C

The Crimson Zephyr was resplendent at golden hour as it snaked its way through a myriad of switchbacks, up Palisade Canyon. As it moved west from the leeward side and crested the top of the canyon, the Beowawe porter stared expressionlessly at the iron caravan, its hues more muted as it slowly crept into the shadows.

The Beowawe station was empty except for a handful of staff and four young men in their twenties. The men were silent with sullen yet purposeful looks on their faces. With their nondescript clothing, they would have attracted little attention save for their anachronistic hats, which seemed oddly out of place in Gilded Age America and more suited atop medieval court jesters.

As was customary, the station master ambled out of his office at precisely 7:36 p.m. per the station clock. As the coal-fired westbound train ground to a halt, he cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted exaggeratedly and with no little ostentation, despite all ticket holders being clearly within earshot.

“Last train to Reno!”

As soon as the four men boarded, the valve gear engaged and the train accelerated out of sight of the station.

Reginald Wentworth Harrington, strong and tanned in his early 40s, ever looking the part of robber baron, sat in an upholstered chair on the train’s finest railcar, smoking a Dunhill from his favorite London shop. He was no stranger to bad habits, including risking his life on his next adventure. It was a long journey, and he devoured nearly all of the large carton of the newly introduced Juicy Fruit gum, a gift from his good friend William Wrigley Jr., whom he met up with in Chicago.

His manservant, the youthful and sprightly Rufus Cobb, decided it was a good moment to ask the great captain of industry a question he had been dying to pose since Ely.

“Sir, may I ask?”

“Anything, dear boy, as long as it doesn’t involve that abominable baseball.”

“No, I promise,” Rufus snickered. “But sir, would it be all right if I panned for gold for a bit when we get to California? It’s just… I’ve never experienced it.”

“Oh, heavens yes. And as long as you don’t chance upon the next Welcome Stranger nugget, you may keep whatever you find. Consider it additional gratuity.”

“Thank you, sir! I will properly invest it in UP stock if I were so lucky.”

“Oh, please don’t be so foolish! I shall leave this journey a pauper if the stock continues to decline. Should you stumble upon a modest nugget, may I suggest silver cufflinks or a fine pair of leather boots for our expedition?”

“Yes sir, but I should think the depression is almost over and the market will rebound.”

“For both of our sakes, I hope you’re correct. Things can’t get much worse.”

As Harrington spoke these words, a masked bandit with a strange hat stormed into the luxury car brandishing a Colt Single Action Army Revolver. Shrieks from other cars pierced the night.

“And here I was starting to think the voyage rather dull. I guess our adventure starts a little early.” Harrington whispered dryly to Rufus. “Odd thought, my lad, but with the great Butch Cassidy onboard, I’ve suddenly become the second wealthiest man on this train.”

However, any notion that the devious deed was the work of the infamous “Wild Bunch” was immediately disabused when the bandit started to bark demands. “Ve have ze train. Do not be ze hero, und your life vill be spared. You vill not leaf your seat for any reason till ve say.”

Suddenly, the patented Westinghouse Air Brakes were engaged, accompanied by the distinctive screech; four hundred tons of iron and steel slowed to a crawl and came to rest on a bridge directly over the Reese River just outside of sight of Battle Mountain.

Not one to abide by the halting of his operation, Harrington decided to take conciliatory action with the bandit. “My good man,” he said with an air of compromise. “I daresay this entire affair can be rightly concluded without any hold-up — no pun intended — and you can be off on your merry way.” Harrington pulled out a large valise from under his chair and opened it to reveal a princely amount of money. Ever the salesman, he itemized the loot: “Plenty of paper, some Double Eagles in there, and oh yes, even some queen’s coin, probably even doing a little better than your American currency right now.” Harrington held out the valise. The bandit snatched a neatly bundled stack of bills from the top of the valise, looked at it as if it were a scrap of refuse, then threw it directly into Harrington’s face and walked off.

“Well, I suppose now is the proper time for a gentleman to panic.” Harrington whispered to his most trusted manservant.

Just then, a blood-curdling scream came from towards the front of the train, the source of which could only have been a woman in the grip of terror. A moment later, two more masked men entered the luxury car from the vestibule on the west side carrying large mauls and lanterns, passed through the luxury car and exited via the rear vestibule. Within a few moments, loud banging sounds came from the back of the train, a distinctive metal clang that the great business mogul knew all too well.

Harrington jumped out of his seat and shouted at the bandit guarding the back door of the luxury car. “What the Devil is going on?!”

The bandit angrily turned to the troublemaker and roared “You vill stay seated! Or you vill make big splash! No more talk!”

“Sir, I beg you to comply, or you shall be in the papers again tomorrow for all the wrong reasons,” Rufus advised in a subdued but forceful tone, strongly suspecting that his request would go unheeded due to his boss’ notorious intransigence.

Harrington was not deterred. “I must insist that your little escapade here cease immediately! I am well aware that you are destroying the track and when the next westbound train comes, innocent people will die! I wish to chat with the leader of your gang at once!”

