Power in the Blood (123 page)

It was decided to ride further along the pass to see if such a shack existed. Drew volunteered to do this while Clay went back to explain things to the women. Everyone was cold and in need of shelter. The weather had been kind, without further snow, but temperatures at night were well below freezing. Drew returned after a difficult ride through deep snow, and reported that there was another shack at the far end.

“I saw wheel ruts too,” he said. “Those drunks drove their wagon along the railroad tracks from Glory Hole, not along the trail from Leadville. They must’ve had lamps and come straight on through the shed.”

“Bunch of fools. They’re lucky a train didn’t meet them halfway in.”

“The shack’s like the one at this end, big enough for all of us, and there’s a draw just a few hundred yards from it that’s protected from the wind good enough for horses, practically no snow at all in there. We can use it if we want to, Clay.”

“Doesn’t look like we have any choice. I went and looked at the drunks again, and they’ve unhitched their team and put them in the shack. They’re not going anywhere.”

“You don’t think they’re fixing to do what we’re fixing to do?”

“Three drunks, rob a train? They couldn’t be so stupid, liquored or not, and one of them’s a woman.”

“Most of our bunch is female too,” Drew pointed out.

“But we’ve got Omie,” said Zoe, “and they don’t.”

The fact that everything depended on Omie made Clay uneasy. It was a cowardly way to attempt such a thing, he believed, even if the plan would not place her in harm’s way, if it came off as intended.

Once across the Colorado line, as the train began climbing the gentle slope that would carry it away from the plains, Boysie Frazier felt his nervous state enter a new kind of excitation. Perhaps it was the air, which grew more rarefied as the elevation of the rails increased, or maybe it was the reduced number of days and hours remaining for bandits, should they wish to attempt a robbery. This was so remote a probability Boysie tended to dismiss it, but he could not help but be aware of his own anxiety.

By the time Denver was reached, near midnight, nine days after the train had left Pittsburgh, Boysie was fidgeting unconsciously, making more outside inspections than before, and causing comment among his men, all of whom were heartily tired of the assignment by then. Boysie promised them all a change of clothing and as much soap and bathwater as they could use, once Glory Hole was reached and their work was done. The weather was fine, although cold, and it was estimated that, barring any sudden avalanches in the mountains, the train should arrive in Glory Hole sometime in the afternoon, the day after next. Boysie had received a clutch of reports from a representative of the Denver Pinkerton office. Telegrams from Pueblo, Salida, Buena Vista and Leadville all confirmed that the tracks were open and passable.

While the tender’s fuel and water were replenished, Boysie looked across the darkened marshaling yards and attempted to reassure himself all was well, and would continue in that vein until the job was completed. He admired the way in which the local office had distributed false news that established the train’s time of arrival in Denver at a little after dawn the next day, by which time it would in fact be approaching Pueblo. It was a precaution taken to lessen any chance of the train’s being mobbed by the curious, and Boysie fully approved of the deception. Subterfuge practiced in the name of the law was a good thing, unlike its outlaw cousins, cunning and deceit.

He strolled around the train, along one side and back down the other. Like everyone else aboard, Boysie was irritated by his own grime and the uncomfortable bunks that had provided too little sleep. The company had considered changing the complete team three times during the trip, then lowered the cost of that plan by deciding to change the team just once, at the midway point, then finally calculated that it was far cheaper to keep just one team aboard the train, from Pittsburgh all the way through to Glory Hole. It would mean considerable hardship for those concerned, but would save the company a lot of money. The job of overseeing what would undoubtedly be a somewhat cantankerous crew by journey’s end befell Boysie Frazier, who was known to have qualities of physical endurance few other men possessed. He had been instructed to set an example, and thus far was confident he had done so, despite the trying circumstances of having been delayed, for days sometimes, by the early onset of winter.

