The Chase (31 page)

A
BNER
W
EED'S BARREL CHEST AND BEEFY SHOULDERS
were sweating as he shoveled coal into the firebox. There was an art to creating an efficient fire, but he had no idea how. He simply heaved coal through the open door into the fire, ignoring the complaints from the engineer who shouted that too much coal would drop the fire temperature.

Abner took on the job only to spell the fireman, Ralph Wilbanks, a big, burly man who soon became exhausted after a few hours of sustaining the necessary steam temperature that kept the big Pacific locomotive running up the steep grades of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They traded one hour shoveling, one hour of rest.

Abner stayed alert during the effort, his Smith & Wesson revolver stuffed in his belt. He kept an eye on the engineer, who was constantly busy maintaining a fast but safe speed around the many mountain curves while watching the track ahead for any unforeseen obstacle, such as an unscheduled train coming in the opposite direction. At last, they crested the summit and it was all downhill until they met the flat-lands of the desert.

“We're coming into Reno,” yelled Wes Hall, the engineer, above the roar of the flames in the firebox. An intense man with the features of a weathered cowboy, he would have stopped the train in protest when he found his passengers demanded he set speed records across the mountains but relented after Abner put the Smith & Wesson to his head and threatened to kill him, and his fireman, if they didn't do as they were told. A thousand dollars in cash from Cromwell added to the persuasion, and Hall and Wilbanks now pushed the Pacific locomotive through the mountains as fast as they dared.

“The signal ahead reads red,” said Wilbanks.

Hall waved that he saw it, too. “We'll have to stop and lay over on a siding.”

Abner pointed the gun at the engineer's head. “Lay on the whistle. We're going through.”

“We can't,” said Hall, staring Abner in the eye. “There must be an express carrying relief supplies to San Francisco coming toward us on the same track. I'd rather you shoot me than cause a collision with another train that would kill all of us and stop traffic in both directions for maybe a week.”

Abner slowly slid the revolver back under his belt. “All right. But get us back on the main track as soon as the relief express passes.”

Hall began closing the throttle arm. “We can use the delay to take on coal and water.”

“All right. But mind your manners or I'll blow holes in the both of you.”

“Ralph and I can't go on much longer. We're done in.”

“You'll earn your money—and stay alive—by pushing on,” Abner said threateningly.

Leaning out the left side of the cab, Abner could see the train depot and the small town of Reno, Nevada, looming in the distance. As they came nearer, Abner spotted a figure waving a small red flag standing by a switch stand. Hall blew the whistle to announce their arrival and to let the flagman know that he understood the signal to slow down and was prepared to be switched off the main track.

Hall precisely stopped the Pacific's tender directly under an elevated wooden water tank on one side of the track and a coal bin on the other. Wilbanks jumped up on the tender, grabbed a rope, and pulled down the spout hinged to the tank until water flowed on board due to gravity. Climbing down from the cab with an oil can, Hall began checking all the bearings and fittings of the locomotive, and, since Cromwell had refused to wait for the arrival of a brakeman, he had to examine the bearings on the wheels of the tender and freight car as well.

Keeping a sharp eye on Hall and Wilbanks, Abner moved past the tender to the door of the freight car. He rapped twice with the butt of his Smith & Wesson, waited a moment, then knocked again. The door was unlatched from the inside and slid open. Jacob and Margaret Cromwell stood there, looking down at Abner.

“What's the delay?” asked Cromwell.

Abner tilted his head toward the locomotive. “We switched to a siding to let an express relief train through. While we're waiting, the crew is taking on coal and water.”

“Where are we?” asked Margaret. She was dressed uncharacteristically in men's pants, with the legs tucked into a pair of boots. A blue sweater covered the upper half of her body, and she wore a bandanna on her hair.

“The town of Reno,” answered Abner. “We're out of the Sierras. From now on, the landscape flattens out into desert.”

“How about the track ahead?” inquired Cromwell. “Any more relief trains to delay our passage?”

“I'll check with the switchman for scheduled westbound trains. But we'll have to stand aside as they come.”

Cromwell jumped to the ground and spread out a map on the ground. The lines drawn across it displayed the railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi. He pointed to the spot signifying Reno. “Okay, we're here. The next junction with tracks going north is Ogden, Utah.”

“Not Salt Lake City?” asked Margaret.

Cromwell shook his head. “The Southern Pacific main line joins the Union Pacific tracks north of Salt Lake. We swing north at the Ogden junction and head toward Missoula, Montana. From there, we take the Northern Pacific rails into Canada.”

