California Gold (45 page)

Flame from the burning cushions ignited a shirt cuff and his vest. He fought to stand up, slapping out the fire. Passengers, bloodied and screaming, crawled or stumbled toward the ends of the car. Up and down the train, the screams multiplied.

The worst was still the girl’s. What was her name…?

He roared it. “Kirstin!”

“Here! Who’s that? I’m caught—help me!”

He had trouble reaching her. Choking smoke filled the aisle. He had to crawl and clamber over the berths that now formed a floor for the car. Tearing the curtains off the girl’s berth, he found her huddled in tangled bedding, hands jammed to her throat, blue eyes round and wild. He yanked the covers until he unsnarled them, freeing her. What had really imprisoned her was her own fright.

“Reach up. Arms around my neck. Quick.”

She obeyed. Coughing, he lifted the girl out of the berth and teetered there, trying to decide. The end of the car? No, fire from his seat had leaped across the aisle. He found the partition separating the girl’s berth from the next. “Kirstin, hold on to this wall.”

“Don’t leave me here, oh please don’t.”

“I won’t—be quiet.” He ripped down the curtains of the berth across the aisle; it was now above him. He braced himself, then crawled up into the berth and beat at the window with his elbow. Turbulent red smoke almost hid the girl beneath him. He struck the glass again.

Again.

Again—

The window broke and he shielded his eyes and face, but not in time, the glass slashing his cheek and opening a long cut on his forehead. A fleck lodged under his left lid, a needlepoint of incredible pain. “Oh, Christ.” He blinked and blinked, felt tears well in the eye. Then, mercifully, the needle was gone.

Fire spread rapidly now, brightening the car’s interior. “Kirstin, take hold. I’m going to pull you up and boost you through this window.” She saw the ragged glass all around the window frame and cowered.

“Come on,” he yelled, and grabbed her wrist too hard, hurting her. Never mind a broken bone; this was a question of her life. He wedged himself in the berth and somehow dragged her up. Then he put a hand under her hip and shoved.

“Somebody out there help this girl!”

Voices, then heavy footfalls, a man running along the side of the overturned car. “Yes, coming. Here, girl—”

In a moment Kirstin was safely in the man’s arms out there in the firelit murk. Mack gulped sweet damp air, listening to a bedlam of questions, the crackle of fire, the wailing of the frightened or injured. He reached through the dangerous glass-toothed opening to find a hold and lift himself to safety—

He heard a voice, a feeble male voice. Someone else trapped.
Save yourself
, something said to him, but he didn’t listen. He dropped back inside. The smoke was acrid, almost opaque. Covering his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, he heard the faint plaintive voice again.

“I can’t move. I think my leg’s broken.” Mack’s face poured off sweat. The cry came from the other end of the car, from a berth beyond the flames that created a hot bright barrier across the aisle, just where he’d been sitting.
I don’t want to do this,
he thought.

He knuckled his eyes, dragged a blanket from a berth, folded it, and wrapped it over his head for protection.

Then he held his breath and ran toward the fire barrier, and through.

Mack rested in his double bed in the cottage. He’d designed the room with a wide window beside the bed; that way he could always wake to the sight of the derricks pumping money from the ground.

His arms and shoulders were dressed with cotton batting over a paste of oxide of zinc and ground acetate of morphine, the latter for pain relief. Roller bandages held the batting in place. He’d been lucky—no burns worse than first-degree, and those over a limited area. A smart young doctor up in the mountains had minimized the burn damage by soaking him in cold water in a horse trough, then applying household molasses.

His eyelids tended to droop; that was the opium tincture the local doctor prescribed for pain. Mack was ashamed to lie helpless in front of visitors. Sickness was unmanly.

Nellie sat on a chair, Bierce behind her. They’d shown up with no advance warning. Nellie looked tired and uncharacteristically pale, but Bierce was his elegant self in a spotless ivory suit and vest and a flowing bow tie.

Bierce laid a small book on the coverlet. “That might amuse you while you recuperate.”

Mack picked it up:
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.
“Yours?”

“Yes. The usual portions of grue and vitriol. Read it when you hate the world.”

“Not right now,” Mack said. His tongue felt thick and clumsy. “I’m thankful to be alive.”

