He stared down at what was happening around the lodged tree. The other men had beaten the fire out - the pine was smoldering now, a charred black hulk - and they were struggling, without much success so far, to move the upper end of it. Some were kicking or tugging with shirt-wrapped hands at the boughs, trying to strip them off to lighten the tree's weight. Honeycutt had moved in among them, and as Denbow watched, most of the men quit working at the news of what was in the opened boxcar. He could hear their voices raised in sudden alarm. But Honeycutt held them there by force of his iron will, got all but four of them back to work within seconds. Those four he brought on the run to the open car.

  Denbow joined them, saw in their faces what must be reflected in his own. None of them said anything; there was nothing to say. Kimbrough and Ashmead had emptied two of the crates, laid the rifles in the doorway, and were now climbing through the car hunting explosives. Denbow and Honeycutt loaded half a dozen Winchesters into the arms of each of the other four men for transport down-track; and the carriers came back for more until there were no rifles left.

  Kimbrough and Ashmead jumped down. "No powder in there," Kimbrough said. "Can't tell about dynamite without opening every goddamn box." He went to the second boxcar, helped Ashmead break the seal.

  Denbow stumped over close by. He knew what they were going to find inside, so there was no surprise when Ashmead confirmed it less than a minute after the two of them clambered up. There were at least a dozen kegs in there, each of them marked nails and the one Ashmead pried open full of black powder. And they were all wedged at the back of the car, behind a pair of large crates and one massive box the size of a small wagon, so that there was no way to get them out without unloading the whole car.

  In frustration, Ashmead used his hammer to rip up the boards on one of the big crates.

  Then he stepped back with a look of astonished fury on his sweating face. "God Almighty," he said. "A Gatling gun."

  Kimbrough looked for himself. "What in hell's in that big box? A howitzer?"

  Denbow listened in disbelief. There seemed to be enough firepower here to start a small war. Austin Trace was a strange, secretive man and nobody liked him much, but something like this? Rifles, explosives, Gatling guns, howitzers… it plain unsettled a man's mind.

  And where was Trace, anyhow? Denbow couldn't recall seeing him in Big Tree tonight, didn't think he was on the train. Explosion or the fire must have gotten him-

  Honeycutt was there again. He listened without expression to what Kimbrough and Ashmead had to tell him, then said between his teeth, "Get those cars closed up; won't be long until we're ready. And keep your mouths shut when you go back inside the coaches. I don't want the women and kids to know about this."

  He prodded Denbow back toward the cab. "Will, you go up and load the firebox. I'm goin' to oil up again."

  "On my way."

  As Honeycutt hurried ahead to the Baldwin, Denbow noticed the other stranger, the heavyset, bearded one, come stumbling out of the first coach. But he didn't pay much attention. The smoke was thickening along the rails behind the train, thickening everywhere; it started him coughing again. The fire wind blew hot against his cheeks, made them feel feverish.

  He limped to the cab. Ahead, the rest of the men were lined up along the tree, working frantically with the Winchester rifles, digging muzzles and stocks down into the dirt between the ties. They'd managed to lever part of the bole up onto one of the rails. In the glare of the headlight their naked backs gleamed with sweat as they strained against the deadweight. Another five minutes, maybe, before they were able to move it far enough for the Baldwin to shove it clear.

  Five minutes. And another five for everybody to get back into the coaches and the train to start moving again…

  Denbow climbed up through the gangway. The stump of his right leg was paining him again - sharp, biting pulses. He took chunks from what was left of the stacks of cordwood in the tender, brought them over to the firebox. He could hear the men grunting around the pine, one of them shouting, "Heave! Heave!"

  He pedaled open the butterfly doors, flung the armload of wood inside. The ballast was mostly ash now, but it still glowed bright red and gave off searing heat against his face. Inside the box, all around them… like glimpses of hell.

  More wood, more wood. And all the while he tried not to think about the approaching wildfire and the heat building around what was in those boxcars.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Patch stood against the second boxcar like a man crucified - back flattened to the wood siding, arms straight out from his body - and watched the fire coming for him.

