The Black Swede spun around to fire a wild shot that was sure to throw the pipe organ out of tune. So Longarm fired before the crazy son of a bitch could figure out what he wanted to shoot at.
The big and doubtless crazy brake bull reeled but crabbed sideways out of that pew, shaking his head like an angry bull in the haze of his own gunsmoke as he screamed awful things in Swedish and fired yet another shot, into the floor between them, as Longarm blazed away to stagger him backward with six hundred grains of hot lead in him.
Gus Bergman crashed against the recently repaired front door and busted it wide open to land face up on the front steps with a peaceful expression on his ugly face at last.
Longarm strode out into the sunlight to stand over him, reloading, as he muttered, "Jesus H. Christ. How are you going to tell me what's been going on now? Didn't they ever tell you confession was good for the soul? With you dead, you son of a bitch, I'm staring at the damnedest run of pure coincidence or a plot that would cross old Machiavelli's eyes!"
By this time the whole town had come running in response to the gunplay, of course. Big Jim Tanner was first on the scene with Rita Mae Reynolds and two of her kid deputies close behind.
Longarm ignored the newspaperman's questions as the undersheriff stared down at the mess at his feet to exclaim, "I know him on sight. He works for the railroad, and we asked them to switch him to another line when he kept getting into fights. I think his name was Bergen."
Longarm said, "Bergman. I've tangled with him more recent. He was working on another spur line, and I'll be switched with snakes if I can see how anyone knew I'd be riding north that way instead of this way. I know they were watching for me around the Cheyenne railyards. But I met up with this homicidal maniac before I ever got to Cheyenne!"
Somebody in the crowd thought to ask if Preacher Shearer was all right. Longarm said he'd been next door, and there didn't seem to be anybody home.
Rita said, "There's always somebody there. Preacher Shearer has an old Indian squaw keeping house for him. We'd better find out why nobody came to the door!"
They did. Longarm said nothing about search warrants as the law that worked there forced the lock of the back door. They found the plump brown corpse of the middle-aged housekeeper face-up on the kitchen floor without a stitch of clothing on. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear. It was the shemale undersheriff who allowed right out that they'd have the county coroner determine what other crimes had been committed on or about her.
Longarm led the way forward through the house that smelled of blood and crud. He found Preacher Shearer's naked body in a front office, facedown amid blood-spattered books and papers, with a corncob shoved up his ass and a pigging-string knotted tight around his wrists. He'd been stabbed, a heap, with what looked like a Malay kris but was likely a paper knife. It was still in him, betwixt the shoulder blades.
Longarm moved quickly to the door and tried to stop Rita from entering as he tersely told her, "You're right. We'd best wait on the coroner's report, Miss Rita."
She tried to walk through him, demanding, "What happened? Why won't you let me see?"
He said, "What happened looks like the last act of Hamlet directed by the Marquis de Sade. I don't want you to see in yonder because you really don't want to see in yonder."
But she insisted and she was the law with two deputies backing her. So Longarm stood aside and braced himself to hear some screaming.
But old Rita took it like a man, or at least a lady undersheriff who took her job serious, and moved in to scout for sign, being as careful as Longarm about where she planted her feet. It was she who noticed the yellow telegram in a far corner and moved over to hunker down and read it.
Once she had, she stared up at Longarm to say, "Somebody signing his or her name Horny sent this message from Pueblo, Colorado, to this poor dead preacher man, of all people! It says plain as day that their mutual friend Ram Rogers just checked in to the Black Diamond Hotel near the depot. I don't understand this at all!"
From the doorway Big Jim Tanner said, "I think I might. I told you we print all the news that's fit to print. When they pay you to be nosy, you hear things you dare not print. Some say the preacher, there, liked young men. A lot. Young men who've spent much time in prison or hiding out together in lonely cabins tend to learn the same bad habits."
Longarm quietly said, "You told me you'd been tipping off Miss Rita to the whereabouts of wanted outlaws by comparing notes with other newspapermen. I happen to know you never got wire one about half a dozen of the rascals."
Big Jim smiled sheepishly and said, "I was coming to that. That poor twisted sister on the floor was my informant. Like a newspaperman, a preacher hears all sorts of gossip, even when he's not, ah, entertaining young saddle tramps and riders of the Owlhoot Trail."
Longarm whistled low and said, "In sum, he was nibbling on bad apples, and you were blackmailing him."
That had been a statement rather than a question. But Big Jim blustered, "The hell you say! Sorry, Miss Rita. Preacher Shearer was the one who approached me. He never said anything about being queer, and I never let on I knew. He only told me he'd heard the law was after such and such a wayward youth and thought he ought to pass on some gossip he'd heard from poor but more honest cowboys."
Rita was the one who decided, "I'm sorry I just felt sorry for the old two-faced sodomite! I see it all now! He wasn't a criminal mastermind double-crossing his followers for the loot! He was offering a hideout to like-minded outlaws passing through, then turning them in to us to shut them up forever about his depraved secret life!"
Longarm shrugged and said, "Some of the earlier ones might have liked gals. But he'd have surely noticed, the same as the rest of us, how fatal it could be to be wanted by the law in these parts!"
Rita dimpled up at him to reply, "You heard me tell Edith I meant to take Ram Rogers alive. As a matter of fact, I have just the deputy for the task. She and I were just talking about that very villain at my substation. She came up from Cheyenne to complain he'd run off with her shop girl and the contents of her till. Her name is Covina Rivers, and I'd just told her we didn't know where he was when we heard all that gunplay. Come on. I'll introduce you to her while my boys tidy up around here!"
CHAPTER 19
Miss Sarah Bernhardt could not have been a greater actress, nor the Baron Miinchhausen a bigger liar as Longarm shook with the lady he'd spent most of the night before with in the sheriff's substation near the crossing. The Wyoming widow woman with a grudge against the wanted man who'd robbed her was smart enough just to look dumb when Rita said, a ways into their conversation, "I don't understand how a womanizing rascal who ran off with that young girl who worked for you could have been mixed up with a bunch of swishy boys."
Longarm soothed, "I can. I deal with heaps of crooks who spend as much time behind bars as out pestering women. Most of them tend to part their hair on both sides unless they mean to spend half their lives just admiring themselves, if you follow my drift."
Rita blushed and told him he was awful while Covina pretended not to understand.
She had to catch the early combination south unless she meant to wait all day for the passenger varnish to roll in and back out. Longarm excused himself well ahead of time so's the two of them could enjoy some girlish talk. He'd already instructed Covina how to wire him in code from Cheyenne, using another name, and let him know whether they'd told her to simper up to Ram Rogers and throw down at him to take him thundergasted but alive, or simply shoot him down like a dog.