The Railroad War Read online

  “You sure did the right thing, sis,” Jed said. “But how’d you know the house was on fire? Did you look out the window?”

  “No. Well, I did, but I might not have if I hadn’t heard somebody outside and looked to see if you and Mama and Papa were coming home.” She frowned and added, “I don’t remember exactly what I heard, because that was when I saw the fire and got excited.”

  “You didn’t see anybody running away?” her father asked.

  “No, sir.” Peony frowned. “There wasn’t any fire when I first went to the window, either. It seemed like it started all at once, right about the time I looked out.”

  “Well, if we had any doubt about the fire being deliberately set, that oughta settle it,” Henry said soberly.

  Captain Tinker nodded. “It was set, all right.” He turned to Jessie and went on, “Pick up that lantern, Jessie, and let’s walk around and take a close look at those walls.”

  Any doubts they might have had vanished when the group fell in behind the Captain and Jessie and started walking around the house, inspecting the scars left by the fire. The pattern of the flames was marked clearly by the charred areas.

  “Somebody walked along there with a bucket of coal oil and splashed it on the wall,” Captain Tinker said, pointing with his cane at the series of burned arcs that ran along the wall. “You men have seen what happens when you slosh a bucket of water on a wall. It makes a mark just like this, a curve where most of the water hits, and a wider streak where it spreads when it runs down. Only this wasn’t water running down, it was coal oil.”

  Jessie had been holding the lantern close to the logs at the top of one of the arcs. Now she said, “You can see something else, if you look closely. A normal fire burns hottest at the bottom, but these burned places are deeper at the top, where there was the most coal oil on the logs.”

  “And there’s not any question about it,” Jed said. He put his hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Peony saved our house.”

  “No doubt about that,” Tinker agreed. He turned to the others and went on, “I haven’t had time until now to tell you men that whoever set the Garvey place on fire started that one with coal oil too. Jessie found proof of that, places where there were coal-oil smears on the flagstones of that path Jethro built back of his house.”

  “It’s that damned railroad outfit,” one of the volunteers said grimly. “What we oughta do is catch that son of a bitch Prosser and douse him with coal oil and touch a match to him.”

  “That wouldn’t do a bit of good.” Captain Tinker exchanged glances with Jessie, who still stood beside him, holding the lantern. Jessie understood the question in his look, and nodded. The Captain went on, “If we got rid of Prosser, the railroad would just send somebody else to take his place.”

  “That might be,” growled the man who’d just spoken. “But Colt and Winchester can turn out cartridges quicker than the railroad can find rowdies and hire ‘em.”

  “The Captain’s right,” Jed Clemson said. “The railroad wants the land around the passes, and if Prosser can’t buy it, they’re ready to take it.”

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I sell ‘em any land of mine,” one of the others growled. “Prosser’s been nosing around my place too, trying to buy me out, but I say let ’em put their damned tracks someplace else.”

  “They quit offering to buy my place,” a third put in. “Now they’re threatening to go to law and take it away from me because they claim I ain’t got a deed to the land.”

  “Can they do that, Captain Tinker?” asked the man who’d started the discussion.

  “Maybe so and maybe not,” Tinker replied. “But every one of you men bought your land from me, and if you’ll remember, I told you to be sure to take the deeds I gave you and file them at the courthouse. If you did that, the railroad couldn’t touch you.”

  “Deed or no deed,” the man grumbled, “it’s a damned poor law that don’t let a man keep what he’s bought and paid for.”

  “A man named Dickens wrote a book once where he said the law is a jackass, Ben,” Tinker said with a wry grin. “I suppose he was right about it, not that it helps us any right this minute.”

  “What we’d better do up here is what the ranchers are doing at the south pass,” Jed said. “They’ve got men standing guard day and night to keep the railroad from setting foot on any land they haven’t bought and paid for.”

  “Now I’d go right along with that,” agreed the man who’d mentioned Colt and Winchester. He turned to Captain Tinker. “If you want to give us a hand, Cap‘n, you’d get a bunch of us set up in a posse that could do like the ranchers are.”

