There was nobody lurking amid the dark varnished pews. He was sort of tense, and he yelled at the auburn-headed undersheriff more than once as she poked around after him with her own.40-caliber Patterson Conversion. He had as much luck getting her to stay downstairs when he worked his way up into the bell tower, ready to throw down on the first damned pigeon who cooed at them.
But all that remained on the top landing was a thick crust of dry pigeon shit, with the kitchen-match smell of gunsmoke lingering to explain why all the birds had flown away. Three spent brass.45-70 shells shone fresh-from-the-box on the shitty floorboards.
"Likely an army issue Springfield. About as easy to trace as a Stetson hat or a pair of Justin boots."
Rita peered past him out the open latticework pigeons could whip in and out through. She said, "I can see what's left of my poor bay window from here. But how could the villain have seen either one of us, inside, from up here?"
Longarm said, "He, she, or it couldn't. The plan was to draw me to yonder bay window where I'd have been in their sights at less than three hundred yards. Anybody watching from up here would have seen me coming to call on you. Anybody with any notion of the way your house is laid out would know that bay window goes with your front parlor. It don't take a college degree to read the little sign the shooter left us, Miss Rita."
She demanded, "How could anybody follow you up the street in broad daylight with a rifle, then break into the front door facing in the street downstairs without being seen?"
Longarm said, "I doubt it was done that way. When they failed to stop me in Cheyenne, they figured I'd get through and they knew I'd have to pay a courtesy call on yourself. So at least one of them got in downstairs before sunrise and waited up here, mayhaps with a good book, a jug of wine and somebody singing beside him, until I came along as expected and all went as planned until I failed to rise to the bait in your bay window.
She frowned thoughtfully and objected, "The shooter had to leave by broad day, didn't he?"
Longarm nodded and replied offhand, "We'd best scout around down below for his or her cheap rifle. Anyone willing to leave one behind only had to step out a side door into the churchyard and join the rest of the rush toward your shot-up bay window."
She gasped. "Then it had to be somebody who wouldn't stand out as a stranger in our township!"
Longarm managed not to sound sarcastic as he replied, "I somehow doubted we were searching for three wise men on camels, ma'am. Deacon Knox told me some local mastermind has been sending for outside help with a view to robbing you all blind. He, she, or it has to be somebody who's been here long enough to know Keller's Crossing and vice versa."
She forgot her ladylike manners enough to mutter, "Shit! That means there's little point in asking Western Union to tell us who wired whom from Cheyenne about you, doubtless in some criminal cypher!"
Longarm said, "It's worth a try. My boss likes me to use what he calls a process of eliminating. I doubt anyone would be dumb enough to use a cypher because that would be easy to spot, next to code."
She said she thought a code and a cypher were the same.
He pocketed up the spent brass and explained the difference while he helped her down the steep steps, saying, "You ain't the only one, Miss Rita. What most everybody calls the Morse Code ain't no code at all. It's cypher, which is a series of individual signs or symbols standing for letters of the alphabet. Don't matter whether you use dots and dashes, numbers or substitute letters. Anyone else can see at a glance the message is encyphered, and that's why crooks hardly ever use cyphers. Anyone as smart can figure your cypher out in time, once he knows he ought to." She didn't seem to be following his drift. He said, "A coded message is tougher to crack because it ain't half as easy to see it's in code. Codes are most often substitute words or sentences agreed upon in advance or written down in code books used by the sender and receivers. If somebody in Cheyenne wanted to tell a pal here in Keller's Crossing somebody like me was coming or not coming, they only have to word innocent-sounding messages a tad different. A message allowing Aunt Rhodie's goose had died in the millpond or from getting hit on the head with a walnut would only seem important to the ones who knew a millpond meant yes and a walnut meant no."
Rita brightened and said, "With Aunt Rhodie's goose meaning you, to them and them alone, right?"
He shrugged and said, "If that was the code they'd agreed on. What will you bet they're using other code words and phrases?"
As he helped down the last step inside the tower, she dimpled up at him to declare, "We can eliminate the majority of folk in these parts who haven't been sending or receiving telegrams at all, right?"
He shook his head and replied, "Wrong. It's a sure bet that most of the folk in these parts have to be innocent. But a real sneak could send a coded message by wiring somebody innocent to do something, with a confederate watching for them to do it. I told you codes could be tougher than cyphers to break."
As they stepped out into the church nave, one of her kid deputies came over to them holding a beat-up old trapdoor Springfield with as pleased an expression as a tabby cat delivering a dead sparrow to its mistress.
He said, "We just found this in the flower bed by the side steps down to the churchyard, Miss Rita. That door bolts from the inside, and guess how we found the barrel latch? Looks like the jasper as shot out your front window got in here by forcing the front latch, then left by that side exit to slither and sneak his way through the tree-shaded tombstones to parts unknown!"
The newspaperman, Big Jim Tanner, joined them to ask who they were looking for in connection with this latest outrage. Before Longarm was able to nudge her, the lady undersheriff said, "Deputy Long, here, is of the opinion we're after a hired gun called Ram Rogers and at least one companion. They were in cahoots with that Texas Tom who tried to ambush Deputy Long in Cheyenne and got shot by Wyoming's own Marshal Casey down yonder!"
Longarm wanted to kick her. But he knew he wasn't even supposed to kiss her before he knew for certain he wasn't going to have to arrest her. She seemed a good old gal, but somebody in those parts had to be as two-faced as that Roman statue, Mr. Janus.
For his own part Longarm told the newspaperman, "I ain't accused nobody of nothing for the record, Big Jim. I understand your desire for all the news that's fit to print. But I'd be much obliged if you just held your fire, for now and, if you will, I'll give you the very first officious statement. Do we have a deal?"
Big Jim frowned thoughtfully and replied, "It sounds like a one-way marriage agreement in which I agree to love, honor, and obey you without any right to kiss you. You are so right about my having a newspaper to put out, and my readers have the right to know a hired gun is running loose in their township like a mad dog off its leash!"
Longarm snorted. "Aw, come on. I only told Miss Rita another shady character named Ram Rogers as a possible suspect. There's no solid evidence it was him and not some other mad dog up in the bell tower just now!"
Rita said she wanted to question this Ram Rogers whatever he was and allowed she was headed over to their J.P. to ask for a writ she could use to run the rascal in on suspicion, if nothing else, for a good seventy-two hours.
Longarm started to warn her not to swear out a felony warrant with no more to back it but the unsupported accusations of a known con man.
Then he wondered why he'd want to say a dumb thing like that. For Billy Vail and the attorney general had asked him to find out what these Wyoming wildwomen were up to and old Rita, for all her dimples and auburn hair, was talking sort of wild right in front of him. So he held his tongue and went along with the rest of them as they all made their way afoot down the main street and around a corner to a mansart-roofed frame house painted puke green with chocolate brown trim.