by Tabor Evans
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."
