The Trainmasters Page 19

  “How are you, ‘Uncle’ Edgar?” he said to Thomson in a voice not quite dripping with insolence. “I trust you have been well.”

  “Very well, thank you, Francis,” Thomson said.

  “And what brings you to require my presence?” he asked. “I couldn’t imagine what you would want me for. I thought, after our last encounter, that you’d never want to see me again.”

  “Sit, Francis. You make me nervous leaning there against the wall.”

  Stockton’s insolent smile widened, but he obeyed. With close to infinite lassitude, he moved across the floor to the chair Thomson pointed out for him. When he sat down, his body fairly slumped in a disrespectful slouch.

  “John,” Thomson said, looking at Carlysle, “you sit next to me.” He pointed to a chair. “And Harrison, would you hand me my saddlebags? Then sit over here.”

  While Thomson and Carlysle were in the tunnel, Thomson’s saddlebags had been brought to the office. Now Thomson opened them and withdrew the bound volume containing the report on the caves.

  Then he turned through the volume to the report and laid it out on a table. “I want you to tell me about this, Francis,” he said to Stockton.

  “What would you like to know, Mr. Thomson?” Stockton asked. John noted that he said “Mr. Thomson” and not “Uncle Edgar”; Stockton had lost some of his initial sarcasm. And there was a baffled look on his face. His expression said he thought the report contained nothing but out-of-date and irrelevant information. But there was curiosity there, too. He was not ready to dismiss Edgar Thomson’s interest.

  “I’d like to know something about that cave system you investigated,” Thomson went on calmly. “I’m especially interested in its extent. Could you tell me about that?”

  Still looking baffled but curious, Stockton answered, “It’s in the report, I guess. And I suppose you’ve read that. But if you’d like to know more than the report states, well then…”

  “That’s right. We’ve read it,” Thomson said, indicating John with a nod of his head. “And we’ve found that it raises some fascinating questions. We feel that you can give us answers to many of them.”

  “I’m not sure why you want to know that,” Stockton said. “And I truthfully can’t say that I remember much, but I’d be delighted to tell you all I know.”

  “Bear with me, Francis. I’ll be clearer soon, I’m sure.” He pointed to the introduction to the report. “It says here that you spent two days examining the caves. Could you tell me about that… tell me how you went about it?”

  “There’s not much to say, really,” Stockton said. “I found a couple of men who knew the caves; and I took them inside, and we looked around a bit. The caves didn’t seem to go anywhere near the route projected for the tunnel. So that’s what I wrote.”

  “I see.”

  “What were the names of the men who went with you?” John asked.

  “Aaron Kolb and his son Durl, and a boy named Joel Crawford,” Stockton said. “Kolb and his son live next to one of the entrances to the caves. Just inside the entrance is a large open space, as high and wide as a church. Kolb uses it as a barn. He keeps hogs in there. And he’s a distiller, too. He stores barrels of whiskey deeper inside; ages the stuff there. Crawford is a neighbor of Kolb’s. He and Kolb’s kid have spent a lot of time exploring the caves. They know them pretty well.”

  “Crawford works the tunnel,” Harrison said. “He’s one of the men that’s missing.”

  As Harrison said that, Thomson shook his head and muttered sadly. “Goddamn! Another man… !”

  “And so you say that you spent two days with them in the caves?” John continued.

  “That’s right.”

  “And they know the caves well?”

  “The two boys do. Aaron Kolb wasn’t much interested in going inside.”

  “And you explored the caves thoroughly in those two days?”

  Stockton looked at him. He was still baffled and curious. “I looked around.” He shrugged.

  Thomson looked at John. “Explain our theory about the cave-in, would you please, John?”

  Carlysle told him the ideas he and Thomson had discussed. As John talked, Stockton’s eyes grew wide and doubtful. And as John went on, he began to shake his head vigorously. When John was finished, he spoke almost as the final word left John’s mouth.

