Excerpt from El Paso by Winston Groom, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"And so these punks are really laying it to you?" Mick said.

Arthur nodded.

"And you ain't going back."

Arthur shook his head.

"Well, just suppose," Mick said, "that I go up there with you when the classes start again. I don't think any of those little snots are going to fool with you after I give them a talking-to."

Arthur shook his head again. "It's not worth it, Mick, but thank you," he said. Arthur just couldn't see it, not after what they'd done. How they'd treated him. He felt sick to his stomach every time he thought about it.

"So let me ask you this," Mick said. they were stopped at the curb to let a trolley rumble past. "Who's the one who's the ringleader? the one who gives you the most trouble?"

"they all do," Arthur said dejectedly. "I'd rather be back in Southie than to go back there."

"C'mon, there's got to be a ringleader. there's always a ringleader." "I don't know," Arthur said. "I guess if it's anybody, it would be Hawkins. He's from Ipswich."

"And you don't want me to go and say hello to Master Hawkins?" Mick asked.

"No, Mick, like I said, it's too late, at least for me."

Mick looked at his friend. He felt terrible for him. With all Arthur had now, all the things he himself could only dream of, and now this unhappiness.

"Well, bucko," Mick said, draping a thick arm over Arthur's shoulder, "you do whatever you think best. that's the thing—the only thing. And now I'm going to take you to a place and buy you a beer."

When school resumed two weeks later, without Arthur's knowledge or consent, Mick Martin boarded a train to Groton. It did not take him long to find Hawkins after he'd asked around. Mick caught Hawkins just outside his residence hall and yanked him behind a tall long hedge, where he administered a fearful beating to the boy, making sure Hawkins fully understood the reason. Hawkins told the headmaster; a search was launched for Hawkins's assailant, and the Boston police came to the Shaughnessy home and questioned Arthur, which was the first time he learned what Mick had done, but he told them nothing. He didn't really lie; besides, all he had were his own suspicions. Still, Arthur did not return to Groton that year or any year, enrolling instead at day school in Boston. His father never let him forget it.


NOW, AT HIS DESK AT THE RAIL YARDS in Chicago, Arthur sat with a pencil and a pad, trying to compose a response to his father's wire that would convey the mounting crisis at NE&P. Since his father was now aboard Ajax where there was no phone, the telegram would have to be worded cautiously, since the worst thing that could happen was some loose-lipped telegraph operator letting it get out that for the second time in its history under the Shaughnessys, the New England & Pacific Railroad Company might not be able to meet its payroll.

the first time this had happened, three years earlier, Arthur's father wriggled off the hook by selling a considerable piece of company property in western Connecticut. He'd realized so much money from the sale that the company was not only flush, but the elder Shaughnessy was able to order the construction of the Ajax, which Arthur felt was a wild extravagance.

But his father was always extravagant: the big house in Newport, the enormous ranch in Mexico, the place in Maine, the lavish parties, the safaris and trips to Europe. All that might have been fine while the company was making money. And indeed it had made a great deal of money for a while; so much so that John Shaughnessy was able to fulfill at least his second-most ardent wish, which was to be included in that rarefied class of barons such as Gould, Harriman, Hearst, Rockefeller, Stanford, Huntington, Guggenheim, and even J. P. Morgan himself. Although John Shaughnessy was on the outside tier of that august bunch, he was nevertheless a member of the club, which he would not have been had he merely been content to own a codfish fleet and not a railroad company.

Excerpted from El Paso by Winston Groom. Copyright © 2016 by Winston Groom. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.