On the Wrong Track Read Free Page B

face growing redder with each fistful of lint and crumbs he produced. “Somebody give me something to write with, damn it.”
    The dude in the bowler produced a scrap of paper and a stubby pencil from his vest pocket. Lockhart snatched them away with a muttered curse.
    “Yessir … ol’ Burl Lockhart’s still got himself a friend or two … ,” he mumbled as he wrote.
    He finished with a flourish—a series of hard, stabbing dots that jabbed at the table like knives. Then he thrust the paper at me and lurched to his feet.
    “There! Sorry I can’t help you with the Pinks. An old-fashioned, guts-and-guns lawman like myself don’t have no pull with the muckety-mucks no more. But believe you me—you don’t wanna sign on with them limp wrists anyhow.” He turned a glare on the fellow who’d come to fetch him, then pocketed the man’s pencil and stomped away.
    “Thanks, Mr. Lockhart!” I called after him, though as yet I had no idea what I was thanking him for.
    The dude lingered behind with me and my brother, pushing up the brim of his bowler and regarding us coolly. “You two wanna be Pinkertons?”
    “That’s right,” Old Red said.
    The dude shook his head and snorted. “Stick to ‘dogies,’ cowboy.” Then he followed Lockhart toward the door.

    I was about to tell the man what he could stick to—or, more precisely, what he could stick where—but Gustav cut me off with an elbow to the ribs.
    “Well?” he grunted, pointing at Lockhart’s note.
    The old Pinkerton had folded the slip of paper, and I read out what he’d written on the front:
    Col. C. Kermit Crowe
    S.P.R.R.
    Union Station
    When I unfolded the paper, there was even less to see on the other side. Lockhart’s message consisted of just four letters.
    O.K.
    B.L.
    “Well, ain’t that just the way,” I sighed. “We finally get ourselves a lucky break … and it’s broke.”
    I was a half second from balling up Lockhart’s note and tossing it over my shoulder when my brother reached out and plucked it from my fingers.
    “Hold on there.”
    He stared down at the paper, even though Lockhart’s wobbly scrawling couldn’t have meant less to him if it’d been written in Chinese.
    “It’s obvious, ain’t it?” I said. “That’s the shortest letter of recommendation a man could write. And it’s to a railroad—the Southern Pacific to be specific. We wouldn’t have anything to do with them sons of bitches.” After a moment went by without a reply, I added, “Would we?”
    Old Red kept staring at the note. He was chewing something over, and he obviously didn’t like the taste of it. In the end, though, he didn’t spit it out.
    “I reckon we’ll cross that trestle when we come to it,” he said, and he stood and headed for the door.

Three
    267 AND 268
    Or, We Learn We’re Just What the S.P. Isn’t Looking For
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    My brothers and sisters and I didn’t hear much cussing when we were growing up. Mutter wouldn’t tolerate it, and even so mild a word as “heck” would get your tongue slathered with soap.
    Yet when our Vater or Uncle Franz cut loose on the railroads, a ton of lye wouldn’t have been enough to wash away all the obscenities. Even sweet old Mutter would join in from time to time (albeit auf Deutsch, thinking we wouldn’t understand). If that revealed a little streak of hypocrisy in a woman we all worshipped, it was easily overlooked. Farming’s a tough enough life without Eastern fat cats charging more to ship your crops than folks could ever pay to eat them.
    It had been nearly a decade since Gustav had spent any time behind a plow, yet when it came to the railroads, he apparently remained as bitter as any Granger. For proof, one need look no further than my butt—and the unheavenly host of saddle sores it sported. Old Red insisted that we do by horse and trail what anyone else would do by rail, and through all our wanderings he hadn’t allowed us to subsidize the railroads’