Tys-2012-12-29

After giving the situation some thought, Alec comes up with a likely profile. Men who know each other, who've had dealings, and who will travel together when they won't risk being sighted - or travel separately to avoid raising suspicion. Men with a purpose, and a schedule, who came and left deliberately. There will be many marks on the ground, but he hopes that few will satisfy those criteria. And in his usual quiet manner, he starts looking.

The east-west road sees a lot of traffic - a lot of it, from the railroad itself. Tracking a sick student through the brush is one thing; tracking the party of saboteurs (for what else can they be?) is a different matter entirely.

It takes well into the afternoon, at which point the Steam Heroes have been up for twelve hours straight on half a night's sleep. None of the tracks were distinctive. None followed any pattern that spoke of sneaking out to the rail trestle at night... but there was one set of wagon tracks that stood out in its absence.

There's a set of tracks on the road that comes from the west and heads east, back towards the city. This is not unusual; the road is the major land route to the coastal villages, and is one of a dozen wagons that must have come this way. But it disappears after a time, showing that the wagon must have left the road. To the north and east is the very edge of Fowler's estate; to the south is a scrubby bit of pine forest between the road and the ocean that doesn't really belong to anybody, but which looks like it's often used as a caravan halt.

The campsite is a few dozen yards back from the road. The firepit is cold; nobody has lit a fire here for some time. But there's signs that a wagon was here, and a pile of horse leavings that anybody with a nose can tell are fresh.

It's easier to follow from there. Bootprints, from three men. Reasonable quality, with iron nails in the soles, but not exceptional. Working man's clothes. Cigarette butts and tobacco ash here and there, cheaper varieties common in the City. The last guys to camp here, and they were here for several days, but kept a cold camp - probably to avoid being seen. Bootprints that lead back towards the road and, presumably, to the railway trestle, though normal traffic has erased those. Age has also erased the tracks from the wagon's entry into the grove - only the exit tracks are clear enough to follow.

It's a slim hunch. Lots of people use this road, and any of them might have good reason for keeping a cold camp - but it occurs to Alec that this is the first place that anyone could hope to hide from the bustle of activity around the railway, and still have a short walk to the rail trestle in the evenings. And so the steam heros head East, back towards the city, and mostly on foot - following the wagon's trail, where they can find it. The iron rims of its wheels are in good repair - better than the men's shoes, in fact - but there are small telltales. A scuff here, a seam there. It's painstaking work that only Alec can do. Gerald, Wulfgang, and Cassandra busy themselves asking any and every passerby if they've seen a wagon travelling last night. None have.

The party passes through two small villages as it heads east, stumbling into a third in late afternoon. They are dusty, sore, and tired. This is the hour that most people are closing shop and looking for dinner. This place is no different; a few dozen people are on the single wide street, heading home or to the inn. A few take notice of the pack of youngsters wandering up from the road, mostly to frown at the intrustion. Traffic is heavy enough that the individual tracks are impossible to find. There's no choice but to ask around.

The single main street forks off from the coast road and runs straight through the middle of town. It seems to have been recently extended north a few hundred feet to meet the railway, which passes by the village to the north. The Steam Heroes ask around, looking for signs of their quarry, or for people disgruntled about the railroad in general.

It turns out that there few of the former and more than a bit of the latter. People are happy with 'progress' and local farmers are organizing morning deliveries of produce around the railroad's timetables. The innkeeper is worried about losing business from the roadway, but is also setting himself up as a dry goods merchant, and figures that easier access to the city's wares will pay off for him. The livery stable has nothing good to say about the rail; the old man in charge seems to think that steam is an insult to his ancestors. Still, none of the wagons in his yard match the tracks; the saboteurs aren't here.

The Steam Heroes end up on the wide porch in front of the town's inn, tired and dusty. The adrenaline surge has gone, and the sun is getting low. Cassandra has gone inside to inquire about rooms for the evening. It is then that the second body is reported.

One of the farmers living just west of town found a dead man on his land that afternoon. He's just now reporting it to the innkeeper, who it seems is also the town's mayor-sherriff-postmaster by dint of having the biggest house and largest wine cellar. The innkeeper-mayor is giving him an earful over waiting until supper to report it; partially because dead bodies are important, but mostly because he's got to walk out and leave three dozen paying customers in the care of his overworked wife and slow-witted son.

It's not hard for the Steam Heroes to parley their way into the affair. The innkeeper is glad to have someone else take care of the problem; the farmer is glad to have the dead man off his land. And Alec is quite happy to have found two of the boots he's been tracking, albiet on the feet of a teamster's corpse.