“You’re a hero,” Nellie said. He’d rescued the girl Kirstin, and then the man trapped in his berth. Nellie’s tone conveyed her pride.

“If you don’t think so, Uncle Willie’s minions will make sure,” Bierce added.

“Are you two down here to write about the wreck?”

“Naturally,” Bierce said. “Rushed to the scene by another special train from the beloved SP. Frankly, it’s a relief. For weeks I’ve been flogging the Crime of the Century, as our proprietor christened it: A sleazy little Sunday-school superintendent at Emanuel Baptist did away with two of his female pupils. I can find nothing else sensational or titillating to say about the undergarments of the deceased. We came on from Tehachapi to see how you were. Tenderhearted Nell insisted.”

She reddened, embarrassed. Bierce ignored her. “That was an unscheduled work train, you know, with an inexperienced engineer. Further, when word of the train passed down the line by telegraph there was no one at Tehachapi to receive it. The agent was malingering in some deadfall.”

Mack hitched higher against the bolster. “I noticed the station was empty. I also saw a green signal that should have been red.”

“They still don’t give a damn about the safety of passengers. We’ll roast them with our usual crusading verve.”

“Not that it’ll do a lot of good,” Nellie said. “Fairbanks is already paying off the passengers. The one man who was killed worked for them.”

“The conductor,” Mack said.

“Yes. He was crushed when the cars overturned. His widow filed a damage suit in San Francisco, but we had a telegraph message this morning saying she’s withdrawn it.”

“Why would she do that?”

Bierce sighed. “What a naif you are, Mack. I expect she realized that silence and a pension are superior to justice and poverty.”

“Bastards.” Mack stretched to take Nellie’s hand. “I’ve said it before: I’ll help you nail them one of these days.”

She kept her hand just out of reach. After a nervous glance at Bierce she cleared her throat. “I hope to be able to do a much better job of that in New York.”

Mack’s stomach twisted. “You’re going?”

“Not immediately. But I’ve made the decision. Mr. Hearst is off in Europe with Tessie. Before he left, he sent our business manager, Charley Palmer, to New York for preliminary negotiations. There are four newspapers for sale. The
Times
,
Advertiser
,
Recorder
, and the
Morning Journal.
Mr. Hearst plans to buy art objects in Europe, and then come back and buy one of those failing papers.”

“Oh, the
Journal
, by all means,” Bierce declared. “It’s so cheap and racy. They call it the chambermaid’s delight. Onward and upward with the bright banners of journalism.”

“When is this likely to happen?”

Nellie said, “Before the end of the year, I should think. Mr. Hearst wants me to be the sob sister. And keep an eye on Mr. Huntington’s tricks. At the moment, Huntington’s other priority besides the harbor is the railroad’s debt to the government. It goes back to the days of construction in the sixties. Huntington wants Congress to cancel the debt, or reduce it drastically. That would be fraud on a mammoth scale. It’s disgusting.”

“It’s the dear old Southern Pacific.” Bierce patted his various pockets one by one. “Here a legislator, there a legislator—soon you have exactly what you want.”

“Ambrose,” Mack said, “would you leave us alone?”

Surprise erased his sardonic smile. “I beg your pardon?”

“I need to speak to Nellie privately.”

“Certainly. If I hear any sounds of unbridled lust, trust me to remain discreet.”

He turned away. Nellie watched the back of his jacket with visible desperation. She didn’t want to be alone with Mack.

Humming, Bierce closed the door.

Mack wasted no time on polite preliminaries. “Nellie, forget New York.”

She dabbed at her stubby little nose—a nervous, unnecessary gesture. She wasn’t a woman given to showing anxiety. But he saw it in her eyes now.

“And do what, Mack?”

“Marry me. I’ve bought a fine piece of land in Riverside—”

“More property?” She laughed in a hollow way. “You’ve become a spendthrift.”

“I’m rich. I’m making investments. Don’t change the subject. The property is beautiful, up on a hill in a subdivision called Arlington Heights. Orange groves cover most of the acreage. I’ll show it to you when the doctor lets me out of this damn bed.”

She folded her hands and sat still, gaining control.

“What is it?” he said. “Carla Hellman? Would I be proposing if she meant anything to me?”

