On the Wrong Track

by Steve Hockensmith

  “How ’bout this?”

  Kip’s jaw dropped so far, so fast, it almost ended up on the tabletop next to the toupee. Samuel, on the other hand, recognized it for what it was straight off. He grunted out a little one-note chuckle—“Huh”—and picked the wig up.

  “I’ve seen plenty of these. Even had to help a few gentlemen get theirs fastened to their heads.” He dropped the hairpiece back on the table. “This one don’t look familiar, though. Maybe you oughta ask Mr. Horner about it. I bet he’d have a sharper eye for such things.”

  “Why would that be?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’d never gossip about anything that might embarrass a passenger,” the porter said—and he rubbed his hand over his own gray-tinged hair, as if smoothing down a cowlick.

  I nodded, smiling, finally realizing why Horner’s pompadour had gone so cockeyed after he’d climbed up into his bunk. He’d hung up his hair for the night the way most men hang up their hats. He’d have no mirror to go by in his berth, so whenever he wanted to poke his head out, all he could do was balance his little man-wig over his ears and hope for the best.

  “How ’bout you, Kip?” Gustav croaked, his voice finally cracking under the weight of so many questions. “You notice this on anybody today?”

  “Heck, no. If I had, I never would’ve stopped laughin’.” The news butch reached out to stroke the toupee warily, like it was some exotic woodland creature Old Red had on a leash. “Jeez … I think I’d rather be bald. Where’d you find this thing, anyway? And why is it important?”

  “Oh, it was just lyin’ around. Might not mean a thing.”

  My brother swept the hairpiece off the table and stuffed it back in his pocket. Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed, suddenly seeming so weary the weight of his own skin looked like too much for him to bear.

  “You done?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “With these fellers, anyway.”

  “Well, then … seein’ as you look like shit and sound like shit and have been generally actin’ shitty, I’d say it’s time for you to turn in.”

  Gustav pursed his lips and glared at me so long I started to think he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open.

  “Alright, Mutter,” he finally said. “I reckon you’re right.”

  He put his palms on the table and slowly pushed himself to his feet. I stood, too, offering the good-nights and thank-yous my brother wasn’t bothering with.

  “Wait,” Kip said as we started to leave. “Old Red … what’s goin’ on?”

  “Yeah,” Samuel said. “You’re actin’ like whoever killed Joe’s still on the Express.”

  “Well, there’s a reason for that.”

  The murmuring of the porters and cooks snuffed out, and for a moment all you could hear was the humming-rumbling-tapping of the little vibrations all around us—wood, metal, glass, porcelain, leather, all in motion, all rattling against each other, a million collisions a second all invisible to the eye.

  “Whoever killed Joe is still on the Express,” Gustav said.

  And with that, he turned and headed for the Pullmans.

  Every man there watched silently as he went, either wondering if he was crazy or hoping he was.

  “Well,” I said with a cheerful wave, “sweet dreams, fellers!” And I followed my brother back into the darkness.

  Twenty-two

  GUT FEELINGS

  Or, Old Red Lays Out His Doubts, and I Lay Into Old Red

  “So, Gustav,” I began as we trudged through the dimly lit sleeping cars.

  My brother was ahead of me a couple steps, and he glanced back just long enough to shoot me a frown. “Later.”

  “I’m just wonderin’—”

  “Not now.”

  “But you ain’t even heard—”

  He looked back again, his frown now a full-blown scowl. “Hush up.”

  “So I ain’t allowed to ask questions even when—?”

  Old Red spun to face me, and I only barely managed to stop in front of him rather than on top of him. Yet he waved me in another step, and I pressed in so close we could’ve shared socks. He waved again, though, and I bent down and cocked my head, bringing my right ear in near enough to hear not just his whispers but the whistling of the wind through his nose hair.

  “You got questions. Fair enough. I might just have an answer or two. But here’s a question for you first: If the killer is still on this train, who’s to say we ain’t bein’ listened to this very moment?”

