On the Wrong Track (7 page)

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Authors: Steve Hockensmith

BOOK: On the Wrong Track
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“You most certainly would,” I said.
The conductor looked disgusted but unsurprised. “How about you Lockhart?”
The name sent yet more murmurs through the crowd.
“I told you it was him,” a fellow nearby said.
“I didn’t think he’d look so
old,
” his friend replied.
If Lockhart heard them—and he’d have to have been deaf not to—he didn’t let on.
“Just get me some rope, and I’ll take care of the son of a bitch.”
El Numero Uno shuffle-stepped backward until he was stopped by Bedford’s brick wall of a chest.
“Keep him away from me!”
Lockhart grinned. “What I meant to say is, ‘I can tie him up for you.’”
The King of the Hoboes wasn’t put at ease by this rephrasing, yet it hardly mattered. Bedford clamped down on him, dragged him to the baggage car, and tossed him inside like he was little more than a carpetbag stuffed with feathers. Then the brawny fireman hopped up into the car and reached down for Lockhart. After he’d hauled the old Pinkerton up next to him, he shut the side door with a thunderous slam.
“Anyone who doesn’t wish to be left here should return to his seat at once,” Wiltrout announced in a tone of voice that suggested he not only wasn’t joking, he’d enjoy the chance to prove it.
As everyone else scurried toward the Pullmans, my brother headed in the opposite direction, toward Wiltrout.
“Listen, all I need’s two minutes to look for—”
“All aboard!”
Wiltrout bellowed straight into Old Red’s face.
Gustav stood there, wiping spittle from his cheeks, as the conductor stomped away.
“I think that meant no,” I said.
“Undoubtedly,” said someone behind us—someone who shouldn’t have been anywhere near us, given that mingling with a mob’s not the sort of thing a lady does, no matter how “modern” her sensibilities might be.
“I’m afraid it also means our conductor isn’t very fond of you, Mr. Holmes,” Miss Caveo said as I spun around to face her. She was drifting back toward the Pullman with Chester Q. Horner at her side.
“Well,” Old Red said, his gaze suddenly so downcast it almost looked like his eyes were closed, “it ain’t my job to be liked.”
“You can thank God for that,” I said to him.
“Now, Otto—show some respect,” Miss Caveo scolded. “That was quite a display of ratiocination your brother put on. I daresay your late ‘cousin’ would’ve been proud.”
“That’s right,” Horner threw in. Then he leaned in closer to the lady and added, “It’s just too bad the man can’t
deduce
the difference between the ladies’ room and the gents’.”
He was snickering at his own funny as he helped Miss Caveo up the steps into the car.
“Why a gal like that would be within a mile of a jackass like him …” I grumbled, shaking my head.
“Women,” Old Red said, as if this one word solved a multitude of mysteries. “The real question is what the hell was she doin’ out here in the first place?”
I shrugged. “She’s adventurous.”
My brother sighed in a sad, long-suffering sort of way, though I couldn’t tell if it was my thickheadedness causing the suffering or something else entirely. The last of the passengers had just reboarded the train, and the time had come either to hop back on ourselves or spend a very long, very cold, very dry night in the desert.
Gustav almost seemed to be thinking it over. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, holding the cool night air in his lungs for a moment before letting it go.
Then his eyes popped wide, and he marched back to the Pacific Express on legs that looked about as steady as jelly.
BLACK CURTAINS
Or, The Passengers Get Ready for Bed As Gustav Goes to Work
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The train’s porters hadn’t
been lollygagging while the rest of us worked our jawbones outside. In our absence, the sleeper cars had been transformed. Where once had been rows of well-cushioned settees was now a narrow passage hemmed in on either side by dark, velvet draperies. Behind these curtains were our beds—pulled down from ceiling cabinets in the case of the upper berths, folded together from our seats for the lower.
It was a jarring sight to return to. What had seemed like a long sitting room when we’d left now had the cramped, clammy feel of a mausoleum.
But the real tomb was up ahead of our Pullman, in the baggage car. Word quickly spread that porters had deposited the baggageman’s body there … stuffed in a stewpot from the dining-car kitchen.
Oh, that’s bunk,
I almost replied upon hearing this from Horner, who relayed it with the eyebrow-waggling leer men usually reserve for off-color jokes.
The body was banged up, sure, but you couldn’t squeeze it into no pot. You’d need at least a washtub.
I held my tongue out of deference to the ladies milling about nearby. The Pacific Express was under way again, and our fellow passengers were preparing for bed. As a result, a steady stream of females pressed past us, either going to or coming from the women’s washroom Gustav had so briefly toured earlier that day.
Pullman travel, it turned out, had a side benefit of which I hadn’t been aware—a relaxation of the normal rules of decorum. Most of the ladies were attired only in their nightgowns and perhaps a flimsy robe or wrap, and I had to be careful to conceal the degree to which I found such sights distracting.
