The sheriff said that made sense. But his senior deputy pointed out that Laughing Larry had been a homicidal lunatic.
Longarm shrugged and said, "Anything's possible, once you toss out all the remotely sensible reasons to kill folks. It's possible anyone here in Brown County could have sent for a hired killer just to see whether I died with my eyes shut or open. But if it's all the same with you, I'll start with more logical suspects."
Sheriff Tegner blinked and asked, "You mean you got some good as Banker Plover?"
To which Longarm could only reply, in a weary tone, "How would you like me to list 'em, alphabetical or numerical?"
CHAPTER 25
It was just after midnight when Longarm finally made it back up the river to that raft and told Mato Takoza not to flap those raggedy buzzard wings and moan at him like that.
The spunky little breed acted mighty happy to see him, once she knew who'd come calling at that hour. But she'd have likely acted as happy whether she'd meant it or not. So Longarm held a few things back until she was making him happy inside the shanty, bare-ass with her on top. Then he told her he had some other happy surprises for her, and rolled her on her back to open her wide and probe her deep as he told her he'd been scouting her old Bee Witch, as he'd promised her he would.
Long-donging anyone that pretty would have been easy in any case, but she'd been extracting honey all afternoon and smelled like she had, even after an afternoon swim in the chalky river water. She took all the organ-grinding inspired by all those Wasichu gals through a long chaste day as a personal compliment. So when she threw both her arms and legs around him to crush him tight against her tawny tits, he kissed the side of her neck and murmured, "I like you too. Now I have some questions to ask, and before you answer, I want to give you a couple of tokens of good faith."
She demurely asked what he wanted to know, and assured him she would never lie to him, never.
He murmured, "Don't see why not. We lie to you folks all the time."
As she stiffened under him he quickly said soothingly, "Always for your own good, just as your kind tells us things we'd like to hear instead of things that might upset us. Meantime, what's a little lying betwixt friends, and I hope you understand how awkward it would be for me to testify in any court of law against a sweetheart I just shot my wad in."
She started to cry with her legs up around his waist, and it sure felt interesting inside her. So he began to move in her just a mite as he said, "I'm fixing to tell you everything I know about your Santee plot and its likely outcome first."
She said she didn't know what he was talking about, gripping him tighter with her strong brown thighs. But he didn't move any faster as he insisted, "Sure you do. The Chambruns and those other breed homesteaders have only been leaving a little out. Nothing any of you have done is go-to-prison illegal. If it was, a land and railroad speculator I know would have been in jail a long time ago."
She pleaded, "Faster. Do it to me faster, Wasichu Wastey!"
He kept teasing them both with long, measured thrusts as he calmly said, "Someone in your Indian land-development syndicate figured out who the Bee Witch really was and what she was really up to. They sent you to beg her for a job, pretending to be a poor little orphan with no connections with those other Santee moving in up and down the banks she was surveying for her railroad."
She sobbed, "Hear me, I am an orphan! I have nobody. Nobody. Not even a man of my own kind to keep me company on this lonely raft!"
It was starting to feel too good again to talk. But as Longarm started pumping faster she demanded, "Have you ever met any other men out here with me, red or white?"
He kissed her, came, and moaned. "We'll get to that part in just a minute. First I'm telling you right out that the old railroad survey gal got back East all right with all her money and a bonus for a job well done. I got two wires in a row this evening from a railroad dick who'd know about such matters. Neither me nor Whispering Smith have any idea where she got rid of that pony."
Mato Takoza groaned she was coming too now. So Longarm pounded her over the pass to Paradise, and let her get some breath back before he said, "I got a later wire from a Wasichu who delights in scalping other Wasichus, so listen tight."
When he was certain she was, he told her, "A robber baron who pulls such tricks all the time must have thought I was about to invest in a railroad stock manipulation. That's what they call crooking widows, orphans, and wise-ass Indians, railroad stock manipulations."
She proved how dumb and innocent she really was by demanding more details. "Why would anyone survey a railroad right of way if they didn't mean to build a railroad?"
He kissed her some more and replied, "To sucker folks into buying railroad stock, of course. The one and original Jay Gould assures me the whole thing's pie in the sky. They have railroad trestles enough down to New Ulm and up by Franklin. Nobody needs a third line between. So they ain't really fixing to build one."
She wailed, "Oh, hinhey! Now you Wasichu have really done it to us! Even when we play by your own rules you screw us, screw us, screw us!"
Longarm said, "Later, after I get my second wind. Meanwhile, I've told you what's really going on so's you can come out on top for a change. Jay Gould assures me the clever flimflam has some time to go as they sell more watered railroad stock at ever higher prices, thanks to carefully placed secret tips about secret surveys and such. Meanwhile, even homestead claims clouding title to future townsites must be worth something to the greedy speculators who've just started to hear about that swell new railroad line."
She nibbled his earlobe pensively as she pondered a mite before deciding, "But my Ina Tatowiyeh Wachipi's high and rocky claim will be worthless, worthless, once no river crossing is ever developed up her way!"
Longarm said, "Tell your aunt to sell such rights to the claim as they have for whatever they can get. Then tell them to buy stock in that feeder line the Bee Witch was surveying for."
"You said the stock was worthless, worthless!" she shouted.
Longarm hushed her with a kiss on the lips and told her, "You have to learn to pay attention if you're out to flimflam folks as slick-talking as mine. I said that railroad stock was watered pie in the sky. Stock is only worthless when nobody else wants to buy it from a poor ignorant redskin, who bought it earlier, before us wise-money boys heard about that trestle across the Minnesota, cutting hours off the regular railroading east or west."
This time she got it. She laughed incredulously and said, "Hear me, my ina and her friends have a lot of money to invest. What if we bought as much of that railroad stock as we could this month, and sold it for as much as we could get for it next month?"
He said, "Jay Gould tells me he figures to dump his own investment at the end of this month. I wouldn't hold on to any a day longer than that. For what goes up must come down, fast, when it has nothing but hot air lifting it anywheres to begin with."
She said she understood, and loved him so much for being so nice to her and her people that she wanted to give him a French lesson.
He said, "Before you find it tough to talk with your mouth full, I want you to be nice to me in another way. We both know I had to take your word about that conversation you had in Santee the other night."
She nodded and said, "I told you what those strange riders asked about you. Are you suggesting I knew them better than I told you I did, Wasichu Wastey?"
He said, "The thought had crossed my mind. A man tends to get sort of suspicious after he's been trailed by Indians for a spell, no offense. But if I take your word you weren't flim-flamming me about some pals who only wanted to know how you were doing with the sucker, let's try and slice it a couple of other ways. To begin with, that was really Santee the bunch of you were speaking, right?"