“Our voyage may take a while in this weather.” As if to accent his statement, the bottle of champagne slid off its table and onto the floor. “A pity. I was going to offer you a drink.”

Bell could only guess where Cromwell kept his Colt .38. “I never drink while on duty,” Bell said facetiously.

The car took another sudden lurch as the ferry tipped over to one side, the entire hull vibrating as one of the paddle wheels thrashed out of the water. Margaret gasped in fear and stared at the water that was seeping in widening puddles along the bottom of the freight door.

OUTSIDE, the wind shrieked, and the Kalispell creaked and groaned against the onslaught of the mounting waves that rolled down the length of Flathead Lake. The tired old vessel burrowed her bow into the gale-driven crests before dropping sickeningly into the troughs. A towering wave broke out the forward windows, sending sheets of water into the wheelhouse.

Captain Boss pulled up his coat collar and grasped the helm desperately as the gale lashed him with spray that stung the skin of his face and hands.

A whistle shrilled through the speaking tube from the engine room. Boss picked it up, said, “Wheelhouse.”

Ragan’s voice came with a hollow tone through the tube. “I’m taking water down here, Captain.”

“Can the pumps handle it?”

“So far. But the hull is creaking something awful. I fear the bulkheads might give way.”

“Get ready to clear out if it gets bad. Make your way to the roof over the galley and unlash the raft.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Ragan. “What about you, Captain?”

“Call me when you leave the engine room. I’ll follow if I can.”

“What about the people on the train? We can’t just abandon them.”

Boss was a man with moral depth, a God-fearing man of great inner strength from the old school whose word was his bond. He was well respected by all who lived around the lake. He gazed through the broken wheelhouse window at the far shore and the mad water thrashing over the bow and felt certain the Kalispell was not going to make it.

“They’re my responsibility,” he said slowly. “You save yourself.”

“God bless you, Captain.”

Then the tube went silent.

49

THE TORNADO WINDS OF THE CHINOOK WERE THE most destructive in memory. Barns were flattened, roofs carried away, trees ripped by their roots, and telegraph and telephone lines downed. The full force of the warm winds roared over Flathead Lake and flogged the water into a swirling turbulence that battered the weary old Kalispell unmercifully as she wallowed in the valleys between the waves. Already, the lifeboat that Captain Boss had hoped would save lives had been torn from its lashed mounting and shattered, its wreckage swept into the restless water.