The sun had set in Genoa, but when we reached the top of the pass, why, there it was again, like an old friend. It was very low in the sky, lighting up some puffy clouds all red & purple & yellow. This fiery sunset was reflected in Lake Bigler, which some folk call Tahoe. It was so pretty it made my spirit want to fly up into those clouds like a hawk.
Dizzy flipped a coin to a toll-gate keeper. A few moments later he guided the puffing team of horses off the road & onto a muddy patch of ground in front of a couple of raw-plank buildings. There was a smell of wood smoke & stables.
‘Is this Friday’s Station?’ I asked.
‘Yup.’ Dizzy reined in the team and we rocked to a halt. ‘Wanna get down or can you last one more stage?’
‘I need the jakes,’ I said.
While Dizzy was helping me down, two men came out of the shack. One had a little nose and a big mustache. The other had a big nose and a little mustache. Big Mustache went to get a fresh team and Little Mustache started undoing the whippletree.
When I got back from using the outhouse, Big Mustache was telling Dizzy how another California-bound stage had changed teams an hour before and a rider came by not long after.
‘Dang,’ said Dizzy. ‘They are now a whole hour ahead of us. We’d best not dilly-dally.’
It was chilly up here with a breeze coming off the lake. The pine-scented air came cold into my chest & made me feel light-headed. I pulled my pink shawl around my shoulders. Then I remembered the coat I had bought for the dummy to wear. I went towards the coach.
Through the window, I saw that the dummy was leaning against the corner & her hat was down over her watermelon face, so it really did look like a lady was sleeping. That was good.
I gave a soft knock on the door and opened it.
Mr. Ray G. Tempest was lying on his back upon the bed of mailbags with his head back, his eyes closed and his mouth open. His hat & Dizzy’s shotgun lay nearby on one of the other mailbags.
I took the coat off the dummy & gave her my shawl instead & restored her to her former position.
Ray snored on.
I quietly closed the door of the stage and then put on the coat. It was a lot warmer than my shawl. Mrs. Wasserman had called that coat a ‘sacque’ & told me it was the girliest coat she had & that it was the latest fashion. It was like a cape only with sleeves, made of silk-lined purple velvet & white fur trim. When I put my gloved hands in the little slits at the front I discovered a hidden pocket.
One of the things I hate about dresses is that there are no pockets so the only place to put things is in a purse or similar. But now I had found a pocket in this sacque. Hallelujah!
I took my four-shooter out of my medicine bag & put it in the secret pocket along with a few spare cartridges. Then I let Dizzy help me back up into the box. He took the reins from Big Mustache, released the brake & we were on our way again!
My stomach growled so I opened my yellow drawstring purse which I had tied it to the rail of the driver’s box. I took out some beef jerky & shared it with Dizzy.
I noticed a wooden sign down by the side of the road. It said, WELKOM TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNEE. We had left Nevada Territory behind and were now in California, a state I had not heretofore set foot in.
The sun had set for good & dusk was gathering fast.
I said, ‘Do you think the Reb Road Agents have held up the decoy stage yet?’
‘I hope so,’ said Dizzy. ‘Soon it will be too dark to see. If they miss the decoy they might hold us up instead. We should of set out earlier.’
‘At least they are an hour ahead of us.’
‘Yup,’ said Dizzy.
I said, ‘When Icy Blue and his agents catch them, what will they do with them?’
‘Why, clap ’em in irons and take em back to Virginee. Hopefully we will see them coming back this way, mission accomplished, at any moment.’
My spirits lifted. I might see my victorious pa soon & then he would turn around and ride to Sacramento with us and soon we would go to Chicago covered in glory.
‘Want to see something awful?’ said Dizzy, chomping his piece of jerky.
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘See that bend we’re coming up to? Scoot on over to the left and look down.’
I scooted over to the edge and looked down. As we came to a curve in the road I saw a steep slope tumbling down to a rocky gorge far below. My sharp eyes saw a wheel on the jagged gray rocks & some broken crates & then the worst thing of all: a smashed up stagecoach and what might have been the bones of a horse. I could not be sure about the horse bones, for the light was fading fast.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Coach went off the road,’ said Dizzy. ‘Crashed on them rocks below. Happens more than people think.’
‘Stagecoaches going over the edge and crashing on the rocks below?’
‘Yup. That is why they never put glass in the windows. In case it breaks and cuts you to ribbons.’
‘Were the passengers killed?’ I asked.
‘Only a couple,’ he said. ‘The others escaped with just a few broken bones and cracked heads.’ He chuckled. ‘Driver broke both arms. When they took the bandages off, he found one arm was an inch shorter than the other.’
I held out my arms.
I tried to imagine having one arm shorter than the other.
I could not do it.
We rode for a while without speaking. I tried to listen out for the sound of a pa and the decoy stage coming our way, covered in glory & with the Reb Road agents in irons.
But it was hard above the noise of 24 thundering hooves and a creaky old stagecoach.
Soon it was so dusky I could hardly see the road.
I said, ‘How do you light the road when it gets dark?’
Dizzy said, ‘You don’t.’
I said, ‘Because there is an almost full moon tonight?’
He said, ‘Moon won’t rise for an hour or so. But we don’t use lights even when there ain’t a moon.’
I said, ‘How do you see in the dark?’
He said, ‘You don’t.’
I said, ‘You drive in the dark?’
