On the Wrong Track

by Steve Hockensmith

  “What is that? Some kinda pelt?”

  “Ain’t no pelt. See for yourself.”

  My brother tossed me the round clump of hair. The moment my fingers wrapped around it, I noticed that its thick curls were smoother and silkier than anything I’d handled off an animal. When I got a better look at it, I understood why.

  Old Red was right—it wasn’t fur or wool. The hair was most definitely human.

  Sixteen

  MANIFEST DESTINY

  Or, Gustav and I Round Up Our Clues—and Find One’s Gone Astray

  “Sweet Jesus … a scalp?” I said.

  My brother nodded, looking both puzzled and pleased, like a fellow who drops a bucket down a well and hauls up a twenty-pound catfish.

  “You don’t think Barson and Welsh are ridin’ with Indians, do you?” I asked him.

  Old Red shook his head. “Indians ain’t the only ones known to bark folks. That scalp there ain’t fresh-cut, so for all we know some asshole bought it in a saloon for two bits.”

  “How does it help us, then?”

  Gustav gave me that droopy-eyed “Some folks never learn” look he often puts on before bludgeoning me with a quote from Mr. Holmes.

  “Too much data’s like too much money,” he said. “Ain’t no such thing.”

  This was, for once, not a quote but an attempt by my brother to craft a Holmes-style homily all his own. While it was pithy enough, I found it lacking in another, more important regard: truth.

  “I don’t know, Brother,” I said. “The way I hear it, ‘it is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise, your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of concentrated.’”

  Old Red’s expression went from smug to smoldering, for he knew whose words I’d turned against him: It was Holmes himself, sermonizing to poor, patient Watson in “The Reigate Puzzle.”

  “Yeah, I can quote the man, too,” I said. “It’s a wonder I can say anything that don’t come outta one of them stories, the number of times you’ve had me read ’em out.”

  “You might’ve done you some memorizin’, but you ain’t learned squat,” Gustav grumbled. “A goddamn scalp lyin’ around ain’t ‘incidental.’”

  “Alright, alright. Don’t get your bloomers in a bunch, granny.”

  I looked down at the tuft of hair again. The locks on top were blond and curly and silky to the touch. But the bottom, I noticed now, rubbed coarsely against my fingertips, almost like burlap. When I flipped it over, I saw a pattern woven into the underside—a dense tapestry of tiny loops.

  I poked my tongue up against my cheek, the better to bite it should the urge to laugh become overpowering.

  “You know, there’s something mighty strange about this here scalp.” I offered it back to Old Red. “You didn’t have no light to go by outside. Maybe you oughta look at it again.”

  Gustav snatched the scalp out of my hand and turned it over—and realized instantly it was no scalp at all. He looked up at me, scowling, and waited for me to crack a funny.

  I bit my tongue.

  “It’s a wig,” he finally mumbled.

  “A wig? No!” I leaned closer and pretended to give the hairpiece another going over. “Well, I’ll be … you’re right! Looks like the kind they make for bald fellers. I believe they call ’em toupees.”

  “For Christ’s sake, you don’t have to humor me,” Old Red said glumly. “I was wrong, that’s all. I ain’t gone feebleminded.”

  “Now that’s a debate I wouldn’t mind havin’. Cuz if today’s any indication—”

  “Otto?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Well … since you asked so nicely.”

  For the next minute, Gustav just sat there cogitating, and I just stood there watching him do it. Oftentimes, my brother comes out of these little quiet spells with some new deduction to show for it. This time, however, all he came out with was a curse.

  “Aw, shit,” he moaned, hunching over and putting his hands up against his face.

  He’d hardly broken a sweat during his dash to catch the train, but now his skin glistened with fresh beads of perspiration.

  “I’m all tangled up,” he said miserably. “At first, I was sittin’ here thinkin’, ‘It was the feller from the crate a-wearin’ that wig. That’s how he disappeared after tossin’ Pezullo’s body off the train. He costumed himself and mixed in with the passengers.’ But then I got to thinkin’, ‘If it’s so damn easy for him to sneak around in the Pullmans, why was he hidin’ in the baggage car in the first place? Why not just buy a ticket?’ And then I think, ‘Hold on—if he didn’t buy a ticket, how’d he get his crate on the train?’ And then out of nowhere I start thinkin’, ‘A little bowl? A dinky little goddamn fancy-ass bowl? What the hell’s that all about?’”

