The Trainmasters Read online

  “Would you get him some water and a rag at least?” she asked.

  “Get them yourself, bitch. There’s water down to the well over there. And some gourds.” He pointed. “You got clothes you can use as rags.” He gave her a final look. “I’ll be back,” he promised, then walked off.

  She went to fetch the water. When she returned, she lifted up her skirt and tore some rags from her petticoat. Then she started to bathe Graham’s face and clean his wounds. After a while he began groaning and trembling, showing the gradual return of consciousness.

  “Graham?”

  His lids fluttered almost imperceptibly, and then she could see that his eyes were open a crack. His mouth twisted a little. He was attempting a smile of recognition.

  “Tess, darlin’,” he croaked. He tried to lift his arm to touch her, but pain prevented that.

  “Don’t try to say anything,” she said. “Just lie there while I bathe your face.”

  She continued doing that, and the opening in his eyes closed. It didn’t reappear for at least another half hour. During that time Matthew looked in on Teresa and Graham a couple of times. But when he saw that the situation hadn’t changed much, he walked off again.

  Now Graham’s eyes were fully open, and his head was in Teresa’s lap.

  “What happened to you?” she asked when she was sure he was finally able to speak. “How did they get you?”

  “Are the others all right?” he asked.

  “No one’s hurt,” she said. “They’re keeping us locked in the cellar.”

  “Well,” he said, “at least nobody’s hurt.”

  “You’re hurt,” she said softly. “Look at you!”

  “I’d rather not,” he said, trying to treat his wounds lightly.

  “What did they do to you?”

  He shrugged. “The arm, I think, must be broken. And maybe some ribs.”

  “I’ll bind the arm in a minute. Let me see the ribs.” She hitched up his shirt and looked at his side. It was a mass of ugly, dark bruises. “I can’t tell whether they’re broken or not.”

  “There’s nothing you can do about that, in any event.”

  “But I can bind the arm. At least I can make you a little bit more comfortable than you are. It will have to wait to be properly set, though.”

  And so she tore off another large piece of her petticoat and wrapped it tight around his broken arm.

  While she was busy with that, he told her how he’d come to be captured and that it had been Matthew who’d performed the beating. He’d done it coolly and silently, his hands and fists and elbows moving like clockwork. Matthew hadn’t betrayed a twitch of emotion the whole time.

  “What do you make of that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. Wild, fiery rage would make sense, but not the iciness. He acted like he was possessed, taken over, doomed to act out his revenge.”

  She shook her head, understanding no more than he did. Then she said ruefully, “So here you are now.”

  “Here I am.”

  “And you believed they’d let us free if they had you?”

  “I thought it was worth a try,” he said, sadly. “And besides,” he continued, “I thought you could use a man at your side.”

  “How did you think I was going to use a man?” she asked with just the trace of an ironic smile. “Here?”

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “Maybe I can help. Without me there were only two women and three kids.”

  “Not the way you are,” she said. “You aren’t going to help at all, hurt the way you are.” But her look belied her words, confirming that she was glad he had done what he had done—even risked what he had risked.

  And then Matthew Kean reappeared. He was accompanied by his father, George, and two other men that Teresa did not recognize.

  “Who’s the older one?” Graham whispered to her when the others started to walk up.

  “That’s George Kean,” she answered. “Matthew’s father. And,” she took in a breath, “Ben’s.”

  Graham didn’t say anything then. He simply tried to give the two Keans and the other men as hard and as cold a stare as circumstances would allow.

  And then Graham struggled to his feet. He didn’t want to talk to these people lying on his back. He was able to stand, but only with Teresa’s help. She stood behind him, propping him up.

  The Keans moved forward, leaving the other two behind them. Evidently they were acting as guards.

  “Your note said you were going to let the women and children go,” Graham said angrily to George. George, meanwhile, had settled himself down in the big chair. Matthew stood next to his shoulder.

