Cape Hell by Loren D. Estleman Page B

shutter, my legs dangling free two hundred feet above an earth made entirely of broken stones like eggs hatched by some extinct bird. I hung that way, arms dead to the shoulders, until we straightened out. A toe found the ledge. I groped with my other foot, placed it beside the first, spread my legs, braced myself, released and flexed each hand in turn until circulation came tingling back, grasped the rod again, bounced on my knees three times, counting, and hurled myself forward through the opening at the rear of the cab.
    For a third of a second I was airborne, prey to the first crosswind that would hurl me out the side into open air. Then I landed, throwing myself sideways to avoid colliding with Joseph, standing at the front with a hand on the throttle. I came up shoulder-first against something diabolically hard sticking out of the cab’s side, bruising the bone and turning my lungs inside out. I feel the tender spot still when the barometer drops; and it’s been forty years since I rode outside a train.
    The man at the throttle glanced back over his own shoulder. “I gave you up.”
    â€œYou almost did on that last bend.” I rubbed the place where I’d struck, gasping for breath.
    â€œI dared not stop. These hills swarm with bandits who fall upon everything standing still and worry it to the bone.”
    I nodded. That last effort had exhausted the wind I needed for conversation.
    He pointed at the firebox and a pair of sooty leather gloves jammed inside the handle. “We are losing steam.”
    I nodded again, put on the gloves, and fell upon the woodpile. I wrenched free a squarish chunk, opened the box, and poked the wood inside. It caught like a curl of paper, the flames burning blue along the bottom edge. I repeated the action until there was no more room in the box. The heat drew all the moisture from my pores and baked my face until I was sure it was as dark as the Indian’s.
    â€œTake the wood from the bottom. The rest is green.”
    I was no longer senor to him. His promotion to master of the Ghost hadn’t come so suddenly he’d failed to note the shift in our relationship.
    From Alamos we climbed and climbed, the scenery turning from green to near black in its density; my ears popped, and still we were only in the foothills. To our left the country rose in succeeding folds of old-growth wood, the limbs pregnant with leaves, the trunks straight up and down and as close together as ribs of corduroy. They had no place to fall if they fell. It seemed nothing could squeeze between them: yet when I wasn’t stoking the fire Joseph kept me entertained with stories of marauding bears, half-human predators, and pumas that pounced without warning.
    â€œWe have them up north,” I said.
    â€œNot like these cats. They strike with the sun at their backs, making no noise, so that you are aware of one only when it is eating you alive.”
    â€œYou’ve seen this?”
    â€œEben, my sister’s husband, died in this way. I could do nothing; so of course I watched.”
    His family, it turned out, was a wealth of uncles, cousins, and brothers-in-law whose deaths he’d witnessed, or whose remains had been found half-devoured after days of searching. To hear him tell it the local wildlife had been living on the sole diet of his people for generations. I couldn’t tell how much of what he said was truth and how much invention, to keep me under his influence; but I found the heft of the two revolvers reassuring.
    As I chucked wood, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pistol Hector Cansado had told me he had hidden somewhere in the cab, the one he claimed Joseph didn’t know existed. Just because the Indian had saved my life didn’t mean he wouldn’t reclaim it the moment I was no longer needed, and there was no sense in allowing him a weapon beyond the axe he’d used on the engineer. DeBeauclair, the vanished Pinkerton, had reported