On the Wrong Track

by Steve Hockensmith

  “If I let every passenger waste our time sending ‘one little message,’ we’d be here all night,” Wiltrout interrupted in a tone of voice that added, you silly woman. “Now return to your berth at once.”

  The conductor’s pique seemed to pluck the pluck right out of the lady, and her cool, sardonic demeanor gave way to something weaker and weepier and more conventionally feminine.

  “You don’t understand. I had to leave the Exposition early because my father had a stroke and my poor mother’s been under such a strain, and the smallest shock could … could …”

  Her trembly words trailed off, and she brought up delicate fingers to wipe the pooling moisture from the corners of her eyes.

  “Oh, now look what you went and did, you big bully,” I said to Wiltrout. “I mean, really—DEAR MOM AND DAD STOP I AM FINE STOP. How long is that gonna take?”

  “One message wouldn’t be any trouble, Captain,” Morrison added meekly. “And there aren’t any other passengers around. Why not accommodate the young lady?”

  Old Red chose not to weigh in. He simply watched with a detached air, as if observing the proceedings through a telescope.

  “Oh … go talk to the stationmaster,” Wiltrout grumbled. “If he has the time to send your message, fine. But keep it brief.”

  “Thank you,” Miss Caveo said, nodding first to Wiltrout, then to Morrison.

  I got a nod, too—as well as a quick wink when she turned to go. As she walked away, the door to the platform opened again. Wiltrout rumbled out a gruff growl of a sigh, apparently bracing himself for yet another passenger seeking special favors. But the man who sauntered in was hardly Pacific Express material—except perhaps as someone you might hire to scrub the dirt off between runs.

  He was a chubby, chipmunk-cheeked fellow in clothes so wrinkled he appeared not only to have been sleeping in them but to have used them as his pajamas unironed for most of his adult life. When he saw me—and the badge on my chest—he broke into a grin so broad it bordered on unbalanced.

  “Shoo-wee! Looks like you really took it on the nose, pussyfooter!”

  The man guffawed at his own joke, the heaving of his belly shifting the folds of his creased coat to reveal something with a dull metal gleam pinned to his shirt.

  He was wearing a star, too.

  “Well, you are one lucky son of a bitch, whether you know it or not,” he said to me, still chortling. “Last railroad dick Barson and Welsh got their hands on, we had to cut down from a telegraph pole.”

  The lawman turned his attention to Wiltrout, and his already maniacal glee took on a spiteful edge.

  “But I reckon you’re even luckier still, ain’t you, Cap’n? An S.P. man livin’ through one brush with the Give-’em-Hell Boys—that’s fortunate. But two? That’s downright miraculous. Now.” He gave his flabby hands an earsplitting clap. “I was told you brought some stiffs with you this time.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Wiltrout said sourly, brushing past the man on his way to the platform.

  “So you would be Sheriff … ?” Gustav said as the rest of us set off after the conductor.

  “Constable Leck Reeves, pride and joy of Carlin, Nevada.”

  “Riiiiight,” my brother replied, clearly unconvinced that the constable was capable of inspiring either pride or joy in anyone.

  Before we stepped outside, I stole a peek back at Miss Caveo, hoping to find her perhaps pilfering a peek at me. Alas, she was paying me no mind whatsoever—her full attention was on the stationmaster, who was jotting something down on a piece of paper as the lady hovered over him, whispering.

  I looked ahead again just in time to find myself approaching the back of Morrison’s head at an alarming speed. I stumbled to a stop, barely managing to keep my bloated nose out of the messenger’s pomade-slicked hair.

  “What the hell?” Wiltrout muttered.

  I leaned around Morrison to see why everyone had stopped.

  Up ahead, two men were grappling in the dark beside the train. And from the way they were punching and clawing and kicking, it looked like they meant to kill each another.

  Eighteen

  DISSIMULO

  Or, I Introduce Myself—and Bid Farewell to Old Red

  “Looks like the little one’s got the upper hand,” Constable Reeves said with a chuckle, making no move to break up the fight. Quite the contrary, he seemed to be enjoying it so immensely I almost expected him to pull out his folding money and start quoting us odds—though which of the brawlers he would’ve backed was unclear, as they both leaned toward the puny side.

