hell of a difference in the outcome.
There was little a man could do about walking taller than average, and changing the Colorado crush of his sepia Stetson hardly seemed worth the bother. So he simply kept his eyes peeled as he made his way back to the Western Union afoot.
They'd been expecting him. There was no word yet on that stranger who'd gone off the railroad trestle into all that white water. But a long night letter from Billy Vail was waiting there to order him on back to Denver. According to Longarm's cagey old boss, one hell of a tracker in his own right, he'd sent his senior deputy on a wild-goose chase and he was sorry as hell.
Longarm told the telegraph clerk he wasn't ready to wire back just yet. Then he put the night letter in a hip pocket and headed up to the sheriff's office. This time that deputy was able to introduce Longarm to the sheriff in person, a potbellied but strong-looking old cuss called Verner Tegner. He said to call him Vern, and might have reminded Longarm of Billy Vail if he hadn't smiled so much.
As they lit up the cigars the sheriff handed out to guests in an election year, Longarm asked what they'd found out about those two gunslicks he'd had to lay low at the Widow Pedersson's. The local lawmen exchanged embarrassed glances, and the deputy said, 'We're still working on them. Sent out an all-points by wire yesterday. Ain't had any nibbles as yet. Hired guns are most often from somewheres far and wide, you know.'
Longarm took hold of the back of the bentwood chair the sheriff had pointed out for him, spun it around, and sat astride it so the two of them would consider it polite to sit. Then he sighed and told them, 'There seems to be a lot of that going around. My boss back in Denver just wired he's cut the trail of that Tyger-Flanders gang way closer to the scene of their last known crime. Some of that hot paper's turned up in other parts as well. A bank in Salt Lake City stopped one, and then somebody got arrested trying to break a hundred-dollar treasury certificate in Chicago. They had to let the suspect go when he was able to prove he'd been dealing faro at the time of that Fort Collins robbery. Being a professional gambler, he naturally disremembers just who he might have won the infernal money off of.'
The sheriff nodded sagely and said, 'We never thought Israel Bedford was an outlaw. That Chambrun cuss likely got the hot paper as innocently. When a gang pulls a robbery, they generally have spending the money in mind. So by this time there's no saying how many innocent hands the purloined payroll has been scattered through far and wide.'
Longarm took a drag on the cheap cigar, noting it burned hot in its own right the way such flashy political handouts were inclined to, as he quietly observed, 'Chambrun naturally told me he'd come by the money honestly, and even suggested somebody might have switched a good note with a wicked one. Can either of you gents come up with a motive for Banker Plover wanting to get a halfbreed in trouble?'
The two lawmen looked blank. The sheriff was the one who suggested, 'I don't know what sort of a name Plover might be, and he's not likely to vote for me this fall, the Republican cuss, but I fear I can't see why he'd want to frame any nester for anything. I don't think his bank could hold a mortgage on the Chambrun place, could it?'
Longarm shook his head and said, 'The Chambruns Won't own the land to mortgage it before they prove their claim, and now there's something I hadn't even considered until just now, bless your hearts!'
They naturally wanted to know what he was blessing them for.
Longarm explained, 'I got an interesting line on that Bee Witch you gents may have heard about.'
Tegner laughed and said, 'Oh, her? She's crazy but harmless enough.'
Longarm said, 'I'm not so certain she was crazy, but she surely seems to be missing. Worse yet, I suspect she was working a secret survey for somebody planning yet another bridge across the river, up by Chambrun's claim.'
The two local lawmen agreed they'd never heard such an outlandish suggestion about the crazy old Bee Witch.
Longarm insisted, 'She was charting proposed crossings on a sort of fancy tracing paper out to her house raft. I looked for the tracings by lamplight and broad day. They weren't on board. Neither was she. I don't know whether she just abandoned her false identity because she'd finished what they'd sent her to do, or whether somebody waylaid her and destroyed her work to delay her employers considerably.'
Sheriff Tegner frowned through his own tobacco smoke. 'What good would that do anyone trying to keep somebody from building another span across our river? Lord knows we could use more this side of the one way up by Fairfax, and a good site is a good site. So why wouldn't they just send some other sneaks to survey the same way?'
Longarm replied, 'I just said that. Meanwhile, a homesteader with an unproven claim smack in the path of a railroad wouldn't be able to hold out for a fraction of what a landowner free and simple could demand and likely get!'
Sheriff Tegner gasped, 'Hot damn! It's an election year as well, and none of my white pals like those trashy Sioux to begin with. I'll get right out there to arrest the son of a bitch in person and-'
'I'd wait till I had a better case,' Longarm said. 'For all we know for certain, there's no case to begin with. I'd hate to have a murder victim turn up alive and well if I was running for sheriff this November.'
Tegner called him a spoilsport, and asked why Longarm had brought the whole mess to his attention to begin with.
Longarm explained, 'I got to. I promised a lady I'd find out why her Miss Jasmine, the Bee Witch's given name, never came back from an errand here in town. I'm handing you some other odd doings on a plate before I have to leave as well.'
'You're going somewheres?' asked the sheriff's younger deputy.
Longarm nodded. 'Since the two of you are real lawmen, you know real life don't work the way it seems to in those detective yarns by Mister Poe, Mister Twain, and such. In real life it seems one damned crook after another is pulling off some crime with no consideration of the cases we're already working on.'
They agreed that was for damned sure. So Longarm explained, 'My own Marshal Vail sent me here to New Ulm when that money from that payroll robbery turned up in the old stamping grounds of at least the leaders of the gang involved. I seem to have stumbled over other odd doings, and I mean to leave you a full report on paper before I leave. But as you just pointed out, that payroll seems to have been spread all over, meaning there's no particular significance to the transaction that brought me here, albeit you'll notice some assimilated Indians seem to be up to
