The Chase (33 page)

M
ARGARET LOUNGED ON A SETTEE, WEARING AN
embroidered silk robe, and stared at the champagne bubbles rising in her saucer-shaped coupe glass. “I wonder if it's true,” she said softly.

Cromwell looked at her. “What's true?”

“That this glass was modeled from the breast of Marie Antoinette.”

Cromwell laughed. “There is an element of truth in the legend, yes.”

Then Margaret gazed out the window Cromwell had raised in the back of the car—it was recessed into the rear wall and was inconspicuous when closed. The tracks that flashed under the wheels seemed to be stretching to infinity. She could see that they were traveling through a valley surrounded by forested mountains.

“Where are we?”

“The Flathead Valley in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.”

“How much farther to the border?”

“Another thirty minutes to the ferry landing at Flathead Lake,” said Cromwell, opening their second bottle of champagne for the day. “Half an hour to cross over onto the Great Northern tracks and we'll be in Canada by sunset.”

She held up her glass. “To you, brother, and a brilliant flight from San Francisco. May our new endeavor be as successful as the last.”

Cromwell smiled smugly. “I'll drink to that.”

 

A
HEAD
, in the cab of the locomotive, Abner was pressing the crew he had abducted at gunpoint from a small café beside the railyard in Brigham City, Utah: Leigh Hunt, a curly-red-haired engineer, and his fireman, Bob Carr, a husky individual who had worked as a brakeman before becoming a fireman, a step he hoped would eventually lead to his becoming an engineer. They had just come off a run and were having a cup of coffee before heading home when Abner held his gun to their heads and forced them into the cab of the engine pulling Cromwell's fancy freight car.

As was the earlier crew, Wilbanks and Hall were thrown from the engine in the middle of nowhere at the same time Abner cut the telegraph wires.

Abner sat on the roof of the tender above the cab so he could prod Hunt and Carr to keep the Pacific locomotive hurtling over the rails to Flathead Lake. The black swirling clouds over the Rocky Mountains to the east caught his attention.

“Looks like a storm brewing,” he shouted to Carr.

“A chinook, by the look of it,” Carr yelled back over his shoulder as he scooped coal into the firebox.

“What's a chinook?” asked Abner.

“It's a windstorm that roars down out of the Rockies. Temperatures can drop as much as forty degrees in an hour and winds can blow over a hundred miles an hour, enough to blow railcars off the tracks.”

“How long before it strikes here?”

“Maybe an hour,” replied Carr. “About the time we'll reach the train ferry dock at Woods Bay. Once we arrive, you'll have to sit out the storm. The ferry won't sail during a chinook.”

“Why not?” Abner demanded.

“With hundred-mile-an-hour winds, the lake turns into a frenzy. The wind whips the water into waves as high as twenty feet. The train ferry wasn't built for rough water. No way the crew will take it out on the lake during a chinook.”

“We telegraphed ahead to have the ferry waiting for our arrival,” said Abner. “We're going across, wind or no wind.”

 

B
ACK IN
Cromwell's rolling palace, Margaret had drifted into a light sleep from the champagne while her brother sat and relaxed with a newspaper he'd picked up when Abner abducted the train crew at Brigham City. Most of the news was about the San Francisco earthquake. He read that the fires had finally been put out and wondered if his mansion on Nob Hill and the bank building had survived.

He looked up, hearing a strange sound different from the clack of the steel wheels on steel rails. It came faint and far off. He stiffened as he recognized it as a train whistle. Cromwell was stunned, knowing now for certain that he was being pursued.

“Bell!” he exploded in anger.

Startled at his loud voice, Margaret sat up awake. “What are you shouting about?”

“Bell!” snapped Cromwell. “He's chased us from San Francisco.”

“What are you saying?”

“Listen,” he ordered her. “Listen.”

Then she heard it, the unmistakable sound of a train's steam whistle, barely perceptible, but it was there.

Margaret rushed to the rear window and peered down the track. It was as if a fist had struck her in the stomach. She could see a stream of black smoke rising beyond a curve above a windbreak of small trees.

“You must tell Abner!” she screamed.

Cromwell had anticipated her and climbed a ladder to the vent opening in the roof of the boxcar. He pushed aside the lid to the vent, stood above the roof, and shot off his revolver to get Abner's attention over the clamor of the locomotive. Abner heard and hurried over the top of the tender, until he was only a dozen feet away from Cromwell.

