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 23

When I came out into the firelight with the double-barrelled shotgun, the two Reb Road Agents stopped and stared at me with Expression No. 4 – Surprise – across both their faces. 

‘Drop ’em. Now!’ I said in my most commanding voice. I held the gun beside my hip, my grip relaxed but not loose.

They looked at me & then they looked at each other & then they started to laugh. 

‘Lookee there! It is that strange little girl from the stagecoach!’ cried Kepi. ‘She is dressed up as a midget Marshal, you bet.’ 

‘I reckon if she pulls the trigger the kick will knock her off her feet,’ said Slouch. 

They were laughing so hard they did not even bother to draw their sidearms. 

I pointed the double-barrelled shotgun at the branch above their heads & pulled the trigger. There was a gargantuan explosion that echoed and re-echoed in the mountain night and sent pine needles drifting down into the clearing. The gun had indeed given a powerful kick, but I had been holding it slightly away from my body so it did me no harm at all apart from the ringing in my ears. When the gun smoke dispersed I saw their sidearms on the ground before them and their hands stretched high in the air. 

‘You,’ I said to Kepi. ‘Take off your pard’s belt and cinch up his hands real good behind his back. But first, back away from your guns.’

They backed away from their guns.

While Kepi was undoing Slouch’s belt, I walked over towards them and kicked their revolvers back towards where I had been hiding. Keeping the barrel of the shotgun trained on the two outlaws, I backed up. Then I used my left hand to pick up the biggest revolver. It was Slouch’s. One glance told me it was a Remington Army which takes a .44 caliber ball. I stuck it in my whang leather belt. 

After Kepi bound Slouch’s hands real good, I gestured at Slouch’s feet. ‘Take off his boots,’ I said. ‘Then take off yours.’ 

‘No!’ whimpered Kepi. ‘Not that!’

‘Take off your boots,’ I insisted. ‘Or I will blow you out of them.’

With much grunting and glaring, Kepi took off Slouch’s boots & then his own. 

‘Now, take those leather reins and use them to tie him to that tree trunk,’ I commanded. 

 ‘Listen,’ said Slouch, as he backed up to the tree in his stocking feet. ‘We got lots of silver here. We are happy to share it with you if you will just let us go.’ 

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘And stop talking.’

‘We were supposed to shoot her dead,’ muttered Kepi as he tied his pard to the tree. 

‘I did my best,’ said Slouch.

I only had one shot left in the scattergun so I took that big Remington revolver from my whang leather belt & cocked it & fired another warning shot into the tree trunk a few inches above Slouch’s head. 

BANG!

‘Dang!’ yelped Slouch, ducking down. 

‘Cheese it!’ I commanded. ‘Now, sit down with your back against the tree. Tie him up good,’ I said to Kepi.

Slouch sat at the foot of the tree & Kepi tied him to it real good. 

‘Now take off your belt,’ I said to Kepi. 

Kepi took off his belt. 

‘Use it to bind up your own ankles real good,’ I said. 

He bound up his ankles. I noticed he had a hole in his sock where his big toe poked through.  

‘Sit on the other side of the tree from your pard,’ I said. 

Kepi hopped over to the other side of the tree & sat down awkwardly, with his back to the leather-bound trunk and his belt-bound legs straight out before him. I stuck the revolver back in my belt, transferred the shotgun in my right hand & took the end of the leather traces in my left hand. I tied it to the strip of leather already wound around the tree. Then I made three circuits of the tree, wrapping them both up real tight. 

The fire had died down to a reddish glow so I threw a few more pieces of wood on the embers & stood with my back to it & examined my work. They could both see me if they turned their heads but they could not see one another. 

‘One word from either of you,’ I warned, ‘and I will take off your socks and stuff them in your mouths as a gag.’

‘You goddam blank!’ said Slouch. ‘You would not dare.’

I put down the double-barrelled shotgun & went over to him & tugged off his smelly socks and stuffed them both in his mouth. 

‘Try to spit them out and I will shoot you in the foot,’ I warned. 

Then I went round to do the same to Kepi. 

‘Please no,’ he whimpered. ‘I promise I will be quiet.’ 

But Ma Evangeline taught me never to make a threat unless you are prepared to carry it out. So I took off his threadbare socks and put them in his mouth, too.

I almost felt sorry for them until I remembered the .44 caliber bullet hole in my bonnet. 

It was now chilly, even with my velvet, fur-trimmed sacque. I went over to stand by the revived fire. I warmed my hands above it and pondered what to do. They had mentioned a stash of ‘booty’ at ‘Grizzly Gulch’. 

Then I remembered Slouch saying the ‘shebang’ was ‘less than a mile’.  

I reckoned they were talking about their camp. If I set out now with the silver-laden horses, I could get there before the moon set. I might even see another stage or rider on the road and send for the Law. Then they could put Slouch and Kepi in jail to await a trial. 

I glanced over at them. They sat barefoot & gagged & back-to-back with a big old pine trunk between them. They could not see each other but they both had their heads turned & were staring at me. With their socks poking out of their open mouths it looked like they were angrily sticking out their tongues at me. 

But even as I watched, I saw their expressions change. Their eyes got wider & their eyebrows went up. They were giving me Expression No. 4 – Surprise. 

Why were they looking at me like that?

Then I realized. They were not looking at me.

They were looking beyond me. 

Someone – or something – was coming up behind me!

[Don't have a clue what's going on? Start with chapter one.]

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!