2 The man who liked women
Part 1
Luke disliked cities, but occasionally he found himself passing through places which were definitely larger than small towns for more specialist supplies – the centrefire cartridges for his Winchester were not common enough to be available in every general store – and to replace the black clothing he favoured over the usual garb of levis, flannel shirts, and leather vests.
Fully tooled up, clean from a long hot soak which was a luxury, and, which pleased him mightily, some black levis to combine hard-wearing with Luke’s sartorial tastes, and he felt good.
He stalked down the street with his predator’s tread, and found a poster pasted up outside the stage coach office. He studied it.
The man depicted was handsome in a florid sort of way; the sort of coarsely-handsome man some women find irresistible. Luke thought he looked an ugly customer. His name was Dan ‘Fillies’ Mikkeljon, and he was worth $1,250 alive, $500 dead.
That meant he had a stash they wanted to get their hands on.
The stash was probably worth finding.
The small print declared that Fillies had acquired his nickname by his habit of making up to women who had connections to wealth, and using inside knowledge to crack safes, or dig up hidden monies, and was to be considered dangerous. Luke recalled reading of his last theft in a paper left in the train when he freighted into town with his horse. An unhappy wife with a miser of a husband had been seduced, and agreed to flee with Fillies, along with her husband’s stash. Having helped him dig the hole to uncover it – a matter deduced by the local sheriff, who had to be smarter than many, who figured this out by the blisters on her hands – Fillies had then shot her, and left her in the hole as her grave.
Luke disapproved strongly of men who killed women.
He pulled down the poster, ignoring the startled protest of the man at the ticket office, and headed off to the marshal’s office.
“What’s the reward on this hombre’s stash?” he asked.
“What, a boy like you, after Fillies Mikkeljohn? Go back to school,” jeered the marshal.
“My boyish beauty is against me,” sighed Luke. “Just because I have the body of an angel, everyone assumes I’m an innocent. What’s the reward on his stash?”
“Ten percent,” said the marshal, unwillingly. “He lifted fifty thousand in gold.”
“How the hell did he transport it?” asked Luke.
“He took the whole train, uncoupled the caboose with the gold in, and unloaded it at his leisure,” said the marshal.
Luke whistled.
“He ain’t short of gall, is he?” he said.
“Nope,” said the marshal. “Torpedos[1] on the line, the train stopped, he uncoupled the caboose, cool as you please, shot the guard, and draped him over the buffers of the last carriage. Train driver swears he knows where he stopped, but by jingo, there was no caboose there when anyone went back for it, and no gold neither.”
“Huh,” said Luke. “Map?”
The marshal shrugged.
“If you got any ideas,...”
“Ideas I got in plenty, sir, but ideas aren’t proof, and if I’m wrong and drag out a posse, my reputation will be mud,” said Luke.
“You talk like an Easterner.”
“I talk like the schoolmarm’s son,” said Luke. “My mother came out from England.”
“I don’t suppose it makes you friends.”
Luke smiled at him. His smile was singularly sweet, and his lips, delicately coloured and curved, almost effeminate. The hint of mischief in his eyes was not, however, warm.
“I don’t need friends who judge me on how I speak,” he said.
“Well, it’s no skin off my nose,” said the marshal. “Here’s the map.”
Luke studied it.
“Where’s he struck?” he asked. The marshal marked half a dozen places with pins.
Luke considered; then he nodded.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “What’s his lower limit?”
“He’s never stolen a prize worth less than fifteen thousand.”
Luke nodded.
“How do you plan to find him?” asked the marshal.
Luke smiled again. The hint of mischief was stronger and his eyes glinted and a dimple made its appearance on his cheek.
“I’m not going to bother. He’s going to find me,” he said.
oOoOo
An hour later, Luke walked into a ladies’ outfitters.
“I’m shopping for m’sister,” he told the young shopkeeper. “She’s happy with readymades until she can get fabric and shop. She needs mourning, and she took it into her head that she needs all new undergarments as well.”
“What, and you’ve got to pay? Sisters, eh!” said the young man, sympathetically.
