Clive Cussler - The Chase

“More like six, by the time we take on coal and get a load of steam up.”

“I was told there were repairs. Are they completed?”

The engineer nodded. “The shop replaced a faulty bearing in one of the truck wheels.”

“The sooner we get going, the better.” Bell paused to extend his hand. “By the way, my name is Isaac Bell.”

The engineer’s shake was vigorous. “Nils Lofgren. My fireman is Marvin Long.”

Bell pulled his watch from its pocket and checked the time. “I’ll see you in forty-five minutes.”

“We’ll be at the coal-loading dock just up the track.”

Bell hurried toward the Oakland terminal until he came to a wooden building that housed the Western Union office. The wire chief told him that only one wire was open to Salt Lake City and it was hours behind getting messages through. Bell explained his mission and the chief was most cooperative.

“What’s your message?” he asked. “I’ll see that it’s sent straightaway to our office in Salt Lake.”

Bell’s wire read:

To the Van Dorn office director, Salt Lake City. Imperative you stop locomotive hauling freight car number 16455. It is carrying the Butcher Bandit. Use every precaution. He is extremely dangerous. Seize and hold until I arrive.

Isaac Bell, special agent

He waited until the telegrapher tapped out the message before leaving the office and walking to where Lofgren and Long were taking on coal and water. He climbed up into the cab and was introduced to Long, a heavy, broad-shouldered man with large muscles stretching the sleeves of his denim shirt. He wore no hat and his red hair almost matched the flames inside the door to the firebox. He pulled off a leather glove and shook Bell’s hand with a hand that was hard and callused from long hours wielding a coal shovel.

“Ready whenever you are,” announced Lofgren.

“Let’s do it,” answered Bell.

As Long stoked the fire, Lofgren took his seat on the right side of the cab, locked the reverser Johnson bar into place, opened the cylinder cocks, and pulled the rope above his head down twice, causing the steam whistle to scream an about-to-move-forward warning. Then he gripped the long throttle lever and pulled it back. Adeline began to move and slowly gather speed.

Ten minutes later, Lofgren was signaled to switch onto the main track east. He eased the throttle back and the big Atlantic began to move forward. Slowly, the train wound through the yard. Long began maintaining his fire, light, level, and bright. In the five years he’d stoked locomotive fires, he’d developed a technique that kept the fire from burning too thin or too thick. Lofgren yanked on the throttle, the drive wheels churned amid a loud blast of steam, and black smoke spewed out the top of the stack.

Bell took the seat on the left side of the cab, feeling vastly relieved that he was at last on what he felt certain was the final chase to catch Cromwell and hand him over to the authorities in Chicago, dead or alive.

He found the vibration of the locomotive over the rails as soothing as floating in a rubber raft on a mountain lake, the chug of the steam propelling the drive wheels and the warm heat from the firebox positively restful for a man on a mission. Before they reached Sacramento and swung east across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Bell slid down in his seat, yawned, and closed his eyes. Within a minute, he was in a sound sleep, amid the clangor of the speeding locomotive, as Adeline aimed her big cowcatcher toward the Sierra Nevada and Donner Pass.

ABNER WEED’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.