The Warriors (34 page)

“Jaysus, Captain,” Murphy gulped. “I
was
attemptin’ to enjoy my breakfast.”

The Virginian paid no attention. “One of my fellow prisoners on the train said that when I was put aboard, I had spit—foam—all over my chin. I couldn’t remember my own name for the best part of a day. Handsome treatment for an officer, wouldn’t you say?”

Michael shrugged again. “I can’t excuse it. But I wasn’t there. I’m not to blame.”

“Oh, yes.” Worthing jabbed the crop into his chest. “You wore the blue.”

“You’re going to harass every Union man in this outfit just because you were treated badly?”

“Harass!
Mighty fine word for a slum Irishman.” Another jab with the crop. “Mighty fine!”

Michael’s temper was heating. He seized the crop and pushed it down. “Of course I forget one fact. You don’t limit yourself to harassing men. Last week you practically whipped that lorry-car boy to death with this thing. And merely because he was a little clumsy handling the horse. You surely didn’t learn much from John Mosby, Captain. You didn’t learn men work better when they’re led, not driven. I suspect you’re too stupid to learn anything so simple.”

Livid, Worthing swung the crop. “You damned high-assed mick!”

Michael’s right hand shot across to catch Worthing’s forearm. The dining car was completely silent.

There was a test of strength as Michael struggled to hold Worthing’s arm steady. His face reddened. Veins rose thick on the back of his hand.

Worthing tried to wrench away. Michael held him. But his anger had subsided a little; he thought it best to bring the confrontation back into saner limits.

“Captain, if we keep this up”—a quick gasp for breath—“we won’t be ready to work at six thirty. What do you say we both try to forget the war’s over?”

“Hell if I will!”

Michael’s shoulder began to throb. He felt tension in Worthing’s arm. The man was readying for another attempt to pull free. Already Michael had humiliated him, and he realized that he’d probably have to fight. God knew what trouble he’d land in with Casement for that.

Boots thudded on the steps at the west end of the car. The door banged open.

“General Jack wants all the crew bosses. Right away!”

Several diners grumbled and left their places. Michael weighed the risk, accepted it, and released Worthing’s arm.

“That includes you, I believe.”

He watched the crop, waiting for it to come slashing at his cheek. Worthing’s hand whitened. Michael mentally gauged how far back he could jump and still throw a punch. The man at the door bellowed again.

“Worthing, shake a leg! The telegraph says the iron train’s forty minutes late out of Kearney.”

Eye to eye with Leonidas Worthing, Michael waited. Finally the ex-Confederate ran the tip of his tongue over his upper lip. The hand holding the crop relaxed and regained its color. The other crew bosses trooped out as the man who’d summoned them stormed forward.

“Damn it, Worthing. Casement said
now,
not Christmas!”

Worthing waved the crop. “Shut up. I’m coming.” He inclined his head toward Michael’s. “Wasn’t good luck for you when they put you on one of my gangs, boy.”

“Surprise me with something else, Captain. And don’t call me boy again or I’ll knock you down so you won’t get up for a while. I answer to the name of Boyle.”

Worthing reddened. Michael could see grins on the faces along the table. Sean Murphy’s was broadest of all.

“Ah, who gives a shit what your name is?” The crop wigwagged; Worthing was trying to make light of his humiliation. “A mick’s a mick, except you—you’re special. You’ve been headed for trouble since the day you climbed off the cars.”

“I could give you a few reasons why.” There was anger in Michael’s eyes again; he’d had enough. “But I’d be wasting my breath.”

“Reasons—” Worthing nodded, licking the brown stump of an upper tooth. “Lies you’ve been spreading around free and easy among your pals. That nigger. The half-breed I got stuck with—well, you remember one thing. There’s a good forty miles or more until we hit the meridian. That’s forty days. And you’ll be working for me every damn one of ’em. I guarantee you won’t feel like celebrating when we put down milepost two forty-seven.”

He touched the crop to Michael’s jaw.

“Before we get there,
boy,
I’m going to break your back.”

Worthing spun and stalked to the door, shoving two workers out of his way. Michael barely heard the compliments directed at him. He was experiencing one of those shameful moments in which he wished he’d never met Mrs. Amanda Kent de la Gura. A good deal of her style—her refusal to be intimidated by those she considered in the wrong—had rubbed off on him while he’d worked for her.

