The Wrecker

“Good afternoon, sir,” said James, thinking that the blacksmith looked morose. Big as the man was, his cheeks were hollow. His eyes were red, as if he didn’t sleep well.

“What can I do for you, young fella?”

By now, Dashwood had learned to ask his questions privately. Later, he would show the sketch to the whole group. But if he started off in front of all of them, it would turn into a debate that resembled a saloon brawl.

“Can we step outside? I want to show you something.”

The blacksmith shrugged his sloping shoulders, got up from the milk crate he was sitting on, and followed James Dashwood outside next to a newly installed gasoline pump.

“Where’s your horse?” the blacksmith asked.

Dashwood offered his hand. “I’m a Jim, too. James. James Dashwood.”

“I thought you wanted horseshoes.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Dashwood asked, holding up the sketch with the mustache. He watched the blacksmith’s face and, to his astonished delight, he saw him recoil. The man’s unhappy face flushed darkly.

Dashwood’s heart soared. This was the blacksmith who had fashioned the hook that had derailed the Coast Line Limited. This man had seen the Wrecker.

“Who are you?” asked the blacksmith.

“Van Dorn investigator,” James answered proudly. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, and the blacksmith was ru

“Stop!” Dashwood yelled, jumped to his feet, and gave chase. The blacksmith ran fast for a big man and was surprisingly agile, whipping around corners as if he were on rails, losing no speed in his mad turns and jinks, up and down alleys, through backyards, tearing through laundry hung from clotheslines, around woodsheds, toolsheds, and gardens and onto a street. But he hadn’t the stamina of a man just out of boyhood who neither smoked nor drank. Once they were out in the open, Dashwood gained on him for several blocks. “Stop!” he kept shouting, but no one on the sidewalks was inclined to get in the path of such a big man. Nor was there a constable or watchman in sight.

He caught up in front of a Presbyterian church on a tree-lined street. Grouped on the sidewalk were three middle-aged men in suits, the minister in a dog collar, the choirmaster gripping a sheaf of music, and the deacon holding the congregation’s account books under his arm. The blacksmith barreled past them, with James hot on his tail.

“Stop!”

Only a yard behind, James Dashwood launched himself into a flying tackle. As he flew, he took a heel on the chin, but he still managed to close his ski

“Now that you caught him,” called the deacon, “what are you going to do with him?”

The answer came from the blacksmith himself in the form of a wide fist ribbed with thick knuckles. When James Dashwood came to, he was lying on the grass, with the three men in suits peering down curiously at him.

“Where’d he go?” said James.

“He ran off.”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere he wanted to, I’d reckon. Are you all right, so

James Dashwood rose swaying to his feet and wiped the blood off his face with a handkerchief his mother had given him when he moved to San Francisco to work for the Van Dorn Detective Agency.

“Did any of you recognize that man?”

“I believe he’s a blacksmith,” said the choirmaster.

“Where does he live?”

“Don’t know,” he answered, and the minister said, “Why don’t you let be whatever got between you, son? Before you get hurt.”

Dashwood staggered back to the livery stable. The blacksmith was not there.

“Why’d Jim run off?” a mechanic asked.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“He’s been acting strange, lately,” said a stable hand.

“Stopped drinking,” said another.

“That’ll do it,” said a groom, laughing.

“The church ladies claim another victim. Poor Jim. Getting so a man’s not safe on the streets when the Women’s Christian Temperance Union holds a meeting.”

With that, grooms, stable hands, and mechanics broke into a song that James had never heard but they all seemed to know:Here’s to a temperance supper,

With water in glasses tall,

And coffee and tea to end with-

And me not there at all!

James took out another copy of the sketch. “Do you recognize this man?”

He received a chorus of nos. He braced for a “Broncho Billy” or two, but apparently none of them went to the pictures.

“Where does Jim live?” he asked.

No one would tell him.

He went to the Santa Monica Police Department, where an elderly patrolman led him to the chief of the department. The chief was a fifty-year-old, well-groomed gentleman in a dark suit, with his hair cut close on the sides in the modern way. Dashwood introduced himself. The chief acted cordially and said he was happy to help a Van Dorn operative. The blacksmith’s last name was Higgins, he told Dashwood. Jim Higgins lived in a rented room above the stable. Where would he go to hide out? The chief had no idea.

Dashwood stopped at the Western Union office to telegraph a report to the Sacramento office to be forwarded to wherever Isaac Bell was. Then he walked the streets, as darkness fell, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man. At eleven, when the last streetcar left for Los Angeles, he decided to rent a room in a tourist hotel instead of riding back to town so he could start hunting early in the morning.

A LONE HORSEMAN ON a glossy bay rode a ridge that overlooked the remote single-tracked Southern Pacific line just south of the Oregon border. Three men, who were grouped around a telegraph pole squeezed between the track and an abandoned tin-roofed barn, spotted him silhouetted against the sharp-blue sky. Their leader removed his broad-brimmed Stetson and swept it in a slow full circle over his head.

“Hey, what are you doing, Ross? Don’t wave hello like you’re inviting him down here.”

“I’m not waving hello,” said Ross Parker. “I’m waving him off.”

“How the hell is he going know the difference?”

“He forks his horse like a cowhand. A cowhand knows damned well the cattle rustlers signal for Mind your own damned business and sift sand away from us.”

“We ain’t rustling cattle. We ain’t even seen any cattle.”

“The principle is the same. Unless the man is a total fool, he’ll leave us alone.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“We’ll blow his head off.”

Even as Ross explained waving off to Andy, who was a city slicker from San Francisco, the horseman turned his animal away and dropped from sight behind the ridge. The three went back to work. Ross ordered Lowell, the lineman, to climb the pole with two long wires co

Had the cowboy on the ridge ridden closer, he would have seen that they were unusually heavily armed for a telegraph crew working in 1907. Decades after the last Indian attack, Ross Parker packed a .45 holster on his hip and a Winchester rifle behind his saddle. Lowell had a coach gun, a sawed-off shotgun, slung over his back within easy reach. Even the city boy, the telegrapher Andy, had a .38 revolver tucked in his belt. Their horses were tied in the shade of a clump of trees, as they had come in cross-country instead of along the tracks on a handcar.

“Stay up there!” Ross ordered Lowell. “This won’t take long.” He and Andy settled down beside the old barn.

In fact, it was nearly an hour before Andy’s key started clattering, having intercepted a train dispatcher’s orders to the operator at Weed, north of their position. By then, all three had backed against the barn, dozing in the sun out of the cool wind.

“What’s he saying?” asked Ross.