The Boundless (32 page)

“In addition,” the Mountie says, “she endangered the lives of others aboard by not telling us sooner about Brogan's plot.”

“But I didn't tell either!” Will exclaims.

“I'm aware of that,” says the Mountie. “Three times I saw you in the carriages, and you said nothing to me.”

Recklessly Will says, “Well, you should arrest me, too!”

“Will!” Maren and his father say at the same time.

“I am considering it, young sir,” says Steele.

This makes Will pause a second, but he pushes on. “She saved my life in the muskeg. Without her I couldn't have warned my father—or stopped him going over the edge just now!”

“Remarkable heroism, no question,” says Samuel Steele. “And it will certainly weigh in her favor when she's brought before the magistrate in Lionsgate City.”

“Is this truly necessary, Lieutenant?” Will's father asks.

“I'm afraid so, Mr. Everett. The law must be upheld. When we get things a bit more settled, I'll transfer her to the jail in second class.”

“May I have a blanket?” Maren asks, shivering.

Will takes a large blanket off one of the bunks and drapes it over her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she says.

“I'm sorry,” Will says awkwardly. “I didn't see it ending like this.”

“Neither did I.” She smiles. “Well, at least you've got a good story to tell. And I think this one definitely happened
to
you.”

He nods. “I guess so.” He wishes he hadn't used the word “ending.” Is that what this is?

The kettle starts shrieking atop the stove.

“Can I offer you a mug of tea, Miss Amberson?” Will's father asks, moving to the boiling kettle. “It'll help warm you up.”

When Will looks over at Maren, she has pulled the blanket right over her head and wrapped it around her like a tepee. She must be really cold.

“Maren?” says Will's father, offering her the cup of tea.

She makes no reply, nor does she move. Will holds his breath, watching.

The Mountie steps over. “What're you playing at, girl?”

He takes the blanket and yanks it off, revealing a pair of manacles on the empty bunk.

“This is unacceptable,” mutters Lieutenant Steele.

While the Mountie and James Everett hurriedly check the inside of the bunk car, Will charges to the doorway and climbs onto the roof to get a better view. There's no sign of her in the snow-strewn landscape. He wants to cheer, and call her back all at the same time.

“I gather that's called the disappearing act,” says James Everett, climbing onto the roof with Sam Steele. Will thinks there is a trace of a smile on his father's lips.

“She's foolhardy if she thinks she can run for it,” Steele remarks, “with the sasquatch on the move.”

Will looks about, feeling suddenly desolate. She wouldn't really strike out alone into the wilderness, would she? No one could survive out here. She must have a plan. The emptiness inside him contracts into a hard ache. Is this it? Is this how she always imagined it? That after the robbery she would say good-bye and never see him again?

“There's no time to worry about her now,” says the Mountie. “I need a rescue party for the men who were forced off the locomotive. They're likely injured. And I need deputies to apprehend those last three brakemen.” He looks at Will. “Two of them manacled together, or with wrist bruises, yes? Shouldn't be too hard to find.”

Will follows his father's gaze to the funeral car, the door in its side still open.

“Let's get that door closed,” his father says. “And then we need to start digging ourselves out.”

“I'll assemble a team for you,” says Steele.

Will points. “I think it's already assembled.”

Slogging their way along the tracks is a steady stream of crew and passengers: men in fine overcoats, colonists in their bulky woolen layers—and amongst them two stilt walkers, and an assortment of oddly dressed people who could only belong to the circus.

“All we need are shovels!” one of them calls up.

*   *   *

Will digs in and tosses more snow to the side. All along the buried track, people are working to clear the rails with shovels, buckets, soup ladles—anything they could lay hands on. Their muffled voices and laughter carry through the clear mountain air. Kitchen staff bring sandwiches and hot drinks, and the mood is almost festive. He has a memory of winter mornings in Halifax, when all the neighbors would be out shoveling after the night's snowfall. He looks over at his father, working alongside him.

“Can you put the train back together?”

“We'll need to repair the couplings they blasted apart, but we've got a welder aboard. Shouldn't be a problem. I want to get clear of here by nightfall.”

Will glances up at the fireman atop the locomotive, a rifle in his hands, scanning the slopes for sasquatch. So far there's been no sign of them. Will hopes Maren is safe, wherever she is. Most likely she struck out with her brothers. He hopes at least Christian is with her. Will likes the idea of her having an animal handler along, especially one used to dealing with sasquatch. And what about the reward Mr. Dorian promised her, the five thousand dollars to start her own show? It seems too unfair if she doesn't even get that. The ache in his throat gives another contraction.

“Do you think Sam Steele will try to catch her?” he asks his father.

“Not right now certainly—and maybe not ever. I'll have another word with him, see if he'll drop the charges. I've no wish to pursue them. She seems like quite a remarkable young woman.”

From the corner of his eye, Will sees his father watching him, and keeps digging. His cheeks feel hot. He's not worried about Maren getting caught—not if she doesn't want to be. No locks can hold her, no chains bind her. She'll always have her freedom. But maybe if the charges were dropped, she'd come back . . .

His father claps him on the shoulder. “You did well. I don't know many lads—or men—who could've done the things you did.”

Will grins. “Thank you.”

“But I wish you'd come forward sooner, for your own safety.”

“I promised them. That I'd wait till he got the painting. I thought I owed it to her. And Mr. Dorian,” he adds carefully. “He saved my life too.”

His father pauses from his shoveling. “It seems incredible to me he really thought the painting would keep him young. He was too clever a man for that, I thought.”

