Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  “I need my handbag,” she said, starting the climb toward her seat.

  Something told Regan they didn’t have time. All at once he had the impression her remark had been a warning, almost supernatural, of impending disaster. It was still snowing and had been since the train left the track. Who knew how much snow hovered over them?

  “We’ve got to climb out, Maryellen,” he said, grabbing her by the waist. “Now!”

  Thinking he was joking, she was about to turn and push him playfully away, then she saw the look in his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not sure . . . just a feeling.” He held out his hand and, hesitating only an instant, she took it.

  The car was heeled over at a severe angle, making it easy for him to lift her to the sill and help her out the window. She rolled into the snow, quickly sinking, and fought to get her feet under her. When she righted herself, the snow was around her waist.

  It occurred to Regan that Maryellen was now in danger, should the car list any further downhill, of being crushed if it tipped. “Get out of the way now,” he called through the window, gesturing toward the rear of the car. He didn’t want to make an effort to get through the window himself until she was out of harm’s way, lest his movements jostle the car. There was no way to tell how precariously it was balanced, or how small an action might upset it.

  Maryellen, perceiving the danger, slogged her way through deep snow toward the rear of the coach, grateful she’d decided to put on slacks that morning. By the time she was able to call that she was in the clear she was gulping air, but couldn’t seem to get enough to fill her lungs. The muscles in her lower back and thighs felt about to tear, and she was bathed in an icy layer of sweat.

  The echo of her cry hadn’t died when Regan hurled himself out the window, but the hood-string of his pullover caught the brass curtain bracket as he passed through, fetching him up halfway out the window and nearly choking him.

  The scene was so cartoonish that Maryellen laughed spontaneously, but a sudden muffled thunder from the hill behind the train stuffed the laughter back down her throat. The wall of snow from which the earlier avalanche had calved had broken loose and, preceded by a wave of icy spume, was crashing down the slope.

  “Regan! Get out!”

  From his perspective, Regan couldn’t see what she could, but the look in her eyes foretold calamity with alarming clarity. Calm reason fell victim to fear and his fingers – suddenly each with a mind of its own – tripped over one another in his frantic effort to disentangle himself. As the solid wall of snow struck the uphill side of the car, strengthened by a rush of adrenaline, he pulled the cord. The bracket snapped loose from its moorings as the car – offering little resistance – lost its tenuous grip on the track, was absorbed by the white-blue maelstrom, and swept down the hill.

  Maryellen watched in stark horror as the disaster played out in slow motion before her eyes. At the end of its long ride down the slope, the terrifying white wave, bristling with the jetsum it had uprooted up along the way, burst over the edge of the cliff in a silent crescendo and fell to oblivion in the river below.

  When the icy cloud settled – its crystals scintillating in the multicolored light of the dying day – the wreck of the coach was revealed, wedged against two quaking pines that sprouted from the face of the cliff just below the edge. Against all odds, as if to test itself, nature had planted them there long ago. Now, against all odds, in brash defiance of physics and gravity, they had not only survived the avalanche but, bending only slight at the force of its impact, held the front end of the car firmly in their branches, the remainder rested on solid ground.

  For a frozen moment Maryellen stood there, paralyzed by an internal maelstrom of conflicting emotions until the most over-whelming of these fought its way to the surface and impelled her to action. Running, rolling, and falling through drifts that were alternately waist or ankle deep, she threw herself down the slope. In her alarm, she misjudged her speed and would have hurtled off the cliff had she not flung herself on the ground and grabbed the stump of a young aspen as she passed by.

  “Regan!” she screamed, clambering to her feet. She closed the narrow gap between herself and the coach in a few strides. Miraculously, it was more or less upright, and only the window Regan had fallen through earlier was open. “Regan!” she said, poking her head inside.

  The seats Regan had loosened were heaped at the cliff-end of the car; the curtains, stove, lanterns, and luggage piled around them like pagan offerings. There was no sign of him.

  “I’m going to demand a refund.”

  She spun toward the voice, which came from behind her. “Regan!”

