Longarm shrugged and said, “Try her this way. Strangers to you might not have been strangers to somebody in town without a sign in their front window. What did these spooky strangers look like?”
Pronto Cross said, “Spooky strangers. I didn’t get too close a look at either. I was standing across from the open platform in the shade when they got off unexpected. I figured they might be with you, no offense, because of the dark suits and six-guns carried cross-draw. I had no sensible-sounding reason to dash across the street and introduce myself, so I never did. I figured they’d settle down somewhere, with or without asking about you, and I could approach them more delicate. So I let ‘em walk on by, blast my sweet nature, and now I don’t know who they were or what they got off here to do!”
Longarm took another thoughtful drag and decided, “They could be no more than innocent visitors. If they’re holed up for the moment with local kith or kin, you’ll see them around town sooner or later.”
“What if I don’t?” asked the town law. “What if they ain’t innocent at all? What if they’re here to rob the bank or something?”
Longarm said, “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. Get word to anyone with a horse to hire that you’d sure like to hear about anyone new in town hiring a horse. There’s no train in or out of here this side of supper time. Can you see bank robbers escaping afoot across open sand-hill range with enough of a load to matter?”
Cross smiled thinly at the picture and said, “I wish the damned sheriff was handy today. He’s rode down to Ogallala, and I can’t tell his deputies what to do without his permission. So how am I supposed to stake out the livery, the bank, and Lord knows what-all with just my own two elves?”
Longarm said, “It’s getting too hot to put the stew on the stove before you know you’ll be serving any, Pronto! All you know for certain is that two gents you don’t know got off that train to do, so far, not a solitary thing. It’s quiet as hell all up and down the street right now. Matter of fact, I don’t see anything going on, and the only living soul in sight would seem to be that tabby cat across the way, licking its fool self in the shade. You say Sheriff Wigan had to go down to the main line at Ogallala?”
Cross nodded, but said, “Don’t ask me why. I don’t tell him when I go to the card house, and that reminds me. What’s this I hear about you telling Deacon Knox to get out of town?”
Longarm answered with a clear conscience, “I advised him it might be good for his health. I caught him dealing slapjack with a one-way deck last night. But I wasn’t the one who ordered him to leave town.”
Cross said dryly, “I know. They tell me Fox Bancroft was out to shut down the whole shebang. She’s always been a willful child. How do you like the owners of the Aces and Eights sending away for some outside help? Deacon Knox is just a two-bit tinhorn, but I happen to know who really owns that joint.”
Longarm said, “So do I. We were just now discussing wallpaper. I didn’t want to discuss more serious business in front of a lady. But since that other lady and her kid seem to be hiding out in some fool ladies’ notions or candy store, what else can you tell me about old Remington Ramsay?”
The town law made a wry face and said, “Aside from the fact that his shit don’t stink? He owns half the town. He says he only rents out space to the highest bidder and has no personal interest in the whoring and gambling that may go on under roofs he tar-papered personal. I’ve wired places he says he’s done business in in the past. As far as I have been told in return, he’s never been charged with anything really serious.”
Longarm soberly asked, “What’s on his yellow sheets that may not sound really serious?”
Pronto Cross shrugged and said, “Put a man in a Chicago hospital with his fists back in ‘76. Busted the arm of a blacksmith down in Ogallala just after he came out our way. In both cases the victims are said to have insulted his late wife. You’ve likely noticed old Ramsay runs to size, and still does a lot of heavy work alongside his hired help. I’d approach him polite if I was going to ask him about the Aces and Eights, pard.”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Ain’t my row to hoe. Up to the township to decide such matters. In the lawful manner, I mean. What have you got here, the usual mayor and board of aldermen handing out business permits for a nominal fee?”
Cross nodded and said that was about the size of it, adding that the county council collected the property taxes. A hot and dusty-looking younger gent was coming their way up the walk now. As he approached he wearily called out, “You must have seen two pistol-packing ghosts, Boss. I’ve been all over this fool town and not another soul seems to have seen hide nor hair of your mysterious strangers!”
Pronto Cross said, “Never mind about them for the moment. Deputy Long here has been waiting a spell on Mrs. Sears and her Timmy. Might you have any notion where they could be right now?”
The roundsman shook his head and said, “Not hardly. Last time I saw ‘em they were here with you.”
Pronto Cross replied, “They went off to buy some ribbon bows or mayhaps some root beers. Try the candy shop down the other way and send Stretch to me if you run across him, will you?”
The already overheated roundsman went off muttering, softly cussing all mothers of small witnesses who couldn’t sit still on hot days.
Longarm and the town law smoked their cheroots down twice, and the tall drink of water called Stretch had joined them to say he had no idea where the fool kid and his mother might be either, by the time it commenced to make Longarm uneasy.
He said, “The only sensible place nobody has looked would be the house they live in. The boy or his mother might have taken to feeling poorly in this heat, or just went home for an early noon dinner.”
But it took Pronto Cross less than a quarter hour to establish little Timmy Sears and his mother were neither at home nor at the saddle shop where Tim Sears Senior worked.
The worried father joined the search, which didn’t take long in a town as small as Pawnee Junction. But search high or search low, nobody they talked to could say, or would say, where in blue blazes the missing mother and son had disappeared to in bright sunlight on what had been described as a short shopping errand.
So Pronto Cross said, “Damn, if only Sheriff Wigan was here, I’d ask him to posse up!”
Longarm said, “You don’t have to wait on him. I’m here, and as a federal lawman I have the authority to convene a posse comitatus. So why don’t we get cracking? It’s barely past noon, and how far could anybody carry a small boy and his mother across wide-open range?”
Chapter 17
It took less than an hour to gather better than fifty willing riders and swear them in as a federal posse. Most of them worked or spent a lot of time in town. None of them showed up with masks on. So there was just no saying how many might have assembled for other riding in these parts in the past. Tim Sears Senior himself showed up with a saddle mule and a Spencer .52 carbine. Remington Ramsay had changed his bib overalls for old cavalry pants and rode a handsome cordovan Morgan, armed with a brace of Navy Colts and his Springfield .45-75. A couple of sheriff’s deputies as well as both of the town marshal’s roundsmen volunteered. Longarm was the one who pointed out that somebody in the law-enforcement trade ought to be watching all the stores as well as their one bank. Pronto Cross laughed sheepishly and allowed he’d forgotten those strangers who’d come in aboard the morning train.
Cross told his own boys they couldn’t tag along, and one sheriff’s deputy agreed to stay behind and make sure nobody carried off the courthouse in broad daylight, as everyone else rode south along the railroad tracks at first.
They split into two parties at that railroad trestle the Minute Men had used more than once as a handy gallows. Cross led one bunch circling to the west. Longarm and his two dozen riders took the east, and they agreed to meet near that impoundment north of town.