The Wrecker

And roar He

“Well, now,” soothed Van Dorn.

He

“Bookkeepers,” Mrs. Comden said, “do not build empires.” Something about her attempt to comfort him made He

Bell exchanged a quick glance with Van Dorn.

“What was a lumberjack doing in the railroad-construction yard? Your mill is high up the mountain.”

“Who the hell knows?” He

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Ask Lillian … No, you can‘t, dammit. I sent her to New York to sweet-talk those lowdown bankers.”

Bell turned on his heel and hurried off the private car to the field hospital the company had set up in a Pullman. He found the burned miners swathed in white dressings, and a bandaged yard foreman yelling he was cured, dammit to hell, just turn him loose, he had a railroad to fix. But no lumberjack.

“His friends carried him off,” said the doctor.

“Why?”

“No one asked my permission. I was eating supper.”

“Was he awake?”

“Sometimes.”

Bell ran to the yard superintendent’s office, where he had made friends with the dispatcher and the chief clerk, who kept enormous amounts of information at his fingertips. The chief clerk said, “I heard they moved him down to the town somewhere.”

“What’s his name?”

“Don Albert.”

Bell borrowed a horse from the railway police stable and urged the animal at a quick clip to the boomtown that had sprung up behind the railhead. It was down in a hollow, a temporary city of tents, shacks, and abandoned freight cars outfitted to house the saloons, dance halls, and whorehouses that served the construction crews. Midweek, midafternoon, the narrow dirt streets were deserted, as if the occupants were catching their breath before the next payday Saturday night.

Bell poked his head into a dingy saloon. The barkeep, presiding over planks resting on whiskey barrels, looked up morosely from a week-old Sacramento newspaper. “Where,” Bell asked him, “do the lumberjacks hang out?”

“The Double Eagle, just down the street. But you won’t find any there now. They’re sawing crossties up the mountain. Working double shifts to get ‘em down before it snows.”

Bell thanked him and headed for the Double Eagle, a battered boxcar off the trucks. A painted sign on the roof depicted a red eagle with wings spread and they had found a set of swinging doors somewhere. As in the previous saloon, the only occupant was a barkeep, as morose as the last. He brightened when Bell tossed a coin on his plank.

“What’ll you have, mister?”

“I’m looking for the lumberjack who got hurt in the accident. Don Albert.”

“I heard he’s in a coma.”

“I heard he wakes up now and then,” said Bell. “Where can I find him?”

“Are you a cinder dick?”

“Do I look like a cinder dick?”

“I don’t know, mister. They’ve been swarming around here like flies on a carcass.” He sized Bell up again and came to a decision. “There’s an old lady in a shack tending him down by the creek. Follow the ruts down to the water, you can’t miss it.”

Leaving his horse where he had tied it, Bell descended to the creek, which by the smell wafting up the slope served as the town’s sewer. He passed an ancient Central Pacific boxcar that had once been painted yellow. From one of the holes cut in the side that served as windows, a young woman with a ru

“Thank you, no,” Bell answered politely.

“Honey, you’ll find nothing down there better than this.”

“I’m looking for the lady taking care of the lumberjack who got hurt?”

“Mister, she’s retired.”

Bell kept walking until he came to a row of rickety shacks hammered out of wood from packing crates. Here and there were stenciled their original contents. SPIKES. COTTON WOOL. PICK HANDLES. OVERALLS.

Outside of one marked PIANO ROLLS, he saw an old woman sitting on an overturned bucket, holding her head in her hands. Her hair was white. Her clothing, a cotton dress with a shawl around her shoulders, was too thin for the cold damp rising from the fetid creek. She saw him coming and jumped up with an expression of terror.

“He’s not here!” she cried.

“Who? Take it easy, ma‘am. I won’t hurt you.”

“Do

Bell said, “I’m not the law. I-”

“Do

Out of the shack stormed a six-foot-five lumberjack. He had an enormous walrus mustache that drooped below his grizzled chin, long greasy hair, and a bowie knife in his fist.

“Are you Don Albert?” asked Bell.

“Do

Concerned that Don Albert was belting out the back door, Bell reached for his hat and brought his hand down filled with his .44 derringer. “I enjoy a knife fight as much as the next man, but right now I haven’t the time. Drop it!”

The lumberjack did not blink. Instead, he backed up four fast steps and pulled a second, shorter knife that had no handle. “Want to bet I can throw this more accurate than you can shoot that snub nose?” he asked.

“I’m not a gambler,” said Bell, whipped his new Browning from his coat, and shot the bowie knife out of the lumberjack’s hand. The lumberjack gave a howl of pain and stared in disbelief at his shiny knife spi

The lumberjack dropped his throwing knife.

“Where is Don Albert?” Bell asked.

“Don’t bother him, mister. He’s hurt bad.”

“If he’s hurt bad, he should be in the hospital.”

“Cain’t be in the hospital.”

“Why?”

“The cinder dicks’ll blame him for the runaway.”

“Why?”

“He was on it.”

“On it?” Bell echoed. “Do you expect me to believe he survived a mile-a-minute crash?”

“Yes, sir. ‘Cause he did.”

“Do

Bell pried the story, step-by-step, out of the lumberjack and the old woman, who turned out to be Don Albert’s mother. Albert had been sleeping off an i

“Skull like pig iron,” the lumberjack assured Bell, and Don’s mother agreed. Tearfully, she explained that every time Don had opened his eyes in the hospital, a railroad dick would shout at him. “Do