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“Wire Dunsmuir!” said Bell He had posted Van Dorn operatives at that railroad center He would order them to commandeer a locomotive north to tell Archie to arrest the Wrecker

The telegrapher tried, with no success “Dead to Dunsmuir”

“Wire Redding” Texas Walt Hatfield atching Redding

“Sorry, Mr Bell It appears all lines are dead from here in Sacramento north”

“Find a way around it”

Bell knew that raph lines connected Sacramento to the rest of the country Coe towns and cities The second syste train orders

“I’ll get right on it”

With Bell at his shoulder, the telegrapher polled train-order stations in the region, trying to gauge the extent of the system’s failure

The anxious dispatcher hovered, explaining, “North of Weed, Western Union lines follow the old Siskiyou route to Portland The new Cascades Cutoff has only the railroad wires”

“They’ve been deluged by rain,” said the telegrapher, still waiting for responses “Ground gets soft, poles fall”

Bell paced the floor

All wires down?

Not due to weather, he was certain

This was the Wrecker’s work Kincaid was taking no chances that Bell would figure out who he was He had isolated the Cascades Cutoff railhead for a final assault on the bridge to bring the cutoff to a standstill and bankrupt the Southern Pacific He would attack the reinforcement effort while the piers were still vulnerable

“Avalanches of ”