Part 2
Her first attempt to pull herself up moved only the grass.
The second sent pain through her right shoulder and a white flare behind her eyes. Kate lay still until the flare narrowed, listening to the train recede. The wheels became a vibration in the ground, then a rhythm too faint to count, and finally nothing at all.
Cold took its place. It entered through the torn side of her nightgown and the bare sole of her left foot, patient and without urgency.
Kate tried to say Lily’s name. What came out was a low animal sound she did not recognize. She rolled onto her side, vomited into the ferns, and began to cry.
There was no discipline in it. She cried with her mouth open and her bruised ribs folding around each breath. She called for Tom, then for Lily, then for her mother, dead eight years. Once she struck the ground with her left hand and split the skin across her knuckles. The pain steadied nothing.
When the crying stopped, it did not leave courage behind. It left a series of plain facts.
She was below the eastern side of the track. The train had been moving south. Vickers and Nolan would get off at Klamath Falls, and Kincaid’s people controlled the Pine River yard beyond it. Walking south meant walking toward the men who would be waiting to learn whether the forest had finished their work.
North was behind her. Two miles before the pass, according to the maintenance map in the case file, there was a signal access road and a small section shed. Kate did not know whether anyone would be there at night. She knew only that it was closer than the next town.
Her right arm could move at the elbow but not above her waist. Two ribs grated when she drew a deep breath. Blood ran from her scalp into her left ear, and the foot without a slipper had three cuts she could feel and perhaps others she could not.
She tore a strip from the hem of her nightgown with her teeth and left hand. The cloth went around the foot twice. It was not a bandage, but it kept pine needles and ballast from entering the deepest cut.
The climb back to the track took eleven attempts. At the top she lay between the outer rail and the ditch until the nausea passed, then found a milepost in the beam of a signal light: 478.
The maintenance shed should be near 476. She began walking north.
The ties did not match a human stride. If she stepped on each one, her legs cramped; if she skipped one, the wrapped foot landed in loose rock. She stopped trying to turn the count into distance and used it only to keep her mind occupied.
She counted to one hundred, rested against the cold rail, and started again.
At three hundred, she lost the right slipper and did not go back. At five hundred, she heard an engine and lowered herself into the ditch, but the sound belonged to a truck on a logging road far below. At seven hundred, she realized she had counted the same sequence twice. That frightened her more than the blood.
“One,” she said aloud. “This is one.” Her voice belonged to the woman in the roomette again, at least enough to obey.
The eastern sky thinned from black to charcoal. Fog settled among the trunks. Kate passed milepost 477 and nearly walked by the access switch because salal had grown over the gravel. A reflective strip flickered ahead, then vanished, and she crouched behind a bank of brush.
A man in an orange maintenance vest stood beside a white pickup fitted with rail wheels. He was in his sixties, heavy through the middle, with a gray beard cut close to the jaw. He set a short-handled hammer against a joint bar, struck once, listened, and marked something on a clipboard. On the truck door was the blue mountain emblem of Cascadia Western, and that emblem made Kate stay hidden.
She watched him inspect three more joints. He did not hurry and did not glance around like a man expecting witnesses. Before moving the truck, he called the dispatcher on the radio, gave his employee number, his exact mile, and the next section he intended to occupy. His procedure was so ordinary that it felt safer than kindness.
Kate stood too fast. The trees shifted sideways.
“Sir.”
The man turned. His hand went to the radio, not the hammer.
“Stay there,” Kate said. “Please show me your railroad identification.”
He stared at her bare legs, the blood dried across her face, and the cloth around her foot. Then he unclipped a laminated card and held it out at arm’s length.
AMOS BELL. TRACK INSPECTOR, DISTRICT 4.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I’m going to come closer now.”
“Not yet. Is there a telephone at the section shed?”
“There’s a landline. Dispatcher circuit and outside line.”
“How far?”
“Quarter mile down the access road.” His eyes moved to the track behind her. “Were you on the train?”
Kate nodded. Amos took off his canvas work coat and laid it on the hood of the truck instead of approaching with it. “You put that on yourself if you can. I’ll turn around.”
Kate trusted him because he had put the coat on the hood and turned away. He was the first man that night to let her choose the next movement.
The coat smelled of diesel, cedar chips, and coffee. Its sleeves covered her hands. Amos helped her into the passenger side only after asking where he could touch her without worsening the shoulder. He radioed for an ambulance, but Kate caught his wrist before he gave her name over the railroad channel.
“Say injured woman. No name.”
“Dispatcher needs something.”
“Then give him your name twice.”
Amos studied her for one second and did exactly that. The section shed was a prefab building with a hot plate, a wall map, and a telephone the color of putty. Kate dialed the after-hours number at the U.S. Attorney’s Office from memory. Walter answered on the second ring.
She said, “Marigold.”
The silence on his end lasted less than a breath. “Where are you?”
“Cascadia Western section shed, milepost four seventy-six point eight, Alder Pass. Amos Bell is with me. I need federal marshals, FBI, and medical. Do not route the first call through railroad police.”
Walter’s voice changed as he wrote. “Are you safe for the next ten minutes?”
Kate looked at Amos. He had moved to the door, where he could see the access road and the track at once.
“I think so.”
“Who did it?”
“Nolan Price, sleeping-car attendant. The second man was Raymond Vickers.” Kate pressed the heel of her hand to the cut at her temple.
“Ray Vickers was the witness you were going there to protect.” “Yes,” Kate said. “And I opened the latch for him…”
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