“When I laid this thing on ol’ Joe’s bar, I’ll sw’ar it stretched from thar to thar.” Dangerous Dagwood held his hands apart like a bragging fisherman and chortled mightily. Then he lowered them and fell on Flame.
Dizzily, I was trying to get to my feet to come to her aid when Dangerous Dagwood screamed and fell backwards, both hands groping behind him. He tell face up on the floor. By the time I reached him, it was plain he was dead.
It wasn’t until I turned him over that I saw what killed him. Flame had latched onto his knife and when Dangerous Dagwood embraced her, she’d plunged it into his back. Now she came up beside me with the lantern and stared down at his back with the blade protruding from it.
“Ohmigod!” she whispered. Her face was very white.
“You couldn’t help it,” I soothed her. “He had it coming.”
“Not that.” She dismissed the killing. “That!” She pointed.
I followed her gaze to the corpse’s hairy buttocks. Among the tendrils on the left one I made out a large strawberry mark about the size of a half-dollar. “It’s a birthmark,” I said, not comprehending.
“Yep.” Flame shook her head. “I thought you had it,” she said.
“That’s what you were looking for.” I began to see daylight. “But why didn’t you just ask me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Look,” I told her, “why don’t you just tell me what this is all about.”
She thought a moment and then sat down on the edge of the bed. “All right.” She took a deep breath and began.
It seems that Flame had a beau back home in the Midwest. This beau had a brother, a black sheep. This brother had gotten into one scrape after another and finally left town one jump ahead of the sheriff. The last that had been heard of him, he’d gone to the Klondike to prospect for gold. All this had occurred before Flame and her beau had met. But he’d told her about the black sheep brother and he’d also told her about the brother’s having a large birthmark on his left buttock.
Subsequently, Flame and her beau had had a lover’s quarrel. Angry words had been exchanged, and Flame had left town in a huff. Some three years had passed while she bounced around the country, finally landing in Dawson City. Here a letter from her former beau had reached her. She replied to it and the romance was revived by mail. A little shamefacedly—because of our love- making—Flame told me she’d been saving her money to return home and marry the guy.
“Believe it or not,” she said, “up until tonight I’ve been faithful to him.”
“I believe you. Go on.”
She picked up the threads of her story. Between the vows of undying love they’d exchanged by mail, her fiancé had mentioned his wayward brother. He was sure the black sheep was in the Yukon and he wanted Flame to keep an eye peeled for him. If she located him, she was to write immediately and let him know. The brother had money belonging to Flame’s intended husband and if he was in Dawson City, her fiancé intended to come there and beat it out of him.
“Of course the last thing I wanted was for him to come here,” Flame told me.
“Why?”
“He don’t know I’m a dance-hall girl. I don’t want him ever to find out. He mightn’t marry me.”
“That’s a pretty stuffy attitude.”
“Well, that’s the way he is. So you see, I was trying to find out if you was his brother ’thout lettin’ you in on who I was. I was afraid if you was his brother, you’d tell him ’bout me workin’ in the dance hall.”
“But what made you think it was me?”
“Your last name. My intended’s monicker is Victor too.”
“Oh.” I thought about it. “Just a coincidence,” I decided. “Victor’s a pretty common name. And I don’t have any brothers.”
“You ain’t got no birthmark either. But he does.” She pointed at Dangerous Dagwood with her foot.
“That doesn’t prove anything. Lots of people do.”
“Still, I’m wonderin’ what his last name might be. I never heard him called nothin’ save Dangerous Dagwood.”
“Let’s look through his pockets,” I suggested.
We did. Flame came up with a crumpled letter. The name on the envelope was “Mr. Algernon Victor.”
“Algernon!” Flame exclaimed. “That was his name all right. Oh, Lordy! I done went and did in my own future brother-in-law!”
I convinced her that she hadn’t been able to help herself. I told her she’d probably done her fiancé a favor. I reminded her that he’d never have to find out she’d killed his brother anyway.
It was dawn before Flame left my room. A couple of the men who worked for her at the mine appeared an hour or so later and removed the body without comment. After they’d gone I finally got to sleep.
When I woke up, I tried to get Putnam on the wrist radio. There was no answer. Maybe he couldn’t answer. Maybe he just didn’t want to be bothered. Maybe nobody vas standing by for my calls.
Whatever it was, it didn’t change. One day went by and then the next and still I couldn’t raise Tibet. The days added up to a week-—still no results. The weeks turned into one month and were creeping on towards two and it began to look like I was permanently stranded in the year 1898.
Meanwhile, Flame had been making arrangements to sell the Lucky Seven and return home to marry her fiancé. I continued to work for her, but once she’d made her decision, she gave me a wide berth at night. Obviously she was trying to revirginize herself before the wedding and I respected her decision.
Then one night she did come to my room after the dance hall closed. “There’s somethin’ I gotta tell you,” she announced.
I waited.
“I’m gonna have a baby!”
My mouth opened and closed. Like most fellows, it was the last thing I wanted to hear. There were no freight trains to hop out of the Klondike and the river steamer wasn’t due for another week.
“You’re the father for sure,” Flame added. “Hasn’t been nobody but you.”
“You want me to marry you?” I asked helplessly.
“Not likely!” She snorted. “Wouldn’t marry you if’n you was the last man in the Yukon. Never did meet a feller so bad at so many things. You ride like you got a glass rump. You shoot like the worst thing could happen is you hit somethin’. You play poker like as if you was one of them philanthropists tryin’ to give his money away. An’ you ain’t much use in a fight neither. Nope! I sure ain’t gonna marry you.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it—-” I started breathing again.
“I’m goin’ back to Columbus, Ohio and marry up with Egbert. I sold the mine an’ I’m leavin’ by dogsled tonight. So long, Steve.” She paused in the doorway. “If it’s a boy, I reckon I’ll name it after you.” Flame closed the door behind her.
I stared at it a long time. Slowly, uncomfortably, I began to realize that I was finding something out about myself that I’d never known before. Aghast, my numbed brain struggled to put together the pieces. They fell into place all too well!
First-—Columbus, Ohio! That was where I’d been born. My family had lived there for two generations before me.
Second—Egbert! That was my grandfather’s name!
Third-—Euphremia! That was what Flame had said her real name was. That was my grandmother’s name!
Fourth-—Steve Victor! That was what Flame said she’d name the baby. That was my father’s name! And my father had been born in 1899!
Concidence? I couldn’t let myself off the hook that easily. I had to face the fact I’d learned about myself—
I’m my own Grandpa!
Chapter Ten
THEIR TANGLED GENEALOGY DROVE THE HAPSBURGS dotty. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I refused to blow my cool over the bark of incest blighting my branch of the family tree. The Jukes23 learned to live with it, and so would I. Besides, my immediate predicament took precedence over other concerns.