“You vill die! Und I haf no leader! You vill come mit me!” The bandit flashed his Colt, grabbed Harrington by his arm, and led him towards the front of the train.

After what seemed like an eternity of suspense, amid the incessant metal clangs, a faint splash could be heard in the river below. Rufus’ heart sank, people screamed, and the mood on the car took an even darker turn.

After a few minutes, the bandit emerged back in the car then stopped and turned to the occupants. “Do not be ze next,” he said calmly.

The two masked saboteurs returned from the back of the train. One of them pointed westward and spoke in a friendly northern American dialect. “For your own safety, we need everyone towards the front of the train now. All the way up to the dining car.” The terrified passengers in the luxury car filed toward the front along with a heartbroken but enraged Rufus. The bandit with the Northern accent asked, “Was that a splash we heard?” The Teutonic maniac replied evasively, “I vas forced to do somesing. Ve vill discuss later.” The inquiring bandit nodded.

The three villains lingered at the gangway between the penultimate and antepenultimate railcars and went to work. After a few minutes of labor, they shot a flare and the train subsequently eased forward. After moving forward about a thousand yards the train stopped again. The fourth bandit who had commandeered the engine yanked the Johnson bar and the train went backwards at a slow trundle.

There was a collective wail from the dining car with shouts of “We’re all gonna die!” and “It’s a suicide plot!” A number of men attempted to open the railcar door to rush the engine but the door was barred. Rufus was already mournfully silent and seemed to accept his fate.

However, just after moving back onto the long bridge, the faux engineer hit the air brakes. There was some anxiety among even the bandits if the brakes were applied soon enough. Fortunately, the train stopped just before the stretch of mangled track, but not the last two railcars. They kept going, tipped over and violently crashed into the river below. The coupling pin had been deliberately pulled. But it wasn’t just the two railcars that took the plunge. Amidst the terror and piercing cries, two other masses had been thrown overboard unseen, arms and legs flailing.

The bandit at the rear walked the entire length of the train, then at the dining car climbed up the ladder and across the roof to the engine. He surprised the other bandit at the controls who was reading from a handwritten piece of paper and was caught completely off guard. “You were supposed to send off a flare if you’re finished. Are the lanterns and red flag in place along with the railway torpedoes? We can’t have the morning train going into the drink.”

“Nein, nein, nein! Is much vorse. Zere is a madman on ze loose. He has killed ze other two!” The bandit said with no small amount of trepidation and pointed at the papers. “Here, give me zose, und ve go to ze gangvay. I sink he may try to reach ze engine using ze running boards.”

“Oh dear Lord, I was afraid this might happen.” He handed the papers over, grabbed a lantern and his gun, then abandonded the engine controls and walked out to the gangway, followed by the other remaining bandit. He then leaned precariously over the side with lantern in hand and looked down the side of the train. As he slowly turned and said “I don’t see anybody back…” the rogue bandit gave him a vicious shove. He lost balance, tumbled over the side, and plunged into the abyss.

A sharp knock brought Donnie “Spike” Dupree out of his book-induced trance.

The spellbound Dupree looked up reflexively as Harlan Peabody, head curator at the museum since 1973, eased open the door.

“Just wanted to check in with our newest docent. I see you’ve already dove headfirst into your work!”

“More like descended into the abyss…” Dupree retorted with a mischievous smirk.

“…and if I read any more of these dreadful biographies of Harrington, I would be drowning in a sea of banality.” Dupree pointed at his pile of castoff books. “I hope you don’t mind but I’m focusing on the more scintillating aspects of the Zephyr, namely the big caper. I’ve already accumulated a lifetime of knowledge on Harrington and the other top brass at Union Pacific.” Dupree added. The boy wonder flashed a glimpse of the timeworn book in his boss’s direction.

“Ahhh, Last Train to Reno: The Raid on the Reese Revisited, Alban Trevinnie, 1983: a cult classic in investigative true crime and runner-up for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. I know it well. Have you got to Trevinnie’s rather peculiar conclusion yet?” Peabody admired the boldness, if not the veracity, of the tome.

“Not yet. But it’s getting interesting.”

“Just wait.” Peabody said with a twinkle in his eye as if Dupree were about to discover the secrets of the universe. “And speaking of ‘The Raid’, I was wondering if we could perhaps talk shop a bit over lunch today, a bit of institutional politics to be sure, but mostly I just want to bounce some ideas off each other before your big debut next week.”

“Sure, boss. Where?”

Peabody looked in both directions down the hall then spoke in a deliberately hushed tone. “The Pullman. It’s been one of my guilty pleasures here since the 70s I must confess. Just please don’t spill any food. It cost a fortune to get it cleaned professionally. Just knock on my door when you’re ready and we can pick something up at The Depot.”

“Sure, boss.”

“Great, I’ll let you get back to your Trevinnie.” Peabody said with a wink and closed the door.

Dupree dove back into his book but now with greater purpose.

After watching the ringleader splash violently into the river below, the enigmatic stranger unbarred the door and burst into the dining car.

