Portia Parkhurst, attorney-at-law, was neither the best lawyer nor the best-looking woman Longarm knew. But he felt no call to kiss old Judge Dickerson, and the beautiful Miss Fong at the Golden Dragon hardly spoke enough English to discuss legal matters worth mention.
Portia Parkhurst, attorney-at-law, was a tad flat-chested and a mite long in the tooth, but still better-looking than most distaff members of the Colorado Bar Association.
It couldn't be helped. There weren't that many gals in any bar association. Gals had been allowed to study law at least as far back as the Portia that Portia Parkhurst was named after. She'd told Longarm her momma had been inspired by that lady lawyer in that play about merchants in Venice. But no state bar association had accepted women, with or without law degrees, before they built the transcontinental railroad and Wyoming Territory in '69. It had taken them until more recent before the higher courts would hear a case argued falsetto by a shemale. So Portia Parkhurst had spent a heap of her professional career clerking for male lawyers, and if it showed as whisps of silver in her severely bunned black hair, she'd still read way more law books than a heap of slick-talking courtroom dandies.
He'd noticed that on courtroom duty, where they'd met whilst she was defending a train robber he was riding herd on. She'd gotten the guilty son of a bitch off, and they'd naturally gotten to talking it over afterward, having supper together at Romano's and then somehow winding up at her place over on Lincoln Street. She'd been a good sport about him not spending the rest of the weekend yonder, too.
But when he ambled over to her office before his usual quitting time, he found old Portia ready to leave for the day her ownself, and looking severe, even for her, in summer-weight black gabardine and veiled black hat with black silk roses growing out of it.
When they almost bumped noses in her vestibule, he tried to kiss her casually, and when that didn't work he asked her who's funeral they were headed for.
She pulled away, saying, "I've just come from a probate hearing, and I look silly in a black frock coat. It's very flattering to be taken for any old port in a storm, Custis. But I've had a long hard day, and I was planning to spend the evening alone with a good book."
Longarm nodded soberly and suggested, "Bricks Without Straw by a new writer called Tourgee would surely qualify as a good book, Miss Portia. But Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad might make you laugh more."
"Where do you think you're going?" Portia demanded as she locked her front door, turned away from the same, and found him in step with her.
He answered, simply, "We both have to go down the same hall and take the same steps down to Wazee Street, don't we?"
She sniffed and said, "I suppose so. But I frankly don't want to be seen in public with you any more, Custis. I know I lost my head that time and I know what you must think of me, but I didn't know about you and that runaway orphan girl, then, and... Don't you have any shame?"
He steadied her elbow on the steep stairs whether she wanted him to or not as he replied in a tone of sincere indignation, "I never told you I was no angel when I said I admired the way you sucked up Eye-talian noodles, Miss Portia. But that runaway I took away from a more shameless cuss after I'd whupped him fair and square wound up out to the Arvada Orphan Asylum, supervised and chaperoned more than most young gals her age. That's because I took her out there and signed her in, pure as I found her, even though she kept trying to tempt me with mighty shocking suggestions, coming from a twelve-year-old."
The lawyer gal who'd never see forty again sniffed and dismissed his defense with, "It's so good to hear you didn't think you could fit that thing in a twelve-year-old. I meant what I said, at the time, when you put it in me! But that was then and this is now and I'll be damned if I'll let any man use me as no more than a slight improvement on his own hand."
Longarm sniffed back and tried, "I don't know what gives you gals the right to take so much for granted. Where do you get off thinking I came all the way across town to play slap and tickle with you, just because I let you have your wicked way with me that one time?"
She laughed, despite herself. But by then they were out on the walk and she insisted, "I have to be on my way, and I don't want you to follow me, Custis!"
He shrugged and said, "Suit yourself. I reckon I can find another lawyer to tell me about death warrants issued by a justice of the peace."
That worked. She turned to stare up at him with a puzzled smile as she replied, "That's ridiculous. No J.P. has the right to try a criminal case. So how could one sentence anyone to more than the fees and fines allowed under civil codes?"
Longarm said, "I was hoping you might be able to tell me. I came to you with the problem because there's this shemale justice of the peace handing down arrest warrants, directing the server to bring the defendant in dead or alive."
Portia shook her black silk roses wildly and sounded sincere as she said, "The presiding judge of a federal district wouldn't word an arrest warrant that way. Lord knows I've read enough of them, and more than one poor cowboy gone wrong has been shot by the law when he wouldn't come quietly. But a J.P.? Before trial in any criminal court? You say another woman has been trying to issue such ridiculous court orders, Custis?"
He said, "Edith Penn Keller, J.P. and she ain't been trying. She's been doing it, and so far eight men have wound up dead instead of alive. I know you'll say they doubtless had it coming, but-"
"We'd better talk this over." Portia sighed, adding, "Let's hail a ride and go to my place. I meant what I said about being seen with such a rascal in public, but I'll whip us up some supper while you tell me more about this crazy woman who thinks she's a J.P."
So that was where they went, and Portia served him some swell pork chops and hash browns along with collard greens that he shoved around in the plate to be polite as he told her, "I came to you about her because a he-lawyer I just talked to back at my office seemed to be as fuzzy as myself on this women's suffering up Wyoming way."
She rose to produce some marble cake from a bread box on a side board as she dryly remarked, "Suffrage is the word I hope you meant, and I suspected all along you came to me because I was a she-lawyer. What's wrong with women being allowed to vote and even hold public office in Wyoming Territory? A republic that denies the vote to over half its adult citizens is by definition not a republic!"
He held up both hands in surrender as he protested, "Don't look at me! I'm only paid to enforce the laws as others write 'em, and I read what Miss Susan B. Anthony wrote about them fining her and them other ladies for trying to vote for or against Grant in seventy-two! If it was up to me a gal who could read and write would have the vote over any man who couldn't, and vice versa. But, like I said, it ain't up to me, and what I was hoping you could tell me was how come Miss Susan B. got arrested for voting in seventy-two if women have been allowed to vote and hold office since sixty-nine up Wyoming way?"
She served the cake and poured more coffee as she sighed and told him, "You just answered your own question, Custis. Whether they were listening to their wives or bucking for statehood by registering all the voters they could manage, the founding fathers of Wyoming Territory extended the franchise to all adult white women as far as township, county, and territorial elections and public offices go. Susan B. and her fellow sufragettes didn't try to vote in Wyoming. They weren't exactly arrested for trying to vote anywhere. They registered to vote at various polling places by signing in under just their initials or in some cases assumed names. They were arrested when poll watchers spotted them standing in the voting lines in their skirts."