On Rails of Gold - A Prequel to Golden Heart

by P J Thorndyke

back upstairs. Thompson took the bottle of whiskey over to a table near the door, not wishing any more of the bartender’s company. It was nearly half past three. His man should be arriving any minute now.

  Mr. Timothy Caldwell, recently of the Confederate States Treasury Department had booked himself into the Grand Hotel two days ago. As Clay Thompson wasn’t likely to get within spitting distance of that establishment’s Brussels carpets and walnut reception desk, he had sent a boy with a note for Mr. Caldwell to meet him in Mickey’s Saloon.

  He would come. The man was desperate. After his embezzlement scheme had come down around his ears and nothing but a firing squad awaiting him should he remain in Tucson, he had done the wisest thing and taken to his heels. But there was nowhere he could go where Confederate agents could not find him. Not without the help of Thompson and his friends.

  The doors swung open and fell back on a thin, bookish-looking man with iron gray hair and a look of worry on his lined face. He wore a brown business suit. His nervous eyes scanned the saloon’s occupants and he appeared to be on the verge of backing out into the street when Thompson flicked a hand up in the air at him. He came over cautiously and slowly sat down.

  Thompson hailed the barkeep for a second glass which he filled. The nervous man took it and finished it in a gulp before looking over his shoulder.

  “Do you think we might sit with our backs away from the door?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  “Sure,” said Thompson and shuffled around the table so the man could sit next to him and keep his eyes on the door like a hare eyeing its only route of escape.

  He seemed to relax a little after this, enough at least, to get straight down to business. “I need you to get me out of Tombstone as soon as possible.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “I’m being followed. I keep seeing the same two men everywhere. They’re toughs. Pistoleers.”

  “So? This town’s full of them, so I’ve been led to believe.”

  “These two are looking for somebody. They have a contract. The government wants me dead and they’re not above stooping to hire the likes of these gangs in Tombstone.”

  “Alright, we’ll get moving. But I need to see some proof of your usefulness to us first.”

  “You seem a little reluctant to protect somebody who can be of invaluable service to your operation.”

  “Your value remains to be seen.”

  “I can make you rich! The Confederate notes in that safe equal two-hundred thousand dollars.”

  “I’m not interested in the safe. We’re not bandits.”

  “And yet you held up a train and robbed the government. And your presence here suggests that your superiors at least, are interested in me, even if you are not.”

  “I have my orders. Like any soldier.”

  “I can see that I’m dealing with a man with morals. You are to be commended…” he fumbled for a salutation and found himself short. “I don’t think you introduced yourself.”

  “I didn’t,” Thompson looked around the saloon to make sure that nobody was within earshot. “Lieutenant Clay Thompson of the Unionist Partisan Rangers.”

  II

  “The bitch has got stuck again!” Theresa Townsend yelled, hoping that somebody down in the carriage would be able to hear her over the noise of gears grinding to a halt. She cursed once more and slammed the mechanism into reverse before stopping it, pulling the safety lock and swinging down the iron ladder to the floor below. Men in dirty overalls shoveled loose earth and broken rock into carriages that were sent back down the tunnel on iron rails.

  “Shall I investigate, Captain?” asked Willy Lonton, poking his sweaty and soot-smeared face out of the engine room.

  “I’ll do it,” she replied. “Just keep the boiler ticking over.

  She spun the wheel lock on the side door and booted it open before hopping down into the cylindrical tube of rock with its newly carved walls looking like a spiral of shadows in the light from the cabin. She took a gas lantern and a long iron pole with her and walked up to the boring mechanism at the front. It was most likely a chunk of granite or schist that had jammed up the works. Again.

  She wiped her oily hands on her blue cavalry trousers and scooped her blonde tendrils of hair up into a bunch, tying them out of the way with a piece of string. Her hair was something of a talking point for the men under her command (although never within her hearing). She had copied the style from a Caribbean trapper she had met once whose long, stiff tendrils made him look like a lion with a mane. She found that in her line of work, short of cutting her hair short like a man, this was the only way to keep it from getting tangled, oily and in the way.