  His father was screaming again, dying again, and he wanted to scream himself but he had no voice. The terror kept him standing there now, as it had brought him lunging from the coach a minute ago. He'd come to awareness again with his head hurting and blood all over his face and hands, and Rudabaugh was gone, all the men were gone, and the train had stopped moving… they had stopped moving … and the flames were still close, still reaching for him. He'd lurched to his feet and out of the car. Then the heat and smoke had driven him back against the boxcar.

  Why weren't they moving? He had to make them move, get away from here before it was too late.

  His legs carried him sideways along the car to where it was hooked onto the second boxcar. He backed in against the coupler between the cars, crawled up over it, and swung himself around to the opposite side. But the fire was over there, too; it was everywhere; it was trying to surround him. He looked desperately to the front of the train, saw that somebody was down on one knee beside the locomotive, that men farther on were doing something with what looked like a charred tree.

  He ran that way. The kneeling man heard him coming, stood up as he neared, and called something to him. But Patch couldn't hear it for the noise of the fire and the screaming of his father. He stumbled past the man by a couple of steps, stopped and stared at the others working around the tree. Moving it off the tracks… it was blocking the tracks. That was why the train had stopped. Then he realized dully what it was they were using to move the tree. Rifles. Winchester rifles. But that didn't seem right, why would they all be-

  A hand caught his shoulder, spun him, and he was looking at the man who'd been kneeling. An old man with a soot-blackened face that looked charred like the tree, like his father that night in the barnyard. Burned-up dead face shining in the awful smoky light of the fire.

  Help me, help me!

  Patch shook his head until the screaming faded. The old man was saying, "… the hell have you been, mister? Why aren't you down there helpin'?" But Patch didn't listen to that; he was trying to make words of his own come out.

  "Tell them… hurry up!" he managed finally. "Fire's comin'… we got to get out of here!"

  The old man scowled. "Pull yourself together, man."

  Patch said, "Goddamn you, make them hurry!" and clutched at the old man's shirt. But the old man was strong and shoved him away angrily, with enough force to stagger him. Patch caught himself and started for him. Halted when the old man raised a big oilcan he was holding in one hand, waved it like a club.

  "Get back to the coach, you damn coward. And stay there. You're not doin' anybody any good out here."

  Patch wanted to take the oilcan away from him, beat him down with it. But a glimmer of reason kept him from doing it. The old man might be the engineer… and he couldn't fight all of them, couldn't make them hurry, with nothing but an oilcan and his bare hands.

  He backed away, in closer to the tender behind the locomotive. The old man glared at him, then climbed up inside the cab. Patch stood there looking at the flames. Heat blasted against his face; curling smoke made him gag. And the fire moved closer, closer, reaching out for him, making his father scream louder and louder.

  One of the men came running away from the tree, stopped outside the gangway. "Can't move it much farther, Sam," he shouted up. "Heat's getting bad. Those explosives could blow anytime."

  "All right," the old man's voice answered. "Brace it so it's firm on the rail, signal when you're ready."

  "Right."

  Panic ripped at Patch, started him moving again. He backed off until he reached the end of the first boxcar.

  Rifles. All of them using Winchester rifles.

  Those explosives could blow anytime.

  Winchesters, brand-new Winchesters.

  Boxcars.

  Trace, the mill, Rudabaugh saying to him at some point that the ordnance hadn't been inside the compound, supposed to be Winchesters and explosives among the ordnance-

  No!

  No!

  He whirled, lunged over the coupler, hurled himself at the boxcar doors.

  ***

  In the cab Honeycutt stood with his left hand opening and closing nervously around the throttle, listening to the air pump chug as the pressure built up again. The firewind and the pulsing heat of the box made it hell-hot in there, and the air was foul with swirling smoke. He'd tied his handkerchief over his nose and mouth, but that didn't help much; he was beginning to feel sick and weak-kneed. He knew without thinking about it that his sixty-five-year-old body couldn't take much more of this kind of abuse.

