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.”