Firewind, page 8
Rudabaugh would have shot him then and there, if he'd had the chance; his Colt was still pouched at his hip. But there hadn't been a chance and it didn't look as though there was going to be one anytime soon. All he could do, for the time being, was to wet-nurse Patch along, watch him every second and make sure none of these people got close to him. Particularly that big redhead up in the front part of the car, the one who'd helped him get clear of the mill. Rudabaugh didn't like the way that one kept looking at them, as if he were getting ideas.
The train continued to gather speed and the coach kept on rocking and swaying. Then the flickery light inside got brighter, lit up the whole car, and all at once the people on the left-hand side were crying out. Rudabaugh saw nothing outside those windows except fire. Up close, not more than a few yards away.
He held tight to the seat in front of him; he could feel his scrotum shriveling. One of the kids screamed. Patch swiveled around beside him, leaned across in front of his body so that Rudabaugh smelled the hot puke-sour odor of his breath-
The forward windows darkened suddenly to a dull red glow. Then all the windows darkened, like a chain of lights going out one by one. The goblin shadows deepened, took over the car again. Outside now, Rudabaugh saw walls of jagged bare rock. He let out an explosive breath, heard the same relieved sound coming from all around him as he sagged backward against the seat. Dripping sweat blurred his eyes; he let go of the seat back and swiped them clear with his sleeve.
Patch was still leaning forward, hands splayed out on his knees. There were no more flames for him to watch, but he looked as if he were still seeing them: The one eye nearest Rudabaugh seemed as big around as the bottom of a whiskey glass. He was breathing fast, his month wide open, lips caked with dried drool and vomit.
Viciously Rudabaugh shoved him away. Patch blinked once, out of focus, then turned his head and pressed his face up close to the glass like a kid at a candy counter. Put one hand flat against the rattling pane and made a grunting, muttering sound low in his throat.
Rudabaugh sat rigid. An image came into his mind - the roadhouse up at Whiskey Slough - and then was gone. Gone. No road-house for him now, maybe not ever. No thirty thousand in gold, no ease and comfort for the rest of his days. This might be his last day, trapped here on a creaky coach in the middle of a wildfire. What a damn poor way for a man like him to die.
All Chavis's fault, goddamn his eyes. What had that dullard done to cause the explosion?
What had the stupid son of a bitch done?
***
The last Rose saw of the valley, the last she would ever see of it, was the houses and cabins burning along its southern perimeter. Somewhere in the mass of flames behind was her house, hers and Will's, and as the train plunged ahead between the pass walls, she felt the pain of her loss. A part of her life had ended tonight, and she could never reclaim it.
And yet she also felt a kind of spiritual release that, oddly, carried with it little grief. It was as if all her bridges were truly being burned behind her.
She turned her head from the window, looked down at her lap. Her hands moved on the soiled blue gingham of her dress; she could not seem to keep them still. Her fingers felt dry, papery, when she rubbed them together, vaguely numb in the knuckles and joints. The same numbness seemed to have gotten into her mind, too, giving her thoughts a detachment that was almost dreamlike.
The train was going very fast now, it seemed, and the car pitched, rolled, made loud vibrating sounds as though it would shake itself apart. But she mustn't worry about that. Sam Honeycutt knew what he was doing. And Will knew what he was doing, too - at least right now he did, acting as fireman up there in the cab with Sam. Joe Ashmead had told her that that was where Will was and what he was doing.
This was Will's element, she thought. He would be all right. But afterward, if they survived? Would his bitterness and indifference return, to make him a total cripple again?
Shimmering light illuminated the windows, filling the car. Rose lifted her head to look out on one side, then the other. The rock walls had slid past; they were clear of the pass now. The hillside to the east was blanketed in smoke and flame. The one to the west hadn't started to burn yet, but when she edged around to peer behind them, she saw fire flowing in vast waves down the ridge above the pass. A tremor went through her. She put her eyes back on her shaking hands, watched them flutter against each other, and listened to the fast, rhythmic pounding of the wheels.
