Longarm on the Overland Trail (7 page)

Longarm said, "I did. In triplicate. All three copies signed and witnessed."

"There you go," Vail said. "I'll chip in my own statement under a federal letterhead, saying I sent you out in the field on more serious business, and that ought to do 'em. I see you just missed the last northbound this side of sunrise. So why don't you just trot on down the avenue and ask that widow woman you sleep with to set her alarm for you?"

Mrs. Vail, who knew the lady in question socially, and didn't enjoy gossip as much as her husband did, gasped in dismay and left the room. Longarm sat down across from Vail and said, "That was spiteful, Billy. Do I tell you who to sleep with?"

Vail sighed. "There was a time, but lately it hardly seems worth all the suspense. I don't know if I'm getting old or getting smart. But had I known that shapesome lass just down the way felt so lonely I might have beat you to her."

Longarm got out a smoke. "Can we stop dreaming and get back to another idjet's dream world? I'm going to need extra expenses on this job, if we're in a race with the War Department. I can't ask for the loan of an army mount at Fort Halleck if old Colonel Walthers is mad at us."

Vail nodded. "Get a livery nag at Julesburg when your train stops there and we'll wire the money if the price sounds right. You'll do better owning the horse instead of hiring it if you mean to follow the Overland Trail. As I recall, it stretched from Council Bluffs to Sacramento in its day."

"With side branches," Longarm agreed, "but I doubt even a lunatic would be out to haunt all of it. The kid's fixation on Black Jack Slade ought to confine his sleepwalking to the parts his hero raised hell on. But you're right about my needing a bought and paid for mount and maybe a pack animal. We are discussing anywhere between Julesburg and Salt Lake, with a side trip up into the Montana mining country, where the Overland stage never went but Black Jack did."

Vail nodded but said, "I know he got lynched in Virginia City because I read about it at the time. I don't recall him getting in trouble as far west as Utah, though."

"That's where he's buried, on paper," Longarm said. "I mean to look into that some more if ever I can find an account that makes sense. Who do you reckon would have all the properly kept records on that old case on file, Billy?"

Vail said flatly, "Nobody. Conditions out this way was more casual before the War. I was riding with the Rangers at the time. We was sort of overworked, so we only wrote down serious stuff, like another Comanche rising. I doubt the vigilance committee that strung Black Jack Slade up paid half as much attention as us Rangers to pencil pushing. As to other papers out on him at the time he done the rope dance, they'd be filed hither and yon along the wake of his wanderings. Sedgwick County might have records of his more dastardly doings in Julesburg. He had to go through Wyoming to wind up dead in Montana and he always made trouble everywhere he stopped for a drink. I still can't see why he had to go to Utah afterwards."

Longarm said, "Neither can I. The version I just read says that after he was cut down his long-suffering wife, Virginia, had him salted and boxed so's she could carry him home to Carlyle, Illinois, with his kin. Only it was summer, and they hadn't used near enough salt. So by the time they got to Salt Lake he just had to be buried, sudden, and the Latter-Day Saints were kind enough to provide a plot."

Vail frowned and said, "Something's rotten in Denmark, and I don't mean that licorice whip you just lit. Don't it strike you odd that a man lynched in Virginia City would have a wife named Virginia dumb enough to bury him in Utah on the way to Illinois from Montana?"

"I've noticed a lot of penny dreadful writers do get their geography a mite mixed up. I reckon the gent who had to fluff out the bare-bones account enough to fill all them pages didn't know Montana lies northeast, not west, of Salt Lake City, and he had to give Slade's wife some damn name. I can check out a friendly Mormon elder I know. They couldn't have buried a Gentile in any of their cemeteries without noticing, and they're great ones for keeping records."

Vail reached for a defensive cigar in his own humidor and bit off the end before he growled, "In that case, why are we mulling over such petty details? Even if the original Black Jack could still be alive, he'd be a grown man about my age, not a sassy little runt in his early twenties."

