05 Ironhorse (19 page)

“What?”

“Feelings,” Virgil said. “The feelings that sprung up between the two of you. You and Emma. Short time as it was, I saw it.”

We walked a bit more.

“Like you surmised,” I said. “After we disconnected from the first coach, there was not a damn thing we could do about the fact Emma and Abigail were headed north and we were headed south but I’ve not for an extended moment stopped thinking about them, Virgil.”

“Nope,” Virgil said. “Me neither.”

“I hope to hell they are alive.”

Virgil rested his hand on my shoulder.

“Me too, Everett,” Virgil said. “Me too.”

Up ahead, the governor looked back to Berkeley.

“Just where is the boy headed, Mr. Berkeley?” the governor said. “Where is this Sam?”

“At the depot, sir,” Berkeley said. “Sam is the Half Moon Junction stationmaster.”

We walked by the tent encampments as we neared the depot. I did not need the aroma of coffee and bacon cooking to remind me I was getting hungry again. Just before we passed the encampment I heard the sound of a locomotive building up steam followed by two blasts of the engine’s whistle. When we cleared the last tent I saw the engine coming down the track. It was a Yard Goat, a heavy duty 0-6-0 locomotive, used for moving cars around switchyards. It was engineered by a burly man with his hairy arm hanging out the window.

“That Sam?” Hobbs said.

Berkeley shook his head.

“No, that’s Uncle Ted, Sam’s uncle in the Yard Goat,” Berkeley said. “Looks like he’s getting the track cleared.”

The Goat was connected to the coaches that had been left on the track and was in the process of pulling them into the switchyard.

Berkeley pointed to a little man walking next to the Yard Goat.

“That’s Sam there,” Berkeley said.

Sam switched the rails, and the Yard Goat whistle blasted two shorts and moved the cars slowly off the main track onto a side rail that dead-ended in the switchyard.

Sam said something to Uncle Ted and gestured up the track to the north. Uncle Ted nodded, saying something back, and throttled the Goat into the yard. Sam walked down the track toward the depot with his hands in the front pockets of his overalls.

As we neared the depot, the Yard Goat stomped past us, moving the coaches onto the dead-end section of track behind the water tower. Just below the Yard Goat’s window was a skillfully drawn chiaroscuro of a muscled horse running at a full gallop. Under the painting was the single word:
Ironhorse
.

When the coaches passed, Sam saw us walking toward the depot, and only then was it apparent Sam was in fact a woman dressed like a man. She wore a man’s shirt under her bib overalls and had a bowler hat snugged down low on her head.

We arrived at the porch of the depot at the same time as Sam. Sam’s skin was dark from the sun, and her eyes were sapphire blue.

“Burton,” Sam said.

“Sam,” Berkeley said. “This is the governor, Mr. Hobbs, Marshal Cole, Deputy Hitch. Charlie here said you had some information?”

“Charlie, go on and help Uncle Ted with them cars.”

“Okay, Sam,” Charlie said.

Charlie scampered off the depot steps and ran toward the Ironhorse.

“What is it, Sam?” Berkeley said.

“Yes, please,” the governor said. “The boy said you have information about my daughters?”

Sam removed her bowler, revealing her close-cropped blond hair, and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, looking at the governor.

“Yes, sir, Governor, sir,” she said. “Let me show you.”

66

SAM OPENED THE
door of the depot and ushered us in with a slight swing of her hat.

“After you,” she said.

We entered, and Sam hurried past us, and we followed her across the long, narrow corridor of the depot.

“Last night we received a wire alertin’ us the Fort Smith Express out of Paris was off schedule,” Sam said. “When Jenny, our telegraph operator, opened up this mornin’, she got a number of messages right quick about what happened on the track last night.”

We entered a small glassed-in corner office overlooking the track, where a young woman sat at a telegraph desk.

“This here is Jenny,” Sam said. “Anythin’ else come in, dear?”

“No, nothing,” Jenny said as she swiveled around in her chair from the desk.

Jenny was smaller than Sam. She, too, wore men’s clothes: breeches, a bowler, and a pin-striped shirt under a corduroy vest. Jenny opened the top drawer, took out a telegram, and handed it to Sam.

