The Case of the Bogus Detective 25

Too late, I realized I had not tied Kepi’s hands. That was my mistake. Somehow he must have wormed his way out from under the leather reins wrapping him to the tree & then undone the belt around his ankles. He had also taken his socks out of his mouth. 

It only took me an instant to realize this. But in that same moment, my pa whirled around & pulled out his small revolver. 

‘No!’ cried Kepi. ‘Chance– ’
Bang! Bang! Bang!

Before he could say more, my Pa’s revolver spat out three .32 caliber balls. 

The Reb Road Agent stared down at three little holes & a dark stain spreading on his pale jacket right below the heart. The shots were still echoing in the mountains around us.

‘You shot me,’ he said, and then repeated. ‘You shot me!’ 

He said it with a half-smile, like he could not believe it had really happened. 

He kind of sat down on the ground. Then he fell back onto the carpet of pine needles & stared up at the stars.  His kepi had fallen off. He had curly hair. 

‘Look at them stars,’ he said. ‘So many. Sparkling like little bitty silver ingots.’ Then he spoke no more. 

I looked at my pa. ‘You killed him, Pa. You killed him dead.’

In the moonlight Pa looked deathly pale. ‘He might of hurt you,’ he said, staring at the corpse. ‘He might have hurt you.’

Over by the pine tree, a movement caught our eyes. 

The leather traces binding Slouch to the pine had been loosened by his pard wriggling free. Slouch would have got free, too, but his bare right foot was tangled in one of the reins I had used to tie him. His hands were still bound behind him up & the socks were still sticking out of his mouth & his eyes were bugging out, too, as he stared wildly at us. 

Pa sucked in a deep breath & picked up the double-barrelled shotgun from where it lay & went over to the tree. 

Before I could say or do anything, Pa blasted him at point blank range. 

BANG!  

Slouch slammed against the tree & then slid down in a sitting position & then slumped forward, as dead as his friend. 

‘Pa!’ I cried. ‘Why did you do that? We could have just left him tied up for the Law to collect. Or we could have made him show us where they have their shebang.’ 


‘He was about to get loose,’ said Pa. ‘Like that one.’ He pointed to Kepi with his chin. ‘Plus, after a trial they would have hung him by the neck till dead. It was a mercy I was showing him. Also, they are wanted Dead or Alive. Come on,’ he said, tossing the now empty shotgun aside. ‘Let us get those silver-laden horses out of here and find their shebang.’

I felt queasy. The champagne, which had been making me happy five minutes before, had turned sour in my gut. The high moon which had been smiling on our dance now seemed cold and distant. In its pale light I saw a gaping black wound in Slouch’s chest.

I felt like I might vomit up the jerky I had eaten a while earlier so I turned away. 

Pa’s stomach was not as strong as mine. Over in the trees, he was being sick. I reckon he had not shot a man in a few years what with being behind a desk so much. 

He wiped his mouth with his C.P. handkerchief & without speaking, he led the silver-laden stagecoach horses up towards the road. 

I spotted the Reb Road Agents’ mounts further up in the black shadows of some pines. I untied them and chose the smaller one to ride. She was a little bay with a stringy tail. I put Kepi’s Henry Rifle in a saddle loop. I had to hike up my daffodil-yellow Merino wool dress underneath my belted sacque just so I could get my leg over her back. Thankfully, the velvet sacque covered my legs to just below the knees; it was getting real cold. I was shivery. 

Taking the other Reb horse by the reins, I rode after Pa who was trudging the silver-laden stage-coach horses back up the steep mountainside. I glanced back once to see the still form of Kepi lying on his back in the dying firelight. I could not even see poor blasted Slouch. He was lost in the inky shadows. 

Up by the road, I found Pa untying his big gray gelding. 

He took a crude halter that the now-deceased Reb Road Agents had fixed over the head of the lead pack-horse & swung up into the saddle & set off west. 

With Pa leading and me following, we had a convoy of nine horses, viz: the six stage horses, the two Reb horses & pa’s gelding. They were strung out in a line, moving between tall black pine trees on the moon-washed wagon road. 

We rode in silence. In my head, I kept seeing my Pa shoot those two Reb Road Agents. They had tried to kill me, but I still felt bad they were dead. 

I thought of Kepi with his bare feet & curly hair & wondering expression on his face as he looked up at the little bitty silver ingot stars. 

I thought of Slouch with his eyes bugged out in terror & that black sucking wound in his chest. I wished I had not put a sock in his mouth. Maybe he could have begged Pa to give him a chance, like Kepi had. 

I did not even know their real names. 

