Longarm on the Overland Trail (8 page)

"I know all that. I told you Joseph has an unpredictable temper, Custis."

He shook his head. "They should have predicted it. He was wanted for desertion and horse theft when he came in with a brace of six-guns strapped around his skinny hips. As I read the results, they was standing side by side not far from the door, and he was in the doorway or just inside when he slapped leather and beat them both. From the powder burns, he swung both guns up at once and fired both at once at point-blank range. It was still mighty fine shooting, considering one gun had to be in his left hand."

"Joseph is left-handed," she cut in. "We tried, and his teachers tried, to make him write right-handed but he had temper tantroms and after a time everyone gave up."

He nodded. "For that I thank you. It goes in my notes and helps explain him a mite better. That still leaves him able to drill a man direct through the heart with either hand. That's what you get when you force a natural lefty to use his right hand more than he ever wanted to. We know he drew and fired without a word of warning or even that certain look lesser gunslicks get in their eyes as they're fixing to draw. Had those army agents had the merest hint they were up against anything more than what they took to be a mere kid, they'd at least have tried to do a thing about it in the short time they had left. But your brother didn't give them time. He moved faster than spit on a stove, and he had them dead or at least unconscious before they could have even guessed they were in trouble."

She tried a sip of the drink, winced, and asked, "What do you mean by dead or unconscious? Don't you mean they were killed instantly?"

He shook his head. "I told you I rode through a war. A heavy slug through the heart stops it instant. But, if it ain't too shocked as well, the brain can still work for a few seconds, and more than one man's been killed by a man he just killed. On the other hand, a.45 slug can knock one out with its shocking power, hitting almost anywhere in the trunk, if the victim is relaxed when he gets hit. Tensed up, the hydrostatic shock don't whip-snap through muscles near as much. So do you see the way it had to have happened, now?"

She swallowed and said, "I think so. You're suggesting those two men were standing there, relaxed and maybe talking in a soothing way to what they thought was a frightened boy, when..."

"I ain't suggesting it," he cut in. "It don't work no other way. So now we get to the ugly part. How in thunder can you expect any lawman to approach a natural disaster like your kid brother in a gentle, understanding way?"

"That's why you have to take me with you, Custis. I can talk to Joseph. He'd never draw his guns on me."

He raised an eyebrow as well as his glass, took a snort, and said, "You must have forgotten the bruised breastbone you showed me earlier, Miss Flora."

She insisted, "That's my point. He hit me. He didn't shoot me. Isn't it true the original Black Jack Slade was a wife beater, not a wife murderer?"

"It depends on which version you read. Some say they was sort of fond of one another and that she raised pure hell when the vigilantes come for him. I can see how, either way, gunning a gal could be against the code of such an otherwise surly cuss. But leave us not forget your kid brother ain't really the man he seems to think he is. Gals get killed all the time in penny dreadfuls. It's a matter of Wild West myth that Calamity Jane Canary was killed in a gunfight with Mormon Bill so's Deadwood Dick could avenge the death of his true love."

"That's silly. Everyone knows Calamity Jane was the sweetheart of Wild Bill Hickock," she said.

He smiled thinly. "That's a myth, too, even if old Jane likes it too much to deny it. I met James Butler Hickock when I first went to work for the Department. He was working mostly at getting drunk. He was also as happily married as a heavy drinker can get, to Agnes Lake, who was built a lot nicer than poor old Calamity, because she was a circus performer he'd met touring with a circus back East."

He took another slug and explained, "The point of all this tedious discussion is that even when things are down as public record in black and white, the gents who write the fairy tales your brother takes so serious don't allow a little thing like the truth to get in their way. Most of them can't even know the truth, writing as far off as London and stealing tall tales from one another. But your kid brother takes tall tales as his real world and, worse yet, he's fast enough to back his loco notions. I'd like to get my hands on the range instructor who taught him to handle guns so good. But they ain't sending me after him. It's your kid brother the law wants, and you can't come along to reason with anyone so unreasonable. I got enough on my plate with just having your family to worry about. I'd never forgive myself if you both wound up shot."

She raised the glass and downed the drink with a heroic effort before she put it on his lamp table and began to unbutton her bodice again. He put his own drink aside. "Just what do you think you're doing? I've already seen your bruises."

She smiled up at him sadly and said, "I can't go home, with those awful men tramping about my house. If you won't take me with you, couldn't I at least stay here with you tonight?"

She must have been able to read his thoughts, despite his valiant attempt at a poker face. For as she exposed her pretty little breasts to the lamplight she said, "It's not as if either of us are virgins, you know."

He said, "Speak for yourself. How pure I might or might not be is not the question. I ain't in a position to compromise myself as an arresting officer."

She smiled up at him archly. "Heavens, what are you planning to arrest me for, Custis?" she asked.

He said, "Indecent exposure and cruelty to animals. It ain't going to work, Miss Flora. I admire your devotion to kin, but we both know what you're trying to do. You're just upsetting us both to no avail."

She gathered her duds together more tightly and started to cry. Her tears were real. He sat down beside her and buttoned her bodice back up as he said, "You can't stay here, for I know what any lawyer worth his salt could make of that in court. Pull yourself together and I'll take you over to a hack-stand I know of in this neighborhood. It's too late and dark out to send a lady back across Cherry Creek on foot alone."

She didn't argue. She acted sort of numb until he had them both downstairs and walking quietly and awkwardly toward the lit-up corner where, with luck, he'd be able to find a ride home for her.

As he spotted an empty hack tethered in front of Maria's Cantina he said, "There you go. I'll put you in and chase that fool driver out of that dive so's he can carry you home, or to a hotel if you'd rather. Do you need any money?"

