“Yes,” was the answer. Lawson was beginning to think that was a terrible word.
“So then, why—”
“Walk with me back to the cab. Go on, quickly.”
Lawson waited for Gantt to go first.
As they left the front of the engine some small object came flying from the darkness with tremendous speed and shattered the glass of the headlamp. Its force was enough to take it into the fuel well. Burning whale-oil spewed out and drooled down in tendrils of blue flame upon the cowcatcher.
With that, the lamp flickered…flickered…and went dark.
“My light!” Tabbers shouted as he leaned down from the cab. “Jumpin’ Jaysus! What happened to my light?”
Lawson ignored him. There were worse things to contend with than a sightless eye. “Do you have guns?”
“What?”
“Guns. Firearms. Anything. Do you have them?”
“We…got two rifles. Why?”
“Loaded?”
“No, but—”
“Load them,” said the vampire. “Now.”
Six.
“You can’t be tellin’ me what to do, fella!” Tabbers fired back. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the man trying to keep you and everyone else here alive tonight. When you get your rifles loaded, come back to the passenger car. Keep your heads on swivels and move fast.” Lawson told Gantt, “Come with me,” and the conductor did not hesitate.
Back in the passenger car and the welcome yellow light of the oil lamps, the first voice upraised belonged to Johnny Rebinaux. “Why we stopped, bossman? Bandits or Injuns?”
“What’s going on, Lawson?” Mathias dared asked.
Reverend Easterly had returned to his seat and silently watched as Lawson walked along the aisle to check on Blue. “She was making a whimpering sound a minute ago,” Ann told him. “Tried to get her hands on the wound, but I kept them down. She’s out again, it looks like.” Ann’s fierce black eyes asked the question first, then her voice, speaking quietly: “They’re here?”
That word again. “Yes.”
“Trevor, how did they find us?”
“They tracked us, in their way. Maybe they had a human spy watching us. Could be it’s like some telegraph system that ordinary humans can’t fathom. And I can’t fathom it either…not yet.”
“Is something wrong with the engine, Mr. Lawson?” Eric asked.
“Nothin’ wrong with that,” said Gantt, who hung his lantern up on a nail for the moment. The stricken expression on Gantt’s face told Lawson the conductor still didn’t know what to make of the headlamp being broken out. “The rail’s blocked. There’s been a rockslide.”
“Ha!” Rebinaux’s ugly grin widened. “Deuce, listen to me! We can get out of this, if we’ve a mind to! Keene, you up for it?”
“For what?” Presco asked. He had his face pressed against a window’s glass trying to see past the coal tender and engine, but the snow and the night made it impossible. “Gettin’ shot dead right here or froze to death out in that weather? We ain’t got a baby’s chance in Hell!”
“A baby wouldn’t be in Hell, ya jackass!” Rebinaux snarled. “A baby’s born without sin, so why’s a baby gonna be in Hell? Yeah, I always figured there was some yellow on that belly!”
Presco’s fuse had finally been lit. He stood up and lumbered like an angry bear into the aisle. “Fine talk you’re doin’, Johnny!” he shouted in a voice that sounded like a room full of saws working rusted metal. “And you with one hand! You can’t do nothin’!”
“I can kick you where you used to have balls!” Rebinaux hollered back, but he made no move to give action to that threat.
“Settle down!” Lawson took a few paces forward to get between them if he needed to, but he quickly saw that Rebinaux’s courage was in trying to get others to risk their skins for him. “Take it easy, Presco. Nobody’s going anywhere right now.”
“A baby in Hell!” Rebinaux wasn’t done needling his ex-partner. “That’s just plain dumb!” He snorted as if to get the smell of disgust out of his nostrils.
“Lawson, what did you mean out there?” Gantt came forward along the aisle. “About not comin’ back? You think you know somethin’ we don’t?”
What to tell them? the vampire asked himself. He was thirsty, his nerves on edge, the ichor sluggish in his body. In his bag there were two more bottles of cattle blood, but those were poor substitutes for the rich feast that flowed in a human’s veins. His last taste of that had been nearly two months ago, from the throat of a derelict in a tarpaper shack on the banks of the Mississippi. He had left the man alive, but barely. Still…without human blood for more than three months he became a true shade between vampire and man, a scrabbling wretch desperate to feed and gnawed by the knowledge that each feeding from humans took him closer to the edge of the abyss.
They were waiting for him to speak. What to tell them?
There was the sound of boots on the car’s front platform. The door opened and from the snow and wind came the black fireman called Rooster. He was likely twenty-four or so, of medium-height and slim build except for a broad back and a formidable set of shoulders. He had a high-cheekboned face with a small, neatly-trimmed goatee and deep-set, cautious eyes. He was wearing a gray woolen coat, a black cap and black gloves and he carried a Winchester rifle.
“Mr. Tabberson didn’t come back,” Rooster said, as the snow blew around him from the open door. He realized he was letting winter destroy the warmth of the car, so he closed the door behind him. “Mr. Tabberson,” he repeated, as snow melted on his shoulders and the brim of his cap. “He went out to them rocks to see. I called him, but he didn’t give an answer.”
“Why didn’t you go help him?” Gantt demanded. “Tabbers maybe fell down, hurt himself.”
“I was gonna, but…this fella said to come here after we loaded the rifles. I said, ‘Come on, Mr. Tabberson’, but he was like… ‘Ain’t nobody bossin’ me on my own train’. So he told me to stay there in the cab, and he took a lamp. I said he shouldn’t oughta go, ’cause what had happened to that headlight? He said the tin box must’ve heated up too fast and the cold broke the glass, and then he went on. After awhile I called him. I used the speakin’ trumpet, so he could hear over that wind, but he didn’t come back. I was hopin’…a couple of you fellas, and me…we’ll go see if he’s all right.”
“He’s not,” said Lawson.
“Sir?”
“Did he take a rifle?”
“He did.”
“Did you hear any shots?”
“No sir…all that wind…but…” Rooster frowned. “What would he be shootin’ at out there?”
“I don’t care what you say, Lawson.” Gantt lifted the lantern off its nail. “I’m goin’ out there to help him, if he needs it. And he must, ’cause Tabbers is a tough piece a’ leather.”
“What’s this about the headlight?” Eric asked. “It broke?”
“Happens sometimes. Ain’t nothin’.”
“You know it didn’t shatter on its own,” said Lawson. “That wasn’t just to put out the light. It was a message.”
“Do tell!”
“They’re telling us they’re in control.”
“They? Who? Indians? The Sioux have cleared out around here! They’ve—”
“You’ll wish they were only Indians on the warpath.”
“Who, then?”
Again…what to tell them? How to make them understand? Lawson realized that whatever he told them, they were going to think him utterly insane. He looked to Ann for help, but she shook her head because at the moment she knew they’d never believe either of them.