The Lady and the Robber Baron Read online

  Steve had taken to accompanying Marianne into town once a week to shop for Jennifer and Chane. This afternoon they were riding the supply train, and Wendell French, who was one of the saner engineers, took it slow and easy. In spite of having to ride a train, Steve was looking forward to the trip. Marianne was shy and sweet with him. He caught her looking at him a lot. He caught himself looking back at her a lot.

  In town they separated to do their respective chores. An hour later, finished himself, Steve went looking for Marianne. He tried the railroad station, since they’d agreed to meet back there.

  The stationmaster pushed his green bib eyeshade back on his head and scratched his forehead. “You looking for Mrs. Kincaid’s little gal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I seen her go off thataway with her gentleman friend.”

  Thinking he probably meant Wendell French, Steve ambled off in the direction the stationmaster had pointed, though he couldn’t imagine what Wendell or Marianne would be doing in a wine house. As far as he knew, she didn’t drink anything stronger than the tea she shared with Mrs. Kincaid in the afternoons. Wendell preferred beer when he could get it.

  Steve stepped into the wine house and waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. Before they had, Marianne left the table where she’d been sitting and walked over to him, a guilty look on her pretty, flushed face.

  “Were you looking for me?” she asked so nervously Steve realized something was wrong.

  “I wondered if you were ready to leave.”

  “I’m ready,” she said, looking back at the man she’d just left. He was tall and lean with pale blue eyes.

  On the walk back to the work train, Steve waited for her to tell him who she was seeing, but she didn’t. Finally, he asked. “That your beau?”

  “No. That’s just Jason.”

  “Sure looks like a beau,” Steve said gruffly.

  “No. I knew him to nod to in New York. I don’t even like him, but he keeps finding me and hanging around. I was just being nice to him. I don’t think he has any friends.”

  Steve felt disappointed. Marianne was seeing another man. Somehow he’d hoped she was falling in love with him…

  Jason watched the two leave. He pondered the news Marianne had inadvertently shared. Number One was dead. Halbertson had hired him on behalf of Number One, so Jason didn’t imagine the money from the old man would continue to come. But he was still taking Latitia’s money, and he had a plan of his own forming in his mind to do her bidding.

  He thought about it from every angle, and he couldn’t see any reason on this green earth why it wouldn’t work. It would be as easy as eating berries off the vine. He’d take both the woman and the payroll. He’d be keeping his word to Halbertson, just in case that money did keep coming. And the old fart who’d died would still get what he’d wanted. His grandson would no longer be married. He’d be widowed. And free to marry Latitia.

  There was nothing at all wrong with his plan. It would make just about everybody happy. Especially him.

  Beaver Targle arrived in La Junta just in time to beat the worst of the cold front. He left his horse at the stable and walked to the saloon.

  The place was almost deserted. He tramped to the bar and waited. A sallow-faced young man got up off his stool behind the bar and walked toward him. “What’ll it be?”

  “Whiskey.”

  The man poured a whiskey for him. Beaver slapped his money on the bar and tossed the whiskey down. “You seen the three men who were fired from the railroad?”

  “Yep. Heard ’em, too. Reckon they’re not too happy with Kincaid.”

  “Know where I might find ’em?”

  “Heard they’re staying at the Prickly Pear Hotel.”

  “Thanks.”

  Beaver sent a messenger to the hotel with a note asking the men to meet him behind the livery stable. An hour later Rooster Burnside, Bobo Boschke, and Irish Jim Delaney walked up behind him and stood silent as he continued to throw knives at a paper circle he’d nailed onto the back of the barn.

  Beaver hurled three more knives into the circle. They landed less than a half inch apart.

  “Damned good knife throwing,” Rooster said, spitting tobacco off to the side.

  “Not hard when you can see Kincaid’s face—” He threw another knife, which landed dead center. “—right there!”

  The men laughed. Beaver gathered up his knives and led them away from the barn to avoid any extra ears hearing their business. Once alone, he made them a proposition.

