The straw boss shook his head, observing, “I know them claros from Cuba cost more than this child can afford. The big boss, Tough Shit Nabors, smokes Havana Perfectos. I’d say your claro smoker pampers himself a mite, whether he can afford to or not. Claros are mighty mild as well as too expensive for an honest workingman.”
He added he’d never seen anyone mining hardrock in cowboy boots, but that some of the company police thought they were Wild Bill in the flesh. Longarm had been afraid he’d say something like that. It left that ball way in the middle of the air.
He figured asking company police in high-heeled boots whether they’d just been shooting at him in an aspen grove might be a waste of time. So he handed the straw boss a cheroot in exchange for the drink and they parted friendly.
He could see the tin roof of that railroad roundhouse down the slope from the C.C.H. tracks. So he strode down along them, noting in passing how easy it would have been to walk or carry French Sarah up to the stamping mill by that unguarded route.
He found the whitewashed company cottages and some extra tarpaper shanties near the roundhouse, where old Edward had said he might. A couple of colored kids were playing mumbly-peg in the dirt with a jackknife. When he asked the way to Mammy Palaver’s, one ran away, but the other pointed at a slot between two cottages and warned him the Obeah woman might turn him into a horny toad or gopher snake.
Longarm allowed he’d take his chances, and strode over to find the apparent gap between whitewashed cottages was the entrance to a sort of smoke-filled cavern, improvised from scrap lumber and flattened out coal-oil cans. The smoke smelled more like smoldering herbs than firewood. As he hesitated in the low overhang, a cheerful voice called out, “Well, don’t just stand there, child. Come on in and tell Mammy what you want her to make better!”
He went on back to where he could barely make out a once pretty and still friendly-looking colored lady dressed in a white cotton smock, with a purple head cloth and a whole lot of small bones and big beads strung as a triple necklace. She was smoking a long pale cigar. When Longarm started to identify himself she laughed, took the cigar from her lips, and said, “I knew you were coming to John Bull before you got here. I told the chillun how you saved that colored rail-yard man from a mighty ugly bunch of hobo boys that time. I’m telling you now, ain’t none of us colored folk been up to no good in these parts!”
Longarm gravely nodded and declared all the suspects on his list so far seemed to be white folks. He asked if she knew Ute Mary over at the Double Seven, adding he’d just been by there and that the cook had tried to shut her mistress up.
Mammy Palaver said, “Ute Mary been to see me for some love potion. Ain’t no Indian medicine men left in these parts. She ain’t the one who wants to hide her romance with Buck Lewis, the white foreman down that way. He’s the one who’s ashamed to take a full-blood gal to dances in town. I told her she didn’t need no potion for that white boy. He ain’t been fooling with the other gals on that spread, because all but Miss Amanda are true to their husbands, and Miss Amanda thinks she’s too high-toned for raggedy hired help.”
She took a drag on her cigar and added, “She’s right. Ain’t got a peck of brains in her pretty head, but Buck Lewis ain’t good enough for Ute Mary. That stingy old Jed Nolan only pays a foreman top-hand wages and a half. Do they move that beef operation out of here, like some say, Ute Mary won’t have to worry about her Buck Lewis. He’ll be lucky if they take him to Wyoming with them, and Lord knows they’ll never be dragging Indian kitchen help that fu!”
Longarm didn’t ask why. Depending on how full-blooded she might be, Ute Mary was lucky they hadn’t already moved her on out to Utah Territory with the rest of her North Ute kin. The Bureau of Indian Affairs would frown even harder on her winding up on recent Lakota and North Cheyenne range. In their Shining Times the playful young men of those nations had described the North Ute as their favorite enemies. The Ute had counted coup on them many times as well.
Longarm cautiously asked if Mammy Palaver had any notion who Amanda Nolan might be fooling with on the side. The Obeah woman declared she knew for a fact that the redhead had spent a night at the hotel with one of those mining men the last time her husband had been out of town on business. Longarm perked up as he got out his notebook.
But then she had to spoil it all by declaring the redhead’s adulterous stay at the Elk Rack had been well before that confusing Bunny McNee had run that hotel tab up.
As long as he had his pad and pencil out, he questioned Mammy Palaver about all the other slap and tickle she’d heard about up this way.
An Obeah woman who sold love potions heard a lot. The tiny town commenced to sound like Sodom and Gomorrah with Zebourn and Nero’s Rome thrown in. He was more saddened than shocked to hear poor old Constable Payne had been coming from a tryst with a married woman on the night of his death, and he didn’t want to hear about the late Deputy Keen and that colored waitress across the street.
He was a tad disappointed to learn Tough Shit Nabors seemed to be content with his own young wife. They both agreed rich old men seemed to attract the better-looking play-pretties.
Mammy Palaver had kind words to say for Constance Farnsworth as well. She allowed the pretty young widow was either still in mourning for her man or mighty discreet. Then she spoiled that by adding with a shrug, “That uppity Edward would never tell anyone if he caught her in bed with President Hayes and Jesse James at the same time. But listen, have I told you yet about that minister’s spinster daughter who loves her dear daddy more than the Good Book tells her to?”
Longarm shook his head and murmured, “Don’t have any ministers on my list of suspects. Do you mind if I ask where you might have gotten that swell Gallo Claro cigar?”
She calmly allowed a client had bought a box for her, and named the one fancy tobacco shop in town that carried the brand. He asked if her client had been a white cowboy in Justin boots. She found that a droll suggestion, and explained that the colored foreman of that track-working crew had needed some goofer dust to use on a love rival.
Longarm doubted a man of any race would rely on both folk magic and P&P .44-40s to deal with anyone he wanted dead. So he thanked the kindly old witch and went on back to the center of town.
As he approached the jailhouse he saw heaps of pony rumps and assumed that the posse had come back. He learned he was right when he strode in to be told Constable Rothstein had just gone over to the undertakers for a look-see at that dead gal.
Longarm went after the younger lawman, and caught up with him in the cellar of the drugstore, where the druggist ran his sideline as the town’s only and hopefully occasional mortician.
He’d thought French Sarah had been nicely built when she had served him with no more than tea and pastry at the Farnsworth mansion. When one considered what her petite body had been through since then, it was surprising, and distressing, to see how tempting her pale naked flesh looked as it lay on that cold table with the undertaking druggist powderingher dead nose.
Nate Rothstein turned from watching to nod at Longarm and declare, “Small blood flecks in her eyes and only the bruises around her windpipe, despite the drop and a sudden stop on chunks of ore. They tell me we can save the county some bother and her kin some distress if we list the cause of death as strangulation at the hands of a person or persons unknown.”
Longarm nodded soberly and agreed. “She lit out from her job at Widow Farnsworth’s early in the day, as soon as she’d heard her boyfriend had lost a gunfight with yours truly. She might have demanded they send somebody else after me. She might have demanded money to get out of here before anyone could tell me she’d been out in the woodshed with a wanted killer. In either event, the one she went to killed her on the spot, waited until dark, and then carried her up to that stamping mill to get rid of her.”