On the Wrong Track (14 page)

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Authors: Steve Hockensmith

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THORNTON’S BOILER # 2
Or, Things Heat Up When I Find Carlin’s New “Coolie”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I wasted about a
minute trying to change Miss Caveo’s mind. I
know
it was about a minute, because Wiltrout shut me up with one word.
“Nine.”
He was staring at his pocket watch like he was counting down the seconds to “Eight” … and zero.
“Go,” Old Red told me.
Up till then, he’d stayed out of my debate with the lady—which hadn’t been much of a “debate,” really, since I’d been doing all the arguing. All she did was tug at my arm and tell me I was wasting time.
My brother shifted his gaze to her now. “But be careful.”
I couldn’t tell if he was warning her or warning me
about
her, and I didn’t have time to get a better bead on his meaning. Miss Caveo was pulling at my arm like a team of horses in harness, and there was nothing to do but let loose the brake and go rolling off with her.
“So … which first?” I said as we hurried around the station toward the dusty streets of Carlin. “Stables or saloons?”
The lady simply looked up and cocked an eyebrow.
“Saloons it is,” I said.
Miss Caveo finally let go of my arm, though she remained close at my side—we would’ve been walking shoulder to shoulder if she was a foot taller. As it was, we were (her) shoulder to (my) elbow. And she was still staring up at me.
“You might wanna look where you’re headed,” I suggested.
“I’m just wondering when you’re going to ask me.”
I turned my head and held her gaze, the two of us charging forward now with
neither
of us looking ahead.
“Ask what?”
A flicker of amusement passed over her pretty face without quite becoming a smile.
“Why I insisted on coming with you. When you were trying to talk me out of it, all you could say was it wasn’t proper. You never addressed my reasons.”
I shrugged—and looked away first. We were in the middle of the street, and I steered us left toward the only buildings in sight with light still aglow in the windows.
“I didn’t think you
had
a good reason.”
“Exactly. Because you didn’t ask.”
“Alright, then. Why are you so keen on helpin’ Dr. Chan?”
“Why are
you
?”
I shook my head and chuckled and almost muttered something about the inscrutable ways of Woman. But it was plenty scrutable what a suffragette would make of such a comment, so I let it lie.
“Cuz he seems like a decent feller,” I said.
“That’s all? It has nothing to do with your job?”
“Miss, let me tell you something—I consider that a
much
better reason than my job.”
“You don’t like being a railroad detective?”
“I don’t mind the ‘detective’ part so much. It’s the ‘railroad’ I ain’t fond of.”
I glanced down and found her still watching me intently.
“You know, you sure are askin’ a lot of questions. What is it that
makes me so intriguin’, exactly—my good looks or my way with words? Or is it just sheer animal magnetism?”
She broke off her stare. It was hard to tell in the gloom of night, but it looked like I finally got a blush out of her, too.
“Actually, it’s your job,” she said.
“Oh? You thinkin’ of takin’ Barson’s advice and applyin’ for it?”
This was intended as a funny, of course, and it even got a bark of laughter out of the lady—though the sound of it was far harsher than I’d have thought such a pretty throat could produce. A shout from up ahead cut her off.
“I said get me another drink, Chink!”
It didn’t take any deducifying to know what that meant. We’d found Chan—and just in time.
The yelling was coming from a dilapidated saloon with all the elegance and charm of a sharecropper’s shack. The peeling paint on the sign above the batwings said THORNTON’S BOILER #2. Assuming #2 was a step down from #1, #3 wouldn’t have been much more than a bog hole with a jug in it.
“I hate to keep repeatin’ myself, but this ain’t no place for a lady. Wait here.”
Miss Caveo didn’t break her stride. “As a matter of fact, you
are
repeating yourself, Mr. Amlingmeyer. And I didn’t appreciate hearing it the first time.”
