The Ballad of Black Bart

by Loren D. Estleman

  “If he did, some sourdough will stumble on his bones, depend on it.” Thorn drank. He was imbibing more now and eating less. His appetite had deserted him, taking with it the comforts of inebriation. The stuff had no more effect on his mood than mineral water. He’d survived decades of innuendo in respect to his lavish place of dwelling, only to win re-election most recently by a narrow plurality. Seven years of steady plunder by the damn scribbling rascal, and the sheriffs of a dozen counties and Wells, Fargo’s vaunted sleuth were no closer to laying hands on him than they had been at the start. Thorn was painted a fat incompetent in a golden cage, and it was no comfort that his companion showed few signs of worry on his own behalf. Surely the Company was as impatient as the press and the public for a finish to the thing.

  “I’d hate for that to be the case,” said the detective. “It would be like coming to the end of a book only to find the last page is missing.”

  “I care not, so long as we come to the end. What are the great men saying?”

  “Just now Mr. Wells and Mr. Fargo are kicking up a fuss round Hackett, the shotgun messenger. I shouldn’t be surprised if the journals call for him to replace me.” He chuckled.

  “How in thunder can you joke of it? You are too old to be out scouting for employment.”

  “I may hang it up anyway; but only once I’ve twisted my hand inside Bart’s collar.” He wrung the sack. “Life will be drab once I’ve managed that.”

  “I shouldn’t mind a little drabness.”

  They sat in silence, Thorn refilling his glass from time to time from the square cut-crystal decanter and siphon on the table at his elbow, Hume fingering the stained sack and lighting his succession of cigars. The room took on a fug of alcohol fumes and tobacco-smoke. Anna Thorn would complain, upon returning from her charity work, that the place smelled like a low tavern.

  The sheriff reopened his favorite subject. “You ought to be concerned, for your sake as well as for mine. This makes three-and-twenty times Bart’s nicked the Company.”

  “Twenty-two. I’m not persuaded it was he at Little Lake. That fellow was a brute.”

  “Because he neglected to say, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’? Perhaps his courtesy has ebbed away along with his poetic spirit. What would you select to rhyme with ‘I’ll blow your goddamn head off’?”

  “Anyone can obtain a flour sack and carve holes in it. The man who left this one behind, turning tail at the first shot fired in anger without returning fire, is our man. I wonder if that gun of his is even loaded. Hum.” He pumped locomotive gusts into the murk, considering the matter.

  “If it wasn’t before, you can be sure it is now. If our man is losing his gentleman’s manners, it may not be such a bad thing. If he wings or slays an employee or a passenger, perhaps the press will stop writing of him as if he were some kind of Lochinvar.”

  “It would seem to be a very bad thing for the victim,” said the other, scowling into the pall; but the suggestion intrigued him for a moment. He shook his head. “Once these fellows have their teeth into an idea, it’s the same to them as gospel. They’ll sing his praises till trumpet’s blow. He could be photographed strangling Jenny Lind on the stage of the Grand Opera House and they would claim he gallantly came forward to save her from choking on a herring-bone. No, Ben, I think our only course is to run him to ground.”

  “Capital. I was certain you’d arrive at a solution to all the evils that beset us. Now all we need is a way to bring the thing about.”

  “How does one go about flushing a badger from its burrow?”

  “That’s easy. Smoke him out.”

  “That would be feckless. Badgers always dig an escape tunnel. You post a man at both ends and wait him out.”

  “But where is Bart’s burrow?”

  “Somewhere close, I’m bound. I feel it in our bones. Where would a man who has made such easy gains go to spend them, if not San Francisco?”

  “That’s a mighty large burrow.”

  “Patience will shrink it in time.”

  Thorn took a large swig and wobbled it around his mouth before committing it to his throat; the burn when it reached his stomach was more satisfying when he let the liquid come to body temperature. “Of course, the stumbling-block with Patience is it’s a game that must be played alone.”