When next she raised her head, she was aware of Matt Kincaid watching her across the aisle. She didn't meet his gaze. She had avoided looking at him since they boarded the car. She knew what she would see in his face, his eyes, and she did not want to face it now.
She thought again of Will, up there in the locomotive.
She could almost feel Matt's gaze caressing her.
And deep inside she understood, even though she was not ready to admit it to herself, that she had already made her decision. That she knew which of them she would choose, if and when the time came.
CHAPTER NINE
Denbow finished refilling the firebox, checked the steam - holding at one-eighty - and sank onto the fireman's seat to rest and mop sooty sweat from his face. His back was stiff from the twisting and bending; the stump of his right leg throbbed with pain. The air was clogged with cinders and smoke, and the heat from the box and from the firewind was intense. His skin felt blistered, his lungs as though they were being scraped with hot sandpaper.
Honeycutt had the throttle wide open, and the whir of the drivers, the beat of the trucks, the houndlike bark of the exhaust created a sound in Denbow's ears like that of echoing thunder. The engine and tender and the cars behind pitched and writhed in a constant side-wise motion. He'd managed to keep his balance so far, but he had to hang on to the seat or the bulkhead each time they nosed a curve and then swung onto the tangent again.
They were winding now across a long narrow valley south of the Big Tree pass, between high ridges furred with second-growth pine and Douglas fir. The headlamp made shiny humps of the rails ahead, illuminated brush-laden gullies and stretches of sloping grassland along the right-of-way. So far they had outdistanced the fire to the west, although he could see the bright glow flushing the sky over there. But the fire on the east was keeping pace with them, as if in a kind of mad race. Firebrands hurtled forward through the pall of smoke like flaming arrows. Sparks and fire devils fountained up ahead of them on that side - the same side where the tracks would eventually hook around and climb up between a cut in the long eastern ridge.
Denbow leaned forward, bracing himself, and called to Honeycutt on the high seat opposite, "Gaining on us to the east, Sam."
"Yeah, I see it."
"Try for more steam?"
"No. Safety valves are poppin' now."
Denbow knew he was right, slammed his fist against the front paneling in frustration. He could hear the valves popping and cracking, the laboring of the old cylinders and drivers. He watched Honeycutt shut down the steam a little to relieve some of the boiler pressure, heard the popping diminish almost instantly. He raised his head for another look through the side glass.
The forward line of fire seemed to be gaining faster now.
They were nearing the end of the valley; ahead, the tracks made a long thirty-degree curve to the east, and on the far side of the bend there was a short bridge spanning a dry wash. Denbow's body tensed as they started through the curve and Honeycutt kicked in a few pounds of air to take out the wobble, kicked the brakes on lightly, and then kicked them off again. But when they cut the segments and came onto the tangent, he saw that the bridge was all right; the sparks and firebrands hadn't reached it yet.
After they clattered across the bridge the fire was almost in front of them, sweeping toward the right-of-way less than a thousand yards above. The heat grew even more intense, dried his sweat the instant it came out of his pores; the hot smoke flooding his lungs made him feel light-headed. The tracks climbed gradually toward the ridge cut, but the cut itself and the line through it were obscured. All he could see was roiling smoke and spear tips of flame, and above that, in the far distance, the pine-dark summits of distant peaks silhouetted against the red-black sky.. A hundred yards ahead, something came running out of the twisting gray mass - something alive and on fire. A deer, a big buck. It staggered as it came near the rails, commenced to run around in pain-maddened circles, and finally toppled over, dead or dying. The flames turned it black and shapeless in the moment before the locomotive lunged past it. Denbow's stomach heaved. He could smell, or thought he could smell, the sickening half-sweet odor of burning hair and cooking flesh.
