On the Wrong Track

by Steve Hockensmith

  “There ain’t a detective alive who could hold a candle to Mr. Holmes,” Old Red said, his voice kicking up a couple notches. For the first time, he managed to look the lady in the eye, but clearly he was really speaking to someone else. “Not one.”

  With another exasperated grunt, Lockhart threw himself to his feet and marched away up the aisle, leaving the Chinaman to turn and peer after him nervously.

  “I admired Holmes, as well,” Miss Caveo said to Gustav, ignoring Lockhart’s grousing. “I doubt if we’ll ever see his like again.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Old Red replied. Whether he was referring to his own deducifying or his hero’s imminent return, I don’t know. (Like a twelve-year-old who still refuses to accept there’s no St. Nick, my brother pathetically clings to the notion that Holmes might not be dead, no matter what the rest of the world knows to be true.)

  “He wasn’t a relation of yours, was he?” a wide-eyed Miss Caveo asked, mock-shocked.

  “A distant cousin,” I joshed back. “Though I expect everyone in the world named Holmes makes the same claim.”

  The lady chuckled, then pointed at the magazine in Gustav’s hands.

  “So what’s this new story about your cousin called?”

  My brother didn’t just blush this time—his face flushed so dark it seemed to bruise. He’s touchy about his lack of letters, and admitting it in mixed company would surely shame him into silence for the next eight hundred miles.

  I took a quick peek at the Harper’s.

  “‘The Crooked Man.’” I shook my head at Old Red. “I can’t believe you left your readin’ specs back at the boardin’house. That’s the third pair you lost this year.”

  It was a lie so lame there was nothing to do but put it out of its misery—which Gustav did by utterly ignoring it.

  “Stow this away, would you?” he said feebly, closing the magazine and handing it to me. “I ain’t up for it just now.”

  He slumped back into our seat, his face pointed at the window. There wasn’t much to see out thataway—just scrubby desert flatland stretching off toward gray mountains. The windows across the aisle from us were where the real scenery would soon be seen. A distant blue shimmering had steadily been growing there, off to the southwest: the Great Salt Lake.

  If Old Red had no interest in his magazine or what beauty there was to find outside, that was fine by me just then. It allowed me to focus all my attention on the beauty inside.

  “Looks like we got us a mighty pretty view comin’ up,” I said to Miss Caveo.

  “By the time we’re through the Sierra Nevadas, Mr. Holmes, you’ll be sick to death of pretty views,” she replied pleasantly. If she’d been put off by my brother’s moodiness, she didn’t show it.

  “So this ain’t your first trip to California?”

  “Hardly. I’m going home, actually.”

  “From Chicago?”

  She nodded. “I went for the World’s Congress of Representative Women and then stayed on as a volunteer in the Women’s Building at the Exposition. I stopped for a short visit in Salt Lake City on my way back—I just had to see the Tabernacle—and now—”

  “Please pardon my intrusion, but I couldn’t help overhearing,” Horner said, and he leaned across the aisle and wedged himself into our conversation like a salesman’s foot jammed into a closing door. “Do I take it, miss, that you’re a suffragette?”

  “You could call me that,” Miss Caveo answered drily.

  “Well, I have to admit I’m rather surprised,” Horner said. “From what you see in the newspapers, you’d think all suffragettes were hatchet-faced man-haters. But you hardly seem to qualify on either count.”

  He grinned wolfishly.

  Though I’d been happy to help the lady flaunt convention before, now I felt like a champion of propriety—whose duty it was to wipe the dirty smile off Horner’s face. But the fair damsel didn’t need me to strap on any shining armor.

  “I don’t hate men,” Miss Caveo said. “Though I do find some extremely irritating. The presumptuous ones, in particular.”

  Horner laughed as if she’d just passed some private test of his.

  “You lost that round, Mr. Horner,” chuckled the middle-aged matron who’d taken the seat across from him. With her conservative, billowy black dress, high collar, and neatly pinned blond-gray hair, she was too old and obviously respectable for any snipings about unseemliness when she’d been seated alone with a man.

