Disappearances (24 page)

“Then Gagne had to go and spoil it all by saying he didn't think it was jerries or nobody else up there shooting. He said his wife's mother's cousin's place over to Stanstead burnt down this winter and the mason jars exploding in the cellar sounded just like them pops. ‘Get down, you fool,' Commander says and shoved Gagne into some bushes but the Frenchman gets away from him and runs up the lane to the barn. When he see that Gagne wasn't getting shot Commander explained to the rest of us that he always sent the frogs in first over across too, and now it was safe for us to go along up. But as it turned out it wasn't mason jars that was exploding at all, but whiskey bottles. That shipment that was stolen here four, five days ago when the driver got his head blowed off by the cannon. We had run into that Carcajou's hideout. All of which goes to show you how much a Frenchman knows. Mason jars indeed.”

“You've had a busy time of it,” my father said. “Getting shot at by whiskey bottles and making a patriotic speech to the Legion and such.”

“That's not all by any means. Along toward evening somebody reported shooting from down the lake. Loud shooting, maybe cannon fire. So Sergeant MacPhearson from the local barracks went down in his launch to investigate. By dark he hadn't come back. The wind was blowing up a hurricane out over that water. We'd never seen the lake so high. There wasn't much we could do. Chaplain Burroughs down to the Legion said a prayer for him before we got onto the French element, but I fancy it didn't take. Because sometime during the night the pulp coming up to the mill broke loose in the storm and this morning they found MacPhearson stripped and without no head throwed up on the village beach with several hundred cords of pulpwood. Eula and I had to hurry to get there before they took away the remains. Eula got her claxon horn going that I gave her last Christmas, and with that and the si-reen they got out of our way quick enough. Most gruesome sight I hope to see. There wasn't a square inch of skin left on that man's body. It had all been ground off by the pulp. The only way they could identify it for certain was by a ring that had gotten smashed down over the finger bone. It was the third finger on the right hand.”

“Did he have a family?”

“No. It's too bad he didn't, because the Mounties have wonderful benefits for the families of those killed in action. He had a sister. We got up to her place just in time to hear Chaplain Burroughs break the news.”

“Did they find Carcajou?”

“Not yet that I know of. Just before I left for my run they found his cannon truck. It was on the opposite side of the lake from the hideout so he must have driven right through Magog yesterday. We've got the biggest manhunt in the history of the townships going. We'll find him all right.”

“You're going to lose your voice,” my father said. “You'd better have a short one.”

“A short one wouldn't hurt. There. Look up there on that siding. That's exactly what I mean. Not a one of them doing a single thing. Judas, that burns me. Every time we have a little shower they get off onto a siding or hole up around a warm stove in a shanty and smoke them black pipes and play cards.”

“Not cards?” my father said in a shocked voice. “Cards are the devil's picture book, my son. His prime work for idle hands.”

“They're idle all right,” Compton said. “Look at that, will you.”

Ahead on the siding several men in work clothes were sitting on a long handcar, waiting for us to pass. Compton gave them a salutatory blast on the whistle and waved. He smiled and called effusive greetings out the window. My father winked at me.

“I have to keep on their good side,” Compton said. “Otherwise they might pull up a rail on me.”

“I don't know as I'd put it past them. Except they might not be smart enough.”

“It don't take a lot of brains to prize up a rail.”

“That's so. I like that word prize too. I mean to work that into my next sermon. Here's a man that knows how to use the King's English, Brother William.”

“The boys down to the Legion seem to think so.”

“You ain't no slouch at handling Old Ninety-seven neither. See all them dials and needles. See them levers and switches. This must be the throttle.”

“Yes,” Compton said. “I leave it right here on this notch all the way up the next ridge. Oh, it ain't such a hard job as you might suppose. It requires sound judgment more than anything else.”

“Sound judgment and an open mind,” my father said. “Do you think you could show a young boy how to drive her?”

“As long as he didn't have no French in him I could. Step up here, boy. Duck your head. I can see he's no Frenchman. Put your hand right here on the throttle. Feel her throb? That's seventy tons of steel under your hand.”