  “Oh,” I whispered back, suddenly very aware of the black curtains all around us—and the possibility that a murderer was lurking behind them. “I get you. I can hold off a little longer … though there is one thing I oughta tell you now, long as we’re huddled up like this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really need to pop some of them peppermints Kip gave you—and not just to settle your stomach. Your breath’s so bad you could send the killer to Boot Hill just by blowin’ in his face.”

  Gustav replied with a grumpy snort and a turned back. We moved on again in silence, spotting nary another soul till we reached our own Pullman.

  Toward the far end of the aisle, a small figure was hunched over by one of the lower berths. As we drew closer, headed for the gents’ washroom at the front of the car, I saw that it was Dr. Chan—and he wasn’t alone. He was speaking in hushed tones to Wiltrout, who wasn’t so hushed in response.

  “Why, you filthy little monkey,” the conductor snarled. “How dare you?”

  Just what it was he’d dared we weren’t to learn. Upon noticing our approach, Chan murmured something else to Wiltrout, whose only response was to snap his berth curtains closed.

  After that, Chan hustled back toward his berth—and us. The Chinaman had a quiet dignity about him that had weathered quite the gale that day, and he managed to maintain it even then, keeping his eyes down but his back unbent. He offered us a quiet “Gentlemen” as he scooted around us in the passageway.

  “Night, Dr. Chan,” Old Red said. “Oh … and I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Yeah—my condolences, Doc,” I threw in.

  Chan’s eyes bugged out so far it’s a wonder they didn’t pop the spectacles right off his face. “Excuse me?”

  “We noticed that one of them coffins in the baggage car is yours,” I explained. “Or … well … that it’s got a tag with your name on it, I mean.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Chan put a limp smile on his face, but he whipped it off quick, like it was a tie he’d decided didn’t suit him. “A cousin of mine passed away suddenly in Chicago. He was helping me run the Chinese exhibit at the Exposition. Naturally, it’s my duty to escort the body back to San Francisco personally.”

  Gustav nodded. “Naturally.”

  Yet there was nothing natural about the way Chan had answered: There was a rote quality to it, like he was a politician giving the same speech for the hundredth time.

  “Well … good night again,” he said, only slightly less stiff, and he ducked around us and fairly dove down into his bunk.

  I offered my brother a What was that all about? shrug. He gave me his own shrug in reply, this one of the Beats me variety. Then he was shambling off toward the gents’ again.

  “Alright—you ain’t got no excuses now,” I said once we were in the privy. “Talk.”

  “Fine,” Gustav sighed, opening the window just wide enough to let in a swirl of chilly night air. “But you need to be a mite more particular as to what you wanna hear.”

  “I would be, only I got so many questions it’d take all night just to get through all the askin’.”

  Old Red unbuckled his gunbelt and eased it down to the floorboards, then moved to the sink and brought a gush of water down over his head.

  “But alright—start with Carlin, why don’tcha?” I plopped myself on the floor (the washroom being far too cramped for any seats other than the one it couldn’t get away without). “What exactly were you up to back there … other than throwin’ yourself
in front of trains, I mean?”

  “This and that,” Gustav said as he toweled himself off. “Askin’ my own questions, mostly.”

  He looked up at his reflection in the mirror over the sink and didn’t seem to like what he saw—nor should he have. His pale skin was in such marked contrast to the bright red stripes of his mustache and hair he looked like a candy cane from the collar up. The only pinkness to his face came courtesy of assorted scuffs and abrasions.

  He splashed more water over his face, but he couldn’t wash away the aching weariness we both saw there.

  “Talked to the engineer and the fireman,” he said, putting his back against the wall and sliding down slowly until he was on his keister between the sink and the crapper. “Found out what they saw of the ‘robbery’ up in the engine cab. Which wasn’t much. They stopped cuz of the barricade on the tracks, and one of the gang hopped up and held a gun on ’em for the next however long. He was wearin’ a mask—and he was dressed for ridin’ and covered with trail dust.”

  “Well, what else would you expect a train robber to wear?” I pulled off a boot, then set to work on the other. “An evenin’ gown and pearls?”

