He saw those wheels going round in her big blue eyes again. So he said, "I'd be lying if I said I knew for sure whether those two he sent to the Tremont House were out to kill you or get you safely out of our clutches. Either way, I took 'em both so neat and tidy, it must have occurred to their boss that someone had tipped us off. With Flanders dead and Chief hiding out back in Minnesota, if you take my meaning."
She had turned a shade green around the gills before he continued. "It gets worse. Whatever you and your sister had agreed to, I nailed his second in command, Chief, whilst he was supposed to be hiding safe and sound with Miss Helga at your family spread. Then I nailed Laughing Larry, no matter who'd sent for him to do me in, as neatly as if I'd been tipped off he was coming. You want some more? I just left your sister free as a bird, despite an easy chance to nail her on aiding and abetting, if not criminal conspiracy."
The younger and prettier Runeberg sister reached down between them with a Mona Lisa smile as she murmured, "My, you have been busy, and so here we are, alone at last."
He let her fondle his semi-erection. Most men would have. But as she did so, he smiled thinly and said, "Yep. With you screwing the same lawman who seemed so easy on your sister back in Minnesota. You can see, of course, how I'd never be able to hold you as either a prisoner nor hostile witness after getting on such friendly terms with you. So you're free as a bird to leave this little love nest as soon as you can get dressed, unless you'd rather get even friendlier."
He could see she surely did when she rolled over on her plump knees and one hand to lower her blond head to his lap. He didn't try to stop her. Few men would have. But as he grinned down at the bobbing part of her hair he said, "That sure feels friendly. But what I meant was that I could get you out of Colorado in one piece, with no charges pending against you and mayhaps a pocketbook full of bounty money, if you'd only help me make the bad dreams of a bad man come true."
She took her lush lips from his raging erection to impale her tiny twat on it instead as she pleaded, "You're so right about how mean old Cal can be when he thinks he's been crossed. But roll me over and do this to me right before I tell you the whole dumb story!"
CHAPTER 28
The next morning, having hidden the repentant outlaw gal with Madame Emma Gould, a real soiled dove who owed him some favors, Longarm got down to the less amusing chore of seducing a prosecution team and at least one senior judge.
The meeting was held in Judge Dickerson's smoke-filled chambers, with Longarm's superior, Marshal Vail, naturally on hand to back his play unless it sounded wilder than usual.
Once he had everybody sitting down and lit up, Longarm declared, "Before I tell you gents what I want you to do for me, I'd best tell you a bedtime story, as amended for me in bed last night."
Vail growled, "I was just fixing to ask you why you registered at another hotel with that material witness. You told me you were out to get her to tell the truth, not go to bed with you, damn it!"
Longarm smiled sheepishly and said, "Sometimes you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Boss."
The fair but firm Judge Dickerson snorted, "Never mind how he got what out of a hostile witness and let the man tell us what he got!"
Longarm nodded thankfully and said, "Once upon a time there was this outlaw gang. Much like what we know about the James-Younger ways of pulling similar jobs, the three experienced leaders--Tyger, Flanders, and Youngwolf or Chief--stuck together and made plans, but picked up such extra help as they might need for a particular job from a way wider circle of kith and kin."
A lawyer who'd doubtless read a recent edition of the Denver Post said, "What has any of that got to do with Elvira Carson, or with you letting her go after a night of slap and tickle?"
Longarm said, "We call it giving them enough rope, and I got more'n slaps and tickles out of a gal who's really Margaret Egger nee Runeberg, the common law wife of the Fulton Egger you've been holding for trial as the late Frank Keller. But this would still make more sense to you if you'd just shut up and let me tell it from the beginning."
Judge Dickerson warned everybody to be still and told Longarm to proceed. So Longarm said, "All right, moving closer to our own time, the three old pals hid out from time to time on this cattle spread close to their old stamping grounds, where they'd met as half-ass Indian fighters. The spread was owned and operated by the Runeberg sisters, at least until the younger one, pretty Miss Margaret, fell for the exciting bullshit of a part-time gang member called Fulton Egger and told the neighbors she'd be living in Chicago with somebody not quite as exciting."
"You mean it was the Tyger gang, not the Keller gang, who tried to rob that train and-"
"The judge just told you to be still," Longarm told the lawyer. Then he relented enough to explain. "We all know what a piss-poor train robbery that was. Young Egger got treed by the posse, and threw lots of sand in your eyes by confessing he was the leader, Frank Keller. And then you picked up a reluctant witness, coached in advance to blow the case sky high in court when the defense proved she'd been held as a trail-town whore instead of the innocent Minnesota miss she could be if she wanted. After the jury finished laughing about that, they were fixing to spring the death certificate of the real Frank Keller on the prosecution."
There came a rumble of discontent. But Judge Dickerson, who'd had folks trying to laugh in his court in the past and didn't much approve of it, ignored his own injunction to gravely observe, "It wouldn't have worked. Horseplay in court may or may not amuse the jury. But I've been over the briefs and I'd say the prosecution has young Keller or, very well, Egger, as charged. If giving the arresting officer a false name was enough to get you off, nobody would ever be convicted. Who came up with such a sophomoric scheme to disrupt the majesty of my damned court?"
Longarm said, "Brick Flanders, Your Honor. He was the big spender of the bunch. Tyger and Chief wanted to keep laying low, and told him his proposal to stop that train was dumb. But he tried to do it on his own, or with only his own fraction of the gang, at any rate, and we all know how that turned out."
He saw nobody had any objections and continued. "It got worse. The murderous but somewhat cooler heads heard the gang they'd thought they were leading had robbed that payroll office up to Fort Collins, and that the high-denomination treasury notes were hot as a whore's pillow on payday night because the government had a list of all their serial numbers."
Billy Vail just couldn't help but ask, "Which one of them was fool enough to spend one of those very treasury notes in the very county they'd always felt safe to hide out in, old son?"
Longarm said, "Tyger and Chief were sure it was Brick Flanders. The red-bearded and glass-eyed wonder had been identified by survivors of that robbery. He denied having pulled the robbery. So he naturally had to deny spending the hot paper like a drunken sailor, and this got Tyger and Chief so mad they beat and shot him, not far from that rooming house he was found in well toasted. Margaret Egger couldn't say just how they managed to smuggle his body in and register it as the late Calvert Tyger. But she agrees with me that Tyger might have made a habit of dying in fires because he's an ordinary-looking cuss who feels better off with us not looking for him above ground. Chief ran back to the old Santee country where, being Ojibwa, he didn't have to worry as much about being recognized by anyone who'd known him of old. Nobody from the gang bought any riding stock with a note from that payroll job. So you can imagine how chagrined they felt when I showed up as well."
He let them all chuckle and summed up with, "Like I told the gal who told me so much, I'd just fallen in the dung heap and come up with sweet violets. But if the truth be known, I never caught but one of the three leaders with barnyard luck, and the bad one of the bunch is still at large, twice as smart and not looking half as unusual. That gal who admits to knowing him personal tried to describe him, and it sure adds up bland. I doubt any lawman would look twice at a middle-aged cuss of medium build in a not-too-plain-or-fancy business suit unless he acted unusual. So here's what I want you officers of the court to do for me. I want you to drop the charges against Fulton Egger, alias Frank Keller, for lack of evidence. Anyone who reads the Post or News ought to be able to see how that material witness running off on us leaves us with no case and-"