  “No!” he said, with some passion. “Not at all. I don’t see that. None of the cave galleries I looked into extended that high into the mountain. All the caves I investigated went down-—below the level of Kolb’s entrance. They were all formerly underground waterways. I concluded that there just wasn’t enough water in the mountain to carve large caves higher up. And I saw no evidence that there might have been anything different. So I don’t see how the theory makes sense.”

  “I don’t believe you, Francis,” Thomson said. Up until now, his voice was gentle, calm, and friendly. But now Thomson turned steely. “I don’t believe you spent two days in those caves. 1 don’t believe you made anything like a thorough investigation. I don’t trust you, Francis. I never have… You’ve never given me cause to.”

  “I did spend two days in those caves,” Stockton flared. “I went everywhere the report said that I went. I saw what I said I saw.”

  “I’m sorry, Francis. I still don’t believe you. I think you failed me still one more time. What’s more, because you failed, more than fifty lives have been lost.” And then he shook his head sadly. “But I’m guilty, too,” he said. “I’m guilty most of all because I gave you the job to do in the first place, knowing that you’d probably do it badly. But I thought—I thought—mat the quality of your performance on that assignment wouldn’t have any serious impact on the construction of the tunnel. As far as I was concerned, the caves were unimportant. I believed just what you reported, that they could never extend as high as the tunnel. And so when I read the report, I read what I wanted to read… to my disgrace.”

  “But, goddamn it!” Stockton said. “That was one job I did right!” And then he lifted his arms and let them drop, helplessly. “Oh, shit,” he added. “Believe what you want to believe, ‘Uncle’ Edgar.” The sarcasm had very much returned to his voice.

  Thomson pressed his lips together and shook his head. His mind was made up.

  Then Harold Harrison cleared his throat and looked pleased. He very obviously agreed with Edgar Thomson’s opinion of Francis Stockton.

  But John Carlysle was by now not so sure about that. John was puzzled by the deep antipathy between the two men. There was more to it than met the eye. He looked at Stockton and then at Thomson and then back to Stockton. He was beginning to think that he would give the man a chance to show his stuff. And this might even become Stockton’s chance to prove he was justified in his conclusions about the caves. “Francis,” he said. He paused, and there was a questioning look on his face. “May I call you that?”

  “It’s my name,” Stockton said.

  “I want to go into the caves,” he said. “1 want to see if we can use the caves to reach the tunnel. I believe that there may well be some men trapped in the tunnel beyond the cave-in. Would you accompany me?”

  “Into the caves?” he shrugged. “Shit. Why not?”

  “And do you think Kolb and his son will guide us?”

  He cocked his brows and then shrugged. “Why not? Or at least Durl will come, anyway.”

  “Good,” John said. “Then let’s do it.” He rose from his chair.

  “Now?” Stockton asked.

  “Instantly.”

  “And you want to go along with this?” Stockton asked Edgar Thomson.

  “If John wishes it,” Thomson said doubtfully.

  “And you want me to accompany him?”

  “If John wants you,” Thomson said, with an expression that said he would have done otherwise.

  “All right then, I’m ready,” Stockton said, rising. He was also shaking his head. “I don’t understand a goddamn thing about all this, though.”
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  “What do you mean?” Thomson asked.

  “I expected that you had finally found the excuse you’ve been searching for to dismiss me. I thought you were about to throw me off the works, off the site.”

  “As you deserve?” Thomson asked, with scorn in his voice.

  “I don’t deserve that,” Stockton replied. “Not on account of the report you have there.”

  “We’ll see,” Thomson said. “But first let’s find out about those caves.” Then he motioned to Harrison. “Mr. Harrison, would you go find Aaron Kolb and his son?”

  “You want me to bring them here?”

  Thomson thought a moment, then he looked at John.

  “What do you think, John?”

  “It seems to me that we should all meet down at Kolb’s place,” he said, “since an entrance to the caves is on his property.”

  “That’s what I think, too. Meet him there.”

  “And while Harrison goes to Kolb,” John said, “I expect Mr. Stockton and I can find the gear we’ll need to take into the caves.” He looked at Stockton. “Can we do that?”

