that list of serial numbers and money-changers who might give a shit. But nobody making change in a gambling hall or house of ill repute would have that list or care where the money came from as long as it was good.'
The local lawman answered dubiously, 'A hundred-dollar bill does stand out in a crowd, you know.'
Longarm nodded. 'I just said that. Any card dealer or crib gal presented with such paper would doubtless ask the floor boss or madam to okay it. But without that list, all the smartest eye could detect would be whether the note was genuine or not. Once they changed it for the high roller or low-lifer, they might or might not take it to their own bank for safekeeping. The odds are just as good they'd pass it on to some other business folks as rent, liquor- bill payment, or whatever. So there's just no saying how many hands any of these fool bills might have passed through before they were spotted by some sharp-eyed banker such as P.S. Plover around the corner.'
The deputy sheriff shrugged and said, 'I'll be damned if I see what we're arguing about then. I just said it may not mean a thing that a single one of them stolen treasury notes turned up here in New Ulm. I may have wax in my ears. But didn't you just agree with me?'
Longarm nodded soberly. 'I surely did, up to a point. I can go along with that one note from Fort Collins just sort of finding its way here through a whole chain of innocent hands, if you'd like to tell me how come somebody seems so anxious to keep me from questioning your apparently innocent county residents about it. By the way, might either Israel Bedford or Wabasha Chambrun be registered to vote this fall here in Brown County?'
The deputy sheriff said the ones to ask about that would be over at the county clerk's across the square. So that was where Longarm turned up next. The older gent in charge reminded Longarm of what young Henry, back at the Denver office, was likely to look like in twenty years if he didn't watch out. But the skinny, balding, prune-lipped cuss seemed friendly enough as he scanned Longarm's badge and identification and said, 'Figured you'd be along most any time now. Two other lawmen were here just this morning, asking if you'd been by.'
Longarm put his billfold away with a puzzled smile. 'It ain't considered polite to poke about another lawman's jurisdiction without letting him know you're in town, and I know for a fact the gents of whom we speak never checked in with the sheriff across the way. What might they have looked like and what sort of badges might they have flashed?'
The country clerk frowned thoughtfully and replied, 'I never asked to see no badges. That might have been why they never offered to show me any. As to what they looked like, one was tall and the other short. They were both about your age and dressed like undertakers who punched cows or vice versa. Is that any help?'
Longarm got out a couple of smokes as he mused, half to himself, 'Two deputies riding out of the same federal district court as me describe about the same way. But I can't see Smiley and Dutch behaving so unprofessional. If my boss sent them all the way to New Ulm for a damn good reason, they'd have strode right into your sheriff's office to ask about me, knowing I'd have been there ahead of 'em if I was anywhere in this county.'
He thought some more as he got both their cheroots going with a wax Mexican match. Then he shook out the light. 'Well, since they seem to be looking for me, I'll let them worry about who they might be until they catch up with me and I can just ask. What I'm here about is voter registrations. To be specific, I'd like to know whether two different Brown County boys who seem to have handled the same suspicious money might be on your books as registered resident voters.'
The older man proved he was worth what they paid him by nodding soberly and replying without hesitation, 'I know who you mean and they are. Israel Bedford voted in the last election, here in Brown County. That Chambrun cuss just signed up this spring. We had to let him, even if he does look Sioux, because he packs a U.S. Army discharge, honorable, and other government documentation indicating he must be a white man, or at least a U.S. citizen.'
Longarm raised a thoughtful brow. 'Regular army discharge, or one of those certificates they give Indian scouts after a single campaign?'
The old-timer snorted in disgust. 'I fought under Pope in the east and west, dad-blast your respect for your elders, and I guess I know an honorable discharge, U.S. Army, when I see one they gave somebody else. Chambrun says he did a postwar hitch with the Ninth Cav as a trooper, not a scout. Ain't the Ninth supposed to be one of those colored outfits? Chambrun don't look colored to me. He looks like a sonovabitching treacherous Sioux, and some old boys who know say they heard him talking to his woman in that very lingo one day here in town. Ain't that a bitch?'
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring. 'The complexion or conversational habits of a particular homesteader are none of my beeswax as long as he don't bust no federal laws they pay me to enforce. You say he had other official papers to show you when he was here to register to vote this fall?'
The clerk nodded. 'His homesteading permit, from the Land Office. He had to offer some proof he had a legal address here in Brown County, didn't he?'
To which Longarm could only reply, 'Reckon he did, and I reckon you just answered a whole lot of other questions I was fixing to ask about Wabasha Chambrun. Like I said, it's none of my beeswax how a homesteader who talks Santee to his wiyeh may or may not have convinced the War and Interior Departments he's more white than, say, Sitting Bull. If he holds a homestead claim he holds a homestead claim, meaning he does seem to have a permanent legal address, which leads to more interesting questions, such as which old boy, Bedford or Chambrun, would be hurt most by being unable to account for that hundred-dollar treasury note.'
The county clerk showed he was up on county gossip by observing that he'd heard the mysterious bill they were talking about was good for its face value in silver specie. Longarm nodded grimly and replied, 'That was doubtless why the robbers took it at gunpoint. I aim to ask Chambrun where he got it, then ask on back some more, till I meet up with somebody who just can't convince me he came by it innocently!'
They shook on it, and Longarm headed back to Ilsa Pedersson's to see if she'd loan Blaze out to him again. This time he meant to make straight for the Chambrun homestead, and the day was still young enough to make it well this side of sundown.
As he strode along the sunny side of the street an old colored woman with a wheelbarrow filled with garden truck came out of an alley to ask him if she'd make it to the river in time.
When he politely got out his pocket watch and asked in time for what, she explained she aimed to sell her swell fresh vegetables to the steamboat passengers headed on up the Minnesota to Montevideo. When she allowed the steamboat Would be putting into New Ulm around three that afternoon, he assured her she was way early. It might not have been kind to tell her how early. She likely didn't know how to read and write either. Longarm got along better than some of his kind with folks who still failed to grasp the Victorian concept that time was money. Recent slaves, perhaps because they'd been slaves, could usually grasp the notion something was fixing to happen this morning, this afternoon, or at least sometime today. Indians tended to get surly when you tried to pin them down to the exact week in a moon they'd agreed on earlier.
He figured the old colored lady might sell some of her produce by the landing, or at least sit in the shade,