  “It might come down to that in the end,” Tinker admitted. “But before we go that far, wouldn’t it be smarter if we used the law to help us instead of trying to set up our own law?”

  “Just how do you mean that?”

  “You men haven’t had a chance yet to meet this little lady here,” Tinker said, indicating Jessie. “Most of you know where I got the land I sold you, there’s not many who haven’t heard me talk about Alex Starbuck. This is Miss Jessie Starbuck, and she’s come to Nevada Territory all the way from Texas to help me prove that by law I had a right to sell your land to you.”

  “How’s that going to help if the law’s on the side of the railroad?” asked the advocate of Colt and Winchester.

  Jessie said quietly, “I’m sure that right now I’ve got all the legal evidence Captain Tinker needs to prove you’re the real owners of the land you bought from him.”

  “That’s all well and good, Miss Starbuck, but how’s it going to keep the railroad’s nightriders from doing what they did over to the Garvey place and tried to do right here to the Clemsons?”

  “Without the law behind us, we’re like the railroad’s nightriders,” Jessie replied. “When the law’s on our side, we can get help from everybody from the sheriff and the governor on up to the President of the United States.”

  One of the men guffawed and said sarcastically, “You don’t expect us to believe you’d march up to the President and tell him a bunch of poor dirt farmers like us, way out here in Nevada Territory, was looking for him to give us a hand!”

  “No,” Jessie replied coolly. “Although I’ve met President Hayes and have had the honor of dining with him and Mrs. Hayes in the White House, I don’t believe we’ll have to go that high for help. But if I have to, I certainly will!”

  Suppressing a chuckle, Captain Tinker said, “Jessie means what she says, too! I’d advise you men to listen to her.”

  For a moment there was silence while the men who were clustered around Jessie and the Captain exchanged glances. Then one of them said, “I guess we’re of a mind to listen, Miss Starbuck, if you’ve got anything you want to tell us.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you what you’d like to hear, that this fight with the railroad is going to be won tomorrow,” she said soberly. “But I’ll guarantee that we can win it, if you’re willing to have just a little patience.”

  “It’s hard to be patient when they’re setting fire to our houses, Jessie,” Henry Clemson said. “But I know you’re right, and I’m willing to wait awhile, if you’re so certain we’ll win.”

  “I’m sure. And as for the fires and the nightriders, I’m sure all you men have guns, and I’d advise you sleep lightly and be ready to shoot if you get any unwanted visitors at night. Nobody’s going to blame you for protecting your homes.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” one of the group said. “But what about Prosser?”

  “Leave Prosser to the Captain and me,” Jessie replied. “We started working today on a job that will help you stop him. Just give us a little time to finish what we’ve started. But right now it’s late and we’re all tired, and I think the best thing we can do is get some sleep and save talking for later.”

  “That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard all night,” the Captain seconded. “If you men are of a mind to, we can have a meeting real soon a
nd iron everything out.”

  “You tell us when it’s time to meet, Captain,” Clemson said. “I’d imagine we’ll all be on hand.”

  Tinker thought for a moment, then said, “Jessie and I have got some business we need to finish at the courthouse tomorrow—that’s really today, I guess. We could all stand a little bit of rest, so how about tomorrow night?”

  “It’s already tomorrow,” Jessie smiled. “Don’t you mean tonight, Captain?”

  “I guess I do, at that,” Tinker replied. He looked at the others and asked, “Is that too soon? Remember, we don’t have any days to waste right now.”

  “That sounds to me like a good time,” Jed said. “It’ll give me a chance to ride down to the south valley and invite Blaine Abel and some of the other ranchers to come up.”

  “Anybody got any objections?” the captain asked. He waited a moment, and when no one spoke, he said, “All right. My barn’s not as big as some of yours, but it’s right in town. That suit all of you men?” When there was a scattering of yesses and no one objected, he nodded. “It’s settled, then. About seven.”