  “Bravo,” she said, turning her plump, pleasant face toward Miss Caveo. “I’ve rarely seen a fly shooed away with such grace. You might not believe it, but they used to buzz around me in great swarms. And if any of them proved as pesky as this rascal here, why, I just swatted them flat!”

  She illustrated her point by giving the drummer’s knee a playful smack with her black lace fan. Horner and Miss Caveo laughed, and that was that. The cozy duo I’d been hoping for was now a lively foursome. The lady (she introduced herself as Mrs. Ida Kier of San Francisco) proved to be every bit as gabby as Horner, and though the train made the occasional stop to take on coal and water as it rounded the Great Lake, the chatter never slowed.

  Talk returned briefly to the suffragettes (Mrs. Kier being of the opinion that women had already proved their superiority to men by staying out of politics) before moving on to the Women’s Building at the Exposition and finally the fair itself. Most of which left me in the dust, since I wasn’t as well-read or worldly as my companions, nor had I visited the “White City” in Chicago. Thus I was relegated to the occasional folksy observation or attempted witticism, as when Horner brought up a speech that had apparently caused quite the stir at the Exposition the week before—some high-minded university type’s declaration that the frontier was “closed” and the country’s pioneer days behind it.

  “If he wants to see some frontier, he should tag along with me and my brother sometime,” I said. “The trails we ride sure as heck ain’t paved with brick.”

  “I think the professor’s remarks were more of an esoteric, metaphorical nature—as professors’ remarks tend to be,” Mrs. Kier replied, eyes twinkling. “He was talking about our spirit as a people. We’re not just a nation of farmers and cattlemen anymore. We have great industries, great cities. We’re changing.”

  “But not everyone welcomes change, Mrs. Kier.” Miss Caveo cocked an eyebrow at Horner. “That’s why suffragettes are made out to be ‘hatchet-faced man-haters.’”

  “Well, I’m with Otto,” Horner said, dodging the lady’s barb. “It’s too early to talk about ‘the frontier’ like it’s in a museum someplace.” He pointed at the window on my side of the car—and the desolate expanse of sand beyond it. “That’s wild out there, with wild people. It’s not ‘the Be-Polite Boys’ we’re all worried about, am I right? Barson and Welsh hit this very run two months ago—the Pacific Express!—and they’re still on the loose. Until we reach Oakland, anything could happen. A barricade on the tracks, a loosened rail, dynamite. God forbid they should mess with a trestle. The way those crazy hayseeds hate the S.P., I wouldn’t put it past them to send an entire train crashing into—”

  “Je-zus Key-rist!”

  We’d all been paying Old Red about as much mind as the pile of coats in the corner at a Christmas barn dance, so his sudden—and ear-piercingly profane—entry into the conversation got a jump out of all of us. Without another word, he staggered to his feet and started stumbling down the aisle toward the back of the train.

  I sat there a moment, stunned, before tossing out apologies and setting off after my brother. Curiously, I wasn’t the only one on his trail: The Chinaman hopped up and got to hustling after him first.

  The screaming started before either one of us could catch him.

  Seven

  CHAN

  Or, A Doctor Offers a Helping Hand, but Lockhart Gives Him the Boot

  Gustav had veered left at the end of the aisle, just before the passageway to the next Pullman. We’d
passed a lavatory there as Samuel showed us to our seats a couple hours before, and I’d noted something about it that my brother couldn’t—the word written on the door.

  LADIES.

  So the first shrieks after Old Red went barging into the john (or should that be the “jane”?) were, as one would expect, distinctly feminine. They were quickly joined by a male counterpart, though: For once, my brother’s fear of females was completely justified, and he screamed the scream of the freshly damned finding themselves in hell.

  “Can’t you read?” a woman shrieked as Old Red staggered out of the privy. A hand shot out after him, bringing a drawstring purse down over his head three times before he could back out of range. Then the hand disappeared, the door slammed shut, and my brother bolted from the car.

  I followed him through the vestibule into the next sleeper—as did the Chinaman.

  “Gustav!” I called after him.

  He kept going.

  “Mr. Holmes, wait, please,” the Chinaman said.

