Telegraph Days (14 page)

Virgil squeezed his temples, as people do when they're experiencing a headache.

“Damn it, you're just too yappy!” he concluded. “Morg said I should let you be, and Morg was right.”

“At least you enjoyed a tasty partridge,” I pointed out.

“My brothers will josh me good, when they hear about this!” Virgil said.

Then he got on his horse and rode away.

“I
T'S A PUZZLE
to me why fellows keep proposing to you, Nellie,” Jackson remarked, as we kept plodding on toward Rita Blanca.

“Why wouldn't they?” I inquired.

“Because you're not very nice,” Jackson declared.

“Well, I could be nice, if I was approached properly,” I told him. “The problem is that I can't find a gentleman who's polished enough to approach me properly.”

“Being picky is a good way to end up an old maid,” Jackson pointed out—and then he saw something which made him forget whether I was nice or not.

“Is that a white mule?” he asked, pointing to the south. “You rarely ever see a white mule.”

Sure enough it was a white mule making its way across the prairie, with a stout lady on it. Two small brown men, each leading a pack animal, followed the white mule with the stout lady on it. Besides leading a pack mule, one of the small brown men carried a good-sized parasol, which he endeavored, more or less, to keep between the stout lady and the strong prairie sun. Fortunately for the two brown men the white mule was proceeding at a very slow pace.

And if that wasn't enough to think about, a giant gray dog the size of an antelope bounced up and began to bay at us.

“Well, Jackson, it's a small world,” I told him.

“What's small about it? This seems like a pretty big prairie to me,” Jackson insisted.

“It is a big prairie but the heavy woman with the two sepoys and the white mule and the Irish wolfhound is Hroswitha Jubb—the author of
Jubb's Journey
to here and there,” I pointed out.

“Oh my Lord—you mean that bossy writer who married Uncle Teddy?” Jackson asked.

“That's right—we met her in Richmond,” I reminded him.

The Irish wolfhound was still baying at us, and the hackles on the back of its neck were standing up.

“Hers are the most popular travel books in the world,” I reminded him. “I read
Jubb's Journey to Tashkent
while we were on the boat from St. Louis.”

Jackson showed less interest in Ros Jubb or her books than he did in the wolfhound.

“A dog that big could chew off your leg so fast you wouldn't even miss it,” he observed.

Ros Jubb turned around to shush the dog and immediately recognized two of her in-laws. She was wearing a pair of large green goggles but immediately took them off when she spotted us. As I expected, as soon as her dog settled down, she got right to the point.

“Hello, Miss Courtright—I'm glad it's you,” she said. “I'll be wanting an exclusive interview with Jackson as soon as we make our camp.”

No one had ever accused Hroswitha Jubb of being likable—our Uncle Teddy had nearly resorted to poisoning himself in order to escape her, but he finally chose the less painful option of moving to San Francisco.

“As to that, Aunt Ros, you'll have to speak to our representative, who resides in Rita Blanca,” I told her.

“What do you mean, your representative, young lady?” Ros bellowed. If she had had a poison dart about her at that moment I suspect she might have thrown it at me.

“His name is Beauregard Wheless—and you can locate him at the general store,” I said. “I'm sure he would be happy to arrange an interview, though several reporters are there ahead of you,” I told her. I didn't actually know that any reporters were already in Rita Blanca, but it wouldn't hurt to have Ros worry about the prospect a little.

“Since when do young ladies of good families have ‘representatives'?” she asked, not at all happy with the information I was providing.

To devil her even more—after all, she was my aunt—I reached in my saddlebags and extracted a copy of my
Banditti
booklet, which I
handed to her. I was down to a mere forty-seven copies and we weren't even back to Rita Blanca yet.

“If you're interested in the famous shoot-out, here's my own account, Aunt Ros,” I told her. “It is strictly factual. I plan to sell it for twenty-five cents, but since you're my auntie, your copy is free.”

My aunt Ros took the booklet and looked at it skeptically—probably she was shocked that a member of her own family would be so bold as to get ahead of her on a writing project.

