paying attention. So he explained. 'Most outlaws tend to be notorious after the fact, ma'am. I know it don't seem like it now, but hardly anyone had ever heard of Frank and Jesse James before they tried to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, along with the unknown Younger and Miller boys. I was just back yonder in Minnesota, thinking about notorious outlaws in general, and it struck me, lighting a smoke one day, how Frank and Jesse got so famous all at once by riding out of that wild shootout alone, leaving the shot-up survivors of a robbery gone sour to be interviewed by all those reporters and get famous themselves.'
She demurely asked if he'd like her permission to smoke. He chuckled and said, 'I wasn't hinting, ma'am. I was explaining. That Tyger gang might have gone on robbing hither and yon if they hadn't started to get so notorious within just the past year or so.'
She said she hadn't really been following Calvert Tyger's criminal career before he'd burst into that payroll office like a maniac to murder all the men but poor Clifford and scare her half to death.
Longarm had gone over his notes before he'd come calling, so he nodded and said, 'That would be Clifford Stern, the bookkeeper who played dead after he'd only been grazed?'
She nodded and said, 'You should have seen how bloody his shirt was after that evil Indian they called Chief creased his poor chest with a pistol ball. I was the one who described that Indian member of the gang in some detail. I only caught a glimpse of that other one's red beard amid all the gun-smoke and confusion. Clifford remembered that scary glass eye and gold tooth more vividly because that one--Flanders, wasn't it--was the one who bent over him to say he was done for and not to waