“Newspaperman.”
His face changed with comical abruptness. “Why’nt you say so? Shoot, I wouldn’t’ve been so ornery. You looking for action yarns?”
“Maybe,” I said. “You got some?”
“Listen, I’ll feed you stories nobody ever thought of. I’ve outshot, outdrunk, outlied, and outscrewed the worst of ’em!” He leaned close, his breath reminiscent of a zoo’s elephant house. “Just last night,” he said significantly, “after I’d taken my medicinal quart of whiskey, me’n this feller went out to shoot the heads off’n rattlers. He wuz pie-eyed ‘n’ ‘most blasted his toes off. But me, I jus’ kept knockin’ them critters down, thinkin’ ahead to the real guzzlin’ to come.” His laugh turned into a phlegmy hack; he spat and said, “That’s the sort of stuff you’d want, ain’t it?”
“Uh, maybe.”
“Name’s Bruce Hobbs,” he said. “How’s about us teamin’ up on one of them dime novels? Call the first one Nebraska Bruce, Prairie Detective.”
I fought back a smile. “A detective named Bruce?”
“Well, my uncle’s Ralph. How about Ralph Hobbs?”
“Doesn’t quite make it.””
“Earl?”
“Keep coming.”
“Ray?”
“Nebraska Ray Hobbs, Prairie Detective,” I mused aloud. “Tell you what, look me up in San Francisco in a couple months. Maybe we can work something out.”
“Jus’ might do that, pardner!”
“But you won’t be there,” Johnny said to me later.“No kidding.”
At Sherman Summit we stopped longer than usual for water. Johnny and I climbed down stiffly from the car along with the rest. We gazed at snow-crowned mountains rising from dark purple depths to peaks of glistening pearl. Somebody pointed out Pike’s Peak, clearly visible some hundred miles distant. Granite slopes nearby held strands of stunted pine and cedar. For the easterners especially, who’d never seen true mountains, this panorama of the Rockies was breathtaking. We stood for long minutes shivering in the thin air. Already we had traveled nearly half of the UP’s long stretch between Omaha and Promontory.
Our prairie detective disappeared in Laramie, where we had lunch. We then chugged through miles of high, barren land dotted with sage. At Rock Creek we waited for two hours while a derailed freight train was removed from the tracks. The stationmaster told us that sandy soil on this side of the mountains caused constant problems with bridges and track beds.
My attention was attracted by two smooth-shaven men at the end of the car. They’d been with us since Omaha, but had not joined in the general socializing. The older of the two was in his late twenties, taciturn and pinch-lipped. He stood about five ten, with light brown hair, a mouth pulled down as if in disapproval, a long elephantine nose, and protruding jug-handle ears that nearly rivaled Johnny’s. He spent most of his time poring over a battered copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. The book made an odd contrast with the long-barreled .44 Colt revolver strapped to his thigh. Weapons were common now, but he wore his with none of the showmanship that abounded out here. It seemed almost workmanlike, a hammer in a carpenter’s belt.
His companion, about five years younger, was slightly shorter and leaner. He walked with a cane, wincing sometimes as he moved, but carrying himself so erectly that he seemed the taller of the two. He had short-cropped chestnut hair, dark eyebrows over pale hazel eyes, and a nervous blink that came every few seconds. Once, when he glanced up and caught me studying him, he smiled thinly and something icy emanated from him. I looked away. There was the same chill about the pair, especially the younger, that I’d felt from Le Caron; a menacing sort of charisma. Earlier Beard, the dry-goods merchant, had tried to engage them in conversation. The older man had not looked up from his book; the other gave him the thin, icy smile and said, “We don’t know you.” Beard retreated in haste. Another time, when somebody referred to the Confederacy as the “Confabulated States of America,” the younger one snapped, “Don’t ever say that again.” It was not repeated.
So I was surprised when he put aside his newspapers—he read stacks of them each day—and worked his way up the aisle toward me, employing his cane as if to keep from jarring himself. His companion watched fixedly.
“Heard tell you’re a newspaperman.” His voice was thin and nasal; a high-pitched twang and upward inflection made his words almost a challenge.
“That’s true.” This close I saw dark pockets under his eyes; his cheeks were gaunt, his skin pale.
“What paper?”
I told him.
“Enquirer? What’s its politics?”
“Democrat.”
He pursed his lips and nodded slowly, satisfied.
“What sort of articles?”
Before thinking to cover myself, I told him I was meeting the team in San Francisco.
“Red Stockings,” he repeated, screwing up his face like a schoolboy in a spelling bee. “Read of ’em somewhere. Never endeavored that game myself. War busied me. And now there’s the farming.”
Again I heard a hint of challenge, as if maybe I thought there was something remiss in what he’d said. I didn’t ask what a farmer needed with pearl-handled revolvers; the butts of them, protruding from crossed holsters, stuck out from his dark linen frock coat. They must have been encumbrances to such mundane things as sitting down.
“You get news of Western desperadoes up in Ohio?” He pronounced it “desper-A-does.” The question came with studied casual-ness.
“Only what comes through St. Louis,” I replied. “Which isn’t much. Mostly Indian and troop movements.”
He nodded judiciously. “Obliged.”
I watched him move stiffly back to his seat. The older man lowered his gaze to his book once more. Was everybody out here media conscious? I wondered. Was the Old West populated by some whimsical casting agency?
That night I stared out the window at the Wyoming desert, a landscape so dreary that even moonlight didn’t help. My lips were cracked, my eyes stung from the alkali dust that worked its way into the cars and powdered every surface. We stopped at Red Desert, Bitter Creek, Salt Wells. All aptly named. Johnny snored throughout.
I had a nightmare: Brainard was my father and Cait my mother; we huddled like