Longarm explained, "Black Jack Junior, as I feel it handy to think of him, don't seem to know that. He's been acting as if he thinks he's the real thing and, if he read how mysterious the final disposition of any body at all seem to be, it could stand to reason, in his unreasonable mind, that Black Jack, meaning him, somehow survived that lynching, and so now he's back, see?"

Vail lit his cigar before he shook out the match. "No, I don't. Vigilante hangings tended to be crude, but the result was usually fatal, anyhow."

Longarm insisted, "None of us were there. Slade did live through a fusillade of pistol shots and shotgun blasts that time, and old Roy Bean down on the Pecos is always bragging about the time he got strung up by vigilantes and survived."

Vail snorted in disgust. "That old windbag couldn't tell the truth if it was in his favor. He don't like to admit his stiff neck is from old age, so he made up a whopper to excuse it. I have never seen such a country for whopping, and I been out here all my life."

Longarm nodded. "That's my point. Black Jack Junior is living a tall tale. It's like them other lunatics who insist they are the one and original Napoleon, even if they can't speak a word of French or tell you where Waterloo might be. To track the rascal down, I have to know what he thinks his new self did in the past or might do in the future. So when I hand in my expenses on this case, I don't want you fussing me about all the Wild West magazines you may find charged to the Department."

Vail scowled and growled, "The hell you say. I have to justify such purchases to the accounting office."

"I'll put down five to fifty cents for an item called research material and it'll be our little secret," Longarm insisted. "I know he's packing at least one magazine I ain't come across yet, because there was nothing in that sheet music or the old account I found this evening about the time Black Jack shot up Fort Halleck. I only remembered, after his young namesake done it, that I'd heard the tale one time as I was waiting to change trains up that way. If I could come by the exact issue he seems to be following, I'd be in a position to head him off instead of just waiting to learn what he'd done next, see?"

Vail did, but he had to say, "I'm sorry I didn't stick to my original disinclination and let the infernal army track him."

"Do you really think old Colonel Walthers could do it, boss?"

"That puffed up blue-belly couldn't track anything. I told you I wanted you to bring in that young killer, not to keep me up past my bedtime discussing his mental state. So get out of here and let me get to bed. Just thinking about you and that handsome young widow woman down the avenue has suddenly inspired me to turn in early, if I can inspire anyone else around here to forget about darning my socks. I can't think of anything less interesting than darning socks. So let's both call it a day hear?"

Longarm had more than one good reason not to take Billy Vail's indelicate suggestion about the young widow woman just down Sherman Avenue. It was tempting, despite his earlier music lesson, but he knew she'd start by fussing at him for showing up on her doorstep so late, and he'd have a hell of a time getting any sleep before he'd convinced her that, no, he wasn't using her as any port in a storm after another and no doubt younger gal had turned him down. He was really tired, and he had an early train to catch. So he headed for his own furnished digs, closer to the Union Depot. He chuckled fondly as he recalled the time he'd told the widow woman his landlady was the only true port in the storm he ever took advantage of. For she'd almost brained him with a chamber pot before he convinced her his landlady was older than both of them put together.

He chuckled some more as he strode down the steep slope to Lincoln, digging in his boot heels to keep from getting there faster than he wanted to. He knew that if he cut to his right and kept following Lincoln it would take him to the scene of an ugly shootout and the pretty Flora Banes. He wondered why such a notion had crossed his mind as he kept going straight. He'd just told himself a few hours in bed alone wouldn't hurt too bad, and if there was one pretty gal in town he'd have a time bedding down with it had to be Flora Banes. For no matter how she might feel about her baby brother, she could hardly be panting with desire for any lawman out to bring the mean little cuss to justice. The house would no doubt be staked out by other lawmen by now, in any case. Flora's brother sure knew how to make himself popular.