‘Yup. Dark. Rain. Storm. Snow. You gotta remember that each team of six horses just goes back and forth over ten or twelve or fourteen miles at most. They know their stretch of road so well they could do it blindfolded. Why, some of the drivers just have a little sleep while they are holding the reins.’
‘You won’t sleep, will you?’ I asked.
‘Nosiree. Not with the chance of Reb Road Agents behind any pine and a crumbled road at any bend.’
‘The road crumbles some times?’
‘Yup,’ said Dizzy. ‘You got any more jerky?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Gimme,’ said Dizzy.
He opened his mouth like a hungry bird and I gave him another piece of beef jerky.
I was glad of my gloves and velvet sacque for it was now cold.
We were going up a rising bend. Our fresh horses from Friday’s were working hard. I looked over the edge and saw what looked like a sheer drop. The granite rocks far below were almost as jagged as the hundred black pine trees that poked up like needles. I did not want to look, but I could not tear my eyes away.
‘Jumping Jesus!’ said Dizzy.
‘Beg pardon?’
Dizzy swallowed hard & cussed. ‘Looks like we got ourselves company. Those Reb Road Agents must of let the decoy stage pass right on by. Here they are, all right: fixing to hold us up.’
Read on...
Mr. V.V. Bletchley had squashed my pa’s plan of using me to convince Reb Road Agents that our stagecoach could not be transporting silver. It was too ‘gallus’.
But Pa did not give up. He tried a ‘flanking manoeuver’.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘Have ye heard of a certain P.K. Pinkerton, a private eye operating on B Street?’
‘Everybody’s heard of him,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley. ‘He exposed a murderer last year and vanquished a bothersome outlaw name of Whittlin Walt back in September, even though he is just a kid.’
Pa put his hand on my shoulder. ‘This, sir, is P.K. Pinkerton!’
‘What?’ said Mr. Bletchley. ‘You are claiming your half Mexican daughter is the half-Injun Private Eye who has been working in this town for the past seven months?’
‘Aye,’ said my pa. ‘The P.K. stands for Prudence Kezia.’
‘And I ain’t half Mexican,’ I said in my normal voice. ‘I am half Sioux Indian.’
Bletchley shook his head slowly, like a boxer who has been punched one time too many. Then he looked at me.
‘You are P.K. Pinkerton?’
‘Yes, sir! You can call me Pinky.’
‘Pinky is a master of disguise,’ said my pa, ‘and skilled with all kinds of firearms. She will be perfectly safe, else we would not have suggested it. Her visible presence virtually guarantees the safety of the silver-coach.’
Mr. Bletchley looked at me. ‘Ain’t you afraid?’
I must confess I was a little afraid on account of my stagecoach-going-over-a-precipice nightmare, but I knew my inscrutable features would not betray me.
I sat a little straighter. ‘No, sir! I have been shot at, chased down a mine, sucked at by quicksand, almost buzzed in half and nearly froze, too, but I was never scared. I can shoot a gun and I can make a fire. I can ride a pony with or without a saddle.’
‘Although of course she won’t be riding a pony,’ said my pa. ‘She will be sitting up on top of the stagecoach for all to see.’
‘You sure you want to do that?’ Dizzy asked me. ‘You know those stages can be awful jouncy. I would hate anything to happen to a purty li’l thing like you.’
‘I am sure,’ said I.
Dizzy shrugged & nodded, but Bletchley was looking at me with lips like a trout. Poker Face Jace said if someone purses their lips it means they are pondering something & have not yet made up their mind.
Through the open window of the stage office came the smell sage brush & the sound of some quail. They were urging me to go to, ‘Chicago! Chicago!’
I could also see an outhouse.
‘Well, Mr. Pinkerton,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley at last. ‘I concede it is a bold plan, but I am afraid I cannot allow it. I will not risk harming a hair of this dear little girl’s head!’
‘H-ll!’ I said. ‘It ain’t even my hair! It is a _______ wig.’ (Here I used a strong adjective). I pulled off my lighthouse bonnet & wig in one swift motion and plunked them on the desk before Mr. V.V. Bletchley.
Then I snatched up his freshly-loaded Pocket Navy and – before anyone could object – I cocked it, aimed & fired five shots in quick succession through the open window.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Through the cloud of white gun smoke we all saw the door of the outhouse fly open. A miner dashed out. He was gripping a copy of the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in one hand and the waistband of his trowsers in the other.
‘Why, lookee there,’ wheezed Dizzy, as the gun smoke cleared. ‘That little gal made that crescent moon into a full one!’
I nodded with satisfaction & blew away a coil of gun smoke issuing from the barrel. I had used the five shots to make the semi-circular moon-shaped vent into a circle.
‘Goll darn!’ exclaimed Mr. V.V. Bletchley. ‘You sure can shoot. Well, that puts a whole new light on the matter.’
Here I noticed that Mr. Icy Blue had pulled the goggles up on his forehead so he could see better. Now he was watching me with his arms folded across his chest and his pale eyes narrowed.
It was like he was waiting for me to do something more.
I quickly set about re-loading the five-shooter. They were all watching me but I was not nervous. Everything I needed was right there on Bletchley’s blotter. I used his powder flask to drop a measure of black powder into each chamber & then added a piece of lint & then dropped in a .36 caliber ball & used the built-in rammer to jam it in real good. Finally I put caps on the nipples at the back of the cylinder.
