4 Lives

by Jackson Lowry

  "Aww, boss, it's nothing. Really nothing," Jake said. From the way he refused to lock eyes, it was more than that. "Come on back to camp. We got some fried chicken left over from dinner. It's better 'n that swill we get slopped onto our plates by that jackass you call a cook."

  Mullins wheeled his horse about and walked back to camp, following Jake at a distance. When he reached the low campfire, the smell of freshly fried chicken made his nostrils swell. It had been a month of Sundays since he'd had a good piece of chicken. The General insisted on sending his crews beef and nothing more. That suited him just fine, only most of the beef had maggots in it that were tastier than the meat itself.

  He dismounted and hunkered down by the fire. It flared when Jake tossed a couple branches onto it. He warmed his hands, then saw the chicken stored away in a Dutch oven and knew what had delayed the crew.

  "How much did they pay you?" His question caused the whispers among the crew to fall silent. For the longest time only the whistle of the wind and the beating of his heart kept him company. Then Jake spoke up.

  "They woulda froze to death during the winter, boss. We was doin' them a charitable act."

  "How much firewood did you cut for..." He let the sentence trail off, wondering who would finish it for him. The giant of a man called Hick spoke up.

  "Twarn't more 'n a dozen families," he said.

  "What'd you cut? Five cords a family?"

  "Naw, we didn't have time for that," Hick said. "A couple cords, 'cept for the Dawsons. They got the cutest little girls."

  "Little girls," Mullins said thoughtfully. "About sixteen summers or so?"

  "Older," Jake said. "The oldest one's dang near twenty and—"

  "Fill the wagon with cut ties and get back to camp—the railroad camp—by sundown tomorrow."

  "But, boss, that's not possible."

  "I don't care if you have to chisel the trees down with your front teeth like a beaver. You get that wood to camp or don't bother coming back at all."

  He hesitated as he looked into the iron pot at the fried chicken. It had been so long since he'd eaten his belly rubbed up against his spine, but taking the meat would weaken his authority. As it was, he wondered if Jake or Hick or any of the others would show up with the cut ties. Pretty young girls out here in the mountains made for a powerful lure. Truth to tell, he was drawn back to Denver himself by invisible ties almost as strong as keeping his word. He had promised General Palmer to get the railroad over the mountains to the far side of the Rockies before winter.

  His word was his bond. But Isabelle kept him mighty warm on winter nights. He hadn't found out if she could fry up a hen, but that made for a touch of mystery.

  He heaved to his feet and glared at Jake. Without another word, he stepped up into the saddle and aimed his horse through the night in the direction of the tracks. Once he found them, he didn't need to worry. Just keep heading uphill until he got back to camp.

  He arrived after sunup, so groggy from the ride he almost fell from the saddle. Luckily the men were so hung over from their beer drinking no one noticed but Wilkerson.

  "Go rest up, boss," his assistant foreman said. "I can keep 'em moving."

  "What about the ties?"

  "Curing them is going to be a chore. It's too cold unless we put the pissed-on ties near a fire. That means we have to burn some of the untreated ones."

  "Go on and do it. Jake's coming with a wagon load of fresh cut wood."

  "If you say so, Gus." Wilkerson steered his boss toward their tent but paused outside it.

  "What's wrong, Terry?"

  "Is that trick with the piss and ties going to work? I never heard of any such thing in all my born days."

  "Who knows?" Mullins said. "Who the hell knows?" He staggered into his tent and flopped on his cot, asleep instantly.

  He came awake as quickly when a half dozen sounds collided. Mullins clapped his hands over his ears, then sat up. He tried to guess how long he had been asleep. From the sunlight sneaking into his tent, it had to be well past noon. Groaning, he got to his feet, hit his head on a coal oil lantern dangling from the ridgepole and stumbled outside, hardly in better condition than when he had entered hours before.

  From the far end of the tracks rose a cloud of dust. The final stretch of rock had to be blasted away to build the ledge for the tracks. But the rattle of a wagon drew him toward the supply tent. He poked his head inside, but Young was nowhere to be seen.

