Longarm on the Overland Trail

Old Jeff said, “You always did talk fresh to your elders. The critter was doubtless hid a lot better before them coyotes got to nosing the tumbleweed aside to get the stale meat, as coyotes tend to do. But I reckon that you’re entitled to your brag. For you just saved Longarm, here, a needless as well as long train ride.”

Longarm shook his head. “Not hardly. I see no need to change my plans worth mention.”

Old Jeff frowned up at him and asked, “How come? Young Slade could hardly be meaning to follow the old Overland Trail aboard that buckskin, if he shot and hid it right outside of town.”

“Sure he could. He established by his earlier actions that night that he didn’t like to walk far. He knew the well-known mount he grabbed for a hasty exit was easier than many a pony to recognize at a distance. So, having cleared the city limits, he got rid of it.”

Old Jeff said, “Anyone can see that, now. What did he do then, start walking in his flappy chaps?”

“Not hardly. He moves around too good on them stubby legs for a walking man. You boys would have caught him if he’d been that crazy. He rode out to where he’d left another mount tied up, likely to that same bobwire fence.” there was a collective gasp of admiration from the crowd. Old Jeff warned them, “Don’t never try to get away from this old boy.” But then he asked Longarm, “What kind of other horse are we talking about? The only mount stole this side of the county line was the buckskin he shot and left for the coyotes, close.”

“I wish you hadn’t asked that, Jeff. I like to look smart. But lots of serious travelers travel with two mounts, so’s they can change from one to the other and make better time. Let’s say he was moving that way. He tied his spare mount outside town and rode in on the other to scout the same. He found the smithy open and went in to ask the smith something. Don’t ask me what, A halfway sane man might not be able to offer a guess. The smith was one of us saner gents. So when Black Jack Junior asked him some crazy question the smith might have said it was a crazy question and, however politely put, drove the lunatic even crazier. I have seen the results of his hair-trigger temper before.”

Old Jeff nodded. “All right. I can read her from there. He gunned the smith, lit out aboard the buckskin, and… Hold on. It gets even crazier. Didn’t you say you thought he was trying to follow the old Overland Trail out to some graveyard, Longarm?”

Longarm nodded and the older lawman said, “You’re following him the wrong way. Why would a man headed west along the old trail tether a horse northwest of a town he aimed to scout before riding through to the southeast if he aimed to go west?”

The youth who’d brought in the saddle opined, “He could be lost, if he’s loco,” and there was a murmur of agreement.

Longarm thought. “If there’s one thing that mad killer is keeping track of it’s the Overland Trail. Try her this way. Say he rode in from the southeast, following his shining path where it turns into your main street for a spell. Say he passed the smithy, open late, saw the smith was alone and unarmed at his forge, and then rode on out the far side, tethered his getaway ride, and came back to do his dirty deed?”

Old Jeff gulped. “You mean premeditated? A man he’d never seen before? A man who couldn’t have given him any sane reason to even cuss at?”

Longarm nodded grimly. “Why not? He’s crazy, ain’t he?

Old Jeff swore softly. “That’s pushing past crazy into mad-dog vicious, if you don’t mind saying so.”

Longarm said, “I don’t mind. It’s likely true.”

CHAPTER 10

By the time Longarm got off the freight train he’d managed to hop as far as Saint Stephens after a series of slow rides on even less comfortable rolling stock, Longarm was hungry as a wolf again. He toted his saddle and possibles across the cinder-paved main and only street to a shed advertising itself as a Cafe de Paris. The waitress behind the counter was nice-looking, but after that any possible resemblance to the real Paris evaporated in the thin, dry mountain morning air. She served him greasy hash topped with what smelled like a buzzard’s egg, over-fried, and a mug of coffee that tasted like bile even over-sweetened with sugar and canned cow. He was so hungry he didn’t feel up to wrecking the joint, and the pretty waitress was so relieved, she smiled at him.

He smiled back and after he’d introduced himself he asked her if she knew where he could buy a horse. She nodded and said, “Sure. Livestock is a lot easier to come by up this way than decent coffee. Try Pop Roberts an easy stroll down the tracks. He’s got the corral down that way. Tell him Ruby sent you. That’s me, Ruby Perkins, and I get off at six this evening.”

He assured her he’d keep that in mind and, since he doubted he’d be anywhere near at six, he tipped her a whole quarter, lest she feel he didn’t admire her batty eyelashes.

The awful breakfast made him feel better and, along with the crisp, cool air up here, put more spring in his legs as he toted his riding gear ever onward in hopes of finding something worth putting it on.

Pop Roberts turned out to be a friendly old cuss who agreed young Ruby was a pretty little thing, even if she was sort of stupid, and said he’d be proud to sell the U.S. government a horse, since that was what he raised them for. The conversation got a mite less friendly as they looked over the stock in the corral, and the old man tried to tell Longarm a wall-eyed paint with scarred flanks was just the critter to carry a man his size.

Longarm said, “I can see he’s barrel-chested enough to have fair wind at this altitude. But how come he’s so scarred up from scraping corners, likely moving sudden?”

Pop Roberts looked innocent. “Well, to tell the truth, he don’t see so good. But, as you say you’re going up into the South Pass country, where trees and even fence-posts are few and far between-“

Longarm cut in, “They make me dress like this because I work for an administration that don’t serve hard drinks at the White House no more. But that don’t mean I’m a total dude. I don’t mean to brag, but I have done some riding in my time and, whenever possible, I’ve rid horses, not crow-bait you couldn’t sell to a greenhorn with a lick of common sense.”

Pop soothed, “I can see by your boots and them bullet holes in your Stetson that you’ve been around, old son. How do you feel about that handsome black gelding yonder?”

Longarm said, “I’ve been around more than that. If he ain’t spooky I’m in need of specs. What about that chestnut mare with the blaze and white socks? I like her lines, and she looks steady as well as frisky.”

The sly old horse trader smiled despite himself. “You do know which end of a horse the shit falls from, don’t you? That one will cost you. I’ve been saving her for a serious riding man.”

“What do I look like, a ballerina?” Longarm asked. “I’ll give you a quarter for her.”

Pop said, “No you won’t. That pretty little thing is worth six bits if she’s worth a dollar, and you’re still getting her for a steal because I’m so patriotic. I’d never part with her for less than a flat hundred if you was just another cowhand.”

“Two bits. I just aim to ride her. I don’t aim to make her the mother of my children and the solace of my old age, you know,” Longarm said.

They argued back and forth until they finally settled on forty dollars and a handshake of mutual admiration. Pop Roberts roped the bay and hauled her out for Longarm to bridle and saddle. She didn’t fight them. She looked like she was anxious to get out of there as well.

Once he was properly mounted, Longarm asked for directions to the nearest local law. The old horse trader sent him back the way he’d just come, the harder way. Longarm thanked him and rode back to such center as such a small town could be said to have. He dismounted, tethered the bay, whose name had turned out to be Ramona, and told her, “I like you, too, and I’ll be right back as soon as I pay my dues to this friendly little town.”

He strode into the lockup and town constabulary, and found yet another old gent dozing behind the desk. It seemed one had to be too old to move on, or too young and foolish to know better, if one meant to stay long in Saint Stephens. He introduced himself to the town law and gave him a quick rundown on his reasons for being this high above sea level. The old constable looked worried until Longarm told him, “I doubt Black Jack Junior will come your way. You ain’t on the trail he admires so. But I thought it best to warn you it’s possible, if he gets as smart as me about more modern forms of transportation. You know what he looks like and I want you to take it serious when I add that he’s ten times more dangerous than your average Crooked Lancer on the warpath looks. So if he should come your way, shoot to kill, and then shoot him some more until his tail stops twitching.”

The older and now more worried-looking lawman thanked him for his words of cheer. “I’ll spread the word and tell even the preacher to strap on some hardware, like when the Shoshone went loco a few years back. You say you’re trailing such a whale of destruction alone, Deputy Long?”

Longarm said, “I got to. But, what the hell, he’s alone, too, and I’ve got an edge the others he’s beat to the draw might not have. I know how sudden and crazy he can move.”

“You mean to shoot to kill on sight, then?”

“I mean to try. I can only hope I’m good enough. I no longer care if it sounds fair. He’ll try to kill me on sight. He’s killed others that wasn’t even armed. I’d feel worse gunning a mad dog in a schoolyard full of kids. A mad dog might have started out decent. The murderous little beast I’m after seems to have been no damned use as a child. He even hits women.”

The old man behind the desk looked shocked. “In that case, put one in him for me! If he comes through here, we’ll be ready for him. I’ll tell the boys he hits women.”

They shook on it and Longarm left, hoping his warning was just a caution and no more. He mounted up and rode southwest through scattered timber to where Beaver Creek crooked into the white-water of the Little Popo Agie. He followed the wagon trace leading up the right bank of Beaver Creek even though he knew he’d have to ford it, higher up. The Beaver was white-water, too, but not as ferocious as it could get. It was a lot cooler up this way in high summer, but just as dry as the high plains he’d come up from. For such rain clouds as came through this time of the year tended to trip over the higher peaks to the north and south.

