Her dress was plain, cheap, and much patched. Her coat was threadbare and as plain as the dress. Her shoes, on the other hand, were almost new. He suspected she must have treated herself, perhaps out of her earnings at Norma Brantley’s house of happiness. Those, however, were the only things he found that he could be sure would have belonged to the girl.
If Nancy had carried a handbag with her on the Sunday past, Longarm could not find it now. Which did not prove anything. If the party or parties who killed her went in for robbery too, either as the initial reason for jumping her or possibly as an afterthought once she was dead, they very likely could have taken the handbag with them. In that case it should now be in a trash heap somewhere in or near Kittstown, or under a snowdrift, where it was likely to lie undetected until the next thaw.
As for evidence, though … nada, nothing worth a damn.
Longarm sighed and took a final look around the cabin. Nancy’s body had long since been decently covered again after its violation—that, at least, was the way Longarm thought of it—by the local boys.
Hoping to repair the lock enough to avoid a repeat of that visit, he took a few minutes to examine the hasp on the cabin door, and discovered that it was doubly busted. Not only was the padlock broken, the screws holding the iron hasp had been jimmied out of the rotting wood and then pressed finger-tight back in place.
Longarm found that to be at least mildly interesting. Not that he’d ever had any idea that Darby Travis was a suspect in the killing, but this pretty much proved it. After all, Darby Travis had a key and did not need to bust up his own property.
The youngsters who reported the body to the mayor admitted to breaking the padlock.
So it must have been Nancy’s killer who pried the hasp loose.
Damn it anyway, Longarm thought. Why couldn’t the son of a bitch have left something, forgotten something, given some sort of indication of who or what he was. There was nothing. Longarm closed the door and wedged a scrap of wood under it to keep it from being blown open by the swirling winds, then arranged the jimmied hasp and broken lock so that from a distance they would give the appearance, false though it was, of being intact.
Maybe that would be enough to keep any more gawkers from sneaking in.
And tomorrow, if he could, or anyway as soon as the storm permitted, Longarm figured to have whoever it was in Kittstown who provided mortuary services pick the girl’s body up and see that it was properly attended.
The thought of Nancy, so young and so pretty and with that tear frozen on her cheek, lying abandoned in a frigid shack with nothing but pack rats for company … that bothered Longarm.
Dammit, he would see that the girl was taken care of if he had to pay for the burial out of his own pocket.
He pulled the fur cap low on his forehead, turned his coat collar high, and set out into the force of the storm once more.
He was already back in town, walking in the lee of a block of tall buildings where the wind was broken and there was a sense of relative warmth, when someone took a shot at him.
Chapter 15
It sounded like the world’s biggest bumblebee zipping and sizzling past his left ear. Except no bee alive could ever fly that fast. And there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of bees that went out for a look-see in the middle of a Wyoming blizzard.
Besides, Longarm was kinda cheating when he recognized the sound of the bullet; he’d heard its like many a time before.
Not that he was standing there thinking all this through, though. By the time he consciously realized the importance of the sound, he was already burrowing face-first into a snowdrift piled against the north wall of the alley and already had his revolver in hand.
Drifted snow made a damn poor barrier against gunfire, so he didn’t tarry.
He came rolling back onto bare, frozen earth with the Colt pointed more or less in the direction from which the shot was fired.
More or less, that is, because it was all blind guesswork. Literally blind guesswork. Longarm had a face full of snow that was packed thick on his eyes and in his nose and had the same sharp, ozone smell as winter air.
He spat and pawed the snow off his face and blinked wildly as he rolled first one way and then the other, trying to keep the ambusher from getting any luckier with a second shot.
The sonuvabitch fired again, sending up a spray of ice chips and dirt from just to Longarm’s left, but this time the gunman’s target was face-on to him, and this time Longarm had vision enough to see the muzzle flash from the side of the building at the far back end of the alley.
Longarm snapped a shot off in return, swiped impatiently at the small clods and loose dusting of snow that continued to hamper his vision, then took more careful aim and blew some splinters off the wood trim at the back of the building.
There was no howl of pain and no satisfying thump of a body hitting the ground, so he had to figure he’d missed.
But he bet he’d come close enough to make the crotch of the bastard’s britches wet.
He rubbed at his eyes again and, able to see clearly, rolled quickly to his right and sprang onto his feet.
There was no movement at the far end of the alley. Close and cautious inspection disclosed that the gunman, whoever the son of a bitch was, had given up, at least for the time being.
Longarm stood in the lee of the structure that had sheltered the ambusher and gave the matter some serious thought while his hands were occupied with reloading the big .44.
When he was done he had reached two conclusions. The first was that the gunman—he thought he knew who it pretty much had to be—would not likely make a second attempt on his life. The second was that, all in all, it really wasn’t such a bad thing that the asshole had tried to back-shoot him. Not, that is, since he’d missed.
In fact, dammit, the incident could turn out to be a downright positive event.
With a grunt of satisfaction Longarm returned the Colt to its holster—discovering as he did so that he’d snatched the gun out so fast and so automatically that he’d torn a button off the belly of his coat while he was at it—then headed off in the direction of Kittstown’s business district.
Chapter 16
“Afternoon, Mr. Mayor,” Longarm said, closing the storm outside and removing his hat and gloves. The inside of the mercantile was oppressively hot. Which seemed mighty comfortable after spending so much time out in the blizzard that continued its efforts to bury southern Wyoming.
“Deputy,” Parminter said by way of greeting.
“You open for business, Mr. Mayor? I need a button to go on this here coat.”
“I’m sure I can find something for you.” Parminter fetched a wooden box down from a shelf and began rummaging through it. Longarm stepped closer, and saw that it was a box of mismatched buttons ranging from tiny collar buttons to tough shoe buttons and up as large as some huge, decorative buttons. The materials used were almost everything: horn, bone, antler, tortoise shell, assorted metals, even a few gleaming bits of abalone.
“I think this one might match,” Parminter suggested.
“Close enough.” Longarm dropped the button into his pocket. “Thanks. How much do I owe you?”
“No charge. Glad to help. Uh, I’ve been hearing that you are looking into that girl’s death. Is that true, Marshal?”
“Into the murder, you mean?”
“Murder, accident, whatever.”
“I’ve asked a few questions, that’s all.”
“You know, of course, that you have no jurisdiction here,” the mayor reminded him. “Not unless I specifically ask for your help.”
“Is there something about this that you wanta hide, Mr. Mayor?”
“Of course not. I just don’t want the community stirred up over nothing.”