Giving Up the Ghost (5 page)

“Winnie was my little sister,” he said. “She's been dead twenty years. Typhoid. And I've never told anyone the story about what happened during the thunderstorm at Plymouth. So how do you know it?”

“All I can tell you is that I heard her voice.”

“Can you still hear her?”

“No,” I said. “She's gone.”

The engineer nodded.

“You're that psychical detective and professor of mediumship, who speaks to the dead, that I've read about in the newspapers, aren't you?”

I said I was.

“Climb up, Professor,” he said. “There's a siding a mile back, built back in seventy-two when this was the end of track, and it's long enough to get all of our cars off the main line.”

I handed the lantern to Earp, then took the first couple of iron steps up to the cab. Earp started to climb up after me, but the engineer spat.

“Not him,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Just not.”

“He's right,” I said.

“You don't like me, either?”

“No, I mean you have to go back and tell Mackie the
Ginery Twitchell
is safely sided,” I said. “I'll stay with the train until Mackie sends word that the main line is clear and we can proceed safely.”

“All right,” Earp said. “I have things to do in town, anyway.”

Earp jumped down and made a show of brushing dust from his clothes, then started walking back toward Dodge, swinging the lantern lazily beside him. As the engineer put the train in reverse, and we backed away, slowly at first, and then faster, I watched as the lantern grew ever smaller.

“Thank you for stopping,” I said. The cab was rocking and I braced against the wall.

“I should have stopped sooner,” the engineer said. He was looking intently out the side window at the track behind us or, rather, ahead of us.

“No, your suspicion was understandable.”

“My suspicion may have killed us all,” he said, easing the throttle open. The train increased its speed to what seemed to me an alarming rate.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“There's a train behind us,” he said. “Three or four miles behind us, but if it's highballing, and you add our combined speeds, that means we're coming together at seventy miles an hour. That gives us less than four minutes to tuck ourselves away on the siding.”

“What train is it?”

“Damned if I know,” he said. “There were no orders for another until midnight.”

He grabbed a cord overhead and gave a series of short blasts on the train's whistle. The shriek was alarmingly loud in the cab, and added to the cacophony of the chugging locomotive and cars rattling on the tracks.

“Don't know if he can see me or hear me,” he said. “If he's traveling at any speed, he might be upon us before he spots the red lamps on the caboose. It's clear, though, so he should. But I hate betting our lives on should.”

He eased off the throttle now, and we began to slow.

“Garrity,” the engineer called to the stoker, who was gathering up chunks of wood from the tender and throwing them into the firebox. “Throw down that timber and make your way back in a hurry. Find the brakeman. As soon as we've slowed enough, jump down and run back to the switch. If I'm remembering this section of track right, the caboose should be within fifty or a hundred yards of the switch. Take a bar and a sledgehammer with you. The switch may be a bit rusty, and there will likely be a padlock on it, which you'll have to break. Tell me you understand.”

“Aye,” the brakeman said. “I'm to move my arse right quick.”

“Go then,” the engineer said.

He disappeared over the top of the tender.

I moved to the other side of the cab so I'd have a clear view behind us. The yellow headlight of the other train flared and wobbled in the darkness.

“It doesn't appear to be slowing,” I said.

“It's not,” said the engineer. Then he applied the air brakes and the train screeched and shuddered as we came to a stop. “Jump clear while you have time,” he urged.

“And risk being taken for a coward?” I asked. “Thanks, but I'll play this hand.”

The engineer grunted and peered behind us. We could see the lamps of Garrity and the brakeman, hear the sound of the sledge striking metal, and their cursing.

“Get on with it,” the engineer said, then spat out the window.

The sledge struck three more blows, then there was a pause, and a final blow and a clank. A moment later, we could hear the sound of the rusty switch being turned.

“Good, boys,” the engineer said. “That's it.”

Then they signaled with the lantern to proceed.

I looked back and saw the headlight of the other train clearly now. Instead of just a spot of light, I could see a cold blue flame and its sheen on the cowcatcher and the rails beneath.