Abner kept his eyes trained on the crew. He saw the fireman struggle with the coal flowing from the chute into the tender and the engineer moving about as if he were in a trance. “The crew is dead on their feet. We'll be lucky if they can run the locomotive another four hours.”

Cromwell consulted the map. “There's a railyard in Winnemucca, Nevada, about a hundred seventy miles up the track. We'll pick up another crew there.”

“What about these two?” inquired Abner. “We can't let them run to the nearest telegraph office and alert law enforcement up the line that we're coming.”

Cromwell thought for a moment. “We'll keep them with us, then make them jump the train in a desolate part of the desert. We'll take no chances of Van Dorn agents getting wise to our leaving San Francisco and wiring officials down the line to stop our train, so we'll cut the telegraph lines as we go.”

Margaret took a long look toward the Sierras and the track they had traveled. “Do you think Isaac is onto us?”

“Only a question of how long, dear sister,” he said with his usual high degree of self-assurance. “But by the time he realizes we've flown San Francisco and finds a locomotive to give chase, we'll be halfway to Canada and he'll have no chance to stop us.”

A
DELINE
WAS
L
OFGREN'S PRIDE AND SWEETHEART
, and he spoke to her as if the locomotive were a beautiful woman instead of a steel, fire-breathing monster that charged up the curving grades of the Sierras and through Donner Pass. Without having to pull two hundred tons of cars weighed down with passengers and luggage, she performed effortlessly.

The spring air was cool and crisp, and snow still covered the ground. Donner Pass was the notorious section of the mountains where the most poignant event in western history had taken place. A wagon train made up of a dozen families that would pass into legend as the Donner party became trapped in the winter blizzards of 1846 and suffered terribly until rescued. Many survived by eating the dead. Out of the original eighty-seven men, women, and children, only forty-five lived to reach California.

Bell had been fully awake since passing through Sacramento and was finding the scenery spectacular—the towering, rocky peaks; the forest of fir trees, some with branches still laden with snow; the summit tunnels, which were blasted out of granite by Chinese laborers in 1867.
Adeline
plunged into the black mouth of a long tunnel, the roar of the train's exhaust reverberating like a hundred bass drums. Soon, a tiny circle of light materialized ahead in the darkness and quickly grew wider. Then
Adeline
burst into the bright sunlight with a noise like thunder. A few miles later came the panoramic view of Donner Lake, as the train began its long, curving descent to the desert.

Bell stared with some uneasiness down the sheer thousand-foot drop that was within a step or two of the edge, as the locomotive swung around a sharp bend. He did not need to urge Lofgren to go faster. The engineer was pushing the big locomotive at nearly thirty-five miles an hour around the mountain curves, a good ten miles faster than was considered safe.

“We're across the summit,” announced Lofgren, “and have a downgrade for the next seventy-five miles.”

Bell stood and gave Long his fireman's seat on the left side of the cab. Long thankfully sat down and took a break, as Lofgren closed off steam and allowed
Adeline
to coast down through the pass in the mountains. Long had been shoveling coal almost nonstop since they had swung onto the main line at Sacramento and up the steep grade into the Sierras.

“Can I give you a hand?” asked Bell.

“Be my guest,” said Long, lighting up a pipe. “I'll tell you how to shovel the coal into the firebox. Even though we're loafing along for the next hour, we can't let the fire die down.”

“You don't just throw it in with a shovel?”

Long grinned. “There's more to it than that. And it's not called a
shovel
; it's a
fireman's scoop,
size number four.”

For the next two hours, Bell labored in front of the maze of pipes and valves as he learned the intricacies of firing a locomotive. The tender was rocking from side to side around the turns, making it difficult to shovel coal into the firebox. It was easy work, however, with
Adeline
running downhill. He shoveled just enough coal to keep the steam up. He quickly learned to open the firebox door wide, after hitting the scoop against it and spilling coal over the floor. And instead of stacking the coal in a fiery pile, he developed the knack for making a level fire that burned bright and orange.

The sharp curves were left behind as their arc increased as they dropped down to the foothills. An hour after Bell turned the scoop over to Long, the fireman shouted to Lofgren: “We've only got enough water and coal for another fifty miles.”

Lofgren nodded without taking his eyes from the track ahead. “Just enough to make Reno. We can put in for coal and water there and take on a relay crew.”

