Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (30 page)

      
“If we crash, we'll all be fired, literally,” Sabrina said. “Come along, Cordelia.” She pulled the huffing, teary-eyed congressman's wife back through the door.

      
Dismissing her, Cain scanned the car for anything metal that could be used as a crowbar, ordering the others to do likewise. Soon they had seized whatever would serve and began loosening beds, heavy brass fixtures, even the seats fastened to the floor. Within twenty minutes the last three cars were totally stripped and the rugged rocky earth they sped past was littered with the opulence of the Union Pacific, right down to its brass cuspidors.

      
The shrill screech of the whistle still failed to rouse anyone on the freight cars, which kept bobbing back into view every time they crested a slight rise on a heavy grade spiraling down into Laramie. The train bounded from the rough tracks at every bump. Surely it would jump the rails at any second! On they sped past ravines, with the desperate cry of the whistle echoing after them.

      
Some of the women sobbed, a few cried frantically. Roxanna did what she could to comfort them, then went in search of Cain. If they were all going to die, at least she would do so at his side.
Perhaps he'll tell me he loves me. It would almost be worth it to hear those words.

      
With terror clogging her throat, she made her way through the stripped cars, stumbling and losing her footing with every lurch and bump. Crossing the platforms between cars was particularly dangerous, but she persevered, with white knuckles gripping the railing past the first coupling. Then at the second, the wind whipped her hair free of its pins and sent it flying across her face, obscuring her vision. She reached up with one hand and brushed it away just as the cars bounced hard against the iron rails. Her grip on the railing was torn loose by the impact and she screamed, clawing frantically for something to hold on to as she fell.

      
The earth flew by in a sickening blur beneath her as she hung suspended between the two platforms. She struggled to gain purchase for her feet on the coupling while clawing hand over hand on the railing so that she could climb back up. Her long skirts whipped in the wind, wrapping around her legs like a coffin shroud. Her soft-soled shoes slipped from the greasy surface of the coupling and she almost went down. Arching her back frantically, she regained a foothold and started to pull herself up once more.

      
Cain opened the door and stepped onto the platform, ready to jump across the cars when he saw Alexa. Her hands were just about to give way as he threw himself to the platform floor and seized a fistful of her silvery hair, the first thing he could grab as it streamed out like a flag behind her. Then he grabbed her arm and began to lift her up very carefully until he had her completely back onto the platform. Kneeling, he pulled her into his arms and fell back against the car door, holding her tightly.

      
“What the hell are you doing back here?” he yelled over the deafening clank and screaming whistle.

      
Roxanna looked up into his face, pale in spite of his bronzed skin. The ground rushed by them in a blur of sickening speed, but she saw nothing but the expression in her husband's eyes: fear...love?

      
Before she could say anything, they were pitched into a hard roll when the cars were whipped around another bend in the track cut through solid walls of granite, the sharpest on the downhill grade yet. Cain could feel the wheels on the left side leave the track as the train tilted precariously. Would it hold? Or would they careen into the granite wall of the cut? He held tight to his wife and prayed.

      
They cleared the curve—barely. Cain struggled to his feet with Alexa as the men helping him dismantle the cars appeared in the door behind them. “Go on forward. There's nothing more we can do,” he said, steadying her with his arm as the others crossed the platforms and filed ahead. Carefully Cain helped Alexa across.

      
They reached the opposite door just as the deafening scream of metal skidding on metal was followed by the sharp crack of wood splintering. The sound of the freight and kitchen cars smashing into the rocky wall of the cut was deafening. Dust and debris shot up with the impact of a charge of patent blasting oil. She burrowed her head against his shoulder, shuddering. Almost at once the train began to slow.

      
“Oh, Cain, those men! The cooks, the stock handlers—the horses.”

      
“Christ! I'll see what happened. We need to keep the others together until I find out.”

      
He started to turn away, intent on getting his Spencer in case any of the horses were still alive and injured, but she pulled his head down for a swift life-affirming kiss.

