The Wrecker by Clive Cussler (book club reads .TXT) 📕

The sound of simultaneously doubled locomotive whistles would fly up the mountain louder than winged banshees shrieking, “Blow Lake Lillian’s dam!”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“Do you believe that every trainman in those yards works for Osgood Hennessy?” the Wrecker asked enigmatically. “I’ll have two locomotives parked unattended at the edge of the yards. By the time anyone investigates why they’re blowing their whistles, you’ll have lit your fuse.”

Dow smiled. He liked that.

“You’re everywhere, aren’t you?” he said.

“Everywhere I have to be,” said the Wrecker.

Dow opened the saddlebag and inspected the explosives with a practiced eye.

“Blasting gelatin,” he said approvingly. “You know your business.”

The dam was soaking wet. Water would exude the nitroglycerine out of common dynamite. The Wrecker had brought gelignite, which would stand up to water. The detonators and the fuse passed muster too, liberally dipped in wax.

The Wrecker said, “I wouldn’t set the charge before noon tomorrow to be absolutely sure to keep the detonator dry.”

The ordinarily polite Dow revealed how tightly he was strung by snapping, “I know how to blow a dam.”

The Wrecker rode back down to the lake. Some logs had floated to the spillway, further impeding the flow. Excellent, he thought. By tomorrow afternoon, Lake Lillian would be even bigger. Suddenly, he leaned forward in his saddle, every nerve alert.

Down in the camp, a horseman was riding up the wagon trail from the Cascade Canyon Bridge. Eight miles of muddy ruts did not invite a casual ride even if it weren’t pouring rain. The man on that horse had come looking specifically for the East Oregon Lumber Company.

A Stetson covered his hair, a pale yellow slicker his torso and the rifle in its scabbard. But the Wrecker had a fair notion who it was. His first sight of him had been across Hammerstein’s Jardin de Paris theater seated next to Isaac Bell. Neither hat, slicker, nor the fact that he was astride a horse could conceal his shoulders-back, head-high, New York actor’s bearing that cried out Look at me!

A hungry smile twisted the Wrecker’s face as he pondered how to make use of this unexpected visit.

“Detective Archibald Angell Abbott IV,” he said aloud, “come a-calling ...”

ARCHIBALD ANGELL ABBOTT IV liked nothing about the East Oregon Lumber Company. From the muddy eight-mile climb to the steam donkeys standing still and mute to the glum lumberjacks watching him from their bunkhouses, he saw nothing that made any economic sense. Even if he had never seen a timber operation—and he had, in fact, seen plenty in deep-woods Maine and the Adiron dacks while visiting Angell and Abbott family summer camps with his mother—he could tell that this remote and rugged site could not harvest enough timber to pay for all the new machinery much less make a profit.

He rode past the office and the bunkhouses.

No one even bothered to open a door to offer shelter from the rain.

He liked the lake even less. The ramshackle dam looked ready to burst. Water was leaking out top to bottom and pouring over the spillway in torrents. What was it doing here? He urged his horse up a steep trail for a closer look. The trail brought him to the top of the dam and a view of the lake. It was enormous, much bigger than it had to be. There was no race to channel the water. Besides, the modern circular saw blades he had seen down in the mill were powered by steam.

Abbott saw movement farther up the muddy trail. A horseman was coming down it at a dangerously fast trot. His flapping rain slicker was tucked to one side, exposing his rifle. Company cop on patrol, Abbott assumed.

Abbott leaned on the pommel of his saddle, rainwater dripping from his hat, and rolled a cigarette with the deft fingers of one hand. It was an old cowhand trick he had learned from Texas Walt Hatfield that suited his saddle-tramp disguise. He had just managed to get it smouldering with a damp match when he realized that the horseman descending on him was none other than Senator Charles Kincaid.

Well, well, well... The very man Isaac said to watch.

Abbott tossed his smoke in a puddle.

“Kincaid. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“I’m doing my job. What are you doing?”

“I got curious about this operation.”

“So was Isaac Bell. Asked me to have a look.”

“What do you think?”

“You’ve seen more of it than me from up there.” Abbott nodded up the trail. “What do you think?”

“Strikes me as a thoroughly modernized operation,” answered the Wrecker as he weighed methods of killing Abbott. “All it’s lacking is a cable-draw works to snake timber down to the railhead.”

The heavy report of the Wrecker’s rifle would bring men running from the bunkhouse. So would the crack of the revolver he was carrying in his shoulder holster. Pressing the barrels of his pocketed derringer to the detective’s skull would muffle the sound. But to get close enough to do that, he would have to expose himself to a seasoned fighter, and Abbott looked thoroughly capable of killing him. So he had to use his telescoping sword. But it might tangle in his slicker. Best to get off their horses first, and farther away from the bunkhouses.

He was about to say that he had seen something up on the lake that Abbott would find interesting when he heard a woman call out. The Wrecker and Abbott turned toward the trail that entered into the skid road.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” Abbott said, smiling, and he raised his voice to call back, “Does your father know you’re here?”

“What do you think?”

Lillian Hennessy was mounted comfortably on the enormous Thunderbolt, the only horse in the company stables big enough to carry Jethro Watt. She touched her heels to Thunderbolt’s ribs, and the monster cantered amiably toward Abbott and Kincaid.

The young heiress’s cheeks were pinkened by the cold rain. Her eyes were an even paler shade of blue in the gray light. An