Longarm on the Overland Trail (17 page)

The now battered husband stared blankly up at him to say, "I thought we'd just agreed on that."

Longarm shook his head. "Not really. I know of a rich minister in Denver who beat his wife to death for not bringing his pipe and slippers fast enough one night. It's a fact of nature that men and women annoy one another now and again. It's also a fact of nature that most men don't kick the shit out of their women. They have the manly option of paying them no mind or leaving them. Yelling back don't help, and hitting them is just plain wrong. Ninety-nine out of a hundred men are able to accept them rules of nature. The few like you who can't ain't really beating women. They're beating their own feelings of fear and helpless rage at a world they ain't men enough to stand up to like men."

Big Dan started to protest. Longarm said, "Shut up and listen. I may be saving your life, if your wife lives. For in my line of work I have to study on how folk get in trouble. So I know where hitting gals can take a man."

He paused to reach for a smoke before he said, "Men start out abusing women and children because it makes a weak man feel more strong, at first. A man who's afraid to face a male boss or a bully can still rant and roar about his own house like the cock of the walk, and neither his wife nor his kids is half as likely to back him down as the world all around outside is. But you see, Dan, deep down inside, the domineering cuss has to know this. So no matter how much his family cowers from him, it don't give him the full satisfaction he'd get from winning just one fight with another man. He wants to feel brave. He wants to feel respected. So he has to push harder at home, He has to feel he's got his wife and kids scared skinny of him and, even when they are, he has to keep proving it by acting meaner and meaner until, sooner or later, something like what just happened here today just has to happen."

Big Dan started to cry. Longarm said, "Aw, hell, you could at least try to act like a grown man," as he turned away in disgust.

That was when he saw the gal staring soberly at him from the open doorway. She was younger and prettier than he'd expected a midwife to be. She wore a blue dress and a matching sunbonnet over her light brown braided hair. She had a black oilcloth medical kit in one hand. He didn't know how long she'd been there or how much she'd heard. He said, "Howdy, ma'am. I didn't hear you ride in. This cuss on the keg ain't hurt bad. I think the lady on the floor, yonder, has a concussion."

The pretty midwife nodded and moved to drop to her knees by the battered wife. As Longarm watched, Little Dan came in from tethering Ramona and her cart horse, out front. He looked awkwardly at his father and stammered, "Howdy, Pappy. I'm sure glad I didn't kill you, after all."

The nester rose, weeping like a baby, to grab his son and hug him, sobbing, "Oh, I'm so sorry, son."

The young midwife looked up at Longarm. "You were right. There's really nothing we can do for her now, but wait and see."

Longarm glanced at the sun-slant outside and asked, "How long might that be, ma'am? I'm a lawman, working on another case. I got to get up to Atlantic City as soon as I can." The young midwife said, "I can't answer that yet. She could come out of it any time between right now or a couple of days. Or she could become another case for the law, any minute."

Longarm nodded grimly and said, "That's why I ain't left yet. I don't know if we're still inside Saint Stephens Township but we are on federal range, homesteaded or not. Nobody but Uncle Sam's land office really owns this land entire until it's been improved and dwelt on, some."

He turned to the nester hugging his kid in the doorway and called out, "How long have you folk been here?"

The boy said, "About two years, come fall."

Longarm sighed and said, "I was afraid of that. If she don't make it, we're talking federal."

Then he said, "If you two gents are through hugging one another, we'd best get back to work. I got some canned food in my saddlebags. But I ain't about to walk all the way to the creek for pot water."

Big Dan said he'd go. Longarm said, "Not hardly. I mean to keep a closer eye than that on you. I'm already chasing one murderer all over Robin Hood's barn, and there are limits to my patience. I want the boy to go for water. You'd best stay here and start chinking them log walls, hear?"

The man looked surprised. "How can you worry about a chore like that at a time like this?"

Longarm answered, "That's easy. I can't see you doing it without a grown man here to make you, and any fool can see it needs doing."

