The Trainmasters (51 page)

Now it was time for Egan to go into action. He drew the pistol he was carrying and sprang forward.

“You!” he shouted at the stunned guards at the cellar entrance. The javelin bombs had only seconds before gone off, and the
two guards were only dimly aware that they were still among the living. “You! Move! Open the hatch!” Egan held a gun on the
men. As he was speaking, Ferdy moved in from the other side, holding a gun in each hand.

But the two guards refused
xo
move… not because they were brave or unwilling, but because their bodies refused to cooperate with the commands of their
brains.

“Oh shit!” Egan cried. “I’ll do it. You two get out of here. Go on,” he shouted after them as they started to run off. Then
he turned to his friend. “Watch them, Ferdy. Make sure they don’t come back.” Then he crouched down and fumbled with the bolt.

“What’s going on up there?” came a voice from within. Egan soon realized it was Graham’s voice.

“Hang on, Graham,” Egan called down.

“Egan!” cried a woman’s voice.

That must be
Deirdre
he thought.

With difficulty—he was too nervous and excited to work smoothly and efficiently—Egar. finally tore the bolt free and began
to pull at the door. As he pulled it open, he took a swift glance around to see what was going on. He was aware of confusion
and shouting all around him. And flames were beginning to thrust out of the windows of the house above him.

The faces he saw at the bottom of the stairs in the flickering light were haggard and shocked and frightened and overwhelmed
… and
happy !

“Egan!” The name was shouted by many voices at once.

And then came the sharp crack of a pistol firing.

Egan twisted around to see what was happening. He heard a soft, plaintive cry, and then his friend Ferdy crumpled to the ground.
A bullet from only a few feet away had torn a deep channel through the top of his skull.

“Oh, my God! Ferdy!” he cried out. “Ferdy! Jesus! Are you all right?”

But it was too late for Ferdy to answer.

Another voice now screamed, “Egan O’Rahilly!” The voice was unforgettable; it belonged to Tom Henneberry.

The voice was louder. “EGAN O’RAHILLY! GODDAMN YOU!”

Henneberry was standing there, no more than five feet from Egan. A gun was in his hand, the one he’d used to kill Ferdy. The
gun, a twin-barreled pistol, still held its second charge. And Henneberry was raising his arm, lifting the gun up, leveling
its barrels toward Egan.

Egan’s own gun, which he had stuffed back in his belt when he went to work on the door, was going to do Egan no good. He had
a knife sheathed at his side as well. And that was even more useless than the gun.

“That’s right, Egan,” Henneberry said, quieter now, certain of his victory, “there’s nothin’ you can do. Nothin’.”

From his place beside the powder wagon, John Carlysle observed with ever increasing pleasure the growing chaos that the bombs
had unleashed in the camp. Flames were shooting out of the upper windows of the big house, and men scurried away from it,
looking for something to do or someone to give them directions. But no one had wit enough yet to take charge. And so John
saw only confusion in the camp.

John also watched Egan make his run to the cellar entrance, and as soon as he saw Egan working on the door, he signaled the
second set of riders. They were to take to the cellar entrance the horses Egan, Ferdy, and the captives would use for their
escape from the camp.

Once those men were off, John turned his attention to the kegs of powder he had set up to roll down the slope.

There had been maybe twenty or thirty men camped between the wagons and the house. When the bombs had started to explode,
about half of these had run toward the front of the house, thinking that safety must lie in that direction. The rest had been
too stunned to move at all.

Now, two minutes later, John’s intention was to move them out of the way. He wanted to clear the slope between the powder
wagons and the house.

The fuses of the first two of his kegs had been cut short. He lit those fuses and gave the two kegs a shove. Then he dove
behind the nearest wagon in case the kegs went off before he’d planned.

Ten seconds later, there was another explosion. Quickly followed by another.When the dust and smoke had cleared, the area
down to the house was empty, save for two or three men who hadn’t had the presence of mind to move out of the way. One of
them was still moving. A bloody stump hung where his arm had been.

John then lit the next fuse. And kicked another keg down toward the house.

In the incredibly long fraction of a second it took Henneberry to raise his pistol up and take aim, Egan became aware that
Cahill, O’Rourke, and Toolan were bringing up the spare horses a few yards beyond Henneberry. And behind and beneath him,
Egan sensed movement on the cellar stairs.

“Egan! Oh, Egan!” It was Deirdre. She was coming up to help him.

And then an intense red-orange flash of light burst behind the house, and this was closely followed by a clap and peal of
thunder. And with the noise came a shock wave that shook the ground and twisted Henneberry’s aim.

He fired. But the bullet missed Egan. Instead it struck Deirdre in the throat. She was halfway out of the stairwell when it
hit her, but she fell back then, down on the others who were crowding after her.

“DEIRDRE!” Egan screamed, turning to watch her fall.

But then he remembered Henneberry. And as he recalled him, he drew his own pistol out of his belt.

Henneberry hadn’t moved since the explosion, but the hand that held the pistol was now limp against his side. His eyes were
wide with shock and his mouth was hanging open.

An instant later, the shock changed to pain, for Egan’s bullet drove into his belly. An instant after that, the pain turned
to anguish. But Egan did not observe that. He had bounded down the stairs to Deirdre’s side.

He hardly had a chance to get a look at the other prisoners. His attention was so riveted on Deirdre that the others had no
existence for him. He didn’t see that it was Teresa holding her in her arms. Or that Graham had come and taken hold of her…
with enormous difficulty, for one of his arms was in a sling. Or that Graham and Teresa together carried her to the top of
the stairs. Or that the children, silent, subdued, shaken, followed after them.

