Trouble Shooter (Musaicum Vintage Western) - Ernest Haycox

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freight wagon, and walked to the saloon's doorway, The spieler there quit his talking—quit it suddenly and stared at Peace. Men rolled in and out of this crowded place and a lamplight went glittering along the bright fifty feet of Campeaux's portable bar. Opposite the bar all the games were going and beyond, on the dance floor, girl after girl in full evening clothes whirled with their partners. The music stopped then and the promenade to the bar began; a monte player kept calling in his tuneless formula:

      "Fifty dollars if you spot it. Gentlemen, my hand against your eye. Who's trying?"

      Somebody came along the outgoing stream of traffic and said: "Hello, Frank." Peace merely nodded. He turned toward the depot, his long arms swinging. A heavy line plowed its way across his forehead; the bite of the wind turned the scar on his temple white.

      A man called, "Wait a minute, Peace," but he kept on, a feeling of frustration boiling up.

      There was one passenger coach hitched to nine flatcars of steel, with a helper engine coupled behind. A jet of steam exploded from that engine and a bell kept ringing. At the steps of the coach he found Overmile and Morgan and Ed Tarrant waiting for him, their big coats turned against the wind. The conductor, Mike Connor, came rapidly along the platform.

      He said: "We'll be on our way, Mr. Peace?"

      "Let her go, Mike."

      But he stood there at the foot of the car steps, thinking of Eileen's definite face turned so stubbornly to him, and he kept thinking of the eagerness he had brought to that room and the sultry irritation he had brought away from it. Back of all this the shape of Ben Latimer lay like a shadow. Leach Overmile's voice reached him as from a distance.

      "Make up your mind, Mister Peace."

      All his partners watched him closely. He shrugged his shoulders then and swung up the steps. The coach threw its sudden warmth into his face and the flicker of lamplights momentarily blurred his sight. He found his stuff piled under a seat and sat down there, the others coming on to join him. The engines were alternately pulling and boosting the train out of Cheyenne with a lack of unison that buckled the coach back and forth; the town lights slid by and the speed picked up. Over on the right-hand prairie he saw the barrack windows of Fort D. A. Russell strongly shining through the pitch black. Afterward the steady steam blast of the engines began to slap harder into the night as the track started to climb the long grade to Sherman Summit. He considered his watch and found it to be ten o'clock, and there was in him once more that deep uneasiness he could not explain—the feeling of leaving something behind him he treasured and would lose.

      A little flash of color in one corner of his vision lifted him out of this long study. He saw Nan Normandy sitting at the far end of the car. She had her eyes on him and she held his attention for a long moment, seriously and proudly, and with a faint show of something that seemed like fear to him.

      She turned her head away. He hadn't noticed until then that Campeaux sat with her and that Campeaux's creature, Mitch Dollarhide, held her luggage in an adjoining seat.

      III

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      They labored up the heavy grade, buried between the high shoulders of the Sherman Summit cuts. Engine smoke filtered in, turning the flickering lamplight a more impotent gray. Wilder wind boiled along the car sides and all the wheels howled on the curves, and the exhaust of the helper directly behind this coach ripped its lunging sound through the steady run of the weather.

      Phil Morgan broke a long silence. "Last year Tom Durant got enough cash to keep construction going. But the Boston investors furnishing the money don't like his methods, so they told Oakes Ames to take charge and remove Durant from the vice-president's job on the road. Durant's been fighting back. He sent his consulting engineer, Seymour, out here and changed some locations Dodge had made. Then he came out himself. He's at Laramie now, promising the folks there that Laramie will get the division point over Cheyenne. That's why Dodge is on his way west. There'll be a hell of a blowup when those two meet. Durant knew very well, two years ago, he had to get Dodge as chief engineer if he expected government support—because Dodge has got the full confidence of Grant and Sherman, and they're pretty powerful. But now Durant figures he can do without Dodge and wants to get rid of him. The line-up is entirely clear to me. Dodge is building a straight road. Durant is more of a plunger and speculator. He wants personal power and all the subsidy he can get for the road from the government. It's going to be a battle when those two meet. He'd fire Dodge in a minute, but Ames won't stand for it. Ames is only one of the directors, but he's got the stockholders back of him, and he's thoroughly honest. It was Lincoln who asked him to come in and put his own fortune behind the road. We're going to have a showdown some day."

      "I wonder," said Peace, "what her name is."

      "Nan Normandy," put in Overmile promptly.

      "Why is she here?"

      "Don't know."

      Phil Morgan opened his sleepy eyes. "What are you talking about?"

      Peace's glance strayed down the aisle. She sat gently relaxed, her head resting on the back of the car seat and her eyes closed; a well-made girl, strong in a way that he could not clearly define, her presence in this car setting up an actual disturbance.

      "A beauty," murmured Overmile.

      "You know what happens to beauties up here," drawled Phil Morgan.

      Peace said irritably: "Premature judgement, Phil."

      "Then why is she with Campeaux?" Morgan was always like that, caustic and bitter in his estimates of women. All Phil's friends knew some old memory burned deeply in him. They had seen it occasionally squeeze him like a vise and press his lips thin.

      "We might go find out," suggested Overmile, smiling in a soft, rash manner. Peace noticed then that the long Texan's attention could not leave the girl.

      "And we might not," grunted Peace.

      They ran on through the summit cuts. Construction fires played livid, wind-raveled splashes of light across the condensed black, shining on the dripping sides of the cut, shining on men crouched there. The engines were easing off now, checking a sudden downgrade speed. All this was fresh road, laid in a thawed uneasy mud. They circled away from the summit, crawled tentatively over the high, spider-legged Dale Creek trestle and swung northward into the Laramie plains. Wind ripped at them with a gustier temper; rain laid ragged silver splinters on the car windows.

      Ed Tarrant said: "Sam Reed's been a white man to me, or I wouldn't be such a sucker. I took contract to make a two-mile cut near Medicine Bow River. I'm going to lose my shirt on it, even at the maximum three-fifty per yard. Nobody else would take it, not even Ben Latimer."

      Overmile said: "She came all the way from Omaha with him, Frank?"

      "Yes."

      The train brakes were squalling against the grade. Construction shanties and long rows of piled ties and dumped steel rose out of the misty sleeze of the night. They paralleled a siding, running slowly by Casement's boarding train where a thousand men slept; they crawled beside Casement's enormous portable warehouse, clanging for right of way with a steady bell. This was the end of track—this dismal, disheveled clutter of men and material lying under the full blast of that high wind beating across Laramie Plain.

      Overmile, always a restless man, was ready to rise but Peace held his place, watching the scene at the far end of the car with a downbearing interest. She sat erect now, the blue military coat buttoned to her chin; and she had covered her pale yellow hair with a man's broad-brimmed hat. At this moment she had her hands folded together in her lap and her head was thoughtfully tipped down. Campeaux waggled a finger at Mitch Dollarhide, who went down the aisle with the girl's bags. Campeaux rose then and spoke to her. She came to her feet, the sway of the train making her reach out for Campeaux for support. And then her glance touched Peace. It was like a faint far call that held some meaning he could not understand, turning all his impulses powerful and impatient.

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