“Then let me go on after that more ominous killer,” said Longarm. “You don’t need my testimony, even if I could swear I saw the man beat his women. His boy did, and he’s owned up to it.”
The stubborn old judge shook his head. “The boy is a minor. His testimony counts, but not as much as that of a grown man or even a woman, no offense, Miss Ann. The accused is an adult, sort of, but should he retract his confession in open court we’ll need the two of you to back the prosecution’s word that he confessed to both of you as well.”
Longarm groaned. “I know full well how often a gent facing hard time considers telling it another way after he’s had some words with a slick defense lawyer, Your Honor. But you still have this lady and the boy, and I can leave a sworn deposition for the court, can’t I?”
“Nope. As a known peace officer with a good rep, who heard the words of both the dying woman and the man who killed her, your testimony will carry the most weight. If you won’t stay willing for the trial I’ll just have to hold you in another cell as a material witness. So what’s it going to be?”
Longarm shot a look at the blushing Ann and decided “I’d as soon stay willing, at the hotel. But how much time are we talking about, Your Honor?”
The judge thought before he said, “Oh, we can start the trial as soon as we get the boy up here by rail. Let’s say day after tomorrow, to be safe. The trial shouldn’t take more than two or three days if he decides to make a fight of it. Way less than that if he don’t go back on his confession. So, all in all, you should be able to go on after that outlaw by the end of the week.”
Longarm took a deep breath and tried to keep from snarling as he said, “Your Honor, by that time my want may have made it over the mountains to Lord knows where.”
But the judge insisted, “Joseph Slade is not the one being tried by this district court. Dan Hogan is. So, like the Indian chief said, I have spoken.”
He meant it. By that afternoon Longarm had gotten Billy Vail and even the judge of the Denver District Court to wire that the mule-headed cuss in Lander was obstructing justice. But he wouldn’t budge. So, while the next few nights were delightful, the days wore on tedious as hell.
Longarm spent a lot of time at the Western Union, trying to trap that other killer by wire if they wouldn’t let him chase after him personal. It was sort of surprising how much a lawman could learn that way, even when he couldn’t do anything. Longarm began to suspect that once they had those new Bell telephones strung everywhere, he as well as the men he got to chase figured to be out of business. Even having to wait for answers, he was able to establish that he might not have caught the rascal even had he been allowed to follow his original plan. For tiny town after town in the high country to the west reported back that, no, they hadn’t spied any strangers of any description trying to get over the mountains by any trail, in open country, where a rider on a rise could see for miles in all directions.
By the afternoon the judge finally got around to throwing twenty years for manslaughter at the weeping Dan Hogan, it was too late for serious riding, even had Longarm known where to ride, now. So he took Ann and a bottle of rye to bed at the hotel early. As they were making love she suddenly blurted, “It’s over between us, isn’t it, darling?”
He kissed her. “Not until the cruel gray dawn. I’m sorry if I seem distracted tonight, honey. It ain’t you. It’s that loco little Black Jack Junior. I think I’ve lost him for good.”
They knew one another well enough to talk and make love at the same time. So she hugged him reassuringly with her thighs and said, “I’m sure you’ll pick up his trail when he acts crazy some more, dear.”
He shook his head. “I was supposed to catch him before he killed again, not follow a dotted line of victims as I was wasting time up here. In that courtroom, I mean. This part has been mighty fine.”
She thanked him with a teasing twist of her torso and said, “He may be in remission, you know.”
“I didn’t know. What are you talking about?” he said.
“Sometimes victims of dementia praecox just stop. They don’t get better. There’s no treatment for that condition. But a split personality can split again, to somebody crazy in yet another way, see?”
He grimaced. “Oh, swell. I could be chasing a Black Jack Slade Junior who thinks he’s Buffalo Bill?”
She said, “I’m trained as a midwife, not a head doctor. But I do recall reading that the condition tends to get worse, not better. If he’s still alive, sooner or later, something is sure to rub him the wrong way again and, when you rub dementia praecox the wrong way it goes off like dynamite.”
“I’ve noticed that about the little rascal. He may think he’s someone else, now. But I’d have heard if he’d been killed, acting crazy or any other way. I even found out how his model wound up buried in Salt Lake so mysterious.”
“Does it really matter?” she asked, moving her hips faster. He decided it didn’t, just then. But later, as they were cuddled calmer, he said, “It was neither a geographical mistake by an English writer nor that notion another had that his wife was a Mormon. They just put his box on the wrong train. When it got to Salt Lake City, late in July, old Jack was so stinky that they didn’t want to ship him half way back to Illinois. So the railroad sprang for a handsome marker on hallowed ground, and his kin agreed not to sue them after all.”
She didn’t sound interested. She snuggled closer and said, “I wish both of them were dead and buried, so you wouldn’t have to leave in the morning. Oh, Custis, so soon?”
He kissed her again and said, “I ain’t kissing you because I’m horny. I’m kissing you because you just gave me a grand notion.”
Billy Vail gave Longarm more like general hell when he showed up in Denver at last, empty-handed. Vail said, “Longarm, it has been established that we can’t win ‘em all. But I’ve never seen you give up so soon. You didn’t even go to Montana or Utah after the cuss, and we agreed he was heading for one or the other on the old Overland Trail.”
“The trail only goes to Salt Lake, not Virginia City,” Longarm said, “and young Slade never meant to go to neither. We just got slickered by a slick and cunning killer, not a lunatic. Do you want to tag along and share the credit for the arrest?”