Then he excused himself and stepped outside to find that shotgun and empty it as he called, "You can come out and start pulling grass up, now. Make sure you don't pull nothing but grass if you don't want your chinking to fall out. Plantain and dock wilts a lot as it dries."

The nester came out, staring uncertainly at the slopes all around. Longarm said, "I don't care which way you pick. Just so you don't go too far."

The boy came out, toting a cast-iron pot and a wooden bucket. Longarm nodded and said, "That ought to do her, in two trips. Your dad will need at least a couple of pails of water to mix with the grass and mud."

"is it all right if I help him, mister?" asked the kid.

Longarm shrugged and said, "He's your kin. It's your cabin as needs the chinking." So the son went one way and the father another as Longarm strode over to the midwife's buckboard and told her dapple-gray draft pony, "We'd best unhitch you so's you and old Ramona can graze. Lord knows when any of us will be able to get out of here."

As he was leading the gray from between the shafts, the gal who owned it came out, smiled when she saw what he was up to, and said, "Oh, thank you. You must have read my mind. My name is Ann Fletcher, by the way."

He told her it wasn't his fault that his folk had named him Custis and as he led both horses around to the back she stayed in step with him as if she had something else on her mind.

He tethered both brutes on long leads to the corral rail, to let them graze outside it. She said, "I heard what you were telling Dan Hogan about wife-beaters before. I thought I was the student of psychology in these parts. But I guess a lawman has to know more than most about such matters as well, eh?"

He shrugged and began to unsaddle Ramona as he said, "It helps some. I wish it helped more. I meet most of the gents I have to arrest some time after they should have talked to a head doctor."

She told him he was nevertheless an unusually understanding gent. He got the saddle off, draped it over a corral rail, and rubbed Ramona's back with the saddle blanket before putting that aside to dry as well. As he turned back to her he said, "I don't know if I done these folk any good or not. If she dies I have to take him back into town to stand trial for it. If she don't, he might stop beating her, or he might beat her some more until he kills her, or his son kills him, or whatever. As long as everyone's alive and more or less well when I ride out again, it won't be my unwelcome chore. Do you know how to cook?"

She blinked in surprise, dimpled at him, and said she'd never had any complaints. So he said, "That's good. My cooking don't bother me, or I wouldn't cook that way. But I have had complaints. I got some pork and beans, tomato preserves, half a smoked sausage and some real Arbuckle coffee. There ought to be some wild onion higher up, or even mountain cress, if it ain't all dried out. We'll need some padding to feed so many on one rider's iron rations. So I'd best poke about."

She stayed with him as he walked upslope behind the homestead. He didn't mind. She was nice company and, as it turned out, not bad at herbing. From time to time she'd bend over to pluck a weed he wasn't so sure one ought to eat. When he came up with a fistful of bitty wild onion bulbs and mentioned death camus she said, "Those are onions. I have an easy way to keep from eating death camus by mistake. I never eat any kind of camus."

He chuckled. "That's a good way to be sure. Even Shoshone have been known to poison themselves that way. But the camus that's safe to eat sure tasted good, one time, when I was left afoot a spell with nothing better to eat."

She asked when that had been. "Never mind," he said. "I don't like to dwell on Indian scouting. I like most Indians, when they ain't on the warpath."

She looked away and said, sort of tight-lipped, "I don't. The Shoshone killed my husband two summers ago. Was that the uprising you just spoke of?"

"Yep. I'm sure sorry I shot off my fool mouth about Indians, Miss Ann. I didn't do so to rake up hurtful memories."

"I know. I can tell you don't like to hurt anybody. I must say you sure picked an odd profession for such a kind-hearted man."

He shrugged and said, "It pays better than herding cows, and I don't figure I'm hurting most folk. Most folk come decent. By putting away the few bad apples in the barrel, one could say I was sort of helping the majority of the folk I meet."