My brother was unable to pull off such a masquerade himself. In fact, he was quite obviously mortified, and he shuffled up the aisle sideways, his face pressed into the drapes and his hands plastered to his sides lest they accidentally brush against female flesh.
He was headed for the privy at the front end of the car—the
men’s
privy, he was careful to confirm—and I’d been instructed to follow once I’d recovered our carpetbag from our berth. It was hard to escape from Horner once he got his lips up to a gallop, though.
“I’ll bet this is it for the Pacific Express,” the drummer was saying. “It’s supposed to keep on through October, when the Exposition ends, but I don’t see that happening. The Give-’em-Hell Boys hit the very first run back in May, and now a drifter murders one of the crew? When word gets out, you won’t be able to
pay
people to take the Express.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Mrs. Kier said. She was still in her day clothes, having been roped into conversation with Horner before she could flee to the WC. “After all, what some consider ‘danger,’ others consider ‘excitement.’ I don’t think one robbery and one unfortunate death are going to scare many customers away. Just look at me. I was on that first run to Chicago myself—I saw Barson and Welsh with my own eyes. And I came back.”
I didn’t think Horner’s mouth could open any wider, but his jaw dropped so low I could’ve rolled a doughnut down his throat.
“
You
were on the Express when … oh, pardon us, Miss Caveo. Do you have room to get through?”
I had to fight to keep my gaze at eye level as the lady joined us. I could see enough of her shoulders to know she was in sleeping attire of a frilly, lacy design, and the urge to peek lower was difficult indeed to resist.
The three of us stepped back to let her maneuver into her bed (though I couldn’t help noticing that Horner didn’t give her quite the leeway Mrs. Kier and I did). But rather than retreat behind the curtains of her berth, Miss Caveo lingered in the passageway.
“Reviewing the day’s excitement, are we?”
“That’s right, miss,” I said. “We ain’t covered much you don’t know, though, seein’ as you were outside for a lot of it yourself.”
“I hope you’re not about to tell me that was no place for a lady.” She was smiling as she spoke, but it was the kind of smile a man learns not to trifle with if he wants to stay in a woman’s good graces.
“Oh, no. I’m simply relieved you didn’t come to any harm, what with all those bullets whizzin’ about.”
“Mr. Horner here was concerned, as well. When the gunfire started, he threw himself right on top of me. Shielded me with his own body.”
Horner pressed his hands to his heart and offered a bow as deep as the crowded corridor would permit. “Any gentleman would have done the same.”
“Truly, chivalry is not dead,” Miss Caveo said drily.
“Truly,” Mrs. Kier agreed, and the two women shared a little smirk.
“You and your brother were in the thick of things yourselves,” Miss Caveo said, turning to me.
“Gustav likes it thick, alright.”
“In an occupational capacity?” Mrs. Kier asked. “Or more as a hobby?”
“Yeah, what’s the story with you two?” Horner threw in.
I found myself surrounded by quizzical stares. I was still hunting for an escape (which is to say, a decent lie) when a familiar voice barked out, “Otto!”
I turned to see Old Red up at the far end of the car, looking peeved.
“You’ll have to excuse me, folks—I hear my mother callin’ me.”
I pulled back the curtain to our berth, snatched our carpetbag off the bunk, and hustled away up the aisle. Before I got out of earshot, I heard Horner steer the conversation back to Mrs. Kier’s encounter with the Give-’em-Hell Boys. He seemed quite insistent that Miss Caveo stay to hear the tale with him—most likely to keep the scantily clad young lady from disappearing into her berth.
As I neared the end of the corridor, I was stopped by a waist-high roadblock in matching nightshirts: the twin boys I’d seen boarding the train with a widow woman that afternoon. They were cute enough as kids go—perhaps six years old, chipmunk-cheeked and wide-eyed, with such voluminous golden curls they could have been hiding slingshots and frogs in their hair with their mother none the wiser.
“What’s your name?” one of them asked me.
“Otto. But my friends call me Big Red. What are your names?”
“Oh,” said one twin.
“Oh,” said the other.
The boys glanced at each other, looking disappointed.
“I’m Marlin. He’s Harlan,” said the one who’d spoken first.
“We heard Burl Lockhart was on the train,” his brother added. “We thought it might be you.”
“Thanks, boys. That’s quite an honor. But I ain’t no Pinkerton.” I brought up a thumb and waggled it at the corridor behind me. “You heard right about Lockhart, though. He’s right back there—the feller with a checked suit and a head of hair that looks like a coonskin cap.” I leaned down and dropped my voice to a whisper. “He’s in disguise, you understand. Calls himself Chester Q. Horner. But I bet you could get him to bring out his six-guns if you asked him enough times.”
“Oh, boy!” said Marlin.
“Come on!” said Harlan.
They squirmed around me and darted off down the aisle.
“I was startin’ to think you’d fallen through the floorboards,” Gustav said as I walked up. He was at the end of the line for the washroom, but he would’ve surely been excused had he cut to the front, so pale and wet with sweat was he. The collywobbles were back.
