The Trainmasters (40 page)

“I don’t want bloodshed.”

“You already got bloodshed, you stupid shit,” Henneberry said, pointing to his wounds.

“Then think on this,” John said. “Think on the fact that there are over five hundred of them… and twenty-five of us.”

“But,” Collins said, “they’re running already. If we’d shot at ‘em when I wanted us to, we’d have had ‘em all runnin’ for
the next county.”

“And what about the railroad?” John said. “Who’d build it after they were all gone?”

“Why are you thinking about that now?” Henneberry asked.

John just gave him a look. Then he turned to see what had happened to the workers.

Most of them were under cover or out of range. The ones with firearms had placed themselves in position to shoot if they had
to.

“Oh, shit!” said Tom Henneberry when he saw that.

The other bodyguards looked green rather than courageous. And most of them were looking with longing toward the safety of
the hills to the east.

“Get inside the building,” Collins ordered, taking charge before they put their fears into action.

“That mob sure as hell scattered fast,” Henneberry said. “Do you think Egan O’Rahilly planned that?”

“Why’d he want to do that?” Collins asked.

“Come on! Move!” John said, opening the door. “Get inside. Those men with guns out there look ready to use them.”

And then, to his relief, the twenty-five others all obediently trooped inside the building.

Once inside Collins and Henneberry and John took a quick council and decided to put men at the windows all around the building,
just to be on the safe side. Just in case the mob out there decided to attack.

Let them start getting frightened about that, John thought. Let the fear build
.

When the men were stationed, Collins, Henneberry, and John held another council in the big dining room in the front of the
building.

Collins was staring speculatively out of one of the windows, looking across the open space at some of the positions of those
arrayed against him.

John was betting that Collins would run when faced with the choice of doing that or getting killed. But he knew Collins would
need time to meditate on that choice. So Collins must not be allowed to try anything right away.

“So what do you think will happen?” John asked.

“Don’t know,” Collins said.

“Nobody’s doin’ anythin’ out there,” Henneberry said.

“If they wanted to take us,” Collins said, “they’d have tried to storm us already.”

“I don’t get it,” Henneberry said.

“I don’t either,” Collins said. “I can’t understand what they are doing.”

“So what choices do we have?” John asked. “There are too few of us to start a fight.”

“We could try to force a way out,” Collins said, clearly not happy at that prospect.

“Or we could wait for them to show their intention,” John said.

“I don’t like that,” Collins said. “Don’t like giving them any initiative.”

“What kind of initiative have twenty-five of us got against over five hundred of them?” John said, with a trace of fright
in his voice. “I’m not sure I want to die for the railroad.”

“You won’t,” Collins said, automatically. “You can bet on that.”

“I’d like to be able to collect,” John said.

The other two looked at him and shrugged. And then there was silence among them while Collins made up his mind about what
he wanted to do.

“All right then,” Collins said, coming to a decision at last, “let’s wait them out.”

And so they waited in the hot and airless dining room. Without talking.

After a few minutes of this quiet, they heard a loud crack. All three jumped up, startled. But then they realized what it
was. It was the back door of the building slamming.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph!” Collins said. And they rushed to the rear of the building.

Five of their bodyguards were walking fast toward the buildings at the tunnel shaft with their hands raised above their heads.

“Goddamn!” Collins said. And then he shouted back up into the building. “All the rest of you here, listen to me. Anybody else
that leaves here is gonna get a bullet in the back! You all understand that?”

There came the sounds of voices from elsewhere in the building. But John couldn’t make out what the voices were saying.

And from the front of the building came the noise of men running out through the door and onto the porch. By the time Collins,
Henneberry, and John returned there, they were too late to do anything but watch helplessly as seven other bodyguards, also
with hands raised, ran for safety.

“Is every one of your men going to run out on us!” John screamed at Collins at the top of his voice, as panic stricken as
he could manage. Loud enough, he hoped, for everyone else in the building to hear.

But Collins only stared at him, apprehensive now. For the first time he was fearful of losing control of this situation.

But he was not yet in anything like panic.

“Henneberry,” he ordered, calmly, “go to the back. Watch to make sure no one else runs. Shoot anyone that tries. If we keep
together, it’s all gonna work out. We just have to wait them out. They don’t have anything up their sleeve. They’re just waitin’
on us. If they knew what they were doin’, they’d have done it.”

“So we just keep waiting?” John asked.

“That’s right. We do that.”

“What you gonna do when all your men are gone for good?” Henneberry asked. “Are we gonna stop five hundred men with just the
three of us?”

“Ten men won’t do that either,” Collins said reasonably. “Or twenty-five, or fifty. What we do have is brains. And we know
who’s in charge here. And that’s what they don’t have. So we wait.”

And then there was a shout from outside.

Walking toward them from the direction of the stables, where he must have made his headquarters, came Egan O’Rahilly, alone,
carrying a white flag.

“Do you think he is giving up?” John asked, smiling to himself.

“Not goddamn likely,” Collins said.

When Egan was about five yards from the porch he stopped and waited.

Collins went to the door but kept out of sight and undercover. “What do you want?” he called out, despising Egan more than
ever.

“It’s time to talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?” Collins asked. “You want to talk about when you’re going to get out of this place?”

Egan laughed.

“That’s the only thing on my mind to talk about,” Collins went on.

“Aren’t you frightened some?” Egan asked. “Just a tiny bit? Seeing that you are surrounded by armed men that hate you enough
to want you dead?”

“I don’t know about that,” Collins said.

“About whether you are surrounded? Or about whether they want you dead?”

Collins didn’t answer that.

