Then Longarm was on top of the writhing and cussing young monster, and it was still a near thing, taking such a spiteful kicking spitter without busting his damned skull.
Fox Bancroft helped by keeping her line tight as the throw-rope pinned the youth’s powerful arms to his sides. Longarm came close to singing soprano for a spell when the unruly schoolboy kicked hard, with skill, but only bruised a thigh.
Then Longarm had the mean young shit face-down with his hands cuffed behind him. He grabbed a fistful of dark hair and banged the kid’s face against the ground a couple of times as he told him firmly but not unkindly to cut it out before somebody got hurt.
The nearby mounted redhead asked for her rope back. So Longarm loosened the noose and slipped it off over the kid’s head as he knelt on sweet Howard’s spine. Fox Bancroft was whipping in and recoiling when Mrs. Tendring came shrilling down the path, weeping and wailing about her precious child.
She was still in her thin robe, and she sure smelled nice as she hugged Longarm from behind, her tits rubbing all over the back of his vest while she said there was some mistake and that she’d do anything, anything, if only he’d let her darling boy go.
Then Fox Bancroft had dismounted to join them, saying, “Go home and put some clothes on, Felicia Tendring. This federal lawman never would have come for your foulmouthed brat if he hadn’t done something. What did her foulmouthed brat do, Custis? We’ve been looking all over for you since you never came back to tell us what happened to that other kid and his own mother.”
Longarm rose to his feet with Howard Tendring III, despite the combined efforts of mother and son, as he soberly said, “You have to eat the apple a bite at a time. I don’t reckon this boy knows what happened to that other boy. You don’t know where we might find your young friend Timmy, do you, Howard?”
To which his young prisoner replied with a sob, “Screw Timmy Sears. Screw all of you! You’re all against me! All of you! Everybody hates me and I hate everybody, so there!”
Felicia Tendring gasped, let go of Longarm from behind, and came around his front to slap the kid’s face.
Her son spat, “Don’t you go hitting on me, Mom! I’ll cut you if you hit me like that again!”
His mother covered her face with her hands and began to bawl like a frightened baby. Fox Bancroft softly said, “Go home and put those clothes on. You can talk to your boy later, after things have calmed down. You’re taking him to the town marshal’s now, aren’t you, Deputy Long?”
Longarm had been thinking about that. He said, “The sheriff’s county jail is built more solid and fireproof. I reckon I’ll turn him in to the county and see where they want to go from there. There don’t seem any just cause to charge him with anything federal. We’d have a time proving he had anything to do with the death of Dancing Dave Loman, and the murder of Mildred Powell is a matter for your own grand jury to decide.”
Fox Bancroft gasped, “You’re charging this kid with that crime? I thought Mildred Powell was attacked by Bubblehead Burnside! Didn’t little Timmy Sears say he saw that feeble-minded cuss coming out of the cellar door whilst the dying gal was still screaming inside?”
Longarm said, “No. Not if you read over the transcript of his kid talk carefully. Timmy said he saw Howard at the scene of the crime. So they added two and two to get seven when they asked if he didn’t mean Bubblehead. Timmy was likely telling the simple truth, as he saw it, when he simply told them a generous-hearted young lady had told them never to use the cruel nickname Bubblehead for another Howard entirely!”
Felicia Tendring told her baby she’d get dressed and go see a friend or lawyer called George about his plight. As she turned away she sweetly added, “Don’t sign anything. Don’t tell them anything, honey. Uncle George and I will have you out in no time!”
As she scurried away in her slippers, Longarm turned to Fox and quietly asked, “Uncle George?”
The redhead shrugged and said, “Ask this one. George is a more common name than Howard. How did you figure out that this was the Howard little Timmy really meant, by the way?”
Longarm said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you along the way as we march this one over to the county jail.”
So she led her paint pony afoot as the two of them escorted the handcuffed Howard Tendring III the quarter mile or less to the jail. When Longarm got to how he’d had trouble buying a sweet-natured and baby-sexed Mongoloid as a slashing sex maniac who’d exposed himself to a younger gal earlier, Howard Tendring III complained, “I never just supposed nothing. I meant to give ‘em what I knew they both wanted. But they were teasing me, like alley cats in heat, smiling dirty and then trying to twist away at the last minute!”
Fox Bancroft softly gasped, “Oh, my God!”
Longarm told the monster, “Your mother told you to save your tales of woe for your family lawyer, Howard. Old Kiowa Jack or somebody from his office will take down all you have to say for yourself while your mother and your lawyer listen in, see?”
Other folks were coming out to their front gates as Longarm and the well-known local stockwoman passed on foot with the neighborhood bully. Fox Bancroft asked why the little shit couldn’t spill his guts along the way if he was of a mind to.
Longarm said, “Confession is good for the soul, but it can play bob with the prosecution in a delicate case. I don’t mean this here slashing Romeo is delicate. I mean he’s under-age and they’re going to try to sell the jury on his being loco en la cabeza. I never might have come anywhere close to him if he and some other Howards hadn’t been mighty slow and bothersome in your public school.”
She made a wry face and said, “I sure feel sorry for poor Rose Burnside. We thought her kid brother, Bubblehead, was the only village idiot we had to worry about. Can you imagine how she must have felt when they came for him, refusing to believe her when she swore he couldn’t be the one they were after?”
Longarm said, “Nope. Neither can you. Nobody but Miss Rose will ever know what it felt like to have that particular sweet and harmless problem child of voting age on her hands.”
Closer to the center of town, they were joined by Tim Sears Senior and Remington Ramsay. The hardware man said, “We heard you caught up with somebody down this way and, good grief, is that the Tendring boy you seem to have arrested there?”
Longarm replied, “Yep. I had to. The charge is murder most foul and attempted rape. This is the Howard little Timmy meant.”
The missing child’s father shook a fist in the young prisoner’s face and demanded, “What have you done with my wife and child, you murderous simp?”
Howard Tendring III told him to go screw himself. Longarm blocked the outraged father’s backhand swing, and the big strong hardware man pulled Sears away, soothing him the way you calmed a spooked critter.
Longarm said, “I doubt he knows, Tim. Help us get him over to the county jail and we’ll study on who’s holding your wife and your boy.”
As the growing procession moved on, it was Remington Ramsay who asked what Longarm had in mind about the missing mother and son.
Longarm sighed and said, “If I knew anything for certain, I’d be proud to share it with you. By the way, did you know what all that railroad paper on Mavis MacUlric’s walls is worth? I do because I wired a railroad stock slicker about Credit Mobilier earlier.”
The hardware mogul said, “It’s not really that good for papering walls. I offered her par value on the matured bonds. She’s too smart to think a construction company pays dividends to shareholders after it’s been out of business for years.”
Before Longarm could ask why anyone would want to pay anything for any worthless railroad paper, they were joined by Pronto Cross who demanded, “What on earth are you doing with this lad in handcuffs? I know young Howard and his family, Longarm! He may be a tad unruly, but you can’t be serious about him kidnapping Timmy Sears!”