The Lady and the Robber Baron

by Joyce Brandon

  Work resumed on the railroad. Two weeks later they had spanned two small creeks and ten miles of track to reach Earle. At each town, they endured the festivities, the beer, the dancing, and the speeches. After each town it took Tom Tinkersley and his crew days to get all the men back to the job site.

  March was cold and windy, but not nearly as cold as the winter had been. There were times in the afternoon when it was almost warm. Jennifer oversaw care of the sick and injured, settled disputes, and intervened when injustices occurred. The men were accustomed to seeing her pop up wherever and whenever something went wrong. They much preferred her to Mr. Kincaid, who wasn’t half as pretty or one-tenth as patient with them.

  The Santa Fe Trail, which ran parallel to the railroad, was busy night and day now that the weather was moderate. Almost any time of the day, Jennifer could look up and see a rider, a lone Conestoga wagon, or a train of Conestogas. Occasionally a freight train of mule or ox teams pulling heavy loads moved noisily past. The trail was heavily traveled.

  A blizzard hit the last week in March and brought work to a stop. Men huddled in their sleeping cars, grateful for the wood they’d cut and stored. They had to keep a window open at each end of the car to avoid asphyxiation, and frost formed on the blankets of men sleeping nearest the slitted windows.

  During the blizzard, Chane rode the locomotive equipped with a heavy metal snow-plowing shield up and down the track to keep it cleared of snow.

  The first night of the blizzard, the sheepherder, Jim Patrick, came into camp seeking warmth. The next morning he found his sheep bleating in fear and pain, many stuck to the icy ground they’d huddled against to keep warm. Chane ordered a crew of men with shovels to cut them loose before they pulled holes in their woolly coats trying to unstick themselves. This was repeated for three mornings. Finally, the icy north winds subsided, the clouds cleared, and the sun came out.

  With the blizzard over the first week of April, the weather warmed and men returned to work with a vengeance. Chane said the only good thing about it was that it slowed Laurey down as well. Nights were still icy cold, but days grew as warm as seventy degrees in the sun. Men worked in shirtsleeves. Sounds of sheep bleating were commonplace. A whole new crop of lambs appeared as if by magic.

  Chane was more worried about security now that they were approaching Raton Pass. He told Tinkersley to hire more guards and to be ready for anything.

  Tom went into the nearest town and came back with four rough-looking men. He led them up to the Pullman coach and called Jennifer outside.

  “Mrs. Kincaid, ma’am, I’d like to introduce you to some new additions to our security force.” He pointed to a tall, lean sandy-haired man, the obvious leader of the foursome.

  “This is Jason Fletcher, my new assistant.”

  Jason’s pale gray eyes failed to match the smile curving his thin lips. Jennifer had a sinking feeling she’d seen him before.

  “Howdy, ma’am,” he said with a soft Southern accent.

  “How do you do, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “Don’t care much for the cold, but other than that, I’m just fine, ma’am.”

  “You’re in the wrong part of the country for a man who doesn’t like cold.”

  He chuckled softly. “Got that right, ma’am. Shore don’t know what I was thinking of.” His words were right and proper and spoken with respectful demeanor, but his eyes made her uncomfortable. They were as pale as water, and they didn’t seem to truly register her presence.

  The other men were introduced as Miguel Etchevarria, a small, dark-eyed Basque; Clem Stringer, wiry and lean as catgut; and Jake Blackburn, a soft, pale man with a whiskey tenor voice.

  She wouldn’t have hired any of them, but fortunately, they weren’t her problem. Between bookkeeping and inventory control for the cooks’ supplies, the doctor’s hospital supplies, and the track layers’ supplies, which were the most critical, Jennifer was busier than ever. Anyone who needed or wanted anything came to her first.

  Every morning she stopped at the hospital car, labeled the “bed wagon” by irreverent railroaders. By now almost every man working for Chane had been in the bed wagon at least once. Between hospitalizations and paydays, she knew most of them by their first names. Some days she felt certain she went there to get the attention she couldn’t from her own husband. Unlike Chane, who had been avoiding her assiduously since that night in Thatcher, the men’s faces lit up when they saw her.

