On the Wrong Track by Steve Hockensmith Page A

talking to my brother so much as through him. “We’re less than ninety minutes from Carlin, Nevada. It’ll be up to the law there to sort all this out.”
    “What about him?” Bedford asked, jerking a thumb at El Numero Uno.
    “We’ll keep him in the baggage car till we reach town.” Wiltrout shifted his gaze back to my brother and me. “I suppose I’d be hoping for too much if I were to ask if you brought handcuffs with you?”
    “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