  A steam whistle sounded, signaling the arrival of the supply train. He went back down the tracks a ways and saw the train backing away. He waved to the engineer, who loosed another blast on the steam whistle. Then the narrow gauge engine disappeared down the slope, hidden by blowing snow.

  "We done it, boss."

  "What?" He saw that Jake and two of his crew sat in the wagon.

  "We done sawed up enough to fill the wagon and brung it 'fore nightfall."

  As good as his word, Jake had already begun stacking newly cut ties beside the pile of old ones. For a moment, Mullins tried to figure out what was wrong.

  "Hick, he sorta snuck away in the night," Jake said, seeing his boss' confusion.

  "So he's a farmer now?"

  "The Dawsons raise sheep. Never took that big galoot for a sheepherder, but he says it's worth it to smell like a woolly when he crawls under the blanket with his honey."

  Mullins stifled the comment that he had expected Jake and the rest to desert, too. He stood on tiptoe and looked over the pile of ties as his curiosity flared.

  "What's wrong, boss?"

  "Back there, down by the tracks? What is it?"

  "The crew unloaded supplies. You reckon we got any good food? Don't look like more than a mountain of barrels."

  "We're not going to be here much longer. A week, maybe, ten days. We have plenty of food—and beer." Mullins skirted the ties and saw forty barrels of creosote. "Why'd they bring us so damned much? The twenty barrels that were tossed over the side of the mountain would have finished the job. This is twice what we need."

  As he said it, the thought came to him that it was three times as much as necessary, and the D&RG had been billed for it all.

  "Young? Where the hell are you? Young!" Mullins' voice turned hoarse as he shouted for his quartermaster.

  "He climbed onto the train. I saw him in the cab with the bakeman and engineer," Jake said.

  "Why? Was the stoker ailing and they needed a hand?"

  "The bakeman was fine as could be, boss. It looked like Tomasson moving the shovel back and forth. You know him, always bragging on how he's never missed a day of work in more than five years, like that was something important. In all that time the General's not got a full day's work out of him." Jake looked at him curiously. "You been drinking that beer I heard the others talking about?" Jake dragged his coat sleeve over chapped lips in silent entreaty.

  "No, I just haven't slept enough. You know how to use a telegraph?" Jake's mocking laugh gave the answer. "Never mind. Somebody other than Young has to know how to send a message down to the General."

  It was a product of his foggy brain that he thought such a thing even for an instant. Young was the only one other than himself who could tally a column of figures to keep inventory, and Young was the only one who knew Morse code.

  The railroad needed men who could work twelve hours a day moving steel rails into place, then hammering in spikes. Telegraphy wasn't highly valued in most work camps.

  He jerked around when another explosion sounded.

  "That's not right, boss," Jake said. "I don't know nothing about blasting, but that sounded lame."

  Mullins already headed for the end of the line. Wilkerson and their blasting engineer stood there, arguing. Now and then the engineer pointed at the still solid plug of rock barring their way.

  "What went wrong?" Mullins demanded.

  The engineer turned and being mostly deaf as a post, shouted, "The dynamite's punk. It doesn't explode like dynamite. It slow burns like powder."


  "It got wet, maybe," Wilkerson said.

  "That don't matter," the engineer said. "I heated it up because it was all frozen overnight. Hell, I left it in the sun all the livelong day. It was a bad shipment of dynamite."

  "Wait, Terry," Mullins said. "He might be right. I think Young's been responsible for ordering too much of some things and maybe supplying us with shoddy supplies. That might be true for the dynamite."

  "Why?"

  Mullins thought on that and realized he had blurted out his suspicion without a good reason. He started talking and the answer came out.

  "He threw our creosote over the edge of the cliff, then ordered twice as much to replace it. It arrived just now. He's charging three times what the railroad should pay. He's getting paid off by the supplier's my guess."

  "This is cheapjack dynamite, that's for certain," the engineer said. "If he paid top dollar and got this"—he waved a dull red, papered stick around like a magic wand—"he stole better than twenty dollars a case."