He slowly walked over and grabbed Rufus Cobb by the collar and in a freakishly high falsetto voice straight out of vaudeville snarled, “You are next in ze reever!”

Rufus recoiled in horror along with every soul in the dining car. Presumably, after getting the reaction he wanted, the feigned malice of the masked figure gave way to uproarious laughter, bordering on maniacal, yet carried a timbre that was vaguely familiar.

The masked figure pulled off his bandana and jester hat and revealed his true identity.

“Mr. Harrington?!” Rufus cried out, and everyone in the dining car exhaled a collective sigh of relief.

“Got you proper!” the tycoon chuckled. “Admit it, my dear boy, you fully expected a midnight…”

“…swim in ze reever.” Dupree muttered to himself in a strong German accent. While working on his double Ph.D. in History and Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, he had read this account hundreds of times. He desperately wanted to get to this theory he’d been hearing about. He skipped past the long biography of Harrington and finally found what he wanted under a section entitled “What Really Happened.”

When Reginald Wentworth Harrington alighted from the Crimson Zephyr at approximately 4:06 p.m. on December 15, 1895, and stepped onto California soil, he was greeted by a marching band and hailed as a conquering hero. The mayor of Sacramento, Bernard Steinman, presented him with the key to the city. After giving his only known interview regarding his exploits to a journalist for the Sacramento Daily Union, he retired to the luxurious Golden Eagle Hotel. On the 16th, he set out via stage over the old Placerville Road, to inspect some of his newly purchased mining operations in the Placerville area. His manservant, Rufus Cobb, got his chance to mine for gold and reportedly found a small gold nugget. On the 17th, Harrington and Cobb bade farewell to a group of miners in Diamond Springs, sauntered off into the forested area on the south edge of the town and were never seen again.

Many highly conjectural books and research papers have been written about Harrington’s High Sierra expedition, and numerous theories continue to circulate regarding the pair’s mysterious disappearance.

Nevertheless, there is only one theory that is perfectly plausible and it can only be found in the pages of this book.

To truly understand what happened on one of the most momentous nights in American history and the expedition that followed, we must examine the social and economic conditions in the United States and grasp their consequences, i.e., how the milieu influenced the misdeed.

Like the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s and South Sea Company crisis of 1720, the Railroad Overexpansion of the 1890s was the defining financial bubble of its century. It was a time of wild exuberance and optimism in the future of the industry. In late 1892, by dint of his Union Pacific stock, Harrington briefly became one of the hundred richest men in the world. However, things derailed quickly.

At that time, tracks were regularly laid in the middle of nowhere, connected to absolutely nothing, with the simple goal of obtaining federal land subsidies, but this business strategy failed spectacularly. It turned out that rural Kansas didn’t really need over 10,000 miles of tracks. On February 20, 1893, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad failed, triggering the Panic of 1893. The dominoes began to fall, and by the time the stock market tumbled 24% on May 5 and Union Pacific entered receivership on October 13, Harrington was no longer filthy rich, he was merely well-to-do.

When the former titan of industry boarded the Crimson Zephyr, the Union Pacific’s flagship luxury train, for the first time in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on December 11, 1895, the United States was still in the grip of the most devastating depression in its history up to that point. Far fewer Americans could afford the kind of first-class ticket required to access the luxury cars. The very use of this equipment entailed contracts that included a minimum number of special porters who, though inexpensive to employ in 1895, were now seen by most board members as an unnecessary burden. There was heated debate among the Union Pacific board over whether to sell off all the luxury cars or continue to hemorrhage money until the economy corrected itself.

The prevailing belief among most historians is that those responsible for The Raid had absolutely no financial motivation. How could they have? According to the testimony of two unrelated witnesses in the luxury car, they threw Harrington’s money back in his face. They were merely a handful of “misguided anarchists,” or perhaps “saboteurs hired by a Union Pacific competitor,” as Max Whidbey claimed in Steel Thunder: The Zephyr Raid. Right?

Wrong!

In an era when most Americans struggled to afford a prepared meal on a train or even a warm bed in which to sleep, these theories strain the bounds of credulity. Even Biff Bergerson’s theory in Off the Rails that the renegades were escaped inmates from a Nevadan insane asylum seems more plausible.

Once you accept the possibility that the miscreants were very much motivated by money, the truth descends on you like a lead balloon. Greed was the singular motivation behind The Raid and the mastermind was none other than Reginald Wentworth Harrington himself. And once you accept that, then you must also conclude that Harrington’s disappearance was in fact staged, and, distressed that something went terribly wrong on The Raid, went on to make a new life for himself. However, before I posthumously convict Harrington in the court of public opinion, I intend to present two key pieces of evidence that seal his fate.

