidst a thunderous roar.
Lijuan looked back at him in pure elation. “We made it! It’s going to take more than some old railroad trestle to bring down a pair of Wildes!” she shouted in pure bravado which Dutch recognized as her way of releasing the tension.
“True enough … though I better not tell you just how close it was!” he was laughing now, his own tension venting away, but suddenly he grew straight-faced at the sound of something striking the side of the steam engine.
The danger relating to the trestle wasn't quite done with them yet. Above them, the combination of a tremor that rumbled through the mountain from the mass of collapsing beams and the rumble from the collapse jarred loose a cluster of rocks that began tumbling towards the train.
Seconds later they were pelting the train from the engine to the caboose, but the Wildes had been lucky none had been any bigger than a breadbox. That was until up ahead they saw a rock about the size of a horse saddle tumbling down madly end over end. If it punctured the long cylindrical boiler, once again their journey would come to a swift end. Relief began to flood over them as the engine passed by the rock while it was still tumbling. It missed the engine but they felt an additional jolt as it struck directly behind them. Whirling around Dutch peered down at the coupling holding the coal tender and the locomotive. The boulder had struck it but mercifully instead of decoupling the two the opposite had occurred and the coupling was now a mangled ruin fused together.
There wasn’t time to consider the impact, as they were suddenly startled when one fair-sized rock sailed cleanly through the window on the left side of the train smashing some of the gauges before ricocheting off several of the mechanisms, damaging them as well before tumbling to the floor with a loud thud.
Dutch scooped the rock up and threw it out. “Lijuan, is everything still working?” his voice rife with alarm called to her.
“We’re still moving! Feels like no change in speed,” she answered.
He picked up on an uncertainty in her voice, but before he could press her further, a sudden thought burst into his head.
“Blow the whistle!”
“What?” she called out over to him.
“Blow it now!”
“Okay, but why?” she demanded to know, her eyebrows furrowing and then releasing.
“So Bright Feather and anyone listening will know that we made it. There is no way they didn’t miss the sound of that trestle coming down. By blasting the whistle she’ll know we are alive and not thinking we’re dead!”
As she gave three long whistle blasts, Dutch did not hear her murmuring under her breath. “Of course. We can’t have Bright Feather upset. Now can we.”
CHAPTER 11
* * *
Bright Feather was more than upset at the moment, she was frantic. The muscles in her arms strained as she pushed her burden forward over the sandy, rock-strewn landscape. Across from her, sweat dripping of his face in torrents, the slender Niles Pierce labored on his end of the wooden construct.
“On three, then!” he managed to grunt out before he began the countdown. “One … two … three!” and as he ticked off the last number the pair gave a mighty heave and at last arrived at the edge of the small ravine. Pierce stepped back, doubled over with his hands on his knees, panting heavily.
“Come on, Mr. Pierce! We must hurry! We have to tie the chain off, and I can see the train coming down off the mountain onto the flats!” As she waited for him to straighten back up, her mind replayed the events of the last few minutes.
***
The ride through the gap had been a complete blur to her. This time she didn’t care to look up at the trestle that her love would soon be crossing over, the very thing that might kill him and separate him from her forever. Though they had left after the train had begun moving, they had made good time, thanks to the slow pace the locomotive and its cars would have endured during its climb up the mountain.
Soon they had burst free from the gap and charged forward towards the water tower with its windmill adjacent to where the switching mechanism had been installed at the side of the track. The pair had just dismounted when Bright Feather had frozen in terror at the sound reverberating from the gap that could only have been the collapse of the trestle, taking Dutch to his death. Her feet swayed underneath her for a moment as she sucked in a deep breath, her mind reeling at the implications. The man she loved more than life itself was dead! Pierce was just moving into to offer comfort when the faint sound of the train whistle had carried to their ears.
“They are alive! They made it!” Pierce shouted in relief and Bright Feather looked up blinking back her tears, as two more long blasts of the whistle followed the first.
"Thank you, Great Spirit. Thank you."
"Now it's time for us to do our part," Pierce had said as he took the reins of their horses and tied them to a tree that grew along the edge of the ravine. With that done, he had joined Bright Feather as she stood between the small workman's shack and switch with its long black metallic arm. While she had been waiting, Bright Feather had been staring towards Stanton's Gap. She recalled that earlier in the day when she had traveled this way with the Wilde sisters, she had been able to see the town off in the distance. Now hours later, and what felt more like an entire lifetime, the stampede had been too far away to see. But the cloud of dust hundreds of steers were kicking up was very visible and completely blocked her view of the town. With dread, she knew had to be almost to Stanton's Gap!