Their speed decreased as the grade steepened. Honeycutt opened the steam again and the engine and the cars bucked, jolted, regained a measure of the lost momentum. Cinders from the belching stack fell beside the cab like a thin black rain. Visibility ahead was less than a hundred yards and closing.
Denbow squinted at the steam gauge, pushed off the seat, and staggered, gasping, to the tender. Braced himself against its bulkhead and took out more cordwood. A wave of nausea struck him as he turned back to the firebox, nearly made him black out. For the first time his peg leg slipped on the cab deck, pitched him off-balance; he went down hard on his left buttock.
Sticks of cordwood bounced and clattered through the cab. Denbow kicked one of them aside with his good leg, beat at his stump with both hands; the pain cleared away some of his dizziness. He reached to grab the seat and haul himself erect.
Honeycutt was looking across at him. Between hacking coughs he called, "You all right, Will?"
Denbow gestured that he was, pawed at his stinging eyes, twisted around again to the tender. Got another armload of wood and this time made it to the firebox without stumbling. He opened the butterfly doors and fed the blaze inside.
Outside the cab, the smoke flowed around them, seemed to enwrap the train. It was as if they were struggling blindly upward through a poisonous gray gelatin. Panic clawed at Denbow. They couldn't keep breathing much longer in thick smoke like this; they'd both pass out. Runaway train then, derailment on one of the downslope curves…
Seconds that seemed like minutes crawled away. Then the laboring pull of the engine ceased; the Baldwin rocked and the front boxcar banged against the tender as she leveled out and then surged ahead. The smoke on Denbow's side of the cab was shredding. He blinked, scraped at his eyes, blinked again - and had an impression of jagged slabs and ribs of granite rock in the smoke rifts.
The cut… they were into the ridge cut.
Honeycutt was bent double on the high seat, still coughing in spasms, and his face was a glowing, sooty bronze in the light from the cab lantern. But he was all right: His teeth were bared and his left hand was wrapped tight around the throttle, shutting it down a notch to even out their speed when they started on the downslope run.
Denbow clung to the bulkhead. The smoke in front of them was breaking up, too, and the brightening glare of the headlight showed him part of the tracks ahead, the wooded slopes to the west and the high rock shoulder to the east. The terrible blasts of heat had lessened. There was oxygen in the air again; the sweetness of it in his heaving lungs was like an elixir.
They pounded through the cut and headed into the descent on the far grade. Denbow pushed along the bulkhead to the gangway, leaned out to look behind them. There was no sign of flames on any of the cars in the string; none of the flying sparks and cinders had settled on them. Wildfire swept all along the northeast rim and on the ridges and hollows beyond. But to the southeast, paralleling the right-of-way, ragged granite formations and volcanic earthflows stretched out and down for at least a third of a mile. Madrone and salmonberry shrubs and a few pines grew there - too sparsely for the fire to take much hold. That section of terrain wouldn't check the onrushing flames for long, but maybe long enough for the train to clear the trestle across the Miwok River, three miles down the line.
When they nosed into the first of the down-slope curves, he hobbled back to the firebox and checked the steam. Holding. The grade wasn't steep enough here for Honeycutt to have to use the brakes, but he had his hand on the lever, anyway. He had opened the side window again, to let hot streaming air, half smoky and half fresh, swirl through the cab.
The old man hawked deep in his throat, spat phlegm through the window. Then he called hoarsely, "Cars okay on your side?"
"Look to be."
"Thank God. It was close back there."
"Too close. We'll make it now."
Honeycutt grimaced. "Don't get cocky, son. We got a long way to go yet."
"The river'll slow the fire on the west," Denbow said. "We can outrun it from there… it's less than seven miles to Springwood."
The old man didn't respond. He sat still for a time, staring at nothing, as if he were thinking ahead, fretting. Or praying.