“It doesn't seem so much stranger than other things,” Will says.

He thinks of the ringmaster's body, laid out cold in the first-class infirmary. He worked so hard, and for so long, and bloodied his hands to change his fate. But in the end he wasn't able to cheat time.

“I can't help wondering,” Will says, “if all the strain actually brought on his heart attack.”

His father shakes his head sadly. “He shouldn't have put so many people in harm's way. It was more than selfish. It was monstrous.”

Will supposes he should feel angrier at the ringmaster, but when he remembers the fear pouring from Mr. Dorian's face, and his terrible moans—he feels only sadness.

“What will happen to his portrait?” he asks suddenly.

“Well, I imagine it'll have to be removed from the canvas, without damaging the Krieghoff.”

“It was good,” Will says wistfully.

His father looks at him. “Or maybe we can just leave it. Have it reframed. A secret on the back of the Krieghoff.”

“I like that idea.”

“You know,” his father says, leaning on his shovel, “we're not so far from where you drove the last spike.”

Will looks into the mountains. He had the feeling they were close to Craigellachie, but it's hard for him to superimpose this view with the one he saw three years ago, when he was a boy coming to see a father he barely knew.

“Brogan said you and he mined for gold.”

His father turns to him. “This is true.”

“To save the company from going bankrupt.”

“True again. If we hadn't struck a seam, the railway never would've been finished. Thousands of us would've lost months in wages.”

Will has to force himself to ask, “Did you take any for yourself? The gold?”

“Is that what Brogan said?”

Will nods.

His father takes a deep breath, and Will catches himself holding his. “There wasn't a day I wasn't tempted. Some of the others pocketed what they could. I didn't report them. We'd gone unpaid for a long time, and it was hard to think of it as stealing. Who owned it? Maybe the Dominion. Maybe the Natives. Maybe no one at all. But we were employed by the company, and I followed orders. I never took any, William. I hope you believe me.”

Without hesitation he says, “I do.”

Despite the cold, the sun feels warm on his face, and he thinks of spring. The smell is coming back to things. Grass and mud. They dig for a little while in silence, and then his father says:

“This art school in San Francisco. If your heart's set on it, you should go. I'll pay your way.”

Will looks at him in astonishment. “You will?”

“I will. Now you keep clearing these tracks, and I'm going to see how the welders are coming along.”

Will leans on his shovel, dumbfounded. This thing he wanted, that seemed impossibly far away, is now right before him, and it hardly seems real. So why isn't he happier? His father has agreed to let him go to art school. But somehow the thought has no luster right now.

He scratches his neck, and his fingertips come away with a bit of face paint. He tried to wash it all off earlier in the bunk car, but it was stubborn stuff. When he looked at himself in the mirror after scrubbing hard, he felt disappointed, like some part of him had gone swirling down the drain with the dirty water. He was just William Everett again.

Something brushes his head, and he turns to see a small bird bouncing off his shoulder as it flutters to the ground. Bending, he realizes it isn't a real bird at all but an ingenious paper creation, like the one Mr. Dorian made the night before. Heart beating faster, Will picks it up. Standing, he looks all around, but he can't see who threw it.

Carefully he unfolds it and starts reading the handwritten note. Even though he's never seen her handwriting, Will knows almost instantly that it's Maren's.

He gave me the circus! He left the will in my pocket.

He has to read the lines a second time, he's so astounded. Mr. Dorian
gave
her the circus? Was this his way of repaying her for all the danger he put her in? Will remembers how, before they set out for the funeral car, the ringmaster wrote two notes and put one inside his jacket. This must be what he secretly slipped into Maren's pocket. Eagerly Will keeps reading:

We'll be in San Francisco in two weeks. Ready to join the circus properly? Write your answer and send the bird to the west.

Don't be late this time.

Will feels a little short of breath. It's almost too much to think about. This is more than just a door opening in his life—it's the door being blasted right off its hinges, and a circus troupe bounding in, picking him up, and carrying him off on its shoulders.

He looks along the tracks that, once cleared, will take the Boundless to Lionsgate City, to his future. And what exactly will his future be? His mind is noisy, and he forces himself to take a deep breath.

His hand shakes as he fumbles inside his pocket for his stub of a pencil. At the bottom of the page he writes his answer, twice to make sure it's good and dark. He's worried about putting the bird back together, but the paper seems to know which way it wants to be folded.

Lifting the bird high, he faces west, and launches it. Up it swoops, and he can't quite tell, but he thinks its wings are fluttering. It skims above the trees, in the direction of the setting sun, carrying his answer of yes.

A
LSO
BY
K
ENNETH
O
PPEL

The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein

This Dark Endeavor

Such Wicked Intent

T
HE
S
ILVERWING
T
RILOGY

Silverwing

Sunwing

Firewing

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•This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
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. • Book design by Lucy
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© 2014 by Jim Tierney•Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data • Oppel, Kenneth, 1967– • The Boundless / Kenneth Oppel. — First edition. • pages
cm • Summary: Aboard “The Boundless,” the greatest train ever built, on its maiden
voyage across Canada, teenaged Will enlists the aid of a traveling circus to save the
train from villains. • ISBN 978-1-4424-7288-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN
978-1-4424-7290-7 (eBook) • [1. Railroad trains—Fiction. 2. Circus—Fiction. 3. Adventure
and adventurers—Fiction. 4. Canada—History—1867–1914—Fiction.] I. Title. • PZ7.O614Bo
2014 • [Fic]—dc23 • 2013009879