Hell on Wheels (A Fargo Western #15)

by John Benteen

  Will Whitmore stopped. His face was tallow-colored, his voice shaky. “Jesus, Fargo, you always twist the tiger’s tail like that?”

  Fargo grinned. “It wasn’t show-off, Will.” He sobered. “First place, I had to size up the opposition. Second place, if I’d let Gregg play his little games, you’d have been throwin’ the money you paid me down the drain. If I’d backed down, Blaine and Morrison would have kept right on doin’ what they’ve been doin’. Now, the way it is, likely we’ll have a breather for a day or two. Blaine will report to Morrison and get his instructions before he makes another move, and when he does, he’ll move a lot slower than he would have otherwise. On top of which, I put at least one of the C & W’s good men out of action for a spell. All in all, I’d say it was worth that button off your overalls.”

  Whitmore shook his head as if all this were more than he could cope with. “Well, I’ll say this. You don’t waste time. You earn your pay from the minute you hit the cinders.”

  “I didn’t come here for the mountain air. Now, let’s see the rest of your lay-out.”

  Chapter Five

  The locomotive was a Baldwin compound Mogul 2-6-0, which, Whitmore said, meant that she had two pilot wheels, six drivers, no trail wheels. She had backed out of the big Cayuse Mountain Line train barn at Felspar at five in the morning, with a string of empty ore cars and a caboose behind her tender for the thirty mile run to the Cayuse Mountain Mine, with Will Whitmore himself at the throttle. Now, at not much more than thirty miles an hour, she was chugging along a track bed that, as Whitmore had said earlier, was enough to make a mountain goat puke. It didn’t help Fargo’s stomach either. There were only two things in life that genuinely frightened him. One was the thought of becoming old and sick and helpless. The other was high places.

  The fear of heights was something he had never totally conquered. He could face cold steel, hot lead, thirst, hunger, and death; had faced all those things in countless forms. But height made his palms sweat and his gut knot in a way that nothing else did, and how anybody could scale a mountain cliff as some idiots did, just for the sheer hell of it, was something he had never been able to understand.

  Courage, though, was learning to face what scared you and go on with what you had to do, scared or not. And because he operated wherever fortune took him and always earned his pay, he had worked in high places before and had never let them slow him down. Still, he could see where making regular trips along this route to the Cayuse Mountain Mine would be no picnic, and he also saw why the management of the C & W had refused to build a line over such terrain—and his admiration grew for Will Whitmore, who had somehow met the challenge.

  Because most of the Cayuse Mountain trackage ran along the flanks of towering mountains, up steep grades and down. And because, as Whitmore had told him, it was cheaper to trestle than to fill and grade, the line was supported almost entirely by timberwork, built up from steep slopes. From the rear platform of the caboose, Fargo could look up, on the right, at a sheer mountain wall towering over him. To the left, there was nothing but space for hundreds of feet, as, its wheels invisible, the caboose seemed to float over deep, timbered valleys, like an airplane. Fargo had ridden in an airplane once—Pancho Villa’s army had had several—and he had emerged shaken and swearing never again. But this was the next thing to it, and whether he lived or died on this job, he knew he would pay for every dollar he made in cold sweat.

  Sometimes though, the train hit a grade where he could see at least a margin of solid earth on both sides, and once there was a brief run along a valley floor that was almost like a vacation. Then a chug up a slope again, and a mountain rising head-on to block their passage. This was, Whitmore had said, the Hallelujah Tunnel. Half a mile long, it had been blasted out of solid rock, then shored and timbered; its name had come from the shout of the first man to see daylight after that bitter, grueling construction job.

  Here, according to prearrangement, the train stopped. Fargo swung down off the platform of the caboose, where, with field glasses, he had been watching every foot of track ahead of the backing train. Now he glassed the slopes up and down, and then, after Whitmore had dismounted from the cab to join him, they walked into the tunnel together, Fargo carrying his rifle and with his shotgun slung.

  It was dark and chill inside the narrow passage through the mountain. The track ran straight down the center of the tunnel and space was scant on either side. Fargo frowned. “I’d hate to get caught by a train in here. There’s not room to get out of the way.”

