Longarm didn’t ask where the county courthouse might be. As they crossed the dusty street between the municipal corral and lined-up frame buildings beyond, Longarm told the sheriff he’d see him later at the inquest. Wigan looked confounded and declared, “It’s early yet. You sure you can’t use some guidance and introductions betwixt now and late this evening?”
Longarm shook his head and replied, not unkindly but firmly, that he liked to work alone. He felt no call to add he’d found he got more out of folks when their local law wasn’t listening in.
So they shook on it and parted friendly. Then Longarm opened the gate of the low picket fence in front of that mustard-colored house to stride between knee-high dusty flowers, mount the recently swept front steps, and twist the polished brass turn-key of the boardinghouse doorbell.
A pale dusty blonde in a dusty tan smock opened the door for him with a turkey feather duster in one hand. It took a lot of dusting when you kept house across from a municipal corral. Longarm smiled down at the obvious parlor maid and introduced himself with a flash of his badge and identification before he asked if he might by any chance speak with the lady of the house.
The gal he’d taken for her hired help smiled wanly up at him and replied, “I’m the Widow MacUlric. My friends call me Mavis. If I didn’t have more than enough rooms to let I wouldn’t be doing my own housework. I can let you have a nice corner room overlooking the garden out back, along with three meals a day, for three dollars a week.”
Longarm replied, “That sounds more than fair, Miss Mavis, but I don’t know how long I’ll be here, or how often I might or might not be coming in or out. So why don’t you let me charge a dollar a day to my field expenses and might you have afront room I could hire, facing that corral across the way?”
She pointed at the nearby stairs with her duster as she told him uncertainly, “I’m in no position to turn down a dollar a day. So we can put you in the less comfortable front room I’ve been using myself, if you’ll give me time to move some bedding and belongings. Why would anyone else care to bed down with the window facing into the south across that dusty corral all day?”
Then she blinked up at him. “Oh! You did say you were a lawman up here after somebody, and that is a public corral, isn’t it?”
As he followed her up the stairs, admiring the view, even though her swaying hips seemed sort of skinny under that tan smock, Longarm soberly observed, “It surely is, ma’am. I understand they got this one street corner in London Town, near some place called Pick Your Dilly, where they say that if you wait there long enough, everyone in the world is sure to pass by sooner or later.”
She gasped. “Good heavens, are you suggesting wanted outlaws have been riding in and out of the municipal corral, right under my front window, without my ever suspecting a thing?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “You’ve been running a boardinghouse. You ain’t paid to keep an eye peeled for outlaws. I carry a gun and a badge. So they expect me to suspect things, ma’am.”
Chapter 3
Longarm offered to help. But the Widow MacUlric insisted housework was women’s work. So he allowed he’d be back for noon dinner, and strode over to the Western Union near the railroad stop.
Once there, he wired his home office the little he’d found out so far. He didn’t ask Marshal Billy Vail whether he was supposed to arrest anybody or not. Western Union charged a nickel a word for flat-rate wires and old Billy could be such a fuss about needless waste when he went over a deputy’s field expenses.
Longarm stopped by a tobacco shop for some three-for-a-nickel cheroots and the latest gossip on last night’s lynchings. He wound up with two bits worth of smokes and as much information as he might have gotten from the wooden Indian standing out front.
It was early in the day for any responsible citizens to be sipping suds in the one saloon that was open at that hour. So Longarm tried the barbershop he spied across the way. He didn’t need a haircut, but a man could always use a store-bought shave this late in the day if he needed an excuse to wait his turn and jaw a mite.
There were four morning customers ahead of him. Three townies and what seemed like a prosperous cowhand indeed. The rascal must have weighed three hundred pounds. He was only saved from looking just plain sissy-fat by standing well over six feet, and that was before he put on those high-heeled Justins he wore with his sailcloth pants legs tucked inside. His black sateen shirt and maroon brocaded vest had likely set him back more than his black Texas hat. But not as much as the brace of silver-mounted and ivory-handled Remington .45s riding his broad hips in tooled black leather holsters.
Longarm could see all this at a glance because the big beefy cuss rose when Longarm entered, as if he’d been expected.
But when Longarm nodded at the big rider, the big rider never said anything as he barely nodded back. Longarm could see the one barber wasn’t nearly finished with his current customer. So he figured the stockman had just grown tired of sitting in the bentwood chair he’d risen from. There were plenty of seats that morning. So Longarm felt no call to thank anyone for offering him one as he sat down near the doorway. There was a folded newspaper on the empty chair next to the one he’d chosen. He picked it up and scanned the front page a spell before he declared to nobody in particular, “I see they ain’t printed anything about that necktie party we had last night yet.”
Nobody said a word or even glanced his way. Small-town barbershops could be that way. He went on. “The reason I mentioned current events is that I am Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long of the Denver District Court and I was sent all this way to gather up the one they called Dancing Dave and deliver him to another hangman entirely. I find it more peculiar than annoying that somebody up this way hung Dancing Dave at less expense to the federal district I ride for. Dancing Dave Loman had done wonders and eaten cucumbers in other parts of this great land. But it was my understanding he was hiding out in Nebraska because this was about the only state he wasn’t wanted in.”
The balding barber shot him a stern look by way of the big wall mirror and demanded, “Did you come in here for a shave, a haircut, or to gossip like an old fishwife?”
Before Longarm could answer, the bulky stockman standing near the back wall with a gun on each hip laughed jovially and cut in to take the bit in his own teeth, declaring, “Lawman has a right to be nosy when the Minute Men string up a cuss he’d had his heart set on.”
Beaming down at Longarm, who was fighting the temptation to rise and adjust his own gun rig, the just as tall and far wider two-gun man explained, “That’s last week’s edition of the Monitor, pilgrim. They ain’t had time to report what happened in these parts last night. I ain’t saying I was there myself, you understand, but I reckon I can tell you why they robbed you of your own true love. That train robber had the misfortune of being locked up with the murderous son of a bitch the Minute Men were really after. They were after Bubblehead Burnside because he raped and murdered a pretty church lady, and because they knew the son-of-a-bitching circuit judge was likely to send the knave to that insane asylum over to Omaha!”
There came a rumble of agreement—now that the bully had told them what their opinions had better well be. A townsman in a snuff-colored outfit opined, “They should have locked that loony away years ago. Always knew Bubblehead Burnside was going to hurt somebody someday. Had half the kids in town scared skinny, coming at them all squinty-eyed and drooling as he asked ‘em to shoot marbles with him!”