Longarm on the Overland Trail (9 page)

Longarm didn't feel up to an argument on such a hot, dry day. He said, "I did hear tell he run the coach line honest, at least when he was sober, Myrtle."

"Black Jack took his job serious, drunk or sober. It was that French Canuck, Jules Belle, who was crooking the company. My late husband told me so, and he was in a position to know, because he worked on the books in the office, here."

"Jules Belle would be the Jules they named the stage stop after, right?"

"As a matter of fact, he named Julesburg after his grasping self. There was nothing here but grass when they laid out the Overland Trail, and Jules Belle was the first supervisor. Belle prospered so good, so fast, that Mr. Ficklin in Council Bluffs, the firm's general manager, sent Black Jack Slade out here to look into the matter. It didn't take Jack long to see how sticky-fingered Belle was. Jack hired back some honest men Belle had fired for asking questions, and began to question them himself. It was right down the street Belle shot Black Jack in the back, twice, and pumped him full of number-nine buck as he lay there helpless. I didn't see the fight, but I heard the shots, and it was me as cradled what I took to be a dying man's head in my apron as Frenchy Belle laughed, said to bury him and send the bill to him, before he strutted off bold as brass."

"There was no law about to object to such rude behavior?"

She turned at the bottom of the stairs to grin up at him like the wicked child he suspected she must have been in her day. "Oh, the boys were going to string Belle up. My husband was the one as got the rope. But then Ben Ficklin in the flesh came. He'd read Black Jack's first reports and had meant to fire Frenchy Belle in any case. The company owned the town. Mr. Ficklin bossed the company. So when he said he didn't want a lynching on company property, the boys had to listen. Mr. Ficklin told Frenchy Belle to ride fast and hope he'd ridden far enough by the time Black Jack died. So Belle rode, and that was that. I don't mean to boast, but I was one of the ladies as nursed poor Black Jack back to health, and it wasn't easy. Nobody but a giant of a man could have soaked up so much lead and lived."

"Then I take it the original Black Jack was not what one could call a runt?"

She replied, sort of wistfully, "He was tall, dark, and handsome. Almost as big as you, but a lot more dark. That's why they called him Black Jack. He could have passed for a Sioux, and some said he had Injun blood. Didn't you know that?"

He said he hadn't thought about it, since the lunatic who was trying to be Black Jack nowadays was short, pale, and puny. Then he ticked his hatbrim to her and headed for the doorway. As the sun outside slapped him in the face with a hot towel, the middle-aged Myrtle called after him, "Come back here if you can't hire even a mule. I might be able to fix you up."

When he got to the livery he discovered that she'd been right about the townees playing posse. The fat old stablehand there told him the only transportation they had left for hire was a pony cart. When Longarm asked if it would be at all possible to hire just the pony, the older man laughed and told him, "Anything's possible, but a man your size would sure look stupid aboard a Shetland mare. On the other hand, since you'd have both feet on the ground, you could likely get her to move a mite faster. Lord knows she'd need a little help in packing anyone your size. We mostly hire her out to women and children, cart and all."

Longarm almost let that go by him. Then he asked, "By the grasp of a straw, could you have hired that pony cart to a gent short enough to pass for a kid, say yesterday afternoon?"

The stablehand shook his head. "Nope. The sheriff was ahead of you on that. The cart was out exactly twice yesterday. A grandmother I've dealt with before took her grandkids from back East for a morning ride on the prairie. Later in the day, a young gal hired the rig to ride off alone in. I suspect she aimed to meet her fellow outside of town. She got back after sundown, looking sort of rolled in the grass, if you know what I mean. There was mud on the spokes. They likely did their spooning over in the willows along the South Platte."

Longarm frowned and said, "This is likely another wild guess, but Fort Halleck is along the South Platte. So can we be sure such a mysterious traveler was a woman, and not a short gent dressed silly as hell?"