  “We didn’t build it any wider than we had to,” Whitmore said. “But we cut holes in the wall on each side, niches, every hundred yards, just big enough for a man to dodge in if a train catches him. Once in a while some miner that can’t stand it anymore tries to walk from the Cayuse Mountain Mine into town along this track; we have to allow for them and for our work crews.”

  He gestured. “Anyhow, we’ve just got it open again. Two weeks ago, I brought a train barreling in here to find the whole track blocked with rock, the whole roof of the midsection yonder had come down.” His voice, strange in the confinement of the long stonewalled hole, rasped. “Not a cave-in. Dynamite. Got the train stopped just in time; as it was, the caboose hit the rock and derailed. It took us a solid week, working day and night, to get it cleared, and it cost a fortune. Now it’s back in order, but I got no guarantee that one of Hawk Morrison’s crew won’t blow it again tonight, for that matter. Or maybe blow a trestle. Or just cave in the mountain up above us. Anything to stop us running.”

  “I see. Let’s roll on. When we get to where the wreck happened, you show me that, too.”

  He mounted the caboose and Whitmore climbed into the cab. Slowly the train began to roll. Entering the tunnel, it picked up speed. Fargo stepped back inside the caboose and trapped, pungent, stifling smoke swirled around him. He did not re-emerge on the platform until they were in the open air again.

  At thirty miles an hour, the train backed on toward the mine, through country even more dizzying in its ups and downs than before. After five or six minutes, it slowed and stopped again, and once more Whitmore joined Fargo.

  “There,” he said, walking to the edge of the roadbed.

  “Judas priest,” Fargo said.

  He was looking three hundred feet straight down into a mountain valley. There, at the foot of a sheer drop, like prehistoric animals caught in a trap, or like stranded whales, lay a locomotive, tender, and a string of six empty ore cars.

  “That was five weeks ago,” Whitmore said grimly. “I was running three crews and three trains then. It really takes that many to make six loads from mine to smelter a day on account of switching and loading and unloading time. Anyhow, Anse Macon, the hogger, was heading for the mine, making time, first run of the day. The track was clear, just been inspected the night before. All of a sudden, I reckon the whole train just sailed out and over before they knew what happened. Killed ’em all. We brought their bodies in on mule-back, but no way ever to get the engine and the cars out. I guess they’ll still be there fifty years from now. Anyhow,” he said bitterly, “somebody had taken up a fishplate and pried out a rail. In the middle of the night, it had to be. And when he did that, he murdered those six men just the same as if he’d shot ’em in the back with a pistol. Between that and the tunnel cave-in, he’s come damned close to murderin’ the Cayuse Mountain Railroad, too. Losin’ that third train and crew really crippled me.”

  Fargo looked at him. “You can’t buy more rolling stock, hire another crew?”

  “Oh, I can hire the crew. Could buy another engine and some cars, comes to that. But no way to get ’em in here, up to Felspar from outside. They’d have to come over C & W track.”

  “Oh,” Fargo said. “And Hawk Morrison wouldn’t stand for that.”

  “No. He’s got me sealed off tight. Anything I lose, I can’t replace. The smelter sells me coal. Otherwise, I’d either be burnin’ firewood or out of business long ago. All I can hope is t
o keep runnin’ with what I got until Hawk and the C & W give up.”

  Fargo looked both ways along the track, at the towering cliffs above, the sheer drops beneath. He shook his head. “Whitmore, you ain’t got a chance in hell,” he said.

  Will Whitmore’s face went pasty. “Fargo, that’s what I hired you for, to—”

  “Like I said, you ain’t got a chance in hell to keep on running that long. Not with this layout like it is. Will, a hundred of the best gunmen in the world couldn’t guard this stretch of track for you, not workin’ day and night. You hire a hundred, put ’em out here, I’d guarantee you, I’d still have you out of business in twenty-four hours.” He jerked a thumb. “You give me two mules and a hundred pounds of dyno and plenty of detonator wire and some rope, and I could come in cross country, drop my charges from above by rope, detonator wires attached, back off, push a handle and—” He gestured with his palms up. “Boom! A mile of track gone. I could do that three times in the night, three different places five miles apart, and keep it up as long as you could keep makin’ repairs.”