  “Come on,” Gustav said to me, and we waded in together and pulled the two apart.

  I ended up grabbing Dr. Chan. Old Red got Kip.

  “What’s going on here?” Wiltrout demanded as we let them go stumbling from our grips. I’d expected him to roar like a bear with his butt in a steel-jaw trap, but he kept his voice to a mere growl. “Explain yourselves at once.”

  Kip snatched his cap off the ground and jammed it back atop his head. “It’s a good thing I stayed out here to keep watch. I caught the Chinaman trying to sneak into the baggage car through the side door.”

  “I wasn’t trying to ‘sneak’ in!” Chan protested.

  “Keep your voice down,” Wiltrout snapped. He jabbed a finger at the nearest Pullman. “There are passengers trying to sleep in there.”

  He said this as though Chan wasn’t a passenger himself—and as far as the conductor was concerned, he probably wasn’t. He was more like unwanted freight.

  Chan nodded and took a moment to catch his breath and smooth out his suit, recovering the deferential manner a man in his position can’t survive without.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his tone low and even now. “I simply wanted to check my things. It’s been an eventful evening, and I was worried that some of the baggage might have been damaged. I don’t blame our young guard here for overreacting. It’s my fault, really. I apologize for the disturbance.”

  Wiltrout nodded curtly, placated. “Alright, fine. Get back to your berth. We’ll be leaving shortly.”

  “But he was sneakin’,” Kip whined.

  Wiltrout silenced the kid with a scowl like a funnel cloud on the horizon—a storm you wouldn’t want blowing your way.

  “Pardon me,” Chan said warily, obviously not keen on drawing another squall down upon himself, “but where’s Mr. Lockhart?”

  “He thinks he can catch the Give-’em-Hell Boys single-handed,” my brother told him. “I reckon he’s headed to the nearest livery to hire himself a horse.”

  “Or the nearest saloon to empty himself a bottle,” I added.

  The mask of calm Chan had affixed to his face fell away, revealing a surprise bordering on panic.

  “He can’t do that. He can’t leave the train.”

  “He can and he did,” Wiltrout said. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have things to do here.”

  “But—”

  “If you will excuse us …”

  Chan was being dismissed, ordered from our sight. But he didn’t scurry back to our Pullman—he hurried away from the train, toward the station building.

  “I’ll find him … bring him back. Don’t leave without us. Please.”

  “‘Please’ doesn’t enter into it,” Wiltrout said. “We leave when we leave.”

  Constable Reeves had been leaning against a post nearby, soaking in the scene with a smirk. He straightened up as Chan moved past him.

  “I wouldn’t tarry in Carlin, I was you. Your kind ain’t too popular hereabouts.”

  The lawman was still smiling, but it was unclear if he was offering friendly advice or a veiled threat. Either way, it was enough to stop Chan—for a moment.

  “I won’t be long,” he said, looking back at Wiltrout.

  The conductor shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  Chan started away again. If he’d so much as glanced at me as he walked past, I swear I would’ve marched right off with him. But he’d no doubt
learned long ago not to look for help from the likes of me—unless, as with Lockhart, he was paying for it.

  He kept his gaze straight ahead.

  “Shouldn’t we oughta—?” I said to Gustav.

  “Probably,” he cut in. “But right now we can’t.”

  “You bet your ass you can’t,” Wiltrout snarled. “The only thing you ‘oughta’ is get those corpses off my train. Now.”

  I turned back to Old Red, crooking a thumb at the conductor. “We don’t really hafta take orders off this big peacock, do we?”

  “Nope,” my brother said. “But it just so happens I was about to suggest we hand them bodies over to the constable, anyway. So we can move along to other matters, you understand.”

  “Well, now … that does sound sensible.”

  We stepped around a fuming Wiltrout and headed for the Express.

  “The Chinaman wouldn’t be lookin’ for Burl Lockhart, would he?” Reeves asked.

  “How’d you guess?” I said.