When I finished reloading, I handed the revolver back to Bletchley, butt first.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Icy Blue give a little nod and replace his goggles over his eyes. I felt I had passed a test.
‘Well,’ said Bletchley. ‘I do believe I have changed my opinion of your daughter!’ He put the pistol in his drawer & looked at Pa. ‘I think your plan might work after all.’
Dizzy scratched his belly and frowned. ‘I don’t rightly understand the Plan,’ he said. ‘Can you ’splain it again?’
Bletchley turned to him. ‘As I see it, these detectives are suggesting that you let the little girl and one of them ride up on top with you in shotgun position. The silver will be inside your coach. We will hide it under mailbags, as we got so many of those still left to deliver. But a decoy coach will set out first. It will appear to be carrying silver, but when the Reb Road Agents hold it up, half a dozen of my men will jump out and arrest them. Then you and the silver will ride on past to Sacramento in perfect safety.’
‘What is the point of that li’l gal, again?’ asked Dizzy.
‘To make your coach look harmless and ambling.’
‘All right, then,’ said Dizzy after a moment. ‘If you are sure you want to entrust so much silver to my care, I reckon I will do it.’
That is what he said, but I could tell from his feet pointing towards the door that he was not happy.
‘Blue?’ said Mr. Bletchley. ‘You all right with our plan? Can you rustle up five or six men for the decoy stage?’
‘Dam right,’ he growled.
‘And you, Miss Pinkerton?’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley, turning to me. ‘Are you absolutely, positively certain you want to do this?’
I set my wig & hat back on my head, looked at my beaming Pa & nodded firmly. ‘You bet!’
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!
The Virginia City office of the Overland Stage Company was noisy & crowded. It smelled of spittoons & sweat & cigars. Pa and Mr. Ray G. Tempest were standing behind a counter and I was standing behind them. It was just past ten o’clock. We were waiting to see the owner so we could tell him our clever Plan.
Behind me, a woman’s hoop skirt nudged me up against pa so that his brown woolen greatcoat tickled my nose. Now that the road out of Virginia was passable, there were a lot of folk wanting tickets for the stagecoach.
‘We have an appointment with Mr. V.V. Bletchley,’ said Ray to someone on the other side of the counter. ‘We are Pinkerton detectives.’
‘I will see if he is ready for you,’ said an Irish Accent.
I could not see over the counter, so while we were waiting, I read a sign on the wall:
Overland Company Rules for Stagecoach Passengers
1. Do not to jab people with your elbows or jostle them with your knees.
2. Do not talk to other passengers if you have not been introduced.
3. Do not discuss Politics or Religion.
4. Do not wear strong-smelling toilette water or pomade.
5. Do not smoke a strong-smelling pipe or cigar.
6. If you must spit or vomit, do so out of the window. (On the leeward side.)
7. Do not stare fixedly at the other people in the stagecoach.
8. Do not drink whiskey or other spirituous beverages.
9. Do not lean upon your neighbors when sleeping.
10. Do not point out where murders, robberies and/or grisly stagecoach crashes have occurred.
11. Do not discharge firearms. The noise might upset the passengers & spook the horses.
12. If the team runs away, sit still and take your chances. If you jump, nine out of ten times you will get hurt.
It was that last rule that worried me the most on account of my stagecoach-going-over-a-precipice nightmare. If Mr. V.V. Bletchley liked pa’s idea, I would soon be sitting atop a stagecoach. I wondered, if something spooked the team would I be better off jumping or sitting still?
An Irish accent broke into my thoughts. ‘Mr. V.V. Bletchley will see you now. Please follow me.’
‘Remember, Pinky,’ whispered my pa, ‘It is important ye act like a girly-girl.’
I followed Pa and Ray around the counter. I practiced taking dainty half-steps. We went past some desks and along an echoing corridor. The clerk opened a door and stood back to let us enter.
I followed pa in & was about to close the door with a backward kick but remembered just in time & gently closed it with my gloved hand instead.
‘Please be seated, gentlemen,’ said a plump man behind a desk without looking up. He had some .36 caliber balls & powder & lint & caps laid out on the blotter of his desk & he was loading a revolver. I observed it was a Colt Pocket Navy. It is like the Normal Navy only it has a shorter barrel and the cylinder holds five balls, not six.
There were two chairs in front of the big maple desk and a small red velvet stool over by the window. My pa brought the stool and set it between the chairs and we all sat down with me in the middle.
The man still had his head down as he concentrated on putting little brass caps on nipples. I could see he had a few strands of black hair pasted over his bald head.
At last he finished loading his five-shooter & looked up.
I sometimes find it hard to remember people’s faces and names, which can be a handicap when you are a detective, but Mr. V.V. Bletchley’s face and name would be easy to remember. His cheeks were blotchy, which sounds like Bletchley.
‘Who is this?’ he said when he saw me sitting between the two operatives. His voice sounded clotted & thick, like porridge.
‘This is me wee lassie,’ said Pa. ‘Say hello, Prudence.’
‘How do you do?’ I said in my little girl voice. I half rose from my stool to make a curtsy.
‘Charming,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley. ‘Her mother must have been quite lovely. Mexican, I’d guess, like my wife. And who are you?’
‘I am Robert Pinkerton, founder of the world-renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. This here is Ray G. Tempest, one of our finest operatives.’