“This wire we received,” Sam said. “Addressed to you, sir.”

Sam handed the telegram to the governor.

“I sent Charlie to fetch you right away,” Sam said, “first thing when Jenny received it.”

The governor read the telegram. His eyes narrowed. He read the note again and looked to Jenny.

“You’re certain this is correct,” the governor said.

“Yes, sir, it’s correct, sir,” Jenny said. “It’s the message that was sent.”

Jenny spoke quickly with crisp, precise diction.

The governor looked at Sam.

“Jenny knows telegraphin’ beyond her years,” Sam said. “Her daddy was a telegrapher, taught her enough and then some. She’s good with code ’n everythin’ comes through here, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, heck, Greek—”

“Marshal?” the governor said.

He handed the telegram to Virgil.

“Sometimes wires get changed when repeaters are not in line,” Jenny said, “or if notes have to be retransmitted over long distances by other operators, or if someone is a novice on the key, but that wire is from just up the rail at the top of the Kiamichi. I know that operator.”

Virgil looked up at me and back to the telegram. He reread the message and handed it to me.

“Up the rail, top of the Kiamichi?” Virgil said. “Where are you talking about, Jenny?”

“As far as I can tell, the transmission came from Tall Water Falls.”

I read the note and looked at the governor. He sat slowly into an armchair next to the desk. He was doing his best to maintain his composure. He gazed out the window toward the iron rails tapering off in the distance and shook his head slowly from side to side.

“For God’s sake,” Hobbs said. “What in God’s name has happened? What are we dealing with?”

The governor took the note from my hand and handed it to Hobbs. Hobbs read the telegram and looked at the governor with a shocked expression on his face.

67

“RANSOM! DEAR GOD!
The gall!” Hobbs said. “What more? This is madness, absolute madness.”

The governor took the telegram from Hobbs. Then he leaned over in the chair, rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, and stared at the telegram.

“What did you mean,” Virgil said, “as far as you could tell this telegram was from Tall Water Falls?”

“The telegram could come from anywhere in the loop,” Sam said.

Jenny nodded.

“Yes, but as I previously mentioned, I know that operator; there are two of them at the depot. That operator is from Tall Water Falls. I don’t know the operator personally, but I know that fist. That is Ernest C.’s fist.”

“Fist?” Hobbs said.

“The operator’s key pattern,” I said.

“Every operator has a fist,” Jenny said. “A signature way of keying. We all key a distinct style. Though that wire is cryptic, that is Ernest C. from Tall Water Falls, no doubt about it . . . But . . .”

“But what? Something wrong?” I said. “You curious about something?”

Jenny looked at me then looked to the governor.

“Ernest C. didn’t provide a sine or confirmation to the wire,” Jenny said. “Sine is an operator’s signature.”

“Which is unusual,” Sam added.

“It is,” Jenny said. “Normally all railroad- and depot-dispatched transmissions are retyped in complete with sine. That way depot communications maintain a high degree of accuracy for zero confusion and safety. Right after I received this wire I replied with a received confirmation but got nothing back. With the Express not arriving in Tall Water Falls and everything that has happened this morning, compounded with the nature of this note, I knew something was wrong.”

“What are you saying?” the governor said.

“I believe Ernest C. is under watch or something of that nature,” Jenny said.

“So there is no telling where the note really came from?” I said.

“There is not,” Jenny said.

“Have you had any other communication with Tall Water Falls?” Virgil asked.

Jenny shook her head and said, “No. The last contact we had was prior to this note, and that was last night, right before I closed.”

“Which was what?” Virgil asked.

“I received word the Express out of Paris did not arrive at the scheduled time in Tall Water Falls,” Jenny said.

“You tell anybody about this?” Virgil said. “Last night?”

“Pardon?”

“When you got that news about the Express, you tell anybody else?”

“I left and alerted Sam right away,” Jenny said.

“Nobody else?” Virgil said.

“No,” Jenny said. “Well . . . except when I was closing the office there was a man who came just as I was leaving, asking about the next express to Fort Smith.”

Virgil looked at me, then back to Jenny.

“Tall man,” Virgil said. “Silver hair?”