“I don't know but what I'd like to try it myself,” my father said.

“Why not? Here, put on my gloves, Pastor. Let's see how you look in my cap. Now the bandanna. Say, ain't that a caution? I wish the boys at the Legion could see this.”

“Caution's my middle name, Captain. Have another sup, why don't you? Old Ninety-seven's in good hands.”

Compton took a long drink. He stepped back to survey my father and began to expel his reeking breath in a long hissing wheeze which I interpreted as laughter.

In order to prevent the cap from coming down over his eyes my father had to balance it on the back of his head and keep his head tipped back. The grimy bandanna came halfway down the front of his surplice. The gauntlets on his gloves extended well above his elbows. Pretending to adjust the gloves, he pushed the throttle forward a notch.

I leaned out the window. Ahead was a steep incline through two rock walls. It looked like a long sloping roofless tunnel.

I heard my father saying, “Do you like to go fast, Captain?”

“Fast?” Compton's eyes were getting red.

“How fast will Old Ninety-seven do?”

“Old Ninety-seven?” Compton said as though he had never heard of the engine. “Oh, Old Ninety-seven. At first I thought you meant did Eula and I go fast. She'll do about eighty on a downgrade, Ninety-seven will. Not down the other side of this ridge, though. There's a hairpin curve at the bottom. Twenty's the limit around there.”

“What if she ever got out of the traces going down the mountain. Would you jump?”

“Abandon Old Ninety-seven? Never. I'd almost as soon turn her over to a Frenchman.”

“Couldn't prize you loose, eh? True for you, Captain. Have another short one.”

Compton took a drink. He looked out the window at the wall of the cut. “How them rocks do rush by,” he said. “I never noticed when I was behind the controls.”

“It always seems faster to a passenger,” my father said, pushing the throttle up as far as it would go. “What's in them shut boxcars, Captain? Newsprint?”

“No, that's hay from Ontario. Alfalfa hay.”

“Alfalfa hay. That's a valuable commodity in these times. Alfalfa hay he says, Brother William.”

Compton was quite drunk now, but he couldn't help noticing how fast we were going. “Here,” he said, “I'd better take back over.”

My father glanced back out the window. “Who's that dark curly-headed fella?” he said.

“What?”

“They's a little fella looks like a section hand hanging onto your ladder, Captain.”

“Judas Priest, one of them dirty little French darkies hitching a ride,” Compton said. “Keep the controls another minute.”

“Certainly. What are you going to do with him? Make him pay a fare?”

“How big did you say he was?”

“He's only a pitiful little fella. Not much bigger than a boy. He looked scared.”

“He better look scared. This is the last straw. See this big boot, Pastor? I'm going to put it to him.”

In the best style of an honorary Legionnaire, red-faced Compton came bulling back through the cab. As he went by I noticed that he did not seem to have any neck at all. His head was clamped down tightly between his shoulders like something round and hard and ugly in a vise.

My father was close behind him. As Compton drew back his foot and lunged toward the open entranceway above the ladder my father drew back his foot and lunged toward Compton's barrel of a rear end. “
Bon voyage,
” he said as Compton disappeared through the opening.

Somehow Compton managed to catch hold of a rung of the ladder with one hand. Dangling with his short legs just out of reach of the driving cams, he shouted for his fireman. The fireman rushed up into the cab. He knelt in the entranceway and extended his arm.

An interesting exhibition ensued. Compton flailed out with his free hand and caught the fireman's wrist. The fireman heaved up, but without much success. At the same time Compton seemed to be trying to pull his would-be rescuer off his perch and down on top of him. The fireman was no match for his engineer in this tug of war. With some slight assistance from my father, he steadily lost ground. Suddenly he was sailing through the air over Compton, who had less than a second to enjoy his triumph before being yanked off the ladder over the flying fireman. Clasping one another's wrists like trapeze artists they rolled in tandem to the base of the rock cut.

