"The hell you say!" one of the prosecution team declared. "We have the whole posse he surrendered to, along with the train crew they threw down on, and Jesus H. Christ, what sort of a federal prosecutor would throw in the towel over one hostile witness lighting out?"
Longarm said, "A federal prosecutor with bigger fish to fry and an eye for an unethical but simple deal, of course. We can hold Borden and Wagner, the two gunslicks I arrested at the Tremont House, for what--twenty-four hours after we turn loose the material witness they were menacing?"
Judge Dickerson said, "Seventy-two, on suspicion of anything. But you'd better make your other proposal a good one, Deputy Long. Why on earth would this court even consider turning loose a known member of a dangerous outlaw gang?"
Longarm nodded and replied, "Why indeed, Your Honor? What might you think if a bunch of sneaky lawmen turned a member of your gang and his gal loose, whilst still holding other pals they had less to charge with?"
Judge Dickerson smiled wickedly and said, "I like it. Let's try it."
CHAPTER 29
So later that afternoon, as Longarm and young Fulton Egger were coming out of the Federal House of Detention, a shady lawyer they'd both talked to in the past met them on the granite steps, looking a tad upset, to demand of Longarm, "Where are you taking my client now, Deputy Long? I warn you, he's never agreed to waive extradition on that old Kansas state charge!"
Longarm smiled thinly and said, "You ain't been keeping up, Lawyer Culhane. I ain't taking this innocent child to Kansas or anywhere else as a prisoner."
Egger stared back at his confounded lawyer, just as confounded, to say, "Don't look at me. I don't know neither. They just now told me they were dropping all charges and I was free to go."
"With one proviso," Longarm explained knowingly. He pointed west along the busy street as he said, "Just because we don't want him on train robbing doesn't mean we want him spitting on the sidewalks of our fair city. So I'm escorting him down to Union Depot, from whence he'll be catching a Burlington Flyer clean out of my court's jurisdiction. His little woman will be waiting for him when he gets there, and I hope this has been a good lesson to the two of them."
Lawyer Culhane stared thoughtfully at his client. "What did you and Margaret have to do in return, Fulton?"
Egger answered truthfully enough, "Nothing. They never asked for anything."
Longarm purred, "What might anyone want to ask a couple of pure innocent kids, Lawyer Culhane? Haven't you ever done anything from the goodness of your heart? Has dealing with the sort of clients you seem to deal with blinded you to the rights of an honest citizen? It says early on in the Bill of Rights that the accused shall be granted a fair and speedy trial. You've pestered me personally with enough writs of habeas corpus to know why we can't hold this pest."
The short and respectable-looking member of the courthouse gang shook his derbied head. "No, I haven't. You have a way of making arrests stick, Longarm. We both know I've never pried a client loose from you for lack of evidence unless you had damned little evidence, or unless you were throwing a little fish back in exchange for..."
"I never! I swear!" Egger shouted with an expression of dawning fear on his simple face.
Longarm said, "Believe the boy. He's telling you the pure truth. He can write to you and settle on what he might owe you, after I get him aboard that flyer and on his way--out of our hair. We'd love to stay and chat some more, but the kid's train will be leaving around sundown, and he'd be better off eating in the depot beanery than aboard that night train. You care to come along and ask more questions? Neither one of us has anything to hide."
Lawyer Culhane said he had some other late errands. They both knew he didn't have to say any more. So Longarm never asked what they were.
As Longarm and Egger headed off down the street without his cheap lawyer, the unsettled outlaw suddenly confided, "Listen, we'd better not go to that depot just now. I follow your drift about my not being welcome here in Denver. I've been run out of town before. So why don't you just let me find my own way over to... You say old Margaret will be waiting for me in Omaha?"
Longarm said, "Mebbe. I told her that would be where you'd be getting off the train I'm putting you on. I'm putting you on that train and no other because I told Judge Dickerson I would when he signed your release papers. I don't think he wants you finding your own way to the city limits, no offense."
As they kept on walking, with Egger spooking at storekeepers sweeping the walk or passing riders dressed cow, the stockyards a few blocks away accounting for such riders innocently enough, Longarm told himself not to start tensing up before that tinhorn lawyer had had time to report to other clients. Then he considered how quickly one could whip around a corner to consult with another client at, say, a shoe-shine stand, and tensed up quickly.
Egger tried to hold his own cards close to his vest. But as the red brick walls of Union Depot loomed just ahead the outlaw pleaded, "I don't want to wait for no train in there. You as much as told Culhane where this child would be during tricky glooming light, and I guess Margaret told you Culhane acts as lawyer for all of us here in Denver, right?"
As a matter of fact, she had. But it would have been dumb, as well as needlessly cruel, to tell a man who'd just lost his woman that she'd even told the law how big his dong got. The big blonde, who could easily satisfy a modestly endowed man but said she'd learned to like a hung one better, could meet old Egger farther along if she wanted to, assuming he lived through what was about to transpire.
When Egger suddenly asked why Longarm was grinning that way, the lawman said, "Just thinking how often I've caught a crook I'd have never known about had he only had the sense to leave me alone."
As they crossed the street through the horse-drawn traffic, Egger started to make a break for it. But Longarm caught him by one elbow and spun him around, saying, "Careful, old son. You don't want to get run over by a coach an' four. I don't want to handcuff you neither, but I can and I will if you try that again!"
Once on the sandstone walk in front of the depot, Egger sputtered, "You bastard! You're using me for bait! You never meant to turn me loose at all. But you figured Tyger would hear you had, suspect we'd made a deal to do him dirty, and come for me, right?"
Longarm said, "Yep." He hauled the frightened man into an archway and hauled out a folded length of linen bond paper, handing it to Egger as he continued. "I told your Miss Margaret I don't play dirtier than I need to. If you want the whole truth, I think you're a useless punk. But she assured me you've never killed nobody or even stolen apples without somebody leading the way. So I can afford to let you run loose, until somebody kills you or you get a little sense. Meanwhile, there's no accounting for taste, and one of the conditions Miss Margaret made was that both of you went free in exchange for Tyger. I never said I wouldn't wire Brown County they could pick up her older sister, so remember that in days to come when and if she says I double-crossed her. For when I make me a deal with the likes of you all, I dot every I and cross every T. After which you are on your own."