But he’d joined Jack Casement’s rust eaters to find peace, not endless quarreling.

He sank down on the bench beside Murphy, staring with lusterless eyes at his plate of beef and cup of cooling coffee.

He had always been teased about his appetite. His belly seemed to have a limitless capacity—no doubt because he’d gotten so little to eat as a child. He never tired of cramming himself, and the enormous amounts of food he ate never added so much as one extra pound. But his earlier anticipation of breakfast was altogether gone.

I’m going to break your back.

“Lord, Fergus, did you hear that feller from the office?” a Paddy on the opposite side asked his companion. “First iron train forty minutes late. ’Spose it’s Injuns?”

“Eat up!” Murphy urged Michael, who shook his head.

The man named Fergus shrugged. “The further we go beyond Kearney, the more likely it is. The Injuns don’t like this railway cuttin’ into their buffla grounds.”

“But I thought General Dodge pacified the savages before he signed on with the U-Pay.”

“It don’t take ’em long to get
un
pacified these days,” Fergus replied. “You heard what happened at Fort Laramie. Out this far, the only Injuns we got for friends are the one or two workin’ on the line, and a few hang-around-the-forts. The buckos with the devil in ’em—ones like that Red Cloud—they don’t pay any attention to what the tame Injuns say, do—or sign. Touch the pen, I mean. They can’t write English so they just touch a pen to a treaty an’ some clerk fills in their names.”

Fergus’ companion looked puzzled. “I dunno what you mean, hang-around-the-forts.”

“That’s because you ain’t been out here long enough,” Fergus announced in a smug tone. “Hang-arounds are Injuns who pitch their tipis near a post to trade an’ beg for handouts. Liquor. Hot coffee with lots of sugar in it. Everybody back East thinks the Injuns are crazy for the alcohol, but a buffla hunter told me it’s coffee with sugar they fancy most. Why, for years on the Holy Road—”

“What the devil is
that?”

“You look at it every day! Holy Road’s what they call the old emigrant trail across the river—just like this here’s the Fire Road. The Injuns used to make a game of stoppin’ wagons and askin’ for sugared coffee as the price of lettin’ white folks pass through.”

“I don’t know why we’re gabbling about the red heathens,” Sean Murphy put in, his words muffled by a mouth stuffed with beans. His cuff served as a napkin to catch the juice. “We’ve rails to worry about. Train’ll more likely be an hour late, but we still have a mile to lay, regardless.”

“We’ll get it done,” Michael said, more confident than he felt.

“Mebbe,” Fergus said. “But I have a funny feeling it’s to be one of those days that bust a man’s privates.”

Or break his back?

Michael drank a little of the tepid coffee. Tried to forget Worthing’s threat. He forced a smile.

“Cheer up, Patrick Fergus. We do get paid this evening, you know. And with a start such as we’ve just had, the day can become no worse, only better.”

But he was wrong.

S
EAN MURPHY’S PREDICTION PROVED
accurate. The iron train pulled by the engine
Vice-Admiral Farragut
arrived an hour late. Not an auspicious beginning for a Saturday, the one workday Casement’s men eagerly anticipated.

As soon as the day’s work was over, gold or greenbacks would be handed out from the office car, and a man could spend the rest of the evening drinking, rattling dice on a blanket, playing euchre—whatever he fancied—with no fear that too little sleep or an aching head would hamper him next morning. Sunday was for sleeping, reading, writing letters, laundering and mending clothes, or taking a lazy dip in the Platte.

This Saturday, the men knew the evening’s fun would be cut short. Late train or no, a mile of track had to be laid. Michael and Murphy drifted through the crowd watching the
Farragut
chug in from the east. They saw sour faces everywhere.

Michael also noted some longing glances directed toward an attraction that had been with the moving railhead ever since it passed Grand Island, a dusty little settlement populated mostly by German families hoping to build a future out of small farms or, as soon as the railroad lured more settlers, business establishments.