“Oh, she gave me the dough,” said Luke, easily. “She may not be wealthy yet, but she can afford to make a bit of a splash; seemingly her husband turned up his toes long enough after his own brother for her to inherit her brother-in-law’s fortune. Fellow was a gold miner, and hoarded every nugget and poke of dust. The lawyer said she’s worth twenty thousand, maybe more, if the mine ain’t worked out.”
“Dadburn it! That sure is a sizeable heritance,” said the young man.
“Yes, and she’s all rarin’ to take off for some place called Pendleton,” said Luke. “Won’t wait for me, of course; just like a woman.”
“You didn’t ought to talk about that, really, sir,” said the salesman. “People talk...” he made a small movement with his head towards a middle-aged lady, being attended to by another young man. She was listening avidly.
She was also the wife of the editor of the local paper, and Luke had picked his moment with care.
The helpful young man turned back to business.
“What size is your sister?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s about my height; a tall lass. O’ course, she’s a shadow of her old self; been nursing her old man. I don’t suppose you do them patent corsets which are... you know, a bit exaggerated? She used to be...” he made graphic hand movements in the neighbourhood of his chest. “She don’t want to turn up at her in-laws looking like she should be the one being buried.”
“Of course, sir,” said the helpful young man. “You want a Watkiss Patent shapely corset.”
Luke smiled in content as the helpful young man produced a corset which was well-padded in the right area.
“Perfect,” he murmured. He paid for his purchases and walked away with a complete set of female garb.
Back in his hotel, Luke crooked a finger to the proprietor’s youthful son, Tommy, who was boy of all work, and about fourteen years old, with red hair, buck teeth, and a taste for lurid fiction in dime novels, on which much of his pocket money was squandered.
“You know I’m a bounty killer, don’t you, Tommy?” he said. “They call me the Black Falcon.”
“Y’are? Wow!” said Tommy. “That’ll explain your guns.”
“Exactly,” said Luke. “Now, I’m after a villain who kills women; and I need your help, and your silence. And there’s five dollars in it for you if you can help me.”
“For sure!” breathed Tommy, his eyes shining.
“Come up to my room,” said Luke.
Tommy trotted behind the tall, dangerous man who was his new hero, surpassing all heroic marshals, Pinkerton’s detectives, and dashing cavalry officers.
“Right,” said Luke. “You any good at shaving?”
“Uh... no,” said Tommy. “Never had to do it.”
“Well, I should think I can give myself a close enough shave,” said Luke who had also been to a drugstore asking about cosmetics to hide his sister’s tear-streaked face when travelling. “You unpack all them female doo-dads for me, and we’ll see if we can figure out how to dress me up. Durned if women’s clothing didn’t ought to come with an instruction manual; it isn’t as easy to figure out as stripping and cleaning a gun.”
Tommy giggled a little self-consciously as he handled garments he had never even imagined touching.
“It’s all right if you get a thrill, son, as long as it’s the thoughts of a lady in it, not me,” said Luke, who had stripped to his long underwear to shave.
“Something’s wrong with the, um.... the underthings,” said Tommy, holding up two separate frill-bedecked legs.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Luke. “It’s all sewn up and finished proper; I guess that’s the way ladies do things. How do they stop the draft getting up their nethers?”
Tommy sniggered.
“Perhaps they don’t,” he said. “After all, ladies gotta go same as men, and all them skirts....”
“Good point, Tommy-boy,” said Luke. He carefully removed every last speck of hair on his face, and turned to the clothing. “I’m wearing those over my own underwear,” he said. “And my own riding boots under them at that. I can’t afford to have my feet let me down.”
He got dressed with Tommy’s help as far as the skirt, cursing about the corset.
“Women need medals of honour for surviving these,” he said. It was fortunate that his waist was slender; the bulk of the petticoat and skirt would hide that his hips were, too.
“I wouldn’t be a woman for a hundred thousand dollars,” opined Tommy.
“I need slits in this to reach for my guns,” Luke said. “You’ll have to hold things flat for me so I can fix it so it ain’t immediately apparent. I am glad my mother taught me to sew, so I can fettle my own duds at need.”
Tommy, who had been resisting such domestic lessons from his own mother, promptly swore he would learn how to sew if a dangerous man like this could admit to sewing and seemed to think it a virtue.