  The Worm had been her design. And it had got her husband killed for it. He had claimed it was his, damn him. But Archie had always sought to protect her. His refusal of a contract with the Confederate government had been their undoing and for the second time in her life the CSA had torn her world asunder.

  The first time had been when she was nine. General Baylor’s invasion of the New Mexico and Arizona territories had inspired much resistance from those who had no wish to see the Confederate flag flying over Tucson. Theresa’s father had been such a man and he had earned a death at the wall of a firing squad. Her mother, broken hearted and destitute, died that same year leaving young Theresa in the hands of an orphanage.

  She had only escaped that hell by her own determination and diligence. She had always been good at fixing things. She had begged, stolen and borrowed every book on engineering in Tucson and was a fast learner. Enrolment in any kind of education was out of the question for a young woman with neither family nor money but she never gave up. When she met the engineer Archie Townsend, he had completed her education and let her work on his own projects as a mixture of apprentice and lover. She had an idea that would revolutionize the revolution. But she needed funds to realize her dreams and Archie had provided them.

  His family hadn’t approved of the marriage but she didn’t care. He was a good man and had loved her, even bearing the ridicule that would otherwise have been heaped upon her for designing and constructing such an outrageously ambitious machine. He claimed that it was for tunneling out sewage works with huge potential for the mining industry. But Theresa had always had it in mind for the underground resistance movement. It had the potential to really take it underground.

  There was no need of the original Underground Railroad these days, but by tunneling underneath the Arizona deserts, Townsend proposed a real underground railroad that could ferry people and supplies back and forth right under Confederate noses. It was a project that would take years to realize. So far it stretched from near Tucson to somewhere below Fort Flagstaff.

  That area was strictly off limits on the surface. The government had some sort of special project underway at Flagstaff and only military personnel were allowed within twenty miles of the place. But deep beneath the sun-scorched earth and silent pine forests, the Unionist Partisan Rangers under Captain Townsend burrowed further and further towards the northern mountains where eventually they would connect with Unionist Colorado. That was the plan at least.

  She tried to lever a piece of granite from the boring head free with her pole. It didn’t budge and she cursed. It was well and truly jammed. It would take several hours to free and she was short on time. She headed back to the cabin and called for Willy Lonton.

  “Supervise the reparations,” she told him. “I’m late as it is.”

  “You’re heading out to the rendezvous yourself, Captain?” came the reply.

  She nodded. Ordinarily she would have sent one of her lieutenants to the drop zone but Jones was leading a reconnoiter mission into the deserts surrounding Fort Flagstaff and Thompson was pursuing a special mission to pick up the defector from the Confederate Treasury Department who could open the captured safe that was sitting in her office.

  Townsend walked the length of the Worm to the open exit at the rear. The whole mechanism was
like an accordion; a long, corrugated tube of iron rings connected by canvas. As the boring head dug deeper and deeper, each ring shuffled forward on caterpillar tracks to support the tunnel until the men and mechanicals behind could build the proper reinforcements. Track layers laid down the lines as fast as they could, having ample time to catch up whenever the Worm ground to a halt.

  Thompson clambered aboard a steam-powered locomotive that carried the dirt and rubble the Worm dug free back to various stations and depots along the way. The engineer blew his whistle and they headed off down the tunnel, leaving the Worm behind them in the darkness.

  The station Thompson alighted at was her current base of operations; nearest the tunneling program. She jumped down and headed for her office. There she changed into civilian clothes and took another locomotive on a different track to the gateway where her squad was waiting for her.

  The gateways were just that; portals to the world above. Most were abandoned mineshafts where steam-powered elevators carried people and materials to the surface. Commandeered by the partisans, these gateways had underground stables where horses were kept for journeys across the arid landscape above. Several of these horses were waiting with their riders at the point where the darkness of the underworld was melted by the light of the sun streaming in through the mineshaft. They, like Townsend, wore