Longarm on the Overland Trail (6 page)

Longarm said, "You sure are a stubborn old cuss, no offense. But would you agree one good turn deserves another?"

The old man shrugged. "Do me a favor and we'll call it square."

Longarm took off his hat and coat, put them on the counter with the favor the old man had just done him, and said, "All right. You show me where you want things piled, and that's where I'll pile 'em for you."

"You don't mean that," the old man replied. "I got at least a ton of scrap paper to leave out back for the rag picker."

"We'd better get cracking, then," Longarm said.

Longarm didn't think it made much sense, either, by the time they'd finished. The spry old man had done some of the work, of course, so they were both paper-dusty by the time they'd toted all the trash books the old man was too proud to sell out to the alley. As he dropped the last heavy box beside the back gate, Longarm said, "I hope nobody steals all this paper before your pal can pick it up."

"Let them," the old man said. "Anyone willing to lift such a load deserves it. We both must be crazy, but for a lawman you're a nice change. Where I come from, lawmen don't help an honest merchant. They help themselves to his merchandise. Do you like sweet wine? I got sweet wine inside and we've agreed one good turn deserves another."

Longarm grinned, wiped his sweaty face with his pocket kerchief, and said, "We're going to have to stop doing favors for each other before we both wind up crippled. Are we square about that old magazine now?"

"Idiot, I told you it was yours to begin with. But I thank you just the same. I can't wait to write my brother in the old country that here the cossacks are harmless lunatics."

They went back inside. Longarm gathered up his things and they parted friendly. The balmy dry air of the mile-high city dried him off as it cooled him down. But the combined effects of a hundred and thirty pound gal and a ton or so of less interesting stuff to manhandle had left him feeling exhausted and thirsty. So when he came to a neighborhood saloon, as sedate as such things got, along Larimer, he ducked in to settle his nerves and catch up on his reading.

The place was laid out a lot like Luke Short's Long Branch in Dodge. Built into a storefront, it was no more than twenty feet wide and ran back about forty. The bar ran the long way, along one wall. Small tables were set along the other wall. The place was almost empty, save for a few regulars and a desperate as well as homely Mex gal lounging against the bar in a flouncy skirt with an organdy rose pinned to one overweight hip. As he ordered a schooner of needled beer at the bar she flashed a gold tooth at him and murmured, "Buenoches, querido. A onde va?"

He was going to a table to sit down. He didn't answer her with more than a dry smile. As he moved to do so, she started to follow, but the barkeep warned her in Spanish that she was messing with the law. Sometimes it came in handy to be so well known in the rougher parts of town, Longarm thought.

He sat at a table facing the front, drank some suds, and spread his find on the table. It was entitled, "Black Jack Slade, Terror of the Overland Trail."

So far so accurate.

The Overland Trail, like a lot of stagecoach trails, had more or less died with the coming of the Iron Horse. Rails now ran along parts of it. Other parts were still used as wagon traces by local traffic. Some had just been allowed to go back to seed, mostly tumbleweed. The old Overland Trail didn't interest Longarm as much as the wild-eyed rascals who'd haunted it back in the transcontinental stagecoach era, and as he read the book, he had to allow the writer had tried to get some of the facts Longarm already knew right. So it was safe to assume some of the things Longarm didn't know could be based on yarns still fresh at the time of publication.

Trying to make old Black Jack out a misunderstood Robin Hood was silly, of course. Slade had started out decent enough with an honorable discharge after the Mexican War and had been hired as a supervisor by the Central Overland California & Pikes Peak Express Company, posted at Julesburg, where the stage lines forked to serve both the older mining camps out California way and the new Colorado strikes between Pikes Peak and Cherry Creek, as Denver had been called at the time. So he'd had a good job, had he had sense to behave right. Suffering snakes! His name had not started out as Black Jack. He'd been hired as Joseph Slade by Overland, and it was no wonder a half-cracked little bookworm had been struck by the fact they were both baptized the very same way!

