The Warriors (55 page)

Who had done it? Guns Taken and his Cheyenne? It made little difference. The remains were mute proof of the savage level to which the coming of the railroad had raised the war between the whites and the Plains tribes.

A conference was held, well away from the site of the massacre. The engineer would report to Casement, and ask for a work crew to come back, pick up the remains, and search for identification. “We stay here any longer, we’ll be late to the railhead,” the engineer said. It was an excuse, but Michael was thankful for it.

Soon the train was headed west again. The memory of what he’d seen beat at Michael’s mind. The trembling returned. He was almost pitched off the flatcar before he closed both hands on one of the stakes. Jumbled images spun past his inner eye.

The trees of the Wilderness bursting afire.

A splendid green banner tumbling toward summer grass, its wounded bearer trying to hold it aloft, failing, and weeping as he stained the silken sunburst with his blood.

Pickett’s line, human wheat scythed down slowly in the powder haze of a steamy July afternoon.

Worthing’s face when Michael’s bullet hit him.

The dismembered bodies of men who must have known fear, love, hope, laughter, and who had found death by following the twin tracks of what purported to be civilization—

Clutching at the stake, Michael cried, “Enough!” Cannon thundered in his brain. All the hurt men of the endless wars seemed to wail in chorus.

“Enough!”

The rear brakeman shouted something he didn’t hear. Slowly, he gained control of himself. He wiped his tear-tracked face with the back of a hand.

It wasn’t sufficient for a man to cry out against the struggles that rent the land. A man had to do something more than curse bloodletting when he too was responsible for it—

A man had to do something to defy and defeat what he detested. Amanda Kent had taught him that long ago. He remembered the family motto. Take a stand. Make a mark.

Seated again, he gazed at the sky.

If you’re there, listen to me.

Never again will I knowingly hurt another person the way I hurt Hannah Dorn.

Never again while I breathe will I lift my hand against another human being, no matter what the provocation.

Never.

At the railhead, Adolphus Brown was supervising the raising of a large tent. The girls were already inside, setting up cots, hanging canvas partitions, and uncrating whiskey bottles. Brown’s half-witted young helper, Toby Harkness, swung a sledge to peg the last guy rope.

Although it was barely daylight, the feisty little construction boss, Casement, had already called on Brown to inform him his presence would be tolerated because Casement realized the men required certain diversions. But Brown was under orders not to open for business until the end of the workday. Something else was on Brown’s mind at the moment, though.

Toby leaned on the sledge, grinning. “All done. Butt? I said all done.”

“Oh. Good. Now hang up the sign the way I showed you.”

“Boss, what’s chewing on you this morning?”

Brown fanned himself with his hard felt hat.
Going to be a sonofabitching hot day.

“Boss?”

“That Paddy we encountered driving out here.”

Toby scratched his beard. “Hell, he seemed pretty harmless.”

“Depends. He knows me from Omaha. Some of the others here might also. They could talk. Discourage trade.”

“We got the place to ourselves!”

“Not for long. I know of three gents who’ll be arriving with their outfits inside of a week. In a month, there’ll be a small city of tents following the line. We could end up sucking the hind tit.”

“I promise you, Butt. Those micks get in our way, I’ll talk to ’em. They don’t listen”—Toby caressed the handle of the sledge—“I’ll talk a little louder.”

Adolphus Brown felt a burden lift. He clapped his derby on his scarred head and laid an arm across the younger man’s shoulder. “Toby my boy, you know what I’m thinking almost before I think it. That’s why I admire you.”

Toby smiled in a way Brown found hilarious. The lout had all the brains of a sparrow. Brown managed to keep a straight face as Toby declared, “Nobody ever admired me before I met up with you.”

“That was their mistake.”

“Because if some mick shoots off his mouth, I’ll fix ’em.”

“And do a splendid job, too.” Brown grinned as they strolled toward the tent entrance. Inside, Nancy and Alice were bickering like ruffled hens. He must keep his patience. By sundown he’d have them on their backs, with their attention focused on the only spot where a woman’s attention belonged.

“Yes, sir, a splendid job. I can count on that as surely as I can count on a winner when I need one.”

