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The laws of physics ruled how to distribute weight The laws of physics said he could not carry the crosstie another foot He drove thatht, airy motion of a sword “Attack,” he said aloud “Beat Lun
ge Parry Riposte Feint Double feint” On he plodded, the weight pounding his bones to jelly Attack Beat Lunge Parry Ger tere of Heidelberg when he learned to kill “Angriff Battutaangriff Ausfall, Parade Doppelfinte” He iriff Beat: Battutaangriff Lunge: Ausfall Parry: Parade Double feint: Doppelfinte Sorew shrill Now he heard it right behind hiht of the crosstie nearly spinning hiht blazed on the tracks It was a police patrol pu on an almost silent handcar
A sheer rock wall pressed against the right-of-way on his left To his right, the mountain dropped sharply He sensed more than saw a steep drop The feathery tops of s the dark indicated it could be as much as twenty feet down He had no choice The handcar was ale and jumped after it
He heard the tie hit a tree and snap the trunk Then he s the wind out of him
The hu down To his horror, they stopped He could hearfifteen feet above his head and saw beahts and lanterns They dis on the ballast as they strode the rail bed, shining their lights A man shouted Abruptly as they had appeared, they left The handcar creaked intohim fifteen feet down the steep embankment in the dark
Moving cautiously, hunched over on the slope, digging his boots in, he felt in the dark for the crosstie He smelled pine pitch and traced the odor to the broken tree Several feet down, he bumped into the square end of the tie He felt for his tools Still tied on He looked up the slope The rim of the rail bed towered above him
Hoould he cli the tie?
He tipped it on one end, worked his shoulder under it, and struggled to stand
EveryThis was the real test: to climb back up the embankment It was only twenty feet, but each foot could have been aand the distance he had come and the steepness of the embankment seemed insurmountable
As his strength failed, he saw his drea before his eyes He slipped and fell, then struggled to his feet again If only he had killed Isaac Bell He began to realize that he was battling Bell more than the tie, more than the cutoff, more than the Southern Pacific
The nightth to rise Inch by inch, foot by foot Attack: Angriff Beat: Battutaangriff Lunge: Ausfall Parry: Parade Double feint: Doppelfinte Twice he fell Twice he got up He reached to the top and staggered on If he lived to be ninety, he would never forget that gut-wrenching climb
The pounding of his heart was growing louder and louder, so loud that he eventually realized it couldn’t be his heart A locomotive? He stopped dead in the middle of the tracks, stunned and dis flickered He was hearing the ruan to fall He had lost his hat Rainwater streamed down his face
The Wrecker laughed
The rain would drench the patrols, chase thehed deliriously Rain instead of snow The rivers were rising, but the tracks would not blocked by snow Osgood Hennessyan early winter The railroad president had given up on the ists and had actually paid an Indian medicine man to predict the weather, and he told Hennessy that the snoould come late this year Rain instead of snow meant more time to complete the cutoff
The Wrecker steadied the tie on his shoulder, and spoke aloud