  “Sounds like you’re thinkin’ too much.”

  “I ain’t thinkin’ enough—not straight, anyway.”

  I couldn’t have asked for a better setup for another easy gibe at my brother, but I let it slide past.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know about the wig or the stowaway or the bowl. But I got an idea about that box. If we wanna know who had it put on the train, all we need do is find the manifest. Pezullo had to have one. Ain’t no way he kept track of all the crap back here off the top of his head.”

  Old Red nodded with a weariness that bordered on despair. “That’s a good thought, Brother. But didn’t you notice? The crate didn’t have no tag.”

  “Torn off, most likely,” I said. “Still, with a box that big? Wouldn’t surprise me if Pezullo made some kinda special note on it in the manifest. You know, ‘heavy load’ or ‘overweight—extra charge’ or ‘pain in the ass—bang this bastard up.’ Something like that.”

  “What would a manifest look like?” Gustav asked, brightening up a bit.

  I pointed at a clipboard loaded with crinkled papers hanging just above Pezullo’s desk. I’d noticed it up there earlier, when I’d fished El Numero Uno’s newsprint shroud from the drawers.

  “Like that, I reckon.” I pulled the clipboard down and gave the papers a look—and glanced over my shoulder to flash my brother a grin. “We got us a trail.”

  As a granary clerk once upon a time, I’d become accustomed to poring over ledgers crammed edge to edge with numbers and names scribbled so teeny it’s a wonder I didn’t need one of Mr. Holmes’s “magnifying glasses” to read them. In comparison, Pezullo’s manifest was as clean, clear, and easy to read as the sign above a saloon.

  There were four columns: passenger names, boarding stations, destinations, and baggage. All I had to do was scan the fourth column for some mention of a box big enough to hold a buffalo, then pop over to the first column to see who it belonged to.

  Or so I thought. I quickly noticed that something about those middle columns was very wrong. Instead of saying “Ogden” and “Oakland,” they said “Oakland” and “Ogden.”

  I looked at the upper-right corner of the first page, reading a group of numbers I’d originally skimmed over: “7/14/93.”

  The date was July 16. Which meant the manifest wasn’t for the run to Oakland—it was for the last run from Oakland.

  I went back to Pezullo’s desk and rifled through the drawers, finding more old manifests there. But there was no manifest for an Ogden–Oakland trip departing on the 16th of July.

  “Well, hell,” I said. “I guess they got rid of the real manifest same time they got rid of that bloody brick. If that pigheaded conductor had just given us five minutes for a good look with lanterns, maybe we …”

  I turned to find my brother staring at the floor, slouch-backed and glassy-eyed. He was off in another of his trances.

  This one he snapped out of quicker, though—and without any cussing.

  “Why tear the tag off the crate? Why get rid of the manifest?” he asked in a way that called for no answers—becau
se he already had the answers himself. “Why cover your trail unless it leads somewhere?”

  “Like where?”

  “Like to somebody you’re tryin’ to protect, of course,” Old Red said. “Somebody who’s still on this train.”

  Seventeen

  CARLIN

  Or, The Express Stops Again but the Peculiarities Don’t

  The train gave a little jerk, and the pulsing rhythm that throbbed through the floorboards began to slow.

  “Let’s have a look,” Gustav said, hobbling toward the side door.

  I slid the door open, and together we watched large, boxy shapes glide past us in the gloom outside. The distance between them shrank even as the boxes themselves grew—scattered shacks and farmhouses were giving way to clustered stores and warehouses.

  We’d finally reached Carlin, Nevada.

  “Supposin’ whoever killed Pezullo really is still aboard,” I said. “This’ll be his chance to slip away, won’t it?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether he wants to slip away.”