  * * *

  He wore a patch of sticking-plaster on his temple for six weeks, and took care to keep his head covered in public view. The wound needed stitches to avoid permanence, but he dare not consult a physician; his scrape with shotgun messenger Hackett had been reported, and spread through every telegraph column in the country, and whatever Hippocrates had had to say about the seal of the profession, it was gossamer compared to the greenbacks Wells, Fargo was offering for Black Bart’s capture and conviction. He was not a religious man, but he prayed that the hair would grow back and conceal the wound.

  His companions during this period noted that Charlie Bolton was uncharacteristically moody. Neither Matt Leacock nor Alec Fitzhugh could draw him out with the usual banter about racing and prizefighting, and their companion’s gift for the humorous anecdote seemed to have abandoned him. He was drinking more as well; sometimes as many as three brandies over supper, and the neck of a miniature calabash flask poked from a waistcoat pocket. He spoke little, and only in response to something directed at him, ate even less, and left them to their desserts with a few perfunctory words of farewell.

  “Mr. Bolton?”

  He’d started past the cloakroom without thought of his coat. The girl paled a little when he jumped at the sound of his name, but said nothing, even when he scraped a nickel across the counter and shrugged into the garment on his way out without a word or the lines of poetry she’d come to look forward to as a respite from the tedium of her job. She pouted at his back, and had to be addressed twice by the next customer before turning to redeem his coat check.

  “D’you think the Panic affected his mines?” Fitzhugh asked.

  Leacock doctored his milk with port. “I shouldn’t think. Things have eased up considerable, with Chet Arthur in office; he’s a friend to business and don’t gouge too much for a favor. The trade in cattle couldn’t be better.”

  “Whale oil’s improving. For a while there I was afraid they were burning tallow on Fifth Avenue.”

  “The rich are always the first to complain when the screws tighten.”

  “Not working stiffs like you and me, eh?” Fitzhugh grinned, flicking a crumb of cake from a lapel. “We aren’t exactly lining up outside the Salvation Army, and neither is Charlie. Like all those mining pioneers he’s stuffed his mattress with bundles.”

  “No doubt; though he’s taken on bad manners. I never knew him to leave his hat on indoors.”

  * * *

  Truth be told, he was not so much disheartened as worn out. The close transaction near Strawberry had cost him sleep, but the lesson had been worth the tutor’s price, lest he blunder into his own grave: If there are two men sharing the driver’s seat, stay behind your boulder and wait for the next coach, like any city commuter who’d missed one trolley and must hold his soul in check waiting for the next. The sheer chore of cracking Wells, Fargo’s new boxes was a trial, and sleeping on the ground under the stars (and in drenching rain and sometimes bitter snow) was a young man’s sport, before the skin began to thin and rheumatism filled his joints with chalk.

  Although he couldn’t know what they’d discussed when he was absent, Leacock and Fitzhugh had hit close to the mark regarding his change of humor, but they’d had it backward: It was the improvement of the country’s economic situation since the Panic that had dampened his spirits, not the reverse. Settlers who a few years before had thought nothing of putting up a stranger for the night, blaming his itinerant habits on the scarcity of paying employment, now peered at him with rancor and, worse, suspicion when he showed up at their door with his tattered blanket roll asking for a roof. They saw him as either a wastrel or a threat, a refugee from hard times
who’d gone in for pilferage to survive the Panic and found it still to his liking.

  They weren’t far off, at that; although if they caught on to the whole truth, they might have relented, as Black Bart was known to prick the sides only of Wells and Fargo, who were wealthy men and could afford to bleed a bit; but the same road was traveled by vipers who wriggled their way into a Good Samaritan’s home and cut his throat for the contents of his house. Bolton couldn’t take the chance of dropping his guard and leaving anyone with an accurate description of Black Bart. He’d come close to that once before and, as with the Strawberry attempt, he learned from his mistakes.

  Should he happen to forget, he could thank George W. Hackett for leaving him with a reminder that throbbed like hell’s own furnaces every time the fog rolled in from the bay.

