The Chase

  It was there, a barely perceivable indication of recognition. “I don’t know any Jacob Cromwell.” Gould paused to stare apprehensively at Bell. “What’s this all about?”

  “You dispatched a locomotive to pull his private freight car.”

  “You’re crazy. I wouldn’t dispatch private trains during an emergency such as this.”

  “How much did he pay you?”

  The dispatcher lifted his hands. “I couldn’t be paid by a man I don’t know. It’s ridiculous.”

  Bell ignored Gould’s lie. “Where was the destination of Cromwell’s train?”

  “Now, look here,” Gould said, fear growing in his eyes. “I want you out of here, Van Dorn cop or no Van Dorn cop.”

  Bell removed his hat and made a motion as if cleaning the inside band. The next thing the dispatcher knew, he was staring into the business end of a derringer. Bell pressed the twin barrels against the side of Gould’s left eye socket. “Unless you tell the truth in the next sixty seconds, I will shoot and the bullet will horribly disfigure your face besides blasting away both of your eyes. Do you wish to spend the rest your life as a mutilated blind man?”

  The hypnotic grip of terror crossed Gould’s face. “You’re mad.”

  “You have fifty seconds left before you see nothing.”

  “You can’t!”

  “I can and I will, unless you tell me what I want to know.”

  The cold expression, along with the icy voice, was enough for Gould to believe the Van Dorn detective was not bluffing. He looked around wildly, as if there was a way to escape, but Bell continued remorselessly.

  “Thirty seconds,” he said, pulling back the hammer of the derringer.

  Gould’s shoulders collapsed, his eyes filled with terror. “No, please,” he murmured.

  “Tell me!”

  “All right,” Gould said in a low tone. “Cromwell was here. He paid me ten thousand dollars in cash to hook his car up to a fast locomotive and direct the train onto a track heading south.”

  Bell’s eyes partially closed in incomprehension. “South?”

  “It’s the only way out of the city,” replied Gould. “All the train ferries are being used to transport people over to Oakland and the relief trains back. There was no other way he could go.”

  “How was he routed?”

  “Down to San Jose, then around the bay to the north until his train turned east on the main line over the mountains and across Nevada to Salt Lake City.”

  “How long ago did he leave the railyard?” Bell demanded.

  “About four hours.”

  Bell continued the pressure. “When is he scheduled to reach Salt Lake City?”

  Gould shook his head in quick spasms. “Can’t say. His engineer will have to spend a lot of time on sidetracks so the relief trains can fireball through. If he’s lucky, his train will reach Salt Lake by late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What type of engine did you assign to pull Cromwell’s private freight car?”

  Gould leaned over a desk and examined the notations in large ledger. “I gave him number 3025, a 4-6-2 Pacific, built by Baldwin.”

  “A fast engine?”

  Gould nodded. “We have a few that are faster.”

  “When will one be available?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I want the fastest engine you’ve got,” answered Bell, menacing Gould with the derringer. “This is a vital emergency. I have to catch Cromwell’s train.”

  Gould consulted his big board. “I have number 3455, a 4-4-2 Baldwin Atlantic. She’s faster than a Pacific. But she’s in the Oakland yard for repairs.”

  “How long before she’s ready to run?”

  “The repair shop should have her ready to go in another three hours.”

  “I’ll take her,” Bell said without hesitation. “See that Van Dorn is charged for the time it’s in use.”

  Gould looked as if he was going to protest and argue with Bell, but, staring at the derringer, he thought better of it. “If you report me, I could lose my job and go to jail.”

  “Just give me that engine and route me around San Jose toward Salt Lake City and I’ll say nothing.”

  Gould sighed thankfully and began making out the paperwork to charter and dispatch a route for the locomotive under the Van Dorn Detective Agency. When he was finished, Bell took the papers and studied them for a moment. Satisfied, he left the office without another word, climbed in the Ford, and drove toward the Ferry Building.