  Old Red sucked in a chestful of cool night air. He blew it out slowly, as if reluctant to let go of something precious.

  “Who’d even think to get rid of a baggage tag and a manifest?” he said. “Not a hobo. And not a farmer turned long rider, neither. It had to be someone who knows a thing or two about how railroads run things.”

  “Like an S.P. employee, you mean.” I snorted out a mirthless chuckle. “Maybe Colonel Crowe ain’t so crazy after all.”

  “Whoa, there—wouldn’t have to be a railroader we’re talkin’ about,” Gustav chided me gently. “A passenger could learn plenty about how baggage is handled on trains … provided he’d been ridin’ the things enough.”

  The Pacific Express was moving so slowly by now a man could outrace it at a brisk walk. We’d be stopping any second.

  “Well … you may as well get to the gents’ and clean yourself up,” my brother said. “We’re gonna be talkin’ to the law soon, and I don’t want you smellin’ like a bull’s balls when we do it.”

  “Gee, thanks, Brother—it’s so sweet the way you look out for me the way you do.”

  I started for the door to the Pullmans. Old Red didn’t.

  “You ain’t comin’ with?” I asked him.

  He gave his head a weary shake. “I wanna do some more pokin’ around in here.”

  “Oh, come on. Haven’t you poked enough for now? You’re baked. Give yourself a rest.”

  Gustav had been slumping next to the side door, but now he straightened up and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m gettin’ my second wind.”

  I licked my index finger and pointed it straight up, as if testing the air. “That’s funny. I ain’t gettin’ so much as a breeze offa you, let alone a wind.”

  “How could you even tell, with all the hot air you’re always blowin’?”

  “Alright, suit yourself—just be careful,” I said. “I am retiring to the washroom to complete my evening toilette.”

  I stepped into the vestibule—then spun and poked my head back in before the door could close behind me.

  “But just so you know … you ain’t exactly smellin’ of lilacs and lavender yourself.”

  “Dammit, would you get already?”

  I got.

  When I reached the WC, the first thing I did was take a look at myself in the mirror. It’s a wonder the glass didn’t crack. Dried blood speckled with sand ran in a stripe over my lips and chin, and my swollen nose was as bulbous and purple as an oversized radish. All I had to work with there in the privy was a sink basin the size of a smallish spittoon, but I made the most of it, scrubbing up as quickly (and, when washing anywhere in the vicinity of my nose, as gently) as possible.

  Just as I got myself looking more or less human, the train stopped. After a few last splashes over my face and under my arms, I went back to the baggage car and gave the door a few quiet little raps. (Despite the night’s excitement, most of our fellow passengers had somehow managed to fall asleep, if the snores from their berths were any indication.) Gustav didn’t answer, though I tried some not-so-little raps, too, so I headed outside to hunt him down.

  I hopped off the train onto the darkened platform of a small station. The brick ticket office nearby was lit up, and I could hear men inside talking excitedly—or perhaps angrily.

  “Better get in there,” Kip said.

  I whipped around to find the news butch stepping from the shadows near the Wells Fargo car.

  “Lockhart’s liquored-up somethin’ fierce,” he said. “And the things he’s been sayin’ to your brother shouldn’t oughta be said man-to-man unless—”

  He said more, I guess, but I wasn’t listening. I was running.

  Even before I made it inside, I heard the words “goddamned shpinelessh coward” bellowed at such a volume I would’ve recognized the voice had I been all the way back in Ogden. It was Lockhart, and I had no doubt who the old Pinkerton was hollering at—though I knew all too well he was the furthest thing from “shpinelessh.”

  “For the last time, we ain’t goin’ with you,” my brother was saying as I came rushing in. “But we ain’t stoppin’ you, neither. If you wanna go off and get yourself killed, you’re more than welcome to do it.”

  “Well, that’sh jusht what I’ll do if I have to!”

  Lockhart was dressed now—after a fashion. He’d pulled on trousers, but fastening any but the topmost button was beyond him in his current state, and the nightshirt he’d tucked into his pants flopped lewdly out through the fly. He’d thrown on a suit coat, as well, but it was too thin for a long ride through a chilly desert night. Not that he hadn’t given some thought to keeping himself warm: A bulge in his right coat pocket exactly matched the size and shape of a flask.

