31

Mugsy blasted the horn again, long and loud. Paisley recoiled, but Corey held tight.

In a split second, Corey’s brain made a calculation. The train was massive. Its brakes were 1917 caliber. There was no way it would stop before making contact. But it was pretty far behind and going slow.

He gave Paisley a kick with both heels. “Get him!”

Paisley let out a snort, then quickly accelerated to a gallop. Corey clutched the reins. The fallen guy was lying on the track in a fetal position. His face was angled toward them, eyes shut tight. He was huge, at least two hundred pounds—too heavy and too unconscious to move with a broom handle.

As the horse pulled alongside the body, Corey jumped off. Running to the man’s side, he fell to his knees and grabbed his shoulders. “Wake up!”

Useless. The guy was dead weight.

“QUI-I-I-INNN!” Corey shouted, but his friend was behind the buildings that faced the river.

The train’s brakes were screaming, and those screams were getting closer. Corey’s nostrils filled with the sickly, acrid stink of burning metal. In his peripheral vision he saw the front of the locomotive looming slowly closer in a cloud of dust and smoke. He tried to pull the man away, but it was like lifting a hippo. The heavy rope fell from Corey’s shoulder, landing on the guy’s face, but even that didn’t rouse him.

The rope.

Working as fast as he could, Corey lifted one end, tied it around the man’s chest under his arms, and cinched the loop with a quick double knot. Pulling it tight, he held on to the other end of the rope, jumped to his feet, and ran to Paisley, who was shifting anxiously from hoof to hoof.

“Sorry about this, buddy,” he said, wrapping his end of the rope tightly around Paisley’s neck. “I think you’re strong enough for this, right?”

Mounting the horse, he turned. The train was maybe twenty yards from the guy and gaining. Mugsy and his assistant were both staring at Corey as if he’d lost his mind. Corey pantomimed pulling an overhead rope. “BLOW THE HORN!” he shouted.

Mugsy got it right away and reached upward. The sound echoed off the walls of the buildings. Paisley whinnied and rose on his hind legs.

HO-O-O-O-ONNNNK!

“Go!” Corey shouted, kicking the horse’s flank. “Run away! The train is coming for us!”

Paisley lunged forward. The rope went taut. The horse’s body angled to the left with the added weight.

It took a few stuttering steps to build up speed. Corey’s eyes were fixed on the track. The train was just a few feet away from the old guy and closing steadily. But his limp body was moving now, dragged by the rope, sliding over the rail and onto the gravel track bed. The head was clear . . . the shoulders . . .

A crowd had begun to form, mostly people in ragged clothes emerging from darkened doorways. A chorus of gasps and screams resounded, mixing with the continued screech of the train’s brakes. Corey had to turn away. The clamor rose to a deafening pitch. A deep groan of shifting metal echoed against the buildings.

And then, a dull thump.

The horn, the brakes, and the cheers were all sucked away into an absence of sound. All Corey heard now was Paisley’s hooves, clopping dutifully forward. He felt nauseated. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see exactly what the horse was pulling. Or what it wasn’t.

Gathering up his strength, Corey turned toward the track.

The first thing he saw was Mugsy’s face in the window of the halted locomotive, ashen with shock.

Through a break in the crowd, Corey could see something on the ground. Something brown and wriggling.

“Gaaaahhhh! I apologize! Let me go! Sweet mother of life, let me go!”

Head, torso, two arms, two legs.

The man was there, all of him, fighting against the rope, trying to get loose. “Whoa, Paisley, whoa!” Corey shouted, pulling back on the reins.

The horse came to a halt. Corey jumped off and began running along the length of the rope. He pushed his way through the gawkers until he finally reached the bewildered old guy. The man was sitting up now, his cheeks bleeding and his eyes glassy. “What’d I do?” he cried.

Corey found the knot and quickly wrenched the rope free. “I can’t believe this worked. I—I don’t know what I’m doing. You are so lucky.”

“Worked? What happened to me?”

“You fell onto the tracks when the train was coming,” Corey explained.

Through the locomotive window, Mugsy was shaking an angry fist and shouting. As the old man took in the scene, he murmured to himself and looked at Corey in amazement. “You—you’re one of the cowboys,” he said. “You saved me from . . . that?”

“I—I guess I did,” Corey said.

The man wrapped his arms around Corey and began to sob. He reeked of alcohol and a body that probably hadn’t showered in recent memory, but Corey didn’t fight him. Laughter and “awwww”s sprang up around them. Corey felt people clapping his back. Someone began to applaud, and in a moment, the entire crowd joined in.