They both opened their greatcoats to show the detective buttons on their coat lapels. Mr. V.V. Bletchley’s eyebrows went up.
‘Pinkertons!’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you doing this far west?’
Ray said, ‘We are on the trail of some “Reb Road Agents” who have been robbing stagecoaches in Utah Territory. They have recently moved their base west to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.’
‘I’ve heard of them,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley.
Ray said, ‘We believe they will be lying in wait for your next silver shipment to Sacramento.’
‘Where did you get this information, sir?’ Bletchley’s blotchy face had gone a shade lighter.
‘We cannot reveal our source as it might endanger the life of one of our undercover operatives,’ continued Ray. ‘But we have an idea of how to safeguard the silver and hopefully catch those bandits.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Bletchley, ‘you have my full attention.’
‘A stagecoach leaving Salt Lake City was robbed last month and a female passenger gave us valuable information about these so-called Reb Road Agents,’ continued Ray. ‘She said the only thing they stole from her was a kiss on account of they do not rob stages with women nor children, but only those carrying gold and silver and Fat Cats. The woman’s little girl was on the stage with her and one of the Reb Road agents bounced her on his knee. He said they would not harm a hair of her head as they both had a little girls of their own.’
‘I was not aware of that incident,’ said Bletchley. ‘Nor of their fondness for women and children.’
‘This is our plan,’ continued Ray. ‘We suggest a trap. Put your best driver and your fiercest-looking conductor on top of a vehicle well-suited for transporting valuables. However, instead of silver it will hold your bravest guards. The bandits will see that heavy-laden coach and naturally assume it carries the big silver shipment. When they tell you to “stand and deliver”, your guards will spring forth and apprehend them. No passengers will be hurt, no silver stolen. As those Reb Road Agents are being clapped in irons,’ he concluded, ‘the genuine silver shipment will pass by on a second stagecoach, which will appear to be a harmless passenger stage.’
Mr. V.V. Bletchley pursed his lips. Then he nodded. ‘That is a bully idea,’ he said. ‘Simple yet effective. Let me put it to one of my drivers and one of my conductors.’ He struck a little brass hand bell on his desk: Ding!
The clerk came in.
Bletchley said, ‘What drivers and conductors have we got available at the moment?’
‘Almost all of em,’ said the clerk. ‘Blue, Calloway, Prince and Burns. Oh, and Dizzy just came in.’
‘Send in Blue and Dizzy.’
While we waited, Bletchley turned to me. ‘I would offer you coffee but it is cold and black.’
I was going to say that was my preferred method of drinking it but I remembered I was supposed to be a girly-girl so I replied, ‘I will be grateful for it, however it comes.’
Bletchley stood up, went to a sideboard, poured black coffee into a china cup with matching saucer & put it on the desk before me.
I lifted the cup to my lips, careful to keep my little finger crooked as I took a dainty sip.
Mr. V.V. Bletchley went back to the sideboard. ‘Whiskey, gentlemen?’ he said, lifting a cut glass decanter half full of amber liquid.
‘I dinna drink,’ said my pa.
But Ray nodded. ‘I ain’t teetotal. I will have one.’
As Bletchley was pouring whiskey the door opened and two men came in. One of them was known to me on account of he was an albino with skin as white as a corpse’s & stubbly snow-white beard & little round dark-blue goggles. Folk hereabouts called him ‘Icy’ because of his icy skin color and his initials, which are I.C.
I like people with such distinctive looks; I do not forget them like I do with ordinary people.
The man who followed Mr. Icy Blue into the office was unknown to me. He was short & tubby with a snub nose and stubble on his chin. He wore a floppy gray slouch hat with the front brim folded back & pinned to its dented crown. His faded flannel shirt showed me a glimpse of his undergarments where some buttons were missing at the belly.
When he saw me sitting there he snatched off his hat & sucked in his gut. ‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ he said. ‘I do not mean to exhibit my unmentionables but my dinner done popped the buttons of my shirt.’
Mr. V.V. Bletchley pointed to the man with blue goggles. ‘Mr. Isaac C. Blue here is a conductor.’ To me he said, ‘The “conductor” is what you might call the captain of the stagecoach, for he takes charge of the passengers & goods and protects them with his shotgun. For that reason the conductor is often called the “Shotgun”.’
I knew all this but I was pretending to be a girly-girl so I just nodded politely and tried to make my eyes big & round.
He smiled at me and then pointed to the tubby man. ‘Mr. Davey Scrubbs there goes by the name of “Dizzy”. He is one of our best drivers. Sometimes we call the driver the “Whip” because of the big black whip they hold.’
‘They call the whip a “black snake”,’ explained Dizzy. ‘And whipping the horses is called “black-snaking”.’
I covered my mouth with both hands, the way I had seen Bee do sometimes. ‘Does it hurt the horses?’ I asked in my girly-girl voice.
‘Nah!’ chuckled Dizzy. ‘It only makes a loud crack, like a gunshot. That is what gets em running. A good “Whip” will not even touch them horses,’ he added.
‘Dizzy,’ said Mr. V.V. Bletchley, ‘What would you say if I asked you to take the big silver shipment over the mountains to Sacramento this very afternoon and put it on the steamboat to Frisco?’
Dizzy was so surprised that he swallowed his chaw of tobacco. He coughed & then stood up a little straighter. ‘You never asked me to do that before, boss,’ he said. ‘I would not like to be responsible for that much silver. You know I cannot shoot worth beans.’
‘You don’t have to worry,’ said Ray. ‘One of us will be your conductor and ride shotgun with you, and the other will ride close by for extra protection, just in case. But you probably won’t even see the Reb Road Agents as the decoy stage will be a few miles ahead of you.’
‘Decoy stage?’ said the albino with blue goggles.
‘Just so,’ said Bletchley, turning to him. ‘Would you be willing to take a coach full of armed men in order to apprehend those robbers lurking up in the Sierra Nevada?’
Icy nodded. ‘I would relish the chance to meet those varmints,’ he growled. ‘I am ready to send those goddam road agents to h-ll.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Bletchley. He smiled at Dizzy. ‘So you see? There should be no danger. Icy here will be the bait so you can drive your coach full of silver right on past those Reb Road agents as he is clapping them in irons.’
‘But what if they miss spotting that decoy coach and spy me in a low-slung coach all groaning with silver,’ said Dizzy.
Pa said, ‘We have thought of that. We have an ace in the hand: my wee daughter Prudence!’
Mr. Bletchley looked at Pa and then at me. ‘What do you mean?’
Ray said, ‘Like we told you, we know that those Reb Road agents have a soft spot for little girls.’ He turned to Dizzy. ‘Therefore, we intend to get Prudence here to pretend to be your young niece and ride atop the stagecoach in a prominent position.’
‘What, sir?’ cried Bletchley. ‘You would put your own child at risk for the sake of a little silver? Why, that is monstrous! I could not live with myself if a hair of this sweet little girl should be harmed and I cannot believe you would be willing to put her in danger.’
I looked at Pa and he looked at me.
I was not sure exactly what had just happened but I think it was this: I had girly-girled myself right out of a job!
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!
‘Good morning, Miss Pinkerton!’ snapped Ping the next day. ‘You late.’
It was only a quarter past 9.00 but I let that pass. He was sitting in my chair behind my desk. I also let that pass.
‘Happy May Day,’ I said. (It was Friday the 1st of May.)
Ping scowled at me. ‘That is stupid hat.’
I was wearing my new lighthouse bonnet with its silk flowers & sash & ruffles. And also my daffodil-yellow, merino-wool dress with only one petticoat so it was not too puffy.
His words stung me but I pretended not to care.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘This get-up is vital to a gallus plan of my pa’s devising.’ I held up my new adoption papers. ‘Also, I have just been down to the recorder’s office with my pa and I am now a genuine Pinkerton detective and no longer bogus.’
‘I think you very bogus.’ said Ping. He rose up from my chair & stood with folded arms. ‘You lie to me. All this time.’
He stood facing me with the desk between us as if he was the Detective and I was the Client. He wore his smart gray worsted suit with the white shirt & jade silk cravat & he smelled faintly of jasmine soap or hair tonic. His black hair was very clean & shiny. When he wore his suit he tucked his long pigtail in the jacket so it looked like short hair.
For the first time it struck me that he was good-looking, even handsome.
He said, ‘Why is our account at Wells Fargo one thousand dollar emptier than two days ago?’
I said, ‘When I got home last night I found that Mrs. Matterhorn had heard about my being a gal and evicted me from my boarding house. I had to take a suite at a hotel.’
He said, ‘What hotel?’
‘The International.’
‘Why Suite?’ His black eyes almost sparked with fire.
‘So pa and Ray can stay there, too, in their own rooms. They were lodging at a cheap boarding house down on D Street.’
He said, ‘Suite at International for how long?’
I said, ‘Only one night.’
He said, ‘That is not thousand dollar.’
I said, ‘I had to buy some new clothes.’ I felt my face grow hot. Dang my body for betraying me!
‘Those clothes?’ He looked me up and down. His nose wrinkled on one side. Expression No. 3 - disgust. ‘Anything else?’
I said, ‘I had to pay a clerk upwards of two hundred dollars to get these adoption papers cleared extra quick.’
‘Anything else?’
I said, ‘Five-course dinner at a high-tone restaurant last night.’
He looked at me, his arms still folded across his chest.
‘With champagne,’ I admitted.
He said, ‘Fool! Do you forget we are partners? I handle business side? You should have check with me first.’
‘I should have checked with you about getting adopted?’ I said.
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘You are now his chattel.’
I did not know that word.
I said, ‘I do not know that word.’
He said, ‘If anything happen to you then he get all your money.’
‘And if anything happens to him, I inherit a fifth of his wealth.’
‘He wealthy?’
I shrugged. ‘I reckon.’
‘Then why you pay for hotel, clothes, dinner, champagne and adoption bribe?’
‘Bribe? What do you mean ‘bribe’?’
‘You pay extra to rush something through, it is called “bribe”.’
I said, ‘It was not a bribe. I had to pay two hundred to the clerk to get these adoption papers cleared extra quick. My pa keeps the accounts for the Pinkerton Agency and he says they are very strict on expenses. But I know they are rich. They are a famous detective agency. They are world-renowned.’
‘That does not mean they have money in their coffers.’ Ping’s scowl deepened.
‘If we catch those Reb Road Agents,’ I said, there will be a big reward. ‘Two percent of whatever we recover. Pa said the stolen money might be as much as five hundred thousand. So our cut would be ten thousand dollars if we catch those Reb Road Agents.’
He said, ‘If.’
I said, ‘Did you see our shingle is up again? We are back in business.’
He said, ‘I not sure I want to be partner with liar.’
I said, ‘I ain’t a liar.’
He said, ‘You should have trust me. I do not care if you boy or girl. I only care about success of business.’
I said, ‘You do too care if I am a girl. Would you have worked with me if you’d known?’
‘Yes,’ he said. But for the first time his gaze slid away.
I said, ‘You only care about money.’
He said, ‘A business with no money will not last long. Look.’ He opened a ledger book on the desk. It was a proper ledger book with numbers and dates meticulously recorded. It had all our income from the past seven months we had been doing business.
‘Before you take out that thousand dollar,’ he said. ‘Our balance was good. Nearly four thousand. Now it is only this.’
He pointed at a column on the ledger book & I looked.
I saw the remaining balance in the Pinkerton strongbox was $2,784.20
He said, ‘I want fifty percent.’
I said, ‘Beg pardon?’
He said, ‘I do not want to work with lying female.’
‘You just said it didn’t matter if I was female.’
‘Female does not matter. Lying does.’
I was flummoxed. I did not know what to say. I had not thought Ping would be this riled at me for deceiving him.
His re-folded his arms across his chest. ‘You soon go back to Chicago with your pa, correct?’
When he said that, I felt a mite queasy, like when I stand too close to the edge of a precipice. I would be abandoning my life as I knew it. But Chicago was my dream. I had to make that leap of faith sometime.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will be going to Chicago.’
‘Then split business assets fifty-fifty,’ he said.
The whole room seemed to swell and then shrink back again, as if it had taken a deep breath, not me.
He said, ‘You still have those feet of Chollar Mine which bring you about one fifty a month. They are yours. Good income. Do not sell them.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We will go to the bank right now, and I will give you your half of the money.’
He said, ‘I could also ask you to pay back thousand dollar you just spend, so we could split that, too. But if you sign over deed of this office to me, we will call it even.’
‘You want this office?’
‘Yes, I want this office. After you go, I rename business Pingerton Detective Agency.’
‘Pingerton? As in Ping?’
He nodded curtly.
‘That is clever.’ I looked around the narrow room with its shelves & desk & chairs & sky window & wood-burning stove & the branch with butterfly chrysalises & the hat-tree & the counter at the back & the door to the little storeroom-bedroom where I had lived for a month or two before moving to Mrs. Matterhorn’s. I felt a bunch in my throat but I swallowed it down.
‘All right,’ I said.
I do not usually like to be touched but this was important so I spat on the palm of my right hand and held it out.
He spat on the palm of his right hand and we shook.
Then we went down to Wells Fargo & Co. and apart from necessary yesses and noes required to get a clerk to withdraw $1,392.10 in gold from my strongbox and hand it over to him, we did not speak another word to each other.
I left the bank without saying goodbye, for it was almost ten o’clock.
I had somewhere to be.
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!
I could not really blame Ping for not guessing that I am a girl.
From the day I was born my Indian ma dressed me like a boy.
She put me in little buckskin leggings, shirt and moccasins. She taught me how to ride a horse and shoot a bow & arrow and how to hunt & skin a critter. She trained me to use boy-endings for words rather than girl-endings when I spoke Lakota and she would give me a stinging slap if I forgot.
Not that I spoke Lakota with anybody apart from my ma. For she had lit out from her tribe before I was born and taken up with a fur trader. She traded him in for a railroad detective named Pinkerton a while later, and thus was I born. But soon it was just me & her again, out in the wild frontier. I was fine with that and I was fine with dressing as a boy.
You might say, ‘Why did your ma dress you as a boy?’
I reckon she thought if anything happened to her I would be safer as a boy, knowing how to hunt and ride and suchlike.
And sure enough, something did happen to her.
She got herself massacred on a wagon train travelling west when I was 10 yrs old.
I was out gathering buffalo chips and thus I survived. After that, a preacher & his wife adopted me. They thought I was a boy at first & were mighty surprised to discover I was a girl, you bet. But they let me keep on dressing like a boy, probably for the same reason as my Indian ma.
Unfortunately, they got massacred, too. That was on my 12th birthday, just under a year ago.
I fled to Virginia City to escape the desperados who kilt them & to avenge their deaths. I stayed on in Virginia in order to learn to be a Private Eye so I could one day join my long-lost pa, that railroad detective I mentioned earlier. That was the first time in my life I wore white girls’ clothing, as a means of Disguise. I hated the thin calico dresses with their itchy lace collars & cuffs. I hated the tight, tippy-tappy, fiddly buttoned boots. Most of all, I hated the pinching corsets and puffy hoop skirts I wore while pretending to be a widow woman.
After that, I vowed not to dress like a gal unless it was a matter of life or death.
But recently my body has started changing. I have started my ‘monthlies’ and am beginning to develop. Not a lot, but enough so that I have to put a kind of bandage around my chest to keep myself flat. Luckily my poor dead foster ma Evangeline clearly laid out what was in store, so I was not too alarmed. The thing that worried me was this: Would I wake up one morning to find I preferred dolls to Deringers? Would I get a hankering to sew samplers instead of arrange my Tobacco, Bullet and Bug Collections? Would I stop feeling like a ‘Me’ and start feeling like a ‘She’?