  "With the creosote, he could make another forty or thereabouts," Mullins said. "And the beer. I never ordered the beer." He ran through the calculations there and knew Young overcharged the railroad a hundred dollars minimum for the beer.

  "I'll strangle him with my bare hands," the engineer said. "No, I'll ram this up his ass so far I can light the fuse when it comes out his nose!"

  "He hightailed it back down the mountain," Mullins said. "Nobody in camp can send a telegram to the base to have him arrested."

  "Arrested? The General will court martial him and stand him in front of a firing squad," Wilkerson said. "We're going to have to send a message on horseback down for more dynamite."

  "Maybe not," Mullins said. "How much is left? If we use it all, would that bring down the hillside?"

  "All? That's not the problem, Gus," said the engineer. "I don't know how it will blast. I need a quick, sharp detonation. If it burns slow or some doesn't go off, it might give us a daisy chain of an explosion. There's no telling what would happen."

  "If it all detonated like it ought to, well, boss, it might blow up the underpinning we intend to use as road bed," said Wilkerson.

  Mullins paced to the rock wall and then back, hands clasped behind his back and his gaze on the rocky ledge they had already fashioned. Snow pellets peppered his face as he walked. Winter was closing in. Ten days or even a week of work might be denied them by the insistent winter. He stopped and stared at the rocky plug and glared at it. The stone face mocked him.

  "Drill your holes. We'll use all the remaining dynamite to see what happens."

  "But, boss—"

  "Do it."

  "I'm not lighting the fuse," Wilkerson said. "Fire me, if you want."

  "Me, neither. Terry's right," said the engineer. "Setting off any of this shit is too dangerous."

  "Get the holes drilled. I want to blast before we have to do it in the dark."

  Wilkerson and the engineer exchanged a glance, then set to work. Mullins went to the end of the tracks and found a spot to sit down. The cold rock caused him to shiver. He still fell asleep in spite of the wind and the drilling.

  He came awake with a start when Wilkerson shook his shoulder.

  "We're ready. The holes are all tamped and the blasting caps set."

  "How much fuse?"

  "Three feet ought to get you away."

  Mullins nodded. Black miner's fuse burned at one foot a minute. He got up and saw that his men had drilled five holes. Fuse dropped from each down to form a yoke. A single fuse lead from the junction. Light the fuse, then run like hell. He took a deep breath and accepted a tin of lucifers from the engineer.

  "Get on back and be sure the men are safe," he told Wilkerson. "I'll be there running like the demons of hell are after me."

  "They might be," the engineer growled.

  Mullins shooed them away, then worked to get the match to light in the fitful wind. The magnesium-laden fuse caught when the tip of the guttering flame touched it. Nothing would put it out now. He foolishly watched for ten seconds as it burned along toward the yoke. Only Wilkerson's shouted warning got him turned around and running. He put his head down and pumped his arms. His legs propelled him forward fast enough to catch up with the engineer as he reached a stack of ties used as a shield.

  Mullins vaulted over and sat heavily, panting. Wilkerson and the engineer sat on either side as they waited for the explosion. And waited. And waited.

  "What happened?"

  The engineer peered over the top and cursed.

  "We got trouble bad," he said. "The fuse burned to the top sticks but they didn't go off. The blasting caps must be bad, too."

  Mullins closed his eyes and tried to keep his heart from running away with itself. This was the worst thing that could happen. Somebody had to go pull the explosive out and put new caps on the sticks.

  He heaved himself to his feet and walked around the barricade.

  "Give me new blasting caps," he said.

  "We can get the rifle and shoot at the dynamite," said Wilkerson. "It doesn't matter what sets it off as long as something does."

  "I've seen how good a shot you are. You missed that deer, and you were only twenty feet away. And you're the best shot in camp." Mullins held out his hand, took the new caps in his right hand and rushed out to finish the job.

  A gust of wind caused him to stumble. He fell facedown, his hands going out to break his fall. He heard men screaming behind him, then the fulminate of mercury blasting caps in his right hand went off and the world went away in a black rush.