Exhibit A: the so-called “Saboteur’s Letter” that Harrington supposedly obtained from an evildoer before pushing him off the train. Let’s set aside the unlikelihood that Harrington somehow managed to fight off four armed defenders and throw them all off a train like in some old western or modern Hollywood action film and get right to the facts. In the late 1970s, Harlan Peabody, the lead curator at the Northern Railway Museum in Ely, Nevada and home of the Crimson Zephyr since 1962, had an epiphany. If the “Saboteur’s Letter” read like a list of instructions then it could conceivably have been preceded by an introductory note. A cursory inspection by a loupe revealed exactly that, and Dr. Lucien Keppelweiss, a world-renowned expert in indentation analysis, was subsequently brought in for further examination. Keppelweiss discovered several word groupings, mostly mundane, but two stood out above the drab prose. The first notable combination was “World’s Fair,” which was famously held in Chicago in 1893, and which Harrington and Union Pacific board member Samuel Callaway both attended on October 31. Could the two robber barons have been reminiscing about old times as they plotted to stage The Raid? It’s not quite the smoking gun we seek but it’s insightful.

Exhibit B: I shall return to the second notable word combination shortly, but first, the other key piece of evidence, which has heretofore baffled historians and amateur sleuths alike, and has come to be known as the “Callaway Telegram.” When Harrington arrived in Reno the morning after The Raid, local authorities requested that he wait for the U.S. Marshals to provide a formal statement. Harrington obliged, stayed in the city for three more days, and answered every manner of question about what occurred.

An astute marshal asked Harrington if he had communicated with anyone else at Union Pacific. Harrington answered in the affirmative, and, perhaps attempting to show he had nothing to hide, promptly provided the marshal with a carbon copy of the telegram he sent to his best friend and fellow board member, Samuel Callaway. The original carbon copy was lost along with Harrington, but the marshal’s transcript survived: “ARRIVED RENO STOP UNFORTUNATE INCIDENT TRAIN SEE PAPERS STOP DREADFUL OUTCOME STOP TRUTH SLEEPS WHERE FIRE BREATHES”

Dreadful Outcome?

If we accept the “Harrington as Hero” conclusion, in which he saved an entire passenger train from four bloodthirsty madmen, then how on earth could anyone consider such an outcome “dreadful”? Only in the eyes of Harrington and Callaway because mistakes were made during the plot.

Along with Morse’s “WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?” and Stanton’s “THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD,” this is one of the most famous lines ever sent via telegraph in American history. When asked about the line, Harrington informed the marshal that he was referencing the raiders who he permanently silenced and feared were now in the flames of hell. To modern readers, this explanation sounds nothing short of bizarre. Hell might be described by a believer as a place where fire rages, where fire torments or punishes, but as a place where fire breathes? That sounds positively benign. However, perhaps due to Harrington’s generally positive reputation in business for that era despite his obvious eccentricities, and maybe due to his Roman Catholic faith, the marshals never inquired further.

But what does breathe fire? A flamethrower? This device wasn’t invented until the early years of the 20th century. A volcano, metaphorically speaking? I intend to answer this question, but before I do, for what crime am I putting Harrington (and by extension Callaway) in the dock? The answer is becoming more clear to many of you. There was one component of Union Pacific’s rolling stock that wasn’t close to being profitable in 1895. As I alluded to earlier, this was the luxury cars. And what did unscrupulous businesses do with unprofitable assets in that highly unregulated era? They committed insurance fraud, of course. A day before he boarded the Zephyr in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Harrington had a board meeting just across the river at the Union Pacific headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Notes from the meeting survive via the Oliver W. Mink Trust, and Silas H.H. Clark discussed the situation with the luxury cars at length. None of the surviving notes mention a plot to hire four men to commandeer the flagship Union Pacific train and send its most extravagant luxury car into a river. However, it should be mentioned here that Silas Clark was appointed by the Circuit Court of Nebraska as the lead receiver, and, although given a reasonable flat salary, he owned no Union Pacific stock. In other words, he had no skin in the game. But Harrington and Callaway did.

After the board meeting, the accused dined at the exclusive Omaha Club, and no doubt discussed the finer points of the plot. The idea to involve Harrington in the action was possibly a ploy to improve the overall reputation of the company as well as the executives, who were still seen as robber barons responsible for the deep depression. The Beowawe depot was chosen due to its remoteness, lesser chance for eyewitness identification, as well as its vicinity to a fast-flowing river, which would make a railcar’s salvage in those days prohibitively expensive.

The only question left was, who was hired to destroy the most opulent railcar on the company’s most important train. In those days before heavy government regulation, it was common for unscrupulous companies to hire “torch mobs” or “incendiary men” to do their bidding. Their primary method of destruction was arson, to be sure, but any method would do as long as the company paid up front. A colloquial term used for these individuals was “Red Dragons,” and it should be noted, dear reader, that nothing breathes fire quite like a dragon.

It turns out there was a very good reason why no eyewitness ever testified to seeing Harrington physically accost the raiders, and why no dead bodies were ever recovered. The “Dragons” obliterated their target. A few items were thrown from the train to fake their deaths, and they either floated down the Reese in a raft, made off in a draisine, or simply wandered off into the night, paid handsomely to never tell a soul. If it weren’t for the prescient action of a nameless U.S. marshal, one of the great mysteries of American history would never have been solved.