I surely hope not.
I guess that is why I have taken to spitting & cussing & not stifling burps. I do not want to turn into a danged girly-girl. I may be a half-Indian Misfit, but I like me just the way I am. I do not want to change.
‘I said give me two!’ snapped Ping, bringing me out of my reverie.
I gave him two.
‘I bet three,’ said Ping. He pushed three pieces of licorice forward.
‘I’ll see your three pieces of licorice,’ I said, ‘and raise you a lemon drop.’
I showed the lemon drop to Mouse, who was perched on my shoulder, but he was disinterested. Mouse only eats live bugs, like crickets.
Once more the door opened.
It was Miss Bee Bloomfield in her tippy-tappy button-up boots. School had been closed all week on account of the Big Freeze.
Talk about girly-girls. Bee is about the girliest-girl in Virginia City. She uses Sozodont tooth powder & lilac toilet water & is always buying new bonnets. Worst of all, she is always trying to steal a kiss from me. If she knew she had been trying to kiss another gal, she would have conniptions, you bet.
‘Good morning, P.K. and Ping!’ She put a waxed-paper packet on my desk. ‘I brought you some oatmeal cookies baked by my own fair hand.’
Ping opened the packet & took out a cookie & ate it.
Bee frowned. ‘What’s that on your shelf?’ She went to investigate my branch and then recoiled with a squeal. ‘Oh! What are those green things hanging on it?’
I said, ‘Those are butterflies in chrysalis form. I saw them last week. When it started to snow, I took pity on them & went up & broke off a branch & brought it back here so they wouldn’t get froze.’
‘Friz,’ said a familiar voice from the doorway. ‘First it blew, then it snew, then it thew and then it friz. That is what the wags are all saying. But the thaw is here, and I believe spring is finally on the way.’ The voice belonged to Mr. Sam Clemens, a local reporter. He had a skinny blond boy with him.
‘Spring!’ Mr. Sam Clemens cried. ‘That fruitful time when young men turn their thoughts to bugs. P.K., this here is Affable Fitzsimmons.’
I nodded politely at the skinny blond boy. ‘Howdy,’ I said.
‘How do you do?’ said the boy in an English accent. I judged he was about 14. He was tall & thin with wire rimmed spectacles & straight blond hair. He wore a palm-leaf hat & beige linen knickerbockers & canvas shoes, none of which were suitable for the snowy climes of Virginia City in April.
Bee Bloomfield stepped forward. ‘Are you from England?’
‘I reside in San Francisco, with my parents,’ said Affable, ‘but I am English by birth.’
‘I’m Bee Bloomfield,’ she said, showing her dimples.
‘Affable is the son of the famous naturalist and jungle explorer, Sir Fitzhugh Fitzsimmons,’ drawled Sam. ‘Sir Fitzhugh promised to buy me a hot toddy if I could find some pals his own age.’
Affable Fitzsimmons looked around the room. ‘Mr. Twain said you have some interesting collections.’
I said, ‘Who is Mr. Twain?’
Sam said, ‘I am. It is my new nom de plume. I have started signing my newspaper articles “Mark Twain”.’
‘A rose by any other name,’ said Affable, ‘would smell as sweet. You can call me “Affie”,’ he added.
‘Something in here does not smell very sweet,’ said Bee, sniffing the air. She leaned towards me and wrinkled her nose. ‘P.K.! When did you last bathe?’
I confess I had to ponder this question.
‘December,’ I said at last, ‘I reckon my last bath was in December.’
‘Which year?’ asked Sam Clemens, AKA Mark Twain, striking a match and lighting up his notorious ‘pipe of a thousand smells’.
‘Last year,’ I replied. ‘1862.’
‘P.K.!’ gasped Bee, clapping her hand over her mouth. ‘You have not bathed in four months! Why, that ain’t Christian!’
I pointed at Mark Twain.
‘I ain’t as stinky as his tobacco,’ I said. ‘Folk call it “The Remains” on account of it smells like a dead critter.’
Affable AKA Affie chuckled.
‘At least it ain’t me who stinks,’ drawled Mark Twain, ‘but just my tobacco.’ He winked at me. ‘I was just being ironikle,’ he said, using one of his pet words.
‘Oh, I say!’ Affable stepped forward to examine the pale-green chrysalises dangling from my butterfly branch. ‘Don’t keep them so near the stove,’ he advised, ‘or they will hatch too early. May I move them out of danger?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
As he was carefully moving the branch away from the stove, he saw my glass-fronted butterfly tray on the shelf below.
‘What a bully collection!’ he cried. ‘And you are only missing one.’ He bent closer and read the label. ‘A Buckskin Fritillary, native to Nevada & California.’
Bee said, ‘What is a fritillary?’
Affie said, ‘It is a kind of butterfly.’
I said, ‘It was my foster pa’s collection. I am trying to finish it to honor his memory. I am hoping my branch will hatch out into Buckskin Fritillaries,’ I added.
Suddenly Bee Bloomfield’s brown eyes went round as quarters.
‘P.K.!’ she squealed. ‘There is a giant spider crawling on you!’
Mark Twain’s eyes bugged out, too, and his ‘pipe of a thousand smells’ clattered to the floor. ‘That ain’t no spider,’ he yelped. ‘That there is a deadly tarantula!’
Read more...
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!
My name is P.K. Pinkerton and I will soon be breakfast for a couple of grizzly bears.
