Guthrie sounded confident as he replied, “By Pinkerton. The Eye That Never Sleeps guards us and all our assets under a yearly retainer. Come next Saturday they’ll start out from K.C. with the strongboxes under heavy guard. They’ll freight them in with one Pink assigned to each strongbox with a ten-gauge and two S&W double-action revolvers. Undersheriff Brennan tells us the gang we’re worried about usually strikes with three men and a girl.”
Longarm nodded soberly and explained. “The gal acts as an advance scout and mastermind. For all we know for certain, she’s already come by to cash a small check and do some scouting. If she decided you were as big a boo for as little profit As you seem, she might have already written off this particular bank. How come you call yourself a Minnipeta bank if you’re only a branch, by the way?”
Guthrie explained, “Country folks like to feel you’re paying attention to them. It costs about the same no matter what the gold leaf on the glass might read. So all our branches are named for the one-horse town they serve. Why do you ask? Do you find that important?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “You already explained why it reads out front that you carry more cash on you than you really do. I don’t care how you run your bank. But I have to consider it from the way it might or might not look to Miss Medusa Le Mat, the advance scout and mastermind I just mentioned. She might have been told one thing by one of your neighborhood crooks, the mysteriously missing Buster Crabtree. She might have scouted what she took to be a prosperous, privately run country bank, found out as much about you as I just did, no offense, and decided to pass you by. That might explain some missing pieces of this puzzle. It’s tough to make ‘em fit any pattern when they ain’t on the table.”
Guthrie accused Longarm of confusing him just for fun. So Longarm said, “I ain’t trying to talk mysteriously. I sometimes forget others might be listening when I’m talking to myself about matters I’ve been over more than once.”
He took a thoughtful drag to gather his words, let it out, and said, “A bank robber who just hits banks willy-nilly is sure to hit the wrong bank sooner or later, as the James-Younger gang found out that time in Northfield. So Miss Medusa Le Mat takes more time than most to make sure she and her recruits know just what they’re up to. She lines up the bank, picks a nearby hideout, and stocks up on plenty of sudden horseflesh before she hits, hard and deadly, as you’ve likely heard from Pat Brennan.”
Guthrie nodded soberly and said, “If they hit us come payday, they may find a warmer reception than usual. The Pinkerton Agency will be sending extra guards with the money this time.”
Longarm said, “Miss Medusa Le Mat may have figured as much. I had me a long conversation last night with … someone who knows these parts better than me. We’re surrounded by miles of nothing much but grass, cows, and scattered spreads. This, ah, local informant I just mentioned figures there’s less than three hundred souls, all told, within a hard lope of this here bank.”
Guthrie asked what his point might be.
Longarm said, “It’s easy to lose track of folks in a crowd even when it ain’t too crowded. But they’re either hiding stick as hell, or they ain’t there. Buster Crabtree and that soiled dove who dropped out of sight last payday were well known, at least by sight, to most of the folks in and about the junction. So where are they at?”
Guthrie said he had no idea.
Longarm said, “I know Miss Medusa Le Mat on sight. She shot me at point-blank range recently. I’ve made up a short list of new gals in these parts. Checking out your town whores ought to be easy. What can you tell me about a widow woman called Rose Cassidy, said to breed and sell cow ponies on a small spread off to the east of the Junction?”
Guthrie said, “She banks with us, of course. She and her grown daughter, Maureen, just moved up here from Texas and bought the old Nesbit place for cash. We held the mortgage. We were glad to unload a hundred sixty acres of foolishness at a fair price. I naturally handled the sale, and I felt obliged to warn her the Nesbits had gone bust trying to plow chalk and flint with a worn-out John Deere moldboard. She said she’d made out better breeding ponies for the cattle trade down Texas way, and meant to do better up this way now that beef prices were up and the Indians were out of the way.”
Longarm asked what the ladies from Texas might look like.
Guthrie confided, “Not bad, neither mother nor daughter. They look more like sisters, Rose Cassidy being well preserved.”
Longarm said, “I wasn’t planning on courting either of ‘em. I asked what they looked like.”
Guthrie smiled sheepishly and replied, “You haven’t seen either of them yet. Both pretty, with nice builds. After that I’d describe them as typical Irish types.”
Longarm asked what typical Irish folks looked like, adding that he’d seen them short, tall, blond, brunette, and redheaded.
Guthrie decided, “Petite brunettes with blue eyes. You know, that typical Irish type.”
Longarm nodded gravely and replied, “You often see them with their typically large or small blond or redheaded pals. But I thank you, and I reckon I’d best ride out and talk to them about some horseflesh.”
Guthrie asked, “You mean they answer the description of somebody you’re after?”
Longarm honestly replied, “You’re describing a heap of women when you say any gal is small, dark, and pretty. But I have an edge on Miss Medusa Le Mat that she seldom allows. I know her on sight. So it won’t cost me more than a short ride out and back to decide whether she’s been trading horses on the side.”
He rose, they shook on it, and he went back to his hotel to strip his borrowed saddle of everything but the rope and Winchester for the short ride out to the old Nesbit place.
He packed the lighter load to the livery, saddled and bridled the old paint mare, then headed out along the eastbound wagon trace around eight A.M. with the dew burnt off the grass all around but the morning air still cool. So the paint was feeling frisky for her years, and he let her lope until she slowed to a less comfortable but mile-eating trot without his reining her in. She was shaping up to be a good old mare, and he was starting to like her.
Hence he was chagrined as well as scared skinny, less than two miles out of town, when something solid hit her just ahead of Longarm’s right knee and she dropped out from under him like a monstrous wet washrag!
He landed on his feet, drawing the Winchester from its saddle boot along the way, and flopped on the north side of the fallen pony, seeing that the gun smoke rising from a brushy draw was doing so to his southeast.
He didn’t prop his saddle gun across the saddle of the fallen pony. He knew that was a mistake you only got to make once. Levering a round of .44-40 in the chamber, he crabbed sideways in the long grass to peer around the dead mare’s big rump.
It smelled worse at the ass end of a heart-shot grain-fed mare. But he knew he’d smell worse directly if he didn’t pay more attention to a more distant annoyance. He held his fire, tempted as he was to lob a round into that clump of hackberry the drygulcher had obviously fired from.
But he knew he’d have to move clear of his own muzzle blast and gun smoke as soon as he fired. And at the moment, he had the edge in that the other side couldn’t say for certain whether he’d been hurt in the fall or even hit in the leg. So it might be best to keep the sneaky son of a bitch guessing. He’d once potted a Shoshoni who couldn’t stay put as long as he could, and Indians were supposed to be more patient than most.
So after a century or so, the little skittering critters hiding in the grass stems all around commenced to chitter and skitter some more as the sun warmed Longarm’s back, which didn’t do a thing to improve the odor of blood and crud oozing out of his horseflesh fortification.