She sobbed, grabbed hold of him, and buried her face against his chest as she cried, "Oh, I feel so cheap and low, now. Whatever must you think of me?"

He patted her back. It felt nice as he soothed, "I think you acted like a lady in desperation. The Lord gave you gals mighty unfair weapons. Had I thought you meant it, I might have taken you up on your cruel temptation. But it still wouldn't have stopped me from doing whatever I may have to do, later, and think how awful you'd feel if you gave your all to save your kid brother and we still wound up shooting it out."

"Isn't there any other way, Custis? I know Joseph is a killer, but he's sick. It's not really his fault!"

"I know that. He acted crazy the first time I laid eyes on him. I don't want to hurt him, Flora. I know that if I can bring him in alive they'll send him to the asylum, not the gallows or even prison. I know that if I fail, and live through it, you'll never forgive me. But that's the way it has to be."

He knew, later, as he watched her drive away, that his mind had done the right thing, no matter how mad the rest of him was sure to feel before he ever got to sleep in a lonesome room still haunted by her faint perfume.

CHAPTER 6

The U.P. Combination rolled into Julesburg late in the morning and stopped just long enough to let Longarm and his possibles off before rolling on to more important places. In its day Julesburg had rated a population close to two thousand, and a killing a day. But since the rails had replaced the Overland stages and freight wagons the population had dropped considerably. The town had become a sleepy little county seat and railroad juncture, where the wildest visitors were train-weary passengers changing trains, or cowhands off the surrounding spreads who only got drunk enough to be dangerous once a month, on payday. The town was a good ten miles or more west of the newly opened Ogallala cattle trail and so was seldom shot up by the rougher hands one tended to find on a long market drive.

Longarm picked up his McClellan saddle, with everything he'd brought along lashed to it, and crossed the dusty street to the weathered frame hotel across from the depot. The sleepy blonde behind the desk in the tiny lobby perked up when she saw such a rare sight as a possible guest on such an otherwise dull occasion. When he asked her if it was at all possible to hire a room she told him he could have his pick. He said he'd like a corner room at the east end of the top floor and she said he could have one and that she could see he was an experienced traveler on the summer prairie.

She sold him a key and came around from her side of the stand-up desk to carry his luggage, saying they'd had a bellhop, once, but that he'd run off to herd cows since the price of beef had risen. Longarm told her he hardly ever let ladies carry things for him but she went up the stairs ahead of him, anyway. He found the way she climbed the stairs with her tailbone moving almost as much as her feet an interesting novelty. It was too bad her face was no longer youthful, and that he wouldn't be staying long in any case.

She led him to the corner room. As he deposited his saddle over the foot of the double brass bedstead, she busied herself opening both windows, saying, "It'll smell better in here once the cross-venting airs it out some. We keep the windows closed when the rooms are empty to cut down on the dusting. That smell you may have noticed ain't what you might think. We don't have bugs. The handy man just oiled the bedsprings and, for some fool reason, he used bug oil instead of the axle grease I told him to use."

He said he could see they kept the place wholesome and asked her how many other hotels there might be in town. She looked hurt and said, "This is the best one and about the only one as takes in transients, anyways. You got to hire room and board by the week at the other places and none of 'em are any nicer than this."

He said he was sure of that. "The reason I'm asking is that, as I told you downstairs, I'm law. You'd remember, I hope, hiring a bed to a sort of wild-eyed little gent prone to Texas hats and goat-skin chaps?"

She nodded, but said, "We never. I know who you mean. The local law and the army police have already pestered me about that crazy cowboy as shot up the canteen out at the post. I told them, and so now I can tell you, that we ain't had a male guest of any description for a good three days, now. There was nobody here within twenty-four hours of the shoot-up but a secretary gal and a lady coming back from Denver with her sick little boy. She's had him in the lung spa there in hopes of a cure for his consumption."

Longarm raised an eyebrow. "Just how big a boy might we be talking about?"

She said, "Oh, six or eight, poor little thing. I doubt he'll ever see ten, for when we cleaned up after they caught their eastbound train there was blood on his pillowcase. Why do you ask? Do you know anyone like that?"

"Not that young. It was a grasp at a straw in any case. The little rascal I'm after don't act sane enough to have anyone but another lunatic as a confederate."

He dug out a dime to tip her, and though she said she was the owner and not a bellhop, she put it away anyhow and asked if he had any other possible desires. She looked disappointed when he told her, "Yep, I have to get out to Fort Halleck, now, and as I recall, it's a short ride but a long walk. So where would I find me a good livery stable here in town?"

She said there was one just a dozen doors east but then she said, "You'll have a time hiring a mount right now. Most of the able-bodied men and half the tough boys in town are out looking to cut the trail of that outlaw in the Texas hat. Since few keep horses regular, they'll have hired all the livery nags."

He shot a thoughtful glance at his saddle, shrugged, and said, "I'll leave my gear here and give her a try, anyway. I reckon I could leg it that far if I have to. But I'd feel dumb if I did so only to find out, later, that I didn't have to."

She followed him out and made no surly comments as he locked the door, pocketed the key, and wedged a match stem in the jamb. But as she led the way downstairs she told him, over her shoulder, "I ain't seen nobody use that trick since Black Jack Slade got run out of town."

He smiled thinly. "I didn't know my notion was that old. No offense, but you could hardly be old enough to remember the one and original Black Jack Slade, ma'am."

She dimpled at his gallant lie. "Call me Myrtle. I has to admit I was only a girl-child when my late husband brung me out here just afore the War. He worked for Overland, too. In them days everyone in town did, save for the tinhorns and the pimps trying to take advantage of the more honest folk traveling the trail. I know they say mean things about Black Jack. In fact, he could get a mite surly when he was in his cups. But he did keep the riffraff in their place whilst he was supervisor here."