Longarm spied two familiar figures entering the dinky saloon as he asked Thalman soberly, “Then you only had Amos Payne down as one of many?”
Old Oregon John and Buck Lewis, the ramrod from the Double Seven, nodded at Longarm as they bellied up to the bar. Thalman’s back was turned to them as he replied, “Amos and me were pals. He knew I knew. The two of us had shared other pussy in town in our day.”
“Like that, ah, assistant you were with just now?” Longarm had to ask.
Thalman never blinked as he nodded and replied, “Her too. But you should have seen the big Irish gal who left here with her own husband a few weeks ago. Six feet tall with red hair all over and she liked to get on top. As for our colored help, I don’t see why I shouldn’t screw some of them. Prunella sure likes to!”
Longarm said, “I follow your drift about your unusual marriage. Would you like to tell me where you were early this morning and, say, ninety minutes ago when I was coming out of the town hall?”
The older man thought, shrugged, and said, “This morning I was filling prescriptions and applying makeup to that dead girl in my cellar. You have to lay on just a little color at a time and let it dry or they wind up looking like dead dance-hall gals. As for ninety minutes ago … I think you’ll want to talk to Emma Lou Brown about that.”
Longarm said he’d take his word he’d been screwing in his cellar, figuring how long such a session usually took from start to finish.
So Thalman finished his shandy, they shook on it, and he got up to leave. As he did so the younger Buck Lewis invited Longarm to join them at the bar.
Longarm did so, sliding his own shandy across the sheet copper and asking the barkeep if he could have a regular beer. As the barkeep turned to do so, Longarm held off asking what Buck was doing back in town or why he’d exchanged his red shirt for a dark blue one. Longarm’s back teeth were suddenly floating and he said so, adding, “I didn’t know I had to piss this bad before I stood up just now. The crapper’s in the back, right?”
The barkeep said, “Way back. Across the yard. Try not to wet the seat.”
Longarm said he’d watch his aim, and ambled back toward that beaded curtain. Buck Lewis and his older companion exchanged glances and shoved away from the bar as if to tag after him.
It might have worked. But as Longarm approached the bead-veiled exit to darkness a stray current of air wafted the odor of a Gallo Claro cigar his way.
He knew neither he, Karl Thalman, nor the two behind him had lit any sort of cigar in recent memory, so he threw himself to one side and dropped between two empty tables as all hell busted loose.
As the barkeep would say he saw it later, Buck Lewis and Oregon John had just drawn, thrown down on Longarm’s back and opened up when that double-barreled Greener ten-gauge poked through the beaded curtain to blast Buck Lewis and spin him around like a ballet dancer doing a dance of the dying swan, while the second awesome discharge blew old Oregon John clean out on the walk through the stained glass next to the usual exit!
Then Longarm was back on his feet to dash over and kick Buck’s fallen six-gun the length of the brass rail along the bottom of the bar before he dashed the other way, through the swaying strung beads, to throw down on a familiar figure sprawled by his shotgun in a spanking new pair of Justin boots.
It was young Will Posner, who’d said he rode for the Lazy Three and hadn’t wanted Longarm messing with his true love, Flora Munro.
Longarm hunkered down and gingerly opened the front of the love-struck cowboy’s shot-up gray shirt. The kid was still breathing. It was tough to fathom how. Longarm said, not unkindly, “You keep playing with guns and sooner or later someone’s bound to get hurt, sonny. I know that was you in them aspens earlier. Where’s the rifle you had the last time we met down by the town hall?”
Posner croaked, “You bounce around too unsteady for a rifle, you sweet-talking cuss! I heard you talking sweet to my Flora some more this evening. So I figured this old Greener and some number-nine shot was just what it would take to make you quit!”
“Asshole!” Longarm muttered as he made sure the jealous idiot had no other gun and relieved him of his extra ten-gauge shells.
He went back into the tap room to see it filling up with others. One of them being Nate Rothstein, he yelled, “Constable, you’d best send some men out to the Double Seven in force. Tell ‘em to arrest all the help and bring Miss Amanda Nolan into town with them so’s she can wait safely for her husband at the hotel.”
But then the dying man at their feet croaked, “Hold on, boys. I don’t want you arresting Ute Mary or good old a z. They don’t know nothing. Oregon John said he’d never trust a Mex. So we never invited the bunch at the smithee to join, and as for good old Mary, I was only sleeping with her. I was too smart to trust any woman with a serious secret.”
Longarm holstered his .44-40 and hunkered down beside Buck Lewis to remark conversationally, “I heard about them highwaymen getting betrayed by false-hearted women. Irish track workers like to sing songs about ‘em. Oregon John was your Segundo, right?”
Lewis croaked, “He knew all the trails across these mountains as good as most Indians, and we didn’t want to ask Beavertail Bill if he wanted to join the venture.”
The new town constable had drifted over by those beads to look through them and gasp, “My God, you shot Will Posner off the Lazy Three too, Longarm?”
Longarm replied, simply, “I never got the chance. Both sides got one another as they worked at cross-purposes to get me. Now hesh and let me get the details out of this one while there’s time. It won’t matter whether Posner lives or dies. He was just an asshole with nothing important to say.”
Turning back to Buck Lewis, Longarm got out his notebook and pencil stub. “Tell me who was in and who was out, if you don’t want everyone on the Double Seven spread hauled in.”
Nate Rothstein rejoined them, saying “Posner’s gone. That makes it two out of three, and how come this one’s still with us?”
Longarm growled, “They filled Will Posner with slugs whilst he was peppering them with buckshot. It ain’t any bitty ball in particular that does you in. The effects of all them perforations accumulate. Now hesh and pay attention whilst old Buck here gives us some names.”
The internally bleeding ramrod of the Double Seven began to reel off names Rothstein said he knew. Buck Lewis stopped at eight and said that was it. Rothstein said he’d posse up again and get out to the Double Seven after them before they lit out.
But Longarm said, “Let ‘em. The innocent men and women on the spread will be safer once they’re gone. You can beat ‘em to either Golden or Holy Cross by Western Union. They’ll have to make for one or the other without Oregon John to lead them through rougher country.”
Karl Thalman, the druggist, came in and announced, “I heard. Nothing can be done for Oregon John out on the walk. Is that Buck Lewis you shot this time, Longarm?”
The federal man snorted in disgust and said, “Never mind who shot whom. I want him to keep talking while he can. Go over to your drugstore and fetch us some laudanum and strychnine tonic.”
The druggist whistled and asked whether Longarm meant to make old Buck dopey or pep hell out of him.
Longarm replied, “Whatever it takes. Get going.”
Then he turned back to the shot-up Lewis, gently observing, “They say confession is good for the soul. So before your soul has a mighty serious discussion with Saint Peter, be a sport and tell us how Ginger Bancott and Quicksilver Quinn fit in.”
Lewis croaked, “Quicksilver was up our way on the dodge from the law. He was looking for a job to tide him over. So he naturally came to me at the Double Seven for one. I could see right off he was the sort of jasper me and Oregon John were looking for. So I let him in on our plans and the rest you know. I don’t know anything about that Ginger Bancott who shot that Englishman. He wasn’t working for us. Mebbe the other bunch as shot up the jailhouse?”