'Don't let it bother you for a minute,' Longarm told the young attorney. 'Just... well, just chalk this UP to experience. Eli has that hangdog look that makes everyone think he's a victim rather than the victimizer. I think that's why the man is so dangerous.'
Martha was silent a long time. 'I hope to God that there are other train coaches like this that people have managed to reach. That one destroyed coach we passed looked like a pile of chopped firewood. I can't imagine what-'
'Don't think about it,' Longarm said. 'That doesn't help. We have to just worry about saving ourselves now. We have to hope that, when this train didn't arrive in Cheyenne, help was dispatched right away.'
'In a storm like this?' Martha looked up at him in the dim glow of the firelight. 'I doubt that they would send anyone out in this weather. Would you?'
'No,' Longarm admitted. 'I'd wait until the worst of this storm passed.'
Martha thought about that for a few minutes before she said, 'If some of these people don't get to a doctor soon, they'll die.'
Longarm knew that. He also knew that it was pointless to worry about what was beyond their control. Each and every passenger had been attended to as well as possible given the extreme deprivations they were all trying to endure and survive.
'Wyoming storms this early in the year often pass quickly,' Longarm said. 'I think those among us that survive until morning will crawl out into sunlight.'
'I want to believe that,' Martha whispered as she held Longarm and her body heat drove away his chills.
When Longarm awoke, he knew that his greatest wish had been granted. The wind had stopped and, looking outside through a window that was still intact, he could see the morning sun melting the snow. Longarm kissed Martha awake, and then he joined those who were able to crawl out into the brilliant sunlight. For a few moments, they were all a little dazed and confused, like wild animals emerging from hibernation.
The train was segmented like a broken logger's chain, pieces of it scattered all up and down the mountainside. The locomotive had tumbled hundreds of feet farther down into the gorge, and lay with its huge driving wheels reaching for the sky. The coal car was nearby. Another coach now rested several hundred yards above both and was wrapped around an immense pine tree.
It took only a few minutes for Longarm to realize that there were no other survivors from the train. Every coach except two had been ripped apart, with bodies and baggage now buried under a thick blanket of glistening snowfall.
'Where are you going?' Martha asked.
'To the mail car, or what's left of it.'
Martha followed Longarm about fifty yards up the slope. The mail car was a pile of kindling, and it took Longarm several minutes to dig his way through the rubble in order to reach what had been a large safe. The safe would have survived the destruction had it not been dynamited. Now its massive door hung from only one hinge. The safe itself had been emptied. Even the mail sacks had been rifled and their contents scattered everywhere.
'The safe was dynamited,' Longarm announced when he crawled back out and rejoined Martha.
She stared at him, struck by the implications of his words. 'Then this whole thing was a deliberate act by Eli Wheat's gang.'
'It could have been another bunch. Eli's friends don't have a corner on train robberies. Still, I think that they probably wanted to see if they could free one of their own and at the same time make a good haul.'
'So what now?'
Longarm looked up at the sky, and then removed and studied his pocket watch. 'It's only eight-fifteen,' he said, repocketing the Ingersoll. 'My guess is that a rescue party ought to be here before nine o'clock.'
'With a doctor?'
'I would think so,' Longarm said. 'The Union Pacific officials might believe that this train just mired down in a snowbank, but they'll know that there will be passengers who are suffering from the cold and possibly even frostbite. I'm sure that they'll bring along at least one doctor.'
'When we reach Cheyenne, what will you do?' Martha asked.
Longarm turned to survey the destruction below. How many frozen bodies were buried in those coaches and lying hidden by the white death?
'I'll telegraph Denver and report what happened and my findings. Then I'll go after Eli and his gang.'
'By yourself.'
'Yes,' Longarm said. 'But even if I fail, there will be plenty of others hunting that gang. Even Pinkertons. But I mean to find them first and have the pleasure of killing or capturing Eli and his friends. I want them very bad, Martha. And though you might disapprove, I'll smile when they prance like puppets at the end of a hangman's noose.'
'I don't disapprove,' she said. 'In fact, I rather hope you'll send me an invitation to that party.'
Longarm had not realized the depth of change that this young woman had undergone in less than twenty-four hours. No longer was she blind to the evil that lurked in men like Eli Wheat. It was, on the one hand, sad to see her lose her innocence. But on the other hand, if Martha Noble hoped to survive as a rare female Wyoming attorney, she was long overdue for a massive dose of frontier reality.
CHAPTER 3
True to Longarm's prediction, a relief and supply train with a massive snowplow mounted to its locomotive's cowcatcher came puffing up from Cheyenne at about nine o'clock. No doubt those arriving had expected to find a train stranded in deep drifts. Whatever their expectations, they could not have anticipated the devastation that lay scattered across the mountainside.
Longarm and Martha, standing side by side and arm in arm, witnessed their shock. Longarm saw the Union