  41

  NEARING THE FERRY BUILDING, BELL THREW A BLANKET over his head as he drove through a shower of cinders. He could see that Chinatown was gone, leaving little more than hundreds of piles of charred, smoldering ruins. The Ferry Building had survived with only minor damage to its clock tower. Bell noted that the clock had stopped at 5:12, the time the earthquake struck.

  The streets and sidewalks around the Ferry Building looked like a vast mob scene. Thousands were fleeing, believing the entire city would be destroyed. There was pandemonium and bedlam in the jumbled mass of people, some wrapped in blankets and loaded down with what possessions they were able to carry onto the ferryboat. Some pushed baby buggies or toy wagons, and yet, amid the nightmare, everyone was gracious, courteous, and considerate toward others.

  Bell stopped beside a young man who seemed to be merely standing around and watching the fire across the street from the wharfs. He held up a twenty-dollar gold piece. “If you know how to drive a car, take this one to the Customs House and turn it over to Horace Bronson of the Van Dorn Detective Agency and this is yours.”

  The young man’s eyes widened in anticipation, not so much from the money but the chance to drive an automobile. “Yes, sir,” he said brightly. “I know how to drive my uncle’s Maxwell.”

  Bell watched with amusement as the boy clashed the gears and drove off down the crowded street. Then he turned and joined the mass of humanity that was escaping the destruction of the city.

  Within three days, over two hundred twenty-five thousand people left the peninsula where San Francisco stood, all carried free of charge by the Southern Pacific Railroad to wherever they wished to travel. Within twenty-four hours of the quake, overloaded ferryboats were departing San Francisco for Oakland every hour.

  Bell showed his Van Dorn credentials and boarded a ferry called the Buena Vista. He found an open place to sit above the paddle wheels and turned back to watch the flames shooting hundreds of feet into the air, with the smoke rising over a thousand feet. It looked as if the whole city was one vast bonfire.

  Once he stepped off the Mole in Oakland, a railroad official directed him to the repair shop where his locomotive was sitting. The mammoth steel monster was a grand sight up close. It was painted black from the cowcatcher to the rear of its coal tender. Bell guessed the cab’s roof was at least fifteen feet above the rails. The big drive wheels were eighty-one inches in diameter. In its time, the Atlantic-type locomotive was a masterwork of mechanical power.

  To Bell, it looked mean and ugly. The number 3455 was painted in small white letters on the side of the cab; SOUTHERN PACIFIC, in larger type, ran across the side of the tender, which fueled the boiler with coal and water. Bell walked up to a man wearing the traditional striped engineer’s coveralls and striped cap with brim. The man held a big oil can with a long spout and looked to be oiling the bearings on the connecting rods running from the piston cylinder to the drive wheels.

  “A mighty fine locomotive,” said Bell admiringly.

  The engineer looked up. He was shorter than Bell, with strands of salt-and-pepper hair straying from under his cap. The face was craggy from years of leaning out a cab window into the full wind stream from a speeding engine. The eyebrows over a pair of sky blue eyes were curved and bushy. Bell judged he was younger than he looked.

  “None better than Adeline,” the engineer answered.

  “Adeline?”

  “Easier to remember than her four-figured number. Most locomotives are give
n a woman’s name.”

  “Adeline looks very powerful,” said Bell admiringly.

  “She’s built for heavy passenger service. Came out of the Baldwin Works no more than five months ago.”

  “How fast will she go?” asked Bell.

  “Depends on how many cars she’s hauling.”

  “Let’s say none.”

  The engineer thought a moment. “On a long, straight stretch of open, empty track, she’d top a hundred miles an hour.”

  “My name is Bell.” He handed the engineer the paperwork. “I’ve chartered your engine for a special job.”

  The engineer studied the papers. “Van Dorn detective outfit, huh. What’s so special?”

  “Ever hear of the Butcher Bandit?”

  “Who hasn’t? I’ve read in the newspapers he’s about as deadly as they come.”

  Bell wasted no detailed explanation. “We’re going after him. He chartered a Pacific-type locomotive to haul his special private car. He’s steaming to Salt Lake City before heading north for the Canadian border. I reckon he has a five-hour head start.”

  “More like six, by the time we take on coal and get a load of steam up.”