But he did wonder about one small yet disturbing thing. During those occasional moments when he was able to sleep, Boysie had experienced a recurring dream. He was not given to dreaming as a rule, and had never dreamed the same dream twice, so far as he could recall, and yet he had seen the girl with the blue face four times now. She had spoken without moving her lips, always the same message:
The tunnel. Don’t go in.
He had come awake from each of these baffling visitations, shocked by the accelerated pace of his own heartbeat, the sweat covering his skin and the peculiar tingling of his fingertips. It had been the same each time, but it was not the repetition of the message that upset Boysie so much as the separate inquiries he had received from three other men aboard the train. In every case, the men had asked if there was a tunnel anywhere along the line to Glory Hole. Boysie had assured each man that there was not a single tunnel, no stretch of track that burrowed into rock for even a few yards, and had witnessed the relief in their faces. When asked by him why they wished to know, the men had said they were merely asking for the sake of it. Their replies were unconvincing, their manner shamefaced. How was it that four men (and possibly more) had dreamed identical dreams? Boysie did not dare raise the subject for fear of ridicule and a loss of general confidence in his ability as leader, but he could not forget the message or the messenger.

She still could not reconcile herself to being with the Dugans. If she had been with Drew alone, Fay might have been able to maintain her composure, but surrounded as he was by family, Drew was distant with her, even a little short-tempered. She had thrown in her lot with them for his sake, and she could not see why he chose to be so ungrateful. Nothing about being with the Dugans appealed to Fay, or led her to believe in the success of their plan. A robbery perpetrated by a girl was not something she could truly believe in, and Fay hoped, as they waited together for the train, that Drew at least would see sense and declare himself unable to proceed with so idiotic a scheme. Fay supposed the mere fact that Omie was herself a Dugan, or at least half a Dugan, gave the rest a kind of faith in her abilities, however remote from the business of train robbery Omie’s talent might be. Fay was not a Dugan, and feared for them all.

Omie sat by herself in a corner of the shack, on a crate of tie spikes, her eyes closed. She had asked for silence, so she might “talk to the men,” and silence had been granted. Drew and Clay played cards with a deck found on a shelf, and Zoe spent much of her time staring out the only window, a tiny yellowed pane facing a snowbank. Fay thought she might scream if no sounds were uttered soon. She wished she had never accepted Jones’s offer of freedom from custody of the law if she would cooperate with him and bring Omie Brannan back to Denver, assisted by Clay. Once Clay recognized his siblings, any chance for honoring her agreement with Jones was gone, replaced by a foolhardy scheme that could not possibly succeed. They occupied the maintenance shack solely on account of a rejected woman’s desire for vengeance, and a peculiar young girl’s whimsical vanity. Even if everything proceeded as Omie wished, and no one was killed, Fay knew she would still have to share Drew with all of them.

It was to be Nevis’s final comment on Leo Brannan and Lovey Doll Pines before leaving Colorado. The golden elk was too great a target to ignore. Once Smith had been persuaded to take part, Winnie went along too. They had everything they owned in the wagon, and something else besides, a creation of Nevis’s that had been hidden beneath baggage and a tarpaulin. Smith sold his honey cart to an interested party, and left it behind for the new owner to collect. He had emptied his last shitcan, he said, and so had Nevis, and all three got drunker than they had been for some time.

It was to be a new life for them, somewhere far away from Glory Hole, but before they departed the region for good, one last insult must be hurled at the man and woman who had ruined them. The scheme was conceived in a mood of alcoholic euphoria, and executed without a moment’s sobriety to stand in its way. The ice wagon was loaded, and they drove it out of town to a place where the roadway began veering from the railroad tracks, at which point they drove up onto the tracks and proceeded by that route.

Arriving at the Sky Gorge bridge, they discovered that the mules were reluctant to cross. The bridge spanned a deep chasm with a torrent of water rushing far below it. Smith, who understood the nature of his beasts, unhitched them and led them across blindfolded, one at a time. He and Nevis and Winnie were obliged to haul the wagon across themselves, but the bridge had a downward slope to it, and they managed well enough. When the mules had been hitched again, they continued on to the snow shed, lit two lamps and proceeded through at a leisurely pace, drinking all the while. It was not until they reached the far end and pulled the wagon off the tracks that they considered what might have happened had a train come along during their confinement in the shed. The picture of disaster that came to mind, and their casual ignorance of danger until that moment, struck them as hilarious, and they laughed and drank some more, and fell into the snow and threw snowballs while the mules watched.

