After we got two or three things straightened out, like a shed for the horses, and her riding over to Mouton and paying him some rent under the name of Davis, and a book started, to write down all those things we needed but would forget if we didn’t make a note of them, I went over and got started on my main job for the next two weeks. I mean I got myself hired on, firing the George F. Bragg, which was the freight engine of the Sacramento Valley Railroad. Because the one thing I had to know before anything else was how to handle a locomotive, and it wasn’t something you could pick up by peeping through a spy glass while the cars went down Front Street. I had to be able to do whatever I had to do, and it was tough the way I had to learn it. The engineer was Cap Nixon, and he thought he was the onriest, crustiest article, next to a gator man, that had been seen up to then, and he was crazy on the subject of the goddam firemen being no good. So for the first few days I rolled the sweat and he cussed me out. And then he decided I was an exception, a young fellow that really wanted to learn, and began teaching me. He didn’t only show me every gauge and petcock and reverse bar in his cab, but he gave me all the fine points on how to make the run to Folsom, how to slow down for the curves and twists, how to pick up time on the straight stretches, and all the rest of it. It bothered me, at Folsom, when we’d pull away for the transfer to the Sacramento, Placer & Nevada, for the run up to Auburn, because they made kind of a railroad man’s convention out of it, with everybody on both lines cussing each other out one minute and passing the time of day the next. I didn’t want to get acquainted, because the more of them that knew me, the worse it was for what I was up to. I might have to throw down on men that knew me, no matter how many bandannas I wore. So when the shifting would go on, I’d take that time to shine up the Bragg, and get her brass nice and bright, and bring out her colors. So of course Cap he loved that. He began spreading it around that at last he had a fireman, and by God he was going to make an engineman out of him, too.
“I heard something today, Roger. About Caskie.”
“Yes, what was it?”
“He has a girl. In San Francisco.”
“Ah, that’s important!”
“I thought so. Because it looks like, whenever he goes down, he’d lay over at least one night, the way he did last time, instead of coming hack the same day he got there.”
“That’s it.”
“It makes everything much simpler.”
“Where’d you hear this?”
“From a girl I used to know in New Orleans. I ran into her when I went down to buy clothes that time. It was before Biloxi caught me with the wire, and I was telling her — a whole lot of things. And I happened to mention Red. Last time he was down, she met him, and this blonde he’s got. Between what he told her and what I did, she decided to try her luck in Nevada.”
“Now we can really line things up.”
While I was firing the Bragg, it seemed like the first of the month would never come, and then all of a sudden it was here, and it seemed there wasn’t enough time in the day for all we had to do. At last I had sat down with a pencil and paper and figured up the load on my horses. My horse, with me, my saddle, and my pack, would be carrying 225 pounds, at least. I figured the gold at 100 pounds, so her horse, with her saddle and the metal split into two saddle bags, and her pack, would be carrying 225 and over, well over, close to 240. That meant, if we were going to make any time at all, we had to have another horse for feed, rations, and all the other stuff we had to take with us. So with my railroad wages I bought one, with pack saddle. Then, the more I worked it out, the clearer I saw it: however we split it up while we were traveling, she would have to be the one to handle the horses at the time we were doing the job. So all day long I’d make her saddle them, unsaddle them, stake them out, saddle up again, strip them again, get so she could do it in her sleep, and do it quick. Then another thing began to bother me. It was all right, the idea to split the train, and steal that baggage car with the gold and Caskie in it, and leave the coaches behind. But those coaches could roll. They could roll, and as soon as the brakeman, conductor, and passengers found out what had happened, they’d be out on that platform, and how could I tell how soon they’d slacken speed? Half the hombres in California carried guns, and that meant they’d be shooting at her forever before she got far enough ahead to be safe. There was only one thing that would leave us safe. That string of coaches had to be derailed. But how to do it was something I couldn’t figure out, and I figured plenty. But at last, just after I quit the fireman job, I had it, or thought I had. I went to the Hopkins store on K Street and bought me a two-foot length of one-inch quarry steel, the eight-sided stuff they use to block-hole with before they put in powder. When I got it home I rigged up a little forge with two bricks and a charcoal fire, and all one Sunday I pounded on it, putting a point on one end and a bulge on the other, what they call upsetting it. Then I laid a broomstick on the ground for the rail, and made her stand on the back stoop and pitch for it. I got it through her head she didn’t have to be accurate, didn’t have to be good. Anywhere inside the rail was all right, so that steel bar fell across it and laid there half a second till the car wheel hit it. Then I figured something had to bust. She was the one that thought up the idea of carrying it in a basket over her arm.
“Roger, he’s here.”
“Is he aboard his boat for San Francisco?”
“Yes, the Chrysopolis.”
Two more days, and we were ready now, and all we could do was lie there and smoke these cigarrillos of hers, that I’d got in the habit of in the last few weeks, and hold each other close, and sometimes tremble a little. “Morina.”
“Yes, Roger?”
“I tell you one thing. If we get away with this, I’m going in the Confederate Army, and so are you. That’s one way we can prove we mean what we say we mean.”
“What can I do in the army?”
“Whatever they’ve got.”
“How about our mine?”
“It’ll have to wait.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Then all right.”
The train ran out R Street, but didn’t pick up speed until it passed Seventeenth. She was to buy her ticket early, in the station at the foot of K Street, and keep out of sight until his boat was in and he was aboard the baggage car, which was the first car back of the engine, with the gold. Then she was to keep the station between herself and him, and board the front coach, by the rear end. Then she was to walk through it to a seat up front. She had on her same little traveling dress, with poke bonnet, but in the bonnet she had sewed a ruff, so it was hard to see her face. If anything went wrong, like he didn’t come after all, she was to go to the front platform at Thirteenth Street, take a sandwich out of the basket, unwrap the newspaper around it and throw that off the train, and eat the sandwich. Then she was to ride to Folsom and come back. But I, where I was posted at Seventeenth, would see the paper and keep off, and next day we’d start over.
But here came the train, coasting along easy with the bell ringing, and no newspaper. I looked around, and nobody was in sight. I stepped out from the Chinese laundry on the corner and walked over to the track. Neither the fireman nor the engineer could see me. The engineer hangs out of his cab on the right, where all his signals are, and the fireman doesn’t look anywhere but at his woodpile, as I knew better than anybody else. The locomotive was the Sacramento, and when it came even with me I turned and started to trot beside it up the track. I wasn’t so spry with it as I’d been when I practiced it on the George F. Bragg when Cap Nixon wasn’t looking, as I’d taken the horses up the day before, and had to foot it back, thirteen miles of it, early in the morning. But I had speed enough, and as she pulled ahead and the tender was going by I sprinted a few feet, caught the handhold with my left hand, and the rear tender step with my right foot. That was the hardest thing I had had to learn, I guess, to reverse the natural right-handed, left-footed grab when you’re boarding the left side of the train. But I had it down pat by now, and slammed up against the iron exactly right. I held on a few seconds to get steady, then leaned over to see if I could hear anything in the baggage car. In the compartment next the engine was the Wells, Fargo stuff, in the middle was United States mail, and on the other end was baggage. The partitions had doors in them, but they bolted on the side of the mail, and they stayed bolted, if the mail clerk did what he was supposed to do. In Wells, Fargo, if anybody was riding with the messenger, they generally played cards, and that meant they wouldn’t be noticing much up front, because they’d be below the level of the little window high up in the end door. I heard somebody count high, low, jack, and game, so that part was like I figured on.