Nellie shook her head. “Afterward, I was so ashamed of what I did. I only flared and walked out because I do care for you. Deeply. Your proposal is tender, and lovely—”

“A man covered with white goo and doped with opium isn’t tender or lovely.” A pause. “But he means it.”

She struggled for her next words. “I know what I’m about to say will offend you. No, stronger—you’ll probably despise me. I’m truly sorry. I have to be honest. When you ask me to marry you, you’re asking me to be less than what I can be with Mr. Hearst.”

“I’m offering you my life, damn it.”

“Yes, but in exchange for taking mine.”

“That’s a hell of a way to look at love.”

“I think—” Her eyes flooded with tears of confusion, something else completely unlike her. “Oh, I think if you really understood me—if that was part of your love—you wouldn’t even ask.”

“My God—no, I don’t understand your crazy ideas. Who put them in your head? Who?”

The shout brought her to her feet, red-cheeked. “The world, Mack—the world. This is almost the twentieth century, not the Dark Ages.”

He fought his temper. “Stop it. All that matters is this: I don’t love anyone else; I never will love anyone else.”

“Nor I. But you love your own ideas too. They’re grotesquely old-fashioned. You love what’s in that wretched little book you worship. Look at you, running wildly up and down the state snatching up farms, orchards, spending as if you’re going to die tomorrow morning…”

He sat up straight in bed. It hurt, but no more than his anger over the way this was degenerating. “What the hell’s wrong with ambition? I know people who admire it in a man.”
Carla, for one.

“Nothing’s wrong with it, Mack, unless it comes before everything else—unless it builds a wall.”

“What about
your
ambition? What about New York?”

Her rueful smile said he’d hit a fair target. “Two walls.” She gave a sad little shake of her head. “I don’t know, Mack. We’re right for each other—absolutely right—and at the same time, all wrong.”

“Nellie, don’t do this.”

She rushed to the bedside and bent to give him a kiss. The moment their mouths touched, he seized her shoulders. She fell sideways, her hip on the bed, bracing her leg and surrendering to the embrace. “Oh, you’ll hurt yourself…” As he kissed her more fiercely, she shuddered and closed her eyes.

The deliriously emotional kiss went on, sweeping away all the arguments and objections.

But not for long. As Nellie pulled back for air, Mack saw the lifted chin and determined eyes he remembered from that first day on the pier. He released her and let his hands fall.

“I’m sorry, Mack. The city desk…” She rose. “They’re expecting telegraphed copy tonight. Ambrose and I have a meeting with the sketch artist. Come see me in New York.”

Mack’s hazel eyes held hers, and the stoniness of his stare said it would never happen.

“Mack, please…”

Nothing. Nothing but that stare. She left the room quietly, and he heard her murmuring with Bierce, then the front door. Shortly the
clip-clop
and rattle of the buggy faded away beneath the familiar sound of the pumping derricks. He turned to the sunlit window, blind now to the sight of the wells. He’d never felt so unwanted, miserable, furious, defeated.

E
ARLY IN JULY, HELLBURNER
Johnson returned from a month of roaming the Baja down in Mexico. He rode in through the arch and found his partner in the expanded office section of the depot. Amid the usual desk litter of ledgers, reports, contracts, and memoranda stood an open bottle of Kentucky whiskey. An inch of the liquor shimmered in a shot glass.

Johnson slapped dust from his striped pants, staring from the whiskey to his partner. “This time of day?”

“This or any other time of day, what about it?” Johnson clicked his tongue and left. In talking to a few men around the field, foremen and roughnecks, he found there was no secret about it. Ever since Mack had gotten out of bed, he’d been at the bottle. Heavily.

Lieutenant Colonel Harrison Gray Otis paid a call.

Mack received him in the office in the afternoon. Otis carried a malacca swagger stick, and in his lapel he wore a military rosette of some kind. Some years before he’d edited the G.A.R. journal, and he was still active in that organization of Civil War veterans.

The colonel was disconcerted by Mack’s unshaven, unkempt appearance. To someone accustomed to alertness and discipline, such a foggy expression was displeasing.

“Unexpected pleasure, Colonel.”

“You are a long way from Los Angeles, sir. A difficult man to find. Have we perhaps met before? There’s a certain familiarity—”

“It’s possible.” Mack wasn’t yet so drunk that he’d forgotten the altercation when he drove Marquez to the
Times
office. “Join me in a drink?”