Free Longarm on the Overland Trail by Tabor Evans Page B

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."
    "There was no law about to object to such rude behavior?"
    She turned at the bottom of the stairs to grin up at him like the wicked child he suspected she must have been in her day. "Oh, the boys were going to string Belle up. My husband was the one as got the rope. But then Ben Ficklin in the flesh came. He'd read Black Jack's first reports and had meant to fire Frenchy Belle in any case. The company owned the town. Mr. Ficklin bossed the company. So when he said he didn't want a lynching on company property, the boys had to listen. Mr. Ficklin told Frenchy Belle to ride fast and hope he'd ridden far enough by the time Black Jack died. So Belle rode, and that was that. I don't mean to boast, but I was one of the ladies as nursed poor Black Jack back to health, and it wasn't easy. Nobody but a giant of a man could have soaked up so much lead and lived."
    "Then I take it the original Black Jack was not what one could call a runt?"
    She replied, sort of wistfully, "He was tall, dark, and handsome. Almost as big as you, but a lot more dark. That's why they called him Black Jack. He could have passed for a Sioux, and some said he had Injun blood. Didn't you know that?"
    He said he hadn't thought about it, since the lunatic who was trying to be Black Jack nowadays was short, pale, and puny. Then he