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“Are you O.K., Mr. Bell?”
“I told you to stay inside and lock the door.”
“They’re gone. They rode away on horses.”
“Happen to catch a look at any faces?”
“No. But… Uh…”
“But what?” Bell demanded sharply, hoping for some clue.
“One of the horses had no rider,” Lynds said, looking around fearfully at the passengers clustered beside the derailed train. “Maybe he’s still here…”
“No, Clyde. That empty saddle was reserved for you.”
* * *
“Mister, if you’ll get off that locomotive,” bellowed a redheaded giant of a railroad wreck master, “we can put this train back together.”
First light found Isaac Bell poring over the Golden State’s helper locomotive with a magnifying glass. A wreck train had finally steamed up the grade from Deming, while out of the west another had just arrived from Lordsburg. Between them, the two were preparing to hoist the Limited back on the tracks, piece by piece.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Bell called down.
“Get off my train!” roared the giant, clambering up the locomotive onto the drive wheel fender.
Bell turned with a smile and thrust out his hand. “Mike Malone. I would recognize that Irish brogue in a thunderstorm.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Isaac Bell. Put ’er there.”
They shook hands — two tall men, one lean as a rail, the other with limbs thick as chestnut crossties.
“What are you doing here?”
“Escort job,” Bell answered cryptically. He had known Mike since they had come within inches of being blown to smithereens by dynamite ingeniously hidden under Osgood Hennessy’s Southern Pacific Railroad tracks.
“Under guise,” he added, encouraging Mike to refrain from asking what Bell’s magnifying glass had to do with an escort job — not to mention the express messenger found strangled in his car and the Rolls-Royce auto chained to a broken rail.
Malone winked. “Mum’s the word.”
Bell showed him a groove rubbed in the handrail. “What do you think made this mark?”
The wreck master ran his calloused finger over it. “Hacksaw?”
“How about a braided cable?”
Malone shrugged mighty shoulders. “Could be.”
“Wouldn’t happen to have a small cutting pliers on that wreck train I could borrow?”
“Linesman’s pliers do you?”
“Long as they’re sharp as the devil and small enough to slip up my sleeve.”
“Never seen them that small. I’ll have my toolmaker run ’em up for you. Where should I send them?”
“Los Angeles.”
* * *