  This morning she found only six men on the hospital’s twenty cots.

  “’Morning, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  “’Morning,” Jennifer said, stopping beside the first bed. “How’s your back today, Jethro?”

  “Comin’ along, ma’am. Comin’ along. I reckon I’ll be leaning on a idiot stick in no time.”

  Smiling, Jennifer walked to the next bed. “And how are you today, Russell?”

  “Better now, ma’am, but I fear I’ve broke my pick.”

  The men seemed to search out new ways to say things so she wouldn’t know what they meant. “Broke your pick?”

  “Coughed a little last night. Plumb discouraged me.”

  Jethro hooted. “Coughed all night last night, he did. Sounding more and more like a lunger.”

  “I’ll get Dr. Campbell to take a look at you. You may need to be sent to a warmer climate. I don’t think this cold is good for you.”

  She felt his head. It was hot and clammy. Consumption was a constant worry with some of the men. They just didn’t seem equipped to deal with the damp and the cold.

  Jennifer checked the rest of her patients, talked to Campbell about them, and sent Marianne over with a pot of Cooky’s hot chicken soup to tide them over until lunchtime.

  Marianne was a big help to Jennifer. Cooky was giving her lessons in the kitchen, and she was loving it. Every night at dinner, Marianne pointed out the dishes she had cooked and explained exactly how she’d done it. Now that certain basics had been explained to her, she was a natural in the kitchen.

  The Chinese were the most industrious and clever people Jennifer had ever seen. They fished along the banks of the river, even in the rain, and sold fresh fish to the other men. They set up fan tan and pai gow games and won their money away from them. They baked Chinese cookies and pastries and sold them to whites and Chinese alike for a penny apiece.

  Every week, Marianne took a pile of laundry to the Chinese. Most of their customers were non-Chinese who’d rather pay dearly for laundered clothes than wash them. Chane had laughed. “By the time we reach San Diego,” he said, “the Chinese will have pocketed all the money we’ve earned. Then they’ll go back to China and live like potentates.”

  The Chinese had even put together a band. Men with horns and drums and flutes played odd music that Jennifer found she liked. The wind picked up the smell of incense and spread it into every corner of the encampment. The non-Chinese complained at first, but gradually got used to it.

  Jennifer had less and less time for riding, but she couldn’t resist the new crop of sheep. At least once a day she took a break from her books to ride out to the sheepherder’s camp to take Jim Patrick something Marianne had baked and to marvel at the tiny, newborn sheep following their mamas as they grazed on the new grass. She loved their perfect, woolly bodies and their plaintive little bleats, but Tom Tinkersley didn’t trust Jim Patrick. He kept a close eye on the young man.

  “I imagine you get a little lonely out here?” she asked Jim Patrick.

  “Yes, ma’am. I about go crazy at times. If it weren’t for you and some of the men I get to talk to every now and again, I don’t know what I’d do…”

  Chane rode his horse from one work site to another. The train carried timber and ties from the sawmill at La Junta. In the past, on a good day, the tracks were extended southward by two miles a day. As they neared the Raton Mountains, the terrain got rougher and the men clearing the right-of-way labored with greater difficulty and more slowly. They were lucky to lay a mile of track a day, then a half m
ile.

  Trains arrived weekly with loads of rails and other needed supplies. Unfortunately, every load came with an invoice. Jennifer sat down to pay the bills, and this time she didn’t have enough money.

  That afternoon when Chane came riding in, she met him and took him aside. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Chane looked at her skeptically. “We’ve got lots of problems,” he said flatly.

  Jennifer ignored the comment. “If we don’t do something soon, I’m going to have to start sending our regrets instead of a check.”

  “Oh, that problem,” he said tersely. “All right.” Chane strode to the telegraph shack, which sat on a flatcar. Ever since they’d started down the rails, a crew had been stringing telegraph wire. The shack had been moved over so much rough terrain when they were carting it in by buckboard that the nails had shaken loose. Now it leaned to the left.