  Old Red stopped. And it wasn’t just because the Chinaman had said “please.” Gustav was still white-faced and wild-eyed when he turned around, but his curiosity was apparently enough to overcome his nausea and embarrassment.

  “Yeah?”

  “If I might have a word,” the Chinaman said, stepping closer to my brother. “In private, perhaps?”

  His gaze darted past Old Red, down the aisle—at the churchload of curious Presbyterians who were now gawking at us.

  “Alright,” Gustav said. “Over there.”

  He shuffled into a small, recessed nook next to another washroom nearby. This privy had a sign, too—GENTLEMEN. Old Red stopped just outside the door.

  “What you got to say?”

  “I couldn’t help but notice your … discomfort, and I think I can be of assistance.” The Chinaman’s accent swallowed up a word here and there, but overall I understood him better than some Southerners and New England Yankees I’ve met. “Ginger can be quite effective in relieving motion sickness, and it just so happens that I—”

  “I ain’t in the market for no patent medicine,” Gustav cut in brusquely. His urge to upchuck might have passed for the moment, but he looked sickened again in a wholly different way. “You can go peddle your tonics elsewhere.”

  “I’m not trying to sell you anything, Mr. Holmes,” the Chinaman replied, slipping a hand into one of his coat pockets. “I’m a physician. Dr. Gee Woo Chan.”

  He spoke gently and moved slowly, the way a cowboy approaches an unbroken horse. When he pulled out his hand again, it was clutching a small, brown paper bag.

  “I brought some ginger tea along. For myself. And I’d be happy to give you—”

  “That’s enough of that,” a raspy voice snapped.

  Burl Lockhart stepped from the washroom behind us. Rather than lightening his bladder’s load while inside, however, he’d clearly been adding to it: When he spoke again, the nostril-singeing scent of cheap whiskey blasted into our faces like the heat from a blacksmith’s forge. It’s a wonder the man’s floppy false mustache didn’t burst into flame.

  “Get back to your seat.”

  “But Mr. Holmes here is—,” Chan began.

  “Back to your seat.”

  Chan eyed the old Pinkerton a moment, then turned back to my brother and held out the bag of tea. “You really should try it.”

  “Thanks, Doc—maybe I will,” Gustav said, sounding decidedly more friendly than before. But even as he took the bag from the Chinaman, his eyes were locked on Lockhart.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” Chan said, and he headed back toward our car, his back so straight he could’ve been a soldier on review. He might’ve been the uncivilized foreigner, as some folks reckon it, but to judge by manners, dress, and dignity of bearing, it was Lockhart, Old Red, and me who were the savages.

  “Hey, ‘Custos,’” Gustav said. “What gives you the right to boss the little feller around?”

  “Hey, ‘Holmes,’” Lockhart replied. “Mind your own goddamn business.”

  And with that, he left, too. Except he didn’t follow Chan toward our sleeper. He spun on his heel and returned to the gent’s. Before he got through the door, I saw him fishing something out of his pocket. I had the sneaking suspicion it wasn’t ginger tea.

  “Whadaya think that was all about?” I asked my brother.

  He shook his head and sighed. “That’s just the thing—I can’t think right now. I gotta find somethin’ that ain’t”—he waved a hand at the dark wood that boxed us in—“this. Come on.”

  He turned and hustled away, heading down the aisle toward the back of the train.

  On our way through the next Pullman, we discovered that Samuel had predicted correctly: An impromptu Presbyterian choir was indeed singing hymns. We escaped the sickly sweet strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” by hurrying into the dining car. Though the inviting aromas drifting from the kitchen reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, they seemed to remind Old Red that he was sick to his stomach. He picked up his pace, rushing on to the last car of the train: the observation lounge.

  There wasn’t much to observe there, at the moment. We’d left the Great Salt Lake behind, and the Great Salt Desert is hardly a feast for the eyes—it’s more like an empty plate. Yet still the lounge was a popular place. There were passengers standing in nattering knots, bent over foldout tables absorbed in games of euchre and whist, and arrayed around the brightly upholstered, circular couch that dominated the center of the compartment.

