On the Wrong Track Read Online Free

monopolizing, rate-gouging, land-stealing ways with the purchase of a single ticket.

    Which explains why the first words out of my mouth when I caught up to Gustav outside that saloon in Ogden would have had Mutter reaching for her soap.
    “Now, now—no need to get your bristles up,” my brother replied, leaning casually—almost too casually—against the post our horses were hitched to. “We gotta at least see what that note means, don’t we?”
    “And what if it means what it seems to mean?” I shot back. “Jobs.”
    “Then we think it over.”
    “You who’d steer us a thousand miles out of our way so as not to put a single penny in a robber baron’s pocket? You would think about workin’ for the Southern Pacific?”
    “I’m always willin’ to think … unlike some people,” Old Red replied—though there was something strangely halfhearted about his gibe.
    “If you’re so eager to think, why ain’t you thinkin’ about what Mutter and Vater used to rant about? Jacked-up freight rates keepin’ farmers poor, people dyin’ cuz the tycoons was too cheap to put proper brakes on their cars. You forget all that?”
    My brother gave me a slow, chagrined nod, the way a man does when he recognizes the wisdom of a friend’s advice while reserving the right to ignore it.
    “That was years ago,” he said.
    “Try tellin’ that to the Give-’em-Hell Boys—you know they’re all sodbusters just like our people was. The papers say they never would’ve turned outlaw if the Southern Pacific hadn’t grabbed their land for a new line last year.”
    “Well … it ain’t like we never worked for assholes before,” Old Red said limply. “They just owned cattle ’stead of cattle cars.”
    “Yeah, but when we work for an asshole cattleman, we’re cowboys. What the hell’s a railroad man gonna hire us to do? Yard bulls, that’s what they’d peg us for. Thugs to kick the shit out of hoboes.”
    Gustav shook his head. “I don’t think so. I reckon there’s a reason the S.P. would be on the lookout for fellers like us—and you said it yourself.”

    My brother’s usually not keen on “theorizing” without all the facts, as Mr. Holmes looked down his long nose on idle guesswork. But Gustav was willing to make an exception now to sway me—and perhaps himself.
    “The Give-’em-Hell Boys,” he said.
    “You think the railroad’s puttin’ together a special posse?”
    “They’d have to be, the way Barson and Welsh have been robbin’ ’em blind.”
    I thought it over a moment. It made sense—and it didn’t make a lick of difference.
    “The Give-’em-Hell gang’s a hole the S.P. dug for itself,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t see why we should hop down into the pit with it.”
    “It’d establish our bona fides as law enforcers,” Old Red said.
    “Enforcers, anyway,” I scoffed.
    “It wouldn’t be forever. We’d make the jump to real detectin’ sooner or later.”
    I let a raised eyebrow do all my scoffing this time.
    “Just look at it like this,” Gustav persisted. “The point of ridin’ on a train ain’t the train. It’s where the train takes you. Understand?”
    “What if you get on the wrong damn train?”
    I thought this was a pretty clever retort, actually, but Old Red had an even better one.
    “You get off.”
    He didn’t say it like a platitude. He said it like a promise.
    “Really? It’s that simple?”
    Gustav nodded. “It’s that simple.”
    “We don’t like the setup, we just walk away?” I said—not realizing the mistake I was making using the word we .
    My brother nodded again.
    “Alright,” I sighed. “You win. For now.”
    Old Red didn’t look much cheered by his victory, though. In fact, he almost seemed disappointed that I hadn’t managed to change his mind for him.
    It was easy enough to find our way to the local S.P. office, for it’s at
the center of the colossal web of wood and steel that stretches out from Ogden to cover half the nation.