Rothstein blinked owlishly and replied, “The hell you say! Who do you suspect of killing that Englishman and three others at the jailhouse if it wasn’t that dead rascal or one of his sidekicks?”
Longarm knocked back his second free shot before he declared in a firm way, “It’s beyond suspicion into almost certain. My boss calls it process of eliminating. You peel away suspects who couldn’t have done it, and unlikely ways things could have happened, until you get to where there’s nothing left to peel away and then you look at what you have left.”
Rothstein was shifting from one foot to the other like a kid who had to take a piss as he almost bawled, “Then what have we got left?”
Longarm stared wondrously at the greener lawman and demanded of him, “Lord have mercy, don’t you see it yet?”
Then he spelled it out, swept the curious crowd thoughtfully with his gun-muzzle-gray eyes, and declared, “We’d best let these boys help old Karl get all three bodies over to his cellar whilst you walk me partways up the slope. None of it’s federal. So it’ll be up to you and the township how you want to handle the news. Some of it’s a mite delicate.”
Rothstein made no objections, and delegated some authority to one of the older townsmen in the crowd, and they went out by the back way, stepping wide of the body sprawled on the far side of the bead curtain.
Out back in the dark, Longarm paused to pee in the alley. For he was commencing to feel the way he’d been mixing his drinks on an empty stomach. Rothstein allowed he might as well piss too. As they did so together, the new constable asked where Longarm was headed once he stopped pissing. Longarm chuckled and said, “I told you. Up the slope. I had a supper engagement with another pal that I was afraid there might not be time to keep.”
He shook the dew off the lily and added, “Thanks to Buck Lewis I won’t be as late as I feared. I reckon I owe the backshooting son of a bitch my thanks.”
Chapter 18
Constance Farnsworth answered her front door herself, her long black hair down and dressed in that same house robe as she stood in those satin mules.
As she let him into her dimly lit vestibule she gasped, “Custis! Are you all right? We heard about you shooting it out with a trio of desperados in the Hornsilver Saloon, and I naturally thought I’d seen the last of you tonight!”
Longarm took off his hat and hung it on the usual wall peg as he explained, “I never shot nobody, and as I was just now saying, it’s up to the town fathers how they explain the whole affair to the Rocky Mountain News. So I wasn’t stuck with the usual paperwork, and as you can plainly see, I didn’t get shot. I’m just a mite unsteady on my feet right now because I celebrated my untimely survival with the boys on an empty stomach. I’ll be all right in a minute.”
She gasped, “Oh, you poor thing! Let’s go right upstairs and feed you! When I thought you weren’t coming I dismissed my help for the night, once I’d had a tray brought to my quarters, and as you see, planned on turning in early with a good book.”
He agreed that was about what he’d have done if the shoe had been on the other foot. So she led him up her spiral staircase, and he had to fight the temptation to pinch her nice-looking bottom the way he’d seen that horny undertaker help another gal up some stairs.
Queen Victoria never would have approved, but once they got up to her bedroom suite things didn’t seem all that shocking at first glance. She had this sort of sitting room between the hall door and an archway leading to what seemed a four-poster in the dim lamplight. The front chamber was more brightly lit, and a low table piled with sliced bread, cold cuts, and a tea service stood before a red leather chesterfield sofa. So he wasn’t surprised that that was where they wound up as she questioned him about the gun fray she’d been able to hear clean up her way.
As she built him a hearty ham and cheese on rye sandwich he told her, “I never got to fire my own gun once. Will Posner was aiming a shotgun at me from one direction, and both Oregon John and Buck Lewis were aiming at my back from the other direction, when I ducked and the three of them shot each other.”
She gasped, “Young Will Posner? Well, I never! Why on earth would that fool kid want to shoot anyone?”
Longarm sighed and said, “Because he was a fool kid. He’d somehow took it in his head that we were love rivals. We weren’t. So there’s no need to take another lady’s name in vain.”
She handed him the sandwich and began to pour them both some tea as she said, “I think I know who you mean. But I admire a man who doesn’t kiss and tell.”
He insisted there’d been no kissing to tell of, and bit into the sandwich. To her credit, the young widow didn’t press him to talk with his mouth filled, but she seemed as antsy as Rothstein had been by the time he’d demolished another sandwich and swallowed a whole cup of tea. As she poured him another she demanded, “Tell me why that old mountain man and the foreman of the Double Seven were after you as well, Custis.”
He sighed and said, “It’s a long and complicated story. So I’d best start at the beginning.”
He sipped some tea, leaned back, and began. “Once upon a time a silver boom bottomed out and this place called John Bull slowed down a heap as new hands were dealt, with a would-be cattle baron, a sort of grabby holding company, and a pretty lady with a railroad holding most of the face cards. I’d have never known any of this if Constable Payne hadn’t wired he was holding a federal prisoner and I hadn’t come up here to shake things up.”
He sipped more tea and continued. “I’d have only stayed overnight and headed back to Denver with Bunny McNee if I hadn’t learned just in time that he was a she.”
Constance asked why he couldn’t have taken along a tomboy as easily as a sissy boy.
He explained. “My boss frowns on lone deputies spending that much time alone with female suspects. You see, many a female crook has been known to charge at her trial that she was innocent, and only confessed before she’d seen a good lawyer because that mean lawman threatened to ravage her some more if she didn’t let him put words in her mouth.”
Constance declared, “How awful! What would you ever do if some wicked woman pulled a trick like that on you?”
To which he could only reply, “Tell my boss how sorry I was for being so dumb, I reckon. It’s mortal hard to get a conviction when the defendant has compromised the arresting officer. That’s what they call it when a lawman fools with a suspect. Compromising.”
She set her cup aside, took his away from him, and was suddenly in his lap with both arms around his startled shoulders as she told him in a sultry tone, “Goody! I want to compromise you!”
So he hugged her back and reeled her in so they could kiss and swab one another’s tonsils with their tongues while he slid a free hand inside her house robe to discover that she wasn’t wearing so much as a nightgown under it.
But as he ran his palm up the inside of a creamy thigh to where things felt warm and fuzzy, she pulled her face back just enough to giggle and say, “Not here! In my bed, the right way, you silly!”
So he swept her up in his arms and carried her the short way to one awesome amount of fun. She’d slipped out of her robe and slid a plump pillow under her voluptuous hips by the time he’d shucked his own duds fast. Then she wrapped her naked legs around his bare waist as he entered her with no shilly-shally as if they were old pals, though her innards were sweet, hot, unexplored territory to his raging erection, bless her rollicking rump.
To her credit, and unlike a lot of women, even women who’d come right out and told you they’d been married one time, Constance made no effort to explain how she’d learned to fornicate so swell. Nor did she comment on some positions he suggested, save to say how good they felt. But once they had to pause for their second winds long enough to share a smoke, Constance snuggled closer and said, “Now that I know you never suspected me, what on earth has been going on around here? Those crooks with C.C.H. had poor Gaylord murdered so he would never show us that simple trick with Wilkinson rails, right?”