Longarm read on about the Terror of the Overland Trail, and old Black Jack Slade had surely been that. He began his job for Overland by commencing to fuss with a French-Canadian fellow supervisor named Belle. The book said Belle was a dishonest employee who'd been robbing the company. It was a mite late to ask why Overland hadn't just fired Belle, in that case. The mutual admiration between Slade and Belle had been settled by Belle shooting Slade first, a lot, making the mistake of leaving Slade alive, and winding up with his tanned ear dangling from old Black Jack's watch chain.

Most gents would have stopped right there. Having established his rep as a mighty grim man to cross, Black Jack took to scaring folk just for practice. Within three years he was getting too famous to stay alive much longer in Julesburg, so he'd crossed into Montana with a Colorado warrant out on him.

He and his long-suffering wife settled down in Montana to raise cows and hell. There was no mention of them having any kids, so there went any hope of the latter-day Slade having any basis for his delusion. The original Black Jack hailed from Illinois, not Ohio. No matter how the writer tried to justify the original model as a misunderstood hero, Longarm could see he should have stayed in Julesburg, where at least folk were scared of him. Acting crazy-mean hadn't worked so good in the Montana mining country around Virginia City. The local vigilance committee advised Black Jack politely to saddle up and ride far. He took this as an invitation to indulge in a week-long drunk and shooting spree the vigilantes didn't find half as amusing. So they found a rope and a handy beef-loading scaffold in the Virginia City yards and hung him up to cool considerable. The sad tale ended with old Black Jack buried in Salt Lake City, Utah. The reasons given made no sense at all to Longarm. But then, nothing either Black Jack Slade had done made much sense.

He was going over that part again, sure it had to be a mistake, when two mistakes took place in the here and now in rapid succession. The homely Mex gal at the bar stepped away from it for another try at his virtue just as someone who had to like him less fired at Longarm through the window from outside.

The gal and a lot of busted glass went down as Longarm leaped up, gun in hand, to fire back as he charged. The sill of the shattered window stood two feet above the floor. Longarm leaped over it to land with both boot heels on something softer than he'd expected Larimer to be paved with. He fired straight down as he bounced off and put another round in the son of a bitch for good measure. Then he saw he was wasting ammunition and hunkered down by a watering trough to reload as he swept the rapidly clearing street with his narrowed eyes. He saw that nobody else seemed to want any part of the action. The only possible targets headed his way were waving police nightsticks, so he got to his feet and holstered his gun before they could make any mistakes about him.

One of the local lawmen shouted, "What's this all about, cowboy? Oh, it's you, Longarm. We might have known. Do you always have to act like it's the Fourth of July?"

Longarm pointed at the body stretched out on the walk between them and said, "It was his grand notion, not mine. Hold the fort. There's another one down inside."

He ran back into the saloon. The only soul in sight was the Mex gal on the floor. He bent to help her. She was smiling up at him sort of confused, but he knew she wasn't really seeing anything. He closed her eyes with gentle fingers and lowered her head back to the floor.

As he got back to his feet one of the copper badges came in to say, "It sure is easy to draw a crowd in this part of town, but my pard can no doubt keep anyone from stealing that other gent's boots before the meat wagon shows up. Oh, I see you shot old Mexican Martha as well. Any particular reason, Longarm?"

Longarm said, "I didn't know her. She was trying to know me better and got in the line of fire. She took a round meant for me, and I ought to be stood in the corner for sitting in view from the street outside after dark."

As they moved back toward the open entrance, the barkeep rose from behind his bar to ask who was going to pay for his front window. Neither lawman answered. The Denver officer said, "He must have wanted you bad. Was he the killer they told us you all were looking for? No offense, but he don't fit the description too good."

Longarm stared morosely down at the taller, older man dressed in faded denim. "His name was Edward Morrison. They called him Texas Teddy. I put him away some years ago for stealing army supplies. He swore at the time he'd pay me back, and I reckon he must have meant it."

