Then suddenly he was aware there was somebody behind him. But before he could turn he felt the violent blow from a foot applied to the small of his back, and he went sailing out and over the embankment. Even though he fell upon soft pine needles and aromatic tar weed, he was moraentarily stunned. But he came to on his feet, shouting. The train was still in sight, but going too fast for him to catch up with it. And upon the back of the coach, grinning with a small-boy triumph stood Franz Auslander. He even had the effrontery to raise his cane and wave it derisively.
Troy stood motionless for several seconds, rubbing the back of his neck before he remembered about the loop. Then he was running, clambering up the embankment to the right-of-way, and stumbling back fifty yards over the sleepers to a rutty, dirt road, that led steeply down into the ravine. Past deer brush that whipped cruelly across his face he fled, down the red earth slickened by spring rains, across the rickety wooden bridge that spanned a swollen stream.
To his left perhaps half a mile away, he could hear the warning squeal of wheel flanges as the train took the top of the horseshoe curve. In a few seconds it would be starting back towards him again!
Now he left the road, which turned to meander uncooperatively along the stream, and struggled up a slope through dense chaparral. Instantly he was in trouble. Sharp, skeletal fingers of the manzanita clawed at his clothes and raked his face, but Troy persevered, clutching his hat, and breasting frantically through the resistant thicket. Progress was difficult. For a few seconds he would be comparatively free, following an open deer trail, then the way would close up and he would struggle nightmarishly against the vegetable enemy that seemed determined to delay him.
Finally as the sounds of the engine laboring up the grade approached his position upon the hillside, Troy found an open way that led directly to the railroad embankment. He still had a few seconds to make up his mind what he would do.
Auslander, having probably discovered with dismay that the train was doubling back, would doubtless remain upon the rear platform to see that Troy did not clamber aboard. Troy decided to catch the engine, if he could...
When he re-entered the coach from the baggage car, the train was passing over the high bridge, and Auslander was already back in his seat. The German was breathing heavily and looked tense, although he had the air of a man who feels he has done well. He was smiling to himself as he peered out of the window down into the depths of the canyon. Suddenly he turned his head, saw Troy standing in the aisle and his mouth went slack. Fear crept into his blue eyes.
“You’ve been gone a long time, Jim,” Clara exclaimed petulantly.
Disregarding her, Troy stepped past the preacher to Auslander, and with an amiable smile, leaned over and removed the bowler from his head. The man was bald as an egg! Auslander watched Troy in fascinated horror as the latter, still smiling, picked up his cane which hung from the top of the forward seat, and raising it deliberately, brought the head of it down with a smart crack upon his occiput.
“Let that teach you not to push people off trains!” Troy said severely, speaking as if to a little child.
Auslander’s thick underlip quivered and he looked as if he were about to cry. The preacher, who had turned to watch the chastisement, clicked his tongue disapprovingly. The sailor had fallen asleep and observed none of it. The women were chittering nervously, and Clara burst suddenly into a shriek of derisive laughter that made Troy’s spine prickle.
When the Delta King swung out into mid-channel from the Front Street docks in Sacramento that evening at eight forty-five, Troy and Clara stood soberly at the stern among the other passengers, watching the dense lights of the city give way to the meager sprinkling of farm lights, and finally to unbroken darkness.
“They’re both on board, aren’t they?” Clara said in a taut voice after a while, when the others had gone.
“Yes. And Auslander.”
“I saw you speaking to them in the waiting room.”
“I introduced myself. One is John Ferris. And he was a seaman, a captain, he told me, of one of these river boats about ten years ago. The way he closed up on details makes me suspect that there was some scandal. He isn’t a captain any more. He works for a marine outfitting company in San Francisco. I don’t think he’s very sure of himself; he has a hard time looking you in the eye.”
“And the preacher?”
“A traveling Septaguint minister. Revivalist sort, from up Seattle way, he says. Name’s Winter.”
“Do they seem all right?”
“So far as I can see.”
Clara put her hand to her throat. “I don’t feel well, Jim. Take me back to my stateroom.”
Troy piloted her up the iron steps to the upper deck to her cabin on the starboard side. She had left the oil lamp on, and the minute they entered, the yellow piece of paper upon the floor near the door gave them both a start. Troy picked it up.
“Sir Francis Levinson,” he read aloud, and put the paper in his pocket. Clara gasped, and sank down weakly upon her bunk, looking so pathetically fearful that Troy felt sorry for her.
“Look,” he said, “did you ever tell Auslander about Nate?”
“Never!” Clara cried, and her voice carried such conviction that Troy could not disbelieve her. “You’re the only one I have ever told about Nate. No, no, Franz would never have the imagination to try to frighten me this way. Nate is on this boat. I know it. And you mustn’t leave me, not for a moment, Jim!”
Troy made her lie down on the bunk and covered her with a blanket. Then he sat down at a table and taking out a deck of cards played several games of poker solitarie until Clara’s quiet breathing told him she was asleep.
Then he stopped playing, and picking up a single card, blew thoughtfully upon the edge of it.
His rumination was halted by the sound of a footstep outside the door. He sprang silently to his feet, watched the doorknob turn; then he seized it and pulled the door open.
Ferris, the ex-captain stood there swaying slightly, with a foolish grin on his face.
The incident had not awakened Clara, so Troy held his fingers to his lips and then stepped out on deck, closing the door behind him. The night was clear and mild, and a gentle breeze from the starboard bow blew most of the sound of the chunking and splashing of the rear paddle wheel far astern, so the dark was almost quiet.
“Why are you sneaking around this cabin?” Troy demanded.
“Well, now, I didn’t know you were her watchdog, Mister Troy,” Ferris said, murkily aggrieved. “I got to thinking about Miss Berg, that’s all. Saw her act at the Criterion last night. She’s a mighty pretty lady. I understood she’s not married. Honestly, you didn’t look too interested, and I figured that it’s a free country—”
“Not that free, Ferris.”
“No, I guess not.”
“You stay clear of Miss Berg.”
“Yes, sir!” The man laughed softly. “That’s funny, y’know. The crew of the old Ada Hancock used to say ‘Yes, sir’ to me. I was their cap’n, y’know.”
“What happened to the Ada Hancock?” Troy asked.
“She blew up. I went right up with her, pilot house and all, and came down on the texas deck, near the smokestack, with me still intact! Nine people killed. And I should have died too, Mr. Troy. Yes, sir, I should have died, too!” And with that he wobbled aft.