Jenny looked back and forth between Virgil and me and said, “Why, yes. He was a tall man, silver hair.”

68

VIRGIL LOOKED TO
the governor, who was looking at Hobbs.

“Goddamn Lassiter,” the governor said.

“What did you tell him?” Virgil said.

“I told him I was not certain when the next northbound would come through.”

“You tell him why?” Virgil said.

“You mean did I explain to him why I was uncertain?”

“Yes.”

Jenny thought for a moment.

“Well, I believe I said because there was trouble with tonight’s Express not arriving in Tall Water Falls. I told him he would have to check today for the next scheduled train, but that was it.”

“He ask you anything else?” Virgil said.

“No, sir.”

“He send a wire himself?” I asked.

“No,” Jenny said. “He did not.”

“The son of a bitch liar,” Hobbs said. “He told me he wired to alert the authorities.”

“Yep,” I said. “Told us that, too.”

Virgil looked to Sam.

“You said you got a number of messages about what happened on the track?” Virgil said.

Sam crammed her hands into her front pockets. She looked to the clock on the wall for a moment before she looked back to Virgil.

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “We got us a bad situation here, Marshal.”

Sam fidgeted a bit, looking at Virgil and the governor.

“Go on,” Virgil said.

“Them telegraph lines started buzzin’ with everything goin’ on,” Sam said. “From every direction. Jenny?”

“The Express not arriving in Tall Water Falls,” Jenny said, “started the normal, or I should say necessary, transmissions for a situation like this.”

“We’ve never had nothing like this happen, ever,” Sam said.

“Section gangs already figured out a lot about what happened last night,” Jenny said. “First, the main terminal stations in both—Paris to the south, and Division City to the north—were alerted of the situation so the train and the schedules would be put on hold.”

“There was one Southbound Express already en route out of Fort Smith,” Sam continued, “but it was delayed until the foul cars are removed. Section gangs were dispatched to survey and report their findin’s first thing this mornin’.”

“Which were?” I said.

Sam shook her head.

“Well, last night there was some serious bad business I can tell you,” Sam said. “Nobody would have ever expected nothin’ like what has happened here. Some of it I ’spect you already know about. Some of it I ’spect you don’t.”

Sam stopped talking and looked to the governor.

“Go ahead,” the governor said.

Virgil offered a short nod.

“There was a robbery on the evenin’ Express out of Paris, which resulted in folks gettin’ killed. All along the track, from the top of the rise here at Half Moon all the way up through the woods of the Kiamichi, there have been a number of men found dead. We found these cars here with the burnt Pullman, and at the top of the rise, north of town here, we found another coach and a body of a man with his throat cut on the track. Along with the dead, Standley Station, the next way station up, also found an abandoned coach on the track. That car was full of passengers.”

69

SAM STOPPED TALKING.
She looked at Jenny and bit her lip. Then looked to the governor.

“That it?” Virgil said.

Sam shook her head.

“No, sir. Next up. Crystal Creek gang found the engine and first coach stalled out.”

Sam swallowed hard.

“Apparently, where the engine was stopped on the track just north of Crystal Creek, riders showed up.”

“Riders?” Virgil said.

“The pickup riders,” I said.

“No doubt,” Virgil said.

“Evidently, they stayed diligent heading north,” I said.

“Evidently, they did,” Virgil said. “Go on, Sam.”

“All this was a wire from Crystal Creek . . . which also said shots were fired and two women were pulled from the coach,” Sam said.

The governor looked out the window, then looked to the floor.

“Where’s the engine now?” I said.

“The section gang is removing the engine and coach from the main line to a set out on the wye track,” Sam said. “Never seen or heard nothin’ like this, ever.”

The governor remained looking at the floor.

“That it?” Virgil said.

“Yes,” Sam said. “Well, other than the scheduled South Express from Fort Smith had to stop in Division City and wait. Once the track is clear it will get on its way down. I figure them stranded passengers will board the Express when it’s up and runnin’ again.”

“Nothing else from Tall Water Falls’ section gang?” Virgil asked.

“Nothing,” Jenny said. “Just this, this telegram, but nothing else.”