The attraction was an ordinary wagon. Drawn by two mules, it creaked along beside the advancing rails six days a week and stopped where they stopped each night. This morning the mules had not yet been hitched, were still tethered to the tailboard. What made the wagon of interest were two large barrels lashed to the side. A dipper on a chain hung from each. One barrel bore the name
DORN
in crudely painted white letters. The other said
WHISKEY.
There were two more barrels tied to the wagon’s far side, and others stored under the patched canvas top. Beyond the wagon Michael glimpsed the large partitioned duck tent erected every evening.

He couldn’t personally swear the interior of the tent was partitioned. But certain venturesome rust eaters declared it was. On several occasions, these men—usually tipsy—had tried without success to get a midnight peek at a member of the family of the liquor merchant who’d lit out from Grand Island in an attempt to make money satisfying one of the vices tolerated by the U-Pay management—thirst.

Gustav Dorn, the bearded Dutchman who owned the rig and sold the whiskey, had a fondness for his own product. Michael had occasionally bought a half-dipper of forty rod from him. Dorn was always unsteady on his feet. He spoke broken English rendered nearly unintelligible by sips of his own stock.

At the moment Dorn was nowhere to be seen. His son, a plump blond boy of about fourteen, sat on the wagon seat, guarding the liquor and the nearby tent with an old but powerful Hawken percussion rifle. Casement’s orders prohibited any liquor being sold until the day’s quota of track had been laid.

As Michael watched, the tent flap lifted. The third member of the family appeared, carrying a coffeepot to a cook fire of buffalo chips. Why in God’s name the German had brought his daughter to the all-male railhead was beyond Michael’s comprehension. The only explanation he’d heard had come from the boy, via Murphy. According to Sean, Gustav Dorn believed his daughter was safer traveling with him than she would have been if she’d remained behind, alone, in Grand Island.

Dorn’s daughter was seldom on display at the railhead. She only came outdoors to prepare meals for her father and brother. She spent the rest of her time in the tent, or in the wagon when it was en route between stops. Michael had also heard the girl was a religious sort and read the Bible a good deal.

He studied her while she hung the pot over the coals and poked them with a stick. As usual, she wore a man’s outfit: trousers, a too-large woolen coat, a soft-brimmed old hat. Her hair was pushed up under the hat. That and the shapeless clothing virtually disguised her sex.

He’d never seen the girl up close. Some others had; she’d voluntarily doctored a few minor cuts or sprains, there being no physician in the workforce. Her patients reported she was young and pretty, though not much given to friendliness. An understandable defense, he figured. One smile of encouragement and half the men in Jack Casement’s crew would have stormed her tent with their pants at half-mast.

But the real deterrents to social intercourse—and attempts at another kind—were the Hawkens the family had brought along. On one occasion Michael had glimpsed the girl carrying one of the hunting rifles. He assumed she wouldn’t have fooled with it if she were a novice at using it.

Without having met the girl, Michael admired her pluck. It took nerve to come to the railhead, even with protection. But he suspected Dorn’s daughter couldn’t be as pretty as described. Being the only female for a hundred miles could elevate plainness to stunning beauty in the eye of the lustful beholder. An objective analysis would probably reveal her to be a thin-lipped sort, cold-blooded, and disapproving of human weakness. No doubt she hoped to save her father’s soul from eternal damnation, since he was engaged in a trade at odds with the precepts of the book she supposedly read for hours on end.

She was out of sight now—back inside the tent—and Michael’s musings were cut short by a rising noise level that signaled the start of work.

With billows of steam and the squeal of drivers, the train of flatcars from Kearney pulled in behind
Osceola.
Foremen started shouting. From the disorganized crowd loitering on either side of the track, five-man gangs coalesced with surprising speed.

The gangs climbed aboard the flatcars and began unloading the day’s supplies, starting with eight-foot ties of two kinds: stronger ones of oak or cedar, and softer, less durable ones of cottonwood impregnated with a zinc chloride solution to toughen and preserve them; the process was called burnettizing. Four treated ties would be laid for every harder one.

Wrought-iron chairs were manhandled off and piled beside the track, along with rails, fish plates for joining the rail sections, and casks of spikes and bolts. Then the
Vice-Admiral Farragut
began to back down the track, followed by
Osceola
hauling the four gigantic boxcars. Clanking and puffing smoke, the two trains withdrew beyond the stacked materials, leaving the western end of the track free.