Sullivan’s powerful jab knocked the paper from Bell’s hand.
Bell straightened up as much as he could, given the searing pain in his ribs, and managed to elude the combination Sullivan threw next. “I’ll take you next,” he taunted Sullivan. “Soon as I teach your partner something I learned in college.” Then he turned his scorn on Corbett. “If you were half as good as you think you are, you wouldn’t be hiring yourself out to beat people up in a godforsaken railroad town.”
It worked. As table talk could smoke out intentions in poker, fight talk provoked recklessness. Corbett shoved Sullivan aside.
“Get out of my way! I’m going to make this son of a bitch weep before he dies.”
He charged in a rage, throwing punches like cannon fire.
Bell knew he had taken too much punishment to count on speed. He had one last chance to gather all his strength into one killing blow. Too tired to slip the punches, he absorbed two, stepped inside the next, and hit Corbett hard on the jaw, which snapped Corbett’s head back. Then Bell unleashed a right with every ounce of his strength and plunged it into Corbett’s body. The breath exploded out of the man, and he collapsed as if his knees had turned to water. Fighting to the last, he lunged for Bell’s throat as he went down but fell short.
Bell lurched at Sullivan. He was gasping at the exertion, but his face was a mask of grim purpose:
Sullivan dropped to his knees beside Corbett, reached inside his fallen partner’s coat, yanked out a flick knife. Leaping to his feet, he charged Bell.
Bell knew that the heavily built brawler was stronger than he was. In his own half-dead state, attempting to take the knife away was too risky. He slipped his own blade from his boot and pitched it overhand, dragging his index finger on the smooth handle to prevent it from rotating. Flickering like a lizard’s tongue, it flew flat and true into Sullivan’s throat. The brawler fell, spewing blood through hands desperately trying to close the wound.
He would not be answering Bell’s questions.
The detective knelt beside Corbett. His eyes were staring wide open. Blood was trickling from his mouth. If he wasn’t dying from internal ruptures from Bell’s blow to his stomach, he was close to it, and would not be answering questions tonight either. Without wasting another moment, Isaac Bell staggered along the rails to the Rawlins Depot and burst through the dispatcher’s door.
The dispatcher stared at the man in ripped evening clothes with blood pouring down his face.
“What the hell happened to you, mister?”
Bell said, “The president of the line has authorized me to charter a special.”
“You bet. And the Pope just gave me a pass for the Pearly Gates.”
Bell pulled Osgood Hennessy’s letter from his wallet and thrust it in the dispatcher’s face.
“I want your fastest locomotive.”
The dispatcher read it twice, stood up, and said, “Yes, sir! But I’ve only got one engine, and she’s scheduled to hitch onto the westbound limited, which is due in twenty minutes.”
“Turn her around, we’re going east.”
“Where to?”
“After the Overland Limited.”
“You’ll never catch her.”
“If I don‘t, you’ll be hearing from Mr. Hennessy. Get on that telegraph and clear the tracks.”
The Overland Limited had a fifty-minute head start, but Bell’s locomotive had the advantage of hauling only the weight of her own coal and water while the Limited’s engine was towing eight Pullmans and baggage, dining, and observation cars. Hundred-dollar tips to the fireman and engineer didn’t hurt her speed either. They climbed through the night, encountering snow in the Medicine Bow Mountains, a harbinger of the winter that Osgood Hennessy’s railroad builders were striving to beat even as the Wrecker sowed death and destruction to stop them.
They left the snow behind as they descended into the Laramie Valley, stormed through it and the town, stopping only for water, and climbed again. They finally caught up with the Overland Limited east of Laramie at Buford Station, where the rising sun was illuminating the pink granite on the crest of Sherman Hill. The Limited was sidetracked on the water siding, her fireman wrestling the spigot down from the tall wooden tank and jerking the chain that caused the water to flow into the locomotive’s tender.
“Do you have sufficient water to make it to Cheyenne without stopping?” Bell asked his fireman.
“I believe so, Mr. Bell.”
“Pass him!” Bell told the engineer. “Take me straight to the Cheyenne Depot. Fast as you can.”
From Buford Station to Cheyenne, the road descended two thousand feet in thirty miles. With nothing on the eastbound track in front of Bell’s special, they headed for Cheyenne at ninety miles an hour.
19
THE WRECKER HAD AWAKENED THE INSTANT THE TRAIN HAD stopped. He parted the shade a crack and saw the sun shining on pink Sherman granite, which the railroad quarried for track ballast. They would be in Cheyenne for breakfast. He closed his eyes, glad for another hour of sleep.
A locomotive thundered past the sidetracked Limited.
The Wrecker opened his eyes. He rang for the porter.
“George,” he said to Jonathan. “Why have we stopped?”
“Stopped for water, suh.”
“Why did a train overtake us?”
“Don’t know, suh.”
“We are the Limited.”
“Yes, suh.”
“What train would be faster than this one,
The porter flinched. Senator Kincaid’s face was suddenly wracked with rage, his eyes hot, his mouth twisted with hate. Jonathan was terrified. The Senator could order him fired in a breath. They’d throw him off the train at the next stop. Or right here on top of the Rocky Mountains. “It weren’t no train passing us, suh. It was just a locomotive all by hisself.”
“A single locomotive?”
“Yes, suh! Just him and his tender.”
“So it must have been a chartered special.”
“Must have been, suh. Just like you say, suh. Going lickety-split, suh.”
The Wrecker lay back on the bed, clasped his hands behind his head, and thought hard.
“Will there be anything else, suh?” Jonathan asked warily.
“Coffee.”
BELL’S CHARTERED LOCOMOTIVE RACED through Cheyenne’s stock-yards and into Union Depot shortly after nine in the morning. He ran directly to the Inter-Ocean Hotel, the best among the three-story establishments he could see from the station. The house detective took one look at the tall man in ripped and torn evening clothes and blood-soaked shirt and crossed the lobby at a dead run to intercept him.
“You can’t come in here looking like that.”
“Bell. Van Dorn Agency. Take me to the tailor. And round up a haberdasher, a shoe-shine boy, and a barber.”
“Right this way, sir … Shall I get you a doctor, too?”
“No time.”
The Overland Limited glided into Union Depot forty minutes later.
Isaac Bell was waiting on the platform at the middle of the train, looking far better than he felt. His entire body ached and his ribs hurt with every breath. But he was groomed, shaved, and dressed as well as he had been at the poker game the night before, in crisp black evening clothes, snow-white shirt, silk bow tie and cummerbund, and boots shined like mirrors.
A smile played across his swollen lips. Someone on this train was in for a big surprise. The question was would
