Longarm shook his head. 'Billy Vail didn't forget. It was in ten- and twenty-dollar silver certificates. We just don't know whether the crooks who stole the money knew those serial numbers had been recorded. It ain't the usual routine. But the paymaster up there in Fort Collins did it, poor bastard, and now nobody will ever be able to ask why. Suffice it to say it's one of the few breaks we've had on this case. Had the money been untraceable, and had Calvert Tyger simply left the state, as you suggested, we'd be sniffing a mighty stale and musty trail by now.'
He got back to his feet, saying in a brighter tone, 'Meanwhile we ain't, Lord love all crooks, too slick for their own good, so like I promised, I'll put all I know about your local mysteries on paper before I leave town. I've just a few more errands to tend in New Ulm before I do. So I'd best get cracking.'
They rose as well to shake and part friendly with him. Longarm strode out front and headed next for the bank. Some cynical sage had once written, doubtless in French, that a stiff prick had no conscience. But even after he'd cooled off, he'd promised the poor worried Mato Takoza he'd see what he could find out about her missing Miss Jasmine when he got to town. So here he was, and now that he knew the Bee Witch had sometimes called herself Miss Jasmine Smith, as unlikely as that sounded, there was an outside chance she'd cashed checks or money orders at one bank or another. The folks she worked for would have hardly funded her with cash or money orders she'd have to cash less discreetly at the post office or Western Union.
By this time it was going on noon, and the streets of New Ulm were starting to get hot as well as less crowded. For folks working in a town this size tended to go home for their noon dinners.
So Longarm spotted the cuss keeping pace with him, a pistol shot back, sooner than he might have had the walk been more crowded when he glanced at window glass in passing. A man With a job such as his learned to do that every chance he got. So Longarm was pretty certain the dark figure on his ass was really on his ass, once he'd crossed the street, actually out of his way to the bank, and spotted that same mysterious cuss at the same distance, behind him, in the plate glass of a dress shop.
The cuss wasn't reflected sharp enough to make out in detail at that range, but Longarm could see he was dressed cow, although a tad fancy, in a silver-trimmed black charro vest and shotgun chaps. His features were a dark blur under his big black Stetson Buckeye with its high crown pinched army-style, That didn't mean near as much to Longarm as the fancy Cleveland twelve-gauge the cuss had cradled casually over one forearm, as if he might be after duck or quail in the center of town.
Certain the cuss was tailing him, although uncertain about the motive, Longarm strode on as if he hadn't noticed, and swung the next corner as he might have if he'd been headed for somewhere down that side street to begin with.
It worked even better when, just around the corner, Longarm spied a service entrance in the brick wall of the corner store and crawfished into it, casually drawing his.44-40 but holding it down at his side politely. The man on his tail with that scattergun swung the corner wider, as a trained gunfighter was supposed to. As he spotted Longarm and broke stride, Longarm called out an easygoing howdy, and never raised his own gun muzzle until he saw he had to.
They fired as one, the dark stranger's twelve-gauge blowing a big dusty crater in the cinder paving between them as Longarm's round of.44-40 punched him in the gut to jackknife him out from under his large hat and lay him low.
Longarm managed just in time not to squeeze off the extra round or so that seemed safest on such occasions. He covered his downed foe thoughtfully instead as he strode over to smile down, saying, 'I was admiring that fowling piece you just dropped, pard. English made over to London Town, right?'
He could see now the man he'd gunned seemed almost pure Indian despite his duds and short haircut. Longarm hunkered down, six-gun in hand but held politely, to quietly ask, 'Where are you hit and, just in case, who would you like us to get in touch with for you?'
The dying man just glared spitefully as his lips moved silently in what could have been a curse, a prayer, or a death song. By the time Longarm had pinned on his federal badge and Sheriff Tegner had joined the gathering crowd, the black-clad stranger's jet black eyes had commenced to film over and he wasn't moving his lips or breathing.
As Tegner hunkered beside him, Longarm quietly said, 'I ain't sure what just happened. He was tailing me from your office to here. But he had the drop on me earlier, and never got really hostile until I challenged him.'
The sheriff said, 'Remind me never to challenge you, Longarm. I think I know this old boy. He looks a mite older now, but don't we all, and he reminds me of a scout we had with the old Sixth Volunteers. If it's the same cuss, his name was Baptiste Youngwolf. Last I'd heard, he'd run off to his reservation. Lots of 'em were like that when it came to taking orders, you know.'
Longarm softly said, 'I've ridden some with full-blood scouts. If this was one who rode with you, Vern, might he by any chance have been Santee?'
The sheriff shook his head and replied, 'Hell, no, Chippewa. Even if you could get yourself a Sioux to scout Sioux for you, you'd not be sure you could trust such a two-faced cuss yourself. Him being Sioux could complicate hell out of things!'
Longarm grumbled, 'Not hardly. This would all make more sense if I could be more certain this was a Santee- speaker I may have overheard just last night.'
'He was Chippewa,' another old-timer in the crowd decided. 'I recall that same hatchet face and the cavalry crease of his big black hat from earlier days as well. I never rode with the Volunteers, but I used to drink with some. This old boy was one of their scouts like the sheriff here says. The soldiers called him Chief, as I now recall, and now that I think back, they did say old Chief deserted with some white boys and never hung about to draw his last pay.'
Longarm got wearily back to his feet, muttering, 'A lot old Billy Vail really knows! I got to go send him a wire, Vern, if that's all the same with you.'
The sheriff got to his own feet, saying, 'As long as you wasn't planning on leaving Brown County before we can tidy this up with the coroner's office. I doubt there will be any fuss, you being a lawman and him coming after you with that scattergun and all. But they are likely to want some more details for the death certificate and bill of mortality book. You reckon he was really that cuss called Chief who ran off with them Galvanized Yankee deserters that time?'
To which Longarm could only reply, 'That works better than any Objibwa working in cahoots on something else with folks he'd have been raised to call Nadowessioux and hate like sulfur and molasses!'
Then he added, reloading his six-gun, 'After that, like your county coroner, I sure would like to have some-
