she really had in mind. Crooks tended to use messages such as, 'Aunt Edna sends her regards,' when they wanted to say a robbery was off, still being planned, or all set to pull off. There was simply no saying how a gang leader back in Denver or Durango could have wired the Chief he was coming this way, or what to do about it once he arrived. He mulled the recent events in his own mind as he legged it over to the post office. The Indian they called the Chief had surely been following him, to whatever purpose, when he'd forced the issue. Those other Indians who'd mentioned him by name, in Santee, might or might not have been working with an outlaw everyone had down as a blood enemy. Crooks had no shame. Or what if those Santee trying to get a foot back in the doorway of their old hunting grounds were not in cahoots with the Indian he'd just shot it out with, but worried about something else he might uncover on them? The wheels were still spinning within wheels inside his head when he hit pay dirt, sort of, at the post office. A mousy but not too bad-looking mail sorter recalled a nicely dressed colored lady who'd picked up more than one bulky letter from Chicago, she thought, addressed to one Judith Jones in care of General Delivery, New Ulm. Longarm said that sounded close enough to Jasmine Smith. Longarm had no call to pursue how such a lady might send mail to Chicago, since there were public mail drops all over. It added up to the sneaky so- called Bee Witch sending her tracing-silk drawings by mail and getting paid for them the same way. Whether she'd sent all they'd wanted and she'd just left for other parts, or whether someone else had committed foul play to keep her from finishing, was still up in the air. He'd told pretty little Mato Takoza that, either way, he saw no reason why she shouldn't just go on herding bees out yonder for fun and profit until further notice. He had to go next to the county courthouse, where, just as Sheriff Tegner had said, they were holding a meeting in the cellar to see how they wanted to record that dead Indian. As the older lawman introduced Longarm to their coroner and his pals, Longarm learned they'd already determined the cause of death had been internal bleeding, occasioned by a.44-40 round busting the old boy's aorta all to hell inside him. Longarm said he'd aimed low in the fond hope of getting more out of the son of a bitch than he had. Nobody there disputed the right of a lawman, or any white man, to fire on an infernal Indian pointing a twelve-gauge anywhere near him.
The coroner said he'd already sent a rider out to talk to the dead man's female boss, in hopes Miss Runeberg could shed some light on what one of her riders had been doing in town with that Cleveland to begin with.
Once that meeting was adjourned pro tem, Longarm walked Sheriff Tegner and his deputies back to their nearby office, and borrowed a desk to write up as detailed a report for Brown County as they had any right to expect. He suggested Tegner keep a friendly eye on the breed gal running that honey and wax operation in the absence of the missing Bee Witch. Since everyone else was acting so sneaky about a possible bridge site up the river, Longarm put things plain enough for a cuss as friendly as old Tegner to make some profitable real-estate deals if he felt like it. Old George Washington had been decent enough in his day, and nobody had begrudged him a little land speculation near the end of the Revolution. Doing well for oneself while doing good for others was a grand old American custom. Longarm didn't care what others did as long as they didn't break federal statutes on purpose or hurt a soul he had any use for.
But just in case he was missing something important, Longarm went next to that bank, arriving just in time to see them shutting the big front door from across the way.
He hurried on across, muttering about banker's hours, and ignored the 'Closed' sign hanging behind the medium-sized glass door panel to knock on the shellacked oak as if he really meant it.
That pretty blond gal, Miss Vigdis Magnusson, came to the door to wigwag her finger at him chidingly. Then she recognized Longarm and popped the door inward, gasping, 'Hurry! Get in here before anyone catches us being naughty! We've been closed nearly an hour and I was just about to duck out the back way. Everyone else has already left for the day and I'm not supposed to open up to anybody for any reason!'
He started to say he'd come to see her boss, old P.S. Plover. But she'd just said the cuss had left for the day, and sometimes a lawman could get more out of a bank employee who knew less about the law as it applied to running a bank. So he smiled sincerely at the buxom blue-eyed blonde, admiring how different she looked next to the gal he'd had breakfast with at dawn, and said, 'Mebbe it's just as well your boss ain't here, Miss Vigdis. By the way, do any of your personal pals call you Viggy?'
She fluttered her lashes and allowed that sounded cute as she led him back to that office they'd been in before. She didn't seem to care why. As they passed the time-locked vault she said she'd sort of hoped he'd drop by again. Once they got all the way back, Longarm noticed the blinds had been drawn and everything looked sort of gravy- brown in the light still getting through from outside.
Vigdis, or Viggy, motioned to an overstuffed leather chesterfield against one wall and said, 'Sit right down and tell me just what you wanted from me, Custis.'
So he sat, smiling up at her a mite awkwardly as he chose his words and decided to take the bull by the horns, beginning, 'You look like a sensible gal a man can just level with, Miss Viggy. I don't have too many friends here in New Ulm I can turn to for help and, well, to tell the truth, I'd like you to get even more naughty for me than you were by letting me in after closing hours.'
She blushed hard enough to make out from where he sat, despite the dim daylight, and declared, 'Certainly not! Just because a girl smiles sort of warmly at a nice-looking man, it hardly gives him the right to come right out and ask her to be naughty!'
Longarm laughed out loud as he grasped her meaning and protested, 'hold on, Miss Viggy! I never meant I wanted you to get really naughty with me once we wound up alone back here.'
She answered demurely, 'Well, in that case, you're forgiven. But I warn you, I don't go in for any of that really naughty stuff some girls say they like, and you promise you won't tell anybody, right?'
He started to tell her she had him all wrong. But then he noticed she seemed to have had nothing on under the summer frock she seemed to be shucking. So he just hauled her down on the tufted leather to treat her right as the two of them got him out of his own gunbelt and most of his duds. She didn't ask him to shuck his army shirt and boots until they'd gotten to know one another better on that old chesterfield. But once she'd come, on top, with him kissing her big creamy tits in turn, she even decided she didn't want her shoes in the way. So a good time was had by all, and she declared she'd seldom been ravaged so romantically by such a grand kisser. It was her notion to call what they were doing 'ravaging.' Longarm wasn't certain he'd had any say in the matter. He believed her when she said she'd found it lonely working in a stuffy old bank with all her school chums clean down the river in the bigger town of Mankato.
After they'd screwed, kissed, and smoked a spell, Longarm decided it was safe to tell her what he'd really come for. He told her about the Bee Witch, or a sly old colored lady acting as some sort of secret surveyor for Lord only knows who. He explained he knew it was against banking regulations to release such information without a court order, but that he'd been hoping, seeing they were such pals, she might see fit to bend the rules a tad.
She did better than that, for a gal who said she didn't go in for any of that naughty French or Greek stuff. Smoking his cheroot in the gathering dusk, without having to strike a light or even get off his bare lap, Viggy said, 'I know who you must mean. She had a savings account with us under the name of Janice Carpenter. She was getting these monthly checks from the Chicago and Northwestern, or was it the Minny Saint Lou? We cash so many railroad payroll checks. I'd have to look it up to be sure. But I do know she withdrew all her savings back around Christmas- time, and now that you mention it, I don't think I've seen her around town since then.'