A couple of miles outside of town, he watered Ramona where the wagon ruts swung closer to the Beaver and let her graze some while he dug into his possibles for more sensible trail wear. He sat in the shade of some lodgepole pines to change into blue jeans and matching work jacket. Then he stuffed the tobacco-brown tweeds they made him wear where other sissies could see him into his saddlebag, untethered Ramona, and mounted up to ride on a lot more sensible. He knew that from here on over into Mormon country he was unlikely to meet anyone who wouldn’t laugh at a gent in a tweed suit. He knew that if he swung just a mite to the west as he rode southwest he’d be able to stop for a howdy at a certain cattle spread where he’d no doubt be offered a warm welcome. But he knew he shouldn’t, so he knew he couldn’t. It was likely just as well. Every time he and that pretty little Kim Stover got together for a spell they both wound up hurting. It wasn’t the kissing of Kim Stover that hurt so bad. It was the stopping that hurt. For they always had to stop, even when he wasn’t in this big a hurry, and save for a certain other blonde down Texas way, there was nobody he hated to stop kissing more.

He was tempted to lope his new mount. He could tell she was willing. But they had a good ride ahead, and if he was at all able to read a maniac’s mind they had a good four or five days’ lead on the real reason for all this traveling. He chuckled and told his mount, “You’re sure lucky your kind ain’t in heat all the time, like my kind seems to be. If I didn’t know myself well enough to control myself so good, I’d run your ass ragged trying to kill two birds with one chestnut, and then I’d have two gals hating me in the end. Old Kim always swears she hates me when she can’t get me to stay just a little longer, and Flora Banes is going to hate me for gunning her crazy kid brother, no matter how in the hell I explain it.”

The mare didn’t know what he was talking about so she saw no need to reply. He kept his thoughts to himself as he considered and rejected plan after plan for taking said brother alive. For, though he didn’t give a damn about the feelings of a killer with no feelings about others, he knew poor little Flora was going to be upset as hell, even though even she had to know, deep down, that anyone who shot the silly little bastard would be doing her a favor.

Even if there was some way to take such a raving lunatic alive, there was no way in hell the docs could cure him. Longarm had read that even doctors smart enough to say what was wrong with a human brain in long German words admitted they had no cure for total lunatics. They could humor such a case who didn’t seem out to hurt nobody. But what could anyone do with such a case once he took to killing folk for no sensible reason at all?

A crossbill chirped at them from a nearby pine and Longarm said, “Aw, shut up, bird. A lot you know about the rotten chore they sent me to do.”

He rode on and, after mulling it all over some more, decided, “All right, God damn it. I know I’m only a deputy, not a judge or a head doc. I’ll try to deliver him alive, and let smarter gents than me decide what’s to be done with him. But I sure wish I was smart enough to know how I was supposed to do that. Even if I get the drop on him, he don’t figure to listen. The real Black Jack Slade never did. That’s how come they had to kill him to stop him, too.”

He tried to get his mind on something more cheerful than Kim Stover’s nice build or Black Jack Junior’s disgusting ways, knowing neither could be within reach for quite a few miles. But his mind kept swinging back to one or the other as he rode on and on.

A good five miles up the trail, he spotted a figure running down it towards him. He saw it was a boy of about fourteen, barefoot and wearing nothing but bib overalls. The poor kid’s feet had both been cut on sharp pebbles or glass he’d run over, and he was bleeding like hell from a cut across the forehead as well. Longarm reined in. The kid ran past him as if he hadn’t been there.

Longarm blinked in surprise and heeled Ramona after the running wonder. Catching up was easy enough. But since Longarm didn’t carry a throw rope on his McClellan saddle, he had to lean out and grab the running boy by the X of his overall straps.

Longarm reined in again, saying, “Hold still, damn it. I’m on your side, whatever the hell you’re running from.”

He dismounted, on the off side, as the kid kept trying to run on, blubbering, “Lemme go! Lemme go! My mom’s hurt bad and I gotta git the doc!”

Longarm shook him to plant him in one spot. “You ain’t fixing to make town on them feet, now, boy. Simmer down and tell me what happened and how far.”

The boy sobbed, “Pappy licked her bad, with a loop of bobwire. I tried to stop him but he licked me, too. When I was able to stop him she was lying all over the floor, bleeding all over, with her dress tore half off. I think she’s dead. I got to go get the doc in case she ain’t.”

Longarm growled deep in his throat. “Judging by that slice the bobwire took out of your face, we could be talking more blood than fatal injuries. I’m handy at stopping bleeding, and no doubt she’s bled more than she really ought to by now. So we’re going back, riding double. Because you can’t run much further and I don’t know the way. Hear?”

The boy seemed to see him for the first time. He sobbed, “You can help her, mister? You can keep Mom from dying?”

Longarm didn’t know, so he didn’t answer. He remounted and hauled the kid up behind him, and if it wasn’t comfortable atop a bedroll, it still beat running or even walking on torn-up bare feet.

Knowing which direction the kid had been running from, Longarm rode them that way a spell before he asked, “Do you want to tell me where we’re going, or would you rather I just guessed?”

The kid told him to swing left at the next fork. When they topped a gentle rise, and Longarm saw wagon ruts through the grass running in to join the main trail, he did so. The grass was taller and greener at this altitude. The tracks led across the bottomlands of the Beaver to run between two big granite outcrops. Then they were in a shallow dell, surrounded by more rim-rock, and occupied by a mighty lazy homesteader’s notion of an improved claim.

The cabin and outbuildings had been thrown up sort of cockeyed, with as little labor as possible, and skinny logs even a weakling could chop through with a few blows. Plank roofing like that was supposed to be shingled or at least sodded unless one enjoyed cold unexpected showers every time it really got to raining, and up here it was only dry most of the time, not all the time. It was the wrong time of the year to worry about cabin chinking, so Longarm didn’t comment on cross-ventilation as they rode in. He asked the kid behind him where they might expect to find the man of the house, and in what condition.

The boy said, “I reckon he’s dead. I had to make him stop.”

Longarm thought that over before he asked quietly, “How did you stop him, son?”

“With an axe. There was one by the fireplace and when he knocked me headfirst into the kindling wood, I just come up swinging what was handy.”

Longarm whistled softly. “Well, a boy has to protect his mom, I reckon. How come your old man was acting so ornery in the first place?”

“I don’t know. Neither of us had done nothing to make him mad. But when Pappy got to drinking, he didn’t need much excuse. I was out back milking the goat when I hear Mom screaming for mercy. When I run into the cabin Pappy had her on the floor as he went after her with that whip he’d made of bobwire. I took holt of his arm and begged him to stop, but he hit me with it as well. I tried to grab him again and he backhanded me clear over the table into the fireplace. That’s when I come back at him serious with the axe. Do you reckon they’re going to hang me for hitting Pappy with that axe, mister?”

Longarm shook his head. “Not if your mother lives to back your words, son.” He reined in by the wide-open cabin door and added, “She’s what we got to worry about now. Justifiable homicide can always wait until the law gets around to it.”

They dismounted and went inside. The interior smelled clean despite the chinks of daylight showing through the log walls and the stale scent of boiled greens.

There was only one body on the rolled dirt floor. It was moaning. Longarm stepped over the axe on the floor between them and hunkered down to see what needed to be done.

The badly beaten woman was a once-pretty woman of, say, thirty-five. Had she been living more civilized he’d have figured her for fifty. Her cheap calico mother-hubbard was so torn it made it easy to examine her without asking the patient to undress. The multiple lacerations from the bobwire she’d been lashed with had stopped bleeding and were starting to scab over. Lacking a quart or two of iodine, Longarm figured it best to count on the early bleeding having washed any lockjaw bugs out of the shallow wounds, and scabs would do as much or more for her than picking them open and fussing with them.

He gently opened one eyelid and held a lit match near the dilated pupil a moment before he told the boy in the doorway, “The whipping didn’t do her as much damage as the jar her skull seems to have taken, whether from a fist or from hitting the floor.”

The kid’s voice pleaded more than it asked, “Is she gonna be all right, mister?”

Longarm said, “I don’t know. It would take a real doc to say. She’s suffering shock and concussion. I’ve seen folk in this condition recover natural and I’ve seen it go worse. Where’s the nearest doctor? I know there’s no damn hospital in the village I just rode out of.”

The boy said he’d been running for the local midwife, who’d had some training as a hospital nurse one time.

“I reckon she’d know more than me,” Longarm said, “so here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go out and get my Winchester saddle gun, saddlebags, and possibles roll. After you bring ‘em in here I want you to fork that mare and ride for that medicine lady. What are you waiting for, boy? Do it!”

The kid gulped, ran out of sight, and was back by the time Longarm had rummaged about, found some much-mended but clean wool socks, and pulled the injured woman’s skirts down neater. As the boy piled Longarm’s gear on the dirt beside them he asked, “Did you want this rifle gun because you’re afraid Pappy ain’t really dead?”

“That thought had crossed my mind. Men killed entire with an axe hardly ever get up and go somewhere else. So it seems safe to assume you hit him with the flat of the blade, however hard you tried to split his skull. Was your old man armed with anything more serious than bobwire when last you noticed?”

The boy looked around and said, “I don’t see the shotgun he had over the fireplace, before.”

“All right. Get going. Don’t you want your mother to make it?” Longarm asked.

The kid vanished from view and a few moments later Longarm could tell from the fading sounds of Ramona’s hooves that he was headed somewhere fast.

Longarm unrolled his bedding beside the battered wife. As he was gently sliding her atop the ground cloth she murmured, “What are you doing, Dan?”