  “You’re right,” George said to Matthew, looking up at his son, “he is a feisty one.”

  “Your note said you’d let them go,” Graham persisted.

  “Yep, it did,” George said. “And I will keep my word on that. I’ll let ‘em go. But not yet. We’ve got other things they need to do first.”

  “You have me now…” Graham said, but his voice trailed off. He knew there was no use arguing with them.

  “Now,” George said with a smile, pleased at Graham’s change of attitude, “do you want to hear what’s going to happen?”

  “Go ahead,” Graham said, choking a little. He was losing his voice as a result of the beating.

  “Here, take some water,” Teresa said, offering him a glass.

  He took it with his good hand and drank a sip.

  “Now,” George began again, “I do want to tell you what’s about to happen to you. You need to have it in your minds, so you can look on it and dwell on it total and entire … until I do it.”

  “What’s this all about?” Teresa demanded.

  “It won’t take long to tell you,” George said. “I promise you that.”

  “Let’s have it, then,” Graham said.

  “What you did—the two of you—was kill my son.” Graham was gathering himself to speak up at that, but Teresa placed a restraining hand on his shoulder, and he decided to keep his silence. “It didn’t matter who held the weapon,” Kean went on. “You both did him in.

  “The long and the short of the next thing I’ve got to tell you is that when you both did that, you both got yourself indebted to me. You took his life, and now I’m going to take yours.”

  “That’s mad!” Graham burst out, in spite of another restraining hand. “You’re talking out of the Dark Ages, man!” As he spoke he turned his head so his eyes could meet Teresa’s. He saw there the terror he expected to find, but he saw something else, too—resolve and determination. This was the same woman who had not lost her head the first time they confronted the Keans. Teresa was frightened no less than he, but she was not going to fall apart on him. She’d bear every bit as much as he would.

  And George, meanwhile, sailed smoothly on. “Now what I’m going to do is hang you,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ve thought about this a long time, and I’ve decided that that’s the right and proper thing for me to do.”

  “You’re not going to hang her” Graham shouted. “She didn’t—”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” Matthew ordered. “This isn’t a trial. We all know you did what you did. We’re only workin’ out the details of how you pay for it.”

  George gave a slow bending of his head, a solemn nod of agreement.

  “But I don’t want to just hang you,” George went on. “I want to teach the Carlysles a lesson.”

  “A lesson?” Graham asked. “What do you want to teach my family a lesson for? What do you have against anyone in my family besides me?”

  “But it isn’t just you,” George said, as though speaking a truth that was plain as the palm of his hand. “It’s your father, too, who has set himself against us—by takin’ the railroad’s part against us. You and him’s all of a piece. And so you’ve all got to be punished, all of a piece.”

  “You want to hang him, too?”

  “I don’t th
ink we’ll need to do that. Him watchin’ you die should do the trick.”

  Teresa’s grip on Graham’s shoulder was like iron claws when George said that.

  “So what are you going to do with us next?” Graham asked.

  “You’re gonna wait with the others in the cellar. Tomorrow mornin’ we’ll set out.” He said this with a wave of his arm that included the multitudes that had been arriving and setting up camp.

  “All those, too?” Graham asked, to be certain that was what George meant.

  “Yeah,” he drawled. “We’ve brought a regular little army here. And we’re gonna use it that way, too. Now that the thing’s come out into the open and it’s not a secret anymore where we stand about the Pennsylvania Railroad, we aim to get together and put the damn thing out of business once and for good.”

  “We?” Graham asked. “I thought it was just the Keans who were here.”

  “Just us?” George laughed. “God no! We’ve prob’ly got half the teamsters in Pennsylvania out there right now. And half the other people, too, who don’t want any railway takin’ away their life’s blood and their money. We prob’ly got two hundred people out there right now.”

  “More’n that, Pa,” Matthew said. “It’s gettin’ closer to three hundred.”

