The Wrecker

Bell fired his pistol again and again as fast as he could pull the trigger.

“Stop!”

The engineer slammed on the brakes. Wheels locked. Steel screeched on steel. The heavy locomotive slid along on the massive force of its momentum. The weight of twenty cars shoved behind it.

Bell and Malone leaped off the pilot and ran ahead of the skidding locomotive.

“What is it?” the track foreman shouted.

“That tie,” Bell pointed.

“God Almighty!” roared Malone.

The two men turned as one and raised powerful arms as if to stop the train with their bare hands.

33

THE ENGINEER THREW HIS JOHNSON BAR INTO REVERSE.

Eight ponderous drive wheels spun backward, showering sparks and slivers from the rails. For a moment, it looked as if two strong men were actually stopping a Consolidation locomotive. And when it did grind to a stop with a ground-shaking shudder, Isaac Bell looked down and saw his boots planted firmly on the suspect crosstie.

The tip of the pilot was hanging over it. The leading wheels of the engine truck had come within two yards of it.

“Back her up,” ordered Malone. “Softly!”

GENTLY SCRAPING AWAY THE ballast from either end, Bell discovered upon close inspection that the suspect tie had a round wooden plug like a whiskey barrel bung. It was the diameter of a silver dollar and almost indistinguishable from the timber’s end grain.

“Move everyone farther back,” he told Malone. “He packed the tie with dynamite.”

The triggering device was a nail positioned to set off a detonator. There was enough dynamite to blow rails out from under the locomotive, which would have tumbled off the cut and dragged the whole train down the side of the mountain. Instead, Bell was able to wire back to Osgood He

He

EARLY NEXT MORNING, OSGOOD HENNESSY called Bell onto his private car. Lillian and Mrs. Comden offered coffee. He

Bell walked into the tu

The chattering drills stopped as Bell and the railroad president approached. Miners cleared the crumbling stone with sledges and shovels, then stepped back from the wall that remained.

A towering hard-rock miner with long apish arms and a gap-toothed grin handed Bell a sixteen-pound sledgehammer.

“Ever swing one of these before?”

“Driving tent pegs for the circus.”

“You’ll do fine.” The miner leaned in and whispered, “See that chalk mark? Smack her there. We always set it to come down for the ceremony … Gangway, boys! Give the man room.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do this?” Bell asked He

He

Bell whipped the heavy sledge over his shoulder and swung hard at the chalk mark. Cracks spread, and a gleam of light showed in the wall. He swung again. The miners cheered as the rock collapsed and daylight poured in.

Bell stepped into the jagged opening and saw the Cascade Canyon Bridge glittering in the sunlight. The long, layered latticework of steel spa

Bell saw that it was heavily guarded. Railroad police stood every fifty feet. A sentry house stood at either end and one at each pier. As Bell watched, a cloud passed over the sun, and the shadow turned the silvery girders black.

“What do you think, son?” He

“She’s a beauty.”

How would the Wrecker strike?

In the shadow of the bridge nestled the town of Cascade, established where the original lowland railroad from the desert terminated at the foot of the mountains. He could see the elegant 1870s Cascade Lodge, long a draw for intrepid tourists willing to brave the long, slow climb on endless switchbacks up the foothills. From that railhead, He

The Wrecker wouldn’t hit the Snake Line, its job was done. He wouldn’t hit the town. He would hit the bridge itself. Destroying the long truss-and-pier bridge would set back the cutoff project by years.

“What the deuce is that?” asked He

Isaac Bell’s face opened in a broad grin of appreciation. “That is the Thomas Flyer automobile you and I were talking about. Model 35, four cylinders, sixty horsepower. Look at him go!”

The bright yellow motor car topped the switchback, bounced over the rocky shelf, and skidded to a halt twenty feet away from where Bell and He

“Congratulations!” he called, whipping off his goggles with a dramatic flourish.

“What the hell are you doing here?” asked He

“Celebrating your cutoff hole through,” said Charles Kincaid. “I happened to be meeting with some very important California gentlemen at the Cascade Lodge. I told my hosts they would have to wait while I drove up to shake your hand.”

Kincaid seized He

“Congratulations, sir. Magnificent achievement. Nothing can stop you now.”

THE BRIDGE

34

NOVEMBER 1 , 1907

CASCADE CANYON, OREGONi

RED-FACED, FIERY-EYED SOUTHERN PACIFIC TRACK BOSS MIKE Malone stalked from the mouth of Tu

Charles Kincaid ran to rescue his Thomas Flyer.

Isaac Bell asked Osgood He

“I’m never surprised by men hoping for my daughter’s inheritance,” He