He didn’t know whether Dan was her kid or her man. He didn’t care. He told her, reassuringly, “I’m putting you to bed, ma’am. You’re in shock and we got to get your body warmer and your head cooler.”

She didn’t answer. In her semi-conscious state she couldn’t understand his words, but they seemed to have a calming effect on her.

CHAPTER 11

Longarm covered the woman with his blankets and rain tarp. Then he wet the old socks with canteen water and wrapped them around her skull like a clumsy gray bandage. He poured more water over the wool once he had her head still again. As he did so he saw the tip of her tongue moving between her pale lips. He took out his kerchief, wet that cloth, too, and let her suck on it some.

There was nothing else he could really do for her. He rose with his Winchester at port to see what else needed doing in these parts. He levered a round in the chamber and ducked out the door and to one side, fast, as he scanned the surrounding scenery. The only thing moving in his line of sight was a scrawny chicken pecking at a fresh horse apple Ramona had left in the dust of the dooryard. Longarm grimaced and said, “Yeah, a lazy nester can save feeding you birds regular if he lets you rustle your own grub, even if you do wind up sort of stringy. Those of you as ain’t eaten by varmints, I mean.”

He circled around to the back, ready for anything. He was still surprised at how rundown the layout was, despite how fresh the bark on the unstrapped bark of the mostly lodgepole pine construction looked. The outbuildings and corral on this untidy spread were already turning to punkwood. But he was more worried about punks inside the sheds than the condition of their flimsy walls. So he examined them all with care.

He found the goat milking stand the kid had mentioned in one shed. Where the goat or goats had run off to was anybody’s guess. He saw more chickens grubbing in the grass all about. They didn’t seem to have any other livestock. But he found some badly smoked beef in their smokehouse and muttered, “I sure hope you had the sense to bury the branded hide far and deep, you wife-beating, stock-stealing ass.”

He went back into the cabin. The woman on the floor looked dead. But when he put his fingers to her waxen throat he felt a moth-wing flutter and told her, “You can make it if you really try, ma’am. I know there’s times when life don’t feel worth all the bother. But you got your boy to think of.”

To his surprise, she’d heard him. She didn’t open her eyes, but her voice, while soft, was steady as she murmured, “Waiting for Little Dan to grow tall enough to make it on his own is all that’s kept me going. Now that he’s almost as tall as Big Dan I feels I’ve done my duty. So if it’s all the same to you I’d sure like to be on my way to join the heavenly choir now.”

He had to keep her fighting. He leaned his Winchester against the free-stone fireplace and hauled out one of her limp hands to hold. “If you go before your son gets back he’ll never forgive you for leaving without saying your proper goodbyes. I’ll be mad at you, too.”

She sighed. “You’re always mad at me, Dan. Lord knows I’ve tried, and we loved each other, once. At least, you told me you loved me, and I really did love you. What happened to us, Dan? What happened that made you start hitting me instead of kissing me like you used to?”

There were times to talk sense and there were times a lady was in no condition to make sense. So he kissed her limp wrist and told her, “I’m sorry, honey. I was wrong to hit you and I’ll never do it again, hear?”

There was a little more grit in her delirious voice, as she told him, “You’ve told me that time and time again, Dan. Lord knows I want to believe you, but this time you even hit the boy. I thought you loved our only child, even when you’d been at the jug. But this time you hit Little Dan, too, and I don’t reckon I mean to forgive you this time. So let go my fool hand and let me fly on over Jordan, hear?”

He insisted, “Hang on. The boy is on his way with a trained nurse, and he needs you. We all need you. You got to hang on.”

She sighed. “Well, maybe just until Little Dan gets back, then. I would like to kiss my baby one more time afore I heads for heaven. Lord knows, I’ve served my time in hell.”

The next time he spoke to her she didn’t answer, but he could tell from her more relaxed breathing that she was more asleep than delirious, now. He wet the wool on her brow again and rose, still facing her with his back to the open door. He was sorry he’d done a fool thing like that when a male voice behind him demanded, “What are you doing in here with my woman, stranger?” in a tone midway between a growl and a whimper.

Longarm kept his hands polite as he slowly turned to face a disgusting mess with a twelve-gauge trained on him. The wife-beater was a tall, skinny drink of water dressed in ragged denim, gum-boots, and a blood-caked mop of greasy black hair. He could have used either a shave or a regular beard as well. Longarm ignored the shotgun trained on him, and said, “Howdy. My name is Custis Long. I was passing through when your son informed me the lady of the house was feeling poorly. As anyone can see, he told me true. So I’ve done what I could to make her comfortable until the boy gets back with some medical attention.”

The man scowled. “You had no right laying your hands on my woman, and if you’ve trifled with her honor, well, we both know what a man has to do about a thing like that.”

Longarm snorted in disgust. “You sure worry a lot about your woman’s honor, for a man who just beat her half to death, and we’ll see if it was only half, when that nurse gets here.”

The nester couldn’t meet Longarm’s knowing eyes. “That was a family argument I don’t have to explain to no damn saddle tramp,” he muttered. “You can leave, now. I’ll take over in here.”

Longarm said, “Not hardly. I ain’t about to leave an alley cat in your tender care, after seeing how you’d treat a wife and mother. As to whether I get to ride on, or have to take you back to town before I do, that will depend on whether she lives or not. Do you want me to take a look at that split scalp of your own whilst we wait? You ain’t bleeding fresh, but he surely gave you a good smack with the flat of that old axe, didn’t he?”

The man in the doorway raised the muzzle of his twelve-gauge as Longarm took a step toward him. “Don’t try nothing. I’ll kill you. I mean it,” he warned.

Longarm growled, “Aw, shit,” grabbed the muzzle in his left hand, and made the man let go the other end with a right cross that sent him flying out the door to land on his rump in the dusty dooryard.

As Longarm tossed the twelve-gauge one way and stepped the other to stomp some sense into the silly son of a bitch, he saw the man he’d downed had rolled up into a ball on one side to whimper and bawl, “Don’t hit me again! Please don’t hit me again! I’m hurt bad. My own son just slew me with an axe and I ain’t in no shape to fight right now.”

Longarm kicked him in the ribs to shut him up. “Get up and show some grit, you yellow-bellied nothing-much. Look, I’m taking my gun rig off. I’m tossing it aside, so’s you can show me what a ferocious he-man you are. Get up and fight a man, instead of women and children, for a change. Don’t you want the world to admire how ferocious you are? Ain’t that the whole point of all your man-of-the-house heroics?”

Big Dan, as he’d made them call him, stayed right where he was, at Longarm’s feet, as he blubbered, “I can’t fight you, I’m hurt, and you’re too big.”

Longarm sunk another boot tip into him, spat on him, and said, “You got that backwards. A grown man would be too big for you if you was feeling fine and he was five feet tall. Me or any other grown man could piss on you right now, if I felt like pissing right now, and you’d just enjoy the shower like the shit-eating dog you are. Ain’t that right? Ain’t you nothing but a whimper-faced woman-striking shit-eating dog?”

The man groveling at his feet didn’t answer until Longarm toed him again and made him say it aloud, every word. Then Longarm strode over to recover his gun rig from the grass, strap it back on, and say, “You can get up now. I won’t hit you no more, now that we’ve both agreed on what you are. We’d best have a look at that scalp, and your upper lip’s getting a mite fat, too.”

He led the man back inside and sat him in a corner on a nail keg. Then he stood over him with the canteen and a dish cloth, saying, “hold still. I only mean to wash the yard dirt off and let you scab clean. Chicken-dust in a cut can infect nasty as hell.”

The slightly injured man whimpered as Longarm tried to clean him up a little. Longarm said, “Mat scalp could do with a few stitches, but it ain’t so bad.”

Big Dan said, “My own boy done that to me. Hit his own dear daddy with an axe, he did!”

Longarm said, “Good for him. Had he buried the blade in your thick skull, there ain’t a jury in this country as would have found him guilty of anything more than doing right by his own mother. I want you to ponder them words, you dumb bastard. I fear your days as the ferocious ruler of this pathetic roost are numbered. Your boy’s growed big enough to fight you back like a man, and we both know woman-beaters ain’t up to fighting men, don’t we?”

The man of the house sobbed, “I never meant to hurt the boy. I never meant to really hurt Blanche, yonder. But she kept nagging me and nagging me, and you’ve no idea how sharp that little gal’s tongue can cut a man when she really gets to work on him about every bitty little mistake he’s ever made.”

Longarm said, “You’re wrong. Show me a man who ain’t been fussed at by a woman and I’ll show you a deaf monk. That’s just the way the Good Lord created the unfair sex. It ain’t their fault. It ain’t our fault. It’s just the way men and women was created. Women get to fuss at us because they ain’t big and strong enough to beat us up. We got to take it from ‘em because that’s just their nature and it just ain’t right to beat up anybody smaller, softer, and prettier than you are. Even if they ain’t pretty no more.”

“But she kept going on and on about how shiftless I am and how poor we’ve ever been,” Big Dan protested.

“I ain’t finished. But since you brought it up, I can see as good as any woman that you are shiftless and poor. I don’t know why you picked such a poor place to homestead any more than she did. But you did, and you’re either mighty lazy when you’re sober or drunk most of the time. For this spread is a disgrace and you know it. It wouldn’t cost you a cent to chink these walls with free mud and straw. A man with the ambition of a robin-bird would have sodded the roof by now, and at least drilled in some turnips and spuds. But let that go. I suspect she’d already told you that much, and more, before you beat her half to death. Let’s talk about why men beat women in the first damn place.”

