The mousy little teacher, principal, or whatever sniffed and said, “It was. Now it’s maintained for the most part by Widow Farnsworth, who runs the railroad and isn’t half as stingy with her money as the new board of aldermen and that cowboy who thinks he’s a mayor. What you said about them taxing freeholders for education was, alas, all too true! Lord knows what we’d do, or who’d ever educate children, if it wasn’t for Widow Farnsworth!”
As she led him into a spacious reading room with a bigger chamber filled with book stacks off to one side, Longarm sniffed at the pine oil some tidy soul had been cleaning with and said, “I met up with Widow Farnsworth just last evening, ma’am. I could see right off she was a handsome woman. I didn’t know she was this handsome, even though I’m here this morning on her behalf.”
The schoolmarm naturally asked, as she led the way back to rustle up the two tomes he meant to start with, what Widow Farnsworth could have to do with the Encyclopedia Britannica. So he told her about that English railroading man’s untimely death.
As they found the volumes he needed he explained: “Stanwyk told Widow Farnsworth he might have a simple solution for some problems she can’t find any American railroaders to fix. I have the advantage of being an American with an open mind on railroading. I know the way we lay track seems a heap more sensible. I want to see if a hunch I had last night about the more complicated English way makes sense to the wise old birds they hire to write all this stuff.”
They put the two volumes on a shellacked oak reading table and, as he got out his notebook and a pencil stub, she protested, “Heavens, we can do better than that. Wait right here and I’ll fetch you some colored pencils and graph paper. You do mean to copy down some railroading diagrams, don’t you?”
He said he sure did. So she left him there alone as, outside, the morning train he’d meant to leave aboard with Bunny McNee went puffing and banging by.
He set his Stetson aside on the table and broke open the logical first choice. He found page after page of railroad lore. He flipped pages to determine how long he was apt to be stuck here, and then it hit him, smack between the eyes at first glance. So he said, “Hot dice on payday! That has to be it!” as he grinned down at a side-by-side comparison of American Stevens and British Wilkinson rails in cross section. The clear line cuts, showing how each brand was held securely down to the cross ties, were easy enough to memorize without making one’s own sketches.
But out in the hallway, the mousy Miss Dorman of the John Bull Grammar School had been headed back to the reading room with the drawing materials she’d promised when she was grabbed roughly from behind and let out a mousy squeak before Quicksilver Quinn had his gun muzzle in one ear and was growling into the other, “Hesh your face and do as I say! I don’t aim to rob you and you ain’t worth the time and trouble of a rape. I only need some guidance. That lawman you Was talking to out front was not where I thought he’d be as that train went by just now. So where’s he at and what’s he doing?”
She gulped and gasped, “You’re hurting me! Deputy Long’s not doing anything to anybody in our reading room. He just came to look something up. He couldn’t be after yo-U. So why don’t you just run away while you have the chance?”
The gunslick ground the muzzle of his gun against the tender flesh of her ear and demanded, “Show me the way as I sort of ride you piggyback with this other arm around your waist. How come you’re wearing a corset, girl? You’re as lightly built as one of your schoolgals!”
Miss Dorman had never considered herself a brave young woman. But she tried to dig her heels in, and when that didn’t work, she tried to steer them the wrong way at the first fork in the corridor. But the experienced gunslick growled, “I reckon we’ll just head thissaways! Is yonder archway the way into this here reading room?”
It was, but Miss Dorman didn’t answer. Quicksilver chuckled and murmured, “You’re fixing to help me whether you aim to or not. You ain’t big enough to stop many bullets. But all I need is the moment of hesitation you’ll inspire when he sees you betwixt us. Get moving and don’t struggle no more. I mean it!”
So in point of fact the burly killer was half carrying the weaker schoolmarm as they came in together fast, with the killer’s six-gun out of her ear and trained dead ahead.
Seeing nothing but Longarm’s Stetson on the heavy oaken table, Quicksilver fired and sent the hat flying before he’d grasped that nobody seemed to be wearing it.
He still figured his target had dropped down out of sight behind that natural cover. So that was the direction he was staring when Longarm made his own move.
Having just replaced the two heavy volumes where they belonged, Longarm had been returning to the reading room from among the stacks when he’d heard the muffled sounds of the struggle out yonder and drawn his own double-action .44-40. So he had a sideways shot at a burly target advancing behind a skinny shield, and not wanting to risk the mousy little gal, he aimed high and fired without warning.
Two hundred grains of hot spinning lead went in one of Quicksilver’s temples and burst out the other with a teacup’s worth of blood and brains as the schoolmarm broke loose to wind up facedown on that reading table screaming fit to bust!
Longarm lowered his smoking muzzle, but held on to the grips in case these critters hunted in pairs. He could see at a glance the hunting days were over for the rascal he had spread across the floor like a bear rug. So he moved to comfort the terrified gal.
“It’s over, ma’am.” he said, placing a gentle free hand on one sobbing shoulder. “They’d have heard that gunshot back up the street. So other lawmen will soon be here whether you keep bawling for them or not, hear?”
She gasped, “He was going to murder you! He told me so! He said I wasn’t pretty enough for a fate worse than death, but I just knew he was going to kill me too!”
Longarm shot another glance at the dead man at their feet, grimaced in distaste, and allowed, “You were likely right about that last part, and I wouldn’t have bet on the first. You’re a right nice-looking gal and he’d have never brought the topic up if it hadn’t crossed his mind.”
She stopped crying and demurely said, “Why, thank you. That was an awfully nice thing to say.”
Chapter 9
It was possible to gun a man and get out of town without further formality, but outside of a Ned Buntline romance of a Wilder West, it wasn’t considered proper. So Longarm explained how pressed for time he’d be once some chaperons arrived from Denver, and the dentist who sat in for the county coroner up at that end of the county set the hearing for that very afternoon.
The coroner’s sub-panel met in the town hall facing the dusty municipal corral, Twelve men good and true lined up along one side of a trestle table to call the shots. Most everyone else of any importance around John Bull got to watch from the folding seats set up for their enjoyment. The layout sort of reminded Longarm of a play or graduation ceremony, but their star, the late Quicksilver Quinn, had graduated to his own bed of ice in that root cellar with what was likely a dead associate called Ginger Bancott.
The identity of the villain Longarm had gunned had been established on the scene by Deputy Rothstein, who seemed to read nothing but old wanted fliers. Miss Dorman from the schoolhouse appeared before the sub-panel as their first witness, ladies first, to primly establish the dead man had been using her as a shield and whispering villainous threats to her as he’d fired the first shot and been shot at in turn. The mousy little gal didn’t have to say anything about fates worse than death. Quicksilver Quinn had been wanted on that charge as well.