The Lady and the Robber Baron Read online

  “Do you notice everything?”

  “We’ll have Dr. Campbell take a look at you.”

  Campbell examined Chane and joined Jennifer in the parlor area of the car. “He’s fine. A bad bruise on that right leg, but it’ll heal.”

  Jennifer asked to view the damaged leg. The bruise had already turned blue. It was just above his knee and looked so bad Jennifer shook her head.

  “So, what now?” she asked.

  “I think I’ll build it stronger this time. An idea came to me as I was flying through the air. Fortunately, we’ve got two thousand men to do it, since no one’s going anywhere until it’s done. And we’re good at it by now. It shouldn’t take us long. And we’ve still got the foundation…”

  “Who could have done such a thing? And with us right here?”

  Chane scowled and shook his head. Jennifer picked up a towel and wiped water off his face. She had such a light touch that he wanted to just close his eyes and let her take care of him. He was pretty sure Latitia was behind these acts of sabotage, but he didn’t want to tell Jennie. Just thinking Latitia’s name caused his stomach to lurch. How could he have lost himself with her? “I don’t know, but if I catch the scoundrels, they’ll be sorry.”

  Chane dressed, and, barely limping at all, he walked back to the trestle—or what was left of it.

  Chane and Tinkersley questioned the men who had stood the last guard duty on the trestle the night before the accident, but learned nothing. No one seemed to have seen anything, and yet the trestle had been sabotaged. In addition to the missing rails, Chane found places where iron bolts had been removed in strategic places. That explained why the whole center section had fallen out that way.

  Tom recruited twenty extra men to work in security and told them to stand a twenty-four-hour guard on the trestle. He had them look each other over for about five minutes and told them not to let anyone near the trestle they didn’t recognize as a fellow employee.

  Chane wired Tom Wilcox for another locomotive to use in the meantime. He put Kim Wong in charge of rebuilding the trestle.

  Jennifer found Chane outside by the remuda, cutting out a horse. “Are you leaving?” she asked.

  “I’m going after whoever sabotaged my trestle.”

  That sounded dangerous to her. “Isn’t that Tom’s job?”

  “No, it’s mine.”

  “But he’s in charge of security.”

  “I say who does what around here, Jennie.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you going alone. Indians…”

  Chane grinned. “I’ve ridden alone before.”

  Jennifer shrugged. He looked so determined and stern, it made her heart race. “I know, but—” The look in his narrowed eyes stopped her. She could imagine him looking at his mother that way if she’d tried to kiss him in public after he’d felt himself too old for that sort of display. “Did you pack some food?” she asked instead.

  Chane slapped his saddlebags. “Take care of things while I’m gone, Jennie.” His gaze flicked over her, warning her that she’d said enough. He finished saddling his horse, pulled a couple of times on the cinch to tighten it, climbed aboard, touched the brim of his hat, and left without a backward glance.

  Jennifer watched him ride away. He’d told her to take care of things. That must mean something. Maybe he was beginning to actually trust her. Maybe he was seeing her value…

  Chane rode a large semicircle around the trestle site until he picked up signs of four horsemen. One of the horses had a distinctive rear hoofmark—a cloven hoof. Chane followed their tracks until dark. He felt sure enough of what he’d find that he could have just ridden into Timpas, but he decided not to.

  He tracked that cloven hoof all morning. By noon he saw Timpas just ahead.

  Chane circled around and came into town from the north, stopping at the livery stable first.

  A young kid, seven or eight years old, was mucking out the stalls.

  Chane flipped him a silver dollar. “Howdy.”

  “Howdy, mister.” Openmouthed, the kid turned the dollar over and over, admiring it.

  “I’m looking for a horse with a cloven rear hoof.”

  The kid put the dollar into his pants pocket and motioned toward the back of the stable. “Ain’t allowed to get involved in no trouble, mister, but you might take a look at that claybank back there.”

  Chane walked back and took a look at the claybank’s rear left hoof. It was the one.