  “You hear that?” George’s voice was brimming with pride and accomplishment. “Three hundred! Pretty good, if I do say so!”

  “Jesus!” Graham muttered.

  “So the way it’s goin’ to work is that tomorrow mornin’ we’ll send your pa a telegraph message, tellin’ him where to meet us. When he comes, we’ll let him and the rest of the Carlysles watch you and the girl strangle. While all this is goin’ on, the others here will go and…” He shook his head. “But you don’t need to know that.”

  “So what do you got to say for yourself, Graham Car-lysle?” Matthew asked.

  Graham looked at him, and then he twisted around to face Teresa. “I don’t know,” he said, looking at her, liking her more than ever. “I don’t know if I have anything to say for myself. What should I say?”

  “Somethin’ like you’re sorry you killed Ben.”

  Then Graham turned to Matthew, and then to George. When he spoke, there was bitter venom in his voice, anger at the insanity of the revenge Matthew and George seemed doomed to carry out. “Do either of you really believe that I enjoyed killing Ben Kean? Do you think that was a pleasure? What I did was self-defense. It was him or me. And I’m glad it was me.”

  “Self-defense don’t count with us, Mr. Graham Carlysle,” Matthew said. “Th’only thing that counted then was him against you. And when you killed him, it changed right then to us against you; and right now we have you.”

  As Matthew was speaking, George rose to his feet. “We’ve got lots of work to do before tomorrow,” he said to Matthew. “Let’s get on it now.” To the guards he said, “Bring these two back to the cellar, will you please?” And then to Graham and Teresa he said, “Are you goin’ to want a preacher before you’re hanged?” He looked again at Teresa. “Or a priest?”

  Graham started to shake his head no. But Teresa spoke up. “Yes,” she said with glistening eyes, her voice only just this side of a sob. “I’d like a priest.”

  “We’ll see what we can do for you, then.”

  “Why you doin’ that, Pa?” Matthew asked.

  “Because nobody’s goin’ to accuse me of not bein’ a Christian.”

  Once they were in the cellar, Graham, who was still feeling the effects of the beating, dozed off into a deep but uneasy slumber. Then Teresa related to Deirdre and the children what she and Graham had just heard; she explained everything that was happening, even the part about the hanging, although Deirdre tried to stop her from telling that part. But Teresa felt it was better to have it all out and on the table. If the thing did actually come to pass tomorrow, she thought it would be best for the children to have some preparation for it.

  Later Graham awoke and limped around for awhile in some kind of wounded imitation of a prowl, searching for some kind of tool or weapon that he could use to fight off the seeming inevitable event he and Teresa were scheduled to star in tomorrow morning.

  Fifteen

  “Lord God in Heaven!” Egan O’Rahilly said under his breath. “That’s an army down there!”

  John Carlysle nodded agreement, letting out at the same time a long sibilant whisper. At the end of the whisper a word came. “Incredible!”

  And then John turned to Francis Stockton, who was next to him. “How many do you guess are down there? What do you make of the situation?” he asked, deferring to Francis’s military education and training.

  “It’s hard to say in all that confusion,” he said slowly, calculating, “but there’s at least a couple of hundred.

  And I’d even put it at more.”

  “And there are nine of us,” Egan said, looking at John and shaking his head. There was bitterness in his voice and a resignation that was unusual for Egan. But the resignation was understandable, considering the enormous number of men arrayed below.

  The three of them were lying together on their stomachs along the ridge overlooking the big house. Francis and Graham had observed the house from the same place of concealment a few days before. Behind them, below the crest of the ridge and out of sight and earshot of the house, were Ferdy O’Dowd, Patrick Geraghty, Francis Quigley, and three others: Dan Cahill, Joe O’Rourke, and Marty Toolan. Also hidden there were the horses that had carried them all to this place, as well as four spare horses for the prisoners, if they had any luck freeing them.

