Slocum #422 by Jake Logan

who’d make a custom pair for what this pair had cost off the shelf of a general store up in Sacramento.
    Testing his leg, he climbed the steps to the depot and pressed his face against the bars at the ticket agent’s booth once more. This time McIlheny hunched over the telegraph key, sending the dots and dashes along the wire to satisfy what must have been a dozen customers.
    â€œYou got word on Burlison’s arrival?” Slocum called.
    McIlheny kept at his work as he said, “An hour. Maybe less. His train broke down ten miles out of town and is limping back to the yard for repair.”
    â€œHe fit to be tied over the delay?”
    â€œI got the ’gram. Damn near melted the wires it was so hot.” McIlheny looked up. “You better mind your p’s and q’s. When he gets all het up, he and his daughter argue ’bout nothing.” The clerk sniffed. “Hell, they argue about everything. Anybody caught in the cross fire gets their head blown off.”
    â€œThanks for the warning.” Slocum took out his pocket watch and compared it to the station’s Regulator clock ticking balefully. The times matched close enough.
    He walked to the edge of the depot platform and looked down the few feet to the ground. Testing his leg now gave him more confidence later. He jumped. The impact sent a shock up into his hip but otherwise supported him fine. Slocum walked fast to the crew working on the Yuma Bullet. Two men were beneath the wheels, one banging away with a small sledgehammer, while another man stood nearby, holding an oilcan and looking bored.
    The fireman had gone, but Mad Tom sat on a step cleaning his filthy fingernails with a knife. He never looked up as Slocum stopped in front of him.
    â€œNo idea,” Tom said.
    Slocum had to laugh. The question was an obvious one, and Mad Tom didn’t have to read minds to know.
    â€œAnything I can do?”
    â€œYou know anything ’bout engines?” Mad Tom glanced at Slocum before returning to his futile work.
    â€œI see how things fit together pretty well. I worked a spell along the Mississippi as a dock hand and saw something of how steam capstans worked.”
    â€œBe better if they’d let you fool ’round with the steam engines below deck. I got my start there, then saw how the riverboats was a dyin’ breed so I went to KC and lied my way onto an engine as fireman so I could work up to my exalted position of train driver.” He finished his cleaning, wiped the point on his overalls, then yelled, “Hersch, you got help comin’. ­First-­rate mechanic what’ll show you how stupid you’ve been.” Mad Tom pointed with the knife blade for Slocum to get to work.
    The man with the oilcan used the spigot to indicate a spot just behind the front wheels.
    â€œYou know shit ’bout a Prairie?”
    â€œIt’s a 2-6-2,” Slocum said. “Two lead wheels don’t do anything but keep the front on the tracks. The next six do the work. Two rear wheels under the cab support a goodly portion of the weight from the firebox.”
    â€œYou know more ’n I do, then,” the oiler said. “I know the damn thing can’t run if it falls off the tracks. Seen one try once. It blowed itself up when it hit the ground.” He bent and yelled under the engine, “Hersch, we got ourselves an expert.”
    Slocum wondered at how easy it was to become an expert just because he had ridden enough trains in his day and gotten drunk with enough engineers to hear about wheels. He pulled off his holster and hung it from a knob protruding from the boiler. Wiggling on his back, he felt the cut of cinders against his shirt. He tore shreds out of it, but the money he’d get from Burlison would pay for a new shirt as well as decent boots. The scent of hot oil and burned steel made his nostrils flare. A quick swipe across his eyes cleared them of tears forming against the