Pat sighed and said, “One usually does, and she’s awfully pretty. What if we’re talking about a lovers’ quarrel that got ugly and an Uncle Chester who rode far and wide, Buck?”
Longarm said, “You may as well start calling me by my real name, seeing some damn body in these parts seems to know who I really am. I forgot to tell you about getting a pony shot out from under me as I was headed for the old Nesbit place.”
Pat gasped, and demanded a complete rundown on the incident near the wooded draw. So he tersely brought her up to date, then asked how come Lash Flanders and Silent Knight hadn’t already told her all about it.
The undersheriff soberly replied, “I haven’t seen either one of them today. Are you saying they had any part in ambushing you?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “They said they were on my side. But they sure as hell knew I’d been shot at with a big fifty, and they said they were riding on into town. So I mean to find out if they did, and if so, why they never saw fit to report an attempted murder to the only law they knew of in these parts!”
Chapter 11
His first charitable notion was that Flanders and Knight might have swung around the Junction to ride on to somewhere else. But he found his saddle and bridle waiting in that tack room for him, and they told him the familiar pair had not only been by, but had hired fresh mounts to ride on to Florence.
Leastways, they’d said they were bound for Florence. You had to say you were riding somewhere when you hired a livery mount.
Putting the early risers and wide riders on the back of the stove for the time being, Longarm arranged the hire of another mount of his own, and told the livery crew about that free hide and dog meat they could have for the taking.
Once they’d assured him they’d be proud to dispose of his dead paint, he toted his saddle and bridle back to his hotel and stored them with the rest of his possibles in his hired room.
Then he trudged over to the Western Union to wire Billy Vail a progress report. He had to allow nothing was panning out the way it had been expected to. But had Billy Vail been able to come up with all the answers seated at his Denver desk, he’d never have to send any deputies out on field missions.
So Longarm wired that while he’d seen neither hide nor hair of Miss Medusa Le Mat, the ex-convict Buster Crabtree, or the fallen woman recalled by her many admirers as French Barbara Allan, somebody or other had just pegged a serious shot at him. So it seemed likely he was only fooling innocent folks with his disguise, and he meant to drop it. He started to suggest that Vail wire him by name at his hotel. Then he crossed that out on the yellow form as he reflected that a man just never knew where he might wind up spending the night. He instructed Vail, or their office clerk, Henry, to wire him care of Western Union, Minnipeta Junction.
Once he had, he asked the clerk of the small telegraph office whether they stayed open round the clock.
The clerk, a wispy-haired young cuss with eyeglasses thick as the bottoms of two hotel tumblers, told him, “Surely you jest. We don’t do enough trade here by daylight to justify my modest salary. Western Union only keeps a branch here because our batteries relay the long lines across the Flint Hills and there is some heavy traffic around the end of the month, when beef prices fly back and forth or the hired help wires money orders home. Lots of cowboys seem to hail from Texas or the Ohio Valley. It’s surprising how both breeds are so devoted to their old folks at home, considering how they feel about one another.”
Longarm said he’d noticed riders north and south had different styles, but felt no call to go into that further. He asked instead, “Are you saying you have a heap of cash on hand, guarded only by your ownself, no offense, come payday?”
The Western Union clerk shrugged and said, “Depends on how many send how much. You ain’t the first one to worry along those lines. Mr. Cornell, who strung all this wire out this way to begin with, made it a rule to never keep more money on hand than need be. We empty our safe every evening and run it over to the bank. Incoming money orders have to be cashed there as well, unless they’re for less than a hundred dollars. We used to get held up more often. But by this late in the game the owlhoot riders know they’d get as much just holding up a fashionable dress shop, or better yet, a jewelry store.”
Longarm thanked him and left, cussing silently, as he considered the many places a gang might hit come payday in a cow town. The well-guarded bank would naturally have the most portable wealth on hand. But all the merchants in a crossroads like this would have more cash on hand than usual around the same time.
It was safe to suspect the feed and hardware supply would wind up with more in the till by evening than the barber or tobacco shop. But there were just too many places to cover. If she wasn’t planning on robbing the bank, it seemed just as likely that Miss Medusa Le Mat wasn’t anywhere in these parts planning anything.
Longarm paused near a wooden Indian to light a fresh cheroot as he quietly asked it, “How come somebody just pegged a shot at me this morning if there’s nobody planning nothing, Chief?”
The wooden Indian never answered, and as he shook out the match, Longarm realized he was running low on his brand of cheroots. So he made an unexpected move for the open front door of the cigar store just as a shot rang out behind him and something thunked into his old pal, that wooden Indian, instead of his back!
Longarm dove on inside, getting his own gun out as he hit the floor with one knee, spun on it, and risked a peek outside between the doorjamb and the wooden Indian’s white pine rump.
He spied a haze of gun smoke drifting from an alley mouth he’d passed a few storefronts back. As the cigar store man raised a gray head above the edge of a rear counter to fuss at him, Longarm called, “I’m the law. Stay put whilst I find out who just murdered your wooden Indian!”
That was easier said than done. Swallowing hard, Longarm advanced on that thinning haze of gun smoke, shouting at some fool kids to stay back as he took a deep breath and crabbed around the corner of the last shop, asshole puckered, to throw down on the now-empty alley.
He ran the length of it, feeling dumb as he considered how easy it would have been for that would-be back-shooter to have nailed him from the side just now.
Busting out the far end of the alley on to a residential street, he found three more kids shooting marbles in the nearby dirt. As soon as they saw him, one kid pointed and said, “He ran that way, catty-corner across the street and through Mr. Miller’s yard.”
Longarm considered the direction of his shy friend’s flight, and decided it might be best to have some idea who he was chasing. So he put his .44-40 away as he asked the helpful kids who he’d been chasing.
They varied some in their descriptions, but it seemed safe to say they’d agreed on a “big boy” wearing denims and a black hat crowned Texican.
That description doubtless fit many a hand riding for many an outfit in the Flint Hills. It didn’t sound like either Lash Flanders or Silent Knight. Waco McCord was too big and husky, too, just in case he was two-faced. So Longarm thanked the boys and headed back to see what that wooden Indian could tell him.
The boys picked up their marbles and followed him at a respectful distance. For he seemed more exiting than anything else going on on a warm afternoon on a work day.
He identified himself to the cigar store man, bought a dozen of his three-for-a-nickel brand, and asked permission to dig that spent bullet out of the already somewhat battered chief.
The older man said to go ahead and watched with interest, along with the boys, as Longarm skillfully used his pocket knife to extract the evidence without too much damage to either pine or softer lead.