  “I could just settle down and wait, or there’s another dollar if someone wants to tell me who rode him last.”

  “Don’t know their names, but there’s four of ’em staying at the Prickly Pear.”

  Chane flipped the kid another dollar. “Thanks.”

  At the Prickly Pear, Chane unsheathed the shotgun and tramped inside. Beaver Targle and the three men who’d quit on Jennie while he was away from camp sat around the potbellied stove, taking turns spitting into the spittoon. They stopped talking at sight of him.

  “Afternoon,” Chane said.

  Beaver Targle looked at the shotgun and stood up. “The hell you say. Didn’t expect to see you lollygagging around town. I can understand us out-of-work folks doing it, but not Mr. Highball himself.”

  “Someone sabotaged my trestle last night. I took a notion to follow the tracks, and this is where they led me.”

  Beaver Targle’s face paled, then flushed with color. “You trumping up some new charge against me now?”

  “Thought we’d take a little ride,” Chane said, raising the shotgun so it pointed at Beaver. The men still seated looked at one another, then at Targle, who had gone beet red in the face. They slowly came to their feet.

  “Out the door.”

  “Where’re you taking us?” Beaver asked.

  “Straight to hell,” Chane said, waving the shotgun in the direction he wanted them to go.

  The four men shuffled outside and across the street to the livery stable. Chane took their guns and knives before he had the boy bring out their horses. Beaver had more knives than any man he’d ever caught.

  “We got to saddle ’em,” Beaver protested.

  “No saddles,” Chane said firmly.

  They arrived back at camp before sunset. Chane prodded his prisoners up onto one of the flatcars, then climbed up after them. Hundreds of curious men gathered around.

  Jennifer hobbled down the stairs and rushed forward to watch. When she saw how stern and purposeful Chane looked, a chill raced down her spine.

  He faced the men and spoke loud enough for all to hear: “I followed tracks I found near the sabotaged trestle into Timpas. They led me to these four men. Is there anyone here who has any reason to believe these men are innocent?”

  No one spoke up. “Is there anyone here who has reason to believe these men are guilty?”

  “Hell, yes! Everyone knows they left here mad,” someone shouted. Jennifer recognized him as the fireman who’d been on the train with Chane when it went into the river. “I almost broke my damn neck jumping off that locomotive! I say hang the bastards!”

  Other men took up the cry. Chane called for quiet.

  “You got anything to say for yourselves?”

  Beaver Targle looked out over the sea of angry faces. He swallowed. “I demand a real trial.”

  “You had it.”

  Chane turned to Tom Tinkersley. “We’ll need four ropes and a stout tree.”

  Tom and three men got busy preparing the nooses. Other men put the four back onto their horses. Someone remembered an oak tree a few hundred yards from the work site. When the nooses were ready, Tom put them over the men’s heads, helped them onto their horses, and headed off toward the oak. Every man in Chane’s crew followed.

  Jennifer rushed to intercept Chane. “You’re not going to—”

  “Keep out of this, Jennie. Go back inside.”

  “I will not.”

  Jennifer saddled her horse and followed the men to the oak tree.

  Tom th
rew the ropes over a high limb and gave the ends to half a dozen volunteers. They wrapped the ropes twice around the tree trunk and prepared to use their weight to keep the men aloft once the horses were pulled out from under them.

  Chane took the reins of the four horses. He looked his prisoners over. They had wilted like cut flowers left in the sun. They realized they were about to die. The full knowledge of it was in their eyes. They’d probably learned their lesson.

  Chane raised his hand for silence. The murmuring stopped. Jennifer could hear the crickets, frogs, and birds. It sounded like any ordinary day. The men looked so stunned and listless, her heart went out to them. Her stomach felt like it was filled with rocks. If he hanged them, she would never forgive him.

  “Do you have anything to say before we hang you?” Chane asked.

  Silence. The silence stretched out. Jennifer hiccuped so loud everyone turned to look at her.

  “I have something to say,” she said. “They didn’t kill anyone. I think you should spare them.”