  Beside him, Denbow leaned tensely against the fireman's seat and kept an eye on the steam gauge. He'd loaded the box full and the steam was up and they were ready to move as soon as Kincaid signaled that the men outside had firmed the tree.

  Honeycutt glanced again at the water gauge. They were low on water now - the Baldwin was a thirsty hog - and he'd have to watch their speed and the boiler-pressure gauge; the last thing he could afford to risk was a boiler explosion.

  He put his head through the side window. He could see the upper half of the pine, and not much more than a third of it had been angled crossrail. So he wouldn't be able to ease up to it, lock the pilot against it, and just push it off. It was liable to slide right back between the rails. What he'd have to do was ram it, pray the impact widened the angle of tilt, and then ram it again immediately and hope to spin it loose. Momentum would have to do the rest.

  Farther downtrack, drifting smoke obscured the trestle; as far as he could tell, there were no flames on the framework yet. But the fire was licking along the rim of the river gorge to the west, racing along the meadow on the opposite side. The wind seemed to have picked up some, too. The trestle wasn't going to last much more than a few minutes.

  They were almost ready. He strained his eyes for Kincaid's signal-

  Denbow shouted, "Sam!" in sudden alarm, jerked away from the fireman's seat. Honeycutt saw him staring toward the right-ide gangway, pivoted that way.

  The heavyset stranger, the coward, was coming up through the gangway with a revolver in his hand.

  Honeycutt froze. The coward set his feet wide apart in front of the tender, aiming the revolver - a brand-new Starr Army.44 - at Honeycutt's brisket. Got it from one of the boxcars, Honeycutt thought; found cartridges for it. He knows what we're carryin'.

  The man's face was wild, half mad with fear; his eyes looked as though they were on fire. "Tell somebody to unhook those boxcars!" he cried.

  Denbow said, "For Christ's sake, we can't do that-"

  "Not gonna blow me up - not me!"

  Honeycutt could feel veins swelling in his face and neck. There was fury in him, and fear, too - not of the revolver or the stranger, but for the safety of his passengers.

  "We can't uncouple, you goddamn fool!" he bellowed. "The coaches are back there!"

  "Get those cars unhooked, get me away from here!"

  "We ain't strandin' a hundred people to save your miserable hide-"

  "Do what I say!"

  "Go to hell!" Honeycutt roared, and without thinking, he lunged forward recklessly to slap at the revolver.

  The coward shot him.

  The bullet struck Honeycutt high on the left side of the chest. The shock straightened him up for an instant, as if he'd run headlong into a wall. Then he reeled, bounced off the firebox shield, sat down hard on the deck. He couldn't see; there was a darkness, like shutters, drawn across his eyes. He heard the dying echoes of the shot, shouts, scrambling movement. Felt numbness all through his upper body, blood pumping hot against the fingers of an upraised hand.

  Shot me, he thought. I'm shot.

  Then he thought nothing.

  ***

  Kincaid stepped back from the charred pine, threw the rifle he'd been using away behind him. They had the tree as firmed up on the rail as they were going to get it. And the smoke had thickened to the point where they couldn't work any longer; it had already felled one man, Ben Purdom, and put two others on their knees.

  Coughing, Kincaid dragged a forearm across his bleary eyes, pulled the scorched remnants of his shirt from around his hands. The hands were burned, in places, anyway, from the hot wood. His shoulder was burned, too, where he'd laid it against the trunk before the discovery of what was in the boxcars. But he barely felt the pain; there was too much urgency in him.

  He turned toward the locomotive, to signal Honeycutt that they were ready. And through the gray haze he saw the heavyset stranger, Patch, swinging up inside the cab.

  There was something in Patch's hand. Kincaid couldn't tell what for the smoke, but warning bells clanged in his brain. Without hesitation, he broke and ran for the locomotive.

  Heard Patch yelling, Honeycutt yelling. Heard the gunshot just before he reached the running board.

  He lunged for the handbar, grabbed it, hauled himself up in time to see Honeycutt falling to the deck, Denbow standing there with confusion and rage on his face, Patch brandishing a big Army-issue revolver.