  “I was told there were repairs. Are they completed?”

  The engineer nodded. “The shop replaced a faulty bearing in one of the truck wheels.”

  “The sooner we get going, the better.” Bell paused to extend his hand. “By the way, my name is Isaac Bell.”

  The engineer’s shake was vigorous. “Nils Lofgren. My fireman is Marvin Long.”

  Bell pulled his watch from its pocket and checked the time. “I’ll see you in forty-five minutes.”

  “We’ll be at the coal-loading dock just up the track.”

  Bell hurried toward the Oakland terminal until he came to a wooden building that housed the Western Union office. The wire chief told him that only one wire was open to Salt Lake City and it was hours behind getting messages through. Bell explained his mission and the chief was most cooperative.

  “What’s your message?” he asked. “I’ll see that it’s sent straightaway to our office in Salt Lake.”

  Bell’s wire read:

  To the Van Dorn office director, Salt Lake City. Imperative you stop locomotive hauling freight car number 16455. It is carrying the Butcher Bandit. Use every precaution. He is extremely dangerous. Seize and hold until I arrive.

  Isaac Bell, special agent

  He waited until the telegrapher tapped out the message before leaving the office and walking to where Lofgren and Long were taking on coal and water. He climbed up into the cab and was introduced to Long, a heavy, broad-shouldered man with large muscles stretching the sleeves of his denim shirt. He wore no hat and his red hair almost matched the flames inside the door to the firebox. He pulled off a leather glove and shook Bell’s hand with a hand that was hard and callused from long hours wielding a coal shovel.

  “Ready whenever you are,” announced Lofgren.

  “Let’s do it,” answered Bell.

  As Long stoked the fire, Lofgren took his seat on the right side of the cab, locked the reverser Johnson bar into place, opened the cylinder cocks, and pulled the rope above his head down twice, causing the steam whistle to scream an about-to-move-forward warning. Then he gripped the long throttle lever and pulled it back. Adeline began to move and slowly gather speed.

  Ten minutes later, Lofgren was signaled to switch onto the main track east. He eased the throttle back and the big Atlantic began to move forward. Slowly, the train wound through the yard. Long began maintaining his fire, light, level, and bright. In the five years he’d stoked locomotive fires, he’d developed a technique that kept the fire from burning too thin or too thick. Lofgren yanked on the throttle, the drive wheels churned amid a loud blast of steam, and black smoke spewed out the top of the stack.

  Bell took the seat on the left side of the cab, feeling vastly relieved that he was at last on what he felt certain was the final chase to catch Cromwell and hand him over to the authorities in Chicago, dead or alive.

  He found the vibration of the locomotive over the rails as soothing as floating in a rubber raft on a mountain lake, the chug of the steam propelling the drive wheels and the warm heat from the firebox positively restful for a man on a mission. Before they reached Sacramento and swung east across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Bell slid down in his seat, yawned, and closed his eyes. Within a minute, he was in a sound sleep, amid the clangor of the speeding locomotive, as Adeline aimed her big cowcatcher toward the Sierra Nevada and Donner Pass.

  42

  ABNER WEED’S BARREL CHEST AND BEEFY SHOULDERS were sweating as he shoveled coal into the firebox. There was an art to creating an efficient fire, but he had no idea how. He simply heaved coal through the open door into the fire, ignoring the complaints from the engineer who shouted that too much coal would drop the fire temperature.

  Abner took on the job only to spell the fireman, Ralph Wilbanks, a big, burly man who soon became exhausted after a few hours of sustaining the necessary steam temperature that kept the big Pacific locomotive running up the steep grades of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They traded one hour shoveling, one hour of rest.

  Abner stayed alert during the effort, his Smith & Wesson revolver stuffed in his belt. He kept an eye on the engineer, who was constantly busy maintaining a fast but safe speed around the many mountain curves while watching the track ahead for any unforeseen obstacle, such as an unscheduled train coming in the opposite direction. At last, they crested the summit and it was all downhill until they met the flat-lands of the desert.