  Chane looked from Jennie to the men watching. “Does anyone agree with her?”

  A man near Chane nodded. “I know Boschke has a family that depends on him.”

  “So does Rooster,” another man said.

  Chane looked at the crowd, softened by the knowledge that these men had families. “I’m personally for hanging them,” he lied, “but these men have spoken up for you. I’m willing to commute your sentences, but I’m warning you. If I catch any one of you hanging around my railroad again for any reason, I’m going to hang you higher than a cottonwood blossom.”

  That night at dinner, Jennifer had to ask him.

  “You weren’t really going to hang them, were you?”

  He’d been planning to hang Beaver Targle, until he saw Jennie watching. He knew he couldn’t let her witness something like a hanging. With her soft heart, she’d never sleep again.

  “I expect I’ll have another chance.”

  Tom walked in with the mail. “Thanks,” Chane said, taking it. He shuffled through the mail, stopping at a letter addressed to Jennie. Something about the handwriting puzzled him. He had a feeling he knew that handwriting. He checked the postmark. Denver. A cold chill raced down his neck. He put the rest of the mail down and reached for a letter opener. It was from Latitia, telling Jennie about the debacle in Denver.

  Chane stopped breathing as he scanned the letter, which had obviously been written in a state of rage.

  Once he settled down from his shock, Chane couldn’t believe his good fortune. Since he’d returned from Denver, he’d paid no attention at all to the mail. The first time he did, he intercepted a letter that could have destroyed him in Jennie’s eyes. He searched for a match to burn the letter. Not finding one, he stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He would burn it later.

  All that day he kept looking at Jennie and trying to decide what gave him the right to keep something from her that would probably send her back to New York on the next train. It didn’t make any sense for him to keep the letter. It belonged to Jennie, but he could no more give it to her than he could have taken a knife and cut his left hand off.

  Two thousand men swarmed over the trestle and locomotive. Wendell and his crew took the locomotive completely apart, cleaned the mud and water out of it, and sent a rush order by telegram for the parts that the blacksmith couldn’t build on site.

  Wendell took advantage of the disaster to paint the locomotive to his own tastes. He painted the running wheels yellow, the stack red, and the cab blue. He beat out the dents and polished the brassworks to a fine patina. He painted a bold No. 42 in gold with a black border set off in arabesque curlicues. Men took turns admiring it and making fun of it, but Jennifer was charmed by it.

  Dr. Campbell took Jennifer’s cast off. She was horrified to see that hairs an inch long had sprouted beneath the cast. Her foot smelled like badly soured milk.

  She didn’t know which problem to tackle first, but she was grateful Chane hadn’t been there to witness the hideous sight.

  She borrowed Chane’s razor and shaved off the offending hairs. Then she scrubbed her ankle and foot with lye soap and finished it off with a bar of lilac soap.

  From then on she spent an hour a day exercising her foot. It was a slow, painful business, but it had to be done, to keep the muscles from freezing up any more than they already had. Dr. Campbell checked it once or twice a week. “You’re making good progress with that foot. If I’d seen that break on a man, I wouldn’t have given him any chance at all of saving that foot for anything except a boot rack. You might dance again after all.”

  The weather warmed suddenly and turned stormy. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and rain poured down for days, stopping all work on the trestle. The river was so swollen that Jessup was afraid to let men go out on the trestle for fear it would collapse under the raging torrent. Occasional trees smacked into it with a resounding crash, but still the foundation held. Work consisted of removing debris from the base of the trestle so it didn’t build up and take the bridge down.

  Even with all the bad weather, the crews managed to finish the heavily guarded trestle in record time. Chane walked the track and checked the underpinnings for dynamite or missing iron bolts before he let Wendell approach it with the new locomotive.

  This time, the train crossed with a little less excitement. Tinkersley stationed guards at each end and ordered them to turn over their guard duty only to men they recognized.