  Caked in snow, soot, and blood, Regan stood, bent over with his hands on his knees, his breath coming in short gasps. Overcome with relief, Maryellen leapt at him, he crumpled, they fell and rolled a bit, coming to rest against the rear carriage. “I can’t believe you’re alive!”

  “I’m beginning to wonder.” He should be smarting considerably, Regan thought, but at the moment, with a very attractive girl more or less laying on top of him and kissing his forehead and cheeks, he felt pretty good, all things considered.

  In the end they determined that Regan had broken an arm and at least two ribs, one of which was close to his heart. Cause for concern.

  “I need to go get help.”

  “I appreciate the thought,” said Regan, “but it’s not very practical.”

  “But . . . ”

  “The snow’s way too deep, and it’s getting dark.”

  “I can follow the rails . . . ”

  “One,” he said, holding up a finger, “you can’t see them.”

  “But . . . ”

  “And two,” he interrupted, “you’d freeze to death.”

  “But . . . ”

  “We need to make do here for the night.” He looked up the mountain, which the avalanche had swept clean. “It’s pretty much stopped snowing, so we don’t need to worry about . . . ”

  “But, your arm. Your ribs . . . ”

  “As long as I’m still, I think I’ll be okay.” She didn’t like the way he grimaced when he drew a breath. “That means you’re going to have to do most of the work, I’m afraid.”

  Using her hands, she dug them an igloo in a deep drift in the lee of the coach, dragged him inside as carefully as possible, and crawled in beside him. When the work was done, her heart was beating so fast she didn’t think she’d ever get to sleep.

  The next morning, she woke to the sound of someone calling.

  “Someone’s here!” she said, clawing her way outside.

  The sharp light of a brilliant, clear-blue morning revealed a world of startling clarity. Far up the hill toward the grading, six men were walking toward them on snowshoes.

  She crawled inside the snowy cocoon. “Regan! They’re here!” She shook him lightly. “They’ve come for us.”

  There was no response.

  “Regan?”

  She took off her glove and touched his cheek. It was deathly cold. Her hand snapped back reflexively. “Oh, no!”

  In an instant she was outside, lurching blindly toward the rescue party. “He’s down there! He’s hurt . . . I think . . . I think.” She grabbed at the first man to come within reach, a lanky fellow with a handlebar moustache and a greasy, slouch felt cowboy hat, and pulled him down the hill. The rest fell in behind and, a moment later, were at the mouth of the hole. She was about to drop to her knees to go inside when one of the other men gripped her firmly by the shoulder.

  “Dis is Doc Dunham,” he said in heavily accented Mexican-English, pointing at the sharp-cheeked older man beside him whose closely-cropped head was crowned with a gray fedora that had seen better days.

  “Somebody in there, miss?” said Dunham.

  Maryellen nodded and wrung her hands. “Yes. Regan . . . his name’s Regan.” She was sobbing.

  Dunham nodded at one of the other men, who took her in charge.

  “
He was all right last night,” said Maryellen, as Dunham got down on his knees and looked in the cave entrance. “That is . . . he was . . . he was breathing and everything.”

  “Regan?” said Dunham, his eyes taking time to become accustomed to the deep blue darkness of the cave.

  “He has some broken ribs, I think. And his arm . . . ” Maryellen fretted. “I think his left arm’s broken.”

  The men milled around for a moment, awaiting Dunham’s instructions. He said something, but his voice was too muffled to make out the words. The Spanish-speaking man bent down to listen. “He wants to know what happened to his face.”

  “His face?”

  “His face,” said the man, gesturing at his own face. “There’s cuts on it.”

  “Oh, yes. He cut it on the . . . he fell through the window.”

  The man relayed the message.

  “That was before the avalanche,” Maryellen continued to herself. Her teeth had begun to chatter. Another man, the youngest in the group, took off his coat and put it over her shoulders.

  “We’d best get you warm. August, you think you can get a fire goin’?”

  “You ask can I get fire goin’?” said August indignantly. He was either Swedish or Norwegian. “I can start a fire with two blocks ice an’ spit!”

