eventually lead to his becoming an engineer. They had just come off a run and were having a cup of coffee before heading home when Abner held his gun to their heads and forced them into the cab of the engine pulling Cromwell’s fancy freight car.
As was the earlier crew, Wilbanks and Hall were thrown from the engine in the middle of nowhere at the same time Abner cut the telegraph wires.
Abner sat on the roof of the tender above the cab so he could prod Hunt and Carr to keep the Pacific locomotive hurtling over the rails to Flathead Lake. The black swirling clouds over the Rocky Mountains to the east caught his attention.
“Looks like a storm brewing,” he shouted to Carr.
“A chinook, by the look of it,” Carr yelled back over his shoulder as he scooped coal into the firebox.
“What’s a chinook?” asked Abner.
“It’s a windstorm that roars down out of the Rockies. Temperatures can drop as much as forty degrees in an hour and winds can blow over a hundred miles an hour, enough to blow railcars off the tracks.”
“How long before it strikes here?”
“Maybe an hour,” replied Carr. “About the time we’ll reach the train ferry dock at Woods Bay. Once we arrive, you’ll have to sit out the storm. The ferry won’t sail during a chinook.”
“Why not?” Abner demanded.
“With hundred-mile-an-hour winds, the lake turns into a frenzy. The wind whips the water into waves as high as twenty feet. The train ferry wasn’t built for rough water. No way the crew will take it out on the lake during a chinook.”
“We telegraphed ahead to have the ferry waiting for our arrival,” said Abner. “We’re going across, wind or no wind.”
BACK IN Cromwell’s rolling palace, Margaret had drifted into a light sleep from the champagne while her brother sat and relaxed with a newspaper he’d picked up when Abner abducted the train crew at Brigham City. Most of the news was about the San Francisco earthquake. He read that the fires had finally been put out and wondered if his mansion on Nob Hill and the bank building had survived.
He looked up, hearing a strange sound different from the clack of the steel wheels on steel rails. It came faint and far off. He stiffened as he recognized it as a train whistle. Cromwell was stunned, knowing now for certain that he was being pursued.
“Bell!” he exploded in anger.
Startled at his loud voice, Margaret sat up awake. “What are you shouting about?”
“Bell!” snapped Cromwell. “He’s chased us from San Francisco.”
“What are you saying?”
“Listen,” he ordered her. “Listen.”
Then she heard it, the unmistakable sound of a train’s steam whistle, barely perceptible, but it was there.
Margaret rushed to the rear window and peered down the track. It was as if a fist had struck her in the stomach. She could see a stream of black smoke rising beyond a curve above a windbreak of small trees.
“You must tell Abner!” she screamed.
Cromwell had anticipated her and climbed a ladder to the vent opening in the roof of the boxcar. He pushed aside the lid to the vent, stood above the roof, and shot off his revolver to get Abner’s attention over the clamor of the locomotive. Abner heard and hurried over the top of the tender, until he was only a dozen feet away from Cromwell.
“There is a train coming up behind us,” Cromwell shouted.
Abner braced his feet apart against the pitch and roll of the tender and gazed over the roof of the boxcar. The onrushing train had come around the curve now and was visible in the distance. It looked to be a locomotive and its tender, pulling no cars. It was coming, and coming on fast, as evident from the smoke exploding from its stack and laid flat by the headwind.
Now the two trains were in sight and sound of each other, with the ferry dock at Woods Bay on Flathead Lake only twenty miles away.
47
IT WAS AS IF ADELINE WAS A COME-FROM-BEHIND THOROUGHBRED pounding around the far turn into the back stretch, flying through the herd and vying for the lead. Her connecting rods were a blur as they whipped the massive drive wheels over the rails. No locomotive ever worked harder. From the Oakland railyard to the wilds of Montana, she had covered more distance faster than any locomotive in history. No one timed her speeds, but none on board her cab or those who had seen her hurtle past ever doubted that she had surpassed ninety miles an hour on straight and level stretches of track.
Jongewaard had the throttle against its stop, throwing Adeline over tracks that were never meant for such speeds. Both engineers sat in the cab seats, their eyes fixed on the track ahead. Bell and Long shoveled while Shea systematically banked the fire to keep it burning evenly for the maximum amount of heat for proper combustion.
The chugging sound of the steam exhaust became one continuous hiss and the smoke poured from the stack in an ever-growing cloud. Bell stopped shoveling every so often to stare at the train ahead, growing larger by the minute. There was no effort to sneak up on Cromwell now; he pulled the cord and gave the whistle a long shriek