“Well, try hearin’ it like this, then.” I wrapped my arm around hers again and pulled her to a stop just outside the saloon. “I ain’t just askin’ you to stay out here cuz you’re a lady—or even cuz you’re an especially fine lady I’d hate to see hurt. I’m askin’ cuz I’m the one wearin’ this two-bit badge, so it’s on me to keep Chan
and
you out of trouble. You’re interested in my job? Fine. Stand back and let me do it. Please.”
As I spoke, the peevish pucker to the lady’s face faded away, and when I was through she was back to her old, sardonic self.
“That was positively inspirational, Otto. The Southern Pacific would be proud.”
“Well, I still ain’t proud of
it
.” I turned my body toward Thornton’s Boiler but kept my gaze on her. “You’ll wait?”
She nodded. “You’d better hurry. Mr. Wiltrout’s probably down to four by now.”
I didn’t point out that I’d been
trying
to hurry all along. When a man actually wins an argument with a woman, the last thing he needs to do is kick up a whole new one.
“What the hell is goin’ on here?”
I bellowed as I pushed through the batwings into the saloon. I was asking largely for effect, but it was actually a pretty good question.
Burl Lockhart lay flat on his back atop the nearest card table, the coins and greenbacks spread across his stomach and chest rising and falling with his every rafter-rattling snore. Three men—the dingy dive’s only customers—sat around him. They had cards in their hands and frozen smiles on their dirty faces. Two of the men were oil-smeared railroaders, but the third had the grubby, dusty look of a prospector still hunting for his first big strike. Dr. Chan stood nearby, his spectacles askew, his fine suit clothes mussed, and an opened magazine draped over his head like a bonnet. A gray-bearded man in a sweat-yellowed shirt gaped at me from behind the bar.
“Well?”
I demanded, coming to a stop legs spread, arms akimbo. I puffed out my chest, hoping the star pinned there would prove sufficient distraction from the emptiness at my hip where a six-gun should’ve been.
“A-ain’t nothin’ wrong,” one of the railroad men stammered. “W-we’re just h-havin’ us a little fun is—”
“The Chinaman tried to take our lazy Susan,” the prospector broke in. He was a big, grimy man—bigger and grimier than me even—and a pussyfooter’s badge obviously didn’t impress him. “I told him he could have the old sot if he played coolie for us for a spell.”
“He said he’d help me move Mr. Lockhart if I bought a round for him and his friends,” Chan said, equal parts angry and ashamed. He pulled the magazine off his head and let it drop to the floor. “Now he won’t do it.”
The big man grinned. “I’m still thirsty.”
“Well, you can just go outside and find yourself a trough, then,” I said. “Cuz these here gentlemen are passengers of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and they’re gettin’ back aboard their train—
now
.”
I took a step toward the table, meaning to haul Lockhart up and out of there. The railroaders weren’t going to stop me. They were slouching low in their seats, completely cowed.
Their brawny pal, on the other hand, was all bull.
“God damn,” he spat, pulling his chair around to face me fully—and put himself between me and Lockhart. “The Chink said he and the coot was from the Pacific Express, but I didn’t believe it. Shit, what’s next? They gonna start makin’ folks share their seats with
niggers
? It ain’t right. Someone oughta put a stop to it … huh, boys?”
“Th-that’s right, Pat,” one of the “boys” mumbled.
“I reckon so, Pat,” the other added with a listless nod.
“It’s settled, then.” Pat pointed at Chan with a filthy finger the size of a sausage. “This here slant ain’t gettin’ back on that train.”
I sighed and gave my head a slow, exasperated shake, as if I’d grown weary of the foolishness I had to beat out of such men on a daily basis.
“Let me ask y’all something,” I said. “You ever hear of ‘Big Red’ Amlingmeyer?”
Lockhart cut loose with a raspy roar of a snore. The men gathered around him stayed silent.
“No? Well, that’s alright. I appreciate every opportunity to spread my legend. Now … I can kick your asses one by one or two by two, but I’d prefer you didn’t rush me in a bunch. You’d just get in each other’s way, and it’d make things altogether too easy for me.”