“What’s goin’ on up there?” Henneberry hollered out from the rear.

“Keep your shirt on,” Collins yelled back. “And stay where you are and do what I asked you to do.”

“I’ve got an offer to make to you,” Egan called. “But you’ll have to come out here and talk.”

“I should go out and talk to O’Rahilly,” John said to Collins when his attention returned to Egan out in front.

“You?”

“I represent the railroad. I think I should go out and see what he has to say.”

Collins thought about that for a moment. “All right,” he said at last. He didn’t want to do it himself.

John then buttoned the top of his shirt and straightened his tie. Next he retrieved his hat, which he had laid aside when
he and the others had come into the building. He wiped the sweat from his face and forehead with his handkerchief. Then he
marched out of the building onto the porch. And stopped.

“I’m going to talk with you, O’Rahilly,” he said.

“Why not, you English fruit?” Egan said. “Come on down. See if the sun wilts you.”

The sun was blazing hot. But John tried to look cool and unruffled as he proceeded into the open space where Egan waited.

“All right then, O’Rahilly,” he said in a loud, clear, imperious voice that everyone could hear, “what’s on your mind?” Then,
under his breath, “You’ve done a grand job, Egan. I’m astonished.”

“All right, listen to our offer.” And under his breath he added, “Thanks, Mr. Carlysle. It was scary, but satisfying. Nobody’s
dead. Nobody’s hurt. And nothing’s damaged. I’d have never thought anything like this could happen… considering. And… you’ve
got a lot of backbone yourself, Mr. English Carlysle.” There was just the hint of a warm smile on his face, though not enough
of a smile for anyone but John to see.

“We’re not out of this yet,” John said, with a slight nod. “But I’m starting to get hopeful.”

“What about Collins?” Egan asked.

“He’s near breaking, I think.”

“So you’ll tell him the offer?”

“Yes. And I think he will reject it. But I think the fire will do the job.”

“He doesn’t want to burn.”

“Neither do I.”

“I’ll do my best to see that you don’t burn,” Egan said with a grin.

“Thanks.”

“But you must be burning already, dressed in that armor.”

“I had to dress the part, you know that.”

And Egan gave him another smile. “All right, Carlysle,” he said in a loud voice. “Go tell your master what we want. Like a
good hound. Bring him his bone.”

John retraced his steps to the building.

Once inside, he tore his hat and tie off and loosened his shirt buttons. “Damned hot out there,” he said to Collins, almost
in apology for breaking the uniform code.

“You’re mad to be in that getup in the first place,” Collins said. Then he added quickly, “So what did he have to say?”

“They want all of us out of here. They promised us all our lives. They said they’d even give you a horse.”

“That’s nothin’ but what he’s been saying all along… with a couple of sweeteners.” Collins’s words were negative, but his
face showed he was looking at the idea now with favor.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Let’s wait a little longer.”

“Why? That man O’Rahilly means business.”

“Wait. I’ve told you more than once before that I know these men pretty damn good. They’ll lose interest in us… and start
thinkin’ about what happens next if they do some-thin’ to us.”

“
What
happens next?”

“The army gets after them and strings up the whole lot of ‘em.”

“But what about us—if they kill us?” John said, with a hint of a whine.

“Don’t you worry. I know what I’m doing.”

“I have to tell him something. O’Rahilly’s waiting out there for an answer.”

“Let him cook.”

But Egan did not wait and cook. He returned to the stable. And a few minutes later, several men came out of it. They were
pushing a large wagon piled high with hay.

Another man came out bearing a burning torch. The wagon moved toward the administration building.

“What now?” John asked Collins anxiously. He was only acting a little.

Collins gave him a look. There was very little of his usual confidence remaining in that look. “We could shoot the man with
the torch,” Collins said, uncertainly.

“And how long would that keep them from doing what they have in mind?”

“So what do
you
have in mind?”

“Tom Collins,” John said, “1 think it’s time to give in.”

“Henneberry,” Collins called. “Tom Henneberry!”

There was no answer.

“Where the hell are you, Henneberry? Jesus!”

“He’s left.”

“There are some others,” Collins said. He called out to them, ordering everyone else in the building to assemble.

He got no answers. They’d all left. Slipped away. Deserted.

The wagon came closer.

“There’s only us now,” John said.

“All right then,” Collins said, sweating—and not from the heat. “What should I do?”

“Get out of here and don’t come back. They say they’ll let you off with your life. I believe them.”

“And you?”

“I’ll go to Philadelphia. I’ll be all right. Edgar Thomson will think of something for me.”

Collins stared out of the window at the approaching wagon. The man with the torch was beginning to set the hay on fire.

“You’re alive, man,” John went on. “But I wouldn’t presume on that for long. If O’Rahilly’s any indication of the mood of
all of them, they want your scalp… and your balls … and your heart. I’d get out fast.”

“You really think so?” Collins was truly shaken.

“Run!” John said the word softly but with passionate intensity.

“Yes,” Collins said. “I’ll do that.”

When John Carlysle arrived in Philadelphia earlyon Monday morning, he found Edgar Thomson’s offices booming, buzzing hive
of activity. Men were rushing frantically about, shouting, moving papers from one desk to another.

All the excitement reminded John of the first time he had met Thomson in his railroad car. And John wondered if he was fated
to come in upon his superior at moments of crisis.

When John entered the chief engineer’s private office, Thomson seemed no less excited than the rest of his staff, though he
had not lost his legendary control and self-possession. Unlike everyone else, he was not agitated but rather intensely focused,
unassailably concentrated, possessed of a passionate singularity of purpose.