All he knew was that Deirdre was dying. That was clear now. Nothing could stop that. The wound had crushed her windpipe. And
her brain was deprived of oxygen.

But she was still partially conscious, and her eyes were open. Her lips quivered, formed a shape… They mouthed an
E
.

And then her eyes filmed. His face was the last thing she saw.

There was another flash and another thundering explosion. There may have been others, but Egan had been unaware of them. He
was too overwhelmed by his anguish and his grief.

“We have to go!” said a commanding voice. The speaker’s identity didn’t register.

“Egan, you have to leave.” That voice was Teresa’s, and it was insistent. “We have to break out of here!”

“You’re not going to leave her here!” he cried.

“No, of course not.” That speaker was Graham. “But we have to go.”

Hands took her away from him, lifted her onto one of the horses. Other hands lifted Ferdy up, too.

They did not intend to leave any dead behind.

There was another explosion.

And then, somehow, Egan was on his horse; and the band was moving out. No one in George Kean’s army made a move to stop them.
For no one in George Kean’s army had recovered enough to realize what was going on.

John Carlysle had sent the last keg rolling down the little hill. Next was his final task: the wagons themselves.

He lit first one fuse, then another. Then he raced for his own horse, swung himself up, and spurred the animal hard. He had
a minute and a half. The final and most magnificent explosion—so magnificent that the tale of it was still celebrated in the
Pennsylvania mountains a hundred years after it flamed against the sky—came less than ten minutes after the first sounds of
approaching horses reached the camp.

Fifteen minutes after their mad dash with the bombs, and ten minutes after the powder wagons blew up, Francis Stockton, Geraghty,
and Quigley were taking their bearings on the ridge overlooking the Keans’ camp. They were still mounted, however, in case
they were forced to make a quick move.

While the others relaxed, Francis observed through his field glasses the rebirth of activity amid the wreckage. Where the
powder wagons had been, there was now a wide, deep crater. But that wasn’t the largest effect of the great explosion. The
blast had also crushed the rear half of the big house. And all over the ground around the house, bodies of the dead, dying,
and wounded lay scattered. As of that moment, no one was doing anything about them.

But even so, purpose, order, and direction soon returned to the camp—much sooner than Francis expected after all the devastation
he and his friends had wrought. George and Matthew Kean (apparently unscathed) were already busy, herding the fit and the
clear-headed men into one place, giving them commands, setting tasks for them.

And now, at last, some of them began moving among the bodies, searching for those that could be saved. Others went to the
place where the horses were corraled. And in another few minutes, twenty-one horses were being made ready to ride.

That made Francis mighty curious, for he could only think of one reason for the Keans to do that.

Meanwhile another horseman rode up beside Francis. It was John Carlysle.

“You look intent, Francis,” John said, after Stockton had given him only the briefest of greetings.

“I am,” Francis said, pointing down. “See there. What do you make of that?”

John looked for a time at the gathering band of horsemen, then he turned to Francis. “They’re coming after us,” he said.

Francis shook his head. “It’s one more goddamned thing after another, isn’t it?”

“One more goddamned thing.” John agreed.

“So what do we do next?” Francis asked as Geraghty and Quigley drew their horses closer so that they could listen.

John thought a moment to himself. Then he thought out loud. “The most desirable move would be to slip off into the wilderness
and elude Kean’s people until we can work out something more permanent. Perhaps we should even slip out of the state entirely.”

Francis nodded. “I could vote for that,” he said.

“So could I,” said Geraghty. “We’re wasting time here.”

“But before we can do that,” John went on, “we have to consider the others in Egan’s party. The more I think about them, the
more I think we have to keep close to our original intention, at least until we meet them in Tyrone… and maybe afterward.”

According to the plan John had concocted with Egan and Francis, the entire band would regroup in Tyrone. There John would
order up a locomotive, tender, and passenger car that would carry them all to Philadelphia, where they’d be less exposed than
they’d be at Gallitzin in case the Keans planned to make reprisals.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t think Teresa or the children—or Graham and Egan, for that matter—are up to doing any strenuous activity like running
off into the wilderness. They’re going to have to take it easy.”

“So you’re still thinking of ordering up a train?”

“I think so,” he said, after a long pause. “The quicker we all get away from this place, the better off we’ll be. We need
time and distance. And we need to be able to call in the authorities before this business we’ve gotten into turns into a small-scale
war.”

“Do you really think that could happen?” Francis asked.

“Look at what we’ve already done,” John said.

“Jesus!” Francis said, suddenly taken aback by the growing magnitude of the events he was now inescapably part of.

“It’s hard to take in, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Francis answered. Then he straightened up a bit in his saddle. “So, then, maybe it’s time to get practical.”

“Fine.”

“How long will it take to order the train up?” Francis asked. “Those people down there won’t be hesitating. How long will
it take them to be in Tyrone?”

“Not long,” John admitted. He meditated a moment longer. “So,” he said, at first tentatively but with growing resolve, “we’ll
try this.” He paused for a long breath. “First, we’ve got to have a train fired up and ready in Tyrone by the time we arrive.
The equipment shouldn’t be a problem. There’ll be locomotives and cars in the yard there.” He paused for another breath. “So
I want to send one of the two here… make it Quigley… to set that up.” He gave a glance at Quigley.

“Right,” Quigley said.

“Meanwhile, I should join Egan.”

Francis nodded.

“And I’d like the train to have as much of a start on them as we can manage. So we’ll have to ride fast.”

Francis nodded again.

“You saved some of the bombs, didn’t you?”

“We have six left.”