By now the engineer had spotted the flames, slowed down, and was hanging on the whistle as if he thought the escaping steam might blow the obstruction off the tracks. I saw him in the glow of the flames belching out of the broad black stack, a smear of crimson face beneath a tall hat made of striped pillow ticking leaning out the window of the cab over an arm crooked at the elbow, sparks from the stack swirling about him like fireflies on their way to the cinder bed. Below him the steel driving arm flashed as it cranked at the wheels, at times seeming to come within two or three inches of his sleeve at the top of its cycle. Behind the engine, oily black in the darkness, rumbled the wood car, baggage carrier, and two passenger coaches followed by the caboose, the windows of all three illumined in yellow. The smoke pouring from the stack was a gray streamer trailing a mile behind the red lantern that swung from the railing of the caboose.
At any time that speeding behemoth could have rammed our flimsy barricade and sent it flying in blazing fragments all over the prairie, but the engineer didn’t know that. When it became apparent that the offending substance would not go away, he hauled on the brakes. A jet of white steam erupted from beneath the boiler. Sparks sprayed from the shrieking wheels. Wood groaned, steel screamed against steel in a grotesque parody of human anguish. The driving arm reversed itself without pausing and the entire mass of metal ground to a shuddering halt three feet short of the pile of burning logs.
While all this was going on I had left our gear with Hudspeth and crossed over to stroll among the bodies scattered south of the tracks. I had my revolver, which the marshal had returned to me, fully loaded now from the cartridges in my saddle bags, in my hand in case any of the corpses should still be breathing. But none of them was, nor was any of them Lame Horse, which was what I had come to determine. All were Cheyenne. I left them and approached the engine, which was snorting and blowing like a stallion impatient to be on its way.
“Mister, you better start explaining.” The engineer’s demand was delivered over the breech of a pre-Civil War Walker Colt, for God’s sake, a cap-and-ball six-shooter as long as a man’s arm from elbow to fingertips. I smiled respectfully.
“You wouldn’t want to use that,” I assured him. “I’m law.”
He thought that over. He was a wasted strip of leather with a wind-burned face cracked at the corners of his eyes and mouth and a perpetual squint. His side-whiskers were gray tipped with white and the hairs were long enough to curl in upon themselves. A smudge of soot stained his moist right cheek. He was sweating, but not from the tension of the moment. The heat inside the cab from the open firebox was withering. I kept my eyes on him and on the fireman standing behind his shoulder, a big man whose short-cropped black hair reminded me of greasy wool. At first I’d thought his face was blackened from his exertions before the flames, but now I realized he was a Negro. He was naked to the waist, and his slabbed chest glistened like new iron beneath a sheen of sweat and a sparse covering of coiled hair that ran in a thin line down his stomach into the damp waistband of his pinstriped pants. At the moment he was trying without success to get the engineer’s attention by tugging at his sleeve and calling him “Boss” in a voice as deep and clear as the echo from the bottom of a barrel.
“So you’re law.” It wasn’t the most clever thing the engineer could have said, especially after he’d had all that time to think up a good retort. But a friend of mine was dead and I was in no mood to render him senseless with my wit, so I let him go on to the obvious. “Let’s see some proof.”
“This proof enough?”
Hudspeth’s growl, coming from the other side of the cab, took all the sand out of the man with the Walker. He didn’t even bother to turn around and confirm the fact that the marshal was standing on the step plate with his freshly loaded Smith & Wesson pointed at his back. He just sighed and laid the relic in the palm of my free hand, the one that wasn’t holding the five-shot.
“That’s what I was atryin’ to tell you before,” the Negro informed him.
They were convinced, of course, that they were being held up. I couldn’t blame them. I hadn’t seen a mirror for some time, but looking at Hudspeth—dirty, unshaven, his clothes wrinkled and torn—I got a fair idea about how much I looked like a lawman after all this time on the trail. I don’t suppose I smelled like one either, but whether that made any difference amid the occupational scents of wood smoke and oiled steel and their own perspiration was open to debate. Whatever the case, I was climbing aboard to display the badge and lay their fears to rest when the fireman released the brake.
