The Devil Delivered and Other Tales by Steven Erikson

Author:Steven Erikson [Erikson, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-06-19T06:00:00+00:00

3.

the ends of the line

Wild Bill Chan hobbled along the abandoned rail line, dragging one leg that had been crushed in 1962 at a spill outside Climax, Saskatchewan, walking with a rolling hitch of his hunched back, which had been bent and then broken in 1969 trying to hold up a derailed, sagging-in-the-mud piggyback just outside Ste. Rose du Lac, Manitoba. He glared at the world with one eye, the other one lost in 1974 when he was trampled by a herd of caribou being pursued by a polar bear down Churchill’s main street—his only off-duty injury in a long list of injuries that had begun in 1920 when, as a mere lad, he had joined his father on the crew breaking the path for the northern line.

Joey “Rip” Sanger grinned as the old man approached. “Hell, getting ya outa that damned retirement weren’t too hard, eh?” Behind Joey stood the redcap, who’d had a hell of a time dragging one of the steel trunks out to this forgotten spur. He’d damned near earned his fiver, Joey reflected. Almost. The prairie spread out beyond the line, dotted here and there by derelict grain silos and bought-out farmsteads. A few dusty trees broke the flat skyline to the east and north, while to the south rose the city’s scattering of skyscrapers, behind a golden veil of spring dust.

Chan arrived and hooked his glare up at Joey. “Y’bastard,” he rasped. “Eh was ’alfway t’Katmandu when the call come.”

“Under was under the weather, hah,” Joey said. “Thin skin and too much under it, if you ask me. This the guy you groomed to take over, Chan? Hell, what a sorry thought.”

“Times change, Joey. That’s all eh say. So you call me out here, y’grizzled carp, but in case y’hadn’t nooticed, this spur’s abandoned.” He waved a mangled hand in a sweeping gesture. “’Alf the track’s rusting t’nothing, boy! The heyday’s scrammed. It was the ’20s, the best times, when it was touch and go between this city and Chicago and St. Louis—who was going to be the gate to the West, hey? Touch and go. You’ll find more track round this city than y’can fathom, boy, round and round and round. Spurs and runs and switchbacks and platforms and silos and maintenance shacks and sheds and damned cars, too, boy!”

Joey grimaced. “You forget, you one-eyed Shanghai warlock, you’re talking to Joey ‘Rip’ Sanger here. Y’think I can’t read maps, y’think two thousand miles of unused track around this city is enough to make my knees shake?” He kicked at the rail. “Unused, hell. Take a close look, Chan.”

“Eh?”

“Your squatters are living in cars, got their own goddamned train, look where the rust’s streaked away. Looking pinched, right? It’s a 57 Wells, a goddamned steam engine. Not listed on your service, is it? But it’s here, and someone’s working it, and those squatters are living in the cars behind it, and they got you hunting everywhere but so long as they keep to the abandoned spurs, so long as they keep moving, you won’t find ’em.

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