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...
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.]
Dizzy had put the heavy reins of a six-horse team in my gloved hands. I was so startled I nearly fell off the coach.
I said, ‘How can I drive a six-horse team if I am supposed to be personating a demure little girly-girl and fool the Reb Road agents?’
Dizzy said, ‘You can see they ain’t nobody on this here stretch of road. Besides, those Road Agents are lurking up in them thar mountains not down here on the high plains.’
‘Hey!’ protested Ray. ‘Ain’t that dangerous?’ He had been sipping tooth elixir from his flask and only just noticed I was holding the traces.
‘Nah!’ said Dizzy. ‘It ain’t dangerous. These horses know the road so well they could do it blindfolded.’
But I reckoned it was dangerous. I could feel the life energy of those six steeds whizzing up through the leather straps into my fingers & arms & spirit.
I felt scared and powerful at the same time. It was like flying on a rocking, creaking boat. Dizzy was right: The coach might look old & battered but that thoroughbrace – or whatever it was called – worked real well.
We hit a bump and all three of us flew about four inches up and came down bang!
‘Yee-haw!’ cried Dizzy.
‘Dam!’ swore Ray, but he was laughing.
Dizzy turned to me. ‘Let it out!’ he said. ‘It ain’t good to hold it in. It’ll make you queasy. Go on! If you can’t choke out a “yee-haw” then cuss like a miner or squeal like a gal.’
‘Yee-haw,’ I said. I was concentrating on driving & did not feel like yelling.
Dizzy looked at the sky. ‘I thought I heard a squeak. Could it have been a bat?’
‘Yee-haw!’ I cried, a bit louder.
‘Did you hear something, Mr. Ray?’ said Dizzy.
Ray shook his head. He was grinning despite his toothache.
Using both my lungs I shouted, ‘YEE-HAW!’
It felt good. Everybody laughed. Even me.
I only wished my pa had been there to share the moment.
Dizzy took a fresh chaw of tobacco from his trowser pocket & bit off a corner & folded up the plug in its paper wrapper. I was paying attention to the horses but out of the corner of my eye I saw that it was Blue Star brand chewing tobacco. I try to be observant about such things. Identifying tobacco is one of my special detective skills.
The road was running smooth through a flat marshy plain towards those great jagged snow-topped mountains called the ‘Sierra Nevada’ which means ‘Great Jagged Snow-topped Mountains’ in Spanish. There is a pretty little town called Genoa situated right at their foot with some oak trees & cottonwoods by a stream. We could see it a long time before we got there. Pa Emmet once told me that it used to be called Mormon Station until the Mormons all upped sticks and went to Salt Lake City. He said they named it after a town in Italy but they pronounce it different so people will not get confused.
‘Dam,’ said Ray. He took his flask from his pocket tipped it upside down to show us his Tooth Elixir was all gone.
‘You should get that tooth pulled,’ said Dizzy. ‘Any blacksmith will do it.’
Ray touched his cheek & winced. ‘You mind if I lie down inside the coach?’ he asked Dizzy.
‘Course not! But you will have to lie on them hard leather letter-sacks.’
‘I don’t mind.’ Ray tossed his empty Tooth Elixir bottle into the marsh on the left hand side of the road. ‘Pull up,’ he said, ‘so I can go down right now.’
I was still holding the ‘ribbons’, as they say.
‘Pinky,’ said Dizzy. ‘You want to try slowing this rig? You just–’ he began, but I was already pulling back on the heavy reins.
‘Whoa, you sons of blanks!’ I hollered.
The team of six bay horses slowed & stopped right there in the road. They stood snorting & tossing their heads.
‘Why, missy,’ said Dizzy with his brown-toothed smile, ‘you are a natural.’
Ray started to climb down.
Dizzy put a hand on his arm. ‘Hold on, mister.’ Dizzy looked at me. ‘Now that we’ve stopped, what’s the first thing you gotta do?’
‘Foot brake?’ I said.
‘You got it!’ He was nearest the brake so he used his foot to push the lever forward. I felt the coach turn from a living thing to a solid, unmoving object.
Once again, I wished it had been my pa sitting there beside me to be impressed by my skill at handling a six-horse team. But it was only Ray & he did not even seem to notice. He just climbed down off the box. I felt the coach rock a little as he opened the door & climbed inside.
‘Shotgun?’ came Ray’s voice.
Dizzy and I both leaned to the right to see Ray’s hand sticking out of the front window.
Dizzy took the double-barreled shotgun from its leather sheath beside the driver’s box & handed it down. Ray’s hand & the shotgun both disappeared back inside the coach.