I am trapped in a mountain cave with my dying pa. I have a small fire but not much wood left to keep it going and only 1 bullet left in my Henry Rifle.
I can hear those grizzlies a-prowling & a-growling, and I can smell them, too. I reckon I only have a few hours to record how I came to be in this sad predicament. When my fire goes out they will gobble me up. And my dying pa, too.
You may say, ‘Why are you wasting the final hours of your life scribbling in a Ledger Book?’
Here is my reply:
If I write an account, people will know who done it and they can avenge me.
You may also say, ‘Being half Sioux, why don’t you use your Indian skills to sneak past those bears and at least save yourself?’
My answer is this:
I will not abandon my dying pa.
It all started when two strangers rode into town. I was sitting at my desk in my Detective Agency on B Street in Virginia City. I was ordering the Butterfly part of my Bug Collection. Detective business had been slow on account of a localized snowstorm. But now a strong sun was out.
The scent of melting snow swirled in as the door of my detective office opened.
It was my 14-yr-old partner Ping, with a bag of sugar & a coffee pot. He had filled the pot with pure water from the new filter in the Shamrock Saloon across the street. I could hear someone playing Camptown Races on a piano.
‘Road dang muddy,’ Ping said. ‘Traffic should be running again soon.’ He put the coffee pot on our new stove & the bag of sugar on one of the shelves.
Ping does not drink coffee, but he says the smell entices people in & encourages them to linger.
‘You want game of poker?’ he asked, as he turned the handle of the little wooden coffee grinder. ‘While we wait for clients?’
‘H-ll, yeah,’ I replied.
I try to keep up my skill, because sometimes I help a gambler named Poker Face Jace play cards for money. Jace is my friend & mentor.
I put my Butterfly Tray on one of the shelves on the wall. When my office was a Tobacco Emporium those shelves held tins of tobacco.
Now they hold my collections, viz: my Bug Collection, my Button Collection & my Big Tobacco Collection. I also had a branch with butterflies waiting to hatch out.
I opened a drawer in my desk and got out some strings of black licorice, some lemon drops & a pack of cards.
I tore off a piece of the stretchy licorice and put it between my cheek and gum, like people do with chewing tobacco.
Ping left the coffee pot on the stove to brew. He pulled up one of the chairs where clients usually sit. The door was still ajar so you could hear boots on the boardwalk & the curses of the first riders trying out the snowy thoroughfare.
I divided the licorice strings and lemon drops between us. Then I shuffled the deck and we played a few hands of ‘five card draw’.
Even when I get dealt bad cards I usually win because I have learned to tell when people are bluffing. Ping’s natural expression is a scowl, even when he has a good hand, but my pal Poker Face Jace says the face is the lyingest part of the body.
So I ignored Ping’s scowly face & scooted my chair back a little & kind of slouched down so I could see his feet.
Everybody has their own ‘tell’ and Ping’s is a common one. Whenever he has a good hand his toes point up and when he has a bad one he pulls his feet back under his chair.
If the Face is the lyingest part of the body, the Feet are the most truthful.
I spat some black licorice juice into a spittoon. I had tried proper chaw tobacco once but it made me feel queasy so I had taken to chewing licorice to make me look older & tougher.
Ping’s nose wrinkled and his lip curled a little. My dead foster ma Evangeline had taught me how to identify five expressions.
No. 1 - If someone’s mouth curves up & their eyes crinkle, that is a Genuine Smile.
No. 2 - If their mouth stretches sideways & their eyes are not crinkled, that is a Fake Smile.
No. 3 - If a person turns down their mouth & crinkles up their nose, they are Disgusted.
No. 4 - If their eyes open real wide, they are probably surprised or scared.
No. 5 - If they make their eyes narrow, they are either mad at you or thinking or suspicious.
Ping’s face was making Expression No. 3 – Disgust.
I felt something tickle my arm. It was my pet, Mouse, crawling on my pink flannel shirt.
Ping’s expression No. 3 got stronger. ‘I don’t like that critter. I afraid I step on him. Make him go crunch.’
‘That would be unpleasant,’ I agreed. ‘But he is usually in his tank when I ain’t letting him perambulate on me.’
Ping shifted his gaze from Mouse to my face. His eyes were narrowed. It was no longer Expression No. 3 – Disgust. It was now Expression No. 5, which meant he was either Mad or Thinking or Suspicious. Or all three.
‘You can stare all you like,’ I said to Ping. ‘I am inscrutable. I can neither understand nor express emotions well. It is a Thorn in my Side. But it is useful for playing poker,’ I added. ‘People can not tell if I am holding a good hand or a bad one.’
‘I am not trying to tell if you have good or bad hand,’ said Ping, his scowl deepening.
‘Then why are you staring at me?’ I asked him.
‘Something bogus about you.’ He tipped his head to one side. ‘I can’t think what.’
I pressed my lips together, wondering if he had finally guessed my secret. To throw him off the track, I wiped my nose with my finger.
Then I spat some more licorice-tinted spit to make me look more like a tough detective.
Ping scowled at me.
I scratched my armpit & burped.
Then I farted, just for good measure.
I was not really surprised that Ping was trying to figure out what was ‘not right’ about me. I knew dang well. What surprised me was that in nine months of us being pards, he had not realized that I ain’t a boy.
Read more...
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!