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-“

“Have you considered him riding sidesaddle, in skirts?” she cut in.

He started to tell her that was silly until he took her suggestion. “Thunderation! That works! Even he must have noticed by now how short and small he is. Even in his wild cow duds he ain’t no bigger than you are, and it stands to reason a lunatic could think he was Josephine as well as Napoleon. He come home from the army to an older sister who could be missing at least one dress. I never asked, and she might not have noticed in any case.”

He thought about the way the killer had vanished so quickly with posse riders hot on his tail and grabbed her to give her a big kiss as he told her, “You’re smart as hell, Lord love you. Oh, sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t trying to be forward.”

She smiled up at him from under her sunbonnet and told him she wasn’t sore. He let her drop back in the grass as he sat up in it and stared down the slope at the shabby homestead, growling, “Your fine suggestion makes up for the day I just lost on more serious business. But I’m still sorry I ever saw that fool kid running for you.”

She said, “I’m not. I mean, if you hadn’t wrapped her up so well before I could get there, she’d surely have died before the boy and me arrived.”

He shrugged. “That’s why I wrapped her. And now I’m stuck here until we see how it turns out. How do you figure her chances, Miss Ann?”

She said, “Fifty-fifty. I can’t get her to take liquids, and in this thin, dry mountain air she needs them more than she might in moister and thicker air. I’ve seen concussion victims wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I’ve seen them just pass away without ever waking. I wish we had some way of peeking inside her skull without cutting it open. But we don’t. I guess we’ll always have to just guess about brain injuries.”

He didn’t answer. Women couldn’t stand a man who didn’t babble every stray thought, so she asked, “Will you have to arrest Dan Hogan if she doesn’t make it?”

He favored her with a raised eyebrow. “Did you think I was sticking around to pin a medal on him? The reason gents in my line of work hate these domestic cases is that, should she wake up with him holding her hand and telling her how sorry he is, she’ll never in this world press charges, and I’ll have wasted all this time.”

“And if she dies?”

“He’s mine to keep and cherish. As the only law in sight, it’ll be my duty to arrest him, of course. A lady can’t forgive even a husband for killing her entire.”

She sighed. “Lord knows I have little sympathy for any wife-beater. But poor Dan Hogan isn’t all bad. You were so right when I heard you telling him what made him act that way. I’ve known them since they came out here to try homesteading. The poor man tried, at first. But he just didn’t have what it takes to make a go of it in such unforgiving country. It’s not his fault he’s a failure. What do you think they’ll do to him?”

She blanched when Longarm said flatly, “They’ll hang him high. It ain’t their fault he’s a failure, neither, and in such a thin-settled county there won’t be a man on the jury who won’t have heard he’s a man who beats his woman, and like as not steals beef.”

She insisted, “That hardly seems just. At worse he could only be found guilty of manslaughter, not premeditated murder, right?”

He shrugged. “Jerkwater juries don’t worry much about the finer points of the law. If she dies, he’ll be lucky if they even go through the formalities. Wyoming is still a territory, and such local law as there may be is still sort of ad hoc. I don’t like it all that much, either. But if she dies, all I can do is hand him over to the nearest sheriff. After that it’ll be out of my hands.”

She didn’t look as relaxed, now. She said, “Well, I’ll just have to make sure she lives, then,” and got to her feet to sort of flounce down the slope ahead of him, not looking back, as he muttered, “I’ll never figure their kind, Lord. That makes another woman mad at me for just doing my duty, damn it.”

CHAPTER 12

At Ann’s suggestion, they’d supped late to take some edge off the long hours of waiting ahead. She had cooked a fair supper from the wild greens and smoked beef out back, saving Longarm’s iron rations for him, after all, except for the coffee. She made the coffee strong so she could stay awake and watch for a change in the condition of the battered wife in Longarm’s bedroll.

It was crowded and stinky enough in the cabin with the walls fresh-chinked with wet mud and the softwood fire reeking of sap and pitch. Longarm stepped out to sit on the front steps and blow smoke rings at the setting sun. Ann came out a little later to sit beside him and murmur, “No change. I can’t tell whether she’s sleeping sound or dying, and poor Dan Hogan is beside himself with worry and remorse.”

“He ought to be,” Longarm said. “It’s the boy I feel more sorry for. Having a daddy hanged is a hard thing to live down.”

“I know. It would be kinder if you just shot Big Dan. But I can’t let you do that, either,” she told him.

He didn’t want to know how she aimed to stop him from making the arrest he’d have to if the woman died. “Our two ponies have had plenty of juicy grass and herbs, out back. But I still ought to water ‘em as darkness falls. Leading a horse to water is easier than toting water to a horse. So I guess I’ll lead ‘em down to the creek. Do you want to come along?”

She said, “I’d love to. I’m tired of just sitting about waiting for poor Blanche to go one way or the other. But the creek’s a mite far. I’d best stay closer to my patient lest she go into convulsions, as they sometimes do.”

He nodded, rose, and walked around the cabin to untether the stock and lead them away for some roaming in the gloaming. The creek was less than half a mile off, but it was still getting dark by the time he’d decided they’d had enough and hauled them back out of the running water. They didn’t want to come back to the spread with him, so they were having some discussion about their future plans when, as Longarm was tugging and cussing, he heard running and yelling and turned his head to see what could only be Little Dan Hogan tear-assing off down the creek again, as if he’d decided to make a habit of that.

Longarm called after him. The boy didn’t answer. He just vanished into the darkness toward town. Hoping he was guessing wrong about the reason, Longarm mounted Ramona bareback and, leading the dapple gray, got back up to the cabin as fast as he could.

As he dismounted out front the young midwife popped out to say simply, “She’s gone.”

When Longarm forgot himself in front of a lady to mutter, “Aw, shit!” Ann said, “You can say that again.”

He followed her inside, where Big Dan Hogan was hunkered over his dead wife, bawling like a baby, and told the girl, “Right. You’re going to have to help. Hitch your gray to your buckboard whilst I get the two of ‘em out front and saddle my own mount.”

“Can’t you wait even a split second to turn that poor brute over to the hangman?” she snapped.

“Don’t argue, woman,” he said. “Split seconds is all we got to work with. That kid was running like a deer to tell the whole infernal community his mother had been beat to death by his father. Move. I’ll take care of what’s in here.”

She picked up her black bag and ducked out the door. Longarm stepped over to the sobbing husband and put a not-unkind hand on his shoulder to shake it as he said, “We got to pick her up, my bedding and all, and carry her out to the buckboard, Dan. If you ain’t up to helping, stay out of my way, and I can manage.”

The bawling man couldn’t even make sense, let alone help. Longarm shoved him aside and bent to pick up his dead wife’s pathetic remains. “May as well leave the lamp lit. They’d only light it some more when they ride in. Follow me, in the name of the law, Dan Hogan.”

The sobbing man did, protesting that he’d only meant to make his woman stop fussing at him. Longarm didn’t answer. Outside, he saw that the young midwife had already hitched her cart horse between the shafts. He’d figured she’d know how, since she owned the rig. He carried the corpse over and put it behind the spring seat on the flat hickory bed. Then he made Dan Hogan climb aboard as well and reached for the set of handcuffs he carried on the back of his gun rig. He cuffed Hogan’s right wrist to the left leaf spring under the seat and told him, “You can brace your shoulders against the back of Miss Ann’s seat. Your skinny behind may take more of a beating from the bed, but you deserve a good spanking in any case. Make sure your wife don’t bounce off, hear?”

He turned to see that the owner of the buckboard was standing there staring at him. “Get aboard, damn it. Do you know the way to the railroad stop at Lander?” he asked.

“Of course. It’s the county seat. But it’s so far, Custis. It must be forty miles or more,” she protested.

He said, “I hope that’s far enough. Get in and start driving. I’ll fetch my saddle and catch up with you. What are you waiting for, woman? It was your notion to charge this dumb brute with manslaughter rather than murder. I don’t like him that much. So move it on out before we have company that’s sure to hate him worse than I do!”

She gulped, took her buggy whip from its socket, and they were off and running. Longarm ran, too, back to the corral to get his saddle. The sounds of her wagon wheels had faded away by the time he had everything he owned except some blankets he no longer wanted secured to old Ramona. He forked a long leg into the saddle and said adios to the tedious surroundings that had cut his lead on Black Jack Junior a whole damned day.

When Ann heard the sound of his following hoofbeats as she was topping a distant rise, she reined to a stop to wait for him. As he joined her he said, “Keep going. At a trot. We got too many miles to cover if we run ‘em. Do you reckon that gray is good for forty miles, non-stop?”

She said of course not and he said, “They won’t think to follow wagon wheels and hoofmarks before they’ve studied on it some. They’ll be trying to cut the trail of our only living passenger, and those who know him know he don’t keep a mount.”

Both she and the man cuffed behind her tried to ask what he was talking about at the same time. “Shut up, Dan Hogan,” he said. “You’re nothing but a favor to less disgusting folk, even if you had the brains to understand.” Then he told the woman, “There’s no Wyoming court that wouldn’t hang him, manslaughter or no. They hang you for horse theft under local custom. But I’m a federal deputy and there’s a federal court at the county seat of Lander. Federal law takes a less draconian view on anything less than murder in the first degree. So I mean to turn him in to the U.S. government in Lander and point out that he never had the brains to premeditate anything.”