“You're a severe disappointment to me, Nellie Courtright!” she said in a viperish tone. “I shall have to speak to your parents about you, on my next opportunity.”

“I fear you'll have a long wait, Auntie,” I told her. “Mother and Father are both dead.”

Then she turned her attention to Jackson.

“Did you actually shoot six men, Jackson?”

“Yes, ma'am, I didn't miss a one,” Jackson told her.

“And you didn't think it proper to talk to your famous auntie about this shoot-out?” she asked him. “After all, I am a world-famous writer.”

Jackson just shrugged. “I didn't know you was anywhere around,” he said—truthfully, no doubt.

Aunt Ros put her green goggles back on—they made her look like some species of giant fly. She didn't favor either of us with another word—she just nodded to her sepoys, flicked her white mule with a small mule flicker, and plodded off, followed by her sepoys and her wolfhound.

“I wouldn't mind having a white mule myself,” Jackson observed. “When it's a question of prairie traveling, I mostly prefer mules over horses.”

“I have no preference,” I admitted, “but the nature of the mount is not my worry right now. As soon as it's light tomorrow morning I want you to hurry on to Rita Blanca and see our representative, Beau Wheless, before you talk to a single reporter. You tell Beau to insist on ten dollars an interview—not a penny less, not even to Aunt Ros.”

“Ten dollars?” he asked, looking puzzled. “Why would anyone pay ten dollars to talk to me?”

“Because you shot six Yazees and you're a hero,” I reminded him.

“Oh,” my brother said.

B
Y THE TIME I
had been back in Rita Blanca thirty minutes I'd sold every single copy of my
Banditti
booklet. Demand was so fierce that I didn't even keep one for myself. Nearly fifty people were lined up at the telegraph office when I trotted up. The crowd practically tore off my saddlebags in their desperate hurry to get their copy of the book. Talk about selling like hotcakes! The forty-seven copies immediately changed hands—I had to get out a big tablet and take down the names of all the disappointed customers who wanted to secure a copy once the new batch arrived.

Now that I've had most of a lifetime to think about the matter I'm convinced that there's no power like outlawry to heat up public curiosity. Folks just can't get enough of outlaws, don't ask me why! Just for firing off the six bullets that killed the six Yazees, my brother, Jackson, became famous for the rest of his life, a fact that Jackson, who was mostly a nice boy, hadn't really come to grips with yet.

I had been right about the reporters too. Several members of that species were waiting with the others at my office: they had hired a stagecoach in Leavenworth and had come racing hell-for-leather over the prairies, while several others, from papers all over the country, had bought or rented horses in order to join the chase. According to Aurel Imlah, nearly twenty reporters were in town—they formed a raucous mob at best.

As soon as would-be booklet buyers stopped writing their names on my tablet I rushed off a quick telegram to Joel Tesselinck, telling him to double the order and dispatch the books by Pony Express or any express. Then I closed my window and skipped over to the jail, where I found my admirer Sheriff Ted Bunsen smoking a cigar and drinking straight whiskey out of a glass.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Are you drinking whiskey while on duty, Theodore?”

“What's it look like?” Teddy countered, in that tone men use when they consider that women are being bossy.

“When I left this place you were dour but reliable,” I pointed out. “Now I'm back and you're drinking.”

Actually, just looking at Teddy touched me a little. He was so hopeless I could almost find it in me to be in love with him. A helpless, hopeless man is often pretty close to irresistible, or at least that's the case if you're stuck in Rita Blanca, as I was.

“I suppose Jackson's hiding from the reporters, like I told him to,” I said.

“Hide from a reporter—it'd be like hiding from a flea!” Teddy said. “Some of them have been here two days, waiting for you to get back so they can pester Deputy Courtright. And all because of beginner's luck.”

As I said, the man's melancholy touched me. I took his face in my hands and gave him a little kiss.

“Listen to me, Teddy—this is Rita Blanca's one chance to make some money,” I said. “These newspapermen are Yazee crazy—they'll pay good money for interviews with anyone who witnessed the shoot-out. I'm surprised Beau Wheless hasn't already set things up. I suppose he got overwhelmed.”

