Rothstein called him a pure rascal and insisted, “Come on. Are you trying to tell us that wasn’t you or someone you sent who killed Constable Payne, poor Tim Keen, and that he-she back in that patent cell?”
Lewis insisted that was about the size of it. His voice was getting weaker. The barkeep came over with a shot glass of brandy. Longarm took it from him, drank the contents in one gulp, and said, “Thanks. I needed that.”
Rothstein insisted, “Make him tell us why they gunned that gal in pants and my pals. Damn his eyes!”
Longarm said, “Hesh. He just now said he didn’t know anything about that.” Then he poked Buck’s bloody blue shirtfront, saying, “We know you killed French Sarah. Which one of you raped her first?”
The dying man blinked owlishly and gasped, “Nobody raped anybody! I had to strangle her when she showed up out by the spread, fussing at me to kill you for killing Quicksilver. I never treated her with no disrespect, though. She’d been Quicksilver’s girl! What sort of a shit-heel would screw a pal’s woman?”
As if he’d been paged, Karl Thalman came back in with a basket of paten medicines and a roll of gauze. As he hunkered down beside them he quietly asked, “Which do you want to give him first? Neither one is going to save him, you know.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “We’ll just start with soothing laudanum. He don’t seem to be holding out on us and we may as well make him comfortable.”
So Thalman uncorked the opium-alcohol tincture and put it to the ramrod’s now ashen lips. Buck swallowed a good slug, coughed up some bloody slime, and softly said, “No shit, am I really fixing to die?”
Longarm said, “Yep. That cowboy surely cleaned your plow with his old Greener. But if it’s any consolation you nailed him good, even if you were aiming at my back.”
Buck Lewis smiled up innocently and softly asked, “What part of you did you expect this child to aim at after you’d taken Quicksilver Quinn? It wasn’t nothing personal, Longarm. We’d have had no call to gun you if we hadn’t seen you were on to us. How the blue blazes did you ever get on to us anyway?”
Nate Rothstein loudly demanded, “How did who get on to what? Why didn’t you tell the rest of us if you knew what they were up to all the time, dad blast it!”
Longarm said, “I didn’t know shit until just now. This poor misguided youth was a victim of his own guilty conscience. I did tell everyone I’d come up your way to transport Bunny McNee back to the Denver District Court. When I never did any such thing, they added two and two to get twenty-two. I’ve done that myself in my time.”
Rothstein said, “I can see old Buck here was the mastermind. I can see why he wanted you and Constable Payne out of his way. But I still don’t see what he was masterminding!”
Longarm gave the ramrod another sip of laudanum. He’d noticed in war that dying men made less of a fuss about it if you got them doped up and drunk. As he did so he told Rothstein, “The notion of a criminal mastermind is a contradiction in terms. Nobody with a lick of sense takes up crime as his chosen career. You just heard him confess to choking a woman to death. So I’m taking him at his word when he says he never sent Ginger Bancott to gun that Englishman and had nothing to do with the shooting fray at your jailhouse the other night.”
Rothstein groaned, “Oh, shit, thanks for making things seem so simple! Could I at least have a hint as to what on earth this one and his bunch were up to?”
Longarm answered simply, “Stealing stock, of course. What would you expect a ramrod and a gang of top hands to steal, shithouses?”
There came a confused rumble from the others standing all around. Rothstein said, “Nobody at this end of the park has suffered all that many stock losses, no matter what Granny Boggs says!”
A man in the crowd wearing silver-mounted spurs chimed in. “Nate’s right. Where would anyone hide that much stock around here if he did steal it? Are you trying to tell us this dying rascal has a stolen herd up some side canyon, and killed folks to keep his purloined beef a secret?”
Before Longarm could answer, Buck Lewis plucked at the tail of his tweed frock coat and croaked, “I ain’t ready to meet up with Saint Pete, Longarm. Can’t you do something for me? I feel so cold and can’t we have more light in here?”
Rothstein murmured, “Give him some strychnine! He’s fading fast and we haven’t got the half of it out of him yet!”
Longarm shook his head and softly replied, “I reckon he’s told us as much as he knew. Nobody can deny him his lethal intent, but the only one they really murdered was French Sarah. Whether the county can nail anyone but her confessed killer on murder in the first or not ought to depend on how well they try to make friends with your district attorney. But I’m sure he’ll tell them that.”
Buck Lewis murmured, “Whee, this merry-go-round is sure going faster now. They warned us you were good, and it was a pleasure doing business with you, Longarm. No hard feelings?”
Longarm quietly replied, “I reckon not. The two-faced little gal was trying to get us both killed. Say hello to French Sarah when you meet up with her in Hell, old pard.”
Buck Lewis didn’t answer. Longarm reached down to shut his blank eyes as he told the druggist cum undertaker, “He’s all yours now.”
Rothstein stamped a boot heel like a gal waiting overlong for her carriage ride and snapped, “Damn it, Longarm!”
So Longarm got to his feet, saying, “I could use another brandy. Haven’t you figured the whole thing out yet? No offense, but you’re fixing to make a piss-poor lawman if you have to be led step by step by one hand.”
The well-spurred stockman slammed on the bar for a round of hard liquor and said, “I’m forty-eight years old this summer and you can just lead me by one hand all you like, Denver boy! You say all this fussing and feuding was over stolen stock, and I say to you nobody in these parts has had any damned stock stolen!” Longarm explained, “That’s because Buck and his boys hadn’t stolen any yet. Their boss, Jed Nolan, was planning on moving his operation up to Wyoming and expanding it some. I doubt old Jed meant to raise anyone’s wages. he wasn’t paying top dollar, and mayhaps old Buck there didn’t want to work that hard for any wages. So they were waiting for Jed Nolan to leave Buck in charge of his spread and all his stock while he went clean over to Chicago on a long-planned business trip.”
The stockman who’d been saying he was so puzzled suddenly let out a trail whoop and declared, “Great balls of fire! I see it all now! That’s where Oregon John fits in! I know Jed Nolan planned on a two-week business trip. He told me so just the other day. So not a soul would know all them Double Seven cows were on their way over the mountains before their lawful owner got back!”
Someone asked, “What about Miss Amanda, Jed’s wife? Ain’t she still out at their spread and wouldn’t she notice if they commenced to round up and drive off all her man’s stock?”
Another local laughed and asked, “How? That mail-order play-pretty wouldn’t know a cow was being stolen if they ran it through her bedroom whilst she was reading one of her romantic novels from back East.”
Rothstein soberly pointed out, “Buck could have meant to kill her the way he killed that housemaid. We just heard him admit to being rough on women.”
Longarm nodded, but said, “It’s a moot question how many folks he meant to kill as he went into the cattle business for himself. The only deaths that lead direct to his door are those of French Sarah and that fool cowboy in the back. Quicksilver and Oregon John were on his side, and you could almost say Will Posner’s death just now was accidental.”