One of the copper badges said, "He should have quit whilst he was ahead. One can see by his prison pallor that he ain't been out long. Now he's going to serve even more time, underground. Do you reckon he's the one as fired on you earlier today? We heard about that, coming on duty just a while ago. The duty sergeant told us to watch for that bitty gent in goat-hair chaps, though."

Longarm said, "I was watching for him, too. That's why I thought it safe to let my guard down on a well-lit street, if I was thinking at all, cuss my careless brains."

"You know, of course, that the county coroner will expect even a gent like you to show up for the hearing, don't you?" one of the officers asked.

Longarm nodded. "My office is my mailing address, and you got it on file," he told them. "I wish real life worked the way it does in penny-dreadful shootouts. I hate it when they ask so many dumb questions."

"You think you got troubles, Longarm. We have to fill out all sorts of papers every time we bring in anybody."

Longarm grimaced and went back inside. The scene was the same. He Put money on the bar and told the barkeep, "I want you to use this to see she's buried decent. I can't afford nothing fancy, but she deserves better than a scrap of canvas and a hole in potter's field, see?"

The barkeep scooped up the gold coins and said, "I know an old Mex who'll build a pine box and work something out with the sexton at the church of Santa Catalina across the creek. What the priest don't know about old Martha won't hurt him. But who's going to pay for my front window?"

"I didn't bust it. But I will, after I see you haven't played me and this lady false. Make sure every dime I just gave you is spent honest on her burial and come next payday I'll be by to talk about your glass. But if I find out she wound up in potter's field--and I can, easy--you can commend your soul to Jesus, for your ass and everything else in here will be busted up by me."

The barkeep assured Longarm he had no intention of crossing anyone who shot so good. So Longarm went back outside to watch them load the other body in the wagon. He told them the one inside was personal property. They said they didn't care, since it saved space in an already overcrowded city plot. As the wagon rolled away, Longarm saw Sergeant Nolan crossing Larimer to join him. He said, "I know, I know, I said I'd fill out all the damned papers for Denver, damn it."

Nolan said, "That can wait. That ain't what I come looking to tell you. Your Black Jack Slade has struck again and, since this time it's outside the city limits, the captain says to tell you the crazy little owlhoot is all Uncle Sam's. For he just shot up an army post, way to the northeast, and it was a well known fact he disliked the army even before he gunned them military police last night."

Longarm frowned thoughtfully and said, "Damn, I thought that penny dreadful left something out. By any chance did the more recent Black Jack Slade raise all this hell anywhere near Fort Halleck on the old Overland Trail?"

"He didn't shoot up anything near Fort Halleck," Nolan said. "He was right on the post when he tore into the canteen, to demand a drink, and then shot up a couple of troopers and all the lights, when they refused him service. How did you know it was Fort Halleck, though?"

Longarm said, "I just remembered. The original Black Jack had to run for Montana after he shot up Fort Halleck in Sixty-one. That wasn't heroic enough to put in a story trying to make a trigger-happy killer look sensible, but it happened anyway."

"Well, history sure seems to be repeating itself of late, don't you think?" Nolan said.

Longarm said, "I don't think. I know. That crazy young owlhoot is following in the footsteps of his idol, guns and all!"

CHAPTER 5

"I heard. Why are you Still here in Denver?" asked Marshal Vail as his calmer wife showed Longarm into the sitting room of their residence atop Capital Hill.

Longarm noted the yellow telegram on the lamp table next to Vail's easy chair. "That's what I came to clear with you. I just had to shoot Texas Teddy Morrison. That didn't take half as long as all the fool paperwork at Police headquarters. They say they don't blame me for swatting such a fly, but that I can't leave town until after the coroner's jury clears me."

Vail said, "Sure you can. Texas Teddy had a Kansas warrant out on him, and never should have come to Colorado in the first place. I get my hair cut in the same barbershop as the coroner, and he ain't all that stupid. Did you give them a deposition stating all you care to know about Texas Teddy's demise?"