"If it takes too long, it will blow up the train instead of just blocking the tracks."

"Does that pose difficulties for you, Sharpton?"

"I'm just saying what'll happen," Sharpton said hastily. "If you want to blow up the train instead of just rob it, well I guess that's none of my business. You're paying the bill."

The Wrecker pressed a second package into Sharpton's hand. "Here is three thousand dollars. Two thousand for you, a thousand for your man. You can't count it in the dark. You'll have to trust me."

Chapter 13.

THE LUMBERJACK'S DRAWING OF THE WRECKER PAID OFF IN five days.

A sharp-eyed Southern Pacific ticket clerk in Sacramento recalled selling an Ogden, Utah, ticket to a man who looked like the man that Don Albert had drawn. Even though his customer had a beard, and his hair was almost as blond as Isaac Bell's, there was something similar in the face, the clerk insisted.

Bell interviewed him personally to ascertain that the clerk was not another fan of The Great Train Robbery, and was impressed enough to order operatives to canvass the train crews on the Ogden flyer.

They hit pay dirt in Reno, Nevada. One of the flyer's conductors, a resident of Reno, recalled the passenger too and agreed it could have been the man in the drawing, though he pointed out the difference in hair color.

Bell raced to Nevada, ran him down at his home, and asked casually, as if only making conversation, whether the conductor had seen the The Great Train Robbery. He planned to, the conductor answered, the next time it showed at the vaudeville house. His missus had been pestering him to take her for a year.

From Reno, Bell caught an overnight express to Ogden, and had dinner as the train climbed through the Trinity Mountains. He sent telegrams when it stopped at Lovelock and received several replies when it stopped at Imlay, and he finally fell asleep in a comfortable Pullman as it steamed across Nevada. The wires awaiting him at Montello, just before they crossed the Utah border, had nothing new to report.

Nearing Ogden, midday, the train sped across Great Salt Lake on the long redwood trestles of the Lucin Cutoff. Osgood Hennessy had spent eight million dollars and clear-cut miles of Oregon forest to build the new, level route between Lucin and Ogden. It shortened the Sacramento--Ogden trip by two hours and dismayed Commodore Vanderbilt and J. P. Morgan, his rivals on the southern and northern routes. At the point where Bell was so close to the rail-junction city that he could see the snowcapped peaks of the Wasatch Mountains to Ogden's east, his train ground to a halt.

The tracks were blocked six miles ahead, the conductor told him.

An explosion had derailed the westbound Sacramento Limited.