Reaching over, Pierce grabbed the lever and gave a mighty pull backward and … nothing happened. For a second time he strained to make it work but it remained immobile.
"Let me help!" Bright Feather said as they both pulled back on it but to no avail. The young Indian woman and the railroad man were using all their might, their hands growing slick with sweat on the hot metal bar, but it refused to give. As she let go of it she looked at her hands, they sported an orange hue from the rust on the bar. Bright Feather leaned in closer and looked at the mechanisms that made up the switch. They, too, were a mass of rust.
They were in the desert where rainfall was scant. How was this even possible, she wondered? She turned a
nd looked at the shack next to them, and she knew. When the rains did come, especially the cloud bursts, the sloping roof must have allowed water to shoot right off it and down onto the switch. It was an oversight, and now a costly one.
“Doesn’t anyone check your equipment?” she cried out to her companion in frustration. Looking contrite, he offered that the switch had gone unused for almost five years now with no plans for it ever to be needed to be used again after the new rail bed through the gap had been laid, bypassing the mountain route forever. It was the same reason no one had bothered to check on the now-abandoned trestle.
It was a hell of a way to run a railroad, she had thought, but she didn't have time to worry about the white man's sloppiness. Her eyes instead transfixed on where the rail bed coming off the mountain continued past the point where the track would switch and ended in the desert. Had Dutch survived the treacherous trestle just to wind up dying anyway in a spectacular derailment? Not if she could help it!
“We’ve got to get this switch working! Any thoughts?” she had called out to Pierce who was looking around wildly for any options.
“I’ll check the shack … maybe there might be some kerosene for lamps in there that we could use to lubricate the switching mechanism. I’ll go look!”
At that point, he had dashed inside the shed, as she looked around just as frantically as Pierce had. There had to be something! Her eyes fell on everything, the newly erected windmill with its guy wires holding it firmly in place, the smashed remains of the original windmill toppled to the ground, some of it hanging over the small ravine where the little stream flowed that branched off from the Little Mescalero far from here. The last thing she looked at was the water tower itself. In the shadows underneath it, something caught her eye. Her moccasins carried her swiftly into the shadow of the tower where she stared down at a large circular object.
“Pierce! Come here now!!” she shouted even as off in the distance she heard the whistle again, and this time it was louder. Dutch and Lijuan were off the mountain and coming their way. Pierce bounded up to her and shook his head.
“No kerosene. Just tools, big length of chain and-”
“Forget that! Look at this!” her finger jabbed urgently towards the large object underneath the water tower. He looked at it and then back at her, blankly unsure of how it would be anything of use to them. She dashed around and laid her hands on a large wooden cabling spool. Between its three-foot-high wheels was the remainder of the thick wire cabling being used to anchor the new windmill.
“Do not you see? We might not have been able to get the lever to move but if we fasten it to the lever we can use its weight to pull on it if we push it into the ravine.”
He stared at her for a long moment.
“And to think I have heard many a man refer to your people as savages. My dear lady, that is brilliant!”
"I'll accept your compliment after we know that it works! We have to get this to the edge of the ravine quickly! The train is on its way!" she shouted as she moved to one side of the wheel and Pierce stripped off his coat and took a position on the other wheel and they began to push in unison. Once they had it rolled out from underneath the tower the pair had worked to line it up with the switch and began the challenging task of pushing it towards the edge of the ravine.
***
“We are going to need that chain, Mister Pierce, and we are going to need it now!”
“Understood!” he called back over his shoulder as once more he headed for the shack. Bright Feather shifted on her feet as she looked down the tracks. The train appeared to be growing larger by the moment. Lijuan must have it at full speed she was certain, but she would have to slow it down when the old tracks began to curve to merge with the new ones. “Hurry!”
Pierce emerged from the shack with a miniature version of the great spool they had just manhandled to the edge. This one, however, had handles he was clutching and he struggled to get it over to the switch where he dropped it. Bright Feather was at his side in a moment securing one end of the chain around the lever. Years early she remembered a special kind of knot an old shaman she had met in the Sierra Nevada’s had shown her. He had said the Great Spirit Himself would have a challenging time undoing a knot such as this. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to see if the old man's boasting was just that.
Searching her memory, she tugged the end of the chain and pulled out a foot or two and began making the knot. The sound of the approaching locomotive rising with each passing minute.
