The Wrecker

At the end of three more hard-slogging miles up the mountain, with less than a mile to go to the East Oregon Lumber Company’s camp, the horses were tiring. Even the eighteen-hand monster under Bell was breathing hard. But he and Thunderbolt were still in the lead when they ran into the Wrecker’s ambush.

Flame lanced from the dark trees. Winchester rifles boomed. A rain of lead exploded through the air. A heavy slug fa

“How many?” called Abbott.

In answer came a second fusillade of high-powered slugs crackling through the brush.

“Sounds like six or seven,” Bell answered. He reloaded his rifle. The Wrecker had chosen well. Slugs were pouring down from high above. His gunmen could see the Van Dorns, but, to see back, the Van Dorns had to expose their heads to gunfire.

There was only one way to deal with it.

“Archie?” Bell called. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Boys?”

“Ready, Isaac,” came the chorus.

Bell waited a full minute.

“Now!”

The Van Dorns charged.

THE WRECKER KEPT A cool head. Nothing about the Van Dorn Detective Agency surprised him anymore. Nor was their bravery in doubt. So he was already half expecting their concentrated, disciplined counterattack. Philip Dow kept a cool head too, firing only when he could see a target flitting through the trees, clearly a man most alive when he was in battle. But Dow’s lumberjacks were thugs accustomed to fighting two on one. Quicker with fists or ax handles than rifles, they panicked in the face of ten guns coming up the hill spitting fire like the devil’s brigade.

The Wrecker felt them waver. Seconds later, they broke and ran, some actually dropping their rifles, stampeding through the forest for higher ground as if, in their panicked state, they thought hiding would save them. Nearby, Dow kept firing. Not that there was much to hit among the targets dodging tree to tree, but ever closer.

“Fall back,” the Wrecker ordered quietly. “Why shoot them when we can drown them?”

Isaac Bell had ruined his plan to signal Dow by locomotive whistles. If Dow had even heard the bare few seconds of a single locomotive whistle, which was all the noise he had produced before Bell started shooting, the assassin had failed to understand the go-ahead to blow up the dam that held Lake Lillian.

The two men retreated from the ambush site, loping up the same mule deer trail that Dow had led his men down from the lumber camp. When they got to the camp, lumberjacks and mule ski

“Philip,” said the Wrecker. “I’m counting on you to blow the dam.”

“Consider it done.”

“They won’t go easy on you.”

“They’ll have to catch me first,” said Dow. He offered his hand.

The Wrecker took it gravely, imparting a sense of ceremony. He was not one bit emotionally moved but he was relieved. Whatever strange codes the assassin lived by, Dow would detonate the explosives if it took the last breath in his body.

“I’ll cover you,” he told Dow. “Give me your rifle. I’ll hold them off as long as I’ve got ammunition.”

He would make his final escape when the flood swept the Cascade Canyon Bridge into the gorge. If his luck held, he would be the last man across it.

55

ABBOTT SCRAMBLED ALONGSIDE BELL WHEN THE WRECKER’S gang stopped shooting.

“Isaac, he’s got a huge lake up there impounded behind a dam. I’m thinking if he were to blow it, he’d flood the bridge.”

Bell sent four detectives to track the fleeing gunmen through the woods. He settled three wounded men as best he could beside the road and made sure that at least one could defend them in case the attackers came back. There were two dead horses in the road. The rest had bolted. Bell started ru

“That’s the camp ahead,” called Abbott.

Just as the road opened up at the lumber camp, withering rifle fire sent them diving behind trees.

“It’s a diversion,” said Bell. “So he can blow the dam.”

They emptied their Winchesters in the direction of the attack. The shooting stopped, and they pressed on, drawing their sidearms.

CROUCHED AT THE BASE of the log dam, soaked by the spray of the water tumbling fifty feet to the river beside him, Philip Dow knew his life was over when the Winchesters stopped booming. Kincaid had held off the detectives as long as he could.

The killer had no regrets.

He’d stayed loyal to his principles. And he’d relieved the world of a fair number of plutocrats, aristocrats, and other rats. But he knew when it was time to call it quits. All he had to do to end with honor was to finish this one last job. Blow the dam before the Van Dorns killed him. Or caught him alive, which would be worse than dying. Except first, before he lit the fuse and took the Big Jump, he wanted to send a few more rats ahead of him.

Three of them charged out of the woods, pistols in hand. They would mob him the instant he attacked. This was a bomb job, and, fortunately, he had ample bomb makings already laid in the dam. He pulled a bundle of six sticks of gelignite from its nest between two logs. Then he snipped off a short length from the fuse and carefully removed one of detonators.

The detectives spotted him. He heard their shouts faintly over the roar of the water. They came ru

“Drop your gun!” they shouted.

Dow raised his empty hand to the sky.

“Show your hand!”

They drew beads on him. He kept walking. The range was still long for pistols.

Isaac Bell fired his Browning and hit Dow in the shoulder.

So concentrated was Dow’s mind on getting close to the detectives, he barely felt the light-caliber, underpowered slug. He did not stop, but turned that shoulder toward them and swung the explosives behind him, straightening his arm to catapult the bomb high and far. One of the detectives sprinted ahead of the others, raising a large, shiny revolver. It was big enough to stop him. If a ru

“Get back, Dash!” Bell shouted. “He’s got something.”

Dow wound up to hurl the gelignite. The man Bell called Dash stopped dead and thrust his gun forward. He took deliberate aim. Then he made a fist with his empty hand and crossed his chest, which shielded his heart and lungs and steadied his weapon. Dow braced for the bullet. Dash was a man who knew how to shoot.

The heavy slug hit Dow squarely, staggering him before he could hurl the bomb. Everything within Dow’s range of vision stood still. The only sound was the roar of the water cascading over the dam. He remembered that he hadn’t yet lit the fuse to the charge that would blow the dam. The only fuse he’d lit was the one burning toward the gelignite in his hand. How could he call it quits if he didn’t finish the job?