  Old Red stared forlornly at the boots at the end of his own splayed-out legs, obviously wishing them gone but seemingly unsure if he had the strength for so monumental a task as taking them off.

  “Think about it.” With a pained grunt, he sat up straight and grabbed hold of his right boot like it was a greased pig that might slip squealing from his grip any second. He twisted at it irritably as he continued talking. “It sure don’t sound like the feller who jumped the engine crew came out of any crate. Which means we still ain’t found anybody who saw hide nor hair of that stowaway.”

  “Well, didn’t Morrison say some of the gang was talkin’ to him from outside his car? Maybe one of them was Jack in the Box.”

  “Why would Barson and Welsh squirrel a man away with a bunch of bricks just so he could jump out and gab at the express messenger?” Gustav had finally freed himself of his right boot and was now locked in mortal combat with the left. “They had all the men they needed if they was just ‘sendin’ a message’—especially if one of the crew or passengers was in it with ’em, the way it looks. So that feller from the crate … I can’t fit him in with the Give-’em-Hell Boys any which way I look at it.”

  “But if he wasn’t workin’ for Barson and Welsh, then what was—?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion. I been tryin’ to just follow the data, like Mr. Holmes’d do. But the damn data’s twisted into such a pretzel I’ll never get my brain unknotted.”

  Old Red had both his boots off now, and he sort of wilted back against the wall, spent. His eyes were bloodshot, with bags beneath them so puffy and dark he looked like a red-mustached raccoon. His eyelids fluttered, and I couldn’t tell if he was fighting off mere sleep or a dead faint.

  I had more questions—lots more—but the time for asking was past. It was time to do some telling.

  “Brother, in case you haven’t noticed, it ain’t just your brain that’s kinked up. Next time you get off this train, you need to stay off.”

  Gustav’s droopy-lidded eyes went wide. “What?”

  “You know what I’m talkin’ about. You had a hole in you not two months ago, and now you’re gonna go bouncin’ over the Sierra Nevadas on a goddamn express train? Uh-uh. I’m tellin’ you, Gustav—you can’t take it.”

  As I spoke, my brother pulled his pipe from his coat pocket. Next came his tobacco pouch, and he got to loading the pipe with slow, meticulous movements that allowed him to keep looking down—away from me.

  “We got work to do,” he said when I was through. “Men are dead.”

  “Dammit, I know that. And I don’t wanna see you end up the same.”

  Old Red put the pipe in his mouth and lit a lucifer—then changed his mind and tossed the match in the commode. He sighed, took the pipe out, flipped it over, and emptied the unsmoked tobacco right back in its pouch.

  “I ain’t anywhere near that sick, Otto. I’ll be fine.”

  “Really? Cuz it seems to me the only reason you ain’t pukin’ right now is you ain’t eaten nothin’ but a slice of bread the last twelve hours.”

  Gustav tucked his pouch and pipe back in his pockets. Again, he moved with deliberate slowness, as if putting off some bigger chore he was anxious to avoid.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “So you keep sayin’, though I don’t see what makes you so sure. Every time you get off the train, it don’t take but a minute for you to start lookin’ better. Then you get back on and you sick-up again—and you don’t do nothin’ about it.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to do but ride it out.” He finished with his pouch and patted his pocket.

  “How do you know? Hell, you still ain’t even dug out them peppermints Kip gave you. He said they cured the collywobbles, remember? Same goes for the Chinese tea Doc Chan gave you. Why don’t you try ’em, for Christ’s sake? See what happens.”

  Old Red shook his head, still looking down though he no longer had any excuse to do so. “Them things don’t do squat for me.”

  And he winced. Not for long, mind you—the look lasted all of a second. Most folks wouldn’t have even noticed it. But a brother would. I didn’t know the what or why of it, but he thought he’d slipped up somehow.

  “How do you know a couple of them candies wouldn’t help? You try ’em sometime before?”

  Gustav looked about as saggy as a man can, yet he managed to go even saggier. It was like my question turned his backbone to pudding.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “On a train?”