That picture in my head should have turned my stomach sour but I was hungry again. Also, my legs were cold. I wished I had my soft long underwear & my buckskin trowsers & my pink flannel shirt & my blue woollen coat & my nice slouch hat that kept my ears warm. Then I thought of poor dead Kepi & Slouch & Ray & Dizzy. They were all four dead and cold by now. I reckoned I was lucky to be alive and should not be complaining, even in my head. I had been colder than this in my life. I guess living in a boarding house with a feather bed had made me soft.

We had gone barely a mile when the moon showed me a lightning-blasted pine tree on the left hand side of the road and a meadow beyond & below it. 

‘Pa?’ I said. ‘See that tree and that meadow? That might be where they stashed the loot.’ 

‘By God, ye got good eyes,’ he said. ‘Do ye want to lead the way?’ 

I nudged my little bay mare forward. I could tell straightaway that she knew the path, so I gave her the reins and let her find the best footing. 

‘My horse knows the way, Pa,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘I reckon that is proof we are on the right track.’

‘Good thinking,’ he said. He sent the silver-bearing stage-coach horses down the track after me & took up the rear.

From time to time the moonlight showed me a path marked by scuffed pine needles and bare earth, but mostly I gave the bay mare free rein to guide us. She led me & Pa & those six heavy-laden horses along the edge of the meadow, close to the trees. All sudden-like, she turned left and passed between two towering pines and we were in another moonlit clearing with a cave like a gaping black mouth in the steep hillside straight ahead. 

I smelled an old fire & saw some empty oyster cans & bottles off to one side & a pile of firewood & maybe a latrine pit. Over to the left I heard the gurgling of a brook. I reckoned this was the camp of the Dead Road Agents & that cave was their shebang.  

My little bay mare was suddenly pulled up short. The lead horse behind her had stopped. He was snorting & tossing his head & as I had roped his halter to my pommel it made me stop too.

Behind me, the other pack horses started whinnying & snorting  & I could hear Pa cussing in Scottish. 

I smelled something faintly rank that always makes me think of my Indian Ma on account of she used to make hair pomade out of bear fat. 

Now I knew why the horses were spooked. 

And why they called it Grizzly Gulch.

Read on...

The Case of the Bogus Detective 24

I grabbed the shotgun & whirled to see what was coming into the firelight. I was kind of crouched and my scattergun was cocked and ready for action. 

Hallelujah!

It was my Pinkerton Pa. 

Dang! 

He was aiming a small pistol at my heart. 

I remembered I was wearing my disguise of Ray’s hat and a belt around my sacque. 

‘Don’t shoot, pa!’ I put down the shotgun & stretched out my hands. ‘It is me! Pinky!’

‘Prudence!’ cried my Pa. He dropped his piece back into the pocket of his overcoat. ‘You’re alive!’ He ran forward & shmooshed me in his pa’s bear hug for a long time. 

At last he held me out at arm’s length. ‘I canna believe it!’ he said. ‘Are ye really all right?’

I nodded. I suddenly felt like crying.

‘Praise the Lord,’ he said. ‘I heard gunshots and rode back as fast as I could. Then I saw firelight, but when I saw ye from behind – wearing that hat – I dinnae recognize ye. Where’s yer own wee hat with the daffodils? Why are ye dressed like that?’ 

I said, ‘I am dressed like this so those Reb Road Agents would take me seriously and not try to escape nor kill me.’ 

‘Reb Road Agents?’ he cried. ‘What Reb Road Agents?’

I pointed to the foot of the pine tree. 

The moon had made the tree’s thick branches cast an inky black shadow on Slouch and Kepi. They had seen Pa, but he was only just now noticing them. 

His face looked white in the moonlight. Now he was the one wearing Expression No. 4 – his mouth & eyes open wide in surprise. 

He looked down at me. ‘This was your doing?’ 

I nodded. 

‘What did they say?’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I gagged them with their own smelly socks.’

My pa gave a crooked smile & shook his head. ‘Dang! You are a one. What happened?’

I said, ‘We were about five miles out of Friday’s Station and it was getting dark when they jumped out of the gloaming and told Dizzy to stop the stage. But Dizzy bullwhipped the one in the kepi and got the team moving again. We almost got away. Then the one in the slouch hat shot Dizzy. I took over the reins. We were going downhill when–’

‘Where was Ray all this time?’ 

‘He was inside the coach sleeping on the mailbags. He had drunk a lot of Tooth Elixir. But then he climbed out of the window and pulled poor Dizzy right off the driver’s box even though he might have still been alive.’

