Part 21 (1/2)

The brunette poured some coffee for herself as she gently but firmly reminded Longarm he owed her a story.

Longarm washed down some cake and began. ”Once upon a time there was this sort of odd couple, well-fixed for cash but on the dodge for having obtained the cash under many, many false pretenses. They came in their travels upon this bitty trail town, well-located but dying on the vine because it was located betwixt a haunted mesa and an Apache reservation.

Being keen students of human nature, the couple I'll call Frenchy and Dolly saw folks were still unreasonably spooked by Indian troubles of the past. So it was possible to buy valuable property up this way cheap.”

He took another bite and continued. ”They did. One going business finances another, and so in no time at all Frenchy and Dolly became Queen Kirby and her boys. They naturally sent for other grifters to help them run their private town.”

Meg Campbell protested, ”They didn't own all of us. I'll have you know I was hired by the town council, not any card-house or parlor-house madam!”

He said soothingly, ”I know. Almost half the town council is made up of more respectable old-timers. That's what was eating the greedy gent who was posing as a gal.”

She gasped. ”Good Lord! Queen Kirby was a man?”

Longarm said, ”I reckon Trisha never told you because she never knew.

He made a fairly convincing old gal, But that wasn't the crime that caused so much bother. There was a colonial governor back in the time of the real Queen Anne who liked to dress up like a fine lady, but he never dressed others up as Indians to spook folks even worse.”

He saw he'd gotten ahead of himself again when she marveled, ”Those Apache were dressed up silly too?”

He silenced her with a wave of his coffee cup and said, ”Forget a heap of their unusual habits and you've still got greed. The natural laws of supply and demand raise real-estate values as a towns.h.i.+p gets more attractive to investors. They must have noticed how unwise it was to simply grab property the way they did down Lincoln County way. It was slicker when they grasped how Uncle John Chisum had wound up owning everything when the gunsmoke cleared, leaving the surviving property-holders demoralized and ready to sell out for a song. But as word got out about those Jicarilla being cleared to make room for progress, land values in these parts figured to go up, not down, and leave us not forget the rising price of beef back East. In sum, Queen Kirby's trail-town empire had finished expanding for the foreseeable future, unless they could make the future look different.”

He sipped, put down the cup again, and said, ”They sent out for more help. Some of them hardcase killers but mostly just adventurous saddle tramps. Only a small number of them had to be let in on their true plans. They didn't want to make it easy to add up the numbers, so they had some camping over in the canyonlands at first. That was a mistake they corrected as soon as they heard word was getting out to the real world about private armies gathering. They knew Governor Wallace and even the president who'd appointed him would be on the prod for another New Mexico dust-up like that Lincoln County War. So they pulled them into town and enlisted them with the rest of their so-called Regulators before I ever got here.”

”Regulators regulating what?” she demanded.

He said, ”Apache, of course. Turns out no Jicarilla have really gone all that wild over the latest BIA nonsense. They likely figure Was.h.i.+ngton will reshuffle everybody back the way they were as soon as they get Victorio calmed down or buried. But everyone else with the hair and horseflesh they value was already braced for another Apache war before this county's effeminate answer to Uncle John Chisum decided to provide 'em with one. It was simple for Wes Jones, as Frenchy now called himself, to stage some Apache raids while pretending to be protecting all the white settlers from the savages. They didn't have to steal half as seriously as real raiders to scare the liver and lights out of folks. They didn't want to kill anyone capable of signing a bill of sale for some quick cash on the way to safer parts. So for all the dramatics, it was mostly hollow noise.”

She poured him more coffee as she marveled, ”Well, I never. But how much of this might Trisha have known, the two-faced thing?”