The locomotive jolted forward, throwing me off balance and wrenching the handrail on the other side out of Hudspeth’s grasp. His gun went off into the ceiling and he dropped out of sight. As I threw my arm out to catch myself, the Deane-Adams struck the wall of the cab, jarred loose from my grip, and clattered to the steel floor. I fell four feet and landed on my back on the ground, the Walker bouncing from my left hand as if propelled by a spring. When my wind returned I found myself staring down, or rather up, the bore of my own weapon in the black man’s hand. I spent more time on the wrong end of that piece. There was no doubt about what he had in mind. The cylinder was already turning when I clawed my badge out of my pocket and thrust it at him.
For an agonizing moment I wondered if it would mean anything to him at all. Everything depended upon how he had been treated by lawmen in the past. Then the cylinder rolled back to its original position and he backed off without lowering the gun.
“What’s going on, Gus? Why aren’t we moving?”
The newcomer had appeared from the darkness at the rear of the train. Round and cherubic, he carried a lantern and wore a baggy blue uniform with brass buttons and a black-visored cap set square on his shaggy head. With him was a taller man whose erect carriage and squared shoulders made me think he was more accustomed to a uniform than the well-tailored suit and vest he was wearing, but a uniform far different from his companion’s. His reddish hair was graying at the temples and had a windblown look. Like myself when in civilization, he was clean-shaven, a rare enough thing in that bewhiskered era, his spare cheeks and firm jaw shadowed in blue where the razor had scraped them without missing a stubble. While the conductor appeared to have eyes only for the railroad personnel present, the tall man took everything in with cool eyes under brows so pale they were visible only because of their contrast to his deep tan, which had only recently begun to fade. I figured him for cavalry.
Gus, it seemed, was the engineer. He had alighted from the cab to reclaim his ancient revolver. When it was safely in his belt he rattled off his version of the events, gesticulating at the flaming woodpile, now past its peak and burning spottily where the logs were not already charred, at the marshal, who had recovered himself and was standing on the top step of the cab, his gun trained on the Negro’s back and his badge gleaming ostentatiously on his lapel, and finally at me where I sat on the ground eyeing the muzzle of the Deane-Adams in the fireman’s hand.
“Well, what more proof do you want?” This from the tall man, addressing my guard. He had a raspy voice—roughened, I supposed, from years of barking orders under fire-—but with an undercurrent of smoothness that suggested breeding beyond that offered by the manual of protocol.
Still the Negro hesitated. A glance passed from the tall man to the conductor, from the conductor to the engineer, and finally from him to the fireman, whereupon the last sighed and returned the gun to me. I holstered it and got to my feet with a helping hand from the tall man. A ridge of calluses ran across his palm and between his thumb and forefinger where the reins are held.
“Cavalry?” I asked, just to confirm what I already knew.
He laughed, white teeth gleaming against his burned skin. “Lord, no! Horses are for racing and drawing buggies. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Locke, 16th Engineers, retired.”
I grinned in spite of myself. “You’re the first ex-military man I’ve met since the war who didn’t claim to be a full colonel.”
“There aren’t many of us left. I wish you’d introduce yourself. Old soldiers are always being pumped for colorful stories, and I’ll need a name to go with this one.” He indicated the bodies of the slain Indians, almost invisible now that the fire was dying. He seemed to be the first to notice them, judging by the way the others suddenly forgot all about us and stared at the carnage. At first glance the corpses did look like discarded railroad ties scattered over the right-of-way.
I gave him our names and told him that we had fought the Indians over a prisoner trussed up on the other side of the tracks. “We’re commandeering this train to take him to Bismarck,” I finished.
The engineer and conductor raised their voices in protest. The colonel, however, merely rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“I don’t think I can let you do that,” he said finally.