“He didn't get overwhelmed,” Ted told me. “He got dead.”

“What?”

I was purely stunned. Beau Wheless, the principal merchant of Rita Blanca, dead. I felt trembly for a moment from the shock.

“That mangy old cat that nobody likes bit Beau on the finger,” Ted explained. “The wound didn't bleed—in no time Beau got blood poisoning so bad the Doc couldn't save him. We buried him yesterday. Now the whole shebang belongs to Hungry Billy.”

It was true that nobody liked the mangy cat, which had hissed at me several times.

“Is that why you're drunk on the job?” I asked Ted. “Because you miss Beau?”

“Oh no,” Ted admitted. “I was not that fond of Beau—he always overcharged for brooms and the like.”

“Then why are you drunk?” I asked.

“Because we think the Indian's around,” Ted admitted. “Josh Tell thinks he glimpsed him.”

Aurel Imlah had once mentioned the Indian, when he was visiting Father. He was said to be a giant outlaw who roamed the plains alone. No one could say exactly what crimes he may have committed, if any. Aurel thought he might have glimpsed him once, from a distance, in a snowstorm. No tribe claimed the Indian, evidently. No lawman had ever gotten close to him, and no soldier had ever shot at him.

“I don't know that I believe in this Indian. Sounds like the work of somebody's imagination.”

“If you don't believe he's out there, then you're a fool!” Teddy said. “It's from worrying about the Indian that's got me drunk on the job.”

“Even if he exists, he's just one Indian,” I pointed out. “I doubt one Indian could massacre a whole town.”

Teddy didn't answer—he didn't stop drinking, either.

O
NE THING I
had figured out in my twenty-two years is that in a crisis situation it's a mistake to stop and think. If Jackson had spent even one second thinking about the rampaging Yazees, he and most of the rest of us in Rita Blanca would now be dead.

So, when I found Ted drunk in his jail cell and the street buzzing with reporters, I didn't hesitate. I grabbed a shotgun from Ted's arsenal, went out into the street, and fired both barrels straight up in the air—too straight, as it happened: number four shot was soon raining down upon us, along with a crow and a pigeon that had accidentally flown into the blast. Fortunately neither of the birds hit a newspaperman in their descent.

At first blush the newsies appeared to be a scraggly lot, the sort of men who smoked their cigars down to stubs and spilled whiskey on their vests.

The shotgun blasts easily got their attention.

“Nothing to be alarmed about, gentlemen,” I said. “I'm Marie Antoinette Courtright—call me Nellie for short—and you'll all need to file your stories with me at the telegraph office, which is just up the street and will be open for business in ten minutes.”

“That's all very well, Miss, but where's Deputy Courtright?” a wiry little terrier of a fellow asked me. His yellow cravat was far from spotless; his name was Charlie Hepworth—many years later I was to work with Charlie Hepworth again.

“The deputy's attending to some bookkeeping at the moment,” I told them. “He happens to be my brother.”

“Who cares if he's your brother?” a tall, skinny fellow declared. He had a face as thin as a china plate.

“The deputy will soon be available for interviews—though not free gratis, of course,” I informed them.

The announcement was not well received, to say the least.

“What do you mean, not free gratis?” the tall fellow said. “I'm Cunningham Calhoun, of the
New York World,
by the way, and most people are familiar with my byline.”

“Not most people in Rita Blanca, sir—our newspapers arrive irregularly, if at all,” I reminded him. “We're in No Man's Land, remember.”

“No Man's Land—is that where we are, Miss?” a tall, smiling fellow with a few too many teeth crammed into the front of his mouth inquired. I liked the man right off, don't ask me why. He wore a red bowler hat, the first I'd seen.

“I thought we were in Texas,” he added. “Our readers welcome news from Texas.”

“You're off by a day or two if you're looking for Texas,” I told him. I liked him so much I might have eloped with him to Texas, if he'd asked me, but failing that, there was money to be made.

“How much are we supposed to shell out for these interviews?” Charlie Hepworth inquired.