Longarm on the Overland Trail (22 page)

Her head was wagging back and forth like that of a wind-up doll as she insisted, "This is incredible. First you accuse me of being some sort of Lucrezia Borgia, and then you accuse me of thinking I'm Black Jack Slade?"

"Nobody never thought they was Black Jack Slade. The notion your poor dumb brother might came to you after you'd put the bricks back over him. You wanted everyone to think he'd run off again. You knew you'd never get away with pretending to be him, in his well-fit army uniform. So you made a point of wandering about after dark in your husband's, not your brother's cowboy outfit. The hat was too big, but it served to hide your long hair when you pinned it up inside it. The chaps was too big, but just flopped wild once you'd cut 'em down to size. The man-sized shirt and gun rig served to further hide your handsome, curvy figure. You'd already established the poor puny loner was acting mighty odd by the time them army men rid in and you had to get rid of them, too. So that night you killed a mess of birds indeed with that one crazy act. You killed them silent and private. You had plenty of time to lead their horses over to the carriage house behind that other house you own.

She scowled and snapped, "What are you talking about? There were no horses out front, damn it."

He said, "There you go, butting in again. I know there was no horses here when I arrived. I wondered some about that, since both bodies was dressed for riding. But I let that go until later, after I'd had time to wonder how a lunatic with no visible means of support seemed to be getting around so good on mounts branded by the remount service. Getting back to how you started confusing hell out of me, you left things neat and tidy here, put on your wild outfit, and tore over to the Parthenon to pick that fight with me. In all modesty, I'm well known in downtown Denver, so you wasn't taking the chance you wanted it to look like when I thought a mean little cuss with a family resemblance to a more civilized sister started up with me. You'd learned the words if not the right tune to that dumb song about Black Jack Slade from the pile of pulp paper that had inspired your act in the first place. I reckon you kept a more full account of that old, dead gunslick's misdeeds for further research. That was why the pile had yarns about just about everyone, real or made up, but the real Black Jack, right?"

She smiled triumphantly. "I knew you had to be suffering heatstroke! Your insane accusations fall completely apart as soon as I point out I was with you, in your own quarters, the night my crazy brother shot up that canteen in far-off Fort Halleck!"

He told her, "No, they don't. The railroad gives away timetables free for the asking. We both know Julesburg is less than four hours away by rail. You didn't have to account for your time riding up there in broad day. The army men staked out here were more interested in the possible movements of your kid brother, not where you might or might not be at a given moment. So after you got off at Julesburg, mayhaps wearing that same shapeless summer duster over a wilder outfit, you checked into the hotel as a secretary gal stuck between trains. Then you hired that pony cart to go for a late-afternoon spin out across the lone prairie. Once you found it lone enough, at sunset, you took off the duster, put on that big hat, and crept onto the unguarded post as Black Jack Slade. All you had to do after the wild shoot-up was beat the news back to town in that pony cart, looking less wild, and wait for the next train back to Denver. Nobody notices mousy-looking gals at times of such confusion."

"I was with you, damn it!" she insisted.

He nodded, but said, "Later that night. Just as you'd planned. You offered to go with me, after yourself, and hinted at an even better offer, no doubt hoping I'd know better than to take you up on either. Once news of the trouble in Julesburg reached us, you had more freedom of action, because both me and them army men lit out after a dead man we thought was pretending to be another dead man."

He paused to shake his head at her sadly before he went on, "You should have ended it there, Miss Flora. You'd already hurt lots of innocent gents who'd never done you wrong. But you was feeling too pleased with yourself to quit while you were ahead. Knowing the original Black Jack had haunted the old Overland Trail, you wanted to lead me further astray along the same, So, once again playing your innocent female self, you took them dead army men's mounts with you, by rail this time. You got off mayhaps half a day's ride from Scott's Bluff. The county seat at Gering works best, since it's on another rail line."

"I defy you to produce a stock freight ticket in my name!" she cut in, wild-eyed.

He said, "That's silly, ma'am. Nobody with a lick of sense would board a combo under her own name if she was half as slick as you. You could have told 'em you was the Queen of Rumania and they wouldn't have cared, as long as you paid cash for transporting yourself and two nondescript bay horses. After you detrained with 'em, wherever, you rode over to and through Scott's Bluff as yourself, sizing it up. Then, after dark, you left the one mount tethered just outside town, rode back in as Black Jack Junior, and gunned that poor blacksmith for no other reason than to convince us your kid brother was alive, if not exactly well. You shot that last victim in the head after I'd told you, and you alone, that a heart-shot gent sometimes had a whiff of fight left in him. Couldn't you have settled for just scaring him, the way you scared everyone else up there?"

She insisted she didn't know what on earth he was talking about. "Sure you do. You rode out aboard that buckskin, got rid of such a well-known mount, and rode back the way you'd come, as a shapeless mousy little gal aboard a bay nobody was looking for. The excitement must have been enough for even you by then. One mount running off on you so unexpected and all them drunks yelling at you must have left you with the feeling there could be more risk to the game than you'd bargained for. So that was when you quit.

"It was easy. You just had to bury Black Jack Junior somewhere on the prairie, turn the horse loose far east of where we was hunting you to the west, and if it's been picked up by anyone at all, they might or might not run the brand and keep it for their own. All you had to do, then, was get back to this house you seem so fond of, and dust it all you wanted to, as I hunted for nobody much in all the wrong places. Had I not got stuck in one place long enough to start hunting with my brain instead of my restless nature, I'd no doubt be pestering folk in Salt Lake or Virginia City about now. But, with the help of a friend who asked why both Black Jacks couldn't be dead and buried, I got inspired, and here I am, like another bad penny."

She was staring at him like she felt sorry for him as she said, "Heavens, what an imagination you must have! It's all too easy to prove how innocent even my coffee is!"

Before he could stop her, she had picked up his cup and drained it at one gulp. He leaped up, ran into her kitchen, and poured milk from her icebox and mustard powder from her cupboard into a handy mixing bowl. But by the time he could get back to her she'd already taken the table and silver service to the floor with her, and was writhing like an earthworm caught by sunrise on a slate walk, glaring up at him with a frozen snarl that might have scared the real Black Jack out of a saloon.

He dropped to one knee on the coffee-soaked rug and tried to force some of the hasty emetic between her clenched teeth. But he only managed to spill it down her jaw. Then her heels stopped drumming and her stiff spine went limp. He put the mixing bowl aside and felt for a pulse. He lowered her head to the rug and rose to stare morosely down as he told the pathetic sight at his feet, "Any lawyer worth his salt would have got you off on an insanity plea. I reckon it's just as well you tried to the end to keep things tidy. You just stay put, and I'll go get the undertaker for you."

He put on his hat and left her there, closing her front door neatly after him as he stepped out. As he strode off along the sun-baked walk, two little old ladies were coming up it, under their sunbonnets and parasols. One recognized him from having seen him about the neighbOrhOOd before. She smiled at him sweetly and asked, "And how are you this afternoon, young man? Do you think we're due for a break in this awful heat wave?"

He ticked his hatbrim to them both as he answered, "No, ma'am. But, to tell the truth, I don't mind feeling warm, when I consider all the alternatives."

The End