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A review by spygrl1
On the Wrong Track by Steve Hockensmith
3.0
The second tale of the Amlingmeyer brothers, Old Red and Big Red. This time, the cowboy detectives have taken their first step toward professional deducifyin'--they've landed jobs as railroad detectives, of a sort. Lately, the Southern Pacific Railroad has been plagued by the Give 'Em Hell Boys. But Gustav and Otto aren't supposed to track down the bandits; they're supposed to keep an eye out for an inside man whose in cahoots with the robbers.
Before they have had time to do much more than meet their fellow passengers (and for Big Red to realize that his brother is beset by motion sickness), the brothers see something bouncing down the tracks behind the train, and that something should preferably be firmly affixed to a man's neck. When the train stops so they can investigate, they find the head and the body of the baggage car attendant, Pezzulo. Add to the mix two coffins, a toupee, a small china bowl, a "Chinaman" returning to San Francisco from the World's Fair in Chicago, a drunken Pinkerton, a saucy news boy, a snake in a crate, a crate full of bricks, and a quick-thinking woman who reads herself to sleep with a Southern Pacific Railroad manual.
Before they have had time to do much more than meet their fellow passengers (and for Big Red to realize that his brother is beset by motion sickness), the brothers see something bouncing down the tracks behind the train, and that something should preferably be firmly affixed to a man's neck. When the train stops so they can investigate, they find the head and the body of the baggage car attendant, Pezzulo. Add to the mix two coffins, a toupee, a small china bowl, a "Chinaman" returning to San Francisco from the World's Fair in Chicago, a drunken Pinkerton, a saucy news boy, a snake in a crate, a crate full of bricks, and a quick-thinking woman who reads herself to sleep with a Southern Pacific Railroad manual.