They came through the first curve, wound into the second. The grade began to level off. Denbow looked at the steam again, saw that it was dropping a little, and swung once more to the tender. The heat from the ballast lashed at him when he pedaled open the firebox doors; a fragment of burning wood popped out and stung his right cheek, dropped to the front of his shirt. He didn't take the time to slap at the smoldering cloth until he'd fed the blaze and was turning back to the tender.
At the bottom of the grade the tracks hooked southeast around the long section of rock, then looped back to the southwest across a series of hillocks and short, shallow vales. By the time they were halfway across, less than two miles from the river, the fire to the east had fallen well back - but the west fire was coming on fast, closing in on them. Denbow could see billows of smoke and leaping vanguards of flame beyond the right-hand gangway, as near to the tracks as five hundred yards.
He thought about the trestle, as Honeycutt must have been doing all along, and an icy desperation came into him. The trestle was built almost entirely of wood; one small firebrand could touch it off. And it would burn like kindling, within minutes become a collapsing black skeleton. The drought had reduced the river to a sluggish trickle; it flowed a hundred feet below the trestle, between sheer rock walls that were impossible to scale. If the trestle was burning when they got to it, they would have nowhere to go.
He remembered the deer that had come running out earlier, the fire on it and the stench of its cooking flesh. And shuddered. And went again to the tender even though the steam was back up and the firebox was nearly full.
The Baldwin thundered ahead, shaking from side to side as if it were trying to break loose from the rails. The safety valves were making intermittent popping noises again, but Honeycutt didn't shut down the steam this time. And Denbow didn't quit stoking; he kept the box full and the ballast at white heat.
One mile to the river now.
One mile to that spindly wooden trestle.
***
Patch couldn't see the flames any longer - and inside his head his father stopped screaming.
His father was dead and they'd put him out; the fire was out.
The images of that night long ago faded. Thoughts began to tumble together, his senses to work again all at once. Pain in his chest, the sour taste of vomit in his mouth, the sounds of coughing and crying and metal grinding on metal like a throbbing rhythm in his ears. He stared around him, realized with dull amazement that he was sitting in a shadowed, moving railroad car with dozens of people he didn't know and Clee Rudabaugh beside him. He couldn't remember anything about a train. All he remembered, and that dimly, was somebody grabbing him away from a spring wagon and then Rudabaugh slapping him. There was nothing else in his memory but the fire, fire everywhere, and his father screaming and dying while he and his mother looked on.
He tried to say something to Rudabaugh but his jaw flapped mutely. When Rudabaugh saw him doing that, his eyes narrowed and his face - burned face, hair singed off, Jesus - drew tight. He caught Patch's arm, held it tight.
"You know who I am?" he asked in a harsh whisper.
Patch managed a nod.
"All right, then, listen to me. We're on a train, the people in Big Tree put a train together and got us out of there."
"The explosion… the fire…"
"Shut up about that. That's all behind us. We're on our way to a place called Spring-wood, a safe place. You understand?"
Patch understood. But there was dim flickering light in the car, firelight, and a haze of smoke. He twisted to the window. Smoke all over the sky. And flames, he could see the flames soaring again-
Rudabaugh's other hand caught his shirt, jerked him around roughly. "Don't look out there. The fire's no danger to us now."
Patch tried again to talk, finally got words out in a voice that cracked and didn't sound like his own. "Clee… it's comin', I can feel it comin'."
"No. I tell you it's behind us. Listen to me!"
Patch's hands started to tremble. He wanted to look back at the fire, didn't want to look at it, had to look at it, wouldn't look at it…
"Bend forward, put your head down on your knees," Rudabaugh said. "I don't want you looking out that window no more."
"Clee…"
"Do it!"
Patch did it. He closed his eyes, but as soon as he did, the rocking motion of the car, the smell of smoke, made him dizzy and sick to his stomach. He popped his eyes open, gagged but didn't let anything come up.
Rudabaugh leaned down close beside him. "Stay like that. Don't raise up until I tell you to, and don't say anything to anybody - not here and not when we get to Springwood. I'll do the talking for both of us. Hear?"