Meanwhile my father had discovered Compton's longspouted oilcan and was diligently lubricating the gears and levers on the instrument panel. Weighed down by all of his engineering accoutrements, he grinned his manic grin at me. “Wild Bill,” he said, “we have just become the proud new owners of two carloads of alfalfa.”

“We can't steal that hay,” I said. “That's going too far. Uncle Henry wouldn't like this at all.”

“Uncle Henry's back in the milk car. He don't need to know nothing about it.”

“How are you going to keep him from finding out?”

“I wonder where the brakes are,” my father said.

“You can't just hijack a train, Dad. We're going to be in a lot of trouble.”

“So's Compton,” my father said, as though Compton's difficulties would solve all of ours. “He won't be burning no crosses or attending no more beheadings for a while. The company ain't going to like this.”

“Dad. Listen to me, Dad. What are we going to do with a train?”

“I'll figure out something. Where do you suppose the brakes are, Wild Bill?”

“Pull this back first.”

I pulled back the throttle, but we had already crested the ridge and started down the long grade on the other side. Far ahead through the light rain I could see the lake. It did not look inviting.

We were entering another short cut. For some reason I looked back over the tops of the cars. “Oh no,” I said.

“It ain't that bad, Bill. I think this is them.”

I grabbed my father's arm. “A Mountie just jumped onto the train.”

My father swung around fast just as the policeman disappeared over the side of the caboose. “I saw him,” I said. “He dropped down from the top of those rocks. I'm positive I saw him.”

“All right, my boy. You stay here and see if you can find the brakes. I don't want to lose that alfalfa. I'll go back and tend to the Mountie. Compton don't want unauthorized riders on his train. It's against company policy.”

He scrambled over the coal gondola and leaped up onto the top of the first boxcar. I looked out the window and down the track. About halfway down the ridge to the lake I could see a trestle built into the grade. I hunted frantically for the brakes.

“You're under arrest in the name of the King,” said a voice behind me in a thick Scottish accent.

My most immediate feeling was relief. We might be carried off to jail, but at least we weren't going to be killed in a train wreck. “The brakes,” I shouted, spinning around. “Where are the brakes?”

I was staring up into the face of a monster. Huge chunks of flesh had been torn away from it. The right ear was hanging by a few shreds of cartilage. Part of his right nostril was gone. The right eye socket was a leaking gelatinous pulp. His beard was stiff with dried blood. I could see a row of stubby dark side teeth through a hole in his cheek. When he opened his mouth to laugh I realized that he had no cheek at all.

“Where's the wee mun, lad? It's the wee mun the King wants. Do na say he drouned this time. Sergeant MacPhearson kens better.”

I couldn't stop staring into that creature's ruined eye. “She is na pretty, lad, but I think she's nathing to what you'll resemble if you do na tell me. Look ahead.”

I looked out. We were close to the trestle and going much faster.

He gestured with his pistol. “She's a great ways doun, eh, laddie? Unless you tell Sergeant where he can find the wee mun you'll be lepping into the teeny wee burn that chuckles along below.”

Carcajou trilled his r's and drew out certain words in an insane parody of a Highland accent. He was so big that he had not been able to button the Mountie's jacket across his chest, which was covered by a thick mat of blood-soaked white hair. As we moved out onto the trestle he reached up and casually plucked off his wounded ear, which he lofted out over the chasm. His good blue eye seemed quite calm, quite amused.

He motioned with the pistol. “Step out, lad.”

I had no choice. I had to do what he said. As I passed him I was nearly overpowered by the reek of blood. If I could just stall until we were off that long trestle I would have a chance. I made up my mind that regardless of what happened I was not going to jump into that gulf. Anything would be better than that.

Now Carcajou was facing me with his back to the instrument panel. I stood on the edge of the entranceway. He gestured with his pistol for me to jump. I shook my head. He raised the pistol to a height level with my eyes and fired.

Carcajou staggered back into the panel and fired again. He was shooting wildly. Both shots had gone through the roof of the cab.