He crossed Broadway and strode through the shabbier, less well-lamped wedge of small businesses and low-rent housing beyond, until he got to Cherry Creek. There was a plank bridge about a quarter of a mile out of his way, but in high summer Cherry Creek ran so dry that one could ford it dry-shod by hopping from one sandbar to another. The school-kids of Denver did it all the time for fun. It was considered sissy for a kid to take off his or her shoes or socks, and dangerous to step in any of the places water ran mere inches deep. For it was widely accepted that the wide but almost dry watercourse was filled with quicksand, as well as placer-gold, of course.

The moon was high. Longarm made it across as good as any ten-year-old could have, and followed a cinder path to his rooming house.

No lights were showing in the front windows. He wasn't surprised. His old landlady could spy on the world late at night better with her bedroom lamp out and her lace curtains closed. He waved up at her, anyway, and let himself in. He went upstairs to his own corner room and felt automatically for the match stem that should have been wedged into the jamb above the top hinge.

It wasn't there. A man had to stop and study on a thing like that. It wasn't cleaning day and, in any case, he'd trained the cleaning girl to put that match stem back in place after she'd dusted his seldom-used room once or twice a week. For there'd have been no sense in taking the precaution if it hadn't been meant to inform him that someone had opened his door without his invitation.

The late Texas Teddy hadn't been the only moody gent an ace deputy marshal had annoyed in six or eight years riding for the Justice Department. While Black Jack Junior had to be a good hundred and fifty miles to the northeast this evening, Longarm still drew his.44-40, took a deep breath, and busted in low and crabbing to one side, ready for almost anything but what was seated on his bed with the lamp lit.

Flora Banes gasped and jumped up as Longarm rose, gun muzzle more polite, to say, "Howdy, ma'am. Don't ever do that again."

"Your landlady said she didn't think you'd mind if I waited for you up here, sir."

He holstered his gun. "Call me Custis. I mean to call her something even sillier the next time I see her. But, as we both seem to have survived, what can I do for you, Miss Flora?"

"My house is infested with army agents, including a horrid man they call Colonel Walthers. I think they expect my poor brother to return despite all the trouble he's in," she told him.

Longarm took off his hat and hung up his coat. "I know Walthers. You're right about him being horrid, but fair is fair, and your kid brother did run for home aboard a stolen horse after he'd given the army his home address. You'd be amazed how often deserters do that. I know I am. But nine out of ten young jumpers who go over the hill head right for the home they put down on their enlistment papers. We just got word that your brother has been mean to the army some more. I can't say Walthers is a total fool if he means to wait and see where the kid runs to now. You still ain't told me why you ran here, Miss Flora."

She said, "I heard the soldiers talking about some army post up north they think Joseph just misbehaved on."

"We don't think it, ma'am. How many short gents in goat-hair chaps could be running about claiming to be Black Jack Slade in the flesh, even in the wildest West?"

She sighed and said, "I know. I hate to admit it, but that does sound like my poor sick brother. The soldiers said something about sending someone up there in the morning. I thought you might be heading that way, too."

He nodded. "I have to. It's my job. So, if you came to talk me out of it, I just can't oblige you, much as I'd like to."

"I know you have your job to do. But you're not like the others. You seem more gentle and understanding. I fear that should anyone else find Joseph first they may hurt him."

Longarm moved over to his dressing table to pour some Maryland rye into two tumblers, with a little pitcher water, as he told her, "No professional lawman worth his salt kills anyone he can bring in alive. Even if he's mean-natured, it looks better on his record if he brings prisoners in the hard way."

He held out a glass to her. "Sit down and drink this, even if you don't drink. We got to talk brass tacks."

She sat down with the tumbler but held it in her lap as she said, "I know Joseph is dangerous, but-"

"You don't know how dangerous he is," He cut in. "They don't allow girl children to go to war. You have to go through at least one war to know who's dangerous and who's just trying to stay alive." He took a swig of his own drink. "All right, there's no delicate way to put it. Them two men your brother shot it out with was veteran gunslingers, both armed, and on the prod to make an arrest, when your brother stepped into your parlor to discuss his disgust with military life with 'em."