  Stockton nodded.

  “Then you go to Kolb right away, Harrison,” Thomson said. “I need him to be ready for us as soon as possible. Instantly. And we’ll take care of the gear. Tell him that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harrison said. “I expect Kolb’ll be home now. He usually is.” He paused for a moment. “He makes pretty fair whiskey. He does a lot of business with the crew of the tunnel,” he added, by way of explanation.

  Thomson sighed. “I’m sure he does,” he said.

  “Can you have him ready within the hour?” John asked.

  “I can sure try.”

  He left quickly.

  Stockton gave Edgar Thomson a puzzled look. “You are talking like you are going down into the caves yourself. Are you?”

  Thomson shook his head, ruefully. “No, I can’t. But I’d like to. God, how I’d like to.”

  “How’re you doing?” Egan O’Rahilly asked Ferdy O’Dowd. Ferdy was just now returning to consciousness after the ordeal of the rapids.

  “I’m fine, Egan,” he said. “Just fine.”

  Egan had managed to restart the lantern, and so in its dim and flickering light, he could see Ferdy’s face. He did not look fine at all. He looked feverish and wasted.

  “Well, hell, man, you look terrible,” Egan said.

  “Are you trying to give me encouragement?” Ferdy said, attempting to smile in the hope of making light of a situation he saw little hope in himself. “Or do you just like to see the gloomiest side of everything?”

  But Egan did not rise to the bait. He turned away from his friend and stared out across the broad pool of water without replying.

  Though the light flickered, and there wasn’t much of it, he could see across the great vault to the other side of the lake, which was maybe one, maybe two hundred feet across. It was hard to tell distances in the dark. He stared off across the lake for some time, and as he stared, he sank into the deepest, loneliest, and most hopeless cavity of his soul. For a long time he hung suspended in his hopelessness and despair.

  After a time, though, Ferdy called out to him. “Egan?” he called, a little desperately, like a child who has lost sight of his parents in a strange place. “What’s happening, Egan?”

  “Nothing’s happening,” Egan said vacantly.

  “You don’t sound good.”

  “How do you expect me to sound?” he snapped.

  “Like it’s not hopeless for us,” Ferdy said.

  “Sure,” Egan said, bitterly, sarcastically, “I’m just dancing on top of the world, I’m so filled with hope.”

  Ferdy didn’t answer. He crawled over to Egan and placed his arm across Egan’s shoulder. “We’ll make it out of here, Egan,” he said quietly.

  “We might,” Egan said. “Maybe.”

  “Then can we start moving again?”

  “Yes, I suppose.” But then he remembered Ferdy’s fever. And he looked at him, hard, but with warmth. “You can’t walk. You know you can’t. You’ve got a raging fever. You’re on fire.” He was beginning to think that he could leave Ferdy here, and then come back to him once he had found the way to the surface… If….

  But Ferdy, guessing what he had in mind, had other ideas. “I don’t feel wonderful,” Ferdy admitted. “That’s true. But you can’t stay here, and I won’t stay here. Never!” he said with such passion that Egan could not refuse him. “I can’t stand the dark alone. So 1 guess we’ll just have to manage somehow together.”

  And with that, he made a tremendous effort and rose to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said. And then he staggered up the beach.

  “All right,” Egan said. “Let’s go.” He lifted himself to his feet, gathered up the lantern and the other necessities, and went after his friend.

  “Here,” he said when he caught up with him, “take my shoulder.”

  “I think I’ll do that,” Ferdy said.

  And so together they walked along the beach until the lake narrowed once more to a stream. At that point, there was a hole in the cave wall. When they investigated the hole, it proved to be another gallery, and it apparently led upward.

  They turned into it.

  It was almost dark by the time John Carlysle and Francis Stockton rode the three miles down the mountain to Aaron Kolb’s place. Before leaving the camp, both men had changed into warm, dry clothing, and they carried with them the gear they would need for the expedition into the caves: sturdy, brass lanterns and plenty of oil, stout rope, and mountain climbers’ pikes. John also carried a notebook and pencils, in order to make a record of the journey.