“They're not stopping,” I said. “In fact, it looks like they're picking up speed.”

The engineer cursed as he released the brakes, hurriedly spun some valves, and then he opened the throttle. I could hear the hiss of live steam rush to the cylinders, and then the drivers engaged the wheels, which spun for a moment before finding purchase. The train jumped, and somewhere in the line of cars behind us I heard the metallic ping of metal shearing.

“Dammit,” the engineer said.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I've broken a pin,” he said.

“Is that bad?”

“The pins keep the cars coupled,” he said. “I don't know where, but somewhere I've broken us in two. We use straight air, so their brakes won't work.”

As the end of the train was pushed and snaked onto the siding, I had a clearer view of the approaching train, which seemed like some black behemoth from beyond, all silent and promising catastrophe.

The mystery train passed our caboose—which was rolling free on the siding, along with two other cars, behind where the pin had broken—and was now within an eighth of a mile of us. But the locomotive and a half-dozen cars were still on the main line.

The engineer gave a little more throttle.

We were now in the cone of the black train's headlamp, and I realized that if we collided, my side of the cab would be approximately the point of impact. My heart felt like it would burst and I gripped the side of the cab tightly to keep from dropping to my knees. There was no use jumping at this point; if I did, I'd only be jumping onto the tracks in front of the onrushing locomotive.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I closed my eyes.

“Turn the switch, boys!” I heard the engineer shout. “Turn it now!”

The hot wind from the passing locomotive brushed my face, and the roar and clatter were fearsome. The train had not slowed at all, but was inexplicably continuing at top speed, and as it passed, our engineer leaned on the air whistle, and gave out a long shriek of protest.

I opened my eyes and watched the black train disappear down the main line. There were only three cars behind the locomotive and tender, an express car and two passenger cars, and no caboose. They were all painted in a dark color, perhaps black, and there appeared to be no numbers or letters on any of the cars.

Then there was a grinding sound behind us, and we watched as our slowly rolling caboose and its two cars met the bumper at the end of the siding. The caboose crashed through the heavy timbers and its wheels sank into the prairie soil, while the next car jammed itself into the vestibule of the caboose and splintered the roof.

Then the caboose came to a stop, rocking slightly.

“Come on, boys,” the engineer said. “Let me see all of you.”

The crew jumped out and waved.

The engineer gave a couple of blasts on the whistle in acknowledgment.

Then he spat out the window, crossed his arms, and looked down the tracks to the east, where the mystery train had disappeared into the darkness.

“Well done,” I said.

“I broke a pin.”

“But we are all in one piece,” I said. “It was a narrow escape, and for a moment I thought it was certain catastrophe, but you saved us. And brother, I don't even know your name.”

“Skeen,” he said. “Alistair Skeen.”

“Bravo, Engine Driver Skeen.”

“Don't be too thankful,” he said. “We may have just passed trouble down to the next section.”

Then I thought about McCarty and was worried for him.

“Did you recognize that train?”

“That is the most troubling part,” Skeen said.

“Why?”

“It wasn't one of ours,” he said. “Not only were the colors all wrong, but we don't have a configuration like that. The train did not belong on the Santa Fe tracks.”

Skeen began working the maze of valves and levers in front of him, bringing the steam pressure down to a safe level. Then there was a commotion on the ground below the cab, and I peered down to see a nattily dressed boy of about twenty with a lantern calling up to us.

“You there, in the cab.”

“What is it?” Skeen grumbled.

“Not you, Mr. Skeen,” the young man said. “The other gentleman, the one that flagged us down.”

I leaned out of Skeen's window.

“I'm no gentleman,” I said, “but will I do?”

“Begging your pardon,” the young man said. “I had assumed, well, that you were a man. Garrity, the fireman, told us the story, but obviously he omitted some details.”

“Obviously,” I said.

The young man was wearing nankeen trousers, fashionably rumpled, and a thistle print cotton vest over a blue linen shirt. He had a head of unruly hair that was the same wheat color as his pants.