“There is a train coming up behind us,” Cromwell shouted.

Abner braced his feet apart against the pitch and roll of the tender and gazed over the roof of the boxcar. The onrushing train had come around the curve now and was visible in the distance. It looked to be a locomotive and its tender, pulling no cars. It was coming, and coming on fast, as evident from the smoke exploding from its stack and laid flat by the headwind.

Now the two trains were in sight and sound of each other, with the ferry dock at Woods Bay on Flathead Lake only twenty miles away.

I
T WAS AS IF
A
DELINE
WAS A COME-FROM-BEHIND THOROUGHBRED
pounding around the far turn into the back stretch, flying through the herd and vying for the lead. Her connecting rods were a blur as they whipped the massive drive wheels over the rails. No locomotive ever worked harder. From the Oakland railyard to the wilds of Montana, she had covered more distance faster than any locomotive in history. No one timed her speeds, but none on board her cab or those who had seen her hurtle past ever doubted that she had surpassed ninety miles an hour on straight and level stretches of track.

Jongewaard had the throttle against its stop, throwing
Adeline
over tracks that were never meant for such speeds. Both engineers sat in the cab seats, their eyes fixed on the track ahead. Bell and Long shoveled while Shea systematically banked the fire to keep it burning evenly for the maximum amount of heat for proper combustion.

The chugging sound of the steam exhaust became one continuous hiss and the smoke poured from the stack in an ever-growing cloud. Bell stopped shoveling every so often to stare at the train ahead, growing larger by the minute. There was no effort to sneak up on Cromwell now; he pulled the cord and gave the whistle a long shriek that cut through the breeze beginning to blow in over the lake. Bell's lips were spread in a tight smile. He hoped Cromwell sensed that it was he who was charging down his throat.

Bell turned, looked up to the sky, and saw it had changed from a blue sea to a gray shroud from the chinook wind that howled out of the Rocky Mountains to the east. Great swirls of dust, leaves, and small debris were thrown like wheat chaff through a threshing machine. The water of Flathead Lake had gone from a dead calm to a turbulent mass in less than twenty minutes.

Then, suddenly, both Jongewaard and Lofgren shouted at once: “Wagon on the track!”

Every eye swung and stared at the track ahead.

A farmer with a hay wagon pulled by a team of horses was on a road crossing the tracks. He must have heard the engine's whistle, Bell thought, but the farmer had badly misjudged the speed of the train, believing he could cross the tracks in plenty of time. Jongewaard heaved back the reverser Johnson bar, slowing the drive wheels until they stopped and spun backward in reverse, braking the speeding locomotive.

When the farmer realized the iron monster was only a hundred yards away, he whipped his horses in a frenzied attempt to drive them out of the path of onrushing death. By then, it was too late.

Adeline
plowed into the wagon in an explosion of hay, wooden planks, splinters, and shattered wheels. The men in the cab instinctively ducked behind the protection of the boiler as debris clattered along the sides of the engine and flew over the roof onto the tender.

Miraculously, the horses had jumped forward and escaped without harm. Bell and the others did not witness the farmer's fate. As soon as Jongewaard brought
Adeline
to a halt a hundred yards down the track, Bell and crew leaped from the cab and ran back to the crossing.

They were all vastly relieved to find the farmer lying no more than five feet from the rails with all his hands and feet intact. He had pushed himself to a sitting position and was looking around, befuddled at the demolished wreckage of his wagon.

“Are you injured?” asked Bell anxiously.

The farmer surveyed his arms and legs while feeling a rising bump on the head. “A rash of bumps and bruises,” he muttered. “But, wonder of wonders, I'm still in one piece, praise the Lord.”

“Your horses also survived without injury.”

Shea and Long helped the farmer to his feet. And led him to the horses that had seemingly forgotten their narrow brush with death and were eating the grass beside the road. He was glad to see his horses in sound shape but angered that his wagon was scattered over the landscape in a hundred pieces.

Bell read his mind and gave him a Van Dorn card. “Contact my detective agency,” he instructed. “They will compensate you for the loss of your wagon.”

“Not the railroad?” the farmer asked, confused.

“It wasn't the railroad's fault. A long story you'll read about in the newspapers.” Bell turned and gazed in frustration down the tracks at the fading smoke from Cromwell's locomotive. He refused to believe he had failed so close to his goal. But all was not lost. Already, Jongewaard had backed up
Adeline
to pick up Bell and the crew.

