Wide eyed, the little boy tipped his head far back to peer up at the gaudily painted vehicle looming over him in the Museum of Transportation.
“Whoa,” he said in an awed voice that matched his gaze. “Is that a real stagecoach?”
“They probably just made it to look like one,” the boy’s mother said. “I’m not sure there are any real stagecoaches around anymore.”
A tall, straight-backed man with silvery hair and a neatly clipped mustache approached them.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said as he gave the woman a polite nod and reached up to pinch the brim of the brown felt cowboy hat he wore. “I couldn’t help overhearing what the little fella asked. Son, that sure is a real stagecoach.”
“You mean people used to ride it in the Old West?” the boy asked as his eyes got big.
“They did.”
Ignoring the somewhat disapproving frown the woman gave him, the older man stepped closer to the stagecoach, which was painted bright red with brass fittings and a gleaming brass rail around the top. On the side, above the door and the windows, in gold paint were the words WELLS FARGO & CO. OVERLAND STAGE. The rear wheels were bigger than the front wheels, but both sets were taller than the little boy, who wore a straw cowboy hat and a fringed vest from some playset.
The man rested a fingertip on the side of the stage, just below the back window on this side, and said, “See this? It’s been painted over a heap of times, so you can’t hardly make it out anymore, but somebody scratched something into the wood here.”
“I don’t know,” the boy said, frowning. “I can see something there, but I can’t make it out. . . .”
“All right to give the lad a hand, ma’am?”
The woman sighed, tired from a day of sightseeing and eager to get back to the motel.
“Sure, go ahead,” she said.
From behind, the man took hold of the little boy under the arms and lifted him so his face was close to the stagecoach.
“I see it!” the boy said. “It looks like somebody’s initials.... B.B. . . . December . . . 1901.” He turned his head to look at the man. “That was sixty years ago.”
With only a slight grunt of effort, the man set the little boy on the floor again.
“It sure was,” he said. “I happen to know that the fella who scratched those letters on there was riding in the coach when it was caught in a blizzard in Donner Pass back in oh-one.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Another man approached, holding up his hands. This one was chubby, with dark curly hair. A pair of glasses kept slipping down his nose. “Don’t fill the boy’s head with nonsense.”
“What are you talkin’ about, mister?” the older man said as he looked around.
“No stagecoach would have been traveling through Donner Pass, at Christmastime or any other time of the year, in 1901. The Central Pacific Railroad was completed long before that and had been taken over by the Southern Pacific by then. There would have been no reason for a stagecoach to go through there.”
“You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Yes, I do. I have a doctorate in history, and I wrote my thesis on the development and expansion of the American railroad system.”
“So you’re a college professor.”
“That’s right, I am.”
“I reckon you set me straight, then.” Clearly dismissive, the older man turned back to the boy. “Like I was saying, that stagecoach was on its way through the Sierra Nevadas that December when it started to snow—”
“No, you’re wrong—”
“I’m telling the story here, amigo, not you.” The older man’s voice had taken on a flinty tone that made the professor step back nervously. “You’re welcome to listen while I talk to the boy. Could be you’ll learn something.”
The woman said, “We have to go—”
“No!” the boy said. “I want to hear the story. Does it have cowboys in it?”
“A bunch of ’em,” the older man told him with a smile. “And one of ’em was called Smoke. It all starts in San Francisco. . . .”