"It is done! Mr. Pierce!" she grabbed one of the handles and he the other and they raced to the edge of the ravine unspooling the chain behind them. At the edge, there was still about three feet of chain still on the spool. They lost no time freeing it and taking the end and looping it through the hole that ran from the center of one of the wheels of the spool to the next.
As she finished with the knot on this end she rose and looked at the train, less than a quarter of a mile away. Suddenly the whistle began shrieking at repeated blasts. Dutch and Lijuan must have realized now, too, the mistake about the switch and had probably seen them. She hoped that the pair knew their presence here meant they were trying to save them.
“We have to push it over the edge now!” she cried out, her heart pounding madly against her chest. Pierce didn’t nod, he simply planted his feet into the sand like she was doing and they pushed with all their might. Bright Feather let out a cry as it rolled off the edge of the gully. Pierce was grunting just when she pushed him to the ground and fell back herself, putting a slight distance between them and the chain which was only seconds away from going taut once the spool’s freefall came to an abrupt end.
Gulping down air she sat up and watched the length of the chain jerk up from the ground raising dust until the momentum caught up to the end tied to the switching lever. With a shrieking groan of protest, the lever, amidst a great puff of dust whipped back, pulled by the weight of the nearly two hundred pounds of wooden spool and cabling that suddenly came to a screeching halt midway down the ravine.
Two things happened at the same time that made her heart sing with joy and her eyes widen with fear. First, she watched as the long unused mechanism did what it was designed to do. The nearby tracks shifted allowing the old rail bed to merge with the new. A split second later the lever was torn free from the base of the mechanism and became a deadly airborne projectile. Bright Feather had only a second to drop back flat against the ground as it whizzed directly through where she had been sitting up. Pierce shouted as the lever and chain disappeared into the ravine as the no longer tethered spool dropped the remainder of the way and splashed into the creek.
Bright Feather fought the urge to throw both of her hands over her ears from the shrieking of the brakes that Lijuan was applying to slow them down as the train entered the semi-circle loop that would merge the tracks. She scrambled to her feet and a smile broke out from ear to ear as she saw Dutch looking at her from the window of the cab. He, too, held a smile brighter than any sunrise she had ever seen. She only had a moment to do a special two-fingered tap to her chest. It had been their way long ago of saying they loved each other. They came up with the signal in the early days when she had just joined the detachment at Fort McCallister and they had to be far more discreet in their relationship.
As Dutch raised his hand to mirror the signal, he quickly passed from view as Lijuan had brought the train once again up to full throttle and shot towards Stanton’s Gap in their life and death gamble to reach it before the stampede of Calico Longhorns trampled and maimed countless numbers who had turned out for what was supposed to have been a fun-filled afternoon.
Slowly she turned her attention from the shrinking train and looked back at Pierce who still lay on his back, though he had propped himself up on his elbows. The man was panting, still trying to catch his breath from the day’s exertions. She walked over to him, held out her hand, and smiled at him. He returned the smile and accepted it, and a moment later she was
yanking him to his feet.
“Time to mount up, Mister Pierce. This isn’t over yet!”
CHAPTER 12
* * *
The celebrations in Stanton's Gap were in full swing and the town was buzzing up and down the main street. So many things were happening at once. Midway up the street, a band was playing a jaunty rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy, while at the end of the main street where the thoroughfare ended and the stage and podium had been erected the invited politician stood with a bull horn shouting his rhetoric to the crowd assembled below it. Those not interested in such things milled about everywhere enjoying looking at and purchasing wares and food from various vendors. A children’s sack race also was in full swing with the parents cheering their young ones on.
Cassandra Wilde, however, was right where she wanted to be. At the far end of the main street that opened onto the desert. She was leaning against the wall of the first or the last building on the street, depending on which way you were walking, enjoying the first bite of large red apple she had just purchased. As she chewed she looked directly across at the building on the opposite side of the street. It too, like the building she now leaned against, was a church.
As she munched on the fruit, the tall blonde found herself amused at the stories she had heard. The church she was by now was a Protestant church, and the one directly across the street was Catholic. She found humor in the stories that she had heard that on many occasions fights had erupted between worshippers when the churches had let out at the same time, the two groups mingled in the street, and things had become heated.From what she had heard, the priest and the minister had met and agreed for the sake of peace they would stagger the services times, so the denominations wouldn’t be mingling at the same time. She smiled at the thought of how the parishioners had just spent an hour or longer being guided towards the practice of peace and love only to get into it with each other out in the street over whatever perceived slight had set one worshipper against another.
Sing The Death Song: Dutch Wilde & Bright Feather Western Adventure (Half Breed Haven Book 6) Page 9
