"Jim! Thank heavens!" Artemus Gordon cried, rushing up to his partner as West walked toward the train. "Do you have any idea how worried I've been? I've been wandering around these woods for hours looking for you, buddy! I thought you'd gotten lost! I-" Any other words temporarily caught in Arte's throat as he got a good look at the object Jim was carrying. It definitely wasn't a rabbit. "That . . . is one very big carrot you've got there."
Jim nodded as he thrust the voluminous vegetable into Arte's hands.
"You think the carrots are big, you should see the rabbits!" Jim told him. "I've got something better." He pulled out a map Bugs had drawn for him. "Directions for how to get us out of this looney place Dr. Loveless lured us into."
"Loveless!"
"It's a long story," Jim said, not realizing that technically it was a short story. "Right now we need to get this map to Orrin and Silas and get the Wanderer and ourselves back where we belong – which is not here!"
Within minutes, the Wanderer was speeding up the tracks and taking a turn that would lead them back to Albequerque. It wasn't the city Jim and Arte had intended to wind up in, but for the moment they'd take it – and with gratitude. Feeling another sort of gratitude, Jim suggested to Arte that they not have rabbit or duck for dinner again – ever. Arte, content to wait for an explanation after what must have been some kind of ordeal for his partner, shrugged agreement and murmured something to Jim about looking for a recipe for carrot tagine. Jim yawned and stretched and lay down on one of the varnish car's sofas to take a badly needed nap after what had to have been one of the longest and most bizarre days of his entire life, for which the bar was already practically stratospheric.
Up in the driving section of the locomotive, Orrin Cobb kept a mostly steady hand on the controls. He knew by now that working for the Secret Service meant seeing some pretty strange things, but as the train headed back into desert territory and toward a tunnel . . . the engineer rubbed his eyes and looked at Silas, sitting grim-faced and close-mouthed in the seat next to him. He wondered if Silas had seen it too. The coyote that looked like it was standing upright on roller skates with a fireworks rocket of some kind strapped to its back. Orrin could have sworn that the coyote was roller skating along the train tracks, and that it had started skating a whole lot faster as it turned its head and saw the train coming down the line toward the tunnel. But Orrin had looked at Silas for just the crucial moment before the darkness of the tunnel enveloped them along with a small thud.
"Why did you say that?" Orrin asked.
"Say what?" the other man snapped. "Watch where we're driving!"
"Say thuffering thuccotash!"
"I didn't say thuffering thuccotash," Silas answered. "I thought you said thuffering thuccotash!"
Orrin shook his head slightly and went back to keeping his eyes riveted on where the train was headed, relieved as it seemed to burst through not just the tunnel back into the familiar New Mexico desert but through some sort of filmy haze as well, just as Jim had told them it should. Neither man paid any attention to the black and white cat that strolled back toward the stable car. Cats wandered onto the Wanderer all the time in search of mice, and Jim and Artemus both liked cats, so Orrin and Silas learned to put up with it.
Neither the engineers nor the exhausted elite agents of the Secret Service heard or otherwise noticed the final sound/visual distortion as the Wanderer broke through into its own reality. As the very back railed entrance to the varnish car made its transition through Dr. Loveless' sound distortion zone, one final effect of his dimension-warping machinery briefly appeared in evidence, a short, merry, swelling melody sounded as a set of concentric red/orange rings flashed against the back of the train and a small pig appeared in the center, waving cheerfully to the readers of this story.
"Ah-buh-DEE, Ah-buh-DEE, Ah-buh-DEE, TH-THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!"