She shook her head. 'You can leave that rifle here with me if you like. We never rebuilt the place the Indians burned out. Since the railroad crossed the river I've done better taking orders for barbed wire, patent windmills, and such from this very house.'
He allowed in that case he'd be proud to bring her anything she might need from town when he came back for his Winchester. When she asked when that might be he told her truthfully, 'Can't say yet. I got some wires to send, some other errands to tend, and some calls to make around Courthouse Square. Then I got to find me a place to stay, hire me a pony to ride, and-'
'I've more than one spare room and two horses out back,' she told him. 'One of them draws my sulky, and I ride the other when I have to make time cross-country. So I can tell you it's a pretty good jumper, with my weight at least.'
Longarm started to protest, he didn't want to put her to that much trouble. Then he considered how tough it might be for a hired gun to find out which hotel a stranger in town had registered at if he was holed up in a private home a good quarter mile away instead. So he nodded soberly and said, 'I can easily get away with putting down a dollar a day for room and board, and most liveries hire mounts at two bits a day plus deposit, ma'am.'
She said she dealt in hardware, not room and board, and suggested they argue about it after he came home for supper. So, the day not getting any younger as they sat there staring thoughtfully at each other, he allowed that sounded fair, and they shook on it before he headed on into town on foot.
It only took Longarm a few minutes to cover the five or six city blocks to the area around the depot he was more familiar with. That Western Union was still where it had been the time he'd stopped here in New Ulm on his way to Northfield, where the James and Younger gang had robbed that bank. When he strode in and identified himself to the older gent behind the counter, he was told they'd been expecting him because more than one wire had been sent to him in care of the New Ulm Western Union.
One was from Billy Vail, informing him that yet another of those hundred-dollar treasury notes had turned up at a Cheyenne bank, but that he was to go on with his investigation at New Ulm in any case, that you didn't investigate by running in circles, and that nobody in Cheyenne could say who'd broken that big bill in a local saloon on a Saturday night to begin with.
Another wire was from Pagosa Junction in the South Ute reserve, in answer to the earlier wire he'd sent them while changing trains at K.C. The Indian Police said they'd dragged a few likely stretches of the San Juan in vain and relayed his request to the Navajo Agency downstream. So he knew he didn't have to wire the Navajo Police after all. They'd find the body of that murdering young jasper for him or they wouldn't, and in either case it wasn't too likely anyone out to assassinate federal lawmen would be packing identification papers made out to his true name. But aliases turned up on the yellow sheets as well, if an owlhoot rider kept flashing the library card, voter's registration, or whatever he'd stuffed in his wallet.
Longarm hummed a few bars of 'Farther Along' as he tore open the last wire from an old pal in Denver who screwed like a mink and rode herd over a library of war records, including Confederate, collected by a rich eccentric who, having avoided service in either army, seemed to have enjoyed the hell out of the war on paper.
The good old gal he'd wired for more details about Tyger, Flanders, and others who deserted about that same time, such as that scout he only had down as 'Chief,' had wired back she needed more time. For most of the Confederate records in that private library in Denver dealt with western rebs, such as Hood's Texas Brigade. But she said she'd keep digging and that she was looking forward to a personal visit as soon as he got back to Denver. Longarm grinned as he put all the telegrams away, for after all those pure hours aboard those trains, even the memory of a sort of homely old gal could make a man feel sort of horny. He remembered how hard she tried to please with a rollicking rump despite her plain appearance.
Recalling what Ilsa Pedersson had just said about him looking like a hobo, Longarm scouted up a barbershop that served hot baths in the back as well. He borrowed a whisk broom and did what he could about the fly ash and dust on his duds as the tub slowly filled with only slightly rusty water. He had a fresh shirt and a change of underwear in his saddlebags, of course, but he didn't want to traipse all over New Ulm to get them. The dirt on his light blue work shirt wasn't all that awful anyway, once he'd washed his hide good with naptha soap and had the barber sprinkle him with plenty of bay rum after his shave out front.
The barber's business had been slow that afternoon, but a lawman who knew the ropes of a small town didn't press his luck by bringing up the subject of Israel Bedford. Old Ilsa had already told him the suspect enjoyed a good local rep, and there was no way in hell to ask about folks in a town this size without someone being sure to let them know there was a stranger in town asking about them.
There were only so many hours in a day to work with, but a strange lawman who didn't let the local lawmen know who he was ahead of time could sure have silly conversations about the six-gun someone had just noticed he was packing with no other visible means of support.
Billy Vail's opposite number in these parts worked out of the bigger twin cities further east, where the Minnesota joined the Mississippi. So the ranking law in New Ulm was the county sheriff, and fortunately the sheriff himself was out raising campaign funds for the coming fall elections. So Longarm only had to tell a senior deputy what he was doing in Brown County in a dirty shirt and with a.44-40.
The deputy said they'd been expecting him, and added that the boys from the Saint Paul Federal Court had already questioned everyone at all involved, without finding out too much.
When Longarm groaned inwardly and asked whether other deputies had called on Israel Bedford, lest he not know those serial numbers had been recorded, the sheriff's deputy said cheerfully, 'Hell, you can't hardly ask a man where he got a treasury note without explaining why you're asking, can you?'
Longarm grimaced and growled, 'Sometimes it don't pay to be quite so direct. I don't suppose anybody wondered what a suspect might do with other listed treasury notes he'd been fixing to spend once they told him how they'd spotted the first ones?'
The local lawman shrugged. 'There was no need to pussyfoot. Everyone knows Captain Bedford is as honest as the day is long, and your federal pals left content with his story.'
'Which was?' Longarm asked.
The deputy sheriff answered, 'Livestock transaction. Bedford has some of the finest riding stock in the county for sale. Serves his mixed mares with a pure Morgan stud these days. Told us he'd sold a saddle-broke filly and a promising colt for that hundred-dollar note. Said the buyer was an Indian, or mayhaps one of them Metis, or Red River breeds. Anyways, others out his way say they'd seen a whole family of dusky wanderers around the right time. The one who paid cash for Bedford's stock was dressed like a white man. Had a more Indian-looking squaw and a mess of raggedy kids tagging along, from toddlers to kids in their teens. Us county riders tried to help your federal deputies cut the trail of the prosperous savages, but the sod's as thick and springy as it gets out yonder, and they were traveling with neither a cart nor travois so... What the hell, it ain't as if Captain Bedford is famous for
