whittle away the less likely suspects, process of eliminating.'
Chambrun smiled sheepishly and said, 'She told us how you'd wormed so many family secrets out of her. The two of you ought to be ashamed, But how did you figure out who the real criminal mastermind was?'
As the three of them rode on, Longarm made a wry face and made sure Kangi Ska followed his drift as he told the two of them, 'Criminal mastermind is a contradiction of terms. Nobody smart enough to be called a mastermind would ever become an out-and-out outlaw. You take that old Jay Gould your wife's niece may have just mentioned to you all. He spends more on fancy food, drink, and diamond shirt studs than the Reno and James-Younger gangs combined ever took from anybody at gunpoint. Old Jay don't bother with robbing trains. He helps himself to whole railroads legally by way of dirty stock-market tricks. So the murderous gang leaders we're after ain't half as slick as they think they are. They've just been confusing the shit out of me with unexpected moves.'
He spotted the breakfast smoke from the Bedford place ahead and said, 'I'm saddled with a halfway logical mind. So I sometimes catch myself playing chess by the rules, when the game is really checkers with ornery illogical crooks.' Then he heeled his livery mount to a trot.
Sheriff Tegner had seen them coming of course. So he and his good-sized posse had mounted up in the dooryard of Israel Bedford, as had Bedford, another ex-cavalry rider himself.
Longarm and the breeds reined in close to him. The older lawman leaned closer to ask if Longarm had any objection to Neighbor Conway and his own kids tagging along.
Longarm was too thoughtful to stare at the three colored riders staring his way as they shyly sat their ponies a tad apart from the others. Longarm said, 'It's your posse. It's been my experience a bigger posse packs more firepower than a smaller one.'
Sheriff Tegner said, 'That's the way I see it, and I already have the Swedish vote sewed up. So let's ride.'
They did. Tegner was too smooth a politician to come right out and say the Conways had his kind permission to get shot by Rocking R boys of uncertain temperament. Such mutterings as Longarm picked up on during the fairly long ride across open range seemed to be directed at Chambrun and his Santee breed kid. Hardly anyone had ever lost a scalp to colored folks around New Ulm.
Longarm hoped such neighborly affairs as this one might help the reformed Indians fit in as sort of half-ass Wasichu in times to come. It would likely have reservation life beat. For those still living on the Great White Father's blanket had already started to look sort of sad to a man who remembered the way they'd been living just a short spell back. Some Indians seemed able to stay Indian as wards of the government. Someone like a Hopi could still prove his worth as a man by bringing in his swamping crop of blue corn, while a strong and smart Ojibwa could still show off with his wild rice, and even sell it. But it was tough to live the life of a buffalo-hunting professional horse thief, providing one's wives with household help captured from lesser nations, without getting one's allotment cut off by an old fuss of a B.I.A. agent. So maybe young Kangi Ska would make out better in the end as a prosperous farmer rather than a charity case, pissing and moaning about good old days he didn't really remember.
Posse riders dismounted along the way to carefully flatten and restaple such fences as they had to pass through. They saw more and more beef critters as they approached the road running north out of Sleepy Eye. But they saw none of Helga Runeberg's cowhands before they topped a rise to see her home spread waiting for them, silent as if it was late at night instead of mid-morning.
Sheriff Tegner ordered his men to spread wide, with two of his full-time deputies leading their own bunches to circle the sprawl of buildings and empty corrals as the main party closed in.
As Longarm and the local lawman in official charge rode into her barnyard, Helga Runeberg came out her back door, alone and unarmed in a more feminine outfit of polka-dotted gingham, and stated sarcastically she'd have baked a cake if she'd known so many of them would be by to court her so early in the day.
Sheriff Tegner stared soberly down at her from the saddle. 'You know blamed well why we're here, Helga Runeberg. Last night we found Miss Vigdis Magnusson scattered all over creation. Dynamite wired to the other side of her back door blew off all her clothes along with her right arm, her head, and both tits when she went to let herself in after an honest day's work at her bank!'
The smaller, darker, and plainer gal didn't seem too upset as she nodded. 'I know. Gus Hansson told me all about it when he got back from New Ulm late last night. Are you suggesting anyone out our way had anything to do with it?'
Longarm asked where Young Hansson might be that morning. She met his gaze boldly as she calmly said, 'He and a few of the other boys are out hunting strays. I can't say exactly when they'll be back.'
Sheriff Tegner snorted. 'I can. Never. We saw all that new drift wire You've strung to the east, and you've had your frontage along the Sleepy Eye road fenced solid for some time. I reckon I'd better arrest you for murder before you decide to go hunt stray snipes or great horned jackrabbits your ownself, Helga Runeberg!'
She went a shade paler, but didn't look too scared. Then Longarm suggested, 'Maybe we ought to go in out of this hot sun and have a more confidential conversation with the lady, Sheriff.' Longarm was already swinging out of his saddle as he said this. So Sheriff Tegner dismounted as well, even though he grumbled in a lower tone, 'Damn it, Longarm, it was you who pointed out this very suspect and that missing Hansson boy availed themselves of Western Union's services in New Ulm when they had a perfectly fine telegraph office way closer in Sleepy Eye.'
Helga Runeberg snapped, 'So this fancy federal man says. But he's right about how high that sun stands right now. So come on in if you want to make total fools of yourselves with this dumb line of questioning!'
She waited until just the three of them were alone in her kitchen before she poured herself and herself alone a cup of coffee and asked the sheriff, 'Did he tell you how he followed me all the way to Sleepy Eye and threatened my poor inexperienced cowboys with a repeating rifle in front of witnesses?'
The sheriff planted his old bony butt on one corner of her kitchen table as he replied, 'He did, and how he thinks you put on such a show for witnesses as well!'
Longarm remained standing by her back door as he nodded at her and explained, 'Laughing Larry Lucas went through a charade to encourage the sheriff here to look somewhere else once I was dead too. You'd made too much public war talk to take back, right after I gunned your dear old Uncle Chief, and you were too sore to consider he was the only really experienced killer on your payroll. So after you wired for outside help from Saint Paul-'
'That's your word against mine!' she interrupted, eyes blazing.
Sheriff Tegner snapped, 'No, it ain't. I questioned the Western Union clerk who served you, and he backs Longarm's tale of seeing you and young Hansson coming out just after. Before you even think of saying it was Gus Hansson sending that wire to that boardinghouse in Saint Paul, the clerk said it was you who wrote the telegram,
