With that, both men began straightening their legs while letting out a long, strained breath.
Nick could feel his muscles burning under his skin as if every last one of them had been doused in kerosene and put to a match. He kept the pain going, however, by forcing his legs to straighten even more as he fought to lift his part of the wagon.
Beside Nick, Earl lowered his head and raised the singletree just enough to cause the wheel on his side to budge. “Come on!” he shouted. “Just a bit more.”
Knowing that he’d only have to start all over again if he gave up now, Nick gritted his teeth and raised his side some more. Fortunately for him and all of his muscles, Nick now had his side of the wagon as high off the ground as Earl’s. Nick lifted his chin and let out a gruff holler toward the back.
Kazys responded to Nick’s voice and immediately started moving in the direction he’d been pointed. As soon as the horse took up the slack in the rope tied to his saddle horn, Kazys dug his hooves into the dirt and pulled even harder.
With the combined efforts of one horse and two men, the wagon groaned and rumbled away from the tracks. Nick could feel his knees aching with every shuffling fraction of a step he took. Earl didn’t seem to be doing much better, but he struggled through until the wagon had rolled another couple of feet.
“That should be…good enough,” Earl said.
Just to be safe, Nick kept pushing for a bit longer. “All right,” he said. “Lower it.”
Both men stopped and eased the wagon down again. As soon as he was free from under the splintered wood, Nick ran around to let Kazys know he could stop pulling. Nick untied the rope from the saddle horn and tossed it away. By this time, the nearby horsemen had begun firing at him.
“Is that good enough?” Nick asked.
“Should be,” Earl said. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here!”
Nick didn’t need to be told twice. He climbed into the saddle and Earl climbed on behind him. As he snapped the reins, Nick fired a few shots at the horsemen. He didn’t even bother to see if he’d hit anything before facing forward and urging Kazys to go faster.
The horse got them to the train in a matter of seconds and Earl climbed up into the cab of the locomotive. Already, smoke was pouring from the pistons stack and the other men inside the engine were hurrying about their tasks.
“If you’re coming along, you’d best hop on board,” the engineer said. “If I get going, I ain’t about to slow down until I get far away from here!”
“Go on ahead,” Nick said. “I’ll cover your back.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah. Just go.”
The engineer leaned out to quickly shake Nick’s hand. Before Nick could back away from the engine, it was already beginning to roll forward.
Nick reloaded his gun, rode ahead of the train and crossed the tracks. Some of the horsemen were working their way toward him, but backed up as soon as they saw Nick heading in their direction. They fired a few nervous shots as they gathered their courage. Instead of waiting for them to work themselves into a lather, Nick touched his heels to Kazys’s sides and charged forward with his gun blazing.
Nick stormed straight into the armed horsemen as if he fully intended on riding over the barrels of their drawn guns. He started by firing a few shots over their heads, which scared a few of them off. The ones who kept their composure enough to hold their ground and take aim were the first to be shot from their saddles.
Two of the horsemen dropped before the train smashed through the rest of the refuse blocking the track. The wagon was knocked aside and rolled away as broken crates and splintered boards were sent flying.
For a few seconds, every one of Nick’s senses felt like they were burning.
Once the train passed, Nick was left to feel the heat of the nearby fires drifting over his face. In a strange way, he preferred that to sitting next to that damn window.
ELEVEN
Nick didn’t pull back on his reins until he was in town. Rock Springs wasn’t the biggest town he’d seen, but it was spread out enough for him to find a section that wasn’t in chaos. Even with the flames turning the sky a dull orange in spots, the streets where Nick came to a stop were fairly quiet. Holding his gun at the ready, Nick shifted in his saddle to look for a target.
All he found were some frightened folks trying to hide from him.
After holstering his gun, Nick moved along and turned a corner so he could get another look at the train tracks. Now that the train had moved on, the horsemen didn’t seem too interested in guarding the area. Before Nick could move on, however, he saw a pair of men shuffling toward the tracks. They waved at someone who was out of Nick’s line of sight.
Sure enough, another old wagon was slowly creeping toward the tracks.
“Son of a bitch,” Nick muttered.
The stubborn streak inside of him wanted nothing more than to chase those men away and roll that wagon over their backs.
The rest of him knew that another set of nameless men would probably just show up a little later to roll another old wagon into that very same spot.
With a sigh that he’d only heard come out of his father when the old man’s patience had been stretched to its limit, Nick turned his back on the railroad tracks and rode into Rock Springs.
“You should’ve stayed on that train, mister.”
Nick looked toward the sound of that voice and didn’t see anyone right away. Then, after taking a second and third glance, he spotted an old woman sitting on a nearby porch. She was so small that she barely stood out as being separate from the chair she occupied.
“It looked like you had some trouble,” Nick said. “I saw the fires.”
“Yeah?” the old lady huffed. “What business is it of yours?”
Nick didn’t really know what to say to that.
“Are you one of the Federals?” she asked. Lifting her head seemed to require more energy than the old lady had, but she strained and grunted through the task anyway. After examining Nick’s face through clouded eyes, she slumped back into her chair and added, “You sure as hell don’t look like no Chinese.”
“Some men were blocking up the railroad tracks. They were spouting off about Chinese, too. What the hell is going on here?”
“You ain’t heard?”
A large group of men marching down the street carrying shotguns caught Nick’s eye. His hand dropped reflexively to the gun at his side, but he didn’t clear leather.
As the men got closer, their gaze drifted toward Nick. A few of them shifted and the barrels of their shotguns wandered in his direction, but then they looked away. Without saying a word, they kept right on moving and then finally turned a corner.
“No need to get so fidgety,” the old woman said. “They ain’t after you.”
“How do you know?”
She looked up at him as if Nick had just asked her how she knew where the ground was. “Because you ain’t Chinese,” she said.
“Hasn’t anyone around here seen a Chinaman before?”
“They seen too many of ’em. That’s the problem,” she said, rocking back and forth in her chair. “The mining company decided to replace all the local boys with Chinese to keep their profits up. Them slope-eyed workers take less money and don’t mind putting good men out of work.”
“Doesn’t sound like the Chinese had much of a choice in the matter.”
The woman looked up at Nick as if she was about to spit on him. Then she shrugged and said, “Maybe not.