‘By Dizzy, d’ye mean the driver?’ asked my pa. 

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Ray climbed up to the box even though we were still going a mile a minute. He told me to stop & surrender to the Reb Road Agents as we would never get away. I was all for driving the team on to Yank’s Station but he tried to wrassle the reins from my grip and then it happened, just like in my nightmare.  We went off the cliff and down into this gorge.’

‘That dam fool,’ said Pa. ‘Where is he?’ 

‘Dead, most likely.’ 

Pa shook his head. ‘It is a miracle ye’re still alive.’

I said, ‘Yes. It was a miracle. A branch caught my sacque –’

‘Your what?’ 

‘This velvet cape. I reckon it’s the only thing that kept me from breaking my neck. Ray was not wearing a sacque,’ I added. ‘So his neck is probably broke.’

‘I never should have suggested this plan,’ said Pa. ‘Ye could have got kilt.’

I said, ‘Never mind, Pa. It would have been a good plan if it had worked.’

‘But it did work!’ he said. ‘Thanks to you. Look at that. You captured them single-handed.’

‘Where is the decoy stage full of agents?’ I asked. ‘Did you bring them back with you?’

‘They are probably halfway to Sac City by now,’ he said. ‘I was hanging back to see where ye were and they got well ahead of me. I don’t understand why these rascals did not try to stop them.’ He narrowed his eyes at the bound & gagged Reb Road Agents. 

I nodded. ‘It is almost as if they were expecting us,’ I said. Then I thought of something. ‘Pa, do you know what a “shebang” is?’

He nodded. ‘It’s like a rough shelter or hut.’ 

I said, ‘Then I know where they are keeping the rest of the stolen money.’

‘Ye do?’

I nodded. ‘They were talking about it before I threw down on them,’ I said. ‘They have stashed some booty at a place called Grizzly Gulch which I think it is less than a mile from here.’

He said, ‘We had better find it quick.’

I nodded. ‘We still have a few hours of moonlight. If we start now with the horses and the silver, we could get there before the moon sets. Once we have found their shebang we can turn in these two and get the reward. Then I can go back to Chicago with you and be a detective,’ I added.

Pa looked at me with a strange expression. I could not read it. He picked up the champagne bottle that Kepi had been swigging from and took a suck. Then he held it out to me. 

‘Here!’ he said. ‘Dutch courage.’

I said, ‘I got my own courage.’

‘Then drink a toast to us: Pinkerton and Daughter!’

I hesitated. 

‘Go on!’ he said with a wink. ‘Remember? The bubbles mean it ain’t spirituous.’  

I lifted the heavy bottle to my mouth and took a sip. It was warm & sweet & fizzy. It reminded me of the previous night when we had dined & drunk champagne & then danced the Schottische. 

I drank another swallow, then held it out to him. 

‘To Pinkerton and daughter!’ said my Pa, holding the bottle aloft and then taking a drink. ‘Now you say it, too.’ 

I said, ‘To Pinkerton and daughter!’ I took another sip, but I swallowed wrong and it fizzed hotly all the way down to my chest and made me cough. 

He patted me on the back, laughing. 

Suddenly everything felt fine. I was with my pa. We had saved the silver & vanquished the Reb Road Agents & would soon find their stash. Best of all, I was going back to Chicago with Robert Pinkerton as his savior & legally adopted child. 

I held out the bottle to Pa. He swigged the last of the champagne & tossed the bottle into the trees. 

‘Yee-haw!’ he cried. 

‘Yee-haw!’ I agreed. 

Then he stood up & grabbed me & waltzed me round the campfire among the scattered letters. He was humming the tune of the Schottische we had danced to the night before. 

We must have seemed a strange sight to those two Reb Road Agents tied up to their pine tree. A humming Pinkerton Detective aged about 45 dancing with a 12-year-old half-Indian girl in a too-big, flat-brimmed hat & button-up boots & a fur-trimmed velvet sacque belted with a piece of whang leather with a Remington Revolver stuck in the front & a yellow velvet purse dangling from the back. 

The almost-full moon was directly above. It seemed to smile down on us. The golden sparks from the fire hurried up to join the wobbling stars. 

I felt bubbles of happiness rising up in me, too, like a thousand tiny hot air balloons. My pa & I were dancing together in a silent glade beneath a million stars. 

But as my pa spun me around I caught a flash of a something emerging from the shadows into the flickering firelight. It was Kepi. Somehow he had got free.

‘Watch out, pa!’ I cried. ‘Behind you!’ 

Read on...