“In any case, miss, the general manager would like a word.”

“The general manager?” I asked, now suspicious. “That wouldn't be anything like a superintendent, would it?”

“Well, I'm not sure.”

“Is this general manager a human being?”

“What an odd question.”

“Not for me.”

“I can assure you that William Barstow Strong is not only a human being, but a fine individual from a respected Vermont family. Since assuming his duties in 1873, he has been made general manager
and
vice president in recognition of his efforts to extend the reach of the Santa Fe deep into Colorado, and even now is on his return journey from taking a personal survey of the technical problem posed by Raton Pass, which is our only barrier to New Mexico Territory.”

“Sounds like a regular Cornelius Vanderbilt.”

“Oh, no,” the young man said. “I'm afraid Mr. Strong is a very down-to-earth sort, and would never have any truck with Spiritualists or ladies of questionable virtue.”

“I should think not,” I said. “What's your name?”

“Delmar Delaney,” he said. “I'm Mr. Strong's personal secretary—some would say his confidante, even—and you can trust me to treat your personal affairs with the same discretion as the general manager's.”

“I'll make up my own mind about whom to trust.”

“Please, if you'll follow me,” the young man said. “The general manager is most anxious to speak with you.”

“I would like Mr. Skeen to come with me.”

“Why?”

“Him, I trust.”

“Go ahead, Professor,” Skeen said. “The general manager won't allow me near him, because I'm a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Engineers. In April, the brotherhood shut down Emporia Junction and Topeka in protest of reduced wages and longer hours. The strike lasted four days before the governor, who is in the pocket of the railroad, called in federal troops.”

Skeen spat tobacco juice over the side, and the missile came dangerously close to discoloring Delaney's pant cuff.

“Besides, I must stay with the engine,” Skeen said. “The beast won't tend itself. But if you get in trouble, Professor, you just give the signal.”

“What signal?”

“You whistle, of course.”

I descended the steps and hopped down, refusing the hand that Delaney, the brash young man of the wheat-colored hair and enormous head, offered. We walked past the express car, then past a number of passenger cars, where the inhabitants were now spilling out, and then to a private car. Like all the rest of the cars, including the boxcars that followed it, the private car was predominantly yellow—the official Santa Fe color.

Beside the car, one man in a dark vest and rolled-up shirtsleeves was readying a spool of wire while another, in denim work clothes, was already halfway up a telegraph pole, a pair of wire spring clips in one hand. They both were my age, or a bit younger. The sky above was clear and filled with constellations, but no falling stars. To the north, however, the odd red and green ribbons of lights still danced.

We stepped up to the vestibule of the car, and Delaney held the door open as I stepped inside.

The interior of the car was brilliantly lit, and solidly—if not richly—appointed. There were a few padded chairs, but most of the car was filled with worktables bearing route maps and blueprints of bridges and other railway business. There was a telegraph key and sounder at one of the desks, and behind it in a straight-backed chair was a man of about forty years of age, with a high forehead, dark hair slicked back, and a graying beard that reached down to his stomach.

“Yes?” the bearded man asked, impatiently.

“Mr. Strong,” the young man said. “May I present—”

“Miss Wylde,” I said. “Ophelia Wylde.”

“There was some confusion on the part of Garrity the fireman,” the young man said. “But it was Miss Wylde who was involved in flagging us down.”

“A woman,” Strong said.

“Since birth,” I said.

I held out my hand, and he took it cautiously. He pressed it, in that odd way some men have, but did not shake it.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Delaney asked.

Thinking of the tea I had abandoned earlier, I accepted. The young man disappeared toward the rear of the car.

“Forgive me if I dispense with the usual courtesies,” Strong said. “Pull up a chair, please, and tell me why you felt compelled to stop the
Ginery Twitchell
.”

As concisely as I could, I related the events of the night, beginning with Mackie asking for help in the middle of the street. But I omitted the part about how I had convinced Skeen to yield.