  On the top shelf of the wardrobe in his bedroom in the Webb House, inside the Montgomery Ward box his boots had come in, were rows of banknotes in neat stacks, hedged in round the edges by sacks of gold coins. (Mattresses were too well-known as caches, and the shelf was too high for the old Chinese woman who brought him hot water and cleaned the room to reach.) He hoisted it down carefully, balancing it to avoid straining his back; it was as heavy as a portable sewing machine.

  He dragged his valise from under the bed, opened it on the coverlet, took out the tired old blanket roll, and laid it aside, the hatchet, shotgun, and other tools inside clanking against one another as they shifted. He packed carefully, lining the bottom with stacks of paper currency and placing his clothes on top and tucking a sack of coins between rolled socks. He put several denominations of banknotes in his wallet and tucked some larger bills under the insoles of his dress boots; his hiking pair, worn round now at the heels, the leather cracked from soaking in the rain and drying next to open fires, lay under the bed. He left the rest of the sacks of coins inside the box and returned it to the shelf, placing the blanket roll on top.

  Sitting on the bed, he sorted through the maps and stage schedules in the drawer of the nightstand until he came to a railroad timetable. He took it out and studied it, circling various departures with his carpenter’s pencil and swigging from his pocket flask until it was empty. Then he undressed, put out the lamp, and slid under the covers, folding his hands behind his head—swimming now; he would never develop resistance to inebriation—and gazing at the papered ceiling the same way he’d hunted constellations in the night sky.

  It was as good a time as any for a holiday; and long past time Charles E. Bolton went home.

  FIFTEEN

  The sparrow, they say, finds its way to the nest;

  and the sun in its turn makes its bed in the west.

  So Black Bart, “the Po8,” and Jim Hume, the sleuth;

  took rest to prepare for their moment of truth.

  “There is no room to bargain, Jim. Your department will function without you present.”

  Hume looked about him, at the bright silver and crisp linen, the waiters in livery embroidering their way between tables with trays aloft, heard the tinkling of utensils and clicking of crockery, the strings playing on the discreet platform in the corner—“Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” though it may as well have been “The Wells, Fargo Line”—and grasped the reason for John Valentine’s choice for luncheon. Leave it to the tight-fisted general superintendent to select a venue where his guest would not make a scene when told he was being sacked. Carefully he tilted his cigar into a shallow tray and rolled out the burning end. He kept his voice low.

  “You should have told me you were releasing me before we ordered. Now I’ll be remembered as the detective who robbed the Company on his way out the door.”

  Valentine kept his composure. “No one is being released; except you of your responsibilities, for a month. You’re not a machine. If I were to allow you to go on as you have without a holiday, I should be an accomplice to suicide.”

  “I wasn’t aware that my health was any concern of the Company’s. Or its business, for that matter.”

  “Be reasonable, Jim. What use are you to Wells and Fargo if you collapse at your desk?”

  “Have I given you any reason to think I’m incapable of doing my work? If that’s the case, fire me outright.”

  “You’ve put more bandits behind bars, and recovered more money, than all your predecessors combined. The Company could do without me more than it could without you, although I’ll thank you if that stays at this table. There are other concerns besides Black Bart. You’ve fixed on him at peril to your well-being.”

  “My health again. Have I lost weight? Am I pale? Coughing up blood?”

  The other sat back, relieving the edge of the table of the pressure of his stomach. “Reach into your inside breast pocket and take out what you find. If it’s a handkerchief and not a flour sack with blood on it, I won’t press the issue further.”

  A streak of red scored Hume’s cheeks, then faded. “It’s nothing. A string tied round my finger, to prevent me from forgetting.”

  “Untie it. Forgetting about Bart is the point of this conversation. Go back East, visit family.”

  “I have none.”

  “Then go north and shoot elk. Let your beard grow. There will still be bandits when you come back.”

  “Was this your idea?”