The older man laughed knowingly. "She was pure she, and built sort of tempting. I helped her out of the cart, and you know how a helping hand might grasp the situation sort of accidental. When I told the sheriff that he said I was a dirty old man. He should talk. Everyone in town except his wife knows about the sheriff and that young schoolmarm."

Longarm hadn't come all this way to listen to small-town gossip. "If your sheriff was so interested in that same young gal in that same pony cart, he must have had a reason. Did he say what it was?" he asked.

"Sure he did. He wanted to know if I'd hired any stock to anybody new in town, and when I told him I had, we got down to possibles. He said he figured some married man was carrying on over in the willows, too. The rascal who shot up Fort Halleck must have got out there on his own mount. There ain't a horse owned by anyone around here that can't be accounted for at the time of the shoot-up."

Longarm thanked him and headed back to his hotel, mulling over what he had been told. Assuming young Slade had been keeping that purloined army mount somewhere in Denver and had started riding just after he sung so awful in the Parthenon, it still wouldn't work. Following the South Platte and its forage and water all this way would have taken even a horse-killer more than the time they had to work with. Aside from having to ride faster than the Pony Express ever had, and then some, the country between here and Denver, while still mighty open, wasn't so open that a stranger of any description going lickety-split on a lathered horse would not get noticed at all.

By the time he got back all the way he had decided his want had gotten to Julesburg the way he had, by train. There was just no way to ride a horse, invisible, for a good hundred and fifty miles in less than three days, even if one hated his horse. Just as important, the rascal had ridden off, on something, after shooting up that army canteen. So unless he'd boarded a late-night train paying half-fare for a four-legged kid under twelve, which hardly seemed likely, he'd found a mount at this end of the trip.

Longarm went over that gal in the pony cart again. They had not reported a gal shooting up Fort Halleck. On the other hand, a gal could change into a cow outfit and likely pass for at least a short cowhand. But that raised more questions than it answered. The army could hardly have mistaken even a skinny little recruit for a gal, casual as some medical exams might be. While the sly old dog at the livery could hardly have mistaken a he for a she as he stole a feel. Black Jack Junior had to be a he. If he didn't want folk to know where he was or what he was up to, he'd only have to calm down. Nobody noticed a mousy little runt who behaved halfway sensibly.

Myrtle greeted Longarm in the lobby and asked how he'd made out. He said, "They didn't have a single horse for sale or hire."

"Well, I won't sell you my Blue Boy, but you can ride him all you like for two bits a day," she said.

He brightened and said he hadn't known she kept her own stock.

"I was hoping you'd be able to pick one up at the livery," she said. "I don't like to hire out my personal mount. Blue Boy has a tender mouth and he's used to carrying considerably less weight. But if you promise to ride him gentle, and look out for prairie-dog holes, I'll hire him out just this once."

He agreed to treat her Blue Boy like a brother and ran up to get his own gear as she called after him that she'd meet him out back. In his room he shucked his coat and string tie. It was going to get hotter before it got cooler. He lugged his gear downstairs and, sure enough, found Myrtle talking to an old steel-gray gelding in the stable out back. She was feeding the brute dining-room sugar cubes and telling it not to be afraid as Longarm joined them to observe mildly, "It's your horse, ma'am. But they like apples or even carrots just as well, and such treats don't rot their teeth as bad."

She said she knew Blue Boy was spoiled, but that she'd never been able to resist a pleading male. He was too polite to point out that a gelding wasn't exactly a male, once it had been cut. He told the sleek critter how much he Red it, too, and had no trouble saddling up. Getting Blue Boy's sweet teeth to accept the bit he'd brought along as well was more trouble. Myrtle said he was used to her own bridle and he agreed, grudgingly, since while it was in fact a bridle, it was silver-mounted sissy, and the bit was intended more for spoiling pets than serious riding. As he led the spoiled pet out into the alley, Myrtle followed, and as he mounted up she warned him not to lope too fast in the cruel, hot sun.

He assured her he'd keep to the shady side of the trail and as he heeled Blue Boy into motion--slow motion--it became obvious that, whatever they might be up to, even a brisk trot could not be what the lazy critter had in mind.

