Free On the Wrong Track by Steve Hockensmith Page B

away, but there was no need. A party with another lantern was rounding the locomotive, and both Lockhart and Old Red hurried toward the light, moving side by side like a couple thoroughbreds in a dead heat.
    It was Wiltrout, the conductor, with the lantern. Behind him was the engineer and a muscle-bound Negro in soot-stained overalls—the train’s fireman, by the look of him. But it wasn’t a coal shovel the Negro was hefting now. He was dragging along a heavily bearded fellow in clothes so tattered it looked like he’d dressed himself in old mops. The tramp tried to dig in his heels, yet that didn’t slow the Negro one jot, and the man’s flap-soled shoes merely plowed up twin furrows in the sand.
    “Unhand me, you great brute!” the hobo commanded, his voice surprisingly deep, his diction highfalutin. He even rolled his r ’s. “Have you no respect for royalty?”

    “Anybody hurt here?” Wiltrout asked us, ignoring the tramp’s protests.
    After a moment of head shakings and mumbled noes, the conductor turned toward the express car.
    “I’ll have a word with you later, Morrison,” he said sternly.
    I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard a whimper rise up from inside the car.
    “Now.” Wiltrout faced us again and jerked his head at the Negro. “Bedford here says this little yegg crawled out from under one of the cars. Anybody see where he came from?”
    “I did.” I pointed at the baggage car. “He was tucked away under there.”
    While Wiltrout walked to the baggage car and shined his lantern underneath, Bedford and the engineer turned suspicious glares on their prisoner, the both of them practically growling and baring their teeth.
    “He was riding the rods, alright,” the conductor announced, leaning in to inspect the undercarriage. “His bindle’s still here. When’d you get on, ’bo? When we took on water at Wells? Or was it Promontory?”
    With a sudden twist of his shoulders, the tramp freed himself from Bedford’s clutches. But rather than flee, he began brushing off his ragged clothes with leisurely, exaggerated dignity. The dust flew from him in great billowing clouds that swirled like smoke in the lamplight, and he ended by giving his beard a shake that turned it from ash white to coal black.
    “I embark and disembark where I please,” he said when he was through preening. “The particulars are no concern of yours.”
    “Is that a fact?” Wiltrout said coldly. He turned to the crowd with a stuffed and mounted smile on his face. “Alright, folks. Everything’s under control. Return to your seats. We’ll be under way shortly.”
    “Oh, no, you don’t—I know what you’re up to!” the tramp jeered at him. “Hustling away the witnesses so you can beat the helpless ’bo into a false confession. Well, it won’t work.” He took a step forward and spread his arms wide. “Ladies and gentlemen! Hear my words! I am
El Numero Uno, King of the Hoboes—and I had nothing to do with that man’s death!”
    This pronouncement landed amidst the passengers like an anvil in a pond, and a wave of excited jabber rose up and swept across the crowd.
    “There won’t be no beatin’s,” my brother assured the hobo. “Just a proper investigation.”
    Lockhart coughed out a mocking guffaw.
    “All anyone needs to ‘investigate’ are the stains on this filthy yegg’s clothes,” Wiltrout said, moving his lantern closer to El Numero Uno. “Fresh blood.”
    The passengers’ babblings turned to gasps. Forget Buffalo Bill—old Will Shakespeare himself couldn’t have put on a better show.
    “Of course, I was splattered with some blood!” the King of the Hoboes protested. “The man got caught in the gears not four feet from me. Why, I saw his head plucked from his neck like a grape off the vine. But that’s all I did. See . He fell off the train with no help from me.”
    “You expect us to believe you? A dirty bum?” Kip wailed, his eyes wide and wet. He aimed a finger at the hobo