  It was now almost two-thirty in the morning, and most of those in the camp below were sprawled out asleep. But a few camp fires had been kept tended, and their light told John, Egan, and Francis that their original plan for rescuing the captives was now doomed. The odds against them had greatly increased since Francis and Graham first visited the place.

  John looked at Egan and then at Francis. Then he spoke to Francis. “What would your instructors at West Point tell you to do right now?”

  “Retreat and regroup,” Francis replied. “And bring up reinforcements. A couple of brigades of infantry and a troop of cavalry would be damned nice to have right now.”

  “What if there was no time for that?” John asked. “Make it a purely hypothetical field exercise,” he smiled. “You’re given nine men, and you have to take an impregnable fortress guarded by thirty times your number. What do you do?”

  “Drink,” Francis answered, “until I forget the whole thing.”

  Then John looked at Egan. “Any suggestions?”

  “None, John,” Egan said.

  “Actually,” Francis said, “we’re not totally without resources.” As he said that he lifted up a pair of field glasses he had brought with him.

  “What good will those do?” Egan wondered.

  “If you can’t attack from strength,” he said in a professorial voice, “then you must search for a weakness.”

  “And that’s what you plan to do?” John asked.

  “That’s what I plan to do.”

  Francis then put the glasses up to his eyes and began to scan the camp carefully.

  And John took that moment to scan Francis carefully.

  He liked what he saw. And now at last, he felt he was beginning to understand that part of Francis that had always seemed mysterious—the part that Kitty had been attracted to. Such objectivity came only after John was finally satisfied that Francis was no longer even a hidden rival for Kitty.

  On the ride up, Francis had drawn him aside and spoken to him. “I talked with Kitty Lancaster a few days ago, in Philadelphia.”

  “Yes?” John tried to keep his voice calm but was unable to conceal his interest and curiosity. “What did you talk about?”

  Francis did not answer that question, at least not directly. “I’ve been aware for weeks that you and Kitty are… have been… growing close,” he went on. “Everyone knows about it.”

  �
��Yes.”

  “And you can’t be ignorant about… that she and I were once intimate.”

  “I know that.”

  “I want you to know now, John, that there is nothing between Kitty and me any more. That’s why I went to see her… to close it between us for good.”

  John looked at him. Then he slowly nodded his head.

  “And I want to tell you that…” He hesitated, caught his breath, then said, “I wish you the best of… good fortune.”

  “Thank you, Francis,” John had said rather lamely. He didn’t know then a suitable reply. And now, on the ridge, he still could hot imagine the words that would have adequately responded to Francis’s clearly heartfelt confession and good wishes.

  John then, with unaided eyes, tried to do what Francis was doing with his glasses: search the scene below for signs of weakness, for some tool that would let nine men outwit, if not overcome, more than two hundred.

  After a while, Francis caught John’s arm, and then he pointed. “Look, down there,” he said, “just up that rise.

  There’s an open space.”

  “I see it,” John said.

  “Here, take the glasses and look closer,” Francis said and handed John the glasses.

  “What should I be seeing?” John asked, once he’d trained the glasses on the place Francis had indicated.

  “Do you see two big Conestogas?”

  “I see them.”

  “Look closely at them. And tell me what you see.”

  “They’re full of kegs. I can’t read any markings on them.”

  “Right,” Francis said. “Now look around those wagons.”

  John did that. “They’re roped off,” he said, in growing wonder, “and guarded!” His finger was now aimed at four men, each of whom were stationed at a corner of the rope barrier. At that moment he realized why Francis had called his attention to those particular wagons. “Those kegs are full of gunpowder, aren’t they?”

  “I’m certain of it,” Francis said.

  “It’s to be used against the railroad, isn’t it?” Egan asked, his eye concentrating on a cellar door at the side of the house. The door was watched by a pair of guards. And one of them was now sliding a heavy bolt away from it. The other guard, meanwhile, was heaving the heavy door open.