On the Wrong Track Read Free Page A

for?”
    The bartender shook his head. “Just said he’s working on something secret—though he don’t make no secret of who he is. At first, I figured he was sniffing around after Mike Barson and Augie Welsh, seeing as the bounty on ’em’s up to ten thousand a head now. They’ve hit four trains outta Ogden the last six months, so some folks think this’d be the place to start hunting.”
    “Some folks” included about every newspaper in the country. Barson and Welsh’s gang, the Give-’em-Hell Boys, had stopped so many Southern Pacific trains that spring they could probably join the conductors’ union, and already Old Red and I had run across dime novels like Barson and Welsh: Robin Hoods of the Rails when hunting for new Holmes tales. Coming from farming folk, we had no fondness for the railroads ourselves, so it hadn’t bothered us in the least that the Southern Pacific couldn’t pluck this particular thorn from its side. A part of me was rooting for the thorn.
    “Well, I don’t reckon the Give-’em-Hell Boys have much to worry about from Lockhart even if he does chase ’em down,” I said to the bartender.
    “Yeah. Just look at him.”
    We stole a peek at the pickled Pinkerton, who was jabbering away at my brother without bothering to look at him. Lockhart’s attention
was focused entirely on the drinks resting on the countertop before me. The man was practically licking his lips.
    “Only chasin’ he’s interested in is the kind you do with a shot glass,” the bartender said.
    “I suppose I best let him get to it, too.” I slapped down a couple coins, swept up the glasses, and headed back to the table.
    As I walked up, Lockhart was rambling on about the Cross J, a Texas outfit Gustav and I worked a few years back. Apparently, Lockhart put in a season there himself before turning Pinkerton. While this shared history disposed him toward us warmly, it didn’t stop him from describing in excruciating detail elements of the ranch’s operations and geography we knew just as well as he, if not better. I put down his whiskeys, took a seat, and did my best to disguise the glazing over of my eyes.
    “Those were the days, boys,” Lockhart said after wrapping up a painfully thorough account of a cattle drive of the very type Old Red and I have worked over and over ourselves. “Before barbed wire. Before the railroads. It’s all changed now … and the changin’ just don’t stop.”
    Lockhart looked like he was about to spit again, but instead he chose to wash the bad taste out of his mouth by sucking down the last drops of his whiskey.
    “Christ,” he sighed, “even the goddamn changes keep changin’ on me.”
    “People gotta change, too,” Old Red said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lockhart shot back, his booze-fuzzed voice suddenly utterly clear.
    I jumped in to explain Gustav’s remark before my brother could do any damage by explaining it (truthfully) himself.
    “That’s what we keep tellin’ ourselves, Mr. Lockhart. We gotta change. Like you did all those years ago. The big cattle drives are dryin’ up. Drovers on the drift like us—we ain’t got nowhere to drift to anymore. That’s why we thought we’d give the Pinkertons a try. If a top-rail cowhand like Burl Lockhart could make the switch, well, we kinda hoped we could, too.”

    Of course, Burl Lockhart had about as much to do with Old Red’s interest in detectiving as the hairs on my ass had to do with Sherman’s March. And it would’ve been easy for Lockhart to deduce as much if he’d noticed how my brother was glowering at me just then.
    Fortunately, the old Pinkerton had something else to look at—a slick-dressed fellow in a bowler hat who came toddling up to our table.
    “It’s time, Lockhart,” he said. “He’s here.”
    “Oh, he is, is he?” Lockhart snarled back. “Well, he can just wait a damn minute while I conclude my business with the boys here.” He began rummaging through his pockets, his