Firewind, p.12
Firewind, page 12
Kincaid stared at him. "You want to get us both killed?"
"He won't know it's coming."
"He's not a fool and he's on his guard. It's too much of a risk."
"You gonna help me or not?"
"No. Use your head, man. We're out of fire danger now; we'll be all right if you-"
Denbow's face turned blood-dark with rage. "You goddamn coward!"
Kincaid felt the violence surge inside him, wanted to grab Denbow by the neck and shake him - and behind them the lean one yelled, "That's enough talking! Get the hell away from each other!"
The words brought Kincaid erect, made him back off a step. The stranger had come forward and was standing with his feet spread apart, left hand anchored against the cab bulkhead, right hand holding the Colt steady. His expression hadn't changed any, but his eyes were colder now, deadlier. He was not a man you could fool. No matter what the circumstances, you would never catch him unawares.
Kincaid put his gaze on Denbow again. And felt the short hairs pull along his neck. Denbow's rage was gone; his face was as expressionless as the stranger's. But in his eyes now there was stubbornness, reckless determination.
He's going to try it, anyway, Kincaid thought. With or without my help, the damn fool is going to try for that gun.
***
Denbow waited until they neared the long eastward loop around the lake's south shore before he got ready to make his move.
He had his left hand tight on the throttle; he slid his right over and let it rest on the airbrake lever. Then he eased around on the seat, planted his left foot on the footboard, brought the wooden leg out from under the reverse bar. Kincaid, the yellow belly, was backed up against the fireman's seat, watching him with a tautness in his long body. To hell with you, Denbow thought, and shifted his attention to the hardcase with the gun. Watching him, too, that one - coldly, with his body again wedged flat against the bulkhead. The Colt six-gun was steady in his hand.
Son of a bitch had to be disarmed and thrown out of the cab, that was all there was to it. Denbow had known that as soon as he'd had time to think things through. Coldblooded killer, capable of anything. Capable of shooting both him and Kincaid once they got near Springwood, locking the throttle open, and then jumping clear: creating a runaway that would crash and kill everybody on board, just so he could get away in the confusion. Kincaid, the damned coward, didn't want to believe in that sort of thing happening; but Denbow knew better. Making a move against the gun-hawk here and now was risky, but it was a hell of a lot less risky than doing nothing at all.
The excitement Denbow had felt since taking the throttle was sharper now. All up to him, by God. All up to a one-legged man, a cripple. He felt like laughing. Well, he'd be equal to it, just as he'd been equal to everything else tonight. He'd show them all.
He inclined his body back so he could look through the side window. Ahead, the black rails were beginning to curve beyond the reach of the headlight. In another few seconds the Baldwin would lean swaying into the curve. When he braked, the jolt would sharpen the listing angle, and perhaps that in itself would be enough to spill the stranger right out of the gangway. Knock him off his pins, anyway. Maybe make him drop the revolver.
His teeth clamped together and he set himself. The locomotive started into the curve with a small lurching shock-
Kincaid suddenly pushed away from the fireman's seat and barked at him, "Denbow, don't do it!"
A frenzy took hold of Denbow. He thought: You dirty coward! And braced himself on the seat, threw the throttle shut, and hit the air.
There was a moment of headlong drifting motion. Then the brake shoes locked and ground and the Baldwin jarred, pulled back, shuddered forward again when the tender plowed into it from behind. Kincaid was thrown along the far side of the boiler and into the piping on the front bulkhead. The gun-hawk lost his grip on the tender bulkhead, came staggering away from it. His free hand groped out to the gangway jamb behind Denbow, his knees bent and his feet sliding wider apart as he fought to hold his balance.