Seeing the farmer able to fend for himself, Jongewaard yelled to Bell. “Hop aboard. We've got time to make up.”

Bell, Lofgren, and the fireman had barely climbed back into the cabin when Jongewaard had
Adeline
barreling down the rails once again in hot pursuit of the bandit's train. The chinook was upon them now. The wind blew the dust and loose foliage like foam flying from surf plunging onto a beach. Visibility had been cut to no more than two hundred yards.

Jongewaard could no longer peer out the side of the cab or his squinting eyes would have filled with the dust. Instead, he stared though the cab's forward window, having no choice but to cut
Adeline
's speed from seventy-five miles an hour down to forty-five.

He saw a semaphore beside the track with its flag in the horizontal position, signaling the locomotive to stop, but he ignored it. Next came a sign proclaiming the outer town limits of Woods Bay. Not knowing the exact distance to the ferry landing, he slowed down even more until
Adeline
was creeping along at twenty-five miles an hour.

Jongewaard turned to Bell. “Sorry about the slowdown, but I can't see if the town docks are five hundred yards or five miles away. I've got to lower the speed in case we come upon the bandit's freight car, or flatcars with logs, sitting on the main track.”

“How much time do you figure we lost?” asked Bell.

“Twelve minutes, by my watch.”

“We'll catch them,” said Bell with measured confidence. “Not likely the ferry crew will risk crossing the lake in this weather.”

Bell was right about the ferry not normally running across the lake in rough water, but he missed the boat by underestimating Cromwell. The Butcher Bandit and his sister had not come this far to surrender meekly.

Cromwell and Margaret were not to be stopped. Already, their train was rolling across the dock onto the ferry.

T
HE RAILCAR FERRY WAS WAITING AT THE DOCK WHEN
Cromwell's train arrived. The locomotive was switched onto the track that led across the wooden dock onto the ferry. But that was as far as it would go. The three-man crew had decided it wasn't safe to attempt a crossing until the chinook passed and the lake's surface settled down. They were sitting in the small galley drinking coffee and reading newspapers and did not bother to get up when Cromwell's train rolled on board.

Cromwell stepped down from his freight car and walked to the locomotive, bending into the stiff wind. He paused and studied the waves that were building and chopping on the lake. It reminded him of a furious sea. Then he studied the side-paddle, steam-powered ferryboat.

A faded wooden sign attached to the wheelhouse read
KALISPELL
. The boat was old. The paint was chipped and peeling, the wooden deck worn and rotted. It had seen many years of service—too many. But to Cromwell it looked sturdy enough to endure the severe wind and the valleys forming between the growing waves. He felt secure that it could steam to the west side of the lake. He was irritated at seeing no sign of the crew.

He looked up the track and felt gratified that the pursuing train was not in sight. He could only wonder why it became delayed. Whatever the reason, there was no time to dally. He waved to Abner in the cab of the locomotive. “See that the fireman feeds the firebox so we have steam when we reach the Great Northern tracks.”

“Consider it done,” replied Abner, pointing the muzzle of his gun at fireman Carr, who had overheard the conversation. “You heard the man. Keep shoveling.”

“Have you seen the boat crew?”

Abner shrugged. “I've seen no one.”

“Better roust them. We've got to get under way. That locomotive behind us may arrive any minute.”

“What about the train crew?” said Abner. “If I leave them alone, they might make a run for it.”

“You cast off the lines,” Cromwell ordered. “They can't go anywhere if we drift away from the dock. I'll look for the boat crew myself.”

Abner jumped to the deck, ran onto the dock. He found the bow and stern lines securing the ferry. The waves surged in from the middle of the lake and rocked the boat back and forth against the bumpers hanging along the starboard paddle box. Abner waited while the boat drifted away from the dock and the lines became taut. When the water surged back, the lines became slack, and Abner pulled them off their bollards and threw them over the railings of the
Kalispell
. Agile as a cat, he leaped back on the deck and returned to the cab of the locomotive.

Cromwell climbed a ladder to the wheelhouse and was thankful to get inside out of the howling wind. He found it empty and went down a stairwell that led to the galley, where he found the crew sitting around reading impassively. They looked up as he came down the stairs but showed little sign of response or interest.

