The Great Train Massacre Read online

  “I think Drew is in a position to hear things happening within the company that I might not hear.”

  “Why is that? If you own the company, don’t you know everything that’s going on?”

  “No, and it is precisely because I do own the company that I don’t hear as much as Drew. You see, even though Drew occupies a very high position within the business, when you come right down to it, he is still an employee. And I think other employees may feel sort of a kinship with him, strong enough to enable them to speak freely to him.”

  “But he doesn’t share that information with you?”

  “No. At least not always.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think that he tells me what he thinks I need to know in order to run the company, but he shields me from any unpleasant complaints that he doesn’t think I need to hear.”

  The door to the car suddenly jerked open, and Matt swung his pistol toward the intruder.

  “Oh!” Dan Kelly said gasping.

  “What do you want, Kelly?” Matt asked.

  “I . . . was just coming over to say that the car would be connected to the Chicago Limited soon, when I heard gunshots. I thought I had better check on it.”

  “Did you now?”

  Kelly looked at the three men lying on the floor of the car.

  “Who are those men?” Kelly asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell us,” Matt said.

  “I, tell you? How could that be?”

  “Let me ask you something. What did you expect to find when you opened the door?” Matt asked. “Did you expect to see us dead?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I didn’t give it a second thought.”

  “I would say not. If these men had succeeded, and you opened the door on them as you just did on us, don’t you realize that you could have been killed?”

  “No. Why would they kill me? You three are the ones they’re after.”

  “Why indeed?” Matt replied.

  “I’ll, uh, get the police. I’m sure you won’t want to have these men lying here once we get underway.”

  “Good idea,” John said.

  Two men from the Lincoln Police Department came to interview Matt, John, and Mary Beth about how the three men were killed. They spoke to them one at a time, and all three of the stories matched.

  The police were inclined to believe them anyway, since all three men had records, and they still had their guns in their hands. Finally, the bodies were removed, and Matt and the others were told they were no longer needed.

  Fortunately, the investigation was over before the scheduled departure time of the train, so they remained in the car as the Conqueror pulled it over to track two and backed it up against the consist, which made up the train that, from this point on, would be known as the Chicago Limited.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Shortly after the train got underway, Matt decided to visit the new crew in the engine cab. He crawled across the tender and climbed down onto the platform.

  “Who the hell are you?” the fireman asked.

  “Matt Jensen. I’m a special detective for this trip.”

  “They told us about him in scheduling, Clay,” the engineer said.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that.” The fireman smiled and extended his hand. “I’m Clay Harris.”

  “I’m Spud Dawes,” the engineer said.

  The engineer was considerably older than the fireman, and Matt could see scars, like little pits around the base of his neck. Matt had seen such scars before, and while they might resemble pox scars, Matt knew that they were actually scars made by the red-hot sparks that over the many years and miles of being an engineer on the railroad, had flown down the back of his collar.

  “What brings you up here?” Dawes asked.

  “I’m sure you know about Mr. Gillespie,” Matt said.

  “Yeah, we know that his car is attached to the train.”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that. Someone wants him dead, and there have already been several attempts to kill him since we left San Francisco.”

  “What? You mean on the train?” Dawes asked.

  “In some cases, yes. So, I’ll tell you the same thing I told the previous engine crew. Be on the lookout for such things as obstructions on the track, missing rails, or damaged trestles.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Dawes said. “When something like that happens, it’s usually the cab crew who are the most hurt in an accident.”

  Harris had tossed in several shovels of coal while Matt was there, and he closed the fire door, then checked the gauge. It was holding at exactly 210 pounds. The fire was roaring, the steam was hissing, and the rolling wheels were pounding out a thunder of steel on steel. The speedometer needle was quivering at fifty miles per hour.

  “Damn! What’s that?” Dawes asked, pointing to the front of the engine.

  Matt looked toward the front of the engine and saw something tied just below the smokestack.

  “You have a pair of binoculars in here?” Matt asked.

  “Yes,” Harris said. He opened a tool box and, taking the binoculars out, handed them to Matt.

  Matt leaned out the window, and enlarged by the binoculars, saw that what he was looking at were three sticks of dynamite tied together. He also saw a fuse running from the dynamite into the opening of the smokestack. All it would take would be a spark from the smokestack to light the fuse.

  “Damn!” Matt said, “That’s dynamite.”

  “What?” Dawes asked.

  “There’s dynamite tied to the smokestack! Stop this train! I’ve got to get it off of there before it blows,” he said.

  The engineer put on the brakes, and Matt held on as the train slid to a halt. The braking action threw him forward, and he knew that everyone back in the train must be tumbling all over the place.

  Finally, the train came to a halt.

  “You’re goin’ out there?” the engineer asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s dangerous, ain’t it? I mean what it if goes off while you’re trying to get it free?”

  “If it goes off, it won’t make much difference whether I’m out there or in here, will it?”

  “No, I guess you’ve got that right,” the engineer agreed.

  “Harris, don’t throw any more coal into the firebox until I get back. If I get back.”

