McNee gasped, “I couldn’t! They’d track me down no matter where I ran to!”
To which Longarm replied with an annoyed snort of smoke, “Not if you helped us round the whole bunch up. Even if we missed a few, there’d be nothing about your peaching on them in the court records. We only need some names and addresses, kid. You don’t have to sign a single warrant with your own name.”
The young owlhoot rider didn’t answer. So Longarm nodded soberly and said, “You take your time and think it over. It’s no skin off my ass if you’d rather make little rocks out of bigger ones for the sake of your swell pals.”
He enjoyed another drag on his own cheroot and added, “We have a whole night ahead of us. I’m fixing to bed down in that same hotel you were charged with sneaking out of. I aim to pay them for their services to me. I’m surprised you were caught creeping out like an abandoned woman, seeing your outlaw pals are so loyal to one another.
Bunny McNee flushed mighty red, but still refused to answer. Longarm chuckled fondly and told the town lawman, “We’d best let him jerk off in private over his true blue asshole amigos. Anyone can see they’ve left him to face the music alone, right?”
Rothstein was an experienced lawman as well. So as the two of them strode away the town lawman replied, as if for Longarm’s ears alone, “That’s for damned sure. Any real pal with the price of a few beers could have bailed him out on that theft-of-service charge before we had any notion he was wanted by you boys.”
As they got out front, Rothstein asked if Longarm thought it was going to work.
Longarm shrugged and said, “Depends on whether the kid got into that fix on his own or with some help. From the little we know about the gang he’s been riding with, they divvy the take and split up after each robbery. McNee might have blown his own share a dozen different ways as he was laying low up here. I mean to ask around, if I have the time.
Rothstein said, “We already did. The kid never blew that much on cards or the few whores left in town now that the silver lode has about bottomed out.”
Longarm whistled softly. “Heard things had started to slow down up this way. Hadn’t heard they were that slow. Usual story with Front Range silver carbonate? The high-grade setting on top of base metal like icing on a cake?”
Rothstein shrugged. “I don’t know enough about mining to argue. The way I heard it, they keep smelting more and more lead and zinc out of the crushed rock by the time they run it all the way to the smelters on the main line. So the British syndicate’s had to sell things off, a holding at a time, to keep things going at all.”
Longarm nodded absently and muttered, “That accounts for the railroad being run by a widow gal of our own persuasion. Our Bunny McNee likely figured a town withering on the vine was a better place to lay low than either a boom town or an outright ghost town where a stranger would stand out even more.”
Rothstein said, “I follow your drift. We had him down as no more than a drifter who’d failed to get hired up at the mine and run out of eating money before yours truly got to killing time with some old wanted fliers. Amos says he figures that gang splits up between robberies and then gets together for another after things cool down from the last one.”
By this time they were out on the walk. The sky above had turned dusky rose, the peaks to the east to flame, the peaks to the west deep purple, and everything between sort of murky lavender. So Longarm said, “I was wondering why I was getting so hungry. Constable Amos Payne and my boss, Marshal Billy Vail, think a heap alike. McNee has to know where his pals are fixing to get together again, and you just now heard me tell him why he ought to confide in us. By the time I have him in Judge Dickerson’s chambers tomorrow afternoon, he ought to be willing to explain all the details for us. I was fixing to bed down in that same Elk Rack Hotel he snuck out of. Might that be as wise a move as it sounds?”
Rothstein allowed the Elk Rack was as good a hotel as he’d ever find in John Bull, being it was the only one. So they shook on it and parted friendly in the tricky light of a mountain gleaming.
As Longarm headed up the plank walk in the deep shade of the overhanging snowsheds, a few of the establishments he passed were lit up. But most had either closed for the night or for good, with their windows boarded over or shabby pasteboard signs in grimy windows wistfully promising a glowing future at a great location for anyone who wanted to rent or, hell, buy the property outright cheap.
As he passed the swinging doors of a lamp-lit hole-in-the-wall saloon, a rinky piano burst into life. Longarm paused in mid-stride to peer in. Then he started walking again and, sure enough, so did that pair of high-heeled Justins that had come to a clunking halt when his army boots had just now.
That was more interesting to Longarm than the identity of the awful piano player inside. A quick glance at a flash of bright red had confirmed his suspicion. There was only one person in these parts who could make a living playing piano in the cracks between the keys. So now that he knew where Miss Red Robin was working here in John Bull, he wanted to know who was following him and how come.
He strode on toward the one hotel, trying to act neither hurried nor suspicious until he got to the next corner, ducked around it, and backed into the shade of some side stairs as he clunked in place to sound as if he was still going.
It worked. Those high-heeled boots came around the corner on the double as Longarm tried for the sound of boot heels fading away in the distance. So then it was a simple matter of reaching out to grab a fistful of shirt, swinging the cuss around to slam into the painted pine siding, and shoving a gun muzzle in his face for him to smell as its owner growled, “You’ve caught up with me at last, you sly son of a bitch. And now you’re fixing to tell me what you had in mind if you’d like your brains to remain in your skull this evening.”
What appeared a cowhand at Longarm’s mercy gulped hard and asked if this might be a robbery.
Longarm didn’t need to cock his double action .44-40, but he’d found in the past that snicking back the hammer seemed to underscore the message. So he snicked it as he bounced the young hand against the wall, saying, “I’m the one demanding some damned answers here, and when I implied your brains might be blown out this evening, I never meant later this evening. You’ve been walking in step with me two full blocks and around that corner. I ain’t going to ask you again why you did so.”
The younger but sizeable local, who didn’t seem to be packing a gun of his own on either denim-clad hip, gulped hard and decided to say, “You ain’t allowed to shoot me fatal for no reason, lawman!”
So Longarm sighed and said, “That’s true. I have to put some halfway sensible reason on my official report when I gun one of you assholes. But seeing you know who I am, asshole, you ought to know I can write official as hell, and here we are, with darkness falling, nary a witness in sight, and you following me from a jail where I just now questioned a dangerous criminal. Your turn, asshole.”
His victim blanched and protested, “See here, I had nothing to do with the killing of that lime juicer this afternoon, and I’ve never in this world laid eyes on that outlaw Amos Payne was holding for you all.”
Longarm made a mental note that the mysterious cuss knew the local law by name. Anyone who’d just come to town could have heard about the killing at the railroad depot a good four hours back. Longarm said, “In that case you’d better tell me what you have been up to.”