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Red pointed across the street at a man who’d stepped from one of the grungy little stores just a moment before. He was a smallish fellow, but that was about all I could tell, for he turned and scurried away before I could see his face. He was clearly dressed American-style, though, in a dark suit and spats—and with no queue hanging down his back.
    Now, a Chinaman without his ponytail’s about as common as a horse without hooves, a fish without fins, or a banker with a heart. So it looked like Gustav had found himself a white man. And lickety-split he was Holmesing him up.
    “He’s a doctor,” he said, starting across the street in pursuit. “Respected in his community, well off—until recently. He’s had him a run of bad luck that put him in a bind money-wise. Got himself knocked around, too. Bodily, I mean. But he’s pickin’ himself up again. He might not look like it, but he’s one tough little bird.”
    We reached the other side of the street side by side and began hustling up the rickety sidewalk.
    “Alright, I’m impressed—assumin’ it ain’t pure bullshit,” I said. “Now you wranna tell me how you deduced all that?”
    “No deducifyin’ necessary,” Old Red said, and he shot me a cocked eyebrow that was, for him, the same as a cocky grin. “We know him. That’s Dr. Gee Woo Chan.”
    I gaped at my brother. “Doc Chan? From the Pacific Express? It couldn’t be.”
    But it could, I saw when I looked again at the man we were chasing.
    He seemed stockier around the shoulders and thicker around the middle than the polished, polite Chinaman we’d met during our one and only train run as Southern Pacific police. The height was right, though, as was the hair: Chan was the only Chinaman I’d ever seen who didn’t wear a queue. The man was even limping slightly, and the last we’d heard of Dr. Chan, he’d been bashed over the head and tossed off the express we were supposed to be protecting.
    “Well, hell’s bells. I do believe it
is
him.” I picked up my pace to a near sprint. “Hey, Doc! Stop!
Doc!
”
    The fellow didn’t even turn around to look at me, and I started thinking Old Red was wrong after all. I kept after the man, though, already savoring the vexation I’d see on my brother’s face when “Dr. Chan” turned out to be Dr. O’Grady the dentist or Mr. Stein the encyclopedia salesman.
    “Doc? Is that you? Yoo-hoo!”
    I was almost close enough to reach out and touch the man now, and he finally stopped and started to turn toward me.
    “ ‘Scuse me, sir,” I said. “I was wonderin’—”
    I didn’t finish my sentence for two reasons.
    First off, it
was
Dr. Chan.
    And second, I was interrupted—by the derringer in his hand and the blast of gunfire in my face.

4

FEAST AND FAMINE
    Or, Chan Tries to Make Amends and Avoid Explanations
    Fortunately, it was only the literal gun
fire
I felt on my face—the sting of scorched powder in my eyes and a flash of heat upon my forehead. The
bullet
pierced not flesh but felt, tearing through the crown of my bowler and whipping the hat right off my head.
    “Shit, Doc!” I shrieked, instinctively crouching down and throwing up my hands. “It ain’t our fault you got throwed off that train!”
    Chan’s
eyes
bulged behind his round-wired spectacles.
    “Big Red?”
    Then he looked down, goggling at his smoking derringer as if he had no earthly idea how it came to be in his hand.
    He dropped the gun to the sidewalk as my brother came dashing up to join us.
    “Old Red?” Chan said. “I . . . I’m so sorry.”
    “Hey, don’t apologize to
him
,” I said as I stood up straight again. “I’m the one who almost got his melon drilled.”
    Gustav swept off his Stetson and started beating me over the head with it.
    “What the hell?” I snatched the hat out of his hands. “Why are
you
goin’ at me now?”
    Old Red pointed at the top of my head. “Your hair’s still smokin’.”
    “Sweet Jesus!”
    I slapped my brother’s