  “Against Kincaid?” Rooster asked.

  “Damned right.”

  “Sign us up. What d’ya want us to do?”

  “Remember that trestle Kincaid is building?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, here’s what I’m thinkin’…”

  Jennifer rode out to see the old sheepherder and was surprised to find him gone. A young man had taken his place.

  “I’m Jennifer Kincaid, and this is Tom Tinkersley. We rode out to see the other shepherd. Do you know where he is?”

  The young man looked Irish. He had regular features, friendly blue eyes, big freckles, and coarse blond hair sticking out from beneath a cowboy hat. “He got stomach trouble and had to quit, so the boss sent me out. I got a good stomach. My name’s Jim Patrick.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jim Patrick.”

  He seemed honest and straightforward. But it nagged at Jennifer. The old man had been so friendly. She couldn’t imagine him riding away, even with a stomachache, without saying good-bye to her. She asked Chane about it, and he shrugged it off, saying, “This Patrick may or may not be telling the truth. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

  Chane hired Ezekiel Jessup as Beaver Targle’s replacement. Jessup was an old man now, but he’d cut his teeth on the Union Pacific, which had used Chinese laborers, too. He was short and leathery and plain-spoken. And he seemed to get along fine with Kim Wong, whose crews managed to stay well ahead of the track layers.

  With two hundred men diverted from other tasks, Chane finished the trestle in time to greet the arrival of the tracks just after the noon dinner break.

  “Lookee yonder,” one man yelled. “That stick bridge is pretty as a speckled pup.”

  Men laughed and added their comments. Reaching the bridge roused a feeling of excitement in everyone. Rails were satisfying to look back on, but not as exciting as this massive structure, almost a quarter of a mile long and towering fifty feet above the creek.

  By suppertime the arriving crews had laid tracks across the trestle and half a mile beyond.

  Jennifer arrived after the track layers and watched Chane walk the tracks over the trestle. With the setting sun behind him, Chane looked like a toy on the massive structure. She couldn’t believe they could do so much in such a short time. It looked like it should have taken years to build such a magnificent trestle. She swelled with pride in her husband.

  He came back in such a good mood, he took her across on a handcar just so she could experience it. From above it felt even taller than it looked.

  “It feels just like the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  Chane laughed at the comparison. “Thank you, but I can’t take that much credit.”

  “It’s wonderful!”

  “It’s only a temporary structure. When we reach Raton Pass, we’ll come back and build a permanent one, but this will do for a few months. It won’t hold up over the long haul, though.”

  She leaned over to look at the creek below. Chane held her hand to steady her. His hand felt different now, more callused and even more powerful in the effect it had on her. She glanced back at him. He was looking out over the river, lost in thought. She felt his heartbeat in his hand. It made her own heart beat faster. Chane must have sensed the change in her.

  “It’s time I got you back,” he said, leading her back to the handcar. “It’s cold out here.”

  She’d had no awareness of cold, only the heat and strength from his hand. He lif
ted her onto the handcar. For one second she thought he was going to kiss her. His eyes met hers, but then they wavered. She thought it a hopeful sign, though.

  The next morning, all the railroad crews gathered around to watch the first crossing. Jennifer watched from the observation deck of her Pullman coach, now parked on a newly laid siding.

  Locomotive Number 42 chuffed purposefully toward the first major trestle on the new Texas and Pacific line. Many small trestles had been built between La Junta and here, but this was the first to span a major canyon from top to top. Men put down their tools and cheered. She felt such pride in Chane’s accomplishment. How many men could build a trestle or a railroad? How many men would even take on such a task?

  She felt awed by Chane and wished she could share his moment of triumph with him. Unfortunately, he was riding the locomotive. Three flatcars of cheering men trailed the wood car.

  To get a closer look, she hobbled down the steps, mounted her horse, and rode toward the trestle.