  Kolb lived in a two-room cabin built up against a steep cliff that formed the end of a narrow valley. Just behind the cabin, John could make out in the dim light a wide overhanging brow at the base of the cliff. This had to be the cave entrance. Snuffling, snorting, grunting noises issued from under the brow, along with a heavy, noxious, nearly overpowering stench. John began to wonder what it was, then he remembered that Kolb kept hogs penned under there. Off to one side of the brow was a fairly large open shed, containing what John took to be Kolb’s still.

  The door to the Kolb cabin was open when the two men approached, and the light streamed out. And after they dismounted, they saw Harold Harrison standing in the doorway waving to them.

  “Come on inside,” he called out.

  Someone then moved next to Harrison, a big man with a wild mane of red hair who had to be Kolb himself.

  “You must be Aaron Kolb,” John said as he reached the door.

  “That’s right,” the man said. “That’s me, by God, and no one else. And this,” he pointed to a younger man who was only a shade smaller and a shade less hairy than he was, “is my son Durl.”

  Harrison ushered them in and introduced them to Kolb’s wife, a timid-looking woman who was standing off to one side, and a couple of other children, a boy and a girl. The girl, who looked to be about fourteen, smiled shyly at Francis Stockton. She obviously recognized him. But the boy, who was a few years younger, stared sullenly and stupidly at the newcomers. A half-wit, John decided.

  Durl, on the other hand, though he didn’t look especially smart, either, seemed alert enough; and he had a pleasant, open face. His father, it quickly became apparent, had a quick, sly, shifty smile, flashing eyes, and the gift of gab and nothing whatever to say.

  “So you want to know about the caves, then,” Kolb said when the introductions were finished. “Well, I can tell you more than you’d ever want to know about that place, by God. I’ve lived next to those caves most of my life. I’ve been up ‘em and down ‘em and through ‘em and inside ‘em. I know ‘em better than I know my wife, by Jesus.”

  “Then I’m sure you can help us,” John said.

  “You bet I can help you,” Kolb said. “Just tell me what you want to know.”

  “Some months ago, you did some work with Mr. Stockton here?” John said. “You
inspected the caves?”

  “Yep, I did that. My son and me and Joel Crawford took Mr. Stockton into the caves. We spent a bit of time in there, maybe a day, maybe more. I don’t recall directly—”

  “After you were in the caves with Mr. Stockton,” John said, interrupting him, “he wrote a report. In the report he said that no part of the cave extends as far as the route then projected for the tunnel. Are you aware of that?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Kolb said with a slow, evasive, conspiratorial wink, “I don’t know about that. I don’t know anything about the report. But I guess Francis Stockton wrote one, because that’s why we went into the caves, wasn’t it? Yep, he must of written a report, but I wouldn’t know what it said, would I? I wouldn’t have anything to do with any report, not me.”

  And then John realized what Kolb was up to. The man didn’t want to take any responsibility for what Francis Stockton had found in the caves.

  “I realize that,” John said. “Don’t worry. The report is none of your doing… But what I want to find out has to do with the caves: Do you know whether any branch of them extends up in the direction of the runnel?”

  Then Kolb looked at his son. “Durl,” he said, “what do you know about that? Do you know anything about that?”

  Durl glanced at his father, searching for cues, for he didn’t know what he was expected to say. But John did not want either of them to feel that he was forcing them to commit themselves. He simply wanted information.

  “Let me explain a little bit to you, Mr. Kolb,” he said, while Durl waited for help from his father. “I believe that the tunnel cave-in occurred because part of the tunnel passed over one of the caves. If I’m right about that, then there’s a chance some of the men working that part of the tunnel survived. If there are survivors, then I want to try to save them.”

  Well, I don’t know about that,” Durl said slowly, with none of his father’s evasion or shiftiness. “I don’t know of any part of the caves that goes up that way… They may be some caves goin’ that way; but I sure don’t know of any.”