  Lockhart pivoted slowly on his heel, his stare piercing each man in the room in turn. There were five of us: Gustav, me, Wiltrout, and two fellows I didn’t recognize.

  “Not a one of you ish willin’ to posshe up with ol’ Burl Lockhart?” He stopped his spin with me, and when he spoke again, he sounded less badgering than beseeching. “Not a one?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lockhart … I gotta stick with my brother,” I said. “And anyway, if you’re talkin’ about settin’ out after the Give-’em-Hell Boys, hadn’t you oughta wait till—?”

  “Shpinelessh cowardsh!” Lockhart roared, and he went staggering out into the night.

  A moment of awkward, sheepish silence followed. After all, what does one say after being berated by a national hero, even if he is a drunk, deranged one?

  It was one of the men I didn’t recognize who spoke first—a stoop-shouldered fellow with the tousled hair and sleepy, disappointed demeanor of someone who’s recently been roused from a comfortable bed.

  “Well,” he said, shambling through a low gate into what looked like a small corral of worktables and filing cabinets, “I guess I’ll go check with Ogden again.”

  He took a seat in front of a telegraph key and got to clacking away on it.

  “So what’d I miss?” I asked my brother. “Other than more abuse from ol’ Burl, I mean?”

  “The stationmaster there sent word to Ogden and San Francisco about the holdup,” Old Red said, nodding at the fellow working the telegraph. “I gave him that speech of Barson’s to tap out, too. We ain’t heard nothing back yet, but Lockhart was anxious to head off after the Give-’em-Hell Boys. I told him we still got business on the train.”

  Wiltrout snorted at my brother like an old hog nosing up to a trough full of slop. “‘Business on the train’? What would that be? It was your ‘business’ to protect us from Barson and Welsh, and you sure as hell didn’t do that. It’s a miracle they didn’t make off with another fortune.”

  He was standing next to the other fellow there I didn’t recognize, a middle-aged gent with slicked-back silver hair and a mustache so neatly trimmed it looked like a single gray pigeon feather balanced
atop his lip. The conductor clapped him on the back.

  “Thank God Morrison here kept his head.”

  So I had seen this man before—or at least the barrel of his rifle. He was the itchy-fingered messenger from the Wells Fargo car.

  “Just doing my duty.” He flashed a nervous, here-and-gone smile, his mustache feather fluttering up and down on twitchy lips.

  “So what happened, exactly?” Gustav asked him.

  “They told me to open the side door, and … well, I wouldn’t.” Morrison shrugged, looking disappointed that he didn’t have more of a tale to tell. “I never even saw them. They kept to the shadows alongside the car.”

  “Oh, yeah? On which side of the train?”

  “The left,” Morrison said after a moment’s thought. “Does it matter?”

  Before my brother could answer—or, knowing him, not answer—the door to the platform opened, and Diana Caveo joined us inside.

  She looked as fresh as if it were midmorning instead of midnight, having put up her dark hair and traded in her nightgown for a smartly tailored outfit of gray wool. She favored us with a smile as she walked up, and I gratefully replied in kind, relieved that she wasn’t still mad at me for having Samuel stampede her from the baggage car earlier. She got no grin out of Wiltrout, though.

  “Passengers should remain on the train,” he huffed at her. “We’ll be getting under way again shortly.”

  “Oh, I won’t be long,” Miss Caveo said, her smile undimmed. “I just need to send a telegram ahead to San Francisco. I’m sure news of the robbery is going to reach there long before we do, and I don’t want my family worrying about me.”

  Wiltrout’s eyelids fluttered, as if they were straining to keep the eyes beneath them from rolling heavenward. “We can’t have the wire tied up with personal communiqués. We’ll be in Reno come morning. You can send your message from there.”

  “Please, Captain,” Miss Caveo persisted, stroking the man’s pride with the rather overstuffed honorific railroaders use with conductors. “My parents will be beside themselves, and surely one little message won’t—”