  As she reached the edge of the canyon spanned by the trestle, someone yelled. The cry was taken up by others—clearly an alarm. Heart pounding, Jennifer scanned the canyon tops for Indians. Finding none, she scanned the riverbanks below and the trestle.

  Then she saw it. At mid-trestle a span of tracks appeared to be missing. It couldn’t be. Chane had walked those tracks himself only last night. But her eyes were not deceiving her. Number 42 was steaming toward sure disaster at twenty miles an hour with Chane aboard.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chane saw the missing rails and realized there was no way to stop the train in time, but there might be a way to save the men riding the cars behind the wood bin.

  Wendell French said the first cuss word Chane had ever heard him utter. Chane glanced over at him and knew he’d seen the missing rails, too. Wendell’s face had gone white with fear.

  “Break the train!” Chane yelled over the chuffing of the locomotive.

  “Break it?” Wendell stared incredulously ahead, his mouth hanging open.

  Chane grabbed the emergency brake, pulled hard, then jammed the throttle all the way ahead, and the train broke. He felt the difference in traction when it dropped its load. Grinning, because at least one thing had worked the way it was supposed to, he blew the whistle—a single short toot—to tell the brakemen on the flatcars to brake, if they hadn’t already.

  “Jump!” Chane ordered, reversing the Johnson bar. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop the train, even with the Johnson bar reversed. He’d given up all hope of stopping when he broke the train and lightened the load, but maybe he could slow it enough.

  The fireman didn’t wait for a second invitation. He took a flying leap out the open cockpit door.

  “Jump!” Chane yelled at his engineer. “That’s an order!”

  “Nope.” The thought of jumping off and leaving the boss on his train was not something he could do. In his mind there wasn’t anything more shameful than abandoning a perfectly good train. Kincaid was giving him an out. In some folks’ minds, the owner was more in charge than the engineer, but he just didn’t see it that way. Kincaid paid him four dollars a day. Firemen only got $2.40 a day. Sitting on the four-dollar side of the cab gave him responsibilities a fireman didn’t have. To his way of thinking, it was the engineer who said when it was time to jump.

  A second later the cowcatcher hit the open place on the rails, teetered for a moment as the leading wheels bit into the ties, and toppled to the right with a great groaning sound.

  Chane grabbed Wendell French, who looked too stubborn to save his own life, and jumped to the left with Wendell in tow. The force of gravity, trying to pull them to the right along with the locomotive, was too great. As the cab came up sharply, Chane put all his energy into lunging to the left, and that gave him just enough of an edge to clear the door. As they teetered in the doorway, the locomotive swayed back to the left, tossing them clear before it swayed back to the right and plummeted over the side.

  Fortunately for them, the train falling the other way left room on the trestle. Chane hit the trestle and landed on his feet, Wendell on his chest and belly across two overhanging ties. Just as Chane decided they had survived without even getting wet, the thirty-ton locomotive hit the trestle supports two-thirds of the way down and broke them like matchsticks. One minute Chane was standing on cross ties, the next moment the trestle was nosing downward, collapsing to his right. The loud creaking and straining of wood breaking up sounded like a dozen women screaming.

  Chane slipped off the side, grabbed one of the cross beams, and wrapped himself around it. Wendell slipped, caught a beam, and hung on. Chane was glad to see Wendell had come alive to the situation. The end supports, which Chane had taken great pains to sink into concrete, were holding. But the timbers, which were only held together with iron bolts, gave out. Now the whole center section of the trestle—thirty feet or more—went over.

  Chane rode his beam to the bottom of the canyon. He hit the icy water about ten feet from the locomotive and was driven under. When he came up sputtering, he saw Wendell landing with a splash a few feet from him. Pinned down by the shattered trestle, the locomotive sent up a cloud of steam where the firebox had gone under.

  They were both close enough that if the boiler blew they’d probably not live to tell about it. Waiting for the explosion, Chane looked up at the cars he’d cut loose. Wendell had been thrown out into midstream, a perfect target for a runaway car to fall on him.

