Longarm dryly muttered, “I’ve noticed you’re interested in railroad construction, Ramsay. But I reckon we’d best leave this big mud puddle alone, seeing none of us own it and those kids don’t recall anyone being thrown in recently.”
He gazed thoughtfully about, cheroot gripped jauntily in his teeth, then said, “Well, neither Timmy nor his mother seem anywhere in the vicinity of town. Anyone riding north around the far side of the tracks from this impoundment would follow the rairoad service road. So I reckon that’s our best bet.”
Pronto Cross said, “Speak for yourself, Longarm. I told you before that Sheriff Wigan and me have a gentlemen’s agreement about jurisdiction. We’re about as far out of town as me and mine usually police.”
Longarm said, “This situation ain’t usual, and we could always tell Sheriff Wigan you were with me.”
But Pronto Cross insisted, “You ride on if you’ve a mind to. I’m going back to watch the store. I’d risk a tiff with Sheriff Wigan if there seemed the slightest call to. But damn it, there’s no evidence that missing woman and her boy were ever this close to the township boundaries, and even if those mysterious strangers did ride off with them, who’s to say they couldn’t have carried them east, west, or to the south just as easy?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “You have to eat an apple one bite at a time. The way north seems less crowded than any of the ways I’ve seen so far. I’m headed up that way till I come up with a grander notion. I’ll see you back in town later, Pronto.”
Longarm heeled his mount toward the west end of the clay dam. When Tim Sears Senior fell in beside him, he wasn’t surprised. But when he saw Remington Ramsay was still with him, he had to ask, “Ain’t we headed in the general direction of the Diamond B and Miss Fox Bancroft, pard?”
The blond giant nodded in a casual way and replied, “Fox grazes her stock west of the tracks for a good many miles. The Rocking Seven owned by Sheriff Wigan’s in-laws, the Newtons, ranges as many miles east of the tracks, by one of those gentlemen’s agreements Pronto just mentioned. Neither the Bancrofts nor the Newtons actually hold legal title to more than a section or so of home spread. But grazing the sand hills as open range is the only sensible way to raise anything on them in any bulk. I just told you about water in these parts. You can grub a few acres of produce where the bottomlands lie flat and the sand’s not too deep. But plow most anywhere else, and the winds will blow your crop away before it can sprout.”
Longarm headed around the banks of the broad shallow pond toward those colored kids with fishing poles as he told Ramsay he knew about the geology of the Sand Hill Country and said, “You did hear about Fox Bancroft being at feud with the entire establishment of the Aces and Eights, didn’t you?”
Ramsay nodded and replied in an unworried tone, “I own that whole business block. It’s not for me to say whether the ribbon bows sold in the notions shop are genuine silk or not. I rent business property to those who care to do business with others on their own. Should you care to open a whorehouse or a gambling den, I require three months’ rent in advance as security. So I haven’t lost any money on an old friend’s daughter running those tinhorns out of town. I’ll have new tenants in there long before three months have passed.”
Longarm muttered, “One big happy family, unless you ride in from somewhere else, eh?”
Then he reined in near the clump of boxelder as the two youths stood up warily, fishing poles drooping. Longarm smiled down at the one he recognized by name and said, “Howdy, Nero. I reckon that other lawman told you we were looking for a little white boy and his momma, didn’t he?”
Nero said, “Sessuh. We never seen he momma but we mind bitty Timmy. He be a nice friendly chile. He play marbles good for anybody bitty as him!”
Tim Sears Senior blurted out, “Damn it, if we told Timmy once we told a hundred times not to play over here by the tracks with these … ah, other children.”
Longarm hushed him with a warning look and said, “Let’s not worry about that right now. I’m trying to find out if these friends of Timmy can help us find him.”
Nero chimed in with the innocence of ignorance and a clear conscience. “Oh, me and Calvin here ain’t that bitty white boy’s friends. They let us play too. But they mostly plays together along the tracks. Bitty Timmy and that bigger white boy he call Howard.”
The kid called Calvin volunteered, “That big boy, Howard, he be mean. Scare my baby sister half to death, shaking his pink dick at her!”
Chapter 18
So Longarm wondered, even as he was riding on, why he was riding on. It was hot and muggy down there along the railroad service road, with the only sound, save for themselves and the sandy cropping of their horse’s hooves, the occasional rattlesnake buzz of a big gray prairie grasshopper. Everything at all connected with the lynching of Dancing Dave Loman pointed to him being a not-so-innocent fellow victim of a mob that seemed to have rough justice on its side.
Unless everyone was lying. Dr. Langdon Down, Nurse Calder, and of course Rose Burnside had been wrong about at least one Mongoloid idiot. For a full-grown but immature-looking man who exposed any sort of erection to little colored girls seemed capable of at least a half-ass try with a pretty white lady he knew better.
On the other hand, whether the late Howard Bubblehead Burnside had deserved to be locked up in an asylum or dangled from a railroad trestle, the fact remained that a material witness to the Mongoloid’s mad actions had just vanished, along with his mother, which couldn’t be called rough justice or even common sense.
Nobody riding with Longarm that afternoon could come up with even a wild notion why anyone would want to kidnap little Timmy, let alone his mother. Tim Sears Senior said, “Nobody had any motive to keep you from questioning our boy, Deputy Long. His mother and me went over it all with him at breakfast, knowing you’d be asking about his encounter with the idiot in the churchyard that day. I know you may know more about asking questions. I heard you talking to those colored boys back yonder. But what’s the worst thing Timmy could have told you about that crazy Bubblehead Burnside that we didn’t all know already?”
Longarm said, “I keep finding out things I never knew before. By asking questions others may not have thought to ask, no offense. For example, two grown women who must have been whistled at in their time were both convinced Howard Burnside was innocent of any feelings in the dick he scared that innocent little colored gal with. Have any of you gents ever thought to delve into the secret lives of unfortunates such as Bubblehead Burnside?”
Remington Ramsay said the thought of that drooling idiot with a hard-on was sort of unsettling. Another rider opined, “It’s no wonder that Sunday school teacher screamed!”
There came a general murmur of agreement. Longarm was the only one in the bunch who couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. Something so simple a little boy who could barely read and write might have been able to lead the way … not to what, but to who!
Keeping his thoughts to himself, not knowing who might be listening, Longarm started cutting mental patterns in a whole new way, trying to see who’d fit them best.