Denbow was already moving by then. He came off the seat on his good left foot, twisted his body around, and slapped his left hand against the side bulkhead at the same time his peg leg came down on the deck. That held him steady long enough to swing forward again and roll his weight back onto his left foot. He came right up to the lean man, body half turned away from him at the gangway frame. Reached out for him, dug his left hand into the gun-hawk's shoulder, and threw his right against the nearest hip… shove him right on through and straight to hell. For an instant he thought he had enough leverage to do it-
Only then the stranger got his body braced and lunged back into him, brought his right elbow and forearm around in a vicious backhand sweep. Denbow saw it coming, tried to dodge, but his goddamn crutch slipped on the deck. The blow struck him full force, forearm thudding into his chin and the right side of his face, elbow cracking against his collarbone. His head snapped back; there was a flash of light and pain behind his eyes. The hardcase came all the way around in front of him, savagery in his face, and swung the Colt up and down at the same time he kicked Denbow's wooden leg out from under him.
Denbow went down. The gun barrel glanced across the side of his head as he fell, struck him again more solidly when he landed asprawl on his buttocks.
The wail of the brake shoes quit in that moment, then the bucking motion of the cab ceased. The string smoothed out, the locomotive began to pull ahead at a retarded speed through the curve and into another tangent.
Pain blurred Denbow's vision, blurred his mind, but rage and humiliation wouldn't let him give up. He dragged himself onto his left knee, tried to stand.
The stranger kicked him in the stomach.
All the air burst out of him; he toppled over backward against the footboard and lay there gasping. Dimly he saw Kincaid standing at the controls: He'd shut off the air and opened the throttle halfway. Then the lean man bent forward in front of him, breathing hard through his mouth, pointing the revolver at Denbow's right eye.
"You try anything else," he roared, "I'll blow your goddamn head off! You understand me?"
Seconds passed before the gun-hawk straightened, backed off slowly to the tender. Denbow's smoke-weakened lungs finally dragged in enough air to let him breathe again without gasping. Some of the pain in his head and belly eased. There was oozing wetness on his right temple; he put a hand up there and then took it down and stared at a smear of blood.
"Get up," the lean man said. The savagery had gone out of his face, left it cold and hard again. "Get back on your seat."
Denbow laid a hand on the footboard, lifted himself onto it. Kincaid reached down to help him, but Denbow slapped wrathfully at the hand and said, "Get away from me, you bastard," through clamped teeth. His voice sounded as if it were coming through water. He pushed off the footboard, caught the seat, and hauled himself erect. And then threw a hard shoulder into Kincaid that sent him reeling to one side.
Kincaid caught his balance, took a step back toward him, then changed his mind and retreated to the fireman's seat. His mouth was thinned down to a slash.
All your fault, Denbow told him silently. If we get out of this, I'll fix you. One way or another I'll fix you good.
Denbow slid up onto the seat, wiped blood and sweat from his face, squinted at the gauges. Steam pressure was down under a hundred pounds. He notched the throttle wide open again. The Baldwin surged; smoke peppered with cinders poured out of the barking stack; the beat of the wheels and drivers once more built up to a thunderous cadence. The oil pressure was still down, too, he saw. He opened the lubricator nozzle all the way.
"More wood!" he shouted at the yellow belly. "Load up full."
Kincaid didn't move.
"More wood, I said. I want that box full."
"There's no damn need," Kincaid said. "We're less than five mile out of Spring-wood-"
"I'm the engineer, I know what I'm doing. You don't. Load that box!"
Behind him, the lean man said to Kincaid, "Do what he says."
"But I tell you it's dangerous-"
"You heard me. Move!"
Kincaid didn't offer any more argument. Angrily he turned back to the tender, began hauling out sticks of cordwood from the dwindling supply.
All right, Denbow thought. He put his head out to check uptrack. The fire was almost a mile behind them now; its smoky glow seemed to cover the whole of the northern sky. Downtrack, there was more dense timberland, the right-of-way walled by virgin spruce and Douglas fir. The rails ran straight for another mile, eventually came out of heavy timber near a high granite escarpment and then hooked sharply around it to the west.
All right, he thought again. The gun-hawk wouldn't be expecting him to try the same thing twice, or to try anything so soon after the first attempt, so that was when and where he'd make his next move. Right there on the curve, when the Baldwin leaned into it.
Kincaid had made him fail once, but that hadn't changed anything. He still knew what he had to do.