  Nobody bothered to reply, and the man trudged off toward the nearest stand of trees where, within minutes, he had built a crackling fire.

  “Come get warm,” said the young man.

  “I’d rather stay here in case . . . ”

  “Doc’ll take care’ve him. You won’t do your friend much good froze to death.” He removed an extra pair of snowshoes from his back and lay them at her feet. She seemed unsure for a moment, then placed her hand on his back to steady herself and stepped into them.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, as he guided her toward the fire.

  She told him.

  “Mine’s Conllan,” he said. “Tiff Conllan.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Tiff?”

  “Hell of a name, ain’t it?” he laughed, nudging her forward. “Short for Tiffin, which is another hell of a name. Family thing, you know?”

  Maryellen stared at him as she staggered forward. “You were named for another Tiffin . . . from Ireland.”

  It was the young man’s turn to stop. “Now, how’d you know that?”

  She turned toward the snowdrift. “He told me.”

  “Oh, Regan? Sure. Makes sense,” said Tiffin, smiling as they resumed their march toward the fire. “He’s kind’ve obsessed with the family, for some reason. He’s had us up nights askin’ us questions. Talkin’ and talkin’ . . . ” He laughed. “You’d think he’d find a more interestin’ family than mine. We just raise sheep, like half the folks ‘round here. I guess if you been with him any time, you know more about my family than I do.”

  “How can you say that? What about Thomas, and Sadie, and the beating he took on the Crimea, and . . . ”

  “Whoa, girl!” said Tiffin, settling her by the fire, “I said he asked us questions. He didn’t tell us much. Said he was waitin’ to get the whole story, then I guess he was going to write a book or something and give us a copy.

  “How long ‘til you’ll have some coffee goin’ Gus?”

  “Vater’s alretty on,” said the man.

  “That there’s August Holm.” Tiffin seated himself on a log behind her. “An’ if you hear somebody says he’s just about the best thing to hit Chama since sunrise, it’s either him, or somebody he paid, or someone who don’t know better.”

  Holm pushed a branch a little farther into the flames and winked at Maryellen. “He’s crazy jealous.” He pronounced the word ‘chellus’, and said it with a wicked grin. “They all are.”

  Maryellen conjured a weak smile.

  “The wiry little guy in the glasses is Art Daggett. Those are the Torrez boys, Joe and Calico, L.J. Knee, he’s the brakeman, and Ben Hindelang . . . ” he said, pointing a stick at the engineer as he stepped up to the fire, “he’s the one got you into this mess.”

  “Damn flanger,” said the engineer, puffing to a sitting position.

  This was a new word for Maryellen. “Flanger?” she repeated, hoping it wasn’t a western cussword

  “That’s the rig that keeps snow clear of the tracks,” Tiffin explained.

  “The air hose broke . . . ”

  Tiffin, with a twinkle in his eye, was about to interrupt.

  Hindelang held up his hand. “Don’t let some trouble-makin’ pipsqueak try to tell you different. Air’s what pushes the blades for’ard . . . ” He formed a wedge with this arms.

  “Like a snowplow?”

  “Jus’ like a snowplow, miss. You got it. But if the hose gets a hole in it, or separates . . . ” His arms collapsed across his chest.

  “No pressure, no plow,” Maryellen deduced.

  “That’s the story frontwards, backwards, and sideways. And you,” he said, flipping off his felt hat and flicking Tiffin on the head with it, “whatever you’re about to say, keep it to yourself.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “We were down at the section house in Cumbres. Young Ken Lively, the agent’s boy, fell off a ledge out takin’ pictures of this damn stuff.” He sifted some snow through his fingers. “Busted himself up a bit, so C. R., his dad, calls down to Chama for Doc and the rest of us follow Old Maude up here . . . ”

  Maryellen had a hard time imagining an old lady making her way through the snow. And why would several able-bodied men follow her rather than clear her way! “Old Maude?”

  Tiffin sniffed a laugh. “That’s what they call the rotary plow.” He could see by her expression that she was unenlightened.

