Two in the Field by Darryl Brock

look?”
    “Sickly … like she looked after Colm got killed.”
    Grieving over me, I reflected. Christ, I had to find her!
    “First Colm and then Fearghus,” he went on. “Small wonder if Caitlin thought herself a curse to the men she fancied.”
    Cait fancying Fearghus O’Donovan? Bullshit! Just the thought of it provoked a swell of indignant anger.
    “Queer how Fearghus came to die out in ’Frisco,” Sweasy went on, a malicious tone edging his words. “Right after you refused to go back with us.”
    O’Donovan advancing with his revolver on the precipice of Russian Hill … eyes staring wildly at the shadow of Colm as he plunges past me over the edge …
    “Queer, the timing of it,” he said pointedly. “And then you disappearing.”
    With a sick feeling I watched him walk off. Cait couldn’t possibly have thought for a second that I had a hand in killing O’Donovan. Could she?
    For the sake of company, I’d thought about asking to tag along with the Reds as far as St. Louis. Hell with it. I’d make my own way.

    “You gonna play for Cap’n Sweasy again?” Alex said as we neared the train station.
    “Doesn’t look too likely.”
    “But you struck the tying blow!”
    At the station I thanked them and started to climb down. Alex put his hand on my arm. “Would you?” he said. He handed me his ball and the scorecard pencil. Touched, I signed below Sweasy’s scrawl.
    At the ticket window I paid full fare to Boston via Rockford and St. Louis. I was fading fast, desperate for rest. A sleeping berth cost an extra dollar.
    “They’re as comfortable as home,” the agent claimed.
    “How many per berth?”
    “Two.”
    “In that case, consider me a couple.” Wanting privacy, I gladly forked over the dollar.
    I discovered that he hadn’t exaggerated. Drapes sectioned off the berths, and there were plush cushions to sleep on. I practically dove into them.
    I woke up only once. We must have hit a rough patch of track; things were bouncing and jostling. The clacking of the wheels was very loud. I separated the window curtains and peered out. Moonlight silvered the prairies. I thought I saw a coyote scurry into the brush where a creekline cut a dark curve.
    1875 …
    A moonlit night almost a century before my birth.
    I was heading to Boston to rejoin my old comrades. Some of them, anyway. Even if Cait wasn’t there, Andy would tell me where to find her. Odd, though, that I still felt a tiny pull from the opposite direction.

    “Gotta get up, suh.”
    He came into focus, a train porter.
    “Please, suh, gotta make up the cah.” Slow, liquid, southern accents. “I done the rest while you slept, but I cain’t put it off no more.”
    “Sure.” I lifted my foggy head and reached for my money belt. It wasn’t under the cushion where I’d put it. I catapulted to my feet and the porter stared at my jockey shorts. I upended all the cushions, panic setting in. Nothing. I looked around in sick bewilderment as I realized that my money belt wasn’t the only thing missing.
    My clothes and train ticket were gone too.

 FIVE 
    Looking miserable, the porter brought in the woman who’d washed and pressed my clothes. She said that she’d hung them outside my berth at dawn. I’d slept straight through as the train emptied that morning. Since the car wouldn’t be used again until evening, the cleanup people had worked elsewhere and not discovered me until noon. The porter swore that none of them had robbed me.
    “When your duds wasn’t taken in, suh, that gave somebody the idea.” He theorized that the thief risked a peek, saw I was dead to the world, stepped inside and cleaned me out. “Stealing your duds would keep you from chasin’ after ’em too fast.”
    It seemed as plausible as anything else.
    “I’ll bring some things from the ‘lost’ bin in the station house,” the porter said hopefully. “Maybe somethin’ll suit you.”
    Not surprisingly, it proved to be a wretched selection. I