And this time, nothing would stop him from doing it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rudabaugh watched the redhead pitch wood into the firebox, the peg leg hunched forward at the controls. He'd thought the redhead, Kincaid, was the proddy one, the troublemaker; but the one he had to worry most about was the peg leg, Denbow. Hothead, that one. Lost a leg and thought that on account of it, he had to keep proving he was still a man. Rudabaugh had seen his type before, after the war. Yank and Reb soldiers both, left pieces of themselves on one battlefield or another - always bullyragging, looking for excuses to start a ruckus.
You could almost see Denbow's brain working, figuring some other stupid trick. Sooner or later he'd come up with something and then he'd try it. Rudabaugh didn't want to have to kill him; he wasn't sure Kincaid could operate the train. That was all that had kept him from shooting the peg leg a few minutes ago. Might come to that, though, before this crazy ride was over. He'd been damn lucky to escape the blowup at the mill, to get this far away without either the fire or the explosives finishing him. He wasn't about to let a proddy peg leg put an end to that lucky streak.
Kincaid was coming to the tender again. Rudabaugh asked him, "How far to Spring-wood?"
"Not far now. Four miles."
"How big a town is it?"
"How big?"
"You heard me. How many people there?"
"About six hundred. Be more now, though."
"Why?"
"Why do you think? Men gather from miles around to help fight a forest fire." Kincaid paused. "Law officers, too," he said.
"That supposed to worry me?"
"Doesn't it?"
"No," Rudabaugh said. "Get to work." Then, because Denbow was looking around at him, "You - eyes front."
Both of them did as they were told.
Rudabaugh ran his tongue over dry, ashy lips. Two choices, he thought. Ride on into Springwood, try to slip away in the confusion; there'd be plenty of horses available in town. Or drop off the train some distance outside of town. He liked the second choice much better, as long as it wouldn't strand him afoot in unpopulated and unfamiliar territory; as long as there was a ranch or farm nearby where he could steal a horse. That way nobody on this train could raise an alarm against him until after he was gone. By the time the law got around to hunting him, he'd be halfway back to San Francisco…
Denbow had his head cocked around again, watching Rudabaugh with one narrowed eye. Rudabaugh didn't say anything this time, just stared back at him. After a few seconds the peg leg shifted his gaze and ordered Kincaid to hurry it up, get the goddamn firebox loaded. Kincaid ignored him. He was leaning forward in front of the boiler, studying one of the gauges.
Something between the two of them, Rudabaugh thought. They seemed to hate each other, and it wasn't just what had been going on here in the cab. But that was all to the good, as far as he was concerned: It kept them from allying themselves against him. When Denbow made his next stupid move, he'd be making it alone again.
***
Kincaid released the foot pedal to reclose the firebox doors against the white glare and blast of heat from within, then backed over to the fireman's seat and stayed there. He just wouldn't feed the ballast any longer. The safety valves were popping steadily now, like strings of firecrackers going off, and the needle on the boiler-pressure gauge hovered near six hundred pounds. She was badly overheated; the relief valves couldn't handle that kind of pressure indefinitely.
Denbow should have known that, too, but he wasn't paying any mind to the gauges or to the sounds of the valves. He was just sitting over there with his face closed tight, shouting at intervals for more wood… plotting.
Pretty soon the damn fool would make his second try at the lean man - it was so plain in his face that he might as well have been wearing a sign. And if Kincaid knew it, the stranger had to know it, too.
Sweat streamed from his armpits, rolled down over his naked sides. He still wasn't sure what to do. Maybe he shouldn't do anything at all. Might be best for everyone on this train if Denbow just went ahead and made another outlandish move and the stranger shot him dead. That would solve the problem of the overheating boiler.
Solve the problem of which of us gets Rose, too.
Christ! What kind of thinking was that? Fatigue and frustration and the constant tension corrupting his mind, fueling the hate he felt toward Denbow.
