Ironhorse

22

I stood up and swung the door open wider for Virgil to see what I saw. The back half of the train, from the first-class Pullman car to the caboose, had been disconnected and, along with the governor and his wife, was rapidly drifting away from us.

“Good goddamn,” Virgil said.

Lightning cracked across the dark sky, and we could see the Pullman. It was at least one hundred feet behind us now. I could see someone. It looked like Vince, but I was not sure. He was getting up off the platform from closing the angle cock air valve on the coach brakes.

“They closed the air valve on the brakes,” I said. “We’re not slowing. They obviously closed us off first.”

I got on my knees to open the valve.

“What are you saying, Everett?” Virgil asked.

I reached for the valve and it wasn’t there.

“Got no lever,” I said. “The son of a bitch!”

I stood up and looked back. The cars were no longer visible. They had vanished as we continued forward.

“He closes that valve, Virgil, he overrides the automatic safety brakes. Without a lever, our valve stays closed and it does the same damn thing, overrides the brakes and we keep going. They keep going south, we keep going north.”

Virgil shook his head slowly, and the rain swirled up around us as we powered ahead.

“We’ve been traveling on an uphill grade ever since we crossed the river leaving Texas,” I said. “By them bypassing the safety brakes, they will roll freely downhill. Using the handbrakes to control their speed as they go.”

“So the air brakes,” Virgil said, “work disconnected from the engine?”

“According to George Westinghouse, they do.”

“George Westinghouse?”

“The fellow who invented the air brake.”

Virgil just shook his head, looking south into the dark night.

“The air line runs from the engine all the way back,” I said. “If that line loses pressure, the brakes close automatically on any coach that is disconnected, and that coach—”

“—stops by itself,” Virgil said.

“Yep, that’s right,” I said.

“Next thing you know they’ll be putting wings on these damn things and we’ll be flying around like birds.”

“Well, there’s one thing for certain those robbers will be thinking, Virgil.”

“The farther away from us, the better for them,” Virgil said.

“Yep, they are going to roll back as far as they can go,” I said.

“You think they planned this somehow?” Virgil said.

“Hard to figure,” I said. “Must have. Might have been a backup plan. Seems likely, more than likely, one or some of them are train hands, know what they’re doing.”

Virgil shook his head.

“What do you figure we do?” I said.

“We get up to the engineer. Get this train that’s rolling forward to get going backward,” Virgil said. “En este momento.”