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

elderly patrolman led him to the chief of the department. The chief was a fifty-year-old, well-groomed gentleman in a dark suit, with his hair cut close on the sides in the modern way. Dashwood introduced himself. The chief acted cordially and said he was happy to help a Van Dorn operative. The blacksmith’s last name was Higgins, he told Dashwood. Jim Higgins lived in a rented room above the stable. Where would he go to hide out? The chief had no idea.

Dashwood stopped at the Western Union office to telegraph a report to the Sacramento office to be forwarded to wherever Isaac Bell was. Then he walked the streets, as darkness fell, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man. At eleven, when the last streetcar left for Los Angeles, he decided to rent a room in a tourist hotel instead of riding back to town so he could start hunting early in the morning.

A LONE HORSEMAN ON a glossy bay rode a ridge that overlooked the remote single-tracked Southern Pacific line just south of the Oregon border. Three men, who were grouped around a telegraph pole squeezed between the track and an abandoned tin-roofed barn, spotted him silhouetted against the sharp-blue sky. Their leader removed his broad-brimmed Stetson and swept it in a slow full circle over his head.

“Hey, what are you doing, Ross? Don’t wave hello like you’re inviting him down here.”

“I’m not waving hello,” said Ross Parker. “I’m waving him off.”

“How the hell is he going know the difference?”

“He forks his horse like a cowhand. A cowhand knows damned well the cattle rustlers signal for Mind your own damned business and sift sand away from us.”

“We ain’t rustling cattle. We ain’t even seen any cattle.”

“The principle is the same. Unless the man is a total fool, he’ll leave us alone.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“We’ll blow his head off.”

Even as Ross explained waving off to Andy, who was a city slicker from San Francisco, the horseman turned his animal away and dropped from sight behind the ridge. The three went back to work. Ross ordered Lowell, the lineman, to climb the pole with two long wires connected to Andy’s telegraph key.

Had the cowboy on the ridge ridden closer, he would have seen that they were unusually heavily armed for a telegraph crew working in 1907. Decades after the last Indian attack, Ross Parker packed a .45 holster on his hip and a Winchester rifle behind his saddle. Lowell had a coach gun, a sawed-off shotgun, slung over his back within easy reach. Even the city boy, the telegrapher Andy, had a .38 revolver tucked in his belt. Their horses were tied in the shade of a clump of trees, as they had come in cross-country instead of along the tracks on a handcar.

“Stay up there!” Ross ordered Lowell. “This won’t take long.” He and Andy settled down beside the old barn.

In fact, it was nearly an hour before Andy’s key started clattering, having intercepted a train dispatcher’s orders to the operator at Weed, north of their position. By then, all three had backed against the barn, dozing in the sun out of the cool wind.

“What’s he saying?” asked Ross.

“The dispatcher is sending train orders to the Weed operator. He’s telling him to signal the southbound freight to take the siding at Azalea.”

Ross checked his copy of the schedule.

“O.K. The northbound work train is passing Azalea siding in half an hour. Change the orders to give the southbound freight authority clear to Dunsmuir.”

Andy did as directed, altering the train orders to tell the southbound freight that the track was clear when in fact a work train was racing north with carloads of laborers. An experienced telegrapher, he mimicked the “fist” of the Dunsmuir dispatcher so the Weed operator would not realize a different man was operating the key.

“Uh-oh. They want to know what happened to the scheduled northbound?” Scheduled trains had authority over extras.

Ross was prepared for this. He didn’t bother opening his eyes.

“Tell them the scheduled northbound just reported by telegraphone that it’s on the siding at Shasta Springs with a burned-up journal box.”

This false message suggested that the northbound had broken down and its crew had switched it off the main line onto a siding. Then they had reached up to the telegraph wires with the eighteen-foot sectional “fishpole” carried in the caboose to hook a portable telegraphone on the wires. The telegraphone permitted rudimentary voice communication. The Weed operator accepted the explanation and passed on the false orders that would place the two trains on a collision course.

“Get up there, Lowell,” Ross ordered, still not opening his eyes. “Pull your wires down. We’re done.”

“Lowell’s behind the barn,” said Andy. “Went to take a leak.”

“Delicate of him.”

Things were going exactly as planned until a rifle barrel poked around the side of the barn and pressed hard against the telegrapher’s head.

29

A MUSICAL VOICE DRAWLED, “UNSEND THAT MESSAGE YOU just sent.”

The telegrapher looked up in disbelief into the grim, hawklike features of Van Dorn investigator “Texas” Walt Hatfield. Behind him stood a glossy bay horse, silent as a statue. “And in case you’re wondering, yes, I do know the Morse alphabet. Change a word and I’ll blow your head off and send it myself. As for you, mister,” Hatfield told Ross Parker, whose hand was creeping toward his holster, “don’t make any mistakes or you won’t have time to make another.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ross, raising his hands high. In addition to the Winchester pointed at Andy’s head, the tall Texan carried two six-guns in oiled holsters worn low on his hips. If he wasn’t a gun-fighter, he sure dressed like one.

Andy decided to believe him, too. He clattered out a cancellation of the false order.

“Now, pass along the original order you sidewinders intercepted.”

Andy sent along the original orders to tell the southbound extra to wait on the Azalea siding as the northbound work train was coming through.

“Much better,” drawled Hatfield. “We can’t have locomotives