He waited until they'd strolled out of sight before he kicked harder and growled, "I know, it's almost noon and that there ain't no shady side of the Overland Trail But the sooner we get out of this sun the better, so move you otherwise total waste of sugar cubes!"

Blue Boy stopped dead in his tracks, turned his head back to roll one reproachful eye at Longarm, but decided not to bite his boot tip after all when Longarm stared back sternly and said, "Go on. Just you try it and I'll kick your sugar-rotted teeth up into your empty skull."

Blue Boy had some brains, after all. He heaved a defeated sigh and commenced to trot. That jarred a rider astride more than it might a lady seated side-saddle, but it was a mile-eating if uncomfortable pace, and it was, in fact, too hot at this hour to lope a critter he'd promised to return in good shape.

As they trotted the trail, raising enough dust for a Cheyenne war party, Longarm noted other drifting dust above the horizon all around. That meant the posse riders had split up to circle wide for sign on the flatter prairie this far east of the front ranges. Longarm doubted they'd cut much sign as he stared at the overgrazed range closer to the trail. The 'dobe soil was summer baked as hard as the bricks one could make from it, without having to fire. At this time of the year you could maybe cut it with a knife, but even a steel-shod hoof wouldn't leave a serious mark on it. The scrub-brush stubble of wiry dry short-grass would no more hold a hoofprint than a welcome mat on a brick porch. He glanced to the south, where the South Platte had to be running, if there was water in it. For water was the thing to consider when tracking Cheyenne or worse out here in high summer. But he saw by more rising dust that the others looking for Black Jack Junior had that bet covered. If he'd watered his mount over that way it would soon be known. So there was no need for side tripping, and the sooner he got to the army post the sooner they'd be able to fill in some missing facts for him.

It might not have taken that long by the clock but it felt like they'd been trotting on a hot stove all day by the time they got to Fort Halleck.

The name was sort of boastful. The army outpost had never been what one thought of as a fort, back when it had been built to keep an eye on wild buffalo and rampaging Indians pestering the Overland Trail. Since then both the buffalo and the Indians had been whittled down considerably, and there was only a modest post-operating company of army engineers stationed there.

As he turned off the trail running past it, Longarm saw they had nobody posted at the main gate, which was more like a gap in the three-strand bobwire around the quarter section or so. A sun-faded flag hung listlessly from a lodgepole flagstaff that sure could have used more whitewash. The buildings on the far side of the dust-paved parade could have started out most any color. Twenty-odd years of summer dust and winter snow had turned them all to what looked sort of like big gray pasteboard shoe boxes.

He spied a sign that had once been gold and red in front of post headquarters and reined in to dismount. As he was tethering Blue Boy near a watering trough nobody had thought to put water in of late, a burly sergeant came out on the veranda. "This is U.S. Army property, cowboy. Are you authorized to be on this post?" he asked.

Longarm moved up to join him in the shade. "If I wasn't, I'd be here anyway, thanks to all the guards you have along your wispy fence. But don't get your bowels in an uproar, Sarge. I am federal, too. Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long. I'm here to look into that shoot-up you had out here last evening."

The sergeant said, "Oh, you'd best talk to the commander, then," and led him inside to talk to an overagein-grade first lieutenant. Longarm had to take their word about his rank. The poor red-faced cuss was sitting at his desk in his undershirt with a bottle of sloe gin, half empty, in front of him. He stared up morosely at Longarm. "They wired us some army investigators was on their way to look into the incident. We're under orders not to discuss army business with anyone else," he told Longarm.

Longarm said, "I know Colonel Walthers of old. We can work this out two ways. You can let me poke about and talk to any of your men who might have witnessed what went on or you can order me off your post, in writing, signed, so I can offer that as evidence that you refused the help of the Justice Department when it was offered."

The lieutenant looked even sadder. "I don't think I want to do that. I was taught my first day in the army to never be first, never be last, and never volunteer. I don't want trouble with any federal department. Why don't you just leave quiet?"