Payne sipped some suds thoughtfully, then said, “Six of one and half a dozen of the other. Say she come up here to hide out with Ginger or somebody else when the gang split up after their last big haul. There’s only the one hotel, but a real wayward youth could hole up any number of places as a hired hand or paying boarder. So say Ginger or whoever cached his sweeter sidekick in the Elk Rack lest someone notice she sat down to pee, or simply to keep anyone from noticing two strangers in town all at once.”
Longarm grimaced and said, “I thought you just advised against a chess game we don’t really have to play. I told you I’d sent for chaperones. Once I have her before Judge Dickerson with no counter-charges to offer, he’s fixing to tell her she can tell all she knows or face a slow twenty years in striped cotton dress. Females have fewer good years to spend than us, and twenty years would scare a heap of men. But since she never actually aimed a gun at anyone as a member of that meaner bunch, Judge Dickerson could doubtless let her walk, if she was willing to witness against rascals who let her down and left her stranded with an unpaid hotel bill.”
Payne nodded soberly and said, “I follow your drift. But what if Ginger Bancott wasn’t that other robber she was hiding out with? My boys have been scouting about to no avail trying to find out where he was holed up before he tried for either you or that Englishman at the depot across the way.”
Longarm shrugged and replied, “I’ve been studying on that angle. At the risk of false modesty, the more I study the more I tend to go with Gaylord Stanwyk as the intended target. I ain’t the only gent who ever trod on somebody else’s toes, and way more folk knew he was on his way to John Bull. You and your deputies were the only ones in town I wired that I’d be coming in place of them other deputies.”
Amos Payne stared goggle-eyed and gasped, “Thunderation! Are you suggesting me or mine could have been out to gun the transferring lawman before he could take our pretty prisoner away from us?”
Longarm said, “The thought had occurred to me. But. .
“Then that’s the dumbest thought I ever heard tell of, and you’d be surprised what I hear from the drunks on payday night! Had we been aiming to aid and abet the escape of Bunny McNee, we’d have just let her go and say she escaped! That don’t sound half as risky for a bought-off town constable as assassinating federal agents! I suppose you’re fixing to tell me next that I hired that known killer to kill you and then killed him when he killed the wrong man?”
Longarm snorted and growled, “I hadn’t finished. I was saying I like to ponder all the possibles before I make up my mind. So I did and, had you let me finish, I was about to make them very points for you all.”
“We never had to wire you people we were holding a federal want to begin with!” Payne whined. “We’d only arrested a deadbeat drifter as far as anyone else in town knew. Had the shiftless slut been rich enough to bribe this child, she’d have paid way less to the Elk Rack Hotel and never been arrested in the first place!”
Longarm nodded, drained the last of his schooner, and replied in a friendlier way, “That does make that tall Englishman the far more likely target. Might you have a public library here in John Bull, old son?”
Payne looked surprised, then said, “Sort of. That limey mining syndicate built a school with a library wing whilst this was their company town. Now that we’ve incorporated as a Colorado township, the school, library, and such are still there, no matter who’s been paying for their upkeep. You sure bring up a heap of matters nobody’s ever asked me about before.”
Longarm said, “They pay me to be nosy. Which way did you say your schoolhouse was?”
Payne said to head away from the mining operation and railroad yards until he passed the First Methodist Church. The frame school complex would be back from the road a piece, surrounded by shade trees of green ash. So they shook on it and parted friendly. It wasn’t easy, but Amos Payne managed not to ask what Longarm wanted with a library.
But others were more suspicious of Longarm’s motives as they watched from the shade of a shop overhang at a respectful distance.
The man who’d met with the Widow Farnsworth’s maid asked the more respectable-looking man next to him, “Where do you reckon that nosy lawman could be headed now? That morning train will be leaving for Golden any minute now, and he ain’t got that prisoner out of jail yet!”
The man in position to give the orders said, “Follow him. Let’s hope for his sake it’s some last-minute errand. You’re right about that train. That’s not all we’ll be right about if he fails to catch it out of here. They warned us he was a sly fox who plays with his cards close to his vest!”
The more obvious gunslick grinned wolfishly and said, “I told you I thought he was fibbing to that widow gal in her very own parlor! Do I get to gun him if he fails to get aboard that train?”
To which his boss replied in a disgusted tone, “Why, no, I wanted you to get him hot with some Frenching whilst the rest of us drop our pants, bend over, and spread our cheeks! If he was never really sent up our way to carry that saddle tramp back to Denver, he was sent to pester somebody else, and we’re the only action for miles that any federal lawman could be interested in, Quicksilver!”
The one known as Quicksilver Quinn to those who rented his gun hand at the going rate purred, “I’ve never had the chance to gun anyone really famous before. I don’t want to see my real name there. But I’m fixing to save the newspaper clippings to show my grandchildren some fine day. How do you reckon they got on to us, though?”
The older man shrugged and said, “If they were really on to us they’d be up here in force, making some arrests. They can’t have all that much on anybody yet.”
He took a deep breath, sighed, and said, “I hear that train a’coming from the roundhouse now. That son of a bitch is still on his nosy way to somewheres else. You know what to do. I’d hold my fire till that Shay locomotive goes chugging and clanking past.”
To which Quicksilver Quinn could only modestly reply, “Don’t tell your granny how to suck eggs, or this child how to kill a man!”
Chapter 8
The small town wasn’t old enough for planted trees to grow as big as the handsome grove of green ash off to the east of the cinder-paved main street. So Longarm knew somebody sensible had chosen a handsome site to build on, a tad off center, to leave as many old shade trees as possible for the mighty sunny mountain summers. The green ash dropped its leaves in the fall just as some cooler sunshine would feel right for the kids in the yard during recess play.
The little rascals were enjoying their summer vacations as he strode up to the doorway of the barn-red main building. But as he’d hoped, there were grownups working there all summer.
A little gal in a print dress with a pencil stuck in the bun of her upswept mouse-brown hair looked scared of the federal badge he showed her, until he told her he hadn’t come to arrest anyone for not cleaning the blackboards right. She led him along a corridor as she told him their school library was only for the use of the pupils and their teachers, but that he could borrow all the books he wanted without any lending library card. He assured her he only wanted to paw through their latest copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica if they had a set on hand.
The mouse said, “Of course we have. I just told you it was a school library. What was it you wanted to look up?”
Knowing she was most likely trying to be helpful, there being about two dozen volumes in the set arranged alphabetically, he politely replied, “Railroads, or railways as the British call ‘em. Either way, they ought to be listed under R. But I reckon I ought to take a gander at Civil Engineering under C as long as I’m here. This sure is a handsome school you got here, ma’am. The tax rolls of your average town this size can’t afford anything this grand. It was put up by that original mining syndicate, right?”