The Case of the Bogus Detective 12

My spirits revived a little when Pa took me to Almack’s Oyster and Liquor Saloon down on C Street. We were shown to a high-tone dining room in back. 

It had tables around a polished square of wooden floor with a big chandelier overhead. It was now dusk and there were candles giving a soft, golden light. 

The tables had heavy white tablecloths & silverware & crystal goblets. 

A high-tone waiter in black and white led us to a table for two. He pulled out a velvet chair for me.

When I slumped down on it, Pa rolled his eyes. 

He showed me how to sit with ankles crossed and Good Posture. 

He told me to take off the little white gloves he had made me buy. 

Then he ordered a bottle of Best Champagne. (Ma Evangeline had made me promise never to drink liquor but my Pinkerton pa said the bubbles meant it didn’t count as liquor, and he was teetotal so he should know.)

The bottle of Best Champagne made a pop when the waiter opened it & it spurted out some white foam. Pa tried to catch it in one of the glasses and he laughed when it soaked his new shirt cuff. (I had bought him a new shirt to go with his hat.) The waiter dabbed Pa’s damp cuff with his waiter-napkin & then poured the champagne into special glasses that were flat & round & shallow. I was entranced by the pale-gold liquid. It had about a hundred tiny silver bubbles all swimming up in strings that never ran out.

I downed mine in one, like I have seen folk do with whiskey in a saloon, but I had a bad coughing fit on account of the bubbles & coldness. 

‘Sip, for the love of God,’ hissed my pa, as he refilled my glass. ‘Sip!’

I sipped.

It was sweet & fizzy & made my heart rise up in my chest like a little hot air balloon in the blue sky. 

It was the bulliest beverage I had ever tried. 

There were 3 forks & 2 knives & a passel of little spoons on my place mat. Pa told me to start with the outside utensils and work my way in. 

Pa ordered a fancy five-course meal. It was tasty food but I would have enjoyed it more if Pa had not kept telling me what not to do.  

He told me not to hunker down like a vulture over its prey, but to sit up straight.

He told me not to slurp my soup, but make my spoon like a boat.

He told me not to tip the oysters out of their half-shells straight down my open throat, but to use a special fork. 

He told me not to use the horseradish to glue the peas to my knife. 

He told me not to lick the last of the strawberry blancmange off my plate.

After all five courses, the waiter brought two china cups of black coffee and a plate of fancy little marzipan cakes called petits fours which are pronounced Putty For. Pa taught me to crook my little finger while sipping coffee and he challenged me to eat one of the marzipan cakes in ten tiny mouthfuls. I just about managed to do both those things. 

About this time two men with fiddles started playing toe-tapping music. A few couples got up & began swirling around the little bare space which was a dance floor. The music was bully & it might have entranced me but Pa wanted to teach me how to make Small Talk. 

Small Talk is where you talk about the weather & other genteel things but never about how a Methodist preacher & his wife found you on the Great Plains by the grave of your massacred Injun ma or how they adopted you & taught you reading & writing & scripture and brought you to Nevada Territory before they too got massacred. 

By and by Pa allowed me to tell my story but he made me do it without the cussing or scalpings. 

Then he let me tell him about some of the crimes I had solved. By now he had stopped telling me not to cuss nor mention blood. He just listened with his mouth half open. I reckon he was entranced. 

I was telling Pa how I had vanquished a beautiful but murderous widow named Violetta de Baskerville when he stood up sudden-like and offered his hand. 

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I am going to teach ye to dance,’ he replied. 

‘Do I have to learn how to dance?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘A young lady needs to know how to dance. If ye are to be a Pinkerton operative, ye might have to do lots of it. Put on yer wee gloves and hold up yer right hand,’ he said. ‘Like ye’re taking an oath in court.’

Part-Indians like me cannot take oaths in court but I held up my right hand anyways. He took it & pulled me to my feet & put his arm around my waist. I usually do not like to be touched but I did not mind it too much as he was my pa. He showed me how to move my feet by moving his own. 

I could not do it. 

‘Keep trying,’ he said. He smelled of Lucy Hinton tobacco & coffee & musky hair balm. It was a nice smell. I kept trying. 

I could not master it. 

‘They are playing a dance called a Schottische,’ he said. ‘It is from Scotland. It is our slower version of a polka.’ He was smiling & not getting impatient with my clumsiness & stupidity. 

Concentrating on the steps prevented me from slipping into a music trance but I found my pa looked like a friendly otter again. I did not mind dancing with a friendly otter. 

I kept trying to get it. 

I almost had it. 

I finally got it! 

One moment I was stepping on my pa’s new shoes & the next we were dancing! I could do it. Even in my silly button-up boots, I could do it! 

