The Last Narrow Gauge Train Robbery. Robert K. Swisher Jr.
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filled with the fear it was ending. One day there would be only photographs. Elk and deer would be stuffed or in zoos, and people began to flock to the outback. It was here that Bill, Ronnie, Riley and Frank came every year, came to remember old times and old places, came to laugh at the days when they cut wood to heat their homes, and walked through the snow to the outhouse. They laughed about being stuck in the woods, carrying guns to scare off the Mexicans and cowboys who didn’t like longhair s.
It is different now. People don’t care about the hair. There are enough problems without worrying about someone’s hair. Like the train, the gold, silver, and the big ranches, Frank, Riley, Bill, and Ronnie settled onto the shelf of antiquity. They settled their shoulders a little, and took life for what it was.
“It’s a mind-fuck,” Ronnie exclaimed.
“It’s a cocksucker,” Frank declared.
“It’s a bunch of shit,” Bill knew.
“It’s a photograph of a rose-colored asshole,” Riley observed.
CHAPTER 5
They all woke up at the same time with the morning sun streaming through the truck glass. By the wood corral built by the Forest Service, a meadowlark was singing. They stepped from the truck, stretching cramped muscles. Around them in every direction the mountains loomed, studded with granite and limestone bluffs. On each vista, the snow-capped peaks poked through the early morning clouds. Down an aspen-studded hill, they could hear the main branch of the Conejos River running. They immediately went to work. The horses were unloaded and fed, the saddles lined up along with the other gear that must be evenly loaded onto the two pack horses. After an hour of running around posing for photographs for Riley, they started to load the gear. After the horses were saddled and the pack horses loaded, they pulled out their costumes, as Ronnie called them. With ceremony, each put on his worn and dirtied chaps, each strapped on his spurs with the ringing dowels, each pulled on his own well-worn hat. Bill had a white hat that dropped low down over his eyes; Riley a bowler with a turkey feather stuck in the band. Ronnie had a small-brimmed gambler’s hat, he called it; and Frank a bulldog rolled straw hat.
With a holler, they started down a slight downgrade that led then over the river and onto the trail to Green Lake. Of all the years of packing in the wilderness, they liked Green Lake the best. In August, the meadows are crawling with elk eating the last weeks of green grass and surveying their domain. The lake is deep and cold, blown into existence eons ago when the mountain top blew. It holds large cut-throat trout when one can catch them. As the men forded the stream down from the valley, they heard the faint cry of the Narrow Gauge train as Matthew Crane pulled the whistle.
The time passed. The horses snorted and filled their lungs with the mountain air, straining against reins to nip at the lush, green grass. After three miles, they stopped. It was a traditional stop. Here the trail bends to begin its climb out of the valley floor. The South Fork of the Conejos tumbles by as it rushes off the mountain. Beyond them was the turmoil of life, here the sound of the stream, and the smell of the aspen and birch. Letting the horses graze, the men stood in a circle, held hands, and hollered in unison, “One more year, we fucked you one more year.” Then they threw their hats into the air and sat down and lit up a joint.
Beginning here and now, there was no time — rain, bugs, the sound of chopping wood, horses, yes, but no time; no government, no gross receipts tax, no kids needing shoes, no truck or car needing its endless supply of money to keep it running, no electric bill, no gas bill, no doctor bill.
“Jesus God,” Bill proclaimed, “how in the hell can we make it without the stress?”
Ronnie took a hit on the joint, “I don’t know. Maybe if we invent a pill that gives people stress we’ll make a fortune.”
Riley stood and took several photographs.
“Don’t you think that through the years you’d have enough pictures?” Frank asked.
Riley snapped the shutter, “Never, never enough. You guys stand over by those aspen and let me get another shot.”
By evening, they would be by the lake. Along the way, they would see deer and elk sign, grouse, sparrows, jays, a few wild crows, and the remnants of coyote-killed sheep. They spoke little, noticing the trees and leaves and the relaxing sound of the forest.
Reaching the lake, they went to hiding spots and pulled out nails, grills, and their pine tent poles they had been cut years earlier. They immediately fell into the routine of setting the camp. The ridge pole was run through the wall tent. Nailed between two trees, the cross supports were wired into place. Bill put the wood stove in the tent and ran the stove pipe out the hole in the ceiling. As it grew dark, they all stumbled into camp laughing and joking with arms full of firewood. As the fire came to life, the Coleman lantern was lit. They all stood and passed a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. It was good, they were alive. The government had not sold off the mountain to Exxon and for a week the world would go on without them.
Lying in their sleeping bags, the Coleman out, each man held his own thoughts in the reflection of the fire from the stove. Ronnie thought about his kids and how maybe they would never see something like this; never see the woods free, never be able to go back far enough to leave people behind. His kids living in their world of video games and cars. Kids of LA, space kids.
Riley lay and thought of the first time they had come here. A phone call, a sadness for distant friends, people to mark time and lives with, people to fight the loneliness with.
Frank exhaled deeply. There were no thoughts in his mind. Just the sound of the fire and the quiet of the night that surrounded the tent.
Bill lay, and in his mind’s eye he saw the old shuffling train engineer sitting in his house, the walls cracked and dirty, the windows caked with coal dust and grime. The old man was sitting, sipping coffee, smoking, uncaring, unfeeling, unremembering his past. “His past lives,” Bill mumbled to himself. He rolled on his side, and he saw the train pulling up the hill, trailing dark clouds of smoke and steam. He saw people leaning out the window snapping pictures and pointing to the scenery. He saw little kids holding onto their mothers, saying they had to go to the bathroom. He saw fathers looking out, running through their minds younger days of reading books about the Rocky Mountains. In front, giving the engine steam, he saw Matthew Crane smiling, talking to the engine, coaxing her over the mountains one more time. As sleep overcame him, he saw the engineer as a young man, standing with a young blonde-haired lady beside him as he told her about the train, showing her the large pistons that drew power from the boiler and pushed the wheels forward.
In the morning, after a quick cup of coffee, the men walked towards the lake with their fishing poles in hand. Frank looked at the water, saw a trout jump, looked at his friends, and then turned and looked back down the trail.
“Cocksuckers,” he yelled at the sky, “all of you kiss-ass, mother-fuckers, you can’t get me here.”
CHAPTER 6
Matthew Crane took a deep breath and opened the refrigerator door. Nothing had changed during the last thirty minutes when he had last opened the door. He shut the door, turned, walked, and sat down at the small wooden table. He hated nights like this, nights when sleep did not come alone in a house that held no memories or warmth. He looked at his watch. It was still hours before it was time to be with the train. The bars were closed, Grace would not be at the restaurant for several hours. Nobody to talk to or smile to. Old age was hell at times. He stood, walked, and looked out the window that faced directly towards the railroad tracks. His house stood not fifty feet from the tracks. The red caboose sat even with his door, then the seven passenger cars, then the engine. He stopped them this way every evening. Matthew looked at the darkened caboose, old and outdated, but fresh with its coat of new paint.
Wish somebody could paint me, he thought as he turned and walked slowly back to the bedroom to lay back down. There was a time, he thought, shutting his eyes but knowing that sleep would not come. At times like these, his thoughts drifted to when he was a boy.
When Matthew was a boy in Kansas, he would still be asleep when his father went off