  Kincaid caught Patch's wrist with his right hand, slapped his left arm around the man's thick neck, and jerked him up against his own body. Denbow yelled something, tried to come to Kincaid's aid - and fell over Honeycutt. Bull-snorting, Patch first attempted to get the revolver up between himself and Kincaid and then, when he couldn't manage that, sought to rupture him with an upthrust knee.

  Kincaid twisted, took the blow on his upper thigh. Levered the two of them around into the gangway. But it was like trying to hold on to a maddened animal; he could feel his grip slipping as Patch flailed wildly against him with arms, legs, body, all the while making that bullish snorting noise.

  Then Denbow was there again, but Kincaid had his back to the cab, jammed together with Patch in the gangway, and Denbow couldn't reach around to get at Patch. He threw his weight against them, anyway. And the two of them went toppling out of the gangway.

  Patch wrenched free in midair, so that they landed apart. Kincaid struck the ground on his right shoulder with enough force to half stun him. He rolled over, came up to his knees gagging on smoke, shaking his head to clear it.

  Patch had lost the revolver in the fall, was crawling away toward where it lay next to one of the locomotive's big wheels. Close by there were shouts, confused, shuffling footfalls: the other men crowding up. But none of them was close enough to keep Patch from getting to the revolver.

  Kincaid pushed off his knees in a flat, awkward dive; clawed at Patch's trailing leg; couldn't hold it when Patch kicked forward. By the time he folded himself back onto his knees, Patch had the gun. He came around with it, aimed it at Kincaid's head. There was nothing Kincaid could do but tense his body to meet the bullet in one final lunge -

  A handgun went off, but it wasn't Patch's: two shots, fast-triggered, from behind and to the left of Kincaid. And suddenly there were a pair of red-black blotches on the front of Patch's shirt, one above the other.

  The shouting and shuffling of the men stopped at once, as if they had all been frozen in place. Patch jerked back and up on his knees; the wildness went out of his face, leaving only bewilderment. He made a grunting sound, fell forward on top of the revolver, and lay unmoving.

  Kincaid slid around on all fours.

  The lean stranger was standing twenty feet away, apart from all the others, with smoke still dribbling from the muzzle of his Colt six-gun.

  ***

  Rudabaugh retreated another couple of steps, to keep all the men within the range of his vision. But none of them made a move in his direction. Some were stricken with spasms of coughing, and the rest shifted their gazes nervously between him and Patch lying there on the ground.

  They all wanted to move, though, he could see that. Not at him, not even away from his gun; to get into those coaches and away from here before it was too late.

  It was the same thing Rudabaugh wanted. That was why he'd shot Patch. The poor damn addlehead must have found out about the ordnance and it had done him in for fair. He'd left Rudabaugh no choice but to take control of matters before they got completely out of hand.

  He called to the peg leg up in the cab, "Where's the engineer?"

  "He's shot, damn you."

  "Dead?"

  "No, but he's hurt bad."

  "You know how to drive this train?"

  "I know how to drive it. But I got to have a fireman; I can't do all the work myself."

  Rudabaugh started to tell him to pick somebody, changed his mind when he saw the way the redhead down on the ground was watching him. Trouble, that one. Proddy. Better if he were in the cab where Rudabaugh could keep an eye on him. For the cab was where Rudabaugh intended to ride from now on.

  He said to the redhead, "You - can you do the fireman's job?"

  The peg leg shouted, "Not him! I want Ben Purdom!"

  "Ben's too groggy," somebody said. "Smoke got to him."

  "All right, then Joe Ashmead-"

  "Shut up!" Rudabaugh shifted his gaze back to the redhead. "Well?"

  "I can do it," the redhead said flatly.

  "Do it, then. Couple of you other men tend to the engineer. Everybody else into the coaches - quick!"

  He'd let them go with no time to spare. Another few seconds with that fire closing in around them and they'd have tried to jump him. Now they did what he'd told them. Three men pushed up into the cab and the rest broke for the cars. A few seconds later the three came down with the wounded engineer, carried him uptrack after the others. Then the redhead climbed up to join the peg leg.