  Augustus Mullins came awake with a start. He grabbed the side of the bed and found a soft feather mattress. The air didn't stink, and the soft light making him squint carried the warmer hues of a gas lamp, not a harsh coal oil lantern or unfiltered sunlight. More than this, he was warm. Trying to remember when he had been warm—and clean—made his head hurt some. He sank back into the bed, took a deep breath, then tried to scratch his nose to hold back a sneeze.

  That was when he panicked.

  Strong hands pushed him back and held him down.

  "It's all right, Mr. Mullins. Don't struggle so."

  He blinked away the last of the sleep from his eyes and saw an old man with muttonchops and a forehead like a washboard staring at him.

  "You're a lucky man."

  Mullins tried to push him away, but his arm wouldn't respond. He turned and stared at where his right hand should have been and found only bedclothes. Try as he might, he couldn't lift his right arm.

  "It got blown off by the blasting caps," the man said.

  "Who're you?"

  "Dr. Lloyd. I'm General Palmer's personal physician."

  "General Palmer?"

  "You've been unconscious for nigh on a week. The General had you shipped down to Colorado Springs where I could better tend your injury."

  Mullins struggled to put it all together. The fog over his brain came from opiates. They had drugged him.

  "You sawed off my hand?"

  "There was no need. As I said, you were lucky. The caps blew off your hand and took your arm above the elbow. The explosive seared the flesh or you might have bled to death. The cold helped, too. When shock set in you were already unconscious. That saved your life since no one in the camp had any idea what to do."

  "The blasting engineer?"

  "He wouldn't have known. Injuries are quite rare among such engineers, but deaths aren't."

  "Is he alert, Doctor?" The question came from a million miles away. Mullins tried to find the source of a voice he—almost—recognized.

  "Yes, sir, he is." Dr. Lloyd stood.

  Mullins tried to flop about but found himself too weak to do more than turn his head.

  "General Palmer."

  "Yes, Mr. Mullins. I had you brought to my home for recuperation. The good doctor says you will make a complete recovery." The General coughed politely. "Complete, that is, other than for your hand, of course."

  "Young,
sir. He—"

  "Your Mr. Wilkerson passed along your suspicions. The trouble has been taken care of. Young was being paid to order more material from a particular company than was needed and at exorbitant prices. You have saved the D&RG a considerable amount of money, sir. I thank you for that."

  "The tracks?"

  General Palmer laughed and sat beside Mullins on the bed. He patted his chest.

  "You need to recuperate and not worry about company business. I have every confidence in Mr. Wilkerson finishing the project. Thanks to you, only a mile more had to be laid after the rock was blasted free."

  "The dynamite?"

  "While I cannot determine if it can be laid at Young's feet purchasing old dynamite, it doesn't matter. The barrier was blown away and work has continued over the past week. The storms have held off, in your honor, I suspect. You have served the D&RG faithfully and well."

  Mullins held up the stump of his right arm. A thousand thoughts collided.

  "I won't be able to work anymore. Not missing a hand."

  "Perhaps it is time for you to retire and pursue another occupation."

  "What is there for a one-armed man?" Mullins couldn't keep the bitterness from his question.

  "Swinging a hammer and driving spikes is out of the question."

  Mullins laughed to hide the pain at the image of him trying to swing a ten-pound hammer with one hand. It was a backbreaking job with two good, strong hands wrapped around the handle.

  "I own a saloon in Denver. After hearing what you did with the surplus beer that Young ordered for the camp, perhaps managing the Emerald City would appeal to you."

  "Denver?"

  "Life on a railroad crew wears down even the best. You've served me well. Continue to do so. I need a man I can trust behind the bar."

  "I've never—"

  "I can't expect you to work for a salary. Forty percent of the saloon is yours, if you accept my offer."

  "I'd be an owner?"

  "I need you, Gus, and your honesty."

  "No, I won't do it."

  General Palmer's eyes widened in surprise.

  "Why not?"

  "Fifty-fifty. I can read and cipher, I'm honest as the day is long and I've got a few ideas how to make those worthless layabouts in Denver drink just a glass or two more of beer."