The clerk nodded and said, 'I mentioned your notion to my own boss. He'd like to know what ever became of the money too. But the trail is over six months cold, and as you see, old Jake lived long enough to absolve the brewery dray driver, allowing he'd been drunk as a skunk and not paying attention when he stepped off the curb. His dying words were backed by those witnesses interviewed on the spot by the constable. So how might a murderer get a drunk to stagger so conveniently?'
Longarm didn't answer until he'd finished scanning the neatly handwritten doctor's report. Then he sighed and said, 'Poor old coot was cold sober when he died seventy-odd hours later, of internal injuries your own autopsy confirmed. So you're right, a man taking more than three painful days to die, with his kith and kin keeping him company, would have surely mentioned it if someone had pushed him in front of that dray. Running over a man with six draft horses and a load of beer seems an awkward means of assassination as well. But ain't it odd nobody seems to have wondered where all that money might have gone?'
The clerk agreed. 'He sure as hell never got to spend it, seeing he drew it out of the bank the same day he got run over. Of course, he had time to spend at least some of it, and must have spent enough on brandy to get that drunk before sundown.'
Longarm started to ask what time of the day the old man had been run over. Then he saw the town law had reported it as around six P.m., or about the right time for that brewery driver to be pushing for home after his last deliveries of the afternoon.
Longarm decided such details as whether the dray had been carrying full kegs or empties hardly mattered, since busted innards were busted innards and the dead man's missing withdrawal was more mysterious than what read as his fairly obvious cause of death.
Stuffing the new documentation in a hip pocket with those yellow telegram forms, Longarm thanked the helpful coroner's clerk and got on over to the county sheriff's office. He found Sheriff Tegner seated at his desk talking to a stranger dressed about the way they made Longarm and his fellow deputies dress around the Denver District Court. So it came as no great surprise when Sheriff Tegner said, 'We were just talking about you, Longarm. Meet Deputy Marshal O'Brian out of your Saint Paul office.'
As they shook, O'Brian allowed his friends called him Sean. He and Longarm were about the same age, with O'Brian about two inches shorter and a good bit broader, with big red fists that reminded Longarm of sugar-cured hams sticking out of black broadcloth sleeves. The man from Saint Paul wore his own.44-40 lower and side-draw under his somber frock coat. There was a lot to be said for that rig, if a lawman worked mostly afoot and wanted that extra edge a side-draw might give in an alley fight.
Longarm naturally assumed O'Brian was there about that recorded treasury note and the death of one known member of the gang who'd ridden out of Fort Collins with it.
O'Brian shook his head and replied, 'Not exactly. Those stolen notes of noticeable denomination have been turning up all over this county, and I don't see how I could arrest an outlaw you've already put in the ground for us.'
Longarm shot a thoughtful glance at Sheriff Tegner, who nodded and said, 'Well, sure we let them bury the dead bastard. There was never any mystery about who he was, was there?'
Longarm allowed he was satisfied if the county was satisfied, and asked O'Brian what else they might be talking about.
The beefy O'Brian said, 'You. They sent me to warn you and back your play should a rumor picked up by a reliable informer in Saint Paul pan out. You ever hear of an owlhoot rider called Laughing Larry Lucas, pard?'
Longarm started to say no. Then he nodded thoughtfully and asked, 'Homicidal maniac from the copper country along the shores of Lake Superior? Sent away to a lunatic asylum instead of the gallows after he blew up his own kin with dynamite?'
O'Brian nodded grimly and said, 'He escaped last fall. Blew a lock with homemade explosives he'd put together from playing-card shavings, matchheads, and such. There's some argument as to just how crazy the man might be. But there's no doubt he's out, and working of late as a paid killer. Cheap, the way I've heard it.'
Longarm whistled softly, and seeing the older Sheriff Tegner seemed more confused, explained, 'We're talking about a maniac known as Laughing Larry because he thinks he's so damned comical. He likes to leave droll notes when he blows a safe, which he's good at, and play what he calls practical jokes, which he's not so good at, in my view leastways, because his victims tend to wind up dead.'
O'Brian volunteered, 'He said at his sanity hearing he was only trying to teach some Canadian in-laws about our Fourth of July when he touched off all that sixty-percent Hercules under their outhouse. He said he hadn't expected his brother-in-law to be taking a crap when the dynamite went off.'
Longarm grimaced and said, 'They'd have hung him if he'd offered a less loco excuse for killing an in-law and business partner after a string of more sensible robberies. But be that as it may, whether he knows he's crazy or thinks he's fooling us, Laughing Larry can be injurious as hell to one's health.'
O'Brian said, 'We heard he was after you. Nothing personal. Somebody who knows you better must want you dead awfully bad to send for help as dangerous as Laughing Larry Lucas!'
Longarm sighed and said, 'That's for damn sure. Did your informant say whether Laughing Larry was out to blow me out of my boots or shoot me down like a dog from behind, since he's been known to do both?'
O'Brian shook his head and said, 'We're not even certain of the rumor. You know how they clam up on you as soon as you press them for details about word on the shady side of the street.'
Longarm nodded and replied, 'I seldom ask 'em how they learned a bank was about to be held up, if I put any trust in them at all. It makes more sense to watch the infernal bank.'
O'Brian nodded grimly and said that was why he was there, adding his own office couldn't afford to tie up more deputies unless and until they had more proof Laughing Larry Lucas was anywhere in Minnesota. For as in the case of all that hot paper, tips about escaped lunatics seemed to come in from all over.
Longarm said he thought Lucas was a Scotch-Irish name, and asked if an Irishman named O'Brian might confirm his guess about Calvert Tyger's odd last name.
O'Brian nodded soberly and said, 'It's Irish. Sometimes spelled Tiger, like the big striped pussycat itself. But I believe the family name derives from something like McTaggart to begin with. Why do you ask?'
Longarm said, 'Tougher to see a first- or second-generation Swede or Santee sending for a killer of uncertain temperament and another breed entirely. Folks ought to know better, considering neither Judas nor Brutus were recent immigrants, but most of 'em still feel safer trusting secret plans to their own kind. Tyger and Flanders both