  The tracks reached Thatcher two days later, on payday. The residents were in a jovial, boisterous mood. Within minutes after the first work crews arrived in Thatcher, town officials wired La Junta. An hour and a half later the first excursion train from La Junta arrived, loaded with two hundred people and a boxcar full of beer kegs.

  The celebrants shook hands with the railroaders. Settlers and farmers who had come into town as word spread rushed forward and manned the kegs. Within minutes, water boys with long-handled tin dippers were ladling the brew for all comers, filling jugs, cups, pails, and even teapots.

  Within an hour many men were too drunk to walk.

  Chane and Jennie were commandeered by Mayor Ed Hadley and a group of local businessmen who had decorated the tree where the brand-new train station would someday stand with red, white, and blue bunting. People were yelled into silence, and speeches about the arrival of civilization were made all around. Chane declined to speak but was forced into it. He gave all the credit to his grandfather’s vision and his work crew’s sacrifices. He briefly extolled the hardworking men of all nationalities who cleared the trails and laid the rails.

  “Good speech,” Ed Hadley said, slapping Chane on the back. “You should run for governor.”

  Chane laughed.

  “You and your wife will stay at our house tonight. You’ve spent enough time in that little-bitty Pullman coach. I was on one of those once. It’s real fine until you get tired of everything being so little.”

  “Thank you, but we’re fine…”

  “I won’t take no for an answer. We’ve got a real nice room for you, and my wife’s a damned good cook. It’ll be a treat for us, and I promise you her cooking will make up for any inconveniences.”

  Chane doubted that. Very little could make up for being forced to sleep in the same bed with Jennie. He would refuse outright, except Hadley was president of the First National Bank. It was a hole in the wall in Thatcher—literally, as it was merely one desk and a safe in a corner of the mercantile store—but it was affiliated with the First National Bank in Denver, owned by Hadley’s brother. The railroad might need a loan before they reached Raton. Chane needed to keep on Hadley’s good side.

  At sunset the celebration was moved to the schoolhouse, where a fiddler was warming up. Everyone in the county seemed to be there. Jennifer couldn’t figure out how so many people could have been assembled on such short notice.

  The room smelled like every woman within a hundred miles must have baked either a pie or a cake. As they wa
lked in, Jennifer noticed a pretty young farmer’s daughter do a double take when she laid eyes on Chane. Her face lit up and she flashed him a look that clearly said she’d never seen a more attractive man in her life. Chane didn’t seem to notice.

  Ed Hadley insisted Chane and Jennie start the dancing. “Play a waltz,” he yelled at the fiddler.

  She had been off crutches for a week, walking gingerly. “You want to risk it?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  He’d been afraid of that. Chane held out his arms, and Jennie stepped into them as if she had every right to be there. Maybe she did. She was working harder than any woman he’d ever known. She looked as beautiful and fragile as ever, but her actions bespoke a spirit as fiery and determined as any pioneer woman who had ever braved the wilds.

  Touching her sparked off an undeniable fire in his loins. Of course, it wouldn’t take much. He got erections these days from just pulling up his trousers.

  Jennifer wasn’t all that sure she should be trying to dance, but she trusted Chane not to step on her injured foot. She felt certain the bone had knit weeks before Campbell had taken the cast off. Her exercises had restored a lot of its flexibility.

  Chane held her circumspectly and danced her into the middle of the room. The crowd cheered wildly and loudly.

  “You’re a hit,” he said, his voice oddly hoarse.

  “It’s your railroad.”

  Chane didn’t argue with her, but he knew it was her. With her shiny blond hair piled high on her head, and her amethyst satin gown bringing out the purple lights in her lovely eyes, she looked like a queen. It seemed the more he avoided her, the more beautiful she became.

  The cheers rose to a crescendo, and for a moment she looked like she might cry. Then she lifted her chin and seemed to regain control. They danced in silence. Other couples joined them on the dance floor.

  “Are you all right, Jennie?”

  “No,” she said, lifting her chin. “I saw that pretty young woman making eyes at you.”