Longarm said, "I like that better. But there's one hole in the bucket. Honor among thieves is a myth, and there's been many an old pard back-shot as the robbers were fixing to divvy up the spoils. But a local boy fingering targets for outside road agents would have to gun them sooner and closer, wouldn't he?"
Big Jim nodded and said, "Rusty Mansfield was spending the money from that stage holdup like he feared the ink would fade when... a certain source wired me where he'd turned up."
"How did you know it was Rusty Mansfield as stopped the stage and shot Ida Weaver's uncle? The little I have on that one says the road agents were masked, and Rusty Mansfield was neither well known in these parts or alone."
Big Jim said, "He was the one dumb enough to brag, once he thought he was far enough from these parts. Just like that mean drunk in the Texas Panhandle boasted of gunning that railroad worker. We're not talking about the likes of Frank and Jesse, Longarm. To begin with, they haven't all been what I'd call a professional criminal. Three or four out of the nine, so far, were no more than evil-tempered brutes who killed in anger without taking a dime for their troubles. What profit would I or any other mastermind make from ordering any gunslicks to behave like that?"
Longarm said, "I was hoping you could tell me. I'd agree the whole thing was just a string of wild but unconnected incidents if Deputy Ida Weaver wasn't missing and nobody seemed to be shooting at me, personal. It all started late last winter with Amarillo Cordwain gunning that Irish railroad man, right?"
Big Jim nodded, started to say something, then laughed like hell and called out to his type sticker, "Will you listen to this slick talker, Inky? You just heard me telling him we won't play ball with him unless he's willing to play ball with us, and here I am playing ball with him!"
Then he said, "Get out of here, Longarm. I have a paper to publish, and we work together my way or we don't work together at all!"
CHAPTER 17
The workday was winding down by then. But Longarm had time to do some eliminating that Billy Vail would have applauded. For in a town that small and close-knit it was easy to eliminate like hell with casual questions about who'd been doing what with whom when what was going on.
He'd known right off that neither he, Rita Mae, nor her household help had been smoking up her front parlor with that old army rifle from the bell tower. It hardly made sense that Preacher Shearer would have had to bust his own locked door to get into his own church and the notion of the sniper busting in before dawn when nobody was on the streets of Keller's Crossing eliminated heaps of others.
For everybody with a regular job near the center of town had been at work instead of up in that bell tower and had plenty of others to back their alibi. Alibi came from a Latin term meaning "somewheres else," and it was tough to fathom how anybody could be lying in ambush up among the pigeons and going about their usual chores in front of everybody.
The very few who were too important to be laboring in public, such as that snotty newspaper man, the preacher himself, and most of the public officials of Keller's Crossing had all come running from the wherevers they'd been in response to the gunshots later in the day. So whilst it burned like fire, Longarm had to allow those rifle shots had been fired by somebody who was neither holding a steady job near that church nor a total stranger to those who did. It had to be at least a face they'd seen before. Folk remembered strange faces in small towns, whether they'd done anything or not. Many a horse thief had learned this to his cost when the local vigilance committee rode him down after he thought he'd gotten away clean from a town where nobody was supposed to know he was a horse thief.
As he headed back to his hotel to see if they served supper Longarm reflected that eliminating most everyone he'd met in Keller's Crossing as that sniper didn't mean he, she, or it hadn't been carrying out the orders of somebody more two-faced. He didn't see how he was going to eliminate anyone as the mastermind who'd almost surely done something to that Deputy Ida Weaver and been trying to do something to him ever since he'd talked to the deadly but not-too-bright little gal.
As he approached the hotel, he spied Pony Bodie and another young buckaroo drooling at the passing womenfolk out front of the Western Union. Pony Bodie saw him and got up to lope over, calling out he'd just delivered a wire from Denver to the desk clerk inside.
Longarm reached in his jeans for a silver dollar and handed it over, saying, "Keep the change. How would you like to make a little more on the side?"
Pony Bodie looked wary and said, "Lord knows I could use some. But I ain't one for any queer stuff if that's what we're talking about."
Longarm assured him that wasn't what they were talking about as he tore a sheet out of his notebook that he'd already made some notes on. Handing it to the delivery boy, Longarm said, "I don't need to read any private telegraph messages that are likely in code to begin with. You'll find just some dates and the names of other towns on this page. I need to know who got a wire here in this township on let's say more than three or four of them dates, and from where."
Pony Bodie took the slip of paper but pointed out, "I generally deliver telegrams to all sorts of folk every day in the week."
Longarm said, "You weren't listening. We call it a process of eliminating when one particular address gets more wires than anybody else from particular parts of this vast country, see?"
Pony Bodie grinned and said, "I reckon I do, now. Maybe I'll be a lawman instead of a telegrapher when I grow up. I dasn't poke about in files until Old Wilbur leaves for the night. You just talked to him, and you should have seen what a prune he is. I get along better with the night man, Herb. I fetch sandwiches and suds for him after dark, and in return he's been showing me how to send dots and dashes when things get slow. He's even let me send night letters when nobody else was around. I reckon I can check these dates out for you, later, after I've fetched him them suds."
They shook on it and Longarm went on in to pick up his wire from Billy Vail and ask about supper. They served plain-and-simple off the taproom grill. So he ordered a T-bone with home-fries and forget the damned turnip greens. He read the wire from his boss as he waited to be served. Vail wasn't able to tell him anything he didn't already know. But old Billy agreed that a missing witness and repeated attempts to stop a totally ignorant lawman meant they were likely worried little Ida Weaver might have given something away. Billy agreed that if the gal was still alive, she'd have been able to convince them by this time that she hadn't. He wanted to know if Longarm had the least notion who might be holding Ida Weaver, or her body, where. It was sort of comforting to see that even a paid-up U.S. marshal could ask dumb questions. He topped off his supper with serviceberry pie and went easy on the coffee because he'd had a long hard day, likely face another one, and a man had to sleep now and again, even alone in a strange bed.
He went over to the tobacco shop near the railroad platform to buy some bed-reading and make sure he had the time table on that line right. Then he headed back to his hotel as the sun was setting, sort of glad they'd shut down all the rowdy saloons in town because it was easier to turn in early when everybody else had to.
But when he got upstairs with his new edition of Police Gazette, he spied a match stem on the floor where no match stem was supposed to be unless some sneaky son of a bitch had opened his hired door while he was going about more honest chores!
He had the key to the damned door in his jacket pocket. Before trying it in the lock, he cautiously twisted the knob to see if the door was locked. He found it wasn't. So he flung it open to dive through and roll across the rug with his six-gun drawn and the pink pages of the scattered Police Gazette fluttering in every direction.