  I knew the answer even before he gave me his slow, mournful nod. I didn’t set out to deduce it, but I suppose all the time I’d spent in Mr. Holmes’s company helped me put the pieces together—even though I hadn’t even realized I’d been looking at a puzzle at all.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, though I more than believed it—I felt the truth of it drive into my gut like a fist. “This ain’t new to you, is it? All the years we been stickin’ to the trails, goin’ everywhere on horseback … it wasn’t cuz you hate the railroads. It’s cuz you hate trains.”

  Old Red just looked at me, and I could see him weighing his first inclination, the one he falls back on so often—telling me I’m full of crap. But I could see weariness in his eyes, too. He’d been carrying a secret, and the weight of it had worn him down.

  “Jesus, Gustav,” I said. “You lied to me.”

  “I never outright lied.”

  I gaped at my brother with such shock you might’ve thought he’d sprouted horns and poked me with a pitchfork.

  “Oh, is that how you justify it? You never lied? You just let me make assumptions—theorize without all the data, as Mr. Hoity-Toity would say? So there I was, thinkin’ you was stayin’ true to your convictions, when all you was really stayin’ true to was a flip-floppy stomach!” I shook my head, disgusted. “All them extra miles on the trail. All them days in the sun and nights in the cold. All them extra saddle sores on my ass! And you never told me the real reason why.”

  “You’re right, Otto. It’s just that … I … well …”

  Gustav squeezed his eyes shut, and I could see he was groping around in the darkness inside, in that place where men carry the things they tuck away out of the light. For a moment, I thought he was going to dredge something out of there for me—a truth he’d buried down deep. But then he straightened his spine and puffed out his chest and opened his eyes, and I knew he’d stopped digging.

  “We got things to talk over, sure. Brother things. But that can wait.” He tapped the badge hanging like a shield over his heart. “This has gotta come first.”

  “Really?” I glanced down at my own star. It looked so dull and dusty—such a puny thing, yet it could make some men feel so big. “Is this what comes first for you?”

  Old Red either failed to take my meaning or chose not to. “When th
ere’s a murderer on the loose? You bet, it is.”

  “Alright, then.” I pushed myself to my feet and unpinned my badge. “These little trinkets mean so much to you, why don’t you have two?” I tossed the star into Gustav’s lap. “I’m through playin’ lawman.”

  I snatched up my boots, turned my back to my brother, and started for the door—which slammed shut before I could reach it. Someone had joined us in the gents’.

  Or something, I should say. Something dark and ugly and extremely pissed off.

  It was a snake at least three feet long and black as a banker’s soul save for a patch of white around its open mouth. It held its head high and swayed back and forth, licking at the air with a flick of its long, dark tongue.

  “Sweet Jesus!” I cried out.

  The snake didn’t say anything. He just opened his mouth even wider and lunged at my legs.

  Twenty-three

  SNAKE EYES

  Or, A Serpent Sets His Sights on Us, and I Throw in the Towel

  The snake’s teeth sank into my left boot. Fortunately, my left foot was elsewhere at the time.

  I’d been carrying my boots out with me, and upon noticing that the line for the jakes had just grown longer by about forty inches of snake, I was so stunned I dropped the both of them. They landed directly in the snake’s path, and the scaly SOB was on the left one in a black flash. It bit the boot again and again, thrashing and jerking its head in a squirming fury.

  While the snake was doing its best to chew my boot like a plug of tobacco, I was Texas two-stepping on my tiptoes, trying not to land on it as it writhed underfoot.

  “Oh, Christ! Oh, shit! Oh, Christ! Oh, shit!” I spluttered as I danced.

  The tiny compartment didn’t have much to offer in the way of high ground, but I found a spot and claimed it, sitting my ass down in the sink and swinging my legs up as high as I could get them. With a vigor I didn’t think he still had in him, my brother shot to his feet and clambered atop the only other perch available: the commode. The lid had been left propped up, and Old Red certainly didn’t take the time to put it down. So he ended up crouched upon the seat, his stockinged feet bowed out wide.