He jutted his hand toward Toby’s face. The sleeve garter and attached elastic worked perfectly, popping the spade ace into his fingers as if it had materialized from the air.

Toby giggled like a child, grimy fingers over his mouth. “Lordy, Butt.” He giggled again. “Not out here where everybody can see.”

Brown pointed toward the dining car. “Everybody’s in there, stuffing. Getting ready to bust their asses and lay a mile of track quick, so they can pay us a visit. You get busy with that sign.”

“Yes, sir,” Toby said in an almost worshipful way.

Brown hid the card in a slit in his red velvet waistcoat and entered the tent whistling. Toby was a crackerjack. Stupid but a crackerjack. Any Irishman who flapped his mouth about Omaha would regret it.

“D
OWN!”

On Michael’s signal, the five men lowered the rail. About two and a half feet of it projected beyond a splintered board stuck in the earth beside the right of way. Faded white numerals were painted on the board:

The moment the rail touched the ground, Sean Murphy whirled to the crew on the other side of the grade. “Beat you!” Disgruntled, they placed their rail as Murphy wigwagged his arms and bellowed in the direction of the perpetual train; “It’s done! We’re past!”

Voice after voice took up the shout. Mass insanity seemed to seize the hundreds of men strung out at the railhead this crisp afternoon, the fifth of October.

Christian, fully recovered, put his hands on his waist, bent backwards, shut his eyes, and wailed, “Whooo-
aaaah
” Artemus Corkle—permanently on the crew now; Michael had replaced the complaining O’Dey—ran down from the right of way, performed two quick somersaults, then raised himself on his palms and proceeded to walk with his legs in the air, bleating like a calf.

“WHOOO-AAAAAAAH!”
Christian howled again. Jostled by screaming men, Michael accepted a maul from one of them.

“Take a lick, Boyle. Someday you’ll want to show this place to your grandchildren.”

With a melancholy smile, Michael hammered the spike twice. He passed the maul to Murphy, who was laughing and crying at the same time.

The shouting intensified, spreading eastward, picked up by hundreds of throats. The engineer of the locomotive behind the perpetual train doubled the noise by blowing the whistle and ringing the bell.

In five minutes, all work had come to a stop. Greenup Williams snagged Michael’s waist and hand, danced him around in a circle, then cupped his mouth and yelled at the western horizon, “We done it, Charlie Crocker! You listenin’? Meridian one hundred! We’ll be all the way across the plains while you’re still sitting on your behind in those mountains!”

Guards atop the cars of the work train fired their Spencers at the sky. North of the train, men and a few women poured from a disorderly collection of tents, the ever-growing movable town that packed itself into wagons and buggies every day or so, following the railhead. Someone had christened the tent village Hell-on-Wheels. It was appropriate, Michael thought. All sorts of riffraff had been attracted to it, exactly as Hannah had prophesied. Sean Murphy was fond of telling the more recent additions to the workforce, “The place is fast becoming civilized, several men having been killed here already.”

Michael had already had a run-in with one of the tent town’s citizens—Harkness, the dull-witted young man, who worked for Butt Brown.

Harkness had caught Michael alone one September evening when he was returning from a chat with the drovers. He demanded Michael stop talking to new workers about Brown’s curious habit of winning against all opponents.

Patiently Michael explained that he never sought opportunities to discuss Mr. Brown. Though he didn’t admit it, the fact was he’d only volunteered information to a few close friends. The rest of the time he merely answered newcomers’ questions honestly. He put Harkness on notice that he’d continue to do so.

Evidently trade at Brown’s Paradise was already suffering because Harkness replied with threatening language. He emphasized his warning by repeatedly jabbing a finger into Michael’s chest.

Michael’s temper flared. But he suffered the rest of the tirade, and a few more jabs, without resorting to his fists. He meant to keep the pledge he’d made on the car from Kearney.

Toby Harkness departed with a smirk on his face, apparently convinced he’d been dealing with a coward. Michael had already accepted the fact that such opinions would be the price of fulfilling his vow—

Now Michael watched Butt Brown slip a pepperbox derringer from his waistcoat and begin shooting over his head. Further up the dirt street between the tents and the train, he suddenly spied the white buffalo hunter and his Sioux companion.