  Even on Gustav’s most sociable days, this would have been more enclosed humanity than he’d happily subject himself to, and it didn’t surprise me when he weaved his way through the throng to the very back of the car. There was a final door there—one that didn’t lead to more train. Instead, it opened onto a small, brass-gated observation platform. Beyond that was nothing but track.

  Old Red stepped out onto the platform, and I followed, closing the door behind me. Evening was coming on by then, and the rapidly cooling desert air rushed past so fast it felt like blustery October instead of the stagnant, stifling July it was.

  We were alone.

  “Yeah … this ain’t so bad,” Gustav said as he took in the view—dingy alkali sand, scruffy scrub brush, and distant peaks just starting to glow orange-pink with the last rays of the day. He didn’t so much lean on the railing as prop himself up against it. “Maybe out here I can catch my breath.”

  “How’d it get away from you in the first place, that’s what I wanna know.”

  My brother swatted at the air dismissively. “Oh, that mouthy drummer was just gettin’ on my nerves with his blab about the Give-’em-Hell Boys and wreckin’ trains and all.”

  “You were ailin’ a long time before Horner opened his big yap.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. But it ain’t nothing to worry about. I’m just—”

  “‘Feelin’ a touch poorly’? Let me tell ya, that’s startin’ to wear mighty thin … and it wasn’t exactly thick to begin with.”

  “I said don’t worry. I’m alright.”

  “Oh, sure. You’re the very picture of health.”

  Color was returning to Old Red’s pallid face, but it was the wrong kind. He wasn’t going rosy-cheeked. He was turning green.

  “Look, Brother,” I said, “I know how you feel about detectivin’ and all, but something’s wrong here. Maybe that bullet you took’s messin’ with your innards again, I don’t know. Whatever it is, you need to stop and take stock of yourself. You’re sick as a dog with a damn Southern Pacific badge in your pocket. That can’t sit right.”

  Gustav straightened up and looked me in the eye.

  “It sits just fine.”

  At that exact moment, the train gave a powerful jerk, and the landscape around us tilted. We were moving down now, into the Humboldt Valley and Nevada, and the patchy sagebrush and grass of the desert were soon whipping by at a noticeably quicker clip.

  The train’s jostling pressed
my brother back up against the rail—and squeezed a heave from his gut.

  I offered Old Red a few pats on the back and soothing words as he spewed out onto the tracks. As soon as he could talk, though, we could squabble, and my tone quickly turned less than soothing. But just as we picked up our bickering again, a thumping clatter rose up underneath us, and something about the size and shape of a watermelon came caroming out from beneath the car.

  Which brings us, dear reader, back to the door you stepped in through: Old Red and I were face-to-face with a man’s head.

  Having as I do a basic grasp of human physiology, what came next wasn’t nearly so surprising. Heads, after all, are generally attached to bodies—and even when they’re not, it’s a safe bet you’ll find a torso and limbs and such nearby.

  The carcass Gustav and I spotted was rolling to a stop by the side of the tracks as we sped past.

  “Sweet Jesus,” I croaked. “You reckon we oughta—?”

  But my brother had already done his reckoning: He was rushing into the observation car.

  I’d only managed a couple steps after him when someone inside cried out, “Wait! That’s the bell cord! What are you—?” And then I was hurtling through space and slamming into the doorway as the brakes clutched hold and the Pacific Express came screeching to a stop.

  Eight

  HEAD HUNTING

  Or, We Go Looking for the Head and Almost Get Ours Shot Off

  I checked my face for splinters as I got to my feet, but all I’d picked up from the doorway was a fat lip. A chorus of groans—like a barbershop quartet with a toothache—rose up from inside, and when I stepped into the observation car, I found most of its occupants piled atop each other on the floor.

  “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,” my brother was murmuring as he hauled himself off Mrs. Kier, of all people. With her billowy skirts and matronly girth, she’d undoubtedly made a fine cushion when the brakes kicked in.

  “No harm done,” the lady replied, still clutching a fan of cards even though her companions, the folding table they’d been playing on, and the rest of the deck were now scattered willy-nilly around the car. “This isn’t the first time a man’s thrown himself at me. It’s just never been so literal before.”