The man let go of Corey. His face was red, mottled, and teary, but he radiated gratitude. “Do I know you?” he said.

“No. I’m Corey Fletcher. From the Upper West Side.”

“Oscar Schein. Bless you. Bless you, my boy!”

“Any time,” Corey said.

“No offense, but I hope we never meet again,” Oscar said with a slow, impish smile. “At least not under these circumstances.”

The old man broke into a wheezing laugh, and people in the crowd joined in. Corey felt bombarded by backslappers. Through the din he heard the clopping of hooves, and a familiar voice calling his name. Quinn was crossing the tracks on Thunder. Her face was bone white until she caught a glimpse of Corey. Jumping off the horse, she ran toward him. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, he’s all right,” Oscar said. “He saved my life.”

“I am so sorry I wasn’t there!” Quinn said, her face lined with tears. “I—wait. You lassoed that guy?”

“It’s a long story,” Corey said with a laugh.

HO-O-O-O-ONNNNK! came the impatient sound of the train’s horn.

“Mugsy thinks the story’s already too long,” Quinn said. “We’d better go. Give me the details later.”

“Wait!” Oscar was moving his massive body, heaving himself to his feet. Eyeing Corey closely, he nodded. “Yeah, I do know you. You were the kid asleep in the Gash. The one Ratboy rolled.”

“Someone named Ratboy took my stuff?” Corey said.

“What does he look like?” Quinn asked. “Besides a rat?”

“Nasty little guy, scrawny mustache, buckteeth, squeaks when he talks,” Oscar replied. “Always bragging. Likes to steal from the trains and the barges. Most guys pawn their loot. This one’s different. Cuts out the middleman and sells it himself. Makes a hundred, two hundred percent profit. Smarter than he looks, I think. Says he wants to set up a business buying and selling goods from overseas. Good luck with that, the lowlife. Anyways, I seen him in Grumney’s just last night, on Washington and Bank. Tried to buy drinks for the house, but the bartender wouldn’t take his money, told him it was fake.”

“Wait. Why did he think it was fake?” Corey asked.

“All’s I know,” Oscar said, “is that Fritz the bartender, he keeps pointing to the bill and shouting ‘Unmöglich!’ Which is German for ‘impossible.’”

Quinn and Corey exchanged a glance. Impossible could mean a lot of things. Like, the dates on the bills were from the future maybe. Which would make them seem counterfeit to a bartender in 1917. “Listen, I need to see this guy,” Corey said.

“Ohhhh, you don’t want to mix with Ratboy,” Oscar replied. “’Cause the nickname don’t just come from the way he looks but also from what’s in his soul. I ain’t got no trouble with him personally. But he eats his enemies, if you catch my drift.”

Corey swallowed. “I’ll take the risk.”

“You’re a kid.”

“There are two of us,” Corey pointed out.

“Well, you’re crazy,” Oscar said, “but he’s at Grumney’s every night at eleven on the dot. And there’s an abandoned lot next door. I can get him in there, but then I leave him to you. And you better have a plan.”

Quinn gave Corey a look. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You can just stay here. It’ll be fun. Exciting.”

“You visiting from somewhere else?” Oscar asked. “I thought you said you were from the Upper West Side.”

“I—” Corey didn’t know what to say. Not to Oscar about time travel. Not to Quinn about the exact nature of the artifacts that would take him back.

He took a deep breath. Quinn’s words echoed in his brain. You can just stay here. The idea was crazy. He couldn’t take it seriously.

Still, she was cool, and he’d never met anyone like her. And for the teeniest fraction of a second, he thought it might not be the worst thing in the world.

HO-O-O-O-ONNNNK! HO-O-O-O-ONNNNK!

“You guys having a tea party over there?” Mugsy shouted. “We’re late on the pickup!”

Corey grabbed Paisley’s reins and looked at Quinn. “I need to go home,” he said.

“This doesn’t sound like a foolproof plan,” Quinn remarked.

“Then I’ll keep digging until I get one,” Corey said.

Quinn sighed. “All right. But you’ll miss me.”

“Maybe I’ll come back.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Quinn said. “But if you do, bring back some food.”

“Woo-hoo,” Corey said.

“Yee-hah.” Corey stepped into the stirrup and mounted his horse. “See you at the lot near Grumney’s at eleven o’clock, Mr. Schein!” he called out. “With Ratboy.”