It did not take much for Luke to work out that all he had to do was to open up the pockets thoughtfully provided in the skirt. Then he put on his gun belt, and put the skirt over, checking that he could draw smoothly.
Then he went to work on his face with the cosmetics. A bonnet with a short veil, concealing how firm his eyebrows were, and he turned to Tommy, and batted his eyebrows.
“Will I do, young sir?” he asked.
“Cuh, Mr. Falcon, sir, you’re kinda real purty!” said Tommy, in profound shock.
Luke winked at him.
“Now, do you think I’d fool your old man, if you told him that I’d given my room to my sister?”
“Yes, sir!” said Tommy.
“Well, lad, now you get to help me take it all off. No point me leaving until the gossip columns have talked about a rich widow,” said Luke. “Can you arrange me meals in my room for a couple of days?”
“Yes, sir!” said Tommy, pocketting further largessse. “I’ll get you the paper, too.”
“Invaluable boy,” said Luke. “Now, I wait for the news to hit, and then I get me a stage coach to Pendleton.”
“It’s days and days to Pendleton, sir,” said Tommy.
“Yes, quite,” said Luke. “And I need to give that consarned owlhoot time to find out about me, and get sorted out onto the stage.”
Tommy sighed.
“And then you gun him down?” he said.
“Hell, no,” said Luke. “First, I separate him off from the crowd, then I capture him – he’s worth more alive than dead – and then I threaten unspeakable torture until he reveals where his stash is hidden. I want that ten percent.”
In due course, the newspaper gossip column spoke coyly of how it had come to their notice that a young and lovely widow had come into a fortune by way of compensation for losing her husband, in terms of gold by the truck full.
Luke, meanwhile, had sat for a photograph in his trappings as a woman.
“Tommy, my lad,” he said, “Nip to the newspaper offices and ask them what they’d pay you for the chance to copy a photograph of the beautiful and wealthy widow, Jane Brandon.”
Tommy sniggered as Luke handed him a copy.
“Coo, Mr. Falcon, that makes you into a real looker,” he said. “Are you sure it ain’t your sister?”
“Oh, my sisters would, any one of them, be up for playing bait,” said Luke. “But I’m not sure I fancy the idea.”
“Your sisters sound swell!” said Tommy. “Catch my sister being bait! She’d set up such a screech the owlhoots’d die of fright.”
“Ah, well, she’s a city girl,” said Luke. “My sisters were raised as warriors, like me, with added nursing skills.” He handed Tommy a package. “And while you’re out, if you can drop that into the post office first, I’ll be obliged; it’s a copy of the picture which you ‘borrowed’ off the dressing table of the lady’s brother, and a letter to my parents. I don’t intend for anything to go wrong, but I want my parents to know in case anyone finds themselves burying me in women’s duds.”
Tommy sniggered.
“You’re too good to let any consarned owlhoot take you down,” he said.
“Your faith in my efficiency is heartening,” said Luke.
Luke was killing time watching ladies out of the window of his room, and copying their mannerisms to give the time for the story to circulate. No point going all that way in uncomfortable clothing, bounced like corn in a corn popper in a stage coach if the prey for which he was bait had had no sniff at him.
And then, he fluttered downstairs to pay the bill.
“Durned if I seen you before, ma’am,” said the proprietor, scratching the fringe of hair he still possessed at the back of his neck.
“Oh! It’s my dear brother... he gave up his room for me... so kind! I really couldn’t have a kinder... and himself having to look for somewhere to stay, and still getting me tickets... such a pity he can’t accompany me... I believe I owe you his bill as well, he left money to settle... so do I have to sign your register too?” he fluttered his hands delicately as he lost himself in a series of half-sentences about his so-kind brother, and fluttered across to the stage coach depot to pick up the coach to Pendleton. The fare averaged out at around twenty cents a mile; or a dollar per ten miles. It was an outlay, spending almost fifty dollars to travel as bait, but it would net a goodly amount. And Luke needed to get closer to where he was certain Fillies’s hidden store of gold was stored.
Excellent, thank you! MayaB
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