The Rail Kings by James Walker

Author:James Walker [Walker, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441261922
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

The ornate railcar sat at the end of the line in Pueblo. The lights outside its door glowed through the red lenses of the lamps that peered into the night sky. Jim Ruby was in town, and men on the tracks were careful to talk in hushed tones as they walked past his car. There wasn’t a man among them who hadn’t heard about the court ruling and, above all, no one wanted to give the impression of business as usual.

Peter Williams stepped quickly over the tracks. Conflicting feelings battled deep in his gut. He didn’t like to be beat. Each time he passed one of the workers on the track, he could see that they knew what had happened. They knew that the courts had given the Royal Gorge to the Denver and Rio Grande, and they knew that he and his men had come limping back into town empty-handed. He had always enjoyed the looks of awe from the men that had accompanied his rise to power, and now he read a look of amused contempt on their faces. He knew what they thought without their saying it. They saw him as an uppity foreigner, an uppity foreigner who had lost.

The anger inside him was mixed with other feelings, feelings that perhaps he had joined his future to a falling star. He knew enough about America to know that nothing was more powerful in this growing country than the railroad, and perhaps he had chosen the wrong one. He had not failed the Chicago Pacific—maybe it had failed him. The special train hissed as he walked by. As he passed, he could see Ruby sitting at his desk through the windows. He mounted the stairs and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

Williams knew that Jim Ruby knew exactly who was knocking on his door. The very thought of standing outside in the dark and having to knock bothered him in the first place, but to have to call out like a child at his mother’s bedroom door made his blood boil. “It’s Peter Williams, Mr. Ruby.”

A moment of silence followed, making him even angrier. “Come in, Williams.” Ruby’s voice boomed even in normal conversation. Williams knew that when he lowered it, it was for special effect, for which other men raised their voices. When he opened the door, his heart sank even further. Jake Rice sat on the couch beside Ruby’s desk. Williams nodded at him, and his jaws tightened.

Ruby folded his hands on his desk. For a man who had just received bad news from the courts, he seemed relaxed. It was one of the qualities about Jim Ruby that Peter Williams most admired. But it unnerved him. The large, bearded man wore a white shirt and tie with a blue silk smoking jacket of Chinese design.

“I sent for Rice, here,” Ruby said, nodding at the gunman on the couch.

“Of course,” Williams smiled. “I thought perhaps I would find you working on a large piece of meat about this time, Jake.

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