  “Oh, I know Burl. I hear about a ‘Lockhart’ off to catch the Give-’em-Hell Boys alone—but stoppin’ at a saloon first? Gotta be him. Used to be he knew every trick there was to robbin’ trains, banks, and women of their virtue. He really was somethin’ back in the long-ago.” Reeves chuckled and clapped his hands over his prodigious belly. “But then again so was I … and just look at me now.”

  While the constable was waxing nostalgic, Old Red and I were climbing into the baggage car. We paused over El Numero Uno, who was still tied to his chair, flat on his back and legs in the air like a dead El Cucaracha.

  “Ain’t you gonna come up and have a look ’fore we unload this poor feller?” my brother asked Reeves.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well, it’s the scene of the crime, ain’t it?”

  The lawman guffawed like Gustav had just told him the one about the Irishman, the Mormon, and the thirsty cougar.

  “‘The scene of the crime’? Friend, that ain’t the scene of the crime.” Reeves waved a limp hand at the tracks behind the train. “That was the scene of the crime. The Southern Pacific line. Elko County. The Humboldt Range. Out there. I’m just here to collect them carcasses. Whatever happened in the desert ain’t none of my concern.”

  “Well, whose concern is it, then?” Old Red shot back.

  “The county sheriff’s, of course. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: He don’t give a shit, neither.”

  Reeves busted out laughing again.

  Wiltrout and Kip and Morrison all glared at him, and for a moment I actually felt a twinge of railroader-to-railroader kinship with them. If the Give-’em-Hell Boys had strung up every last one of us, this was what the law would have to say about it: Ain’t none of my concern. No wonder the S.P. hired its own police.

  Reeves had ridden in on a wagon, and a minute later Old Red and I were sliding the King of the Hoboes into the bed, throne and all.

  “Don’t bother cuttin’ him loose … we’ll just plant him that way,” the constable had told us. “Ain’t no way the good citizens of Carlin are gonna spring for a coffin for a murdered tramp.”

  It took two trips to move Pezullo.

  Despite the huffing and puffing required to tote around a couple corpses, Gustav kept up his end of things (the feet, to be specific) just fine. In fact, my brother was looking stronger with each passing minute—his second wind had blown in after all. He even had enough spare breath to pester Reeves with questions as we worked. The Pride of Carlin didn’t mind, being the kind of flannelmouth who could jabber away about baseball, the weather, or whatever through anything and everything, with the (possible) exception of his own funeral.

  Pezullo’s body would go to the local undertaker’s, he told us, where it would be boxed up to await word from the baggageman’s family. El Numero Uno, on the other hand, would go straight into an unmarked grave as soon as the constable’s deputy was awake to do the digging. And as for the Give-’em-Hell Boys—well, they were the Southern Pacific’s problem.

  “Mark my words: Railroad dicks or bounty hunters, that’s who’s gonna bed them fellers down in the end. Not a lawman, and sure as hell not a posse. Cuz no one’s gonna stick their necks out for the S.P. unless they’re gettin’ paid to … and maybe not even then, right, boys?”

  Reeves gave me and Old Red a wink like a secret handshake—a gesture meant to show we understood each other, were cut from the same cheap cloth. Somehow, I managed not to puke.

  As the constable was hauling himself up into his wagon and saying his good-byes (and not getting any fond farewells in return), the stationmaster hustled outside with a piece of paper flapping in his hand.

  “Finally heard back from Ogden, Captain!”

  Miss Caveo followed him outside.

  “Well, let’s hear it,” Wiltrout said.

  “It’s from Crowe.” The stationmaster straightened his stooped back, as if he couldn’t read the colonel’s words without coming to attention. “‘Dispatching horse cars, S.P. agents to initiate pursuit. Do not, repeat, do not talk to newspapers about B and W statement, bounty. Pacific Express proceed to Oakland posthaste. Dissimulo orders same.’” The stationmaster’s bony shoulders drooped again. “That’s it.”

  “What’s a Di-sim-u-lo?” Kip asked.