“You Mr. Cromwell?” said a big, red-faced, heavily bearded man in a red plaid lumberman's coat.

“Yes, I'm Cromwell.”

“We heard your train come onboard. I'm Captain Jack Boss, at your service.”

The laid-back attitude of Boss, who remained sitting, and his two-man crew, who showed utmost indifference, angered Cromwell. “It is of the greatest importance that we get under way immediately.”

Boss shook his head. “No can do. The lake is kicking up. It's best if we wait until the storm blows over.”

As calmly as if he were lighting a cigar, Cromwell pulled his .38 Colt from a coat pocket and shot one of the crewmen in the forehead. The surprise was so complete the crewman slumped over and stared blankly, as if he were still reading newsprint.

“Good God!” was all Boss uttered, his face frozen in shock.

Cromwell pointed his gun at the face of the other crewman, who began to shake uncontrollably. “You will get this boat under way immediately or he goes, too.”

“You're crazy,” gasped Boss.

“My attendant has already cast off the lines. I suggest you waste no more time protesting.”

Boss looked at his dead crewman and slowly, dazedly, came to his feet. He glared at Cromwell with a combined expression of disgust and fury. “You might as well shoot the rest of us,” he said slowly. “We'll all die before we get to the other shore.”

“A chance we have to take,” Cromwell said, his voice hard and venomous.

Boss turned to his crewman, Mark Ragan. “You'll have to operate the engine alone.”

Ragan, a young man yet to see seventeen, nodded with a pale face. “I can do it.”

“Then stoke the boiler and get up enough steam to make good headway.”

The crewman left the galley quickly and dropped down a ladder to the engine room. Boss, closely followed by Cromwell, climbed to the wheelhouse.

Cromwell stared at Boss. “Do not even think about going against my instructions, Captain, or your crewman in the engine room will die. Nor will I have any reservation of killing you, should you not take me to the rail landing on the far shore.”

“You're diabolical scum,” Boss said, his face twisted with rage.

Cromwell laughed and gave Boss a look as cold as death. Then he turned and left the wheelhouse.

As he walked back to his palace boxcar, he heard the shrill blare of a steam whistle. It sounded as if it came from no more than a few hundred yards away. And then his ears caught the hiss of steam and the clatter of locomotive drive wheels. Through the debris hurled by the gusts from the chinook, he saw a large engine materialize from the gloom.

Too late, he thought complacently. The
Kalispell
had already drifted five feet from the end of the dock. No one or nothing could stop him now. Smiling to himself, he made his way back the boxcar and climbed inside.

 

J
ONGEWAARD BROUGHT
Adeline
to a grinding halt only thirty feet from the end of the dock's tracks. Even before the big drive wheels stopped turning, Bell hopped from the cab and ran toward the end of the dock. The railcar ferry was drifting past the pilings out into the lake and the paddle wheels began to turn. The gap had broadened to eight feet when Bell reached the dock's edge.

He did not hesitate, did not think about or analyze his actions, did not step back for a running start. It seemed too far, but without an instant's interruption, he leaped from the dock. Knowing the distance was too great for him to land on his feet, he reached out and grabbed the railing with his hands, his body falling and swinging like a pendulum against the hull of the ferry. He came within a hair of losing his grip and falling in the water, as the impact knocked the wind from his body. He held the railing in a death grip until his breath returned, but the growing ache in his chest did not fade. Slowly, almost agonizingly, he pulled himself over the railing onto the deck of the ferry alongside Cromwell's boxcar.

Bell lightly ran his fingers over his chest and realized he had cracked one, maybe two ribs. Clenching his teeth against the pain, he struggled to his feet and grabbed one of the ladder rungs leading to the roof of the boxcar to support himself from the pitching and heaving of the ship, plowing into the teeth of the chinook. As the
Kalispell
moved farther into the middle of the lake, the windswept waves surged over the bow and onto the low track deck, swirling around the wheels of the locomotive. The terrible winds brought a stunning rise in temperature of over twenty degrees.

Bell cast off any thought of caution. He threw open the loading door of the boxcar and rolled onto the floor, gasping from the agony in his chest, the .45 Colt steady in his hand. Surprise was in his favor. Cromwell was not alarmed, believing that it was Abner who was entering the car. Too late, he saw that it was his worst enemy.