In August, the two had already been gone by the time he returned to the railhead. Now they were back, strolling and enjoying the celebration. The white man waved his plainsman’s hat once or twice, and tipped it to a soiled dove in front of Brown’s Paradise. Even at a distance, a white streak in the hunter’s fair hair stood out clearly.

Michael assumed the pair had brought in another load of buffalo meat. He was still convinced he’d met the white man during the war. He made up his mind to inquire.

A troop of the cavalry now guarding the workers on a full-time basis galloped by, the men no more than blurs in their dark blue blouses and light blue, yellow-striped trousers. Sabers swinging in crazy arcs, they went pounding west, screaming as enthusiastically as the Paddies. Their bugler blew the charge.

Meridian one hundred.

It was a goal every man had concentrated on for months. With the goal reached, Michael had to confront the reality of the next phase of his life: more grueling, lonely work of the same kind. He didn’t like the prospect very much.

He did feel a sense of pride in having helped push the line this far. As of today, the Union Pacific’s charter was official. The eastern skeptics would be silenced, and perhaps the line would begin to attract the investors it needed. Within ten days to two weeks, Dr. Durant’s much publicized Great Pacific Railway Excursion train would be chugging out of Omaha bearing its select group of government dignitaries, military officers, and potential stockholders. Jack Casement was undoubtedly already sending a telegraph message to Durant, informing him of the day’s accomplishment.

Meridian one hundred. He was proud of having been part of the effort.

Yet something was lacking. He felt disconnected from the revelry, and unenthusiastic about the work ahead. The unease wasn’t new. It had been with him ever since the trip to Kearney. He’d grown moody and uncommunicative. Sean Murphy had commented on it several times.

A man came charging from the office car, repeating his news as he ran, “No more work! General Jack says we can take the rest of the day an’ have a good time!”

More cheering. Michael started for his quarters, his face composed but not his spirit.

Men waved and screamed with renewed fervor when Casement appeared on the steps of the office car, a jubilant smile on his face. The rifle fire grew almost continuous, the roar of the Spencers proclaiming the victory and challenging anyone within earshot—God Himself, up in the hazy autumn sky—to accomplish something more wondrous.

It was a triumph, and Michael knew it. Why, then, did he feel so remote from it?

Because he constantly remembered the price paid in blood to achieve it? Remembered the dead men, including the four butchered hunters who had never been identified?

Or was it because, of late, he found Julia Kent’s face frequently and disturbingly replaced in his thoughts by that of Hannah Dorn?

After supper he walked from the dining car to the row of lamplit tents where rowdy men were already plumping down their wages for overpriced whiskey, a chance to beat a professional at three-card monte, or a quarter hour with one of the fourteen or fifteen soiled doves inhabiting the portable town.

He passed Brown’s Paradise. A reveler staggered out. Before the tent flap fell, Michael was gratified to see no other patrons inside. He had nothing personal against Brown. But he figured the new men arriving every day or so should understand the risks of visiting the establishment.

At the rear of the narrow lane between Levi’s Bird Cage Saloon and Tidwell’s, his destination, he spied a wagon parked in the semidarkness. A tarp-covered wagon, with a black-haired man rolled in a blanket on the hard ground beneath.

He recognized the white hunter’s Sioux partner. The Indian cradled a rifle close to his chest while he dozed.

Inside Tidwell’s, the only railhead establishment selling general merchandise, a cheerful, overweight man slapped his hands on the plank counter.

“How do you do, sir? Bucyrus Tidwell’s the name.” He rolled a gold-plated toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Help you find something?”

Michael surveyed the hand-labeled jars, bottles, and boxes on makeshift shelves. Everything from calomel to cartridges. He tugged his churchwarden out of his hip pocket.

“I need some tobacco.”

Tidwell hefted an amber jar and carried it toward the balances, “Got some choice Virginia. Six bits.” His smile widened. “Per ounce.”

“Per
ounce?
You’re joking.”

Less cordially, Tidwell said, “I know my own prices.”