  A few at a time, the exhausted firefighters straggled to their vehicles and horses and started home. Captain Tinker sighed as he watched the last of the vehicles roll away.

  “I’d say we put out more than two fires,” he told Jessie and the Clemsons. “Those men were at a point where one little move by Prosser or anybody else connected with the railroad would have started a flare-up.”

  “I think you’ve started another fire too,” Jessie suggested. “One that’s going to spread over the entire valley. But it’s the kind of fire we need to stop the—” She’d been about to say cartel, but caught herself in time to substitute a word the Clemsons would be quicker to understand. “—to stop the railroad from doing a great deal of damage to a lot of people.”

  It was not until she and the Captain had said their good-byes to the Clemson family and turned onto the road to town that Jessie realized that since they’d left for the first fire she’d been too busy to think about Ki.

  “I certainly hope we’ll find Ki at your house when we get there,” she said. “It may have been a mistake for him to go back to that saloon. After the run-in we had with those two hardcases there yesterday, he might walk into more trouble.”

  “Things don’t really get lively in most saloons until after supper, Jessie. Don’t worry so much. I imagine Ki’s all right.”

  At that particular moment, Ki was anything but all right. He had regained consciousness and opened his eyes to find himself in total darkness. There was no way for him to know how long he had been unconscious, Ki realized. The afternoon had been very late when he’d left Cheri, and the darkness could indicate that it was now night, or that he was confined in a cellar.

  All that Ki was sure of was that he was lying on his back on a hard surface. He moved, and for an instant his head felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck it. He forced himself to relax, and after a few moments the pain settled down to a painful throbbing. Instinctively he started to bring a hand up to his head, and discovered that his wrists were tied together tightly and that his hands had no feeling.

  Closing his eyes, he waited for the throbbing to subside, and moved again. This time the stabbing surges in his head were less intense. After he’d moved his arms experimentally and found the pain bearable, Ki started to roll onto his side. When he moved his legs to get the necessary leverage, he learned that his ankles were also lashed together.

  Moving clumsily because of his bonds, Ki finally succeeded in rolling. He felt the floor, but his numb fingers could not identify its composition. It could have been brick, wood, cement, or even paper. Levering himself into a sitting position, he looked around. He thought, but could not be absolutely sure, that in two small areas high above his head he could detect a difference in the density of the blackness that surrounded him. All he could really be sure of, Ki thought ruefully, was that wherever he was confined, its darkness was total.

  Having reached that conclusion, Ki closed his eyes again. Having closed them, he thought with wry amusement that habit was strong. Then he began thinking seriously about the logical succession of moves to be made. There were so few that his meditation was brief. There were only two moves indicated for the moment: get rid of his bonds and discover where he was.

  Flexing his forearm muscles and twisting his wrists with all the strength he could muster produced a tiny, almost infinitesimal amount of slack. Small as it was, the slack restored part of Ki’s circulation, and when he tried to open and close his hands, he could now feel them move. After he’d flexed his fingers for a few moments, the numbness that had deprived him of a sense of touch began to diminish. Ki put his fingertips on the floor, and after rubbing them on its surface for several minutes, he could identify it as being made from bare boards.

  Ki’s training in unarmed combat had taught him how flexible the human body can be; by exercising the control he’d acquired through years of exacting discipline, even with his wrists bound he could reach almost as far and move his arms almost as freely as he could when they were not tied.

  He felt his vest pockets and discovered that whoever had slugged and tied him had not searched him well, apparently only patting him down; they had not discovered the shuriken he’d concealed in some of the many pockets of his vest. They were flat and made no bulge at all, so a casual search might not reveal them, and in any case they might not be recognized as weapons. He had no difficulty in taking one of the throwing blades from a pocket. Using its razor-sharp edges, he severed the bonds around his wrists. After that, freeing his ankles was easy.