“Ha!” Pat scoffed. “You’re so tough, pussyfooter, what the hell happened to your face?”
“Oh, this?” I waggled my fingers before my swollen nose. “Stand up, and I’ll show you.”
And he actually obliged me, hauling himself off his duff with a crack of his knuckles and a muttered curse. He was only half straightened
up, not firm on his feet yet, when I stepped up quick and slammed a fist into his face.
It wasn’t entirely fair, I’ll grant you—but it was entirely satisfying. Pat toppled backward over his chair and ended up a moaning heap on the floor, blood spurting from his nose.
“So, boys—who’s next?” I said to his drinking buddies.
But they weren’t even looking at me. One was staring down at Pat, wide-eyed and white-faced. The other was gawping at something behind me, even wider-eyed and whiter-faced.
“
Papà! Papà,
what have they done to you?” Miss Caveo called out as she rushed into the room.
When I turned to look at her, my knee-jerk exasperation turned to ice-cold dread, for I also caught sight of the saloonkeeper—and the shotgun in his hands. The barrel of his scattergun hadn’t quite cleared the bar, which was the only reason I still had a neck (and head) for the young lady to save.
“Is he alive? What happened?” Miss Caveo asked, swooping to Lockhart’s side at the card table. “
Papà
… can you hear me? It’s Lullabelle! Lullabelle’s here!”
Lockhart snorked out another tremendous snore.
“Heavens, no! The vapors!” Miss Caveo swung around to face the bartender. “Please tell me you didn’t serve this man alcohol!”
“I surely did. And why shouldn’t I?”
“You don’t understand—my father has toxophiliphalia of the liver!” Miss Caveo’s brown eyes brimmed with tears, and she aimed an accusatory, trembly-lipped look at Chan. “What kind of servant are you? You know one sip could kill him!”
Despite all he’d been through, Chan managed some decent dramatics himself, hanging his head and mumbling an apology.
Miss Caveo began stroking Lockhart’s thinning gray hair. “I’m taking him to San Francisco for a special cure, but he’s been in such pain lately,” she told the railroaders. “Perhaps … perhaps he wanted to end it all.”
“It ain’t my fault,” the saloonkeeper whined, tucking his shotgun
back under the bar. “The old geezer’d had a lot more than a sip before he even came in here.”
“Shut up, Thornton,” one of the railroad men snapped. He turned toward Miss Caveo but couldn’t quite bring himself to look her in the eye. “I’m truly sorry about all this, miss.”
“We didun mean nuh hahm,” Pat added, struggling to sit up with a grubby paw pressed over his nose.
“I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive us, miss,” the other railroader threw in. “Your pa came stumblin’ in here hollerin’ for whiskey, claimin’ he was Burl Lockhart. Well … to be honest, we just pegged him for a crazy old boozehound.”
“That’s the toxophiliphalia,” “Lullabelle” sobbed. “It’s already affecting his brain!”
I stepped over and draped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “There, there, Miss Bernhardt. We’d best get your father back to the train pronto. I hear one of the passengers is a doctor. Maybe he knows something about … uhhh … the old gentleman’s condition. We can have him take a look.”
“Yes … it’s worth a try,” Miss Caveo whispered, fighting to choke back her tears. “I must hold on to hope. I must … strive to … stay strong.”
She began weeping softly, and by the time Chan and I were dragging Lockhart toward the door, she wasn’t the only one—I could’ve sworn I saw Pat wiping at his eyes.
“First you tell Wiltrout your daddy had a stroke,” I said once we were outside. “Then it turns out he’s got a fatal case of tacofaultyfamilia of the liver—and he’s Burl Lockhart?” I shook my head, grinning with incredulous admiration. “Miss, you are without a doubt the most audacious liar I’ve ever seen … and I’m mighty grateful for it.”

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