Bell realized that the race over the mountains had taken its toll on Lofgren and Long. He could see that the strain on body and mind had drained the staunch engineer, and the physical effort of maintaining steam on the steep grades had sapped the strength of the indefatigable fireman. It seemed evident to Bell that Cromwell's train crew must be worn out as well. He checked his watch and could only wonder if they had narrowed the gap.

“How long will it take to assemble another crew?” Bell asked.

“As long as it takes to coal and water the tender,” replied Lofgren. Then he smiled wearily, revealing a set of crooked teeth, and added, “Providing we're lucky and one happens to be standing by.”

“I'm grateful to you both,” Bell said sincerely. “You did a heroic job getting over the Sierras. You must have set a record.”

Lofgren pulled out his big Waltham railroad watch with its locomotive engraved on the back of the case. “Indeed,” he laughed. “We shaved eight minutes off the old record set by Marvin, me, and
Adeline
six months ago.”

“You love this engine, don't you?” said Bell.

Lofgren laughed. “Take all the Atlantic locomotives ever put on rails: they're the finest in the world, all built exactly the same, with identical dimensions and construction. Yet, every one is different—like people, they all have diverse personalities. Some can run faster than the others, with the same steam pressure. Some are finicky while others are jinxed, always having bad luck with repair problems. But
Adeline,
she's a sweetheart. No whims; never cranky, eccentric, or ill-tempered. Treat her like a lady and she's like a thoroughbred mare that wins races.”

“You make her sound almost human.”

“
Adeline
may be a hundred seven tons of iron and steel, but she's got a heart.”

They were nearing Reno, and Lofgren pulled the whistle cord to announce his intention of switching to the siding for coal and water. He eased back on the throttle to slow the locomotive. The switchman threw the switch lever to link the tapering rails, as he had done for Cromwell's train earlier. Then he waved a green flag to alert Lofgren that the siding was open.

Even before
Adeline
rolled to a stop, Bell had jumped from the cab and took off running across the railyard to the depot, which looked like a thousand other small-town depots across the nation. It was characterized by wooden slat walls, arched windows, and a peaked roof. The loading platform was empty, giving Bell the impression that no passenger trains were due to stop there anytime soon.

He stepped inside, past the freight-and-ticket office, and stopped at the telegrapher's small room. Two men were in the middle of a deep conversation when he walked in. It struck him that their faces looked serious and grim.

“I beg your pardon,” said Bell, “I'm looking for the stationmaster.”

The taller of the two men stared at Bell for a moment before nodding. “I'm the stationmaster, Burke Pulver. What can I do for you?”

“Has a train come through with only one freight car in the last ten hours heading east?”

Pulver nodded. “They were stopped on the siding for two hours while two express trains carrying relief supplies for the San Francisco earthquake victims rolled through.”

“They were delayed two hours?” said Bell, suddenly feeling optimistic. “How long ago did they leave?”

Pulver glanced up at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall. “About four and a half hours ago. Why do you ask?”

Bell identified himself and briefly explained his chase of Cromwell.

Pulver stared Bell in the eye. “You say that freight car was carrying the notorious Butcher Bandit?”

“He was on it, yes.”

“If only I had known, I'd have told the sheriff.”

The time gap was less than Bell had dared hope. “Do you have a relay crew available? Mine is worn out, after their record run over the Sierras.”

“Who's your crew?”

“Lofgren and Long.”

Pulver laughed. “I might have known those two would try to beat their own record.” He studied a blackboard on one wall. “I have a crew on hand.” He paused. “I thought there was something funny about that train. Reno is a relay stop for just about every train going either east or west. Highly unusual, not taking on a relay crew. Your bandit won't get far with an engineer and fireman who are used up.”

Bell looked down at the telegrapher, a bald-headed man with a green visor perched on his forehead and garters on his shirtsleeves. “I'd like to alert lawmen in the towns ahead to stop the train and seize the bandit, whose name is Jacob Cromwell.”

The telegrapher shook his head. “No can do. The lines are down. I can't get a message through to the east.”

Bell said, “I'll lay money Cromwell is cutting the lines.”

Pulver studied a large blackboard on another wall that showed the trains scheduled to pass through Reno. “I'll have a crew for you in twenty minutes. You should have a clear run until you reach Elko. After that, I hope you'll find the telegraph in operation or you'll run the risk of colliding with a train traveling west.”

“In that case,” Bell said cynically, “I'll have the satisfaction of knowing Cromwell collided with it first.”