With the evidence I’ve presented so far, nearly every jury in progressive-era America would have convicted Harrington and Callaway of insurance fraud. With the lax Nevada laws and the best lawyers money can buy, the devious pair would almost certainly have escaped with a large fine and no jail time. But even more importantly, history would no longer judge Harrington favorably. “Mere speculation,” some diehard Harrington fans might contend at this point, along with the old trope that the handwriting on the letter didn’t match either Harrington’s or Callaway’s handwriting, or even the indentations on the introductory letter, for that matter. As to the latter point, both Harrington and Callaway almost never wrote their own correspondence, and employed an inordinate number of personal servants and secretaries between them. A match would have been akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Furthermore, they were not fools. The idea that Harrington would have presented the “Saboteur’s Letter” to authorities with his own handwriting or Callaway’s is pure tomfoolery, and can be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, it seems obvious that the “Saboteur’s Letter” was presented to authorities by Harrington with the express purpose of throwing them off their scent.

As you recall, I mentioned the word groupings discovered by our indentation analysis. And so, we now come at last to our smoking gun, which pertains to Exhibit A, our “Saboteur’s Letter.” I noted one of the word groupings discovered by the acclaimed Dr. Keppelweiss: “World’s Fair.”  But as I reveal the other significant grouping, the truth that has slept for nearly a century finally awakens. The other grouping was “red dragon.” Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.

Dupree rolled his eyes, then closed the book. A few minutes later, he walked over to his boss’s office and knocked on the door. They both went to The Depot, ordered the All Aboard Combo, and cashed in on the 20% employee discount. They then proceeded to walk through the Zephyr to the Pullman, passing right by a plaque that discussed how the railcar was extracted from the Reese River and painstakingly restored to its original condition, before sitting down.

“I have some ideas that will knock your socks off, boss,” Dupree laid out a number of papers.

“Oh?! Wonderful! But first, the conservators…” Peabody reflected a brief moment. “I should mention they get a lot of funding from the Harrington Foundation, and when it comes to Harrington’s legacy… well let’s just say they don’t want it tarnished over what — to be fair and unbiased — are some highly speculative, and I imagine fanciful, claims in Last Train. We don’t muzzle our docents here. By all means, examine the controversy, but take heed that you don’t bite the hand that feeds.”

“Mr. Peabody, I assure you that I have no intention of speaking ill of Harrington. In fact, I don’t believe Harrington is a crook at all!”

“Not convinced by Trevinnie either, eh?”

“Not by a long shot. But to his credit, he’s slightly more believable than L. Ron Hubbard. I have no doubt his next book about how Jackie and LBJ worked with extraterrestrials to take out JFK will be equally plausible.”

Peabody cracked a smile and shook his head. “It’s true. For all its accolades, something about Last Train never sat well with me. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve always admired Harrington and want to believe he was an honorable man.” Peabody shrugged and inquired, “But the million-dollar question is, do we have a better theory?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Dupree declared confidently as if he were about to drop a bombshell.

“You don’t say.”

“I have the perfect answer, but first let me ask you this, boss: did you ever find it a bit curious that so many accounts of The Raid mention a luxury car and possibly the mail car, but never the actual brand?”

“I suppose I never thought about it, but yes, it certainly seems to be the case.”

“Think about the painstaking effort that went into a Pullman. Hand-crafted like a Rolls-Royce and everything else on the market at the time was a Lincoln Continental. Oh, don’t get me wrong: a Barney & Smith could’ve done in a pinch on a no-frills local, but on the Zephyr? It would’ve been laughable. There’s a reason you’ve been coming here for years, and not to the Jackson & Sharp in the South Wing. It’s because, when it came to luxury, there was never a legitimate substitute for the Pullman. I know it. You know it. Everyone that works here knows it. So why doesn’t your average run-of-the-mill historian know it or even acknowledge its existence? I suspect they paint their picture of The Raid with too broad a brush and are too intellectually lazy and indifferent to details to see things from our perspective, two obsessed railfans who made it their career and couldn’t imagine doing anything else with their time on this earth. So they end up with silly stories and never get close to the truth.”

Peabody nodded emphatically, even though Dupree was preaching to the choir. “And it’s not just that…” Peabody interjected. “Did you know Trevinnie called me back in ‘82? I remembered the name because he had just written a bestseller on the true identity of D.B. Cooper. Highly speculative stuff but the public ate it up. Anyway, he tells me he’s writing a book on Harrington and The Raid and that he would pay top dollar for a private tour of the Zephyr. I tell him I’ll do him one better: I’ll give him a free tour, as much time as he needs and all I ask is that he mentions the railway museum in the book. So he flies out to Vegas the following Saturday and I don’t hear from him ‘til the Wednesday after. He tells me he’s terribly sorry but the A/C in his rental car wasn’t working and he’s concerned the desert heat on the long ride would be unbearable. My guess is he actually went on a 5-day bender in Sin City and was simply enjoying his stay too much to bother with the legwork and come to lowly Ely. Trevinnie has built an entire career on being all sizzle and no steak.” Peabody scoffed, somewhere between amused and disgusted. “Anyway, I figured you’d be delighted by that little anecdote and I’m confident that any theory you proffer will put Trevinnie’s to shame.”

