Once he had, he thanked the older man, gave the kids three pennies to go buy some jaw breakers and found his way to the one and only gunsmith in the junction.
The gunsmith was a wrinkled-up old timer with bushy black hair and eyebrows. He and his small, cluttered but neatly-kept shop smelled of cleaning spirits and gun oil. He didn’t get sore when Longarm flashed his badge and said he wanted a favor instead of repair work or fresh cartridges.
Longarm placed the deformed slug he’d dug out of white pine on the glass counter top between them and explained how he’d come by it.
The gunsmith picked up the slug meant for Longarm’s spine and measured its base with his steel calipers as he muttered, “Forty-one if it’s American. Closer to .40 if it’s metric and … Yep, one of them fancy French .40 calibers. Can’t even guess at the powder charge, though. You say it sounded like a pistol shot, Deputy Long?”
Longarm nodded and said, “Works even better if we could be talking about a Le Mat six-gun, sir.”
The gunsmith said, “The Le Mat loads nine in the wheel to go with that shotgun charge they revolve around. But this could have come out of a Le Mat. Old Doc Le Mat is such a contrary cuss, he chambers his freak revolvers every way but sensible.”
“Still?” asked Longarm. “I heard tell Le Mat had died or gone out of business.”
The gunsmith shook his bushy head and replied, “Semi-retired, but still puttering with medicine and machine tools in New Orleans. Doc Le Mat—Jean Francois Le Mat, if it matters to you—was born in France but came over here to practice medicine and design weapons just before the war. The percusson cap was invented by a minister named Forsyth, speaking of strange hobbies.”
“We were talking about Doc Le Mat,” Longarm murmured politely.
The gunsmith shrugged. “The reason Le Mat’s ten-shooter never caught on like a Colt or Remington was Doc’s tinkering. His basic design was reliable. But he had them made up at a factory in Paris, France, adding shipping and import costs to his product.”
Setting the spent slug back on the glass, the gunsmith continued. “After that he kept fooling with the calibers, favoring .42, .40, or .36 instead of the more popular .45, .44, or .38 and having his damned guns chambered under the infernal French metric system to make for an even less certain fit with cheaper American ammunition.”
Longarm said he’d already heard about how tough it could be to get fresh cartridges for a Le Mat.
The gunsmith said, “The first ones were cap and ball, so it was easier when he got his first patent in ‘56. But the War Department wasn’t interested in firing buckshot at anybody from a pistol. He had better luck with the Confederacy because he was pals with General Pierre Beauregard. J. E. B. Stuart and Patton Anderson packed Le Mats for the South as well. So by the end of the war that French factory was running in some ten-shooters that loaded brass cartridges as well.”
“You said they still do?” Longarm reminded the digressing older man.
The gunsmith nodded and said, “On special order. They make more popular six-guns for their European market nowadays. But some older gunslicks with mean tempers still favor a reliable ten-shooter.”
Longarm said, “That reserve shotgun blast is a pisser, speaking from experience. Do you stock any .40-shorts or those 20-gauge shells?”
The gunsmith thought before he said, “Twenty-gauge for certain. It’s a popular load for women and children, less of a jolt when you fire from the shoulder. I might have some .40-shorts or even rifle rounds buried somewhere amid the debris. We don’t get much call for that load.”
Longarm said that unless he’d sold some to somebody else in recent memory, it hardly mattered.
So the gunsmith said he’d keep an eye peeled for such an unusual customer, and they shook on it.
He met up with Undersheriff Pat Brennan out front. She was wearing a fresh riding habit and a worried expression as she gasped, “I’ve been looking all over for you, Custis! Somebody told me you’d been in another gunfight and …”
“Never got to fight back,” he said, tersely bringing her up to date about a sudden move saving his ass and explaining what he’d been up to with the gunsmith.
She said, “Somebody really has it in for you, dear. That’s twice in one day!”
He shrugged and said, “Lousy shooting. No guts either. Pegged one wild shot this morning with a serious rifle, and another just now with what’s commencing to stack up as that famous Le Mat.”
She protested, “You said Medusa Le Mat was a woman. But those boys saw a man run past.”
Longarm smiled thinly and replied, “They saw somebody dressed like a man, and Medusa Le Mat is a mistress of disguise. A strange gal in these parts, passing herself off a far less unusual cowboy, could be the answer to many a simple question. Let’s go eat. It’s past dinner time and that Chinese place ain’t half bad.”
She was willing, and the only Orientals for miles around were honored to serve chop suey to such distinguished trade.
As they ate at a corner table near the back, Pat filled Longarm in on that “Uncle Chester” she’d sworn out a warrant against after some more gal-to-gal talk with the slow but pretty Maureen Cassidy.
Pat told him, “I’ve staked out the old Nesbit place in hopes the man will come by to play doctor some more. It’s a godsend you got to that poor little thing first, Custis! We wired Florence, and wherever Rose Cassidy went after leaving Maureen alone out there, Florence wasn’t it. I’ve put out a search on her, along with a want on Uncle Chester for attempted rape.”
Longarm started to say Maureen had said she’d been willing. But instead he washed down some chop suey with tea, which always tasted a lot better when a Chinaman or Irish woman brewed it, and said, “I’ve been studying on Uncle Chester and your notion that Medusa Le Mat could be a lesbian.”
Pat shook her head and said, “The same thought crossed my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time I made a complicated case out of two simple ones. I took Maureen over to my place and sat her down with some cookies and buttermilk for some private talk. She caught her missing mother going at it with her mystery lover more than once. A half-wit could be confused about half-naked flesh at some distance. But while he was feeling Maureen up those other times, she got a good look at his ring dang doo, as she puts it for some reason.”
Longarm said, “I know the reason. There’s this dirty cowboy song about a dirty gal with a ring dang doo. I reckon Maureen’s heard it more than once. I’ve been told Uncle Chester ain’t the first man who ever noticed she was pretty.”
Pat grimaced and murmured, “Maybe it’s a good thing I let you play with my ring dang doo before you rode out yonder. Sometimes I think you men would screw a snake if only you could get somebody to hold its head.”
He chuckled sheepishly and confessed, “I know the feeling. But I reckon I’d mess with a sheep before I’d abuse a helpless half-wit.”
He chewed some more, then frowned and said, “Now that’s sure odd, as soon as you study on it.”
She asked what was odd. He explained, “That song somebody sang to a half-wit about her ring dang doo. It starts out, ‘When I was young and in my teens, I met this gal from New Orleans. And she was young and pretty too, and had what they call a ring dang doo.’”
Pat sniffed and said, “That’s lovely. What does the girl with a ring dang doo from New Orleans have to do with us, Custis?”
He said, “Mayhaps nothing. Mayhaps something. When last heard tell of, Doc Le Mat was down in New Orleans, inventing guns Miss Medusa seems to favor.”
Chapter 12
They went back to Longarm’s hotel to settle their meals dog-style. They knew nobody would suspect an official visit in broad daylight. For as any whorehouse proprietor could tell you, nobody ever did. Prim and proper folks thought you had to have the lights out to get really depraved.