  Ki made his mind blank for the next few minutes, which he spent going through the basic mind-control exercises he’d begun learning as a child. He limbered up his body then, beginning with the simplest body movements and advancing by stages to the moves requiring full coordination of his hands, feet, limbs, head, and torso. When he was finally satisfied, his circulation was again normal, and the usual suppleness had returned to his joints, and fully-controlled strength to his muscles.

  Now, Ki thought to himself in the darkness, Now that I am ready, I must discover where I am, and then move myself to where I wish to be.

  Chapter 10

  Although she was tired after her exertions at the two fires and did not get to bed until the early hours of the morning, Jessie slept badly. When she and the Captain reached his house and found that Ki still had neither returned nor sent a message, Jessie had wanted to start looking for him at once. Finally she agreed with Captain Tinker that searching for Ki during the predawn hours would be futile, and went to bed. Her sleep was restless, and she awoke fully when dawn began to brighten the sky. She tossed and turned, trying to go back to sleep, but could not.

  Throwing aside the sheet that covered her, Jessie slipped out of the bed and stood beside it for a moment, stretching her arms above her head, rising on her toes. She blinked her green eyes to dispel the last traces of drowsiness and threw back her head, letting her mane of tawny gold hair fall free down her back.

  From chin to shoulders to breasts and torso and thighs, her flawless skin radiated vitality. The svelte contours of her limbs gave no hint of the strong muscles they concealed. Jessie’s full breasts stood firm and proud, their pink nipples stiffening in the cool morning air. The sweep of her flat abdomen into the flare of her hips and the taper of hips into thighs showed woman’s form in man’s ideal of beauty.

  Only Jessie’s wide green eyes, the blush of health on her cheeks, the glowing rosy tips of her breasts, and the glint of gold from her hair reflected in the tawny curls at her groin showed that she was a living woman. In the filtered light of the bedroom, her naked body had the classic lines of a statue carved in Carrara marble by a master sculptor.

  Jessie dressed quickly. She slid her legs into short pantalettes, stepped into the skirt of her green tweed suit, and thrust her feet into trim brown cordovan boots. After buttoning on a fresh off-white silk b
louse, she opened the door quietly and stepped into the hall. The door of Ki’s bedroom, at the end of the corridor, was ajar. Jessie did not bother to look in the room; if Ki had come in, the door would have been closed. In any case he would have awakened her at once in spite of the hour, to tell her what he’d found out.

  Going back into her own room, Jessie slid her double-barreled derringer from beneath her pillow and tucked it into the top of one of her boots. She opened her travel bag and took out the gunbelt and holstered revolver that had been her father’s gift. She did not swing out the cylinder to check the loads in the .38 Colt on its .44 frame. Experience had taught Jessie that an unloaded gun was as useful as a caveman’s wooden club.

  After buckling on her gunbelt, Jessie donned her suit jacket and picked up her wide-brimmed Stetson, but did not put it on. As an afterthought, she took a box of ammunition from her bag and dropped a handful of cartridges into her jacket pocket. She went quietly down the hall to the kitchen door, and when she opened it, she was surprised to see Martha Tinker sitting at the table with a coffee cup in front of her.

  “You woke early, too,” Jessie said.

  “I always do.” Martha’s smile did not completely hide her worried frown. She stepped to the stove and filled a cup for Jessie from the graniteware coffeepot. “But I’m up a mite earlier than usual today. I didn’t sleep so good.”

  “Neither did I,” Jessie confessed.

  “Ki?”

  Jessie nodded. “If he’d been free to do what he wanted to, he would have sent me a message of some kind, Martha. And he was planning to go back to the saloon yesterday afternoon.”

  “That’s what the Captain said last night when you got back,” Martha said. Without asking or being asked, she had sliced bacon from a slab that lay on a shelf beside the kitchen range and put it in a skillet on the stove. The bacon was already beginning to sizzle, and as she broke an egg into the pan, Martha went on, “That saloon’s a good place to stay away from. It’s a scandal to the town the way it’s changed since Dutch John sold it. Rowdies and roughs and worse, I guess, have just taken it over.”