“I’m immensely amused! And I’m afraid Mr. Trevinnie has no shame. But, you’re right. I do intend to put his theory on the chopping block. Now about this here Pullman which ‘Tipsy Trevinnie’ didn’t even bother to come see. I’m gonna turn the tables for a bit and give you a quick quiz, Mr. Peabody, one fit for the GOAT of Trainspotting.” Peabody rubbed his hands together as if to say he was up for the challenge. “One… at the time of The Raid, where were the vast majority of all Pullman cars manufactured?”

“Pullman, Illinois”

Dupree nodded. “Two… Pullman, Illinois was unique for what reason?”

“It was a company town that housed Pullman workers and was fully owned by George Pullman.”

Dupree gave a thumbs up. “Three…  the unsustainable expansion of the railroads in the last decade of the 19th century led to what economic crisis?”

“The Panic of 1893”

“Indeed. Four… this one’s easy: what happened to the wages of Pullman employees in the ensuing depression?

“I imagine they had to have dropped significantly.”

“Twenty-five to thirty percent by most accounts. Five… what happened to the Pullman employees’ rent?”

Peabody shook his head, lost in thought.

Dupree noticed the wheels were turning and started to answer his own question. “Rent stayed the same and it would be the understatement of the century to say the workers weren’t exactly thrilled…”

“The strike!” Peabody blurted out. This was the head curator’s eureka moment and it wouldn’t have hit him any harder if “the strike” referenced his discovery of the Comstock Lode in a past life on the other side of Nevada.

“Bravo!” Dupree applauded. “Talk about a powder keg with a short fuse. George Pullman was caught between a rock and a hard place in 1894. He promised the investors in the city a 6% return so he wasn’t about to lower rent but if he maintained the same wages, the company would be deep in the red. Mix in a few union agitators and you have a bloody mess ending with thirty dead strikers.”

“I can understand a few firebrands, hell-bent on revenge, decide to take out a Pullman but why the mail car?”

“I actually anticipated you might ask that question, so I came prepared. There’s a little-known but exceptionally enlightening quote from the great Stephen Grover Cleveland… 22nd and 24th, in an old Herbert Agar book that I came across while working on my master’s thesis.” Dupree tilted his iPad Pro toward his face and proceeded to read from the screen. “I quote: ‘If it takes the entire Army and Navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago, that card will be delivered.’ Here was a man who understood his role with regard to the U.S. Constitution. Protest Pullman all you want but if you plan on shutting down interstate commerce or halt the U.S. mail, let me kindly introduce you to the most lethal fighting force in the history of the human race. It was perfectly legal and logical but it can’t be denied: Big Steve definitely ruffled a few feathers.”

Peabody was floored. After countless tours of the Zephyr, invites to public radio shows, lecture tours to college campuses promoting the museum, endless hours of study, podcasts, documentaries, Internet railfan forums, and hearing every hair-brained, half-baked, cockamamie theory about The Raid for over fifty years of his life, he was finally hearing a sensible theory for the very first time. “So the bandits didn’t just want revenge on the Pullman company, they wanted revenge on the United States government.” Peabody said, fully aware that the sensei had become the student and the student, the new master.

“Exactly.”

“So the ARU was behind all this?” With the how, what, when, where, and now the why out of the way, Peabody was laser-focused on the who.

“Not quite,” Dupree said. “The union wasn’t exactly pacifist in the strictest sense, but by 1895 they were more interested in playing the martyr. It’s highly unlikely they’d send a team two time zones away to commit industrial sabotage.”

“So who was behind it?” Peabody cut straight to the point.

“Only one of the most evil men to ever live.” Dupree said without the slightest hint of irony. He then proceeded to open the Photos app on his iPad, tapped on an image, and flipped the device around to show Peabody. “You familiar with this guy?”

“Papa Smurf?!” Peabody couldn’t have been more shocked if it was a picture of the pope. “My grandkids used to watch that show religiously in the 80s.”

“How much do you know about him?”

“Beyond that he’s old and blue, really not that much.”

“Oh he’s blue all right but also red to his very core. Think about it… he’s the benevolent, older leader of a moneyless, egalitarian commune and he’s the good guy. This eccentric human being named Gargamel, who is always scheming and is ugly with a big nose is, of course, the evil capitalist. And all of this from the mind of a crazed Belgian leftist… Peyo was the name. He desperately wanted to overthrow the Belgian monarchy and replace it with a utopian society. There’s even some credible sources who claim Smurfs actually stands for Socialist Minions Under Red Father. Who could have imagined that during the height of the Cold War, for one hour every Saturday morning, millions of kids were being spoon-fed communist propaganda in the form of adorable, blue collectivists? The Soviets must have been laughing hysterically from their bread lines and singing peyo’s praises while giving toasts with their rationed vodka.”

“It’s hard to even wrap my head around” reflected Harlan pensively as if Dupree had just uttered the most profound thing he had heard in his 78 trips around the sun. After a moment, he added, “But what does all of this have to do with ‘The Raid’?”