  Chester Sims was asleep at the telegrapher’s desk, a wooden door laid over two sawhorses. Chane shook him awake and dictated a message to his brother Lance in Phoenix, telling him to bring whatever he’d managed to raise so far as soon as possible. He turned to leave. “When you get the answer to that, come and get me. I’ll be waiting for it.”

  Chester sent the message, closed up the telegraph office, and climbed down from the flatcar. His stomach was growling with hunger. He walked to the mess car and lined up with others just coming in off the crews.

  “Hey, Chester, them wires too heavy for you?” Ed Bailey asked. “Tapping out that one message or so a day getting you down?”

  Chester scowled. It was boring enough sitting cooped up in that little rolling telegraph shack without having to put up with men like Ed Bailey. “Not the wires, but sometimes the information I have to carry gets a little weighty.”

  Ed stopped smiling. It pleased Chester to wipe that smirk off Ed’s face. Ed always thought he knew more than anyone else.

  “You got some important news?”

  Chester didn’t, but he hated like the blazes to admit it to Ed. “Let’s just say I know things I’d just as soon not know.”

  “Like what?”

  Men stopped talking to listen.

  Chester lowered his voice. He knew better than to disclose secrets, but once he got to talking, he couldn’t seem to stop just when he wanted to.

  “Financial things,” he said with heavy stress on the fi. Ed Bailey scowled and started to reply. Just then Mr. Kincaid walked up to one of the cooks and stopped to chat. At the sight of Kincaid, men fell silent.

  The communal dining car held a long table with a bench on each side. The plates were nailed to the table with one nail in the center of each plate. Chester shuffled up the steps, found an empty bench with a full plate, and ate his dinner in unaccustomed silence. Men with dippers refilled plates on request. Others with coffeepots refilled cups.

  Chester liked Kincaid, but he didn’t like the idea of his building a road using men who weren’t going to be paid for it. Especially since he was one of the men.

  His friend, Silas Brough, stopped beside Chester as he was heading toward the sleeping car. Behind them the waiters were getting ready to hose down the plates, tables, benches, and all. Chester was glad he’d eaten in the first shift. He hated sitting on a wet bench.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy? The cat got your tongue?”

  Chester never knew the answer to that. If the cat had got his tongue he wouldn’t be able to talk. If it hadn’t, it was a foolish question. “What would you do if you knew something important that might or might not be true?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like suppose Kincaid is broke and doesn’t mean to pay us?”

  “Well, I’d say a man who knew that would be a damned fool to keep working under those circumstances.”

  That night a hundred angry men cornered Chane and told him they were quitting.

  “You mind if I ask why?”

  Most of the men looked down at their shoes, tight-lipped, but one of the German immigrants stepped forward. “Ve hurdt you’ve gone bust, und ve harn’t willing to vork for notting.”

  “If that were true, I wouldn’t blame you. I have every intention of paying for every hour worked.” He looked from face to face. “But I’m not going to lie to you. I have a temporary shortage of cash. My grandfather asked me to build this railroad for him, and he gave me startup money, but then he died, and the probate has tied up the money I should have been getting.”

  Men muttered and looked at one another.

  “I’ve wired my brother in Arizona. He’s on his way here with money for the April and May payrolls, but he isn’t here yet. I’ve applied for loans at two banks in Denver. But even with government guarantees, the loans are slow in coming. I realize this sounds like so much smoke, but I swear on the Bible you will be paid in full, every man of you.”

  “But not this month, right?”

  Chane expelled a frustrated breath. “I may have a problem with April.”

  Men grumbled under their breaths and turned away. Other men had crowded around. Hundreds of men pressed in, trying to hear what was being said.

  Jennifer walked up, and the crowd parted for her. She stopped beside Chane.

  “What do you say, ma’am?”

