Longarm got the impression he was supposed to head on back to Denver as soon as possible. The federal want he’d never been sent to fetch was dead. None of the other tales of blood and slaughter sounded like federal offenses, and nobody from Denver seemed to have any notion what it had all been about in any case.
Longarm had to agree his superior’s fussing made some sense. The great unwashed was always raising hell in places like John Bull. That was why they had their own damned lawmen. The Justice Department simply didn’t have the manpower to tame every tiny town.
He wired his boss that he’d heard and would obey. Then he stepped out on the walk, aware there’d be no train out for well over twelve hours, and wondering what he was going to say if old Peony and Matilda both showed up at his hotel room after dark.
A shorter gent in a stovepipe hat stomped up to him and demanded in an imperious voice what he meant to do about the murder of that maid from the Farnsworth mansion.
Longarm had to think before he recalled the face and name. The imperious grump was Justice of the Peace Silas Hall, and he had to be so grumpy because it was an election year.
As if he’d read Longarm’s mind the J.P. said, “I just came from a sit-down at the Republican Club. Everyone from the mayor to junior alderman agrees we’ll all be out of a job come November if all those blamed murderers remain free among the voters of this township! It was bad enough with the mine changing hands and business going to hell in a hack. So don’t you think it’s about time you made some effort to earn your pay, Deputy Long?”
Longarm smiled thinly and replied, “Been trying, above and beyond what they pay me to try, your honor. I see by some wires I sent that you never paid Amos Payne or any of your lawmen half as much as they pay me, and I have to smoke three-for-a-nickel cheroots. If you people don’t think Nate Rothstein is any good, how come you promoted him to constable, aside from getting him so cheap, I mean?”
The J.P. changed the subject by saying he’d been headed up to the town hall for the latest coroner’s hearing. He asked if Longarm meant to appear before the panel again.
Longarm shrugged and replied, “If anyone asks me. I don’t know a thing about the death of French Sarah that most of the folk in these parts haven’t already guessed. Only her killer or killers know any more for certain.”
They walked up to the town hall together anyway. This time the crowd was even bigger. It was as if they were all trying to keep up with a magazine serial by Ned Buntline.
He saw all the folks he’d ridden up with from Golden aboard that train the other day. Pretty young Flora Munro sent her kid brother, Joel, to see if Longarm wanted to sit with them inside. But he said he had to respectfully decline. He didn’t say it was because Widow Farnsworth had just shown up in her one-horse shay. He followed the J.P. inside before they could all get in trouble.
The same dentist was presiding with a somewhat different panel for this one. The dead gal’s body was across town, being packed for shipment to New Orleans. But everyone had already agreed on the cause of death. Who’d caused it was the mystery.
Longarm took a seat near the front and listened with all the interest he could muster as witness after witness was called to confess they had no idea who’d killed French Sarah. None of the servants at the widow’s place had seen her leave. They’d just noticed as the day wore on that she didn’t seem to be there any more.
Widow Farnsworth was asked to take the witness chair and, to his credit, that dentist asked sharp questions. Constance Farnsworth was as sharp, or innocent. She explained she had indeed replaced Sarah on short notice because she’d planned on receiving a guest to a formal supper that evening. Longarm was just as glad they never asked her who.
Another panel member asked what she’d have done if the missing maid had come home to serve supper with a good excuse.
Without batting an eye the lady who ran a railroad and a heap of other stuff replied, “I’d have given her two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice and sent her on her way, of course. There’s no excuse for walking off the job in the middle of the day without telling a soul where or why you’re going.”
There came a murmur of agreement from the crowd. Someone behind Longarm said, “I’ve been told she treats all her help fair and pays her track workers the same as they’d get if they was white.”
The dentist asked her if she had any reasons to suspect her wayward servant had some new swain, since her established lover, the late Quicksilver Quinn, couldn’t have strangled her in some fit of passion.
The young widow sniffed and replied, “Good heavens, we’d only just heard about Mister Quinn! Naturally I’d been told she’d been seeing that ruffian on her own time. But on reflection, I thought it best not to let her know I knew.”
The panel agreed that sounded fair, and dismissed the widow as a witness. As she turned to rise, her eyes met Longarm’s and she smiled wanly and silently mouthed, “Supper at seven?” as she passed him.
He had no way to answer. Then they were asking him to come on over and have a seat in front of them. So he did.
He failed to see why. It only took him a few moments to assure them he’d barely known the late French Sarah and had no idea how she’d wound up strangled in that stamping mill.
The dentist insisted, “We heard someone pegged a shot at you as you rode back from Jed Nolan’s spread this morning.
Longarm shrugged and said, “It was more than one shot, and I’d split off from Constable Rothstein’s posse with a lamed pony. I thought this hearing was to determine who might have strangled a lady, not who pegged a few shots at this child.”
The dentist allowed, not unreasonably, they could be talking about the same person or persons unknown. He asked, “Doesn’t it seem that Englishman, Amos Payne, Tim Keen, and that maid were killed to keep them from talking to you, Deputy Long?”
Longarm shook his head and replied, “All four of ‘em had plenty of chances to talk to me before they were killed. I don’t have one sensible thing to tell myself and they keep trying to kill me, don’t they?”
The dentist insisted, “Mad dogs don’t hire professional killers, and there’s no argument about what both Ginger Bancott and Quicksilver Quinn were. So how do you connect those two?”
Longarm flatly replied, “I can’t. Neither can anyone else, no matter where I wire. Like the late Bunny McNee, Bancott and Quinn had piles of warrants out on ‘em. But never in connection with the same crime. It’s as if a mixed bag of owlhoot riders, hearing things were confusing in a tiny town with a mighty modest law force, showed up separately.
“Only to join forces when they met or somebody hired them,” the dentist proclaimed.
It hadn’t been a question. But Longarm answered it, saying, “If it works out that simple I’ll buy you a good cigar. We know Ginger Bancott was sent to kill that Englishman before he could tell Widow Farnsworth how to run her railroad. Then Amos Payne killed Bancott, and so it couldn’t have been him who killed Payne, Deputy Keen, and a female prisoner who might have been acting as a ringer for the real Bunny McNee. Everywhere I’ve wired has McNee down as sort of a soft boy, not a real gal.”
The dentist nodded and said, “The killings at the jailhouse had to be the work of Quicksilver Quinn. Then he came after you at the school and-“
“Rein in and back up!” Longarm cut in. “How could one killer have shot three victims with two different guns? Or assuming a two-gun man, or one .45 loaded willy-nilly with longs and shorts, why would he then go after me? I hadn’t said I knew who’d killed my federal want along with your town law. I was fixing to leave town. I’d have been gone by this time had they let me. We agreed about this time yesterday that Quicksilver Quinn was never going after anybody again. He was dead before poor little Sarah vanished. I don’t see how he could have tried to drygulch me earlier today either.”