Kincaid instantly slammed on the brake to throw Bell off. Bell went with the maneuver, letting his momentum carry him forward and closer to Kincaid. He reached for the shifting levers, missed, but grabbed a brass tube that delivered oil to the chain drive. Kincaid swung a monkey wrench at Bell’s hand. Bell let go and fell. As he did, he gripped a utility box bolted to the running board.
Now he was partly ahead of the rear wheel, which threatened to roll over him. The chain, just inside the wheel, whizzed inches from his face. He yanked his automatic out of his coat, reached in front of the wheel, and jammed the muzzle under the upper half of the chain. The chain jammed the gun into the teeth of the sprocket. The automobile jerked hard and skidded on locked wheels.
Kincaid disengaged the clutch. The chain jumped. Bell’s gun went flying, and the car surged ahead. Steering with his left hand, Kincaid swung the wrench. It grazed Bell’s hat. Bell clutched the utility box with his right arm, kept his left hooked over the fender, and pulled his throwing knife from his right boot. Kincaid swung the wrench.
Forced to let go before Kincaid shattered bone, Bell jabbed his knife into the sidewall of Kincaid’s tire. The racing wheel ripped the knife out of Bell’s hand, and he fell to the road.
The Thomas Flyer’s exhaust sounded a hollow snap as it picked up speed, crested the slope, and disappeared around a hairpin turn. Bell rolled to his feet, covered in mud, and ran back searching the ruts for his gun. He found his hat first and then the automatic, stripped it, blew off the mud, reassembled it, and exchanged magazines for a fully loaded one. He now had one slug chambered and six on call. Then he discarded his coat, which was heavy with mud, and started running up the timber road after the Wrecker.
Hoofs rumbled behind him.
Archie Abbott rounded the bend, leading a posse of ten Van Dorn detectives on horseback with Winchester rifles jutting from their saddle scabbards. Archie gave him the horse they brought for him. Bell started to mount. The horse tried to bite his leg.
“Lillian Hennessy didn’t have any trouble riding him,” said Abbott.
Bell flexed his powerful left arm to draw Thunderbolt’s head down and spoke sternly into his pointed ear. “Thunderbolt. We have work to do.” The animal let Bell on board, and poured himself over the rough ground, pulling ahead of the pack.
After two miles, Bell saw a gleam of yellow through the trees.
The Thomas was stopped in the middle of the road. The right rear tire was half off the wheel and rim cut. Bell’s knife, still sticking out of it, had done it in. Kincaid’s footprints headed straight up the road. Bell ordered one man to stay behind, replace the tire, and bring the car along.
At the end of three more hard-slogging miles up the mountain, with less than a mile to go to the East Oregon Lumber Company’s camp, the horses were tiring. Even the eighteen-hand monster under Bell was breathing hard. But he and Thunderbolt were still in the lead when they ran into the Wrecker’s ambush.
Flame lanced from the dark trees. Winchester rifles boomed. A rain of lead exploded through the air. A heavy slug fanned Bell’s face. Another plucked his sleeve. He heard a man cry out and a horse go down behind him. The Van Dorns dove for cover, dragging their own long guns from their scabbards. Dodging the flailing hooves of frightened animals, the detectives scattered off the road. Bell stayed on his horse, firing repeatedly in the direction of the attack, his Winchester’s ejection lever a blur of motion. When his men had finally found safety in the trees, he jumped down and took up a position behind a thick hemlock.
“How many?” called Abbott.
In answer came a second fusillade of high-powered slugs crackling through the brush.
“Sounds like six or seven,” Bell answered. He reloaded his rifle. The Wrecker had chosen well. Slugs were pouring down from high above. His gunmen could see the Van Dorns, but, to see back, the Van Dorns had to expose their heads to gunfire.
There was only one way to deal with it.
“Archie?” Bell called. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Boys?”
“Ready, Isaac,” came the chorus.
Bell waited a full minute.
“Now!”
The Van Dorns charged.
THE WRECKER KEPT A cool head. Nothing about the Van Dorn Detective Agency surprised him anymore. Nor was their bravery in doubt. So he was already half expecting their concentrated, disciplined counterattack. Philip Dow kept a cool head too, firing only when he could see a target flitting through the trees, clearly a man most alive when he was in battle. But Dow’s lumberjacks were thugs accustomed to fighting two on one. Quicker with fists or ax handles than rifles, they panicked in the face of ten guns coming up the hill spitting fire like the devil’s brigade.
The Wrecker felt them waver. Seconds later, they broke and ran, some actually dropping their rifles, stampeding through the forest for higher ground as if, in their panicked state, they thought hiding would save them. Nearby, Dow kept firing. Not that there was much to hit among the targets dodging tree to tree, but ever closer.
“Fall back,” the Wrecker ordered quietly. “Why shoot them when we can drown them?”
Isaac Bell had ruined his plan to signal Dow by locomotive whistles. If Dow had even heard the bare few seconds of a single locomotive whistle, which was all the noise he had produced before Bell started shooting, the assassin had failed to understand the go-ahead to blow up the dam that held Lake Lillian.
The two men retreated from the ambush site, loping up the same mule deer trail that Dow had led his men down from the lumber camp. When they got to the camp, lumberjacks and mule skinners who weren’t part of Dow’s gang were peering down the road at the sound of gunfire. Seeing the Wrecker and Dow emerge from the trees, rifles in hand, they wisely retreated into their bunkhouses, leaving questions to those who were fools enough to ask armed men.
“Philip,” said the Wrecker. “I’m counting on you to blow the dam.”
“Consider it done.”
“They won’t go easy on you.”
“They’ll have to catch me first,” said Dow. He offered his hand.
The Wrecker took it gravely, imparting a sense of ceremony. He was not one bit emotionally moved but he was relieved. Whatever strange codes the assassin lived by, Dow would detonate the explosives if it took the last breath in his body.
“I’ll cover you,” he told Dow. “Give me your rifle. I’ll hold them off as long as I’ve got ammunition.”
He would make his final escape when the flood swept the Cascade Canyon Bridge into the gorge. If his luck held, he would be the last man across it.
55
ABBOTT SCRAMBLED ALONGSIDE BELL WHEN THE WRECKER’S gang stopped shooting.
“Isaac, he’s got a huge lake up there impounded behind a dam. I’m thinking if he were to blow it, he’d flood the bridge.”
Bell sent four detectives to track the fleeing gunmen through the woods. He settled three wounded men as best he could beside the road and made sure that at least one could defend them in case the attackers came back. There were two dead horses in the road. The rest had bolted. Bell started running up the rutted track, with Abbott and Dashwood hot on his heels.
“That’s the camp ahead,” called Abbott.
Just as the road opened up at the lumber camp, withering rifle fire sent them diving behind trees.
“It’s a diversion,” said Bell. “So he can blow the dam.”
They emptied their Winchesters in the direction of the attack. The shooting stopped, and they pressed on, drawing their sidearms.
CROUCHED AT THE BASE of the log dam, soaked by the spray of the water tumbling fifty feet to the river beside him, Philip Dow knew his life was over when the Winchesters stopped booming. Kincaid had held off the detectives as long as he could.