She gasped and said, “Oh, you darling man!” Even the prisoner behind her perked up, until she asked how much time they’d likely let him off with.

Longarm said, “Twenty at hard, if he’s lucky. That still saves Little Dan from having to say he saw his daddy do the rope dance, when future friends and possible in-laws ask. It ain’t half as awkward to just say kin is… ah … away.”

She nodded and said she’d see that the lad was taken in by decent folk, later. “That shouldn’t be hard. The boy’s nigh full grown, and I noticed that, even reformed, his dear old dad didn’t work half as hard at fixing up the cabin back there.”

“Can the boy still claim it as his own?” she asked.

“Nope. It’ll revert to the land-office as an unproven claim. But nobody with a lick of sense would have tried to nest in mountain cow country without no cows, in any case. Given a few years as an honest young cowhand, Little Dan ought to be able to buy a way better spread on his own. It was with hopes I might be able to keep him honest that I undertook this mad adventure. Lord knows how much more of a lead I’m giving that infernal killer I’m supposed to be looking for.”

She shot him an arch look in the moonlight and said, “Fess up. You can’t fool me, Custis Long. Under all that gruffness you’re just a nice gent, aren’t you?”

“Damn fool is the term you are searching for. And I’ll get even gruffer if that other killer kills again whilst I’m wasting the taxpayers’ time on this killer who’s only half serious about it.”

The prisoner protested again that he’d never meant to kill anybody, let alone his beloved Blanche. Longarm told him he shouldn’t have hit her so hard, in that case, and added that he didn’t want to hear about it any more. “Save your tears for the federal judge. Let’s take this downgrade ahead a mite faster, Miss Ann. For if that posse catches up with us, they might just hang all four of us in the enthusiasm of the moment.”

They rested and watered their stock every hour or so, but just the same it was getting harder to make them keep going by sunrise, and they were only a little better than halfway. Longarm stared morosely at the trail ahead as they reined in for a breather and told Ann, “You look like you’ve been dragged through the keyhole backwards, too. We’re going to have to camp a spell.”

He pointed at the open and gentle slope off the trail to their east. “Drive over to them pines up the slope. I filled my canteens back at the homestead, and camping any closer to a trailside stream invites all sorts of casual company for breakfast.”

She waited until they were almost a quarter of a mile off the wagon trace before she called out, “Wouldn’t it make sense to go on into the uses, Custis?”

“Not hardly. Anyone coming along now is sure to see where we turned off through this dew-covered grazing. If they see us, camped at a modest distance for talking to, they might ride on by. If they wonder why we seem to be hiding in the trees, they might not. Anywhere along about here will do as well.”

She stopped and he reined in. Both ponies lowered their heads to inhale some dew-wet mountain meadow. Longarm dismounted and helped her unhitch her gray before he unsaddled Ramona and put them on their grazing leads. They were only a few yards from the tree-line. Longarm said, “This grass will be dry enough to sit on by the time we all take a stroll in the woods and bust out the iron rations after all. I see no need to build a fire.”

She didn’t answer. She was heading for the trees. Neither he nor Big Dan Hogan asked why.

Longarm moved around to unfasten the one cuff from the wagon spring as he told his prisoner, “You can hold it till she gets back. Then we’ll both go take a leak.”

The prisoner didn’t answer. He was staring at the body of his dead wife. Longarm had put her aboard with her face covered, but the bouncing had moved the tarp out of the way, some. Longarm covered her waxen face again and said quietly, “She won’t spoil too bad in this mountain air before we get her to Lander.”

Hogan gagged and said, “She looks so… so dead.”

Longarm moved to steady him as they got his feet to the ground, saying, “Don’t go crying about it again. You must have cried a gallon or more by now, and not a single tear made up for any of the tears you made that poor gal shed.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Hogan sobbed. “I don’t care if they hang me, now. I deserves to be hanged more than once for the way I treated that poor little gal.”

The other, more lively gal they were traveling with came out of the trees about then, staring down at the grass as if she was looking for something. Longarm told his prisoner, “Our turn. This way,” and led him out of Ann’s path, up into the same woods.

When they’d both watered the pines Longarm stared thoughtfully about and decided, “I reckon I’d best cuff you to a stout branch and leave you here for now. We’ll pick a low one so’s you can stretch out on the pine needles if you want. I’ll bring you some grub and water.”

The prisoner asked why. Longarm just cuffed him to a low-grown limb and left him to figure it out. He was more polite when Ann asked him, back at the buckboard. He said, “If he ain’t with us, when anybody asks, we won’t be fibbing when we say he ain’t with us, see?”

She told him he was smart again. He stood by the buckboard, opening cans on the tailboard with his pocket knife, as she got her own tarp from under the seat and spread it on the grass nearby. He mixed the contents like a barkeep until he had three cans filled with the same concoction of cold canned beans and tomato preserves. He excused himself a moment and took the prisoner’s rations to him in the woods. He handed the can to Hogan and said, “This may hold you. You don’t need water with such slop. If you hear loud voices from back here, don’t call out to ‘em. Miss Ann and me hardly ever yell. Savvy?”

Hogan had had time to guess the plan. He said he meant to stay quiet as a church mouse. Longarm told him that might not be quiet enough and went back to join Ann on her tarp.

It didn’t take long to polish off their own slop. Rank having its privileges, they got to wash theirs down with water and a dash of Maryland rye Longarm carried in a saddlebag for snakebite and such social occasions. She asked for more and, after she’d had it, said, “It’s funny. I’ve been up all night and I’m bone-tired, but I don’t think I could go to sleep right now if I was back home in my bed.”

He resisted the temptation to tell her he wished they were both back home in her bed, and settled for, “It’s the tension one feels at times like these. I’ve gone three or four days and nights without sleep on a serious case, not even trying. I reckon it’s like that Professor Darwin says. We’re all descended from keen hunters because, before we got civilized enough to live softer, folk who couldn’t keep up when times got tense never got to have descendants.”

“My, you do read a lot. Anyone can see you’re a keen hunter, as well. But you look sort of… well, confused, now, Custis. I mean, I can see it, deep in your eyes, that your thoughts are running around inside so fast they seem to be bumping into one another.”

He smiled thinly. “Remind me never to play poker with you. You’re all too right. It ain’t my thoughts bumping noses. I know what’s going on. It’s conflicting duties that are giving me such a bother. Life would be easier on a lawman if it let him just hunt one rascal at a time. But I’m sworn to uphold the law no matter how many fools I see breaking it. So I got to run that wife-killer in and, at the same time, I feel like a fool foxhound who’s been sidetracked by a rabbit.”

She sighed. “I understand. You’re doing this for me, aren’t you?”

He knew she’d like him better if he said that was it, but he replied, “Not entire, no offense. It is my sworn duty to see justice done, and that poor brute don’t figure to get much justice off a jury of his neighbors. He ain’t got no friends. I know he’ll be treated fair by the federal district court in Lander. So we got to get him there, and we will. Meantime, it’s out of my way, and I know I’m losing my lead on that more serious killer. What you may see running around behind my eyes is that I know I could be making two awful mistakes at once by trying to do my job two ways at the same time.”

She dimpled and said, “Oh, heck, I thought it was because I let you kiss me that other time.”

Her sunbonnet hardly got in the way at all. But she still untied it and let it fall off as he kissed her again, harder. For, while he was somewhat confused about his duty to the law, Longarm knew his duty when it was spelled out for him by dimples and big blue eyes.

They wrestled friendly on the tarp for a spell and she didn’t fuss when he ran his free hand over her from the waist up. But when he got his hand under her skirt, kissing her as warmly as they both seemed to feel, she protested in a stifled voice, “Stop that this instant!” So he did.

She sat up, red-faced, and didn’t look at him as she added, “I meant out here under the open sky, in front of God and everyone.”

He started to ask who could see them, surrounded as they were by such tall grass. But by then he’d sat up, too. So he had to mutter, “Oh, Lord, I’ve seldom met a gal who was right so often, but when you’re right you sure are right!”

They could both see the dozen-odd riders headed their way up the slope, riding sort of spread out and wary. Longarm told her, “Stay put and just follow my lead,” before he got to his feet and waved a howdy with his hat.

That brought them closer, faster. As he spied the tin star one rider in the lead was wearing Longarm called out, “I reckon I know who you boys are after. I sure hope it ain’t me.”

The county deputy reined in to stare poker-faced down at Longarm and the girl he could now see behind him. He said, “The boy told us about you two, when he run in to say his father had beat his mother to death. We know who done it. Would you mind telling us how come you rid this way instead of coming into town? When we got to the cabin, even the body was missing.”

Longarm knew better than to fib about the bundle they were all staring at, now. He said, “That’s easy. I’m law, too. Federal. The Hogan woman was killed on federal land. That’s her, on the buckboard. We figured to take her up to the federal court at Lander.”

The older star-sporting gent staring hard from his saddle said, “You figured wrong. Blanche Hogan was murdered in Fremont County, and the county wants both her and the skunk as murdered her. In case you’re wondering, I’m Fremont County.”

Longarm said, “I never said you was from anywhere else. As you can see, we don’t have her husband with us. So let’s not act greedy. You boys look all you like for him and, meanwhile, we’ll just carry her on up to Lander.”