“You don’t have any choice.” I turned to the engineer. “Get up steam.”
“You don’t understand.” Locke remained calm. “This is a private express.”
“Yours?”
He shook his head, then looked thoughtful again. “Perhaps I can work it out. Will you come with me?”
“Where and why?”
“The last car. A few minutes now might save you an hour.”
He sounded sincere, which added to my distrust. But time was running short. At any minute Lame Horse and his Cheyenne might overcome their fear of trains, and I had no illusions about the ability of six men to stand them off with only (so far as I knew) four guns and a museum piece among them. Ignoring Gus’s protests, I yanked the Walker from his belt and handed it up to Hudspeth. “See that the fireman stokes the box, and put Gus to work clearing the tracks. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Someone’s got to watch the pressure gauge,” the engineer snarled.
“The conductor’s not doing anything.”
Colonel Locke and I mounted the steps to the platform of the second coach, where we stopped before the door that led inside. He turned to me and his voice dropped below a murmur.
“I have to whisper.” he said. “The old man has ears like a cat. Just keep quiet and agree with everything that’s said.”
Before I could question him he rapped softly on the door. Immediately a voice that had to belong to either an orator or a wounded moose boomed an invitation from within. We entered.
It was just as well that my companion had advised me to keep silent, because I was struck dumb by my first glimpse of the coach’s interior. I had expected an ordinary day carrier, narrow and cramped with a double row of hard seats facing each other in pairs on either side of a bare aisle. I wasn’t prepared for a palace.
The dominant color was wine red. It covered the two easy chairs in plush velvet, tickled my ankles where I stood on the carpet, threw off a sheen from the curtains on the windows and from the drapes that concealed all but the brass lion’s paws that were the feet of a huge four-poster bed in the far corner from view. A chandelier the size of a bull buffalo’s head dangled from the paneled vault of the ceiling, its crystal pendants sparkling in the light of two globe lamps, one of which stood on the bar—a bar, by God, of polished oak with a decanter of what looked like burgundy and two long-stemmed glasses atop it—the other on a reading table beside the larger chair, overstuffed with a winged back and arms of curved walnut. The man at the bar pouring amber liquid from a second decanter into a glass was also overstuffed, but unlike Judge Flood, whose excess tonnage hung out everywhere, this one’s was all up front in a solid, rounded globe of belly that started at his collar and swelled out so far that I doubted he could clasp his hands over it without straining his arms, then swept back to balance between his normal-size thighs like a hot-air balloon supported upon a pair of uprights. He was in shirtsleeves and vest, the obligatory gold watch chain describing a grand arc across the biggest part of the bulge. Upon it were strung ornaments representing various guilds and lodges the way an Indian might display scalps on a thong.
“A brandy man, I’ll wager,” he announced over his precise operation with the decanter and glass. His voice was not a bellow like Flood’s, nor a rumbling bass like that of the black fireman, but its resonance carried the best qualities of both. It was a voice trained to ring in the rafters of a great marble hall. He spoke as if he’d been expecting me and as if we’d already been introduced. “I trust this cognac will cut the dust to your satisfaction. It’s not Napoleon, but with the country just emerging from a depression it’s inadvisable to flaunt one’s affluence. That is the phrase you Westerners use, is it not? ‘Cut the dust?’ Or perhaps I should say we Westerners, since I am to be one henceforth.”
“I’m partial to rotgut,” I said, but accepted the proffered glass from a strong, stout hand with a thick gold band around the wedding finger.
His eyes twinkled at what I suppose he considered a prime example of frontier wit. They were the kind of eyes that twinkled easily or flared hot with anger or grew soft and gentle, all at a moment’s notice and upon command. Like those of Major Harms they were brown, but with a dash of yellow, like the cognac. His face was round but not bloated, the dewlaps folded neatly on either side of a fleshless beak and darting immediately into the cover of his whiskers, which, beginning at the tops of his cheekbones, grew into a magnificent noose-shaped mass that concealed his vest as far as the second button. He had started growing them before I was born. They were a shade darker than the iron gray of his hair, thinning now but in the best way, retreating in twin horns of pinkish scalp to the left and right of a healthy widow’s peak that topped the bulge of his forehead in the style of a Crow pompadour. He would never be as bald as Judge Flood. I looked to the colonel for an introduction.
He, too, had been extended a glass of cognac. He sipped at it, then touched his lips with the corner of a silk handkerchief and returned the latter to his breast pocket.
“Sir,” he said, addressing the host, “this is Page Murdock, deputy marshal for the federal court of Judge Harlan Blackthorne at Helena, Montana Territory. Deputy Murdock, allow me to present Senator Harold Firestone, late of the United States Congress and former Governor of the State of Illinois.” He paused, then added, for the other’s benefit, “Deputy Murdock is sympathetic.”
Chapter Seventeen
I sipped at the cognac while my host studied me with new interest. I could tell it was good liquor because it didn’t have much taste. The ideal spirit, I imagine, has no flavor at all. But that wasn’t what concerned me at the moment. I was wondering what a politician was doing away out here in the middle of nowhere and just what it was that I was supposed to be sympathetic with. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a subtle signal from Colonel Locke reminding me of his earlier admonition. I decided to trust him for the time being and kept my mouth shut.
“Tell me, Mr. Murdock,” said the senator. “What is it about this country that you despise? The greed for territorial expansion or the corruption in lofty government circles? Or is it something else? Something personal, perhaps? I am curious to know.”
I was glad I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I stood there like a plaster Cupid while he waited for an answer He was a couple of inches shorter than I and had to cock his bearded chin upward to engage my gaze. There was a hard glint in his eyes now, one of suspicion. Or maybe I was reading something into them that wasn’t there. The silence was growing threadbare when Locke plunged in.
“Deputy Murdock is a frontiersman, Senator. He feels that civilization is encroaching upon his world and blames Washington City for its systematic destruction.”
Firestone kept looking at me. “And how did you learn of our mission? It is supposed to be a secret.” This time I caught a genuine trace of distrust in his tone. The colonel had his work cut out for him.
“Deputy Murdock is a friend of a friend,” he said cryptically.
To my surprise that bit of nonsense seemed to satisfy the senator. I got the impression that he was eager to place his trust in me and was prepared to meet me more t
han halfway. “Very well,” he said. “I caution you to remain silent. As far as anyone else is concerned, I have retired from politics and am on my way to assume the supervision of my cattle herd in Montana.” Then he softened again, visibly, and smiled, crinkling the skin around his eyes. “I knew that you were in sympathy when I looked out the window and saw you boarding this coach. I said to myself, ‘Here is a man who will not accept abuse lying down.’ I assure you that you are not alone, and that when we reach our destination you will find many others who feel as you do.”
“He has a partner,” Locke put in. “A marshal named Hudspeth.”
He seemed unruffled. “He, too, is sympathetic?”
“He’s my partner,” I said. Now I was doing it. Five more minutes with these two and I’d be speaking in riddles for the rest of my life.
“Then he is welcome also.” He turned to Locke. “Place their belongings in the baggage car and see that they are made comfortable in the other coach.” Back to me. “We will talk more later, after we have both rested. Travel exhausts me. I am afraid that I am no longer the campaigner I was in my youth.” His eyes clouded over and I could see that he really was played out, as much as a man can get in this life. His complexion was sallow and the whites of his eyes were turning an unhealthy ivory around the edges. If he wasn’t dying I had never seen it before.
Locke kept silent until we were back outside and beyond earshot of the rolling palace. Then he produced a metal flask from an inside breast pocket and tipped it up, letting the contents gurgle twice before he lowered it and replaced the cork. He looked as if he needed it, so I didn’t blame him for not offering me a swig. He and Hudspeth would get along.
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