When he saw how I was eyeing him, he quickly turned toward the next fellow in line—the Chinaman.
“You two weren’t really introduced properlike before, were you? Dr. Chan, this here’s my brother Otto.”
“Howdy, Doc.”
I was expecting a bow, which I would return, giving us the opportunity to knock heads as the minstrel-type Chinamen in music-hall revues invariably do. But instead Dr. Chan held out his hand, and we shook. He wore no pigtail (or queue, as the Chinese call it), and from what he did wear—dark suit, wire-rimmed spectacles, shoes polished to a diamond shine—it would have been easy to mistake him for an upper-crust plutocrat with a lineage traceable to the
Mayflower
itself, as long as you weren’t looking him in the eye.
“Pleased to meet you,” Chan said, and it sounded like he meant it. When you’re the only Oriental amidst a trainload of white folks, you probably appreciate anyone with the courtesy to speak to you, let alone shake your hand. “I was just telling your brother about some other remedies I know of for—”
“Yeah, yeah—thanks, Doc,” Gustav cut in. He nodded at a doorway just a few feet off. Beyond it was the forward vestibule and, beyond that, the baggage car. “So … I ain’t seen your pal Lockhart come outta there yet.”
Chan stiffened. “That’s right. He’s still in there,” he said reluctantly, as if my brother had brought up a topic decorum would have us ignore. “And how is it
you
know Mr. Lockhart?”
“Oh, I suppose you might call him a colleague,” Old Red replied, brushing the question off as easily as lint from his sleeve. “You comin’ from Chicago?”
“Yes,” Chan said, still wary. “I spent the spring there preparing for the Columbian Exposition. Perhaps you’ve heard of ‘the Joss House’? The Chinese exhibit?”
Gustav and I nodded. I’d been reading out newspaper and magazine accounts of the Exposition for months, and both Horner and Mrs. Kier had mentioned visiting the fair’s magnificent Chinese temple.
“I’m one of the organizers,” Chan said, pride seeping through his caution. “I had planned to spend the summer overseeing the exhibit’s operations. Unfortunately, a private matter of some urgency has called me back to San Francisco.”
“But you didn’t meet up with Lockhart till Ogden.”
“That’s true,” Chan said slowly, looking unsettled to find my brother so well acquainted with his travel plans. “Another
colleague
of his accompanied me there from Chicago. Mr. Lockhart is my companion for the rest of the journey.”
“I see,” Old Red said.
And I thought I saw, too. The railroads may have been built largely upon the back of the Chinaman, yet for a Chinaman to ride upon the railroads was another matter entirely. In fact, the Express would be passing through many a town where the killing of an uppity “yellow devil” would be viewed as an altogether laudable public service.
Gustav and I hadn’t been raised to harbor such hatreds ourselves, as our parents came from fiery abolitionist stock and wouldn’t brook any talk of the supposed superiority or inferiority of this, that, or the other bloodline. (Though, for reasons we never learned, our dear old
Mutter
did possess a powerful prejudice against the race of men known as “Texans.”)
Still, you don’t have to feel something in your heart to understand it in your head, and I knew a Chinaman with a need for haste and a pocketful of cash would have but one way to go: Hire the Pinkertons to smooth the way and keep it smooth.
“Well, best of luck to you with that ‘urgent matter,’” Gustav said. “I just got one more question for you before we go.”
“‘Go’?” I said, unaware that my brother and I were going anywhere other than the privy and, from there, directly to bed.
“Did you happen to see anyone come through that door right before the brakes kicked in?” Old Red asked Chan, nodding at the passageway to the baggage compartment again. “Or right after, maybe?”
Chan shrugged. “No—I wasn’t looking this way. Before we stopped, I was reading. Afterwards, I was looking out the window for bandits like everyone else.”
“How ’bout Lockhart? Was he back in his seat when the train stopped?”
Chan frowned, and for a second I thought he’d finally lost his patience with my brother’s prying. But when he spoke, I realized it wasn’t Gustav he was pissed at.
“No. Mr. Lockhart was still gone.”
“You don’t say,” Old Red said … and said no more himself. He just stared at Chan, glassy-eyed, as if the Chinaman had hypnotized him.
“‘Go’?” I said.
That broke the spell.
“Thank you, Doc,” Gustav said. “Good night.”
“Mr. Holmes … may I ask
you
something?” Chan didn’t wait for permission—he fired off his question, quick and nervous. “What is your interest in the matter?”
“Well … I guess that bush has been beat around enough, ain’t it?”
Old Red had pocketed his badge after flashing it out on the tracks a while before, and now he took it out again—and pinned it to his vest. He gave me a nod that said I should do likewise.
“We’re railroad detectives,” he said with a touch too much self-satisfaction for my taste.
I set down our carpetbag and pulled out my own badge, coughing gently as I affixed the copper star to my shirt.
“Upside down,” I whispered.

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