“Hello, Jacob,” Bell said with a cordial grin. “Did you miss me?”

There came a few moments of stunned stillness.

Bell came to his knees and then his feet, keeping the Colt aimed at Cromwell's heart, and closed the door to the boxcar to seal it off from the gusts of wind that were battering the old ferry. He made a quick scan of the interior of the car. “Well, well, well,” he said with interest. “My compliments.” He swung his free hand around the exotically furnished car. “So this is how you escaped your crimes in style.”

“I'm glad you approve,” Cromwell said conversationally.

Bell smiled in narrow-eyed guardedness without lowering his Colt. He glanced at the leather trunks lined against one wall. “The cash from your bank. Must be an impressive amount.”

“Enough to initiate a new enterprise,” Cromwell answered cordially.

“You followed us?” Margaret said, baffled and incredulous. It was more a question than a statement.

“Not exactly
followed,
” Bell said curtly. “More like
chased.
”

Predictably, Cromwell recovered his composure. “How did you arrive so quickly?”

“Fortunately, I had a faster engine and dedicated crewmen.”

“You knew Margaret and I left San Francisco?”

“I tracked down this freight car and figured you had it repainted with a new serial number. My agents had it under surveillance, waiting for the moment when you would use it again. Unfortunately, the earthquake came and my agents had more-pressing duties elsewhere.”

“And you discovered that it had left the railyard,” Cromwell assumed.

Bell nodded. “Only after I went to your bank and saw that you had cleaned out the vault of all large-currency bills.”

“But how could you have known we were heading for Canada?”

“The dispatcher at the Southern Pacific office,” Bell said, lying so as not to involve Marion. “I put a gun to his head and persuaded him to tell me what tracks your chartered train was traveling. Then it was only a matter of filling in the cracks.”

“Very ingenious, Mr. Bell.” Cromwell, champagne glass in hand, stared at Bell appraisingly. “It seems I have a penchant for underestimating you.”

“I've misjudged you a time or two.”

Margaret spoke in a tone barely above a whisper. “What do you intend to do?” Her shock had turned to desperation.

“Hold your brother for the local sheriff after we reach shore. Then assemble the necessary papers to escort the two of you to Chicago, where he'll have a speedy trial without a fixed jury of your old pals and hang for his crimes.” Bell's smile turned cold and his voice ominous. “And you, dear Margaret, will probably spend the best years of your life in a federal jail.”

Bell caught the exchange of knowing looks between Cromwell and Margaret. He could only wonder what they were thinking, but he was pretty sure it didn't bode well. He watched as Cromwell sank into one end of an ornate couch.

“Our voyage may take a while in this weather.” As if to accent his statement, the bottle of champagne slid off its table and onto the floor. “A pity. I was going to offer you a drink.”

Bell could only guess where Cromwell kept his Colt .38. “I never drink while on duty,” Bell said facetiously.

The car took another sudden lurch as the ferry tipped over to one side, the entire hull vibrating as one of the paddle wheels thrashed out of the water. Margaret gasped in fear and stared at the water that was seeping in widening puddles along the bottom of the freight door.

 

O
UTSIDE
, the wind shrieked, and the
Kalispell
creaked and groaned against the onslaught of the mounting waves that rolled down the length of Flathead Lake. The tired old vessel burrowed her bow into the gale-driven crests before dropping sickeningly into the troughs. A towering wave broke out the forward windows, sending sheets of water into the wheelhouse.

Captain Boss pulled up his coat collar and grasped the helm desperately as the gale lashed him with spray that stung the skin of his face and hands.

A whistle shrilled through the speaking tube from the engine room. Boss picked it up, said, “Wheelhouse.”

Ragan's voice came with a hollow tone through the tube. “I'm taking water down here, Captain.”

“Can the pumps handle it?”

“So far. But the hull is creaking something awful. I fear the bulkheads might give way.”

“Get ready to clear out if it gets bad. Make your way to the roof over the galley and unlash the raft.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Ragan. “What about you, Captain?”

“Call me when you leave the engine room. I'll follow if I can.”

“What about the people on the train? We can't just abandon them.”

Boss was a man with moral depth, a God-fearing man of great inner strength from the old school whose word was his bond. He was well respected by all who lived around the lake. He gazed through the broken wheelhouse window at the far shore and the mad water thrashing over the bow and felt certain the
Kalispell
was not going to make it.