The beautiful undersheriff smiled alluringly at him as she handed him his cup and a wedge of shortbread, saying, "Of course I do. I'm rather proud of coming up with such an easy way to rid the West of so many disgusting old things."
So there it was, as plain and simple as a puddle of dog piss on the rug with her smiling as innocent as a pup who'd never been house broke, and now the question before the house was what they expected him to do about it.
He said, "You'd best start at the beginning, Miss Rita Mae. A heap of other peace officers have been alarmed by your draconian notions on law enforcement. But I try to keep an open mind until I've heard the whole story." She nibbled as much shortcake as a mouse might have, washed it down with her own tea, and began, "My friends just call me Rita, and it all began last March with a shooting in one of the rowdy saloons I hadn't shut down yet. The victim was a young Irish railroad worker. His killer was a brazen bully who'd just been paid off for a cattle drive and got to drinking and bragging as he waited for his train ride back to the Texas Panhandle."
Longarm thought, nodded, and said, "That would be the late Amarillo Cordwain, shot down like a dog by a sweet little thing as he was on his way to another man's funeral in the rain, right?"
The beautiful but mighty unusual peace officer nodded innocently and confessed right out, "I didn't know what I was going to do about our own killing before that Irishman's weeping widow came to me with her aching heart set upon vengeance. As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm not a gunslinger. I hold a postgraduate degree in business administration. I run my substation here in town the way I run the beef operation left to me by a dear old wild and woolly cattleman. I've hired a good crew of experienced cowboys to manage my home spread and herd. They don't give me enough to hire the sort of lawmen I'd choose, myself, for my deputies. I don't have a man over twenty backing my play, as others might put it. None of the nice young boys I have to work with have ever been in a gunfight with a real killer. They can patrol the town and surrounding range for mad dogs and petty thieves. There was no way I could send anyone on my regular payroll all the way to Texas with a murder warrant to serve on a really mad dog like Amarillo Cordwain!"
Longarm said, "We can talk about a murder warrant issued by a local J.P. later, Miss Rita. Tell me how you tracked that first killer all the way to Texas without any experienced man-hunters at your beck and call."
She answered, simply, "That part was easy. The nasty Texas rider made no attempt to cover his tracks. Everyone knew he hailed from the Texas Panhandle, and he was down there bragging on killing a fool Harp up Wyoming way."
"Who's everybody?" Longarm insisted, adding, "I understand how a friend of a friend of a man who works in a barbershop might spread such gossip, but sooner or later you ought to be able to backtrack it to the one who got the ball rolling."
She thought and decided, "I was told by Mr. Tanner, the owner of our own Riverside News. You'd have to ask him who told him. We've gotten such tips from newspaper men, railroading men, and just men riding through. As you just said, a friend of a friend tells a friend, and a man wanted dead or alive shouldn't be walking about bold as brass just because he feels he's safe across a few state lines!"
Longarm sipped tea thoughtfully and decided, "I've heard a heap of gossip about Senator Silver Dollar Tabor, his imposing Miss Augusta, and that mighty sassy Baby Doe married up with another gent entire. I ain't sure just who told me what, now that you've reminded me. So it's easy to see how you could find out where an owlhoot rider had wound up without recalling just who'd told whom. Tell me how come that Irish mourner wound up shooting her man's killer down in Texas, ma'am."
Rita said, "I told her she could. She wept and swore and tore her bodice when I explained how little I could do about a killer so vile and so far away. When she hissed like a serpent that she'd be after shooting the gobbeen herself if she was a man and all and all, it suddenly came to me that there was nothing on the Wyoming statutes preventing a distaff undersheriff from swearing in another woman as a deputy. So I did and you know the rest. Armed with a warrant and a pepperbox.36, Deputy Maureen found it childishly simple to take the train down to Texas, ask about for the handsome devil, Amarillo Cordwain, and simply shove her pepperbox in his smiling face and pull the trigger one time!
Longarm said, "Once as he was standing and five times more as he lay oozing brains at her feet. I told you I read the reports, ma'am. Who told her to serve that warrant on him so direct?"
Rita shrugged and said, "The feeling was mutual. The distraught Maureen O'Boyle gave me the idea when she said she'd shoot Cordwain on sight. I was the one who suggested she hide her feelings until she could work her way as a helpless female within point-blank range."
Longarm whistled softly and said, "They sure taught you how to delegate at that business school. My boss, Marshal Vail, has already said admiring things about your delegated authority getting the drop on unsuspecting hard cases. Let's talk about the others, now."
She seemed willing, not holding anything back as she went on and on about nine such executions in all.
As Longarm and others had surmised, the combination of a remote location and all that cross-country traffic passing through a tighter than usual bottleneck had conspired to attract the attention of more than one dangerous tinhorn or out-and-out road agent. When Longarm told her what Deacon Knox had said about some mastermind inviting crooks from all over the West to a township with a lady undersheriff, Rita sighed and said she and her own pals had suspected as much.
Then she said, "Things have actually started to ease up, after the rash of robberies we had earlier in these parts. I'd like to think my sending girls to do what many consider a man's job had something to do with it. We were out to prove it was just as dangerous to break the law around here as anywhere else. I thought we were winning. That stage holdup pulled by Rusty Mansfield and some others was the last highway robbery in this county, and that was over a month ago."
He asked about the latest Texas killer killed down Texas way since the killing he'd witnessed in Denver.
She explained, "That was an argument over cards. Pecos McBride was another trail drover cut from the same rough cloth as Amarillo Cordwain. I don't know what gets into Texas riders when they're a long way from home. At any rate Pecos McBride shot a young homesteader in the taproom of the Pronghorn Hotel, right across from my substation. He rode out of town at full gallop, after dark, before my helpers and I could posse up, as you bigger boys put it. But, as in the case of Cordwain, the brute had told others here in town where he hailed from. It was Waco, nowhere near the Pecos, by the way. I recruited a girl I met at the homesteader's funeral to run down there and kill him back, the mean thing. She and the boy McBride killed over a penny-ante pot were engaged to be married."
She saw the deep thoughts in Longarm's gun-muzzle eyes and asked him what he found so complicated about what she'd just told him.
He said, "I'm studying on things you told me earlier, Miss Rita. It all sounds so simple until I ask how come your Ida Weaver never came back after I saw her gun Rusty Mansfield in the Parthenon Saloon the other day. The tale she told us jibes with what you've been telling me. But if it's all so simple, how come she's vanished into thin air, and why have other owlhoot riders been trying to prevent this mighty unrewarding meeting we're having this very afternoon?"
She said she wasn't sure she hadn't just been insulted.
Longarm said, "There's nothing wrong with you, your shortcake, or this tea, Miss Rita. But you ain't told me a thing your Deputy Ida couldn't have told us down Denver way if my boss hadn't let her go without pressing her because he's so smart. He thought I might be able to catch you ladies at something more sneaky. He ordered me to mosey up this way, talk to all you Wyoming folk, and tell him what I thought you might be up to.