Chapter 1 – Incident on a Train
I left the Pinkerton office in Denver to briefly return to headquarters in Chicago, the city where I grew up. The home office wanted me to locate Warren Otterbein, a young man last seen or heard from six months ago. So far I'd had no luck with it. He came west in the spring of '94, leaving his father Collin's slaughterhouse and meat packing plant behind, to work directly with the meat while it was still on the hoof on a ranch 50 or so miles from Denver. Warren found working cattle wasn't the least bit fun. It was hard work. He wrote his parents he was coming home, notified the foreman of his plan to quit and collected his pay from the ranch owner before boarding an eastbound train, his ticket for Chicago in hand.
Robert, one of founder Allan Pinkerton's two sons, indicated I should start the investigation in Denver. When nothing turned up, he ordered me to report to him for further instructions. Robert Pinkerton and Collin Otterbein were fast friends since their school days. Hence he wanted the case solved. He considered me, with my ties to both cities, the best man to take sole charge of the case. I related the initial steps I took and my findings thus far to him, his brother William and Warren's parents Collin and Emily. The young Otterbein vanished after the train left Topeka, where a lad answering his description bought a sandwich, and before St. Louis when a conductor noticed his absence.
Warren Otterbein wasn't the only young man to disappear from west or eastbound trains in the past couple of years. Regular passengers with reason to travel back and forth between Missouri and Kansas told me about what had become a disturbingly regular occurrence. Older, often stronger uniformed men confronted young men and older boys traveling alone and forced them off the train. Only a mere handful returned to continue on to their destinations. I boarded a westbound train hoping, while dreading the imagined fate of possible victims, to witness such an incident for myself.
The train had left Lexington's small station on its journey west. It was slowing for the longer stop in Kansas City, Missouri when six men in blue policemen's uniforms entered the car. I'm 33 on my next birthday a few months hence and keep in shape because my job requires quick action. I reckon the two who came up to me and demanded identification with proof of employment requiring travel thought me young enough for their purposes. I keep my badge of office in my inner right coat pocket. I've perfected using my left hand to retrieve it while simultaneously raising the bottom right corner of my coat to reveal the revolver at my hip, my right hand resting on the butt ready for the first sign of a hostile move. It was enough for them to depart without an argument.
The two who accosted me and the other two pairs of alleged officers who entered the car confronted several young men. If they sensed a forthcoming attempt at resistance, one of the two poked a pistol in their victim's side before escorting him off the train. I noticed one victim in particular because he tried to grab something from his carpetbag in the overhead rack while the contents of his billfold distracted the men I perceived as fake cops. He wore a western-style jacket over a white shirt without a tie and dark trousers slipped over the tops of square toed, high-heeled boots. His dress, coupled with his hair color and height, brought to mind my boyhood hero US Marshal Matt Dillon.
I'd met Dillon in August of '78 thanks to my pop's multiple gifts in honor of my 16th birthday. The second time I saw him was ten years later while traveling to our Denver district office from our Chicago headquarters upon completing my apprenticeship. During that September '88 stop in Dodge City I learned that Mr. Dillon in the intervening years married the beautiful red-haired saloon owner Kitty Russell, adopted a brother and sister who displayed a remarkable resemblance to their adoptive parents and Mrs. Dillon had given birth to a boy in March of that year. Their older son, who like the daughter was in school during the half-hour layover, would be about this boy's age now.
Only two of the five boys taken off the train returned to their seats before we began moving toward the Kansas side of Kansas City. They appeared bruised and disheveled. The tall lad wasn't among them. On the pretext that I needed to stretch my legs and heed a call of nature I strolled past where he'd been seated. To the casual observer the passenger occupying that seat had temporarily wandered off. His carpetbag, a Stetson beside it, and ticket stub remained untouched. I glanced at the stub stuck between the frame and straw seatback. It said Dodge City. I decided, barring major events, to leave the train at Topeka to confer with my colleagues there.
I was back in my seat well before the train stopped for no more than five minutes to take on water between Kansas City and Lansing. I'd been keeping an eye on the missing boy's belongings but turned to look out my window when I heard the sound of a galloping horse. Train robbery is far less prevalent than 20 years ago, but not unheard of. A daring robber has been known to board a moving train from his horse, leaving the mount to his confederates care until after he's forced the engineer to bring the train to a halt. I braced myself for action when this particular rider matched his pace to the train, leaped from his horse and grabbed the handles of the boarding platform between my car and the next as we picked up speed. He stumbled into my car straight toward the seat last occupied by the boy headed for Dodge. It was he.
I waited while he caught his breath before sauntering over. He looked like he'd been in a fight, but was ready for another if necessary. I decided I'd best take things slowly and let him lead the conversation after I got it started.
"I happened to be watching from my window when you pulled that circus stunt," I said pointing toward my vacated spot across the aisle and down two seats. "You'd have died if anything went wrong. Name's Trent Wellington out of Denver," I added sticking out my hand, which he took. "Maybe it's the nature of my job, but your disappearance and reappearance got me curious."
"You revealed your identity. It would be impolite now that we shook hands not to tell you mine. Besides, I'm proud of the name my dad gave me, Dillon. I'm Nat Dillon of the Dodge City Dillons."
"Ah, that explains why you remind me of another Dillon. It also confirms what I inferred from your ticket stub after those men pulled you off this train in Kansas City. Your father was quite the hero to me when I was a couple of years younger than I'm guessing you are now. If he's Matt Dillon, your pop's the reason I earn my living the way I do."
He accepted I wasn't an outlaw because to his way of thinking no one outside the law would start out with Matt Dillon as his hero and do a 180. He owned to the relationship and I revealed I became a Pinkerton because I decided after watching his pop in action that being a US Marshal was just too chancy a job even for a lad seeking a career as opposite as possible from accountancy, my old man's profession. I even let on that reading dime novels about the great man was why my pop brought me with him to Dodge as a birthday present when Adams Express sent him to audit Nathan Burke's records back in '78.
"Had dad known about your reading habits, he'd have set you straight. He sure did me when I was ten. He caught me readin' one about him when we boarded the stage in Kansas City for home and then I made the mistake of mentioning another about Uncle Frank. Which one did you read to pass the time on the train from Chicago to Dodge?"
"Matt Dillon and the Outlaw Siege. Which books did your pop disapprove of? Also, who's Uncle Frank? Would I have heard of him?"
All of them, but especially when the man they're supposedly about, like him, never agreed to it. That day the novels were Matt Dillon and the Double-cross and Reardon's Revenge. Uncle Frank was on the stage with us from Cottonwood Falls on. He's not really kin, just dad's best friend. My baby sister Maria's named after his murdered wife; the woman whose death he was avenging in the book."
I didn't leave the train in Topeka to meet with my colleagues or send any telegrams. A wire to Dodge City was no longer necessary. The other two could wait until I talked to Mr. Dillon. I also didn't pump Nat about being snatched and escaping. He'd only have to repeat it when we reached his home. Somehow talk of changing reading preferences as we grew into men and our reasons for admiring his father ate up the time. We pulled into the Dodge station as new friends, Nat's ordeal and any connection it had to my assignment relegated to the background. Minutes later his reunion with his parents and youngest sibling and their surprise at seeing me turned into a conversation as to how and why we came to be together.