      
“Thank you again for my life.”

      
“Please, take better care of it from now on,” he replied gruffly, jumping off the train, which had now all but stopped.

      
Everyone piled out of the cars, all talking at once. Cain issued curt orders to the stewards, secured weapons and began to walk back up the grade to the site of the crash. Roxanna stood staring after him, wondering if she had read too much into the look in his eyes when he pulled her from the wheels.

      
When he returned, Cain's expression was stony. “It was sabotage,” he said coldly. “One of the cook's helpers jumped the train just as we crested the divide. He pulled the pin to uncouple, timing it so the cars' momentum would carry them to catch up with us on the downhill curves. The pin was greased, or he would never have gotten it out. Still, it must've been a bitch getting it free at just the right moment. One of the stock handlers caught him after he did it and got his head bashed in for his trouble. He was able to talk. It's a miracle he lived.”

      
“What about the others?” Roxanna asked.

      
“Three dead from the crash. The other two are pretty banged up, but they'll survive—when whatever they were drugged with wears off.”

      
“Drugged?” Durant's eyebrows rose over his deep-set eyes. “Then there's no doubt this was a deliberate attempt by the Central Pacific hooligans to kill me.”

      
“You and all the other directors aboard,” Cain said dryly.

      
“Dastardly business, dastardly,” Seymour huffed.

      
“If the plan had worked and the heavier freight cars had barreled into us on one of the curves, there wouldn't have been so much as two splinters left joined together after the dust settled. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very lucky,” Cain said levelly.

      
“Are you certain the Central Pacific directors would countenance such ghastly carnage?” Burke Remington asked skeptically.

      
“Andrew Powell would,” Cain replied levelly.

Chapter Fourteen

SAN FRANCISCO

      
“I don't see what you're waiting for,” Isobel Darby snapped angrily, then took a calming sip from her glass of champagne. Andrew always imported Dom Perignon from France. “I want Roxanna Fallon destroyed.”

      
Powell watched her agitated pacing from his chair by the window. This house had a splendid view of the bay—almost as fine as the one he had shared with his wife before her death. Now he and his son lived there alone. Lawrence was no doubt curious about Andrew's relationship with the chilly Southern belle. That was one reason Andrew ensconced her here, where Lawrence knew he had always kept his mistresses. Best if his son did not know the exact nature of his dealings with Isobel.

      
Not that bedding her hadn't been briefly diverting. Her very coldness had been a challenge. At first she had lain in icy resignation when he took her—until her body overrode her will. She hated herself because of the way she responded to him. After the first time, she had cried and thrown a Sevres vase at him, spitting and clawing when he finally subdued her. Isobel liked to be forced. Then she could pretend that she did not enjoy it, that she was still loyal to her poor dead husband. Andrew smiled sardonically for a moment, speculating whether her beloved colonel had ever tied her to a bed.

      
The widow paused in midstride, looking at the bemused heavy-lidded expression on Powell's face. She subdued the urge to claw it off. “You haven't been attending a word I've said, Andrew.” She smoothed one pale elegant hand over the skirt of her violet silk evening gown. Although she could never give up the conceit of wearing mourning colors for Nathaniel, she did enjoy beautiful clothes...and black, gray and purple shades were her most becoming colors. “I had hoped by now that you understood what destroying that Fallon hussy means to me.”

      
Her voice was syrupy and entreating, but her brittle body language and the hardness of her facial expression made the plea into a command. “I'll unmask your clever little impostor...when it suits me. Never fear, Miss Fallon will go down right along with Jubal MacKenzie. I have plans...elaborate, long-range plans that I do not intend to share with you.”

      
“It has been two months. I'm growing tired of all the silly railroad politics.”

      
“I told you when we first met, my dear, that this would be a matter of some delicacy, especially considering that MacKenzie married off the girl to his breed gunman. Cain is another chess piece I need to consider.”

