They told him the jail was just beyond the stage terminal across the river. So that was where he rode, finding the North Platte barely fetlock deep this long after the last good rain, and reined in where, sure enough, they'd erected a small brick jailhouse next to a bigger frame building declaring it was the local substation of the county sheriff's department. So he reined in, dismounted, and tethered old Socks to the rail out front before he and his Winchester strode on in.
A teenage deputy dressed as if for Buffalo Bill's road show sat at the center desk in a fringed buckskin shirt, despite the season. He had buck teeth and a weak chin for such a mop of straw-colored hair and whispy mustache. But he didn't sound as stupid as he looked when he allowed they'd been expecting Longarm and added that his boss, Undersheriff Rita Mae Reynolds, would receive him at her town house over by the churchyard.
As he wrote the street number in his notebook, Longarm asked how come they called the lady's house in town a town house, as distinct from any other house in town.
Her kid deputy explained that undersheriffing was only a sideline with Miss Rita Mae, who ran eighteen hundred head of beef a hard ride off to the northeast, on old Sioux Treaty land.
Longarm agreed it made sense to have quarters at both ends of a hard ride. Then he casually asked if their mighty active undersheriff had been running cows or running for office first.
The kid said Miss Rita Mae had been in college, back East, learning about business administration and such, when her uncle Clay Reynolds had up and died childless, leaving her the herd he'd just driven up the Goodnight Trail to the greener grass of Wyoming Territory. The kid said Miss Rita had been asked to accept her appointment as the township's undersheriff by the Cattleman's Protective Association. She being a member, even if she wasn't a man.
Longarm smiled thinly as he listened in to a smoke-filled room in his own head. He'd warned some other ladies they might not be thinking too far ahead with all this clamoring for rights and responsibilities. It was doubtless a bother to be told from birth that gals weren't allowed to play some games. But speaking as a man who'd dodged many an army shit detail and been stuck with the death watch at more than one public hanging, Longarm knew how anxious men in position to "Designate Authority" could be to pass the buck to anybody they could volunteer for a tedious chore.
The Wyoming Cattleman's Protective Association met in the new Cheyenne Social Club and prided itself on being modernistic to the point of that newfangled Arts and Crafts furnishings and the first electric lights west of the Big Muddy. So they'd naturally be slick enough to put one of their own in as sheriff and appoint dimwits or smart but willing gals to lesser positions of responsibility. It was the wave of the future, to hear all those women's suffering gals go on about how awful it was to let men have all the dangerous jobs.
As he went back out front, Longarm saw they had a hotel across the way, doubtless meant for travelers laying over between stage and rail connections, or buyers coming out here to the end of the rails in search of cheaper beef to ship. He saw they had a taproom with one street entrance, and it had been an all-morning dusty ride from Dwyer and that other rail line. But Billy Vail hadn't sent him all this way to drink on duty. So he forked himself and his rifle back across old Socks and rode on.
He shoved the Winchester in the saddle boot provided by his Dwyer pals as he saw how noonday strollers along the main street stared at him. Once you knew the range would be less than thirty yards in either direction, a six-gun fired faster and handier, anyway.
He saw the storefronts to either side looked more prosperous than the ones south of the tracks. Most were frame or even brick, this close to said railroad. For neither the sod walls you saw north of the Arkansas nor the 'dobe one you saw on the high plains south of same stood up to the ferocious weather out this way as well as balloon frame and shiplap sheathing. There didn't seem to be as many saloons as your average trail town would support. But that was their misfortune and none of his own, seeing barbershop gossip was more reliable as a rule.
He spied the imposing address on the far side of a half-empty churchyard and rode along its picket fence, absently reading off family names because he'd found folk with kin under imposing tombstones tended to run things a day's ride out in all directions.
The kid deputy had allowed they'd been expecting him. But Longarm was surprised when a colored boy in serving livery came out front to take charge of his mount as he was still dismounting.
The boy asked Longarm's permit to take Socks around to the back and stall her with fodder and water. Longarm said that was jake with him as long as they made sure the thirsty mare had her fill of water before they fed her anything dry.
The boy had been taught his place. So he never told Longarm such needless instructions were insulting to an old pro of fourteen.
Another servant opened the front door as Longarm mounted the steps of the imposing front porch, framed between two sort of castle towers sheathed in ship-lap and painted sunflower yellow with cream trim.
Longarm was led to a side parlor, where a vision in sky-blue silk with auburn hair piled high and only a little suntan to show for her riding back and forth rose from the spinet she'd been practicing on to greet him with a smile and wave him to a silk upholstered sofa he hesitated to sit down on in denim jeans.
As the servant, a sort of motherly colored mammy instead of the butler she could doubtless afford, headed back to the kitchen to fetch them some refreshments, the glamorous Undersheriff Rita Mae Reynolds, for that was who she really was, asked Longarm why they were still holding her deputy, the murderous little Ida Weaver, in connection with the shooting of Rusty Mansfield in Denver.
They both sat down, with Longarm's hat in his lap, as he told her nobody was holding any Keller's Crossing gals in Denver. He said, "Our law clerk carried her to the Union Station personal and saw her off on the afternoon northbound, day before yesterday, Miss Rita. She should have arrived long before this child, having almost a full day's start."
The swell-looking undersheriff of perhaps twenty-six or -seven summers stared at him with thoughtful amber eyes he felt like drowning in, as if she thought he was hiding something, while she insisted the other pretty girl who'd gunned that outlaw had never come back.
Longarm frowned thoughtfully and truthfully replied, "I wish I'd known that before I left Cheyenne last night. With one thing and then another I wound up all over Cheyenne, talking to all sorts of folk, but I didn't know I was supposed to ask if anybody had seen little Ida Weaver. So I never."
The motherly colored servant came in with a silver salver of tea and shortcake with the serving-trimmings as Longarm was asking the lady of the house what she knew about the late Texas Tom or his pal, Ram Rogers.
Rita Mae thought about it before she shook her glorious head to reply, "I don't have any wants or warrants on either name. Should I?"
She commenced to pour as Longarm said, "They tried to stop me in Cheyenne. As you see, they didn't. They were working with a cardsharp called Deacon Knox. How about him?"
The mighty refined peace officer replied, "We don't allow cardsharps in this township. One lump or two, Deputy Long?"
To which Longarm replied, "I'd as soon take tea straight, and my friends call me Custis, Miss Rita Mae. I saw some shut-down establishments down by the tracks and stock pens. But how you police your own jurisdiction is no never mind of my department. I reckon you know they sent me up your way to investigate this outbreak of desperados being shot down like dogs, all over this country, by Wyoming wildwomen packing warrants and badges from these parts?"