The object of his admiration, now dressed more like a homesteading gal than a young lady of fashion, idly hefted the now-reloaded Le Mat and quietly observed, “I had to. I recognized him from the time he was pointed out to me at the Cheyenne Opera House. He was that famous and mighty dangerous Longarm from the Denver District Court.”
Pinkie gasped. “Oh, Dear Lord, you gunned a federal lawman! We’ve got to flee far as can be from these parts before his friends posse up to hunt us all down and hang us high!”
The brunette nodded soberly and replied, “They’ve already possed up by now, and this time there’s no way for us to catch a train out to safer parts. The sod all about is soft after that recent gully-washer. So it won’t take them long to cut our trail, boys and girls.”
One of the men, recalling a gal who’d been staring at him wide-eyed in the bank before he’d blown half her face off, gasped, “This is one hell of a time to tell us we won’t be flagging down that train after all! You should have called off the job when you found out about them blamed railroad tracks. I figured you had some other way out in mind. I never would have gone along with that robbery if I’d thought I was about to get caught, Dad blast it!”
The more talkative one, now dressed up to sell windmills or bob wire, said, “Calm down, Smokey. I’m sure the little lady has another way out of these parts figured. Ain’t that right, pretty lady?”
To which the brunette in rustic riding togs demurely replied, “I sure do. They’ll be looking for four riders. Three men and a girl. I don’t see how anyone in town could know about Pinkie here.”
Men who live by the gun get good at living by the gun, if they’re to live any time at all. So the same, hair-triggered hardcase who’d shot the schoolmarm in the bank put a thoughtful hand to the grips of his six-gun, but never got to ask his next question as the brunette opened up at point-blank range with that massive Le Mat, filling the already dusty interior of the little soddy with the reek of gun smoke and spattered gore while Pinkie wailed for mercy in a far corner.
“Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me! I’ll be good!” the terrified ash blonde sobbed as the smoke lifted to reveal three bodies spread like carelessly tossed bearskin rugs across the dirt floor.
The brunette calmly replied, “You’re going to have to change that dress. You’ve shit yourself. You silly kid. I’m not about to hurt you. I need you. That posse will be searching high and low for three men and one girl. After you and me get rid of this dead meat down the outhouse pit, they won’t be able to find anyone but two innocent farm girls, riding east with some pack ponies because they couldn’t catch that train, see?”
Pinkie gasped, “I see it all now! You meant to do those boys dirt from the first moment we picked them up in Cheyenne, didn’t you?”
To which her somewhat older and far more deadly partner could only reply, “Of course. Why, in heavens name, would we want to split the swag five ways when we could simply divide it even-steven?”
Pinkie grinned like a mean little kid and marveled, “You sure have thrifty ways with money. I never liked any of these dirty old men to begin with. Bob and Smokey both kept trying to mess with me, and when I wouldn’t let ‘em they called me a lizzy gal.”
She grinned up at the deadly brunette and added in a dirtier tone, “A lot they knew. About us lizzy gals, that is.”
Reloading the Le Mat, her smaller and darker companion sighed and said, “You’re going to have to see if you can fit into my other outfit, now that you’ve made such a mess of your farm-girl disguise. Go out back, shuck, and wash off at the pump while I see if I can let my coat out at the seams for you.”
When the ash blonde hesitated, she was told, “Just do as I say. Girls your age get in trouble when they try to think for themselves. Anybody who recalls that citified riding outfit I had on at the bank ought to remember little old me in it, you big Swede. It’s your own fault for soiling the disguise we chose for you, and who’s going to be looking for two lady bank robbers to begin with?”
Pinkie went out back, gingerly shucked the summer-weight gingham Mother Hubbard, and used the cleaner bodice as a washrag as she used the yard pump, a lot, from her broad hips down. Then, her socks wet above her tightly laced high-buttons, she strode back inside, naked as a jay from the ankles up, and declared, “I need a nice warm towel to wipe away this wet gooseflesh!”
The brunette set the Le Mat aside to hold up the much more fashionable calico dress and wool coat she’d worn at the bank. “Never mind all that,” she said. “We have to be on our way, and the sun won’t set on you before you’re nice and dry.”
Still naked, and smiling in a mighty worldly way for such a simple soul, Pinkie moved closer, husking, “All this worry and excitement has made me sort of horny. How about you, honey?”
The older and obviously wiser brunette French-kissed her, but drew back to insist, “We don’t have time for that here and now. We have to get our fannies and our bank withdrawal up to South Pass City before we pause for other pleasures. Put on this damned outfit, Pinkie!”
So Pinkie began to, even as she casually asked, “Wouldn’t it make as much sense if we left our coats aside whilst we haul these dead boys out back? How come you’ve already put that riding duster on, honey?”
The brunette replied, “In case anybody rides in before we hide all the evidence, of course. There won’t be much time to put things on or off if we have to shoot our way out of here.”
Pinkie went on dressing, even as she said that she didn’t want to wear such a distinctive spring bonnet.
When the brunette said she wouldn’t have to, Pinkie absently put on the wool coat, finding it mighty snug in spite of the way the seams had been knee-popped across the shoulders.
Then the brunette said, “You look adorable. Let’s saddle the ponies we mean to escape on before we do anything else.”
The ash blonde asked, “Why can’t we just ride? Why do we have to do anything else? I say let the posse find these old things and be damned to them. If I was chasing three old bank robbers and found the three of them had been shot, I’d have no call to search any further for ‘em, would I?”
The brunette smiled indulgently and said, not unkindly, “I tend to forget what a deep thinker you can be, Pinkie. No posse will expect to catch up with three men. Someone in town has surely told them a tale about three men and a girl. If they find them here, without the money or the girl, they’re going to suspect that just about what happened here, happened here, see?”
Pinkie brightened and asked, “You mean they might think the gal they rode off with gunned them, to ride off with the money?”
The brunette nodded soberly and replied, “That’s why I don’t want them to find things exactly this way. I want them to assume they’re looking for a fifth member of the gang who gunned all four of them when they rode in here to change outfits and ponies, see?”
Pinkie looked confused, and started to say there was no female body for any posse to find. Then the Le Mat roared at close range to make an unrecognizable hash of her face.
So when the posse rode in an hour or so later, they read things that way. The bank robbers had been surprised in the act of changing disguises. But clothes they’d worn at the bank, along with their calico bandanna masks, were there for all to see, along with the still shapely but mangled gal in the same wool coat, with that veiled spring hat in one far corner.
Nobody who noticed a distant farm gal riding a paint and leading a gray had any call to chase after her on such a busy afternoon. For just as the treacherous little brunette had planned far in advance, the local lawmen figured the gang had been double-crossed by one or more mighty fast gunslicks of the male persuasion.