Smiley thought. "Make as much sense for them to just kill her. Where in these United States could a striking blonde like that one duck a serious federal warrant?"
"After dying her striking hair? How would you like me to list 'em, alphabetic or numerical? For all we know they plan on killing her, albeit I'm sure they only suggested a train trip of a hundred miles or more."
He left his frock coat open as he consulted his pocket watch. "I'd best get going. You boys are in charge of her now. But if it was still me on duty here, I'd be keeping my eyes peeled for some slickery."
Smiley stepped back inside. Longarm headed for the same stairs he'd come up only a short spell back. Then he reconsidered and ambled back to the rear stairwell, more for practice than anything else. He'd checked into this particular hotel before, although later in the evening and in more of a hurry, lest the gal cool off while he signed them in. So he'd never taken the time to explore all the ways in or out, and a man just never could be sure there might not be some future time when an alternate escape route might save him from another guest smoking in bed or an irate husband prowling the halls in the dark.
He didn't find the back stairs all that astounding as he followed them down to the ground floor. Once there, he found himself in the service hallway leading from an alley entrance to the lobby out the other way. He tried the alley door. He saw anyone could leave at any time, but had to knock if he aimed to enter. He shrugged and headed for the lobby to leave the more dignified way. As a paid-up man-hunter Longarm was hardly aware of his actions as he paused in the shadows of the archway out to the lobby to determine just who else might be on the premises at the moment.
He saw that aside from the clerk there were three gents lolling in the lobby. Two of them were seedy older men who looked as if they were just waiting around for the rest of their lives to unravel. The third man was far younger and seemed as proddy as a schoolmarm on her wedding night.
The squirming cuss in that far corner chair was wearing high-heeled riding boots, a telescoped black Stetson, and a shoulder holster along with his seersucker summer suit. There was no federal law against squirming in one's chair, or even packing a concealed weapon. But Longarm still got out his badge and pinned it to his lapel as he considered how he wanted to approach a total stranger whose only known crime was the way he made the hairs on the back of a lawman's neck tingle.
That shoulder rig would give the squirt in the seersucker suit a pretty good edge in a contest against a cross-draw man. But nobody outside of Ned Buntline Western novels got paid to indulge in quick-drawing contests, with the loser never getting the chance for a rematch. So Longarm drew his.44-40 in the shadows of the archway, and held it pointed politely at the floor. It was handier than any holstered side arm in any sort of rig. But before Longarm could step out into the lobby, a fourth man came into view at the bottom of the front stairwell. This one was dressed more like an undertaker who punched cows on occasion, and Longarm crawfished deeper into the shadows when he saw the one who'd just been upstairs was headed to join the one in that far corner. The one in black wore his own gun cross-draw under his coattails. Meaning that, like Longarm, he'd taken time to study on the various conditions and positions in which a man might be called upon to get his damned gun out quickly.
Longarm already had his gun out. He reached under his own coat for the handcuffs clipped to the back of his gun rig as he tried to read lips at that range. The way they moved their hands told as much as Longarm needed to know. Knowing he could be wrong, he took a deep breath, stepped out in the light, and threw down on the two of them as he crossed the lobby, announcing in a firm, friendly voice that he'd sure hate to gun the first dumb bastard who failed to raise both hands empty and just hold 'em that way for now.
His words were not taken lightly. The one in black groaned at his rising pal in seersucker, "Aw, hell, you told me Longarm had been relieved, you asshole!"
Longarm said, "He told you true. I reckon I could tell you what you just heard upstairs with your ear to the door and me not as helpless with my pants down as you all planned. But why go into all that bullshit here when it's just as easy to cuff the two of you together and run you over to the Federal Building to tell it to the judge?"
CHAPTER 4
There was bullshit to spare as Longarm's two suspects got to test their own versions, in separate rooms, on various suspicious lawyers and lawmen interested in the case. It was Longarm who suggested, out in the hall, that the prosecution might explain the facts of life to Miss Elvira Carson, the beautiful dumb blonde. The prosecutor snorted, "Don't teach your granny to knit socks, Longarm. It's obvious the friends of the lover she agreed to testify against never recruited that professional gunslick to ride off in any golden sunset with her. They flim-flammed her with some bull about getting her out of town once she tricked her guard into taking off his gunbelt behind closed doors. But what'll you bet they'd have gunned the both of you on the spot if she'd been able to seduce you?"
Longarm sighed. "She tried to seduce Tom Weaver first. I just talked to him down to the crapper. Tom confessed he was as tempted as the rest of us. But lucky for us all, he's happily wed to a frisky younger gal, even if he hadn't been an old pro. I just now gave Tom a mild cussing for not warning me about her in fuller detail."
The government lawyer chuckled. "Deputy Weaver no doubt had you down as an old pro too. It's just as well they took enough rope for us to hang the whole bunch, with or without that whore's reluctant help. Wait till you've questioned a hired gun who finds his fool self involved in a train robbery only the assholes who hired him took part in!"
Longarm smiled thinly and resisted the impulse to show off with a remark about federal jurisdiction. A government lawyer doubtless knew they could let a killer who hadn't killed anybody off, if he wanted to be helpful as all get-out.
Leaving the rest of the mess to those who seemed to want it, Longarm ambled down the hall to his own office to see why they'd sent for him a good two hours before.
As he entered the reception area young Henry looked up from his typewriter with a knowing grin. "You sure do like to live dangerously. Marshal Vail was just out here asking about you, all red in the face with steam shooting out his ears."
Longarm explained he'd been detained, and headed back for Billy Vail's office. But Henry said, "He's not there. He went out after cussing you a lot, like I said."
Longarm shrugged and headed on back in any case, lest he and old Billy wind up tear-assing through various doors in search of one another, the way the actors did in that comical French farce at the Apollo Hall.
It seemed smarter to just go on in and enjoy a sit-down smoke as he waited for old Billy to get back from wherever he'd gone.
Longarm knew it was rude, but he still swept his eyes over the clutter atop the marshal's desk in hopes of guessing what all the fuss was about. There were wanted flyers and yellow telegrams all over the green blotter. A familiar letterhead told Longarm they'd gotten another letter from Reverend John Dyer, that snow-shoeing itinerant missionary who'd have been proclaimed a saint by this time if the Methodists went in for that notion. For it took more simple goodness than most could manage to spend more than one's own yearly salary on savage cowboys and drunken Indians. And how many mortal fathers had ever forgiven a saddle tramp for murdering his only son, Judge Elias Dyer, saying he knew the killer had only been the weak-willed tool of crooked Colorado politicians?
Longarm hadn't been raised rude enough to read the mail of a gent who wasn't in trouble with the law. So he sat down and lit up, casting a thoughtful eye at the banjo clock on one oak-paneled wall. He could see Billy Vail was due back any minute, if only to close up for the day. He wondered what in thunder might old Reverend Dyer have to say in that confounded upside-down handwritten letter?