  “You’ve been paid every month so far. You’ve been treated fairly. Mr. Kincaid may be having a temporary problem, but I know he’ll make good on every dollar he owes.”

  “That’s right,” one man said. “He’s treated us damned good.”

  Others agreed.

  “So, what’ll happen this month?”

  Chane looked around at Jennie. Her body slim and proudly held, her profile sharp and clean-cut, she looked like Joan of Arc. A man would have to be a dolt not to believe anything she said.

  “Well,” she said, looking quickly at Chane. “I haven’t discussed this with my husband, but the railroad gets one square mile of land for every mile of track it lays. We’re going to end up land-rich and cash-poor. Is there any man here who’d like to buy land with his wages?”

  “How would that work exactly?”

  Chane flashed an admiring smile at Jennie and explained it. She nodded at critical times. Chane noticed that every time she nodded, another man looked like he was ready to sign up. Finally he ended his speech.

  “What do you think, ma’am?”

  Jennifer looked at the crowd of men pressing around them. She knew almost every one of them by name. “I think it sounds like a wonderful opportunity,” she said honestly. “This is some of the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. Of course, I’ve lived in cities all my life…I suppose if you prefer cities to open spaces—”

  “Not me!”

  “She’s right,” a man said loudly. Jennifer recognized him as one of the men she’d nursed. There’d been days when she felt sure men got “sick” just to talk to a woman. She couldn’t blame them for that. Except for the prostitutes and when they were near a town, she and Marianne were the only ones within miles.

  “I’d do it in a minute,” she said firmly.

  “Where do we sign up?” a man yelled from the back. “That’s as good a recommendation as I’ll ever need.”

  Men cheered and laughed. “But what about us with families who’re waiting for money to live on?”

  Chane looked at Jennie. “We have enough money to meet most of the payroll,” she said. “Anyone who needs to be paid either all or part of their pay can have it.”

  “Good enough for me.” It seemed unanimous.

  “A month’s pay is about as much of a down payment as I’ll want to make, though,” one man close to the front said.

  Chane nodded. “Agreed. By May we should have solved this problem.” Either Lance would arrive with the money or his father would return from Europe—unless something was terribly wrong with his mother. That was a possibility he didn’t care to dwell on. Hopefully, they were having such a good time in Europe, they’d just forgotten they left him turning on the spit.

  Steve recog
nized Jason as Marianne’s beau, and his heart sank a little. He wondered if she’d talked Tom into hiring him. Steve had been on his way to see Marianne, but now he veered off in another direction. She didn’t need two men chasing after her.

  As the train reached each small town, Chane instituted rail service using backup engines acquired from his father’s railroad back East. By mid-April the towns behind them had regular train service using brand-new Baldwin locomotives. Unfortunately, the income from the new service was barely noticeable. And the service had its own costs in employee wages, coal, losses to rolling stock…

  Jennifer’s head spun with the problems. Shippers didn’t ship when they said they would. Sometimes they didn’t ship what she’d ordered. Other times they shipped to wrong destinations. Fortunately, she enjoyed untangling messes.

  Chane came back from the advance work site earlier than usual. He stuck his head in the door of the office car.

  “Jennie, are you going to work all night? It’s suppertime.”

  She looked up and smiled. “Welcome back.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “I’m designing a work sheet to keep track of our new payroll system so I don’t lose any information.”

  Chane climbed up into the car and leaned over to look at the new ledger sheet. He reached over and his arm brushed her shoulder. A trembling started in her heart.

  “Nice,” he said, checking the headings. “Looks like it’ll work.”

  The trembling within grew worse. She knew he was waiting for her to say something, but her mind had stopped working.

  Chane knelt beside her, tapped the ledger and looked over at her. The look on her face mystified him. Her cheeks looked unnaturally flushed.

  “You’re tired, Jennie.”

  “Am I?”

  “I’d say so. You’re carrying a full load.”

  “I like doing it,” she said weakly. Having him so near was sending unspeakable longings through her entire body.

  “Even so, it’s still a load. How’s the money holding up?”