  “It’s Latin. Like, oh … caveat emptor, for instance,” Miss Caveo explained, though I doubt our young news butch was familiar with the phrase (even if he did embrace its philosophy). “It means ‘to keep secret.’”

  Morrison turned toward Wiltrout, his silvery eyebrows shooting up so high they almost impaled themselves on his widow’s peak. “Secret orders?”

  “Don’t look at me,” the conductor snapped. “I have no idea what Crowe’s talking about.”

  “I do,” I said. “Dissimulo’s the fake name the colonel had me and my brother travelin’ under.”

  “So why have you been calling yourselves Holmes?” Wiltrout demanded.

  I shrugged. “Just suits us better.”

  “I’d have to agree,” Miss Caveo said. “It would be nice to know your real names, though.”

  I gave her my best stab at a courtly bow. “Otto and Gustav Amlingmeyer, at your service.”

  “Amlingmeyer?” Kip giggled. “Jeez, you two were better off with Di-sim-u-lo!”

  “So,” Old Red said to Miss Caveo, “if dissimulo means ‘to keep secret, ’ how ’bout the handle Lockhart was usin’? Custos? That mean anything?”

  “‘To get stinkin’ drunk’?” I suggested.

  The lady shook her head. “‘Guardian,’” she said.

  “Well, all any of this means to me is ‘waste of time,’” Wiltrout groused. “All aboard. We’re going.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Chan ain’t back with Lockhart yet. You can’t just leave ’em here.”

  Wiltrout headed for the Pullmans. “I’ve left better men than them worse places than this.”

  “You haven’t taken on water yet,” the stationmaster pointed out. “Surely, there’s still a few minutes to spare.”

  Wiltrout spun around and glowered at the man as if he’d just complimented the conductor on his cute little caboose.

  “Of course, it’s your decision, Captain,” the stationmaster added meekly.

  “And no one better forget it.” Wiltrout yanked out a pocket watch and gave it a glare that should’ve melted its gears to slag. Then he shifted the glare to me. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

  “Thanks … Captain.” I turned to the stationmaster. “Now if you could just point us to the nearest stables and saloons …”

  There wasn’t much pointing to be done—there were only two liveries and two drinking houses within walking distance.

  “Hold up, Brother,” Gustav said as I started to leave. “I can’t go with, just yet. I still got things to do here.”

  “Things” meant snooping, I was certain, and it put a burr in my boot that Old Red would choose to look for clues rather than a man who needed our help.

/>   “Fine,” I said. “I’ll just have to rustle up Chan and Lockhart by myself.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  Miss Caveo walked over and linked arms with me like I was her escort to the debutantes’ ball. There was nothing girlish or demure about her grip on me, though—that was solid steel. She looked up and smiled, and I saw that same steel aglint in her eyes.

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  Nineteen

  THORNTON’S BOILER # 2

  Or, Things Heat Up When I Find Carlin’s New “Coolie”

  I wasted about a minute trying to change Miss Caveo’s mind. I know it was about a minute, because Wiltrout shut me up with one word.

  “Nine.”

  He was staring at his pocket watch like he was counting down the seconds to “Eight” … and zero.

  “Go,” Old Red told me.

  Up till then, he’d stayed out of my debate with the lady—which hadn’t been much of a “debate,” really, since I’d been doing all the arguing. All she did was tug at my arm and tell me I was wasting time.

  My brother shifted his gaze to her now. “But be careful.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was warning her or warning me about her, and I didn’t have time to get a better bead on his meaning. Miss Caveo was pulling at my arm like a team of horses in harness, and there was nothing to do but let loose the brake and go rolling off with her.

  “So … which first?” I said as we hurried around the station toward the dusty streets of Carlin. “Stables or saloons?”

  The lady simply looked up and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Saloons it is,” I said.

  Miss Caveo finally let go of my arm, though she remained close at my side—we would’ve been walking shoulder to shoulder if she was a foot taller. As it was, we were (her) shoulder to (my) elbow. And she was still staring up at me.

  “You might wanna look where you’re headed,” I suggested.

  “I’m just wondering when you’re going to ask me.”

  I turned my head and held her gaze, the two of us charging forward now with neither of us looking ahead.