“No.” Karl screamed and dove for the lower flap of the canvas rear wall. His dive stopped abruptly as he slammed to the steel floor of the cab, with Silas’s weight pinning Karl down.
“You lunatic,” Silas shouted at Karl. This from a man who held strict control of life; a maddened attempt to kill something that was probably already dead. Silas could not understand the foolishness of Karl’s thinking. “You are the one person who has to stay with the locomotive.”
They struggled as Karl fought to crawl under the frozen sheet of canvas.
Silas hit Karl once, a hard blow to the head that should have shaken the man. “You damn mule, stop!” He hit Karl again, and the Swede seemed to lose some of his fight. “For a man who thinks he sees the truth, you are one blind fool. Give me the gun, I will go.”
“John,” Karl gasped and hit the floor of the cab with the butt of the pistol.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Pulling the pistol from Karl’s loose grasp, Silas breathed relief.
“Get the hell off me Blackie,” Karl pushed up against the weight of the fire-man.
“Racist ass,” Silas rapped the butt of the pistol against Karl’s head, a warning tap. “You’re no different from the rest of us; your prejudice is you think you know more than the rest of us, you judge us all against that yardstick in your mind.”
Moving off Karl’s back, Silas leaned against his chair and studied the engineer.
Karl slowly rose to a sitting position opposite Silas and looked at the fire-man with reddened eyes. “He is my friend, my only friend.”
“Well, you got another one idiot.” Silas struggled to his feet, then held a hand out for Karl. “I need to forget my color of skin,” he mocked with a grin. “You need to forgive yourself.”
“How many children do you have?” Karl asked as he stood with Silas’s aid.
“Four. Why?” Silas replied.
“John is dead now.” Turning to his seat, Karl rummaged in the drawer as he spoke. “I will be damned if I make another mother cry. Take this.” He turned and held up a stick of dynamite, complete with a fuse wrapped around the red waxen stick.
“You’ve been sitting on a piece of dynamite?” Silas exclaimed.