  “Another kind of snowplow,” said August. He tipped fresh ground coffee into the boiling water and its aroma immediately surrounded them. He removed a wax paper package from his leather bag. “Got bacon and biscuits, too. Figured if anyone was alive up here, they might be peckish. If not, well, I’d have breakfast after prayers.”

  “Normally,” said Tiffin, “there’s section crews up and down the line to help out with things like this. But, given it’s been such a hard winter on ‘em, and for the last couple weeks it looked for all the world like spring was here, they were given ten days off at half pay.”

  “Chust happen to be the week we get tiss blastin’ freak storm,” said August.

  Tiffin, looking up from his breakfast, was first to see Doc Dunham approaching, wiping his hands on a towel. August passed him a cup of coffee. “Well?”

  “He’s gonna be all right,” said Dunham. “Lost a lot of blood durin’ the night. Had a hole in his back the size of a dime.” He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger.

  “In his back! How?”

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” said Dunham, settling down with his coffee.

  “What about Regan?”

  “Oh, the boys’re riggin’ up a stretcher. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  She told him their story. At the end of it Doc, Tiffin, and August were looking at one another with raised eyebrows, nodding and grunting meaningfully. “But I can’t imagine how he got a hole in his back,” she said in conclusion.

  Dunham emptied his cup into the snow. “Ain’t important. Probably got it rollin’ around in the coach.”

  It was the Swede who put the feelings of the assembly into words. “You’re mighty lucky, I’d say. Bot’ of you. You, that you din’t get crushed. Your friend . . . ” All eyes followed as he looked out across the slope at the coach hanging six feet out over the cliff. Had it gone two feet one way or the other, hitting either tree – or neither instead of both – there would have been no stopping it. A palpable shiver raced around the little circle.

  Over the next few days Maryellen discovered that, while Doc Dunham was a fair hand at the “rough work” of medicine – even if he didn’t believe in anesthetic for “simple stitches” – his wife, Margaret, was responsible for the healing. She’d bee
n Dunham’s nurse before they got married and recalled her former skills to transform the little dining room in their log home into Regan’s private ward. There, with an occasional assist from her daughter, Aggie, who wasn’t indifferent to the presence of a handsome young man in the house, she soon had him up and around.

  On one of her visits, Maryellen overheard Dunham, out on the porch, fussing at his wife about the care she was lavishing on the boy, remarking that she didn’t tend out on his other patients the same way. “Because, J.I., they’re drunks who ought to know better. If they kept out’ve saloons they’d stop gettin’ their heads bashed in,” Margaret replied calmly, gathering an armload of wood for her cook stove. “And,” she added meaningfully, “you’re not the best of ‘em by a long shot.”

  Without further comment, Dunham stomped down the steps, presumably either to go fishing – which he did all times of the year – or to Pat Kelly’s bar, another activity with no set season.

  For her part, Maryellen took an apartment at Foster’s Hotel while waiting for more permanent accommodations to open up and, in a very short time, was slammed up hard against the fact she was no longer in New England. Having assumed the wild west was a thing of the past, she was surprised to learn, on only her second night in town, that that particular revelation hadn’t made it to Chama. Appalling sounds which, to her, might have issued from the seventh circle of hell, filtered up to her room at all hours of the night from the hotel’s saloon. The third night she was startled from her bed by the sounds of yelling in the street below her window. Leaning out, she nearly witnessed a gunfight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chama, New Mexico

  March 9, 1957

  “An actual gunfight!”

  The look that Regan and Mrs. Dunham exchanged on hearing the news flash was not lost on Maryellen. “What?”

  “Well,” said Regan, rearranging his arm in the sling. “I guess I’d’ve been pretty shocked, too, a few months ago. But, Chama is kind’ve . . . ” he cast an appealing look at Mrs. Dunham.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Margaret. “I gave up tryin’ to figure it out years ago. It is what it is. Mexicans, Spanish, Anglos, Indians all tossed together like some kind’ve disunited nations, dowse ‘em with liquor and they get their heads up their cabooses an’ run around bustin’ each other up. And a good time was had by all.”