We were spinning & trying not to barge the 2 other couples & our feet were twinkling & the fiddlers’ faces whirled past wearing No. 1 smiles. Finally the music stopped & everyone laughed & clapped & fanned their faces. 

When my Pa went out back to use the outhouse, I almost plonked down at our table but remembered just in time and sat with ankles crossed and Good Posture. 

I finished the champagne in my glass. I felt like all the little bubbles were lifting me up from inside. 

Suddenly Jace was sitting opposite me. 

‘P.K.,’ he said. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

‘Jace! What are you doing here?’ I said. My words came out a mite slurry. 

He looked at me through a cloud of cigar smoke. ‘News reached me a couple of hours ago. People ain’t happy that you have been pranking them for seven months. Why are you dressed like that? Folk will think you are mocking them.’

‘What is wrong with this?’ I said, looking down at my yellow and green frock. I could hear my voice was too loud. The room was tilting a little. 

‘Well, that color don’t suit you for one thing,’ he said. 

‘You think Magenta would be better?’ I said. ‘Or maybe Solferino? Like what Violetta wears?’

(Violetta de Baskerville was the beautiful but deadly widow I had been telling my pa about. She was partial to fashionable shades of purple. She had tried to get her claws into Jace a few months earlier, but I had saved him from unholy matrimony & sent her packing to Frisco.)

He turned his head to blow smoke away from me. ‘I ain’t saying you should dress like Violetta,’ he said. ‘Though any dress in her closet would suit you better than what you are wearing now.’

It stung me when he said that but I was sure my face showed no emotion. 

‘This is the way my Pa likes me to dress,’ I said, lifting my chin. 

‘Yeah,’ said Jace. ‘I been watching you and your pa.’

‘Well he is going take me to Chicago and I don’t care what you think.’

Jace stubbed out his cigar even though it was only half-smoked. ‘All right then. I didn’t come to talk ladies’ fashions. I just came to try to help. But it looks like you don’t need advice. Good luck in Chicago.’ 

‘Who was that?’ said Pa, coming up to the table. 

I looked at Jace’s retreating back. ‘Just an old client,’ I said. 

‘I have had a wee notion,’ said my pa. 

‘What?’ The champagne in my stomach had gone sour. 

‘I have decided to adopt ye.’

‘What?’ I said again. There was a high-pitched ringing inside my head. 

‘I’m going to adopt ye. Tomorrow morning first thing, if ye will let me.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘what about your wife?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll tell Caroline that ye’re an orphan. I know she’ll learn to love ye. And ye’ll be a bone fide Pinkerton. Now gissa hug.’ 

I stood up and let him embrace me in a strong, firm bear hug. 

Through the muffling sleeves of his jacket against my ears I heard a lady say, ‘Aw, ain’t that sweet. A pa hugging his daughter.’

I knew I should have felt happy, for my dearest dream was about to come true. 

But for some reason I only wanted to blub. 

Dang my changing body!

Read on HERE...

The Case of the Bogus Detective by Caroline Lawrence is the fourth P.K. Pinkerton Mystery. You can buy the first 3 real cheap HERE. And you can read the rest of this one HERE. Or just check into this blog, where I will be posting chapters weekly!  

Golden Treasury Champagne Party

David Schofield

On a cold, clear December night (2004), I went along to a champagne drinks party to celebrate the re-opening of the new enlarged Golden Treasury in Southfields, a suburb of London. You can see more info about this independent children's bookshop at www.thegoldentreasury.co.uk

I chatted with my author friends Cliff McNish, Marcus Sedgwick and Graham Marks and met authors Rose Wilkins and Mary Hooper. Ian Beck was there, too; he's an illustrator. You can see them all pictured below.

I also met an actor who was in the Oscar-winning film Gladiator! David Schofield (above right) played the part of Senator Falco. He told me some great stories about filming with director Ridley Scott. He and I are both huge fans of that director, so that was fab! David told me that when Oliver Reed died unexpectedly in the middle of filming, they had to change the end of the story. So they flew in a top Hollywood script-doctor. Now I can't confirm this, but David said he was there for a week and they paid him $150,000... per DAY! No wonder lots of my writer friends want to become screenwriters.

Golden Treasury Southfields 

above: kids' authors at the re-opening of the new improved Golden Treasury in Southfields. From top left clockwise: Ian Beck, Marcus Sedgwick, Graham Marks, Cliff McNish, Mary Hooper, Rose Wilkins, and Caroline Lawrence. Sadly, none of us earn $150,000 per day.