  “I would extinguish the fire,” Harris said. “But soon as I throw water on it that will raise a lot of sparks.”

  “Yes, that’s what I was thinking,” Matt said. “Well, here I go.”

  “It’s too late!” Spud Dawes shouted. “Look at that!”

  Dawes pointed to the fuse that had been ignited in the smokestack. Now it was sending off sparks as it worked its way down toward the dynamite.

  “I’m going to have to cut it,” Matt said.

  “You’ll never get out there in time!” Spud Dawes said.

  Matt drew his pistol and aimed toward the front of the train. “I’ll cut it this way.”

  “Wait, if you miss the fuse and hit the dynamite, won’t that make it blow?”

  “Yeah, it will. But we don’t have any other choice, do we?”

  He took a long, careful aim, then pulled the trigger. The bullet cut the fuse, just before the sparks reached the dynamite.

  “Son of a bitch! How did you do that?” Dawes asked in a disbelieving voice.

  “I was scared to death,” Harris said.

  “Are you too afraid to climb out there and get it?” Dawes asked. “I don’t want to think of that thing being there for the rest of the trip. Hell, a spark from the smokestack could still set it off.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, maybe I had better get it,” Harris said. He stepped out of the cab, then climbed up onto the board that stretched from the cab, along the side of the boiler, to the front of the engine.

  Matt stepped back onto the deck between the tender and the engine, then leaned out, with his pistol still in his hand.

  �
��Mr. Harris?” he called.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “When you get the dynamite clear of the stack, throw it out toward the trees, but throw it as high as you can.”

  “What for?” Harris asked, confused by the request.

  “There’s no sense in leaving unexploded dynamite around. It’s too dangerous. I’m going to shoot it to set it off.”

  “All right,” Harris said.

  “You think you can do that?” Dawes asked, then he took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. “Of course you can, if you can shoot the fuse in two from here, you can damn sure hit the dynamite.”

  Matt watched as Harris worked with the sticks of dynamite until he got them free. There were three of them bound together, and holding them, he looked back toward Matt.

  “You ready?” Harris called.

  “Yes, throw it as high and as far out as you can,” Matt said.

  Harris threw the sticks of dynamite, and Matt fired. The dynamite exploded in midair.

  “Whoowee!” Harris said as he came climbing back into the cab. “I’ll bet that sure gave the folks back in the cars a show.”

  “Think we can go on now?” Dawes asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Matt replied. “Oh, Mr. Harris, keep an eye open as you’re shoveling the coal, too.”

  Matt told him about finding the dynamite in the coal tender back in San Francisco.

  “I see what you mean about being on the lookout,” Dawes said as he opened the throttle.

  There was a gush of steam as the drive wheels caught, then, with the chain reaction of connectors taking up the slack, the train got underway once more.

  When Matt returned to the car, both John and Mary Beth wanted to tell him about the explosion they saw.

  “It went off right by the track. Fortunately, it wasn’t close enough to do any damage,” John said.

  “Well, it was too close,” Matt said. “But I had Mr. Harris throw it as far away from the track as he could.”

  “Mr. Harris?”

  “He’s the fireman.” Matt told them about the dynamite taped to the smokestack of the train.

  “Oh my, that could have gone off in Mr. Harris’s hand!” Mary Beth said.

  “No, it hadn’t been lit yet. The reason it exploded is because I shot it. I didn’t think it would be good to have live dynamite too close to the track.”

  “No, you are quite correct. You did the right thing,” John said. He laughed. “But I told you, didn’t I, Mary Beth, that I wouldn’t be surprised if Matt didn’t have something to do with the exploding dynamite?”

  “Yes, you did tell me.”

  “You do realize, don’t you, that if the engineer hadn’t seen the dynamite, and if it had gone off, the engine would have been destroyed, and Mr. Dawes, Mr. Harris, and I would have been killed? You two would have been killed as well, and probably a dozen or more who are farther back in the train,” Matt said.

  “Then that means someone is still after me, doesn’t it?” John asked.

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  Kelly had been in the last car of the train when the dynamite blew. He had expected it, thinking it would take out the engine and the first few cars. That meant that Gillespie would either be killed or badly enough injured that he could be killed easily. He was prepared for several others on the train to be killed or injured as well, but he was certain that he would be safe by remaining in the last car.

  Any investigation would probably conclude that the boiler had burst from excessive steam pressure. That happened often enough to make it a very believable reason, and especially in this engine, since the Chicago Limited was designed to operate under higher pressure than the ordinary locomotives. But somehow, and he wasn’t sure how, the dynamite exploded, not on the train, but alongside the track. He didn’t know how it happened, but he was reasonably certain that Matt Jensen had something to do with it.

  Suddenly there was a squeal of brakes as steel slid on steel, bringing the train to an abrupt halt. Kelly and all the other passengers in the car were thrown forward by the abruptness of it.

  “What is it?” one of the passengers asked. “What’s happening?”

  “I have no idea, but I’ll find out,” Kelly said. He really didn’t have any idea what this was about. If this was some part of Conroy’s plan to kill Gillespie, he had not shared it with Kelly.