“The hats!” Exclaimed Dupree, “the hats!” Not since Johnny Cochran waxed poetic about a glove had someone been as passionate about an article of clothing.

“I don’t follow.” Peabody had an expressionless look.

Dupree picked up a piece of paper he had previously laid down. “I went to the trouble of creating a brief compendium of every eyewitness account of the hats worn by our hooligans from The Raid. We have: Sacramento Bee, December 15, 1895 — Harriet Doyle, first class, said the hats resembled, quote, ‘the most grotesque hennins imaginable.’ Reno Evening Gazette, December 14 — Samuel Forsythe said, ‘They were like the dunce caps I was forced to wear in grammar school, but melted by the desert heat.’ Carson City Morning Appeal, December 21 — Zebulon Bigsby: ‘If the hats had a brim, I might have confused the wretched men for warlocks.’ And on and on. Ignore Harrington’s quote for a moment — that they were ‘jester hats,’ which has caused so much confusion over the years — and just listen to the evidence. There’s only one hat that fits perfectly here: the Phrygian cap. 2,500 years ago, some Anatolian lady with a fashion sense and a drop spindle made something hip. Soon, the Romans picked it up and it became a symbol of freedom. It surfaced again in the French Revolution and then, unfortunately, got co-opted by…” Dupree paused and looked Peabody square in the eyes. “Marxists in the 19th century and ultimately beamed into our television sets in the ’80s, perched on the heads of little blue Bolsheviks.”

“So you’re saying the bandits were nothing more than some run-of-the-mill pinkos?” Peabody was starting to awaken from a lifetime of intellectual slumber. “But the ARU wasn’t communist!”

“You’re absolutely correct — not in 1895 at least. They certainly weren’t laissez-faire capitalists like Samuel Gompers and the AFL but they didn’t mind the idea of collective bargaining within a free market system. But one man changed all that. You see at first, the ARU workers wouldn’t operate or switch any trains with a Pullman. So the railroad companies, sick and tired of the ARU running the show, had the brilliant idea of adding a single Pullman to the mail trains. It forced the ARU’s hand: either stop the silly strike or violate federal law. Our agitator-in-chief decided on the latter and starting January 9, 1895, found himself in a federal prison in Woodstock, Illinois for obstructing the lawful delivery of U.S. mail. So while he’s in prison, probably mad as a hornet at George Pullman, the United States government, and especially the railroad companies for outsmarting him, he starts reading Marx and Engels and hatches a grandiose plan for revenge on all three. He gets out of jail on November 22, 1895, just three weeks before The Raid. Coincidence? I think not. His only problem is that a fearless capitalist was on board the Zephyr to rain on his communist parade. The ARU folds a couple years later but he takes the best and brightest and forms an organization that becomes the epitome of evil: the Socialist Party of America.”

“Eugene Victor Debs!” Peabody exclaimed.

“Yes, it was Debs. And the same man responsible for The Raid went on to get nearly a million votes in the 1912 Presidential Election. Just a couple million more votes in a four-horse race and he sneaks past Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft to seize control of the White House and almost cetainly would have joined forces with the Soviets a few years later.” Dupree shook his head. “I shudder at the thought of how our world would look today. When I woke up this morning, I loved Reginald Wentworth Harrington and everything he stood for but as I unwound this mystery today I realized how much he truly did for this country just by standing up to Debs and his warped plan.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. And Harrington did everything.” Peabody said with a renewed sense of pride while sitting in the very Pullman that Debs’ men ostensibly destroyed.

“True, he was a hero, not a crook. It also needs to be said… the only thing necessary for the triumph of amateur, slipshod books is for historians to do nothing!” Dupree countered. “I’ve decided to write my own book now with the real story and I will send Trevinnie an autographed copy!”

After both men laughed heartily and triumphantly, Peabody chimed in, “Just one more thing out of curiosity… What do you suppose Harrington meant when he said ‘The truth sleeps where fire breathes’?”

“Oh yes, I have a compelling theory about that as well. Mind taking a walk with me?” Dupree got up from the upholstered chair and walked toward the front of the train while Peabody followed.

Dupree walked all the way up to the steam locomotive and paused in front of the Rogers Boiler #K27-CS/95-A (Dual Expansion Type) and elucidated on Harrington’s quote. “Maybe the truth sleeps with some 19th century arson gang called the ‘Red Dragons’…” Dupree said facetiously while rolling his eyes. “…or maybe we need to stop chasing dragons and let Occam’s razor guide us. The truth is so much simpler. I strongly suspect that Harrington discovered other incriminating evidence that day, the why along with the how but for reasons unknown, maybe he didn’t want a protracted war with the unions, maybe he just didn’t have the time to deal with the fallout from some small-time crooks or a charge of vigilantism, but whatever the case I’m convinced that the truth ‘sleeps’ right here…” Dupree patted the boiler. “…and whatever evidence Harrington had went up in smoke in this ‘fire-breathing’ machine.”

Peabody thought it about it for a moment and said, “Mind if I go grab something? It’ll just take a minute.”