  Fortunately, the rest of the cars had rolled to a stop only feet from the open rail.

  The men who hadn’t been on the train ran to the edge of the brush-covered canyon and looked down at them. Chane swam with the current to the nearest timber, hefted himself up onto the trestle, and jumped from beam to beam all the way to the riverbank. Looking back at the tangled mess, it seemed a miracle the trestle hadn’t fallen on them and pinned them under. The fireman had dragged himself out and stood shivering beside the swiftly running water.

  Chane patted him on the back. “You better get yourself into some dry clothes.”

  Dazed, the fireman nodded and walked away.

  Men ran down the bank and stopped beside Chane.

  “What happened?”

  What had happened looked so evident to Chane he couldn’t think what to say for a moment. He glanced over at the man who asked the question. He looked entirely serious and dumbfounded.

  “I just dumped fifty percent of our rolling stock into the river.”

  “How the hell did that rail develop a hole since last night?”

  Chane kicked at a piece of the firebox that had landed on the bank near his foot. “Damned if I know. Maybe we’d better post a few more guards.”

  Chane scrambled up the riverbank and stopped abruptly, about twenty feet from Jennie. The stretch of rocky ground between them looked too hard to negotiate on crutches. But she swung forward as if she didn’t see the obstacles. He caught her just as she fell.

  “You shouldn’t be down here with that foot.”

  “I thought you’d been killed,” she said, panting.

  “I might still be. Financially.”

  “Is it destroyed?”

  Chane struggled not to smile. Everything he could see within easy range was certainly destroyed, or as close as it could come with one try. He decided accidents were times when people ran around worrying out loud. He wiped a tear off the sweet curve of her cheek.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “We’ll fish the locomotive out of there, but it’s going to take some doing to fix this trestle. I expected to build a few trestles before we got to Santa Fe, but I didn’t think it would be the same one over and over.”

  Jennifer felt numb with cold. Chane was wet from head to foot. His dark hair dripped water down his face. His eyes were bright green from excitement. He’d almost been killed, and he looked like he’d been on a carnival ride. She didn’t know whether to be furious with him or to throw herself into his arms and sob.

 
She reached up and touched his cheek. In spite of just being dumped in ice water, he felt warm. “You need to get out of those wet clothes.”

  Chane turned to Wendell, who was slogging toward them in waist-deep water. “Did you see that trestle go down? I was hanging on for dear life. You couldn’t pay for a better ride than that. It picked up speed about mid-fall and threw me clear, else I’d probably be sucking some of the coldest mud in Colorado.”

  Jennifer couldn’t believe her ears. He had missed being killed by about a foot, and he was laughing about it. Men crowded around them. Wendell French plodded up onto the bank, shivering.

  Men patted French on the back and congratulated him on saving some of the rolling stock and a good many lives.

  “Wasn’t me. I’d like to take the credit, but it was Mr. Kincaid. He told me to break it, but I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I’ll know next time, though.”

  Jennifer felt weak in the knees. Number 42 had stopped sending up steam. Nosed headfirst into the river, it settled over on its side beneath a tangle of broken cross beams and trestle supports that had fallen.

  “Get the crane. We’ll lift her out before she starts to rust,” Chane said.

  “You’ll get some dry clothes on or else,” Jennifer said grimly.

  Chane scowled down at her, then at his clothes as if he had just seen them. He grinned at the men. “You men fish Number Forty-two out of there while we get some dry clothes on.”

  Men laughed. “That’s telling ’im. Good for her.”

  Chane lifted Jennie into his arms and carried her up the bank to the rocks where her crutches had been abandoned. He sat her down and glared at her wet gown. “Now you’re about as wet as I am. Are you satisfied?”

  “Not until you’ve changed.”

  He picked up the crutches, handed them to her, lifted her again, and carried her up the slope of the canyon toward the Pullman coach they shared. Jennifer felt a twinge of guilt letting him carry her, but the contact felt so good, she would never protest. “Are you limping?” she asked suddenly.