She sobbed, grabbed hold of him, and buried her face against his chest as she cried, “Oh, I feel so cheap and low, now. Whatever must you think of me?”
He patted her back. It felt nice as he soothed, “I think you acted like a lady in desperation. The Lord gave you gals mighty unfair weapons. Had I thought you meant it, I might have taken you up on your cruel temptation. But it still wouldn’t have stopped me from doing whatever I may have to do, later, and think how awful you’d feel if you gave your all to save your kid brother and we still wound up shooting it out.”
“Isn’t there any other way, Custis? I know Joseph is a killer, but he’s sick. It’s not really his fault!”
“I know that. He acted crazy the first time I laid eyes on him. I don’t want to hurt him, Flora. I know that if I can bring him in alive they’ll send him to the asylum, not the gallows or even prison. I know that if I fail, and live through it, you’ll never forgive me. But that’s the way it has to be.”
He knew, later, as he watched her drive away, that his mind had done the right thing, no matter how mad the rest of him was sure to feel before he ever got to sleep in a lonesome room still haunted by her faint perfume.
CHAPTER 6
The U.P. Combination rolled into Julesburg late in the morning and stopped just long enough to let Longarm and his possibles off before rolling on to more important places. In its day Julesburg had rated a population close to two thousand, and a killing a day. But since the rails had replaced the Overland stages and freight wagons the population had dropped considerably. The town had become a sleepy little county seat and railroad juncture, where the wildest visitors were train-weary passengers changing trains, or cowhands off the surrounding spreads who only got drunk enough to be dangerous once a month, on payday. The town was a good ten miles or more west of the newly opened Ogallala cattle trail and so was seldom shot up by the rougher hands one tended to find on a long market drive.
Longarm picked up his McClellan saddle, with everything he’d brought along lashed to it, and crossed the dusty street to the weathered frame hotel across from the depot. The sleepy blonde behind the desk in the tiny lobby perked up when she saw such a rare sight as a possible guest on such an otherwise dull occasion. When he asked her if it was at all possible to hire a room she told him he could have his pick. He said he’d like a corner room at the east end of the top floor and she said he could have one and that she could see he was an experienced traveler on the summer prairie.
She sold him a key and came around from her side of the stand-up desk to carry his luggage, saying they’d had a bellhop, once, but that he’d run off to herd cows since the price of beef had risen. Longarm told her he hardly ever let ladies carry things for him but she went up the stairs ahead of him, anyway. He found the way she climbed the stairs with her tailbone moving almost as much as her feet an interesting novelty. It was too bad her face was no longer youthful, and that he wouldn’t be staying long in any case.
She led him to the corner room. As he deposited his saddle over the foot of the double brass bedstead, she busied herself opening both windows, saying, “It’ll smell better in here once the cross-venting airs it out some. We keep the windows closed when the rooms are empty to cut down on the dusting. That smell you may have noticed ain’t what you might think. We don’t have bugs. The handy man just oiled the bedsprings and, for some fool reason, he used bug oil instead of the axle grease I told him to use.”
He said he could see they kept the place wholesome and asked her how many other hotels there might be in town. She looked hurt and said, “This is the best one and about the only one as takes in transients, anyways. You got to hire room and board by the week at the other places and none of ‘em are any nicer than this.”
He said he was sure of that. “The reason I’m asking is that, as I told you downstairs, I’m law. You’d remember, I hope, hiring a bed to a sort of wild-eyed little gent prone to Texas hats and goat-skin chaps?”
She nodded, but said, “We never. I know who you mean. The local law and the army police have already pestered me about that crazy cowboy as shot up the canteen out at the post. I told them, and so now I can tell you, that we ain’t had a male guest of any description for a good three days, now. There was nobody here within twenty-four hours of the shoot-up but a secretary gal and a lady coming back from Denver with her sick little boy. She’s had him in the lung spa there in hopes of a cure for his consumption.”
Longarm raised an eyebrow. “Just how big a boy might we be talking about?”
She said, “Oh, six or eight, poor little thing. I doubt he’ll ever see ten, for when we cleaned up after they caught their eastbound train there was blood on his pillowcase. Why do you ask? Do you know anyone like that?”
“Not that young. It was a grasp at a straw in any case. The little rascal I’m after don’t act sane enough to have anyone but another lunatic as a confederate.”
He dug out a dime to tip her, and though she said she was the owner and not a bellhop, she put it away anyhow and asked if he had any other possible desires. She looked disappointed when he told her, “Yep, I have to get out to Fort Halleck, now, and as I recall, it’s a short ride but a long walk. So where would I find me a good livery stable here in town?”
She said there was one just a dozen doors east but then she said, “You’ll have a time hiring a mount right now. Most of the able-bodied men and half the tough boys in town are out looking to cut the trail of that outlaw in the Texas hat. Since few keep horses regular, they’ll have hired all the livery nags.”
He shot a thoughtful glance at his saddle, shrugged, and said, “I’ll leave my gear here and give her a try, anyway. I reckon I could leg it that far if I have to. But I’d feel dumb if I did so only to find out, later, that I didn’t have to.”
She followed him out and made no surly comments as he locked the door, pocketed the key, and wedged a match stem in the jamb. But as she led the way downstairs she told him, over her shoulder, “I ain’t seen nobody use that trick since Black Jack Slade got run out of town.”
He smiled thinly. “I didn’t know my notion was that old. No offense, but you could hardly be old enough to remember the one and original Black Jack Slade, ma’am.”
She dimpled at his gallant lie. “Call me Myrtle. I has to admit I was only a girl-child when my late husband brung me out here just afore the War. He worked for Overland, too. In them days everyone in town did, save for the tinhorns and the pimps trying to take advantage of the more honest folk traveling the trail. I know they say mean things about Black Jack. In fact, he could get a mite surly when he was in his cups. But he did keep the riffraff in their place whilst he was supervisor here.”
Longarm didn’t feel up to an argument on such a hot, dry day. He said, “I did hear tell he run the coach line honest, at least when he was sober, Myrtle.”
“Black Jack took his job serious, drunk or sober. It was that French Canuck, Jules Belle, who was crooking the company. My late husband told me so, and he was in a position to know, because he worked on the books in the office, here.”
“Jules Belle would be the Jules they named the stage stop after, right?”
“As a matter of fact, he named Julesburg after his grasping self. There was nothing here but grass when they laid out the Overland Trail, and Jules Belle was the first supervisor. Belle prospered so good, so fast, that Mr. Ficklin in Council Bluffs, the firm’s general manager, sent Black Jack Slade out here to look into the matter. It didn’t take Jack long to see how sticky-fingered Belle was. Jack hired back some honest men Belle had fired for asking questions, and began to question them himself. It was right down the street Belle shot Black Jack in the back, twice, and pumped him full of number-nine buck as he lay there helpless. I didn’t see the fight, but I heard the shots, and it was me as cradled what I took to be a dying man’s head in my apron as Frenchy Belle laughed, said to bury him and send the bill to him, before he strutted off bold as brass.”