  “We’re coming into Reno,” yelled Wes Hall, the engineer, above the roar of the flames in the firebox. An intense man with the features of a weathered cowboy, he would have stopped the train in protest when he found his passengers demanded he set speed records across the mountains but relented after Abner put the Smith & Wesson to his head and threatened to kill him, and his fireman, if they didn’t do as they were told. A thousand dollars in cash from Cromwell added to the persuasion, and Hall and Wilbanks now pushed the Pacific locomotive through the mountains as fast as they dared.

  “The signal ahead reads red,” said Wilbanks.

  Hall waved that he saw it, too. “We’ll have to stop and lay over on a siding.”

  Abner pointed the gun at the engineer’s head. “Lay on the whistle. We’re going through.”

  “We can’t,” said Hall, staring Abner in the eye. “There must be an express carrying relief supplies to San Francisco coming toward us on the same track. I’d rather you shoot me than cause a collision with another train that would kill all of us and stop traffic in both directions for maybe a week.”

  Abner slowly slid the revolver back under his belt. “All right. But get us back on the main track as soon as the relief express passes.”

  Hall began closing the throttle arm. “We can use the delay to take on coal and water.”

  “All right. But mind your manners or I’ll blow holes in the both of you.”

  “Ralph and I can’t go on much longer. We’re done in.”

  “You’ll earn your money—and stay alive—by pushing on,” Abner said threateningly.

  Leaning out the left side of the cab, Abner could see the train depot and the small town of Reno, Nevada, looming in the distance. As they came nearer, Abner spotted a figure waving a small red flag standing by a switch stand. Hall blew the whistle to announce their arrival and to let the flagman know that he understood the signal to slow down and was prepared to be switched off the main track.

  Hall precisely stopped the Pacific’s tender directly under an elevated wooden water tank on one side of the track and a coal bin on the other. Wilbanks jumped up on the tender, grabbed a rope, and pulled down the spout hinged to the tank until water flowed on board due to gravity. Climbing down from the cab with an oil can, Hall began checking all the bearings and fittings of the locomotive, and, since Cromwell had refused to wait for the arrival of a brakeman, he had t
o examine the bearings on the wheels of the tender and freight car as well.

  Keeping a sharp eye on Hall and Wilbanks, Abner moved past the tender to the door of the freight car. He rapped twice with the butt of his Smith & Wesson, waited a moment, then knocked again. The door was unlatched from the inside and slid open. Jacob and Margaret Cromwell stood there, looking down at Abner.

  “What’s the delay?” asked Cromwell.

  Abner tilted his head toward the locomotive. “We switched to a siding to let an express relief train through. While we’re waiting, the crew is taking on coal and water.”

  “Where are we?” asked Margaret. She was dressed uncharacteristically in men’s pants, with the legs tucked into a pair of boots. A blue sweater covered the upper half of her body, and she wore a bandanna on her hair.

  “The town of Reno,” answered Abner. “We’re out of the Sierras. From now on, the landscape flattens out into desert.”

  “How about the track ahead?” inquired Cromwell. “Any more relief trains to delay our passage?”

  “I’ll check with the switchman for scheduled westbound trains. But we’ll have to stand aside as they come.”

  Cromwell jumped to the ground and spread out a map on the ground. The lines drawn across it displayed the railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi. He pointed to the spot signifying Reno. “Okay, we’re here. The next junction with tracks going north is Ogden, Utah.”

  “Not Salt Lake City?” asked Margaret.

  Cromwell shook his head. “The Southern Pacific main line joins the Union Pacific tracks north of Salt Lake. We swing north at the Ogden junction and head toward Missoula, Montana. From there, we take the Northern Pacific rails into Canada.”

  Abner kept his eyes trained on the crew. He saw the fireman struggle with the coal flowing from the chute into the tender and the engineer moving about as if he were in a trance. “The crew is dead on their feet. We’ll be lucky if they can run the locomotive another four hours.”

  Cromwell consulted the map. “There’s a railyard in Winnemucca, Nevada, about a hundred seventy miles up the track. We’ll pick up another crew there.”