“Sure, boss.”

Peabody returned a few moments later holding an iPad Pro in one hand and a Depstech DS630 borescope in the other. He gently laid the iPad Pro down, turned on the borescope and LED, and opened the Depstech-View app on the iPad. “This is a long shot, but just humor me here.” Peabody bent down and set the articulating probe into the small gap where the boiler was slightly raised above the frame to allow for thermal expansion, midway between the two ornamental iron feet. The two men stared intently at the iPad screen like a couple of archaeologists prepared to open the Ark of the Covenant for the first time. Peabody swept the articulating probe across the gap using the app controls but aside from the expected soot and clinker and a few nuts and bolts likely dating back to the Grant administration, they observed nothing of import.

Peabody sighed and said, “Oh well, you win some, you lose some,” as he reached down to bring up the probe, knowing full well that today he had just scored the biggest W of his long career.

“Wait!” Dupree interrupted. “I saw something! Put it back and pivot it up toward the bottom of the boiler shell.”

Peabody reseated the probe, stood back up, then pressed and held the up arrow on the app as they looked on, mesmerized. “Sweet mother of God,” Peabody said softly, mouth agape.

The new orientation revealed an envelope blackened with soot over the decades, brittle but still intact, and attached to the underside of the boiler with what appeared to be four hardened, pale-white globs.

“Is that… gum?” Peabody asked, dumbfounded.

“Yeah,” Dupree said calmly. “Juicy Fruit.”

Peabody turned his head and gave Dupree a quizzical look, pulled out a pair of gloves, slowly put them on, and with a meticulousness and dexterity befitting a seasoned museum curator, deftly extracted the envelope. Peabody carefully brought the envelope back to his office followed by Dupree then placed it on a felt conservation pad. He shut the blinds, dimmed the ambient light, and switched on a UV inspection lamp calibrated to the 365–395 nm wavelength range. A purplish hue filled the room. “Just what I was afraid of, the soot’s absorbing all the UV.” Dupree said dejectedly.

“Oh well, we’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way.” Peabody took a humidification chamber out of the cabinet, set it on his desk, and placed the envelope inside. “Got some time on your hands?” Peabody asked without looking up while adjusting the settings.

“All the time in the world,” Dupree replied. Not for a moment did either man consider calling it a day.

For the next two hours, the men proudly discussed the implications of the find and speculated on what the letter might contain. Both men hoped it included some crazed manifesto from the proletariat, that a new exhibit would be promptly approved by the conservators and then discussed where they could display one of the most significant discoveries in American history.

“I think it’s ready,” Peabody noted as he gently pressed a gloved finger to the corner of the envelope. “We don’t want to risk any mold.” As day turned to dusk, both men exchanged a look as if this were the most wondrous moment not just of their careers but of their very lives. Peabody took out a microspatula and very slowly finessed the letter out of the envelope, delicately opened it, then laid it on the felt pad. They noticed at once that the letter was eminently readable, indicating the use of iron gall ink, popular in the late 19th century. They both read the letter rapt with anticipation.

Both men sat in stunned silence. If a bookmaker had laid odds on who was the mastermind behind one of the most brazen acts of sabotage in American history, a nearly 50-year-old female religious zealot would have been the ultimate long shot, a million to one. And when it came to their profession, Dupree and Peabody had just won the lottery with their find.

“God’s hatchet-wielding handmaiden…” Peabody shook his head in disbelief. “He didn’t want the world to know he had just killed off four unarmed Christians doing the ‘Lord's work’ but he needed to keep the letter around in case some lowlife ever tried to accuse him of staging the entire thing.” Peabody reached over to a copy of Last Train to Reno on his desk and tapped it for effect. Night began to fall in Ely, Nevada but their work wasn’t quite done.

“I suppose I’ll handle the handwriting part and you look into this Hiram Young character.” Peabody said as he opened his filing cabinet and pulled out Keppelweiss’ impressions. Both men started work on their iPads. “Perfect match. No surprise here.” Peabody said calmly after a few moments and showed Dupree the impressions alongside a known postcard from Mother Carrie. A moment later, Dupree started to spontaneously read: “Four Temperance Activists Missing after Confrontation with Saloon Owner. There it is. It mentions Hiram Young, a few others and oh big surprise, Wolfgang Goldschmidt, a man of German descent known for his aggressive clashes with C street saloon owners, especially when they didn’t strictly adhere to local ordinances.”

“We really did it!” Dupree reflected. “So what now?”

“Oh, the conservators will authorize a new exhibit, you and I will get a substantial raise — trust me on that one — and we’ll field calls from nearly every major newspaper in the country in the coming days. And don’t forget the publishing companies. But there is just one more thing we need to do right now.”

“What’s that, boss?”

“We drink to our success, of course,” Peabody said as he got up, took a couple of shot glasses out of a nearby cabinet and pulled out a flask from his waistcoat. “This demon rum has been smoldering in my pocket all day.” The men laughed zealously as Peabody eagerly poured both glasses to the brim.

The men toasted both Harrington and Mother Carrie, then sat back and soaked in the moment.