  Matt was still in the private car with John and Mary Beth when the train slid to a halt. He jumped down from the car and started toward the front of the train to ask Dawes why the sudden stop. Though sitting still, the engine was alive with potential energy . . . spitting steam and percolating water as if protesting the indignity of having been forced to stop while running at full speed. Others were beginning to get off the train as well, and Matt could hear them calling out to each other in curiosity, wondering what was wrong and why the train had made such an abrupt stop.

  Matt didn’t have to inquire. He could see, quite clearly, a missing rail in front of the engine. He could also see that the engine was only a few feet short of the track separation.

  “You see that?” Dawes called down from the window of the engine cab.

  “I see it. You did a good job of getting stopped in time.”

  “I’m lucky at that. The track made a little curve back there, and I just happened to be lookin’ in the right direction to catch it,” Dawes answered. “If I hadn’t of seen it when I did, we woulda run off the track ’n the first three or four cars woulda more’n likely turned over. Or maybe even worse, the cars coulda all telescoped into one another, and that woulda killed dozens of folks.”

  By now John had also left the car and was standing on the ground alongside Matt.

  “What do we do now?” John asked.

  “Well, we can put out torpedoes on the track on the other side to warn any train that might be coming this way,” the engineer said. “Then we can back up to Lincoln and pick up a track crew.”

  “Would it speed things up if we sent them a telegraph message?” John asked.

  “Well, yeah, but how are we going to do that?” Dawes asked.

  “I can send a message from my car.”

  Many of the passengers left the train while they waited on a track repair crew to arrive from Omaha, that being the closest place now. There was a professional photographer on board, and he did a brisk business taking pictures of the passengers as they posed alongside the train, or on the damaged track, or even by some of the wildflowers that grew at trackside.

  “Did you know about this? I mean about the rail bein’ took up like it was?” Calhoun asked. Like Kelly, the porter had agreed to continue the trip all the way to Chicago. And like Kelly, the porter had been hired to provide any assistance as might be needed in arranging the demise of John Gillespie and his daughter.

  “No,” Kelly replied. “I knew about the dynamite, and I told you about that. But I didn’t know about this.”

  “Hell, this coulda kilt us, too. I mean, more’n likely the whole train woulda run off the track. ’N there was bound to be some of the cars telescopin’. How come we wasn’t told?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Conroy thought we were told. Anyhow, the train wasn’t wrecked, and Jensen and the Gillespies are still alive. This might be a good time for you to take care of them.”

  “How am I goin’ to do it? The whole damn train has been unloaded. There’s no way I can get to them.”

  “You know the arrangement as well as I do,” Kelly said. “The only way we get paid is if they don’t get there alive.”

  “Well, this ain’t the place to do it is all I’m sayin’. We got a ways before we get to Chicago. I expect we’ll get us another chance at ’em.”

  Kelly had not been entirely truthful with Julius Calhoun. While it was true that the porter wouldn’t be paid anything unless Gillespie and his daughter were killed, Kelly had managed to arrange payment for himself, no matter whether Gillespie was killed or not.

  Omaha

&nbs
p; All traffic on the line had been stopped due to the necessity of repairing the track, and that changed the schedule of every train. Because of that, the Chicago Limited, which normally would have gone on through Omaha with a stop of only a few minutes, would now have to spend at least two hours in the station while they waited for all the traffic ahead of them to clear.

  John had not sent a message to Drew while they were waiting for the track to be repaired, but because of their extended stay in Omaha, he did arrange to have the teleprinter connected, and he sent a message to Drew directly from his car.

  TWO MORE ATTEMPTS SINCE WE LEFT LINCOLN BUT AM HAPPY TO SAY THAT WE HAVE SURVIVED BOTH ATTEMPTS WITHOUT HARM. INTEND TO CALL ON MITCHELL WHILE HERE IN OMAHA.

  Fifteen minutes after sending the message, the teleprinter began tapping, and a long strip of paper was extruded from the bell jar.

  KEATON BEING QUESTIONED BY POLICE STOP IS IT WISE TO APPROACH MITCHELL QUERY THINK YOU SHOULD CONTACT POLICE THERE IN OMAHA

  “I disagree,” John said, after he read the message aloud. “We are going to be here long enough, I think it would be better if I went to see him in person.”

  “All right,” Matt said. “But I’ll be going with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Leaving the depot, the three walked toward the stockyard. In order to take advantage of rail shipment of the livestock, the Nebraska Stockyard was located just across from the depot. Because of that, it wasn’t a very long walk.

  “If Mitchell is behind this, I believe I will know it the moment I lay eyes on him,” John said as they approached.

  There were several large pens crowded with cattle, and the air was filled with their mooing and bawling. But sound wasn’t the only thing that filled the air.

  Mary Beth frowned and waved her hand in front of her nose.

  “Oh, Papa, that smell is horrible!”

  John laughed. “No it isn’t, darlin’. It’s not bad at all, once you understand that what you are smelling is money.”