The rail stop at Pawnee Junction had a handsome water tower and more than an acre of stockyards alongside the tracks. But passengers made do with an open sun-silvered platform, and settled up with the train crews getting on or getting off. A man getting off with only one bag didn’t need any help. The sheriff and his three deputies were only there to howdy and explain.
Since the four local lawmen had their badges pinned to their vests, with the older gent’s gold-plated, it was easy enough for a stranger to stick out his free hand and declare, “Morning, Sheriff Wigan. I’d be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long of the Denver District Court, and I understand you picked up Dancing Dave Loman for us as he was enjoying a horizontal polka with one of your soiled doves?”
The older, taller sheriff shook hands with a sad little smile and replied, “We surely did, ah, Longarm. But I fear your long train ride from Denver has been in vain. Dancing Dave is dead. You’re welcome to attend the inquest, of course. But if you do, you’ll miss the last train headed south this evening.”
Longarm whistled thoughtfully and asked, “What happened? Did he try to bust out on you?”
To which the sheriff could only reply with a sheepish expression, “He was busted out and lynched, along with a murdering rapist, along about last midnight. We doubt they were after your federal prisoner. But you know how such gents get, once they’ve passed the jug and worked themselves up to enjoy a hanging.”
Longarm curled a lip under his heroic mustache and growled, “I do. I reckon my boss, Marshal Billy Vail, will be content with me arresting a handy half-dozen of the ringleaders. I’d be obliged for such help as you and your boys could give me, of course, and I’ll be proud to put it in writing if it’ll be of any use to you in the elections this fall.”
Sheriff Wigan shot a warning glance at an incredulous looking kid deputy, swallowed, and said, “We’d sure be willing to help you if we could, Longarm. But nobody knows who the Minute Men might be!”
Longarm squinted up at the morning sun. “I just observed it was an election year. Seeing you can’t point out any of your local registered voters, where might a stranger find a hotel in this fair haven of law and order?”
Before the sheriff could reply, one of his deputies suggested the Widow MacUlric’s boardinghouse across from the municipal corral a furlong up the tracks.
Sheriff Wigan cut in. “Hold on. I was about to say you were welcome as rain if you’d like to stay at my place, Longarm!”
The younger but doubtless more experienced lawman smiled thinly and replied, not unkindly, “Thanks just the same. But if it’s all the same with you, I’d as soon leave this bag in a regular boardinghouse. I got some valuable spare socks and a brand new bar of soap to worry about.”
He started walking. Sheriff Wigan tagged along, telling his deputies he’d see them all later at the office. As the two taller lawmen dropped off the end of the plank platform to trudge on along the crunchy railroad ballast between the tracks and weed-grown ditch, Wigan muttered, “They told me you could act hard-ass when the other kids wouldn’t play mumbly-peg by your rules. But …”
“This ain’t a kid’s game,” Longarm told him. “I said I followed your drift. I know I’m just a sometime annoyance that nobody in these parts will get to vote on, whether they’re still pissed or not, come November. I know this is going to come as a swamping surprise to you, Sheriff, but I’ve investigated necktie parties in other parts in the past and, so far, I’ve yet to find a single county where everybody from the county prosecutor down to the saloon swampers didn’t know most every member of the mob by name!”
Wigan insisted, “Things ain’t that simple in these parts. To begin with, this sand hill range ain’t been settled long enough for everyone to know everyone else by name. After that, our folks are divided some as to how you settle sand hill range. The cattlemen who were up this way first don’t think too highly of the sodbusting homesteaders crowding in on us of late. So it ain’t as if we wouldn’t get us some unsigned mail if all that many knew just who the Minute Men were!”
Longarm grimaced and insisted, “You’ve heard or read more than one name by now.” His declarative statement left no leeway at all.
Wigan gulped again and said, “Well, sure, we’ve had some fingers pointed. But like you just said, folks who go around accusing other folks ain’t all that reliable. Even when they ain’t lying, they seldom give you evidence you could use in court. Saying you heard somebody say they heard somebody brag they rode with the Minute Men don’t cut no ice with any jury because no judge worth spit would ever allow you to present such evidence in his court in the first place!”
Longarm said, “I’ve noticed that. How far is that boardinghouse and how come you keep calling your neighborhood lynch mobs Minute Men?”
The sheriff pointed off to their right at some dusty stock lazing in a big pole corral. “That mustard-colored two-story frame house near the red livery on the far side. They call the bunch who lynched your prisoner the Minute Men because that’s the way they act. Ready to ride at a minute’s notice, see?”
“No, I don’t,” said Longarm flatly. “The Minute Men who fought and died at Lexington and Concord were no part of any mob! They were lawfully assembled colonial militiamen, enlisted under their true names without one fool mask between them. Rightly or wrongly, they stood their ground under officers commissioned by their elected New England assemblies. They were only called Minute Men when they were on detached active service, ordered to stay ready to report back to their posts at a minute’s notice. Are you saying the sons of bitches who lynched my prisoner last night were members of the Nebraska National Guard?”
Wigan smiled uncertainly and replied, “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar at me! I never named our own minute Men the Minute Men. I only said they called their fool selves the Minute Men!”
Longarm replied in a more mollified tone, “Fool selves is the term I was groping for. Like old Abe Lincoln said, you can call the tail of a dog its fifth leg all you want. But the dog’s still going to wag its tail and walk around on its four legs. You say these insults to the real Minute Men murdered another prisoner last night along with Dancing Dave Loman?”
As they circled the dusty corral Sheriff Wigan related the sad tale of Bubblehead Burnside, a hitherto harmless village idiot gone wrong. Longarm agreed he’d heard similar sad tales in other parts, sometimes with similar results. He made a wry face and added, “I don’t see why some old boys can’t wait for a public hanging everyone in town could enjoy. From what you say, that Burnside kid never stood a chance of beating murder in the first with premeditated rape thrown in.”
Wigan sighed and said, “That’s on account you never laid eyes on Bubblehead Burnside, no offense. He was over twenty-one, but the county court had declared him incompetent to fend for himself and made him a ward of his normal older sister, Miss Rose Burnside. When we came to her place on the edge of town to arrest him, after he’d raped and stabbed Miss Mildred, we found him out back on his hands and knees, playing marbles in the dirt with the chickens.”
Longarm shrugged and said, “My boss, Billy Vail, wouldn’t have cared. What a feeble-minder did to anybody up this way wouldn’t have been a matter for the Denver District Court. But now that the same lynch mob that came for Burnside murdered a federal prisoner in the bargain, I reckon I’d best look into your whole damn bucket of spit. What time might they be holding that coroner’s inquest, and where?”
Wigan said, “Doc Forbes is planning to autopsy the two of ‘em this afternoon, with some expert from the Pawnee Agency helping. Says he’ll present his findings to the panel in the back room of our courthouse about seven. It seems a tad late in the day, I know. But Miss Rose has been a tidy neighbor, save for her spooky kid brother, and she’s anxious to have the little shit embalmed and boxed in his Sunday-go-to-meeting duds. From the way she’s been carrying on, you’d think she was still fond of him, despite all he’s done to shame her.”