‘OK.’ Dizzy released the brake & turned to me, ‘To start up again you just give the reins a little flick and say “G’lang!” real firm-like.’
‘G’lang! G’lang there, you sons of blanks!’ I said, imitating Dizzy, and we were off again.
Little did I think I would be taking the reins in earnest and riding for my life in less than two hours.
Read on...
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!
Everything happened real fast after that.
Within an hour we were standing in a dim livery stable, watching half a dozen heavily armed men climb into a sturdy stagecoach.
Once in, they pulled down the leather shades. Then Icy Blue & his driver climbed up into the box.
‘How does that look?’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley to us.
‘Looks good,’ said Dizzy. ‘Looks like we got something to hide.’
I agreed & looked at Pa to see whether he did, too, but he was busy adjusting the saddle on a big gray gelding.
‘Off you go then,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley to the first stagecoach. ‘And good luck to you! You catch them Reb Road Agents.’
Icy Blue raised his shotgun and his driver flicked the reins & said, ‘Hee-yah!’
The decoy coach was away!
Pa swung up into the saddle of the gelding. ‘I hope to see ye pass us on the road,’ he said, ‘as we clap those bandits in irons.’
‘Pa!’ I cried. ‘Ain’t you riding shotgun with us?’
‘Not for the first wee stretch,’ he said. ‘Horses and Ray dinna get along so he’ll ride with ye. But don’t worry, me wee lassie. Once we’ve clapped those pesky Reb Road agents in irons I’ll ride with ye to Sacramento.’ His eyes were brimming with tears like he was sad to leave, & he could not meet my gaze.
I confess I was disappointed. I had been looking forward to working with my pa on our first case.
‘Fare thee well!’ He touched his finger to the brim of his new hat. Still without looking at me, he turned his horse & spurred it & trotted after the departing coach. The last I saw of him was his silhouette against the bright square of outside light coming in through the stable doors. Then the light kind of dissolved him & he was gone.
Mr. V.V. Bletchley, Dizzy and Ray were examining the second stagecoach.
I studied it, too. It was battered and old, with a faded vista of mountains painted on the door and gold trim that was almost chipped off.
Bletchley turned to me. ‘She may look old and battered,’ he said, ‘but she was recently fitted with a new thoroughbrace and she can hold tons of silver. Come look.’
He opened a door and showed me how they had covered the floor of the coach with 78 silver bricks of varying shapes & weights all laid neatly side-by-side. He told me the ‘ingots’ were worth over 50 thousand dollars! As I watched, they piled some letter-sacks inside the coach to cover up the silver. Then they pulled down all the leather window shades so you could not see inside.
‘What do you think?’ said Mr. Bletchley, standing back. ‘How does it look?’
‘Not too good,’ said Dizzy, scratching his belly. ‘With the shades down, it looks like we got something to hide. Folk generally like to look out.’
‘But if we open the shades then everybody will see we have no passengers.’ Bletchley looked at Ray. ‘You should have thought of that before.’
Dizzy scratched his armpit. ‘Maybe Miss Pinky can ride inside the coach so people will glimpse her in the window.’
Ray shook his head. ‘The whole point of her is to be conspicuous – that is, easily seen – so any lurking bandits will see a little girl and let you pass.’
I had an idea of how I could make a bogus passenger who would look real.
‘I have an idea of how I can make a bogus passenger who will look real.’ I said. ‘Wait here!’
I ran out of the stable & pelted up to Mrs. Matterhorn’s & plucked a head-sized unripe watermelon from her back garden & then hurried one block down to Wasserman’s Emporium’s & bought Mrs. Wasserman’s old papier-mâché dummy & also a velvet ladies’ coat & also the biggest straw sunhat I could find. Then I whizzed back to the Overland Stage Co. Livery Stable.
‘Where you been!’ they all cried. ‘It has been near half an hour.’
But when I wedged the dummy torso inside the stagecoach at the front & draped the purple velvet coat around her shoulders & stuck the watermelon on the dowel neck of her papier-mâché body & added that big sunhat to hide her green & yellow striped head they all said ‘Ah!’, for my construction appeared to be a fashionable lady sitting in the best seat with her back to the driver & looking out the window.
We stood back to judge the effect.
‘She is bully!’ said Dizzy. ‘Now it looks like a school marm, maybe with the other shades down to shield her napping pupils on their way back from a picnic.’
‘Much better,’ agreed Bletchley, puffing a cigar.
‘Good idea to use a watermelon for a head,’ said Ray. ‘Otherwise her hat would lie too low.’ Then he spotted something & frowned & went closer to inspect her. ‘Goll DANG it!’ he cried, making us all jump. ‘What is that on her hat?’