  “You’ve told me often enough I have no imagination. It comes directly from Mr. Wells and Mr. Fargo, and will not be withdrawn.”

  His companion was interrupted in what he was about to say by the waiter, who removed the lid from his tray, set out their meals—slices of rare duck, scalloped potatoes, and asparagus in Hollandaise for Valentine, bread and consommé for Hume’s nervous stomach—and refilled their glasses from a pitcher of water.

  “Suppose I resign,” Hume said when they were alone again. “What then?”

  Valentine, tucking his napkin under his collar, chortled. “You won’t do that, Jim.”

  “I won’t?”

  “You won’t. You’d never forgive yourself if someone else takes Black Bart after you left.”

  “What if it happens while I’m out shooting elk?”

  “Then you can come back, shave, and take credit. You’ve brought us closer to him than anyone else. I’ll fire the rascal who follows the tracks you laid to the end and tries to claim the honor.”

  So it happened that James B. Hume took his first leave of absence in all the years he’d worked for others.

  The basement of the brick building, in addition to the safe, a two-ton Acme, black with gilt lettering, bolted to the concrete floor and as ugly as a rich man’s daughter, contained the best-stocked arsenal west of Harpers Ferry. Rows of revolvers, shotguns, rifles, carbines, and knives of all sizes occupied locked cabinets glazed in two-inch-thick panes embedded with steel grids, with ammunition in drawers labeled like those that held bolts, screws, and washers in a hardware store. The air was so pungent with oil and polished hickory as to seem slippery to the touch. The clerk in charge, an armorer in everything but name, spent all his time maintaining the inventory. His nails were broken, stained with bluing; the very skin of his face was gunmetal-colored, as if the weapons in his charge had leeched it of flesh and blood. His dundrearies were the shimmery black of black powder, dry to the point of percussion, and his eyes were as balls of lead bright from the crucible. The counter he stood behind, which doubled as a bench, supported a vise in which was clenched the frame of a revolver—a skeletal hand pointing its index finger—with screws, springs, and other components scattered about like pieces of broken toys.

  The visitor was a stranger to the clerk, who asked to see his badge and commission papers. When he read the name, his body, slumped upon first contact in the attitude of a craftsman interrupted in his work, came to a sort of attention.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Hume. We don’t see you here often.”

  “Almost never. I do my stalking on the second floor.”

  The clerk took him on a tour. Given the stature of his guest, he was demonstrably proud of the invento
ry in his trust, and lingered over items of unique interest; but only to him. Hume hastened him through the exhibition.

  “Let me see that one. No, the second to the left.”

  The clerk wore a ring the size of a cantaloupe chained to his belt. A brass key from the collection unlocked the cabinet. He slid a slim rifle from the rack. “Stevens; the sporting model, chambered for a twenty-two-caliber cartridge. A bit on the light side for elk, Mr. Hume.”

  The detective made no response. John Valentine, for all his virtues, was a gossip. No doubt a folksy account of the legendary chief of detective’s forthcoming rustication would appear in all the evening papers.

  He inspected the weapon for balance and heft, approving of its lightness: At fifty-five years of age, more accustomed to riding a Jefferson swivel than a saddle horse, his days of lugging heavy equipment into the wilderness had drawn to a close. He opened and shut the breech, pronounced the action smooth, reversed ends to peer inside the barrel. It was clean, gleaming with a thin application of oil. He switched ends again, shouldered the butt, lined up the sights, and dry-fired the trigger, slinging an imaginary round into the center of the gilt laurels on the door of the safe. Finally he swung the butt to the floor. All these things he did with Marine precision, one of the indelible lessons learned sheriffing. “I’ll take a box of shells.”

  A drawer was unlocked, a deal box produced, and they returned to the clerk’s station, where the visitor leaned the rifle against the counter and signed the ledger under the line where a shotgun messenger had made his mark.

  “Good hunting, Mr. Hume.”

  “Thank you. If I come back empty-handed, it won’t be the fault of the weapon. I’m not that kind of carpenter who blames his tools.”