The shack at the Leadville end of the snow shed was perfect for their needs, and Smith broke the lock with a crowbar, then, in a fit of magnanimity, took the mules inside as well. “They’re God’s creatures too,” he said, burying his face in the nearest mule’s neck. The second mule shat on the earth floor. Winnie said she wasn’t going to clean it up, so Nevis did. Dumping the dung, he looked across the valley and saw a train steaming along the tracks on the far side. The line formed an enormous loop before entering the snow shed, and everything that would pass through it could be seen at least fifteen minutes before it arrived, on the opposite side of the loop. Nevis watched two locomotives linked in tandem slowly hauling a long string of coal cars behind them. Their steady chuffing came to him clearly, amplified by the valley itself. They would be able to hear every train approaching the snow shed, and look to see if it was the one bearing the golden elk. When it came, there would be plenty of time to arrange things.

The reaching, as Omie called it, was different for every man. Omie knew where they were simply by directing herself toward the elk. She did not know exactly where the train was located at any given time, but could go directly to it by way of its cargo, which belonged to her. She neither understood nor questioned the means by which this was accomplished; day or night, near or far, her golden elk was easily accessible to Omie.

Once aboard the train, she could not feel its vibrations or hear the whistle, or listen to the conversation of the men there, but Omie was able to whisper into the mind of any man who was asleep or in a state of lethargy, and a surprising number were. The words she used were simple and unchanging, and the men sometimes came awake instantly, as if her breath had tickled their ears, and sometimes they slept on, but she knew the message had been planted inside them anyway.

Between western Kansas and the central valleys of Colorado she had visited every man at least once, and thrust herself into the thoughts of their leader many times. Drew had instructed her not to bother with the engine drivers until the last, since these would be changed at regular intervals, whereas the same roster of guards would most likely be maintained throughout the trip. “Pinkertons,” he said, “they’ll do a job cheap if they can.” Omie told Drew the same men were always there, and he said that was good.

The train was closer now, much closer. There was something in the mood of the men aboard that told Omie they were becoming both excited and anxious; the end of their ordeal was near, but they feared a tunnel ahead that was not even there. A kind of jagged fog filled both boxcars at either end of the elk’s flatcar, a nervous flux, something unspoken.

Omie had done her work well, taking dozens of catnaps throughout the thirty-two hours the Dugans lived in the shack. Omie hated her blue face, but she fairly strutted when she considered the gift she had and was able to use with such skill. She would make a piece of history without lifting a finger; how many other people could do that. Everyone was depending on her to prepare the men aboard the train for her final onslaught, the thing for which Omie was holding much of herself in reserve.

The bottles were running low. Smith was drinking more than his share, Winnie complained, and when Smith denied it, she began to rant at him, blasting her words directly into his face, until Smith shoved her away. Winnie fell against the mules. She launched herself at Smith, who fended her off easily, laughing. Nevis witnessed their wranglings with a bleary eye; they really should not have been treating each other with such contempt, he thought, especially since he was so very fond of them both, but it was difficult to intervene; he had attempted it several times while they lived together in Glory Hole, and been told to mind his own business. Winnie in particular was adamant that no man should come to her rescue, and Smith, admitted Nevis, saw him as nothing that a strong man such as himself need worry about.

“Stop it …” he said, but they ignored him, and Nevis was too drunk to be sure he had spoken with sufficient loudness. “Stop it!” he yelled, and the protagonists both looked at him, distracted from the sound of their own voices.

Smith said, “Huh?”

“What …?” said Winnie.

“You
mustn’t
…,” Nevis told them. “We’re all
friends
.”

Smith and Winnie began to laugh. Nevis thought they were laughing at him, and when they saw his features begin to crumple, they laughed even louder, but let him know by much waving of the hands that their laughter was for themselves, or for no reason at all. Nevis began laughing also. That was when the whistle across the valley sounded.