‘Flowers,’ I said. ‘Just some old silk flowers.’
‘No. That! Right there!’ He was white as chalk.
I went closer and saw a silk butterfly among the flowers.
I said, ‘That is a silk butterfly among the flowers.’
‘Take the dam thing off!’
‘It is not genuine. It is bogus.’
‘I don’t care! I told you before. Those things give me the fantods.’
I pulled the bogus butterfly off the hat-band & stuck it out of sight in my medicine bag.
‘You best be going,’ said Mr. Bletchley, looking at his pocket watch. ‘Otherwise you will not have the protection of Icy and all those agents if anything goes wrong. They are nearly an hour ahead of you.’
Dizzy quickly clambered up into the driver’s box & so did Ray.
I was about to scramble up after them but then I remembered to be a girly-girl. I accepted Dizzy’s hand and let him help me up via the wheel onto the lofty box seat. I took my place in the middle, with Dizzy on my right and Ray on my left.
‘Ready?’ Dizzy asked me.
I nodded.
Dizzy hooked his right foot around the lever beside the driver’s box & pulled it back to release the brake. Then he flicked the reins & cried, ‘G’lang! G’lang there you sons of blanks!’ To me he said, ‘Pardon my cussing. Those critters won’t pay me no mind lessen I blaspheme.’
‘Good luck!’ called Bletchley after us.
We emerged from the livery stable into the bright day. It was the first day of May. I was wearing my wig with its swinging black ringlets and my lighthouse bonnet with its silk flowers & sash & itchy ruffle at the back. It was warm so I only needed a light pink shawl over my daffodil yellow dress. I had my black button-up boots & a yellow velvet drawstring purse around my left wrist. Pa had made me buy some little white cotton gloves but I had replaced them with my beaded buckskin gauntlets. They were my lucky gloves.
As we went over the Divide – a kind of hump in the road between Virginia City and Gold Hill – I could feel the horses straining to pull the coach full of heavy silver ingots and letter-sacks. But as soon as they started heading downhill towards Silver City, the coach fairly flew along. I had to retie the yellow ribbon under my chin or my yellow lighthouse bonnet would have flown off into the atmosphere.
‘Dang!’ wheezed Dizzy. ‘That silver is pushing them hard.’
I nodded and gripped the edges of the bench. The road was steep and curvy with precipitous drops onto jagged orange rocks. It was scary like my nightmare but also thrilling. My heart was pounding hard.
I wished Pa could be sitting beside me instead of Ray G. Tempest who kept taking secret swigs from his small flask.
Dizzy concentrated hard as we drove through Gold Hill & Devil’s Gate & Silver City. The road was crowded but everybody made way for our thundering stagecoach. Ray flipped the toll booth operators their coins and we fairly raced through. When the mountain finished and the road leveled out on its way to Carson, Dizzy kind of breathed a sigh and wiped his forehead with his faded bandana.
He glanced at me. ‘You’re awful quiet. You scared?’
I shook my head. ‘I just wish my pa could have seen my clever ruse of using a dummy as a dummy.’
‘I’ll make sure he hears about it,’ said Ray. He took a swig from his flask and then saw us looking. ‘Tooth elixir,’ he explained. ‘My dam tooth is still paining me.’
We rode for a while without conversing. I strained my eyes to see pa but he was too far ahead.
I noticed that Dizzy had a double-barrel shotgun in a kind of leather scabbard beside him.
‘You ever been robbed?’ I asked.
‘Nope,’ said Dizzy. ‘Most local robbers know the boss don’t trust me with big payloads so they let me alone.’
‘That is why you are the perfect choice for this job,’ said Ray.
We changed teams at Curry’s Warm Springs Hotel where I had once stayed but I did not see anyone known to me. Ray got himself a red bandana with a few drops of strong-smelling creosote on it and some ice chippings and he tied this around his head with the knot on top and his hat hiding it. This gave him some relief but made it hard for him to talk.
Our fresh team of six bay horses sped us through Carson City without stopping and my haunts of the previous winter flashed past. Soon we were out of town and racing along the flat road to Genoa with sage-brush and greasewood dotted plains either side and those barren, high-rising mountains to the southwest.
‘Nice gloves,’ said Dizzy.
He was admiring my buckskin gloves with the beaded zigzags that Jace had given me for Christmas.
‘These are my lucky gloves,’ I said.
‘Lucky gloves, eh?’ chuckled Dizzy. ‘Then why don’t you take the ribbons?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘The ribbons. The traces. The reins. Go on! Take ’em!’
And before I knew what had happened he’d put the control of six powerful horses & $50,000-worth of silver into my hands.
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!
