“Yeah, I think so.”
“It looks big.”
“Well, it’s a train . . .”
My eyes widened as I realized, for the first time, that the back of this train was being pushed by a locomotive. My hands crept out to the dash, as did Lucian’s. “Is that an engine?”
He squinted his eyes and took the cigarette from his mouth again, and I was pretty sure he was judging time by how fast he was smoking it. “Don’t worry about it, it’s a couple of pushers they’ve got in the back.”
The lights of the coal train were impressive and enough to let the driver know to hit his brakes as the string lights of the coal mine’s delivery system lit up the sky like Russian Christmas. “How are we going to gauge our gapping distance?”
“You said it runs about three miles an hour; doesn’t the last car have a ladder on it?”
He tucked the cigarette into the corner of his mouth like the bolt action on a rifle. “Yeah, but do you know how fast three miles an hour is when you’re out there slipping and sliding around on the ice and snow beside a moving train?”
I stared at the multiple lights. “How close can you get?”
He glanced at me and then at the train ahead, consistently applying pressure on the brakes. “I told you, I can put you nose to nose.”
I began rolling down the window with the manual crank. “Do it.”
Lucian looked at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I pulled the Colt Walker and rested it on the dash. “The hood of this truck gives me a six-foot height advantage; all I’ve got to do is make it from the front of this thing onto the observation platform of that locomotive.”
He shook his head. “Have you lost your mind?”
I unbuckled my safety belt and nudged over to the door as Fry slowed, judging the distance between us and the back of the train. “I’m open to suggestions.”
The train continued its crawl forward. The driver turned to look at me. “You see what we’re up against?”
“I do.” I took a deep breath. “From here to the loader, how many cars would you say we’ve got?”
He studied the distance. “Less than twenty, probably sixteen at best.”
There still wasn’t much wind, but the patterns of the few falling snowflakes were disorienting to say the least. I gripped the headache bar that protected the top of the cab and rested my rear near the windowsill. I started to reach out and pull myself up when I heard the crashing noise of the coal being loaded—one minute between loads.
That was a fast sixty seconds.
I waited until the driver roared forward and positioned himself right behind the train, almost to the point where I was sure we were going to run into it. Bracing my hand, I slipped a boot up onto the seat and could feel the strongest grip in Absaroka County latch on to my leg to make sure I didn’t slip.
Lucian let go, and I pulled my other leg after and lodged my boot on the windowsill, pushed off and landed with my chest on the headache rack; then I grabbed hold of the spare tire that was mounted there with both hands, ignoring the numbness in my arm.
Lucian called out from the cab. “You all right?”
Standing on the sill, I edged forward, glancing down at the slick, white hood of the one-ton truck. “Yep.” The clanking cacophony continued again, and the train surged forward with another tremendous crashing noise.
Another load. Another minute.
I held on as the driver crept forward, trying to buy me time. As soon as he stopped the truck, I took the leap of faith onto the hood and watched with satisfaction as it dented, providing me with a shallow divot in which to stand. I stooped and crept forward, extending my good hand toward the opening in the railing at the center ladder, figuring the more visibility I gave Fry, the better.
Looking past my fingers, I tried to gauge the distance beyond the high-rail gear, the tail mechanism that had taken the place of a caboose, and the front of the pushing locomotive—a good ten feet, at least.
The train continued forward with another thunderous load, and I looked down at my feet and laughed at the absolute absurdity of the situation.
I stepped back on the hood and placed a foot against the windshield. Looking down at the driver, his face blurred by the reflection of the glass and the patterns of the snow, I shouted. “Nose to nose!”
I watched the determination tighten his face as he hit the accelerator, and I stepped forward just as the front of the high-rail struck the back of the train. I could feel my boots slipping on the sheet metal, and my arms involuntarily stretched out as I left the truck, the forward momentum lifting me up into the delicate flake-filled air.
15
There are few things in the world harder than a locomotive, let me tell you.
My hand locked around the top of the left-side railing in a death grip, while the rest of me swung to the right and tangled around the other railing and the headlamp mount. My face hit the chain between the railings, which damn near strangled me but hopefully didn’t pull the bandages covering the wound on my neck, but it was the numbness in my right hand that caused me to slip. I kicked my boots into the hoses below me, hoping for any kind of purchase, finally wrapping a leg around the side long enough to get my other boot on a tread and ease the pressure.
Pulling my hat down tight, I scrambled up onto the platform and discovered that the ladder led to nowhere.
I turned and looked at Fry, and he stuck a hand against the windshield with a finger pointing up.
Great.
Hoisting myself, I landed onto the hood of the great orange and black beast, and even had time to glance in the cab, green-lit and eerily vacant. I climbed over the top and looked down the expanse of the thing, the cars disappearing in the ground fog. Loping along and feeling like a train robber in some sort of old black-and-white movie, I got to the end of the locomotive and was pleased to see another ladder leading down to another platform that provided easy access to the last coal car.
There was another loud noise as I started down the ladder, and once again, the only thing on my mind was . . .
That was a fast sixty seconds.
Jumping the gap between, I started up the ladder on the left and lunged over the edge to look inside. The ambient light from the mine illuminated half of the car, but the side closest to me was a contrast in complete darkness. I could see that there was a long board, possibly a two-by-twelve, sticking up from the middle of the coal car and extending to the corner and, on closer inspection, I could see another lying on top of it.
I concentrated on the darkness and yelled her name, in hopes that she might hear me over the tremendous roar of the coal being loaded. “Jone!”
My eyes began adjusting, but all I could see was the snow, sprinkled with a fine coating of coal dust, that had drifted in the bottom of the car. All I could think of was the remark that Lucian had made about the unfortunates who had met their demise at the bottom of two hundred tons of coal—pulverized pepper steak.
I stared into the darkness, willing my eyes to see her just as the mile-long train jerked forward, and I made the mental note that there had been four cars filled since we’d gotten there, which meant that if the driver’s calculations were correct, we had only a dozen or so cars to go.
I looked down the rails, but with the fog I couldn’t even see the cars in the distance, let alone count how many had been filled. Looking back, I shook my head and tried to figure out where she might be. “Jone!”
My eyes wandered to the boards half lying there, and I had the horrible thought that he must’ve walked her along on them and then dropped her in the next-to-last car.
There were five support rails spanning the last car’s width, and I was going to have to fish the two-by-twelves out and get them up onto those supports before I could get to the next car up the line.