It was Rod Duncan who quietly observed, “One would certainly think so. Me and a couple of these other old boys have scouted Jicarilla in the past. They were out in force as late as ‘73. Yet try as we might, we could never cut the rascals’ trail. It’s been my own experience that when experienced trackers can’t find anybody to track, there’s nobody to track.”
“Or there’s somebody else,” Longarm amended, adding, “We naturally never tracked sign left by other Regulators far enough to mention. So who do you reckon scared all them local settlers, and even butchered a bunch of riders from other parts, to set a good example for those in these parts who might not have been scared enough yet?”
Jones licked his lips and stepped back to give himself more room as he stammered, “How do you expect me to answer for the loco ways of infernal Apache, Henry?”
Longarm said, “Aw, come on, you know who I am. You’ve known since the first day your boss hired me. But lucky for me, neither of you spotted Inspector Duncan here for anything but a harmless blowhard you could use as a tool.”
Then he said, “As for why we’d like you to answer some questions about them fake Jicarilla, it’s obvious as hell you were them!”
The man in black was good. He dropped to the floor and tipped the table on its side between them as he went for his side arm. Longarm drew and fired four rounds at the bare pine tabletop. It took more than an inch of pine to stop two hundred grains of lead backed by forty grains of powder. But the results were far from neat as Jones stopped the deformed slugs, and a heap of pine slivers, with softer flesh.
Meanwhile Duncan and his own boys were backing Longarm’s play with blazing guns of their own. For naturally the hirelings who’d been riding directly under Jones had as much to answer for, and hoped to beat the hangman’s noose with gunplay of their own.
They lost, of course, with one of Duncan’s boys pinked along one rib by a bullet, and all but the barkeep and another man on the other side dead. The one survivor had been as quick as the barkeep when it came to reaching for that pressed tin ceiling. So he was doubtless good for a signed statement.
Duncan had instructed his own deputies to head off other Regulators as they rode in and either arrest or deputize them pro tem, depending on whether they’d been riding at certain times with the late Wesley Jones, alias Frenchy O’Donnel, or, like most of the outfit, just going through the motions as tools of the boss lady. So just Duncan and one of his deputies tagged along as Longarm strode on to the card house to confront Queen Kirby.
The big redhead must have heard the noise, judging from the way she greeted them, seated in her office behind that writing table as the one back-up man positioned himself just outside the door to make certain they weren’t disturbed.
Queen Kirby smiled weakly and asked, “What’s going on? Why are you staring at me that way, Henry?”
Longarm said, “You know who I am and I sure feel silly about that. You’ll be pleased to hear your lover boy never gave you away as he lay oozing his last just now. But Thomhill gave up without a fight, and as soon as he confessed he’d met up with you all on the carnival trail, it all came back to me where I’d seen your pretty face before. You always have liked to make total fools of mere mortal men, haven’t you, Dolly Moore? You’ve come a long way since you had that freak show back in Saint Lou. Don’t do that, Dolly!”
But a monstrous Le Mat revolver was already rising from behind the writing table in a jewel-encrusted hand. So Longarm fired point-blank with the derringer he’d had palmed just to be on the safe side. And that red wig flipped skyward as the now gray-headed Queen Kirby, or Dolly Moore, flew backwards with the chair and all, in a flurry of velvet and scattered pearls.
As the smoke still hung above the writing table, Longarm moved around it for a better look, grimaced, and said, “Takes a spine shot to snap their heads back that hard. Dead as a turd in a milk bucket. But we’ve got that fairly full confession and some of the others may fill in a few gaps as we round ‘em up drifting in.”
Rod Duncan gulped and said, “She must have hoped you’d hesitate just long enough. I know you had to do it. I was there. But Jesus, I’m sure glad it wasn’t me as had to gun a woman, pard!”
Longarm said, “I never did. Dolly must have been so used to the common courtesies accorded the unfair sex that he lost track of the fact I’d just told him I knew who he was.
“Who he was?” gasped the New Mexico lawman.
Longarm said, “Used to be a bearded lady, traveling with decent tent shows. Put on a less decent act whenever he, she, or it wasn’t stopped. When I caught the act in Saint Lou a few years ago, he had half a man’s suit and half a lady’s gown on. You paid extra to go in the back and watch the he-she takes its duds off. I was as big a fool back then. Cost me four bits to discover he-she was just a soft-built boy. I wasn’t interested in the girlish ways he could act for just a few dollars more. Reckon enough others were to finance more ambitious projects. Read a flyer later about this soft-built but hard-headed he-she marrying up with some rich mining man and robbing him blind on their honeymoon. Reckon old Dolly persuaded him she was saving it for her wedding night. Old Frenchy back there was the one true love of Dolly’s life.”
He finished reloading and put the derringer away as their back-up man stared goggle-eyed in the doorway and Duncan said, “Far be it from me to argue that the two of them weren’t acting sort of strange. But what in thunderation was the motive for all this confusing shit?”
Longarm said, “I’ll give you a copy of my report once I have everything tidied up complete. I got one more arrest to make first, and if you think I just felt silly gunning a lady in a red wig and pearls, you don’t know the half of it!”
Longarm had learned in his boyhood that things didn’t always go as a body might plan them, and that sometimes it might be best to just play the cards a fickle fate dealt you.
He didn’t want to stage a possibly awkward scene in front of a summer-school class. So he waited until he was sure Meg Campbell had come home from her job at the schoolhouse before he went calling.