  Whitmore rubbed his face and his shoulders sagged. “Then what’s the answer? If you give up, what hope is there?”

  Fargo grinned. “I didn’t say I was givin’ up. I said the answer wasn’t for me to run around like a chicken with its head cut off here and there tryin’ to stand guard.” His grin went away; his eyes were hard. “The answer’s this, Will. When you got people tryin’ to put you out of business, you put them out of business first.”

  Whitmore stared at him. “You can’t put the whole C & W out of business.”

  “No. But I took out Slasher Gregg yesterday. I can take out Rawhide Blaine. And, in due time, if Hawk Morrison ain’t got the message, I’ll take him out. Meanwhile, don’t be upset, Will, if you don’t see me patrolling with a gun around your yard or ridin’ shotgun on these ore trains. I’ll have other fish to fry.” He slipped his thumb beneath the shotgun sling. “Now, let’s move on.”

  ~*~

  The rest of the run to the mine was made without incident, and as they backed into the yard there by the ore tipple, Fargo was impressed. Located on a broad bench on the craggy, rock-scabbed flank of a rugged peak, the Cayuse Mountain mine was a big layout, with barracks for the workers, commissary and mess halls, administration buildings, shafts and stopes skeining through solid rock down into the mountain’s guts. From the bench, Fargo could see for miles across the mountains, their flanks furred with big timber, marked here and there by scrapes of logging or mining operations. He could see the deep, plunging valleys with occasional open meadows; the bright glint of isolated blue-water lakes. The mine’s only link with civilization was that tiny thread of railroad track. Everything that came in and went out traveled over that, and for a layout this size, that line would amount to a fortune. One big enough for six men’s lives already to have been sacrificed. One big enough for Morrison to have tried to kill him to keep him from defending it.

  While the empty string of ore cars was shunted beneath the tipple and the full one loaded, Fargo pondered what he had seen this morning. The tunnel, Whitmore had said, had been blown in the center, which meant from inside. That was a demolition job that took considerably more skill than simply lowering a bundle of dynamite onto a track from above with a rope. Those tunnel walls were solid, hard rock. To drop enough rubble to take a week to clean and reshore, a man would have to know precisely how and where to place the charges. In fact ... Fargo turned, stared at the mine face. A man would have to have the skill of a hard-rock miner to do the job in the way Whitmore had described it.

  Fargo strolled around the bench, observing every facet of the mine’s operation with interest. The tracks on which ore carts were brought to the tipple were, he noted, the same gauge as the Cayuse Mountain Railroad’s tracks. There was no trace of mules around, no stables for them. Then, even as he watched, a small, but powerful vehicle appeared hauling two carts of ore hitched on behind. Fargo stared at it with curiosity. When it parked and the driver got out, he tapped the man on the shoulder. “Friend.”

  “Yeah?” The miner turned.

  “I’m new, just hired on with the Cayuse Mountain Railroad, over here with their train. I’ve done some minin’ in my time, but I’ve never seen a thingamajig like that. Mind tellin’ me what the hell it is?”

  The driver grinned pleasantly. “Sure. That’s the latest thing there is. We call it the Iron Mule. Special welded chassis, train wheels, a low gear ratio and a Ford truck engine, the most powerful they make. Steers like a truck and got acetylene headlights for workin’ in the dark. Back her in and pull out frontwards, and she’ll drag two carts at a time. Three times as fast as a string of mine mules, and she don’t kick or leave anything to step in. Look her over if you want to. I got to go find my foreman.” He strode off across the bench.

  Fargo took out a cigar and tucked it unlit between his teeth as he walked around the vehicle. Something was working in his mind, factors beginning to add up. Then a powerful hand seized his shoulder, pulled him around. “All right, stranger,” a deep voice rasped. “That’s mine property. You git away from it.”

  Fargo jerked free, found his eyes level with those of a big man in his early thirties, rugged, muscular and with something strange on his face and in his eyes that Fargo recognized at once: he’d seen it in the countenance of soldiers too long in combat. It was the look of a man who faced death every day, from sun-up to sundown, of a man with guts who had used his courage almost too freely, and now was coming to the end of it. Such men, Fargo knew, were dangerous and irrational. So he merely stepped back a pace and said, without rancor, “Friend, I wasn’t doin’ any harm.”