The older lawman in charge of such disgusting odds shook his head. “We’re holding the trial in Saint Stephens, and that’s where we mean to take the corpse, see?”

“Not hardly. You don’t seem to have anyone to try, and you surely don’t want a lady turning funny colors in your witness box,” Longarm told him.

“We has to prove she’s dead, don’t we?”

“Well, sure you do. But anyone can see she is, damn it.”

The old-timer knew his law, too. He stared hard at Longarm and said, “You ain’t fooling us. We know you mean to hand the corpse in to the federal marshal in Lander so’s you feds can steal our case from us.”

Longarm grinned knowingly. “Hell, that’s only fair. I seen her dead first. I’ll tell you what. I’ll drop the body off at Lander, and after you boys bring Dan Hogan up to the county seat, we can let the federal and county judges argue about it.”

He detected the look of low cunning he’d been trying to inspire in that mean old face and quickly added, innocently, “You mean to bring Hogan up to the county seat for a proper view as soon as you can catch him, don’t you?”

The posse leader was grinning like a polecat regarding the open door of a henhouse. “Why, sure we are, old son. Meanwhile, we’ll just carry that dead little lady back with us to put on ice until we catch the rascal.”

Longarm sighed, turned to Ann, and said, “You’d best move over yonder, out of our line of fire, Miss Ann. For I do believe my message ain’t getting through to these gents.”

The older lawman looked more surprised than worried. “I reckon the lady better, too. I hope you’ve noticed you are making your brag with no more than six rounds against fourteen of us, each packing considerably more ammunition than that?”

Longarm nodded soberly. “What can I tell you? I have to uphold federal law as I see it. The woman was killed under my jurisdiction. I mean to carry her body to Lander as federal evidence. Anyone else who’d like to accompany her in the same condition is free to do so. But I can’t promise a tarp for each and every body. It’s your move. I’ve said all I mean to about the matter.”

A million years went by. Then one of them muttered, “The kid said he was the one called Longarm, Jim.”

Old Jim stared hard some more before he shrugged and said, “It must be. Nobody else would act so loco over a damned old dead woman. Let’s go, boys. We can still string that rascal up, if we can get to him first.”

As they turned to ride off, Longarm took his first deep breath in some time. Ann ran to him, long brown hair streaming, and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing, “Oh, Lord, you were ever so brave and I was ever so scared, Custis! You must be the bravest man who ever lived. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you stand up to all those horrid men!”

He patted her back. “I couldn’t believe it either. I don’t know what comes over me at such times. But it goes with my job. I’d say it’s safe to sit down some more, now. Where was we when we was so rudely interrupted?”

As they sank back down into each other’s arms, she giggled and took his hand to show him. But though he wound up with more than his hand down there, she said they’d have to wait until they got to town before she’d take off all her duds and go to town entire with him.

CHAPTER 13

By the time they got to the county seat and end of the railroad line, the hard way, it was too late in the evening to do much more than ask an undertaker to put Blanche Hogan on ice and ask the turnkey at the federal lockup to hold her husband for the judge, come morning.

Longarm knew he’d lost two whole days of his lead on Black Jack Junior. He stood to lose most of another if the judge turned out to be picky about paperwork. But he was sort of looking forward to the night ahead after all the hours he and poor little Ann had spent prim and proper after that hasty ice-breaking with their fool duds on. So he sprang for the honeymoon suite at the best hotel in town, which wasn’t as grand as it might have sounded, and they were so delighted to hire the rooms that they saw no need to ask who she might be when he signed the book for them, singular case.

Once they were upstairs and she was blushing and flustering about checking into a hotel with a man she wasn’t even engaged to, he told her, “Hold the thought a spell. I aim to make you feel even more wicked as soon as I can. But I’ve got some errands to run before this dinky town closes down entire. I got to send me a mess of wires, and I might save time in the morning by picking up the makings of a new bedroll now.”

She didn’t ask why he wanted a new bedroll. She’d helped him unload the cadaver, still wrapped in his old bedding.

Down on the street, he found the outfitting store had just closed. But the card hanging behind the glass said they opened early in the morning. He made a mental note of the time they’d be open for business and headed next for the Western Union office near the end of the tracks.

Inside, he penciled a message for Billy Vail, bringing him up to date and assuring the home office he hadn’t run away with any circus. He figured he still had a lead on the lunatic he hoped to bottleneck on the divide to the west. But it wasn’t nearly as long a lead as before. So he wrote out a detailed warning, tossing in the suggestion that the want could be disguised as a normal man or even a woman, and carried both forms to the counter.

The telegraph clerk in Lander was around fifty, making him an old-timer in a rapidly changing West, so he felt free to scan the messages and opine, “You don’t want to send this one to South Pass City. The Overland stages crossed the divide by way of Bridger’s Pass, not the one that colored gent found.”

Longarm frowned. “Are you sure we ain’t talking about the Wells Fargo stages?” he asked. “I confess the railroad put all the transcontinental stagecoaches out of business before I ever got to ride coast-to-coast so uncomfortable. But I was told the Overland Trail ran through South Pass.”

The older man shook his head and insisted, “Bridger’s. I ain’t saying Overland never sent a freight wagon over the South Pass now and again. But time was money to a mail coach. So most used Bridger’s route, and to hell with the grade.”

Longarm swore softly. “Send that same message to every law office in the great divide basin, then. For Lord only knows where a gent mapping out the Overland Trail from London, England, might have told a homicidal maniac it ran.”

Western Union agreed and, having covered all bets, Longarm went across to a trackside saloon to consult expert opinion on just where in a lot of square miles he might be able to set up his ambush.

The cow and railroad hands he found enjoying their quitting-time cheer in the rinky-dink saloon were more than willing to help out a man they considered to be a poor wayfaring stranger lost in their mountains. They did their best, calling one another fools if not greenhorns, as Longarm gained a grudging respect for the gents trying to write even a penny dreadful based on fact or fable out this way.

Folk had to be self-confident, independent thinkers to come west in the first place. Like many poorly educated gents who’d had to learn a lot, sudden, old-timers who’d survived any time at all tended to be know-it-alls who just couldn’t admit they might be guessing. Ten years was a long time in country that had changed so much, so fast, and since the Overland Trail had been licked by the railroad that far back, Longarm suspected at least half the opinionated rascals had never even seen the mail coaches they claimed to know so much about. One old whiskey drummer who said he traveled all over creation, swore on his dear mother’s honor that he’d ridden the Overland stage over Bridger’s Pass more than once. But he’d also ridden the Butterfield stage through Apache Pass with the famous Deadwood Dick driving. The old drummer confided, “Deadwood Dick is really a colored man, like they say Sublette was. But that boy sure could drive. You should have seen us going lickety-split with them Apache chasing us for miles. I helped, of course. The shotgun messenger got arrowed. So I had to climb up aside Deadwood Dick as he was holding the traces with his teeth and popping off Apache left and right with his big old Pattersons.”

A younger cowhand, who wasn’t old enough to tell tales like that without getting called on them, told Longarm he distinctly recalled the Overland coaches passing by his home spread down by Bitter Creek when he was just a lad of six or seven. Longarm thanked him gravely for the information. He was too polite to point out that the railroad town of Bitter Creek couldn’t have been there earlier than Sixty-eight or -nine, or that when his informant could have been six or seven the Shoshone still owned that part of the world.

He went back to the hotel to find Ann already undressed and under the covers. He told her not to look so hurt, because he’d only had two beers in the line of duty.

She forgave him, and then some, once he’d shucked his own duds and climbed in with her. She blushed all over when he tossed the covers away to do it right, with a pillow shoved under her pretty little rump. As he got atop her she protested, “You could have at least trimmed the lamp, you wicked boy! We’re both stark naked and I feel sure it can’t be proper to watch what we’re doing and… Oh, watch what you’re doing! It’s too deep this way, and I feel so embarrassed in this position with the lamp lit and, and, yesssss! That feels so marvelous, even if it does look just awful!”

He didn’t think she looked awful at all. He’d thought he’d gotten to know her soft sweet body, even though a lot of textile had been in his line of vision. But her thin summer dress hadn’t followed half as many delightful curves as she’d been hiding under them. She was in fine shape because of honest work, with just enough female larding under her soft, smooth skin to keep her from looking muscular.

Later, when he finally trimmed the lamp and they were cuddled up like old pals under the top sheet, she nuzzled her pert nose against his collar bone and confessed, “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to do it right out and natural, like a whore.”

He patted her bare shoulder. “Whores don’t do it natural. What we just done was natural, not nasty or wicked. Just the way natural folk was made to do it. What sense would there have been for the Lord to make us look so nice to one another in our birthday duds if He hadn’t intended us ever to peek?”

She giggled and confided, “In my rounds as a midwife I’ve heard other women confess to worse than fornicating with the lamp lit.”

He said, “We’d best try for some sleep. We’ve had a long day, with no sleep the night before, and come morning the judge’s sure to make us fill out fine-print depositions about the Hogan case.”

She brightened. “Oh, do you think we’ll get to bear witness at Dan’s trial?”

“I don’t see why,” he said. “Neither of us ever saw him beat her, and they’ll have his confession as well as the boy’s testimony.”

She said, “Oh,” in a small hurt voice.

