She demurely replied, “In my saddlebag. I don’t have to go back to say my good-byes to anyone in this horrid town. I know poor Dr. Forbes has to pay attention to the side his bread is buttered on. But I still feel used and abused. He wanted me to confirm that poor idiot—or, all right, imbecile—as a frothing-at-the-mouth sex maniac! Do you want to know what I think, Custis? I think those two cowboys found her alone, raped her and stabbed her, then lied about her telling them the village idiot had done it!”
He said, “The thought had crossed my mind. Let’s mount up and get you out of town before anybody else hears you! How far a ride are we talking about, Miss Nancy?”
She said, “Eight hours each way. I’d hardly put a pal through sixteen hours in the saddle. So why don’t you just ride me down to where I leave the railroad service trace to follow an old buffalo trail I know. If nobody is ghosting after us that far south, I doubt I’ll have anything to worry about from there on to the agency.”
That made sense, and he said it did as he helped her up aboard her sidesaddle. He mounted the chestnut and, at his suggestion, they rode out of town at a walk, due east, by crossing the tracks and following the evening star instead of any trail of man or beast.
it was easy to do so in the Sand Hill Country, where the short-grass range formed an open sea of gentle swells. He was hoping she might not ask why they were leaving town so strangely. But he’d already noticed she had a suspicious mind. So he wasn’t too surprised when she flatly said, “If that bunch the town marshal dispersed are laying for us, they’ll be set up along the southbound rails and service trace.”
It had been a statement rather than a question. He still nodded and said, “I don’t know if anyone’s after us or not. But it’s been my sad experience that you really hate yourself when you ride into an ambush you could have avoided easy.”
She asked, “Wouldn’t it prove my point if somebody tried to kill me, Custis? You saw how angry some of them were back at the hearing when I implied Howard Burnside hadn’t ever raped that girl. They say she was pretty, and boys will be boys. But she was a Sunday school teacher, and so, when she spurned their advances …”
“Doc Forbes said nobody left any, ah, evidence in her,” Longarm declared, adding, “One drunken country boy could do most anything, with or without brains and some vulcanized protection. It would be tougher to get a pal to go along with such rough wooing, and that one kid at the meeting seemed sort of simple. I mean, just saying you were never there and don’t know anything takes a less devious brain than pinning it on even a half-wit. You and me can’t be the only ones who’d ever wonder about anyone that simple acting so dirty.”
He figured they were far enough out to swing south in line with her more predictable route to her agency. The idea was to ride wide enough to avoid an ambush, but close enough to make out any signs of such a setup. As they walked their mounts over a grassy rise in the cool evening breeze from the west, the agency gal declared, “If we spot anyone laying for us, it will mean I was right about that lynch mob as well. Can’t you see that they lynched those two innocent boys to cover up the crimes of Nick Olsen and Rafe Jennings?”
To which he could only reply, “Dancing Dave wasn’t all that innocent, and they were likely convinced of the half-wit’s guilt as well. I try not to turn a game of checkers into a fancy chess game unless I have to, Miss Nancy. The murder of Mildred Powell was local, with a paid-up county coroner and sheriff’s department to investigate it. The murder of Bubblehead Burnside falls on the same side of their fence and, hardcased as it may seem, they don’t pay me to administer justice in cases where it ain’t my chore. The murder of a federal want and a possibly valuable government witness is the one and only crime I can’t get out of investigating. It doesn’t matter to my home office whether that mob had just cause to lynch one of their own. They lynched a man I had first dibs on. So that’s the matter before the house as far as I’m concerned.”
She seemed to feel that wasn’t fair. They rode on, and then on some more, until they were sure they were well south of the trestle the mob had used to murder Loman and Burnside. At Longarm’s suggestion they swung over to the bare ruts of the service trace running in line with the tracks and telegraph poles. The surer footing and safer distance from town allowed them to lope their ponies downslope, walk them up slope, and trot along the flatter stretches, making better time but enjoying less conversation, of course.
So she’d saved up a whole bushel of new theories about recent events back in Pawnee Junction by the time he called a trail break in a watered draw and got down to light up as the ponies lowered their muzzles to the tea-colored peat water. As he helped Nancy down she said, “I just thought of something. What if there was yet a third party, say a depraved church organist, who stabbed her when she said no to his unwelcome advances?”
He laughed and said, “Now you’re really talking like Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, no offense! How do you like this giant ape coming down from the belfry to catch the poor gal alone in the cellar? That’s how come she told those cowboys she’d been attacked and stabbed by old Howard when they came running to see what she was screaming about. Howard was the name of this sex-mad ape who lives up in the belfry, see?”
She sat on the grassy slope and cast her hat aside to prop her weight on one hip and elbow as she laughed wryly and told him he was no fun. She said, “In those stories the criminal is always very tricky and turns out to be the last person anyone suspected!”
He sat down beside her, getting rid of his own hat to cool his brow as he enjoyed his cheroot. He said, “You’d be surprised how few great engineers and inventors we have locked up in prison, ma’am. If the ones who killed my particular prisoner had been as smart as, say, that ape in the belfry you prefer, they’d have never lynched Dancing Dave to begin with. He wouldn’t have been able to say who hung an imbecile he didn’t know. Nobody back there is half as clever as he thinks. Lynch law is stupid and brutal, indulged in by stupid and brutal bullies.”
She asked, “How come you can’t seem to pin anything on anybody then?”
He said, “Nobody wants me to. Just a few short years ago this was Indian country, buffalo range disputed by Cheyenne and Pawnee. So the first settlers took to depending more on one another than, say, the far-off state troopers or even more remote army.” He took a thoughtful drag and added, “Outfits like those mining camp vigilance committees or range regulators down New Mexico way start out with good enough intentions. Some say the KKK filled a need that many felt no army of occupation was able to satisfy, at least at first. The trouble with outfits such as those Minute Men is that they don’t disband once they’ve finished the chores they were set up for. General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the flesh ordered his Ku Klux Klan to disband in 1869, having done all it had been meant to do when they organized right after the war. But some old boys just never got over the thrill of dressing up like a spook and carrying on as if it was always going to be Halloween.”
He blew smoke out both nostrils and grumbled, “Those fool Minute Men have a town law and a county sheriff they voted in themselves. I’ll never in this life understand what makes some enjoy themselves so much when they get the chance to hurt others.”
She stared thoughtfully his way without really being able to see him as she murmured, “You were pretty scary when those boys insulted me back there, Custis.”
He shrugged and said, “I was too scared of them to enjoy myself. I reckon I can hold my own in a fight if I have to, and this job of mine makes me have to now and again. But I’ll be switched if I can see why anybody would want to get all hot and bothered when they had no call to!”