Then he grinned sheepishly. "There I go, trying to explain my fool self to a lady who reads books about psychology."

She laughed sweetly. "That's what they say we all do, about some things. The world could use more men who excuse their actions your way, Custis. I get to see a lot of meanness in my line of work, too, and it's amazing how many spiteful things can be rationalized as one's duty to the Lord and Queen Victoria."

He said he'd noticed that, and added, "As long as I'm picking greens with a lady who knows more than most about sick heads, I got some posers for you to study on with me."

They kept gathering as he filled her in on the homicidal lunatic he'd been chasing when he'd been sidetracked by this lesser case of human error. He noticed she listened well, without missing any bets in the deep grass they were moving through. She let him finish before she said, "Well, I'm only trained to the grade of practical nurse. But it certainly sounds as if that poor boy is suffering from dementia praecox."

"Does that mean he's just plain loco?" he asked, and she said, "About as crazy as one can get and still function. As I understand it, victims of the madness think everyone's against them. So they convince themselves they're somebody more important and powerful, who can deal with enemies better."

He hunkered down to pick a tasty-looking weed as he said, "I already had that part figured. What I'm more worried about is whether Black Jack Junior is really demented or just trying to slicker me."

She flopped down in the grass beside him. He started to ask why and decided that would make him loco, too. He rolled to sit beside her, muttering, "We got more greens than a rabbit could eat for supper."

She lay back on her elbows, her own greens piled where she'd have had a lap if she'd been sitting up straighter, and opined, "I don't see how the killer you're after could be faking madness. He'd have to be mad to be carrying on the way he's been carrying on, wouldn't he?"

Longarm plucked a grass stem to chew before he explained, "I still get the feeling I've been missing something. The real Black Jack Slade didn't vanish into thin air after he pistol-whipped or gunned somebody. He tended to stick around and brag about it. His young, meaner mimic ain't like that at all. One minute he's there, carrying on even worse than the original, and the next time you look he's just not anywhere. Could that demented whatever make a cuss act sneaky as well as ornery?"

She said, "Of course. People with delusions of persecution can act fearsomely cunning, and they often suffer from a split personality as well."

He frowned. "Does that mean he could think he was more than one nut? Say, Wellington and Napoleon at the same time?"

"More like Wellington one time and Napoleon another. I even read of a case in France where this real French peace officer spent half his time as a master criminal and the rest of the time as the detective assigned to the case. It appears he made a sincere effort as a detective to track his own criminal side down."

Longarm chuckled at the picture. "Did he ever catch himself?" he asked.

She shook her sunbonnet and said, "Not exactly. He was caught by other French detectives when his criminal personality walked into the trap his detective personality had set up. The point is that both his personalities were sincere. He wasn't putting on an act when he was either."

Longarm sighed. "I sure wish the timid little Joseph Slade would offer some suggestions on how to catch his blacker side. But if he does turn into a milk-toast, between such moments, he ain't seen fit to turn his other self in. I got another poser for you, Miss Ann. I've been taking him at his word he thinks he's that long-dead gunslick, and trailing him as if he was real. So far, aside from the way he behaved in Denver when he was just starting to act crazy, he's done all his dirty deeds on or about the old stomping grounds of his idol, former self, or whatever. Do I sound loco, too, in assuming he just has to stay close to the old Overland Trail?"

She told him, "I think you've been unusually wise, for a peace officer without a degree in lunacy. The fact that the poor boy headed north to the Overland Trail proves he's acting under some compulsion."

"Yeah, he could shoot folk just as good where he was, if that's all he wanted to do. I just wish he'd stay compulsed more visible along the Overland Trail. But whether he tries to ride through the South Pass up ahead dressed in goat-hair chaps or as a Baptist minister, I'll have him. Folk of any description come few and far between in trail towns like Atlantic City, and he'll have to stop for water there, after riding dry a good stretch above the headwater slopes. I just have to watch for any stranger that small and-"