      
“Are you afraid of him?” She could not resist the snide remark.

      
Powell's expression darkened, but he did not raise his voice. “I'm not one of your silly Southern cavaliers·who will leap to defend my honor, my dear. Frankly, you're beginning to bore me with your tiresome theatrics. Even your novelty in bed is wearing thin.”

      
She stormed across the room, ready to fly at him, hands curved into claws, but at the last moment she stopped, struggling to regain her composure. A slow vitriolic smile spread across her face. “No, that is precisely what you wish me to do, isn't it, Andrew?”

      
He stood up and reached out to her, wrapping one large hand brutally around her slender wrist and pulling her to him. “What I want you to do right now is shut up and leave MacKenzie and his supposed granddaughter to me. Is that quite clear, my dear?”

      
The pressure of his fist tightening around her wrist would leave an ugly bruise. She looked down at the effortless way he held the slender bones, knowing he could snap them with ease, and felt that dark thrum beginning to pound through her blood once more. “Damn you, Andrew,” she cursed, but her voice was breathless with excitement she could not conceal.

      
As he lowered her to the floor and methodically began to tear open the front of her dress, she lay rigidly under him, willing herself to think only of the woman she hated above everything. Coming to Andrew Powell had been a mistake. She must get away from him...while she still could. Against her will, her body began to betray her yet again.

* * * *

BEAR RIVER, WYOMING TERRITORY

      
“I couldna' get Huntington to set a fixed meeting point,” Jubal said wearily. “He still believes Powell can push the Central Pacific tracks past Salt Lake all the way to the Wyoming territorial line.”

      
Cain shoved his hat back on his head and shed his buckskin jacket. It was warm in Jubal's railcar. “Now that Powell's got the Mormons grading track for him, Huntington could be right. We'll be up against tunneling through granite in a few weeks, Jubal. I know what that cost the Central Pacific in the Sierras.”

      
“Then, by damn, we make no winter camp this year!” MacKenzie said, pounding on his desktop. “Can you keep the men working straight through till spring?”

      
Cain considered. “Depends on a number of things. As long as snow doesn't stop the supply trains, the men can work in the cold. Hell, the Chinese did it. We could reach the territorial line by December. They can survive the weather, but we're losing too many of them in those renegade attacks.”

      
“Dillon hasna' been able to catch them while I was in Washington, I take it,” MacKenzie said sourly.

      
“A few narrow misses, but they always slip away. Johnny Lame Pony is nobody's fool. He's just as crafty as that cook's helper Powell planted on the train.”

      
“I take it no link between that crash and Powell has turned up either.” Jubal knew it was hopeless. “Damn but the man has his nerve, trying to kill half the Union Pacific directors and a good number of our political friends in Congress in the bargain!”

      
Cain grimaced. “With men like Scoville and Remington as friends, we just might be better off facing an honest enemy.”

      
MacKenzie snorted angrily. “Honest and deadly. When I think he could’ve killed the lass and all those other women…”

      
“I'll pin that on him yet—and deal with his renegade raiders,” Cain replied with determination. “Regular army patrols keep their attacks to a minimum, but our men are getting frightened—and the sabotage to tracks has been escalating. We have a real problem with supplies for our grading crews right now.”

      
“Speaking of supplies, I picked up some interesting news while I was in Washington. Rumors swirl around Collis Huntington like maggots on putrid meat.”

      
Cain looked up from the reports he was perusing. “What sort of rumors?” Jubal never concerned himself with petty gossip.

      
MacKenzie rubbed his hands over the one bit of heartening news with which he'd returned. “It seems, laddie, that Huntington’s upset over some irregularities in the shipments of Central Pacific material. He and old Mark Hopkins have been comparing notes between what's listed on the cargo manifests on the East Coast and what arrives in San Francisco harbor. Someone's skimming, to the tune of several million dollars. And if you think I have a tight-fisted Scot's soul, you havena' seen the likes of Mark Hopkins.”