runaway - finale

If you missed parts 1 & 2 you can visit the links below:

runaway - part 1

runaway - part 2

Summary:

In Part 1 Zach awakened concussed, ticketless and penniless on the #19 train to Los Angeles. The railroad bull, after clapping him in irons, treated him to a meal in the same car where notorious criminal Bill Doolin and two associates were dining. At the end of his meal, Zach notices that the woman who led him into an Ambush in Alameda is in the same car.

In Part 2 Zach tells the railroad bull how he was bushwhacked before they get off the train at the Tehachapi station. Then he talks the bull into checking the governor's car to make sure Bill Doolin didn't rob him and while he waits outside in the cold wind, the train lurches and begins to roll down the steep slope it had just climbed to reach the station....

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Finale -

Where is the conductor and the brakemen? I thought in horror while dashing after the car and grasping the steady bar at its back and swinging myself up onto the rear platform before crashing face first to its deck when my hands lost their grip.

Standing woozily, I felt thick blood running like snot out of my nose as I grabbed the hand brake. But it was rusted so stiff from lack of use that I couldn’t budge it. I ran through the smoker yelling Runaway train! Runaway train! like a mad man and nearly fell when I tripped on a Chinaman sitting cross legged in the aisle. He jumped up and waived his arms angrily, cussing my back in Chinese as I sprinted through the door at the other end of the car.

I grabbed the hand brake on the diner’s rear platform but it was stuck as well, the rails chattering faster and faster beneath the cars as they gathered speed while I frantically yanked on the brake. With time running out, I ran through the smoker a second time and nearly ran into the Chinaman again. We yelled at one another for a few more wasted seconds before I pushed him aside and exited the door that I had entered when I first jumped on the train.

I entered coach next and yelled for help. Thank God another railroad man joined me, but by the time we sprinted to the back of coach the cars were moving so fast that when we finally set the hand brake the car bucked and my face rammed the door. If my nose wasn’t already broken, it surely was after that. A moment later we hit a curve still goin’ too fast, the car lurching as we watched the cars ahead of the Smoker sail off the track before sliding down the steep ravine. But even with the Coach car’s hand brake set, the coach and smoker continued to rattle down the track as the cars in the ravine burst into flame.

Staring at one another in horror, we sprinted through the car to the back of the coach and yanked on the hand brake for all we were worth till we set it as well. When the two cars finally rolled to a stop, I leapt off the back of the car and skidded down the stones in the cut and then careened down the steep ravine in the darkness toward the burning cars.

Every few steps I would kick a heavy rock in the darkness or stumble in a depression, but I ran on as if nothin’ could stop or hurt me, unconscious of the pain or injuries I experienced running that long mile and a half to the cars, terrified that little redhead was trapped by the flames. Save for my desperate need to save her, I could not have covered that distance in the darkness with such utter disregard for my own safety.

Unfortunately, the first man that I pulled from the burning Mail car was already dead. The other postal clerks and the baggage man in the next car were beat up but came out in fair condition. Once I got to the first sleeper car the other railroad man caught up with me and we pulled the railroad Bull out of a broken window along with three other passengers.

At the next sleeper we saw a man’s legs sticking out of the bottom of the car, but when we pulled him out, we heard women screaming from inside the car. I started to squeeze into the hole but someone grabbed my feet and pulled me back out. I hit him hard enough to knock him to the ground and pulled myself a second time through the opening, but multiple hands grabbed my legs this time and pulled me out again.

By that point the flames inside the car were hot enough that my hair had caught fire. One of the men covered my head with a coat to smother the flames, but they had to wrestle me to the ground because I tried to enter the car a third time. But the next time I stood my head swam and I crashed to my knees, pukin’ the half-digested meat and potatoes before sitting heavily on the ground. I cried like a baby as I helplessly watched the fires in those cars burn until only their metal frames remained.

After the fire finally burned itself out and the embers glowed dully in the darkness, a rescue train with five flat cars stopped on the tracks above the ravine to pick up the survivors. But my feet hurt so badly that I could not stand, and they had to carry me back up the ravine and laid me on one of the flat cars with the other injured passengers. Once we arrived at the Tehachapi station, the railroad Bull finally removed the manacles.

When a doctor finally examined me early the next afternoon, my feet were so swollen he had to cut off my boots. In addition to a broken nose and third degree burns on my scalp, I had broken four of my toes and dislocated my left shoulder. Since the blood in my boots had dried during the night, the doctor had to peel the leather off my feet startin' the bleedin’ all over again.

A relief train sent to the Tehachapi station arrived later that afternoon, and they loaded the dead and the living to finish the run to Los Angeles. The Bull kindly visited me in my room and told me that none of the three women who had died on the train were the little redhead. She must have snuck off the train at the Tehachapi station and rode off with Bill and the others. If Bill had robbed the train or any of its passengers, the fire destroyed the evidence.

Altogether fifteen people died in the fire. The only ones unaccounted for were the redhead, Bill, Little Dick and Charlie. They had all used aliases.

Two weeks later when I was up and about again. I returned to Alameda to look for the little redhead, but she was long gone. I wasn’t even able to learn her name. When I reluctantly returned to the Oklahoma territories and went to see Deputy Marshall Tilghman I decided it was long past time to turn in my resignation.

But he refused to accept it till I tole him the story starting with the ambush in Alameda and all the way to me running into that ravine after that pretty girl. He didn’t say a word till I finished, just a starin' hard at me under his heavy brows.

You can’t be serious, Zach, he said with a sad shake of his head. Your too good a lawman to waste your life chasing after one of Bill’s runaway’s. What’s got into you?

I don’t rightly know, Marshall. All I can say is even if I didn’t go after her, I can’t do this no more. Bill didn’t just steal my badge and all my money. He stole my pride too. I can’t go on as a lawman pretending he didn’t get the better of me and made a fool of me in the bargain.

When that gal smiled at me the way she did, a quiet voice inside whispered ‘Zach, this is the one for you.’ It don’t matter none if she strayed from the paths of the righteous. It’s like the railroad Bull said to me, ‘It aint a crime to be a pretty woman.’

Maybe I’ll find her and maybe I won’t. Maybe she won’t give me the time of day even if’n I do. But I’ve got to try just the same, Marshall.

He shook his head sadly and replied There aint no gold at the end of that rainbow, Zach McMurty. Even if you find her, in the end shell leave you, cause that’s what gals like her do. They always runaway in the end.

I thanked him just the same and said my goodbyes. I figured I’d look up that railroad Bull and try to get a job on the number 19. They say that criminals always return to the scene of their crime. Well, if’n she does, I’ll be there to greet her.

Post Script:

Although Zach McMurtry never saw the little redhead again, some years after hiring on the number 19 train between San Fransisco and Los Angeles, he did meet another redhead by the name of Sallie Callahan who caught his eye. After courting her for six months they married, five years to the day after the train derailment on the Tehachapi grade.

Bill Doolin was captured in 1896 by Marshall Bill Tilghman, but it was Marshall Heck Thomas who killed him with a shotgun blast later that same year. He was 38 years old. By 1898, every last member of the Wild Bunch was dead.