He didn’t have to ask her why. “I’d like to spend a month or more in this bed with you, honey,” he said. “But I told you in the beginning I was trailing that killer and though it pains me, too, I just have to move on, come morning.”

She snuggled closer, sighed, and said, “I know. I’d have never let you have it so soon if I’d thought you might stick around long enough for a proper romance. Do you reckon we’ll ever get a chance to be like this together again, darling?”

He said he didn’t know. She heaved a defeated sigh and said, “I doubt it, too. So this is another situation I’ve often wondered about. I get to read a lot, living alone, since the Shoshone caught my man alone in the hills. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to spend just one night of love with a handsome stranger.”

He rolled on his side to run his hand down her soft belly as he told her, “I wouldn’t want a friend to feel frustrated.” But, as he proceeded to finger her friendly, she said, “Wait. Knowing this may be the last time I’ll meet such an understanding gent, I’ve been thinking of a book I have among my medical texts. It ain’t sold to the general public. It’s put out as a warning about how folk get to acting when they go sex-mad, and I suspect that’s what’s just happened to me.”

“You’re more likely just curious. A warm-natured gal who’d never done it with all her duds off would have a right to be. But I’m game for anything that doesn’t hurt.”

She began to fondle him back as she shyly confessed, “I could never do half those awful things. But there’s this one illustration… Lord knows how they ever got anyone to pose in such a position.”

She made him relight the lamp and adjust the mirror on the dresser as well. And it did calm her down enough for Longarm to get a little sleep, at last.

The day started out just fine. They made love by the dawn’s early light, and enjoyed a hearty breakfast to restore their strength before they went to see how long the judge meant to keep them in town.

That was where things started to go wrong, for Longarm, at least. Ann didn’t look as upset when the crusty old district judge told them that while he meant to offer Dan Hogan a fair and speedy trial, he expected them to appear as witnesses.

Longarm protested, “I never saw the fool kill his woman, Your Honor, and, hell, he’s confessed he beat her to death, and I got more important places to be!”

The judge said, “if you cuss again I’ll have to hold you in contempt of court, Deputy. I know you’re more used to the big city and its hasty ways. I know you feel I’m just a glorified J.P. in a one-horse town. But let me tell you, son, we do things right in this man’s court of justice!”

“Then let me go on after that more ominous killer,” said Longarm. “You don’t need my testimony, even if I could swear I saw the man beat his women. His boy did, and he’s owned up to it.”

The stubborn old judge shook his head. “The boy is a minor. His testimony counts, but not as much as that of a grown man or even a woman, no offense, Miss Ann. The accused is an adult, sort of, but should he retract his confession in open court we’ll need the two of you to back the prosecution’s word that he confessed to both of you as well.”

Longarm groaned. “I know full well how often a gent facing hard time considers telling it another way after he’s had some words with a slick defense lawyer, Your Honor. But you still have this lady and the boy, and I can leave a sworn deposition for the court, can’t I?”

“Nope. As a known peace officer with a good rep, who heard the words of both the dying woman and the man who killed her, your testimony will carry the most weight. If you won’t stay willing for the trial I’ll just have to hold you in another cell as a material witness. So what’s it going to be?”

Longarm shot a look at the blushing Ann and decided “I’d as soon stay willing, at the hotel. But how much time are we talking about, Your Honor?”

The judge thought before he said, “Oh, we can start the trial as soon as we get the boy up here by rail. Let’s say day after tomorrow, to be safe. The trial shouldn’t take more than two or three days if he decides to make a fight of it. Way less than that if he don’t go back on his confession. So, all in all, you should be able to go on after that outlaw by the end of the week.”

Longarm took a deep breath and tried to keep from snarling as he said, “Your Honor, by that time my want may have made it over the mountains to Lord knows where.”

But the judge insisted, “Joseph Slade is not the one being tried by this district court. Dan Hogan is. So, like the Indian chief said, I have spoken.”

He meant it. By that afternoon Longarm had gotten Billy Vail and even the judge of the Denver District Court to wire that the mule-headed cuss in Lander was obstructing justice. But he wouldn’t budge. So, while the next few nights were delightful, the days wore on tedious as hell.

Longarm spent a lot of time at the Western Union, trying to trap that other killer by wire if they wouldn’t let him chase after him personal. It was sort of surprising how much a lawman could learn that way, even when he couldn’t do anything. Longarm began to suspect that once they had those new Bell telephones strung everywhere, he as well as the men he got to chase figured to be out of business. Even having to wait for answers, he was able to establish that he might not have caught the rascal even had he been allowed to follow his original plan. For tiny town after town in the high country to the west reported back that, no, they hadn’t spied any strangers of any description trying to get over the mountains by any trail, in open country, where a rider on a rise could see for miles in all directions.

By the afternoon the judge finally got around to throwing twenty years for manslaughter at the weeping Dan Hogan, it was too late for serious riding, even had Longarm known where to ride, now. So he took Ann and a bottle of rye to bed at the hotel early. As they were making love she suddenly blurted, “It’s over between us, isn’t it, darling?”

He kissed her. “Not until the cruel gray dawn. I’m sorry if I seem distracted tonight, honey. It ain’t you. It’s that loco little Black Jack Junior. I think I’ve lost him for good.”

They knew one another well enough to talk and make love at the same time. So she hugged him reassuringly with her thighs and said, “I’m sure you’ll pick up his trail when he acts crazy some more, dear.”

He shook his head. “I was supposed to catch him before he killed again, not follow a dotted line of victims as I was wasting time up here. In that courtroom, I mean. This part has been mighty fine.”

She thanked him with a teasing twist of her torso and said, “He may be in remission, you know.”

“I didn’t know. What are you talking about?” he said.

“Sometimes victims of dementia praecox just stop. They don’t get better. There’s no treatment for that condition. But a split personality can split again, to somebody crazy in yet another way, see?”

He grimaced. “Oh, swell. I could be chasing a Black Jack Slade Junior who thinks he’s Buffalo Bill?”

She said, “I’m trained as a midwife, not a head doctor. But I do recall reading that the condition tends to get worse, not better. If he’s still alive, sooner or later, something is sure to rub him the wrong way again and, when you rub dementia praecox the wrong way it goes off like dynamite.”

“I’ve noticed that about the little rascal. He may think he’s someone else, now. But I’d have heard if he’d been killed, acting crazy or any other way. I even found out how his model wound up buried in Salt Lake so mysterious.”

“Does it really matter?” she asked, moving her hips faster. He decided it didn’t, just then. But later, as they were cuddled calmer, he said, “It was neither a geographical mistake by an English writer nor that notion another had that his wife was a Mormon. They just put his box on the wrong train. When it got to Salt Lake City, late in July, old Jack was so stinky that they didn’t want to ship him half way back to Illinois. So the railroad sprang for a handsome marker on hallowed ground, and his kin agreed not to sue them after all.”

She didn’t sound interested. She snuggled closer and said, “I wish both of them were dead and buried, so you wouldn’t have to leave in the morning. Oh, Custis, so soon?”

He kissed her again and said, “I ain’t kissing you because I’m horny. I’m kissing you because you just gave me a grand notion.”

CHAPTER 14

Billy Vail gave Longarm more like general hell when he showed up in Denver at last, empty-handed. Vail said, “Longarm, it has been established that we can’t win ‘em all. But I’ve never seen you give up so soon. You didn’t even go to Montana or Utah after the cuss, and we agreed he was heading for one or the other on the old Overland Trail.”

“The trail only goes to Salt Lake, not Virginia City,” Longarm said, “and young Slade never meant to go to neither. We just got slickered by a slick and cunning killer, not a lunatic. Do you want to tag along and share the credit for the arrest?”

“Sure, if you can prove Joseph Slade is here in Denver. Can you?” Vail asked.

“Not a hundred percent, before I find him. But I expect to before this day is over. Coming, boss?”

Vail glanced out the window before he said, “It’s too hot out to chase a hunch. But I’ll listen to your hunch. Where do you mean to start?”

“The Banes house, where the killing all started. It ain’t far. I may need you, if them army gents are still sore at me.”

Vail shook his head. “They ain’t. They gave up on the stakeout right after they got word Slade had shot up Fort Halleck, up north. As for that stupid Colonel Walthers, I used the arrest warrant he swore out on you to prove how stupid he was to an old drinking pal in the War Department. So he won’t bother you no more if he wants to keep his oak leaves. There’s nobody over at the Banes house right now but the killer’s elder sister.”

Longarm said, “I’d best have a word with her, then,” and left alone.

Billy had been right about the heat outside. Longarm was sorry he’d had to change back into his tobacco-brown tweeds and shoestring tie as he walked even that far with the noonday sun beating down on him.

When he got to the house, and Flora Banes Slade came to her door, he could tell from the feather duster in one hand and the thin poplin duster she had on that, despite the heat, he’d caught the house-proud little gal hard at housekeeping. The duster she wore was oversized and shapeless, but he could still see more of her shape than she might have wanted him to, thanks to the way the thin poplin clung to damp bare skin.

She looked surprised if not dismayed to see him. She waved him in with her feather duster, saying, “Come in. I hope you don’t have news too grim about my poor brother. You wouldn’t be back this soon if you hadn’t caught him, I know. But please tell me you took him alive, at least.”

