“But you’re an officer of the law!”
“I’m a man who is at his wit’s end,” Longarm replied. “I need to fix that damned furnace so that it can’t be repaired until this train reaches Sacramento.”
“How on earth are you going to do that?”
“I’ve been giving it some thought,” Longarm replied. “In fact, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”
“And?”
“I’m going to riddle the boiler and put it permanently out of commission.”
“You’ll be scalded alive,” Irma said. “I think it would be much safer just to destroy a section of the heating duct.”
“They could make a replacement too easily,” Longarm said with a shake of his head. “After all, the railroad has repair shops all along the line.”
“If they can repair the duct, they can repair the boiler itself.”
“Sure they can,” Longarm said, “but we’re running behind schedule and a major repair will have to wait until the train reaches Sacramento. There are three big repair shops on this line. Sacramento, Cheyenne, and Omaha. They’d have to go on to Sacramento.”
Irma sighed and continued to dress. “Well,” she said, “you do what you have to do. I’m going to go join Caroline for supper. Do you want to come along?”
“Maybe later.”
“All right,” Irma said, mopping her face and arms dry before leaving their overheated compartment.
As soon as she was gone, Longarm consulted his pocket watch. The porter in charge of stoking the furnace was a creature of habit whose work routine did not vary.
Exactly five minutes later, Longarm heard the bang of the coal furnace door being slammed open. Then he heard the porter shoveling coal. Longarm counted the shovelfuls and there were exactly twenty. In about thirty minutes, the furnace would be roaring hot, the boiler would be belching steam, and the temperature in Longarm’s compartment would be over one hundred degrees.
When the furnace door banged shut again, Longarm came to his feet and opened his door. He peered up and down the aisle and, seeing that it was empty, tiptoed around to the furnace, which was already popping and would soon exhibit a cherry-red glow.
Reaching into his pants pockets, Longarm retrieved a dozen .44-caliber bullets. Taking a deep breath, he found the heavy pair of cowhide leather gloves that the porter used to open the furnace door. Longarm put one on his left hand and unlatched the furnace door.
When he swung the heavy, cast-iron door open, the blast of fire was so intense that Longarm recoiled and was certain that his face was scorched and that his mustache, eyebrows, and hair were singed and would, therefore, mark him as the guilty party in this ridiculous affair.
“Here goes,” he said, tossing in a handful of his gun’s .44-caliber cartridges. He slammed the door, latched it tight, ducked around the corner, and then hurried down the aisle toward second class. He had not gone more than fifteen feet when the first cartridge exploded.
The effect was more than Longarm could have possibly imagined. The explosions were akin to cannon fire, and so thunderous that the very walls of the coach shook. They came so rapidly that they blended into a long but united clap of rolling thunder.
“Hey,” a passenger shouted, bursting in from the second-class coach and starting toward the furnace. “What’s going on?”
“Beats me,” Longarm said, blocking the man’s progress, “but it sounds like a gunfight and you’d better go back to your seat.”
The passenger made a quick and complete change of direction. Longarm followed him out.
“There must be a gunfight of some sort going on in the firstclass sleeping coach!” another passenger shouted as they entered the second-class coach.
“I’ll check it out,” Longarm shouted, wheeling back around as the sound of his bullets finally died. To make it look convincing, Longarm dragged his Colt from its holster and marched back into the firstclass coach. He could already smell smoke and steam, and was suddenly worried that an unwitting passenger might inhale the noxious and potentially fatal fumes.
Holstering his six-gun, Longarm plunged ahead. When he reached the end of the car he saw that the furnace, boiler, and even chimney were completely destroyed. Steam was gushing out of the boiler and drenching the furnace, causing the cast iron to pop and bang. Boiling water flooded across the floor, and the small furnace area was the scene of complete chaos as two porters dashed about trying to figure out exactly what to do.
“Anything I can do to help?” Longarm asked, innocent as a choirboy.
“No,” the porter shouted in anger. “Marshal, I expect you’re the one that caused this … this ‘accident’!”
Longarm pivoted around on his heels and yelled to the curious men who had followed him in from the second- class coach. “The situation is under control now. Everyone back out of here so that the porters can clean up.”
“Well, what the hell happened?” a man yelled. “Did anyone even get shot?”
“Nope,” Longarm said. “Steam heater exploded. Just a minor inconvenience for us firstclass passengers. It isn’t a big deal.”
“There ought to be better maintenance on this equipment,” another man grumped. “Why, if one of us passengers had of been standing beside that furnace when she blew, we’d probably be dead!”
“Probably,” Longarm agreed. “Is anybody up for a game of poker?”