Outside, the sky to the east was turning a dim lavender-gray, smoothing off the heavy edges of night. Dawn was just a short time off. Twenty-four hours since he'd last slept. His body ached, his head ached. For all its negative effects, the tension, like an adhesive, was one of the things holding him together.
Suppose he went over with a stick of cordwood and clouted Denbow, took over the throttle himself? But he'd never driven a locomotive, knew too little about its operation. And suppose the lean man decided to spare Denbow because he was the acting engineer? Then it would be Kincaid who got himself shot dead.
"More wood, damn your hide!" Denbow yelled at him again.
Kincaid moved then, compulsively. Went around the boiler to stand a couple of paces away from Denbow on the high seat. "No more wood," he said. "We're almost out of water. Look at the pressure gauge - the boiler's too hot already."
"The hell it is."
"Listen to those safety valves, man. Listen!"
"You listen. Load up."
"I'm telling you, she's liable to blow!"
"Bullshit."
From over by the tender the stranger shouted, "What are you two arguing about?"
Kincaid said to him, "The boiler's overheated. If we don't slow, relieve some of the pressure before we run out of water, it'll explode."
The lean man scowled. "What about that?" he demanded of Denbow.
"He don't know what he's talking about. He don't know anything about a locomotive."
"I mean it," Kincaid yelled, "it'll explode!"
The stranger didn't know which of them to listen to. He asked Denbow, "You sure he's not right about that boiler?"
"Damn right I'm sure."
Kincaid said, "Come over here and take a look at the boiler gauge yourself. You'll see I'm telling the truth."
The lean man didn't move. "To hell with that. I wouldn't know what I was looking at."
"Needle's in the danger zone, you can tell that much."
"Sure she's running hot," Denbow said, "but that don't mean anything. Not yet it don't. If she runs too hot, I'll shut her down. Right now we got to have full steam; we can't afford to cut speed. Look outside… that fire's still close."
The stranger didn't move. But his indecision vanished, and he said, "All right, then.
The quicker we get where we're going, the better." To Kincaid he said, "Get back over here. We'll keep things the way they are for now."
Desperation swelled the cords in Kincaid's neck. Damn Denbow! How could he believe what he'd been saying? Even with his feelings running wild, he ought to understand the danger-
Maybe he did understand it.
Maybe he was lying, playing games with a heavy-handed cunning, because a wide-open throttle was part of another reckless scheme to assault the stranger.
Kincaid turned sharply away from the boiler. Through the front window he saw that they were just emerging from the section of dense timber. Ahead was a wide granite escarpment around which the tracks curved to the west - a plum-colored mass in the early-morning gloom. Three miles exactly from there to Springwood; he remembered Sam Honeycutt pointing the landmark out to him once on a railroad map.
When he glanced down at the boiler-pressure gauge, he saw that the needle was at the six-hundred-pound line.
He backed over to the tender, trying to decide what to do. Wait it out, let Denbow make his move, hope it got him beaten or even shot? No good. Too many dangers in that, not the least of which was the boiler exploding before Denbow made his move; the popping of the valves was growing louder by the second.
"Load up!" Denbow hollered at him. "Give me steam!"
There was only one choice, Kincaid thought grimly. And he had to do it now, before it was too late for all of them.
He reached inside the tender for a stick of cordwood to use as a weapon.
***
Eyes narrowed, Denbow watched the escarpment loom closer beyond the Baldwin's headlight beam. In another minute they would be into the short westward curve, listing into a turn that was even sharper than the one back around the lake.
Just one more minute…
He leaned sideways around the throttle bar. The boiler gauge was beyond six hundred pounds and climbing. That gutless Kincaid was right about the pressure - but not as right as he thought. A boiler like this one could stand more than seven hundred pounds without blowing. Wouldn't erupt until the pressure reached four times the working steam pressure; he knew that well enough, from talks with his father and Sam Honeycutt. There wasn't any real danger yet. Long before she got over seven hundred pounds, he'd have shut her down and hit the air. And once he had the stranger's gun, once that hardcase was down or gone through the gangway, he'd keep the Baldwin at one-third throttle the rest of the way into Springwood.