He removed his Stetson and waited until she’d led him into her parlor and seated him on her sofa before he told her, “I never caught up with him, dead or alive. That’s likely because he was never in any of the places I was led to look for him. I don’t like to boast. But it has been my experience that when I can’t cut a fugitive’s trail he just can’t be out ahead of me. So I come back to where the trail started to start looking better. I may as well begin by informing you, formally, that the federal search warrant made out by the Denver District Court to them army men is still in force until such time as your brother is found on or about these premises.”

She laughed weakly. “Good heavens, I told them and all the other lawmen who’ve tramped through this house that they were welcome to poke about all they liked, with or without a warrant. But before you begin, I’d better serve you some coffee and cake. For you’ll surely be here some time if you expect to find Joseph in this house at this late date!”

He thanked her for the offer but said it was too hot for such a notion. She rose anyway and said, “Speak for yourself. If you don’t need some coffee to clear your head right now, I do. This heat must be getting to my poor head. I don’t understand one thing you’ve said so far.”

She moved back to her kitchen, leaving him to stare at the four walls a spell. He was dying for a smoke, but he saw no ashtrays in sight and he doubted she shared his scientific theory that tobacco ash was hard on carpet beetles.

He could see she’d laundered her lace curtains and gone over the wallpaper with a sponge since his last visit. But there were still cleaner patches, mostly oval in design, where less tidy stuff had once hung on the walls. He was still thinking about that when she came back in with a silver service on a silver tray and put it down on the small teak table near the sofa.

As she took her own seat in the plush chair across from him he saw she’d filled two cups despite his disinclination. She asked if he preferred cream or sugar and he said neither. So she picked up her own cup and leaned back, toying with the buttons of her duster with her free hand as she smiled and said, “I like mine strong and black, too. Now, what was it you were saying about my poor little brother?”

“I don’t want nobody accusing me of tricking ‘em later. So I’d best tell you, now, that on my way from the Union Depot to my office in the federal building I saw fit to stop at the county hall of records and the main post office just a few doors away. I have found that, even when folk don’t leave a trail on the hard soil of summer, you can often get a line on them by following the paper trail we all leave filed here and there.”

She was working on another button, lower down, as she said, “I hope my brother’s school records and such verified everything I told you about him.”

Longarm nodded and said, “He was more pathetic than even you or your neighbors may have been willing to tell a stranger. He was so lackluster in school that a kindly teacher had his head examined. The doctor’s report was in with his poor report cards and such. It says he seemed to be stunted in growth, with poor hand and eye coordination. His brain just made it to what they writ down as dull-normal.”

She nodded and opened another button as she said, “Everyone knew he was touched in the head, poor thing.”

Longarm shook his own head. “That ain’t what the doc put down. He put your brother down as a slow learner without much ambition or imagination. He never put down a thing about the kid being loco. How come you want to show me your tits again, ma’am? We established the last time you did it that you’re a gal, and not a lunatic boy pretending to be his own sister.”

She hastily regathered the front of her duster as she protested, “I wasn’t trying to prove anything but how hot and stuffy it is in here right now. That other time was to show you the bruise Joseph gave me when he beat me.”

Longarm nodded. “I’ll take your word on the fight you must have had with him, ma’am. You were both about the same size and weight, so it was likely an even match. But we’re getting way ahead of the story. I’d best start from the beginning, now that I’ve been pawing through old city and county records, instead of chasing shadows along a trail that ain’t been used enough to matter for years.”

She leaned forward to pour more coffee in her own cup as she warned him his was getting cold. He ignored that to tell her, “In the beginning, there was a Pappa Slade, a Mamma Slade, and two little Slades, a boy and a girl, living between here and Evans Grammar School. The boy, like I just said, was puny and dim of wit and ambition. His older sister was smarter and a lot more energetic, even if her main ambition was to one day have her very own house to keep, sort of compulsed and overly tidy.”

She sniffed and said, “All right, if you must know, my mother was a dear, but a lazy and careless housekeeper. You didn’t have to snoop about to find that out. Everyone knew it.”

“This is going to take all day if you keep butting in like that, ma’am. It don’t take a head doctor to savvy that all-too-familiar pattern. Slovenly housekeepers raise compulsed neat daughters, and vice versa. You wanted your own house to keep, a lot neater. So you married Tom Banes, young, so’s you could be the mistress of your own home, and tidy it up all you wanted.”

“Is that a crime?” she asked disdainfully.

“I ain’t got to criminal charges yet. Since it’s your house, I can’t even say it was wrong for you to cart all your late husband’s hunting trophies back to his workshop as soon as you was rid of him.”

She followed his glance to a spot above the fireplace where a moose head might have once hung and replied defensively, “I see no reason to deny that. I never shared Tom’s interest in hunting and, to me, all those glassy-eyed dust-catchers were just an extra bother. As for my having gotten rid of anyone, I’d best point out my husband died at work, not here, of a heart seizure.”

“That’s true, right after he’d enjoyed the lunch you packed for him, if the time of death on record is correct. But that’s a local matter, and we’re getting ahead of my federal case some more. Before your husband died, your parents did. I’ll accept that as natural. They was both elderly and in poor health, when you married hasty to get away from them.”

“How can you be so cruel?” she protested.

He shrugged. “Sometimes it goes with this job. Cruel or not, facts is facts So the fact is that by the time you found out you’d married a good-natured, natural slob, you also found you was dependent on him. As a manager at Denver Dry Goods, he made enough to support you decent enough and, by the way, the post office says all them Wild West magazines they delivered to this address was delivered in your husband’s name, not your kid brother’s.”

“I could have told you that, had you asked. It never crossed my mind at the time.”

He sighed and said, “I should have checked that earlier. It occurred to me at the time that, for an unwelcome guest with no visible means of support, your kid brother had a lot of reading material stacked in his room. You likely hauled them out back when you tidied up after your late husband, right?”

She shook her head a bit wildly and said, “No. I told you Tom was interested in outdoor western notions. But he didn’t save a magazine once he’d read it. He passed it on to Joseph, and Joseph never threw anything away.”

Longarm raised an eyebrow. “You told me your husband tried to interest your brother in going hunting and such with him on the weekends, but that the kid preferred to mope about the house and get in the way of your dusting.”

She shrugged. “What of it? That was why Tom asked him to leave, in the end. Tom said there had to be something wrong with a slugabed who’d rather read about cowboys than rid like one when he had the chance.”

“Let’s not worry about whether it was an easy-going brother-in-law or a vexed big sister who threw the kid out. The point is that someone did. So he was off in the army, no doubt vexing them with his useless ways, when your late father died, leaving both his kids well provided for with that trust fund at the Drover’s Savings and Loan.”

The young widow flashed her eyes at him as she snapped, “What of it? What a woman might or might not own in her own name is her own business, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am. There was nothing dislawful about your no-doubt fond father leaving you that house of theirs you still own, boarded up, a quarter-mile away.”

“Are you suggesting Joseph could be hiding there?” she asked.

“Nope. The Denver copper badges already looked. That’s how come I knew it was boarded up. County records don’t show that. I agree it’s smart of you to hold off putting it up for sale with real estate prices in Denver still rising, since the beef market got better, just recent.”

He leaned back and caught himself reaching for a smoke without thinking. He put the thought aside and said, “The point is not that you are today a woman of independent means. The point is how you got that way. You came into modest wealth by birth right only after you’d stuck yourself with a husband who hung animal heads all over your walls and doubtless had other habits a fussy housewife couldn’t abide. So, once you no longer needed him to support you, he—let’s say he just died young and unexpected. I got enough on my plate as it is.”

She gasped and called him a son of a bitch. He chuckled and replied, “Takes one to know her own litter, I reckon. Anyway, just about the time you had this house prissed up more to your liking, your kid brother showed up on your doorstep. Slow-witted as he might have been, he’d have heard about the death of his own old man. So he offered to move back in with you and help you spend the family fortune.”

She nodded and said, “That’s true. I’ll admit I told him he wasn’t welcome and you saw the bruise he left on me. I gave him some money, damn it, but he wouldn’t leave.”

Longarm said, “He couldn’t. He was dead. Had you waited until the army gents showed up, they’d have been glad to take him off your hands for you. But you didn’t know that. You figured you was stuck with a bad penny you couldn’t get rid of no other way. You killed your pesky little brother long before the army showed up to reclaim him. Then, when they showed up with that search warrant, you had to kill them, as well.”

She stared at him owl-eyed and protested, “You must be as crazy as poor Joseph! How could you accuse a poor helpless woman of engaging in a gunfight with two experienced law officers?”

He smiled thinly and said, “That struck me as mysterious even when I considered a weakling who couldn’t even aim a ball. The only way a green gunhand can drill anyone direct through the heart calls for firing point-blank at a stationary target. So you set ‘em down here in this very parlor, served them refreshments as they was asking you about your fool kid brother, and, once they was dead, you just lined them up neat, as usual, over there on the floor, and-“

“Is that why you haven’t touched your coffee?” she cut in, pointing at his cup. She laughed incredulously. “Did you really think I was trying to poison you?”

He nodded soberly. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll no doubt find out which of them chemicals from your late husband’s workshop you prefers to kill folk with, once we dig up all the bodies. It may be enough just to go by the results of your brother’s autopsy, once we dig him up from under the loose paving of your carriage house. I noticed the last time I poked about out there that it tended to make you jumpy. Is that why you pegged them shots at me, up the hill, right after I’d left here? No offense, but Black Jack Junior wasn’t a good shot at any distance.”

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

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