  “Unauthorized personnel don’t monkey around with Cayuse Mountain gear. Who are you?”

  “Fargo’s my name.”

  “Never heard of you.” But something shifted in gray-green eyes, and all at once Fargo knew the man was lying. Whoever he was, he stood there, dressed in miner’s clothes and high-laced boots, thumbs hooked in belt, raked Fargo with his gaze and went on, “What are you doing here and why you carrying all those weapons?”

  “I’ve hired on with the railroad. You might call me a special guard.”

  “I might call you a lot of things. Okay, you take those guns off and stow ’em in Whitmore’s caboose. I won’t have you walking around with all that hardware. One of ’em might go off by accident.”

  Fargo took the unlit cigar from his mouth. “Mister, my guns don’t go off by accident. And suppose you tell me who it is givin’ the orders?”

  “Glad to,” the big man said, smiling coldly. His eyes glittered: yes, Fargo thought. He was not quite sane. “I’m Emmett Ridge, and I’m chief powder man for Cayuse Mountain. And we got a lot of explosives around here and I won’t have any triggerman puttin’ a bullet in a box of caps by accident and setting off the whole shebang.”

  Fargo nodded. Now he knew that wild look in Ridge’s face. The man indeed faced death every day. As chief powder man, it was his responsibility to locate and set and detonate the shots in the Cayuse Mountain shafts. Routinely, he’d daily handle dynamite, TNT, blasting powder, and all the detonators and fuses that went with them. And Fargo, himself a first-class demolition man, knew the strain of that. You could handle a thousand sticks of dynamite, and never have an accident; the thousand and first might have sat on end too long, with all its nitroglycerin accumulated in its bottom, or maybe somehow it had been frozen and the nitro crystallized. Either way, it could go the minute you moved it half an inch. Or you could crimp in five thousand blasting caps with safety; the next one might blow your hand off when you picked it up. There were misfires, too: and nothing was more sickening than a shot that didn’t go. Somebody sooner or later would have to investigate the dud charge and find out what was wrong. There was nothing more hair-raising than such an investigation, made in the full knowledge that some latent spark or quirk of powder might blow the whole charge just as you reached it. That was what Emmett Ridge did fo
r a living, and obviously it had caught up with him.

  Fargo, instead of taking umbrage, only said, “You’ve got a tough job, friend.” He strolled away and put the guns into the caboose. Then he stood on the platform, watching Ridge.

  Ridge paced up and down beside the Iron Mule for a moment. He stared at Fargo, and Fargo stared back, rolling the unlit cigar across his mouth. Presently Ridge turned and strode away. Fargo took out a match, snapped it on his thumbnail and lit it. He had smoked it almost to the end before the train was ready to pull out.

  Headed for Felspar, the train ran forward, Whitmore at the controls. Fargo, shotgun slung, rifle cradled, rode the cowcatcher, watching the track ahead. To a man accustomed to the speed of a running horse, thirty miles an hour, perched on this narrow platform, the wind slamming him in the face, one arm cramped around a stanchion, was a hell of a pace. There were times when the engine’s nose seemed to be shooting straight out into space; Fargo’s stomach knotted and he gulped. Then, following its pilot wheels, the locomotive would swing back in again and he’d relax a bit. But, he thought, God help him if he ever fell. The engine and the following cars would cut his flesh to mincemeat.

  Nevertheless, he responded as always to the challenge of danger. With life in the balance, his blood ran swiftly. He was wholly, completely alive, almost jubilant. He could see now, as the big engine pounded through the mountains, whistle moaning, how railroading got into a man’s blood. It was, like being a soldier of fortune, a man’s job.

  For all the mixture of fear and excitement, he watched the track and he watched the slopes above, field glasses shielding eyes from the driving wind. It was well he did, because he saw the gunman before the gunman fired.

  They were almost into Felspar when it happened. Here the sheer cliffs above the track faded into rolling hills, rubbled with rock on their crests. Fargo caught the flicker of motion almost by accident through the glasses; the glitter of sun on metal. Instinctively he flung himself around the front of the locomotive to the step just beside the boiler. At the same instant, there was the mean, familiar whine of a slug ricocheting off of steel.