The Wrecker

Bell cocked his ears for an answer. All he could hear was a river tumbling through the ravine and steam hissing from the wrecked engine. He called again and again. Through the rain, he thought he saw a familiar flash of white hair. Eddie Edwards waved one arm. The other hung limp at this side.

“Busted up,” Eddie shouted back. “None dead!”

“I’m going ahead. I’ll send a doctor on the wreck train. James. Quick!”

The boy was white as a sheet. His eyes were round with shock.

“Handcar. Move. Now!”

Bell led the way out of the leaning cab to the front of the precariously balanced engine. The handcar was intact. They untied it from the pilot and carried it, slipping and stumbling over fifty feet of rock that had tumbled onto the rails. Minutes later, Bell was pumping the handles and pedals with all his strength.

Fifteen miles up the line, they came upon a freight train waiting on a siding. Bell ordered the locomotive unhitched, and they drove it backward the last ten miles to Tu

“I thought the bridge can’t bear weight. Did they fix it already?”

“Lord, no,” replied the engineer. “They’ve got a thousand hands down at the piers, working round the clock, but it’s touch-and-go. A week’s more work, and the river’s rising.”

“What’s that coal train doing there?”

“The bridge started shaking. They’re trying to stabilize it with down pressure.”

Bell could see that the main staging yard on the far side of the bridge was also packed with trains. Empties, with no way back to the California shops and depots. Having all hands working at the piers explained the eerie sense of a deserted encampment.

“Where’s the dispatch office?”

“They set up a temporary one on this side. In that yellow caboose.”

Bell jumped down from the locomotive and ran to the caboose, Dashwood right behind him. The dispatcher was reading a week-old newspaper. The telegrapher was dozing at his silent key.

“Where is Senator Kincaid?”

“Most every one’s down at the town,” said the dispatcher.

The telegrapher opened his eyes. “Last I saw, he was heading for the Old Man’s special. But I wouldn’t go there, if I was you. He

“Round up a doctor and a wreck train. There’re men hurt at a landslide fifteen miles down the line. Come on, Dash!”

They ran across the bridge, past the parked coal train. Bell saw ripples in the rain puddles. The weakened structure was trembling despite the weight of the coal train. A glance over the side showed that the Cascade River had risen many feet in the nine days since he left for New York. He could see hundreds of workmen ganged on the banks, guiding barges with long ropes, dumping rock in the water, trying to divert the flood, while hundreds more swarmed over new coffer dams and caissons being sunk around the piers.

“Have you participated in many arrests?” Bell asked Dashwood as they neared the special on its raised siding. Train and yard crews were changing shifts. A row of white yardmen’s lanterns and signal flags were lined up beside He

“Yes, sir. Mr. Bronson let me come along when they captured ‘Samson’ Scudder.”

Bell hid a smile. The ironically named Samson Scudder, a prolific second-story man who weighed ninety pounds dripping wet, was known as the sweetest-natured crook in San Francisco.

“This one’s poison,” he warned soberly. “Stick close and do exactly what I say.”

“Should I draw my firearm?”

“Not on the train. There’ll be people around. Stand by with your handcuffs.”

Bell strode alongside He

“Senator Kincaid aboard?”

Osgood He

“Which way did he go?”

“I don’t know. But he parked that Thomas Flyer up the line.”

“He’s the Wrecker.”

“The devil, you say.”

Bell turned to the Van Dorn detective. “If he comes back, arrest him. If he gives you any trouble, shoot first or he’ll kill you.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Send word to Archie Abbott. Railway cops to guard the bridge and the town in case Kincaid doubles back. Van Dorns, follow me. Dash! Grab a flag and a couple of lanterns.”

Dashwood picked up a signal flag, which was rolled tightly around its wooden staff, and two yardman’s lanterns and ran after Bell.

“Give me one!” Bell said, explaining, “If we look like we’re railroad men, it will buy us a few seconds to get closer.”

From the vantage of the raised siding, Bell sca

He could not see Kincaid’s Thomas Flyer from where he stood. Had Kincaid already reached his car and driven away? Then, on the edge of the deserted yards, he saw a man emerge from between two strings of empty freight cars. He was walking briskly toward a pair of locomotives that were parked side by side where the tracks ended.

“There he is!”

52

THE WRECKER WAS HURRYING TOWARD THE LOCOMOTIVES TO signal Philip Dow to blow the dam when he heard their boots pounding behind him.

He looked back. Two brakemen were ru

The tall one wore a broad-brimmed hat instead of a railroader’s cap. Isaac Bell Ru

Kincaid had to make a instant decision. Why was Bell prowling the yards pretending to be a brakeman? Assume the best, that Bell still had not tumbled to his identity? Or walk toward them, wave hello, and pull his derringer and shoot them both and hope no one saw? The second he reached for his gun, he knew he had made a mistake wasting time to think about it.

Bell’s hand flickered in a blur of motion, and Charles Kincaid found himself staring down the barrel of a Browning pistol held in a rock-steady grip.

“Don’t point that pistol at me, Bell. What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Charles Kincaid,” Bell answered in a clear, steady voice, “you are wanted by the law for murder and sabotage.”

“Wanted by the law? Are you serious?”

“Remove your derringer from your left pocket and drop it on the ground.”

“We’ll see about this,” huffed Kincaid. His every ma

“Remove your derringer from your left pocket and drop it on the ground before I blow a hole in your arm.”

Kincaid shrugged, as if humoring a madman. “All right.” Moving very slowly, he reached for his derringer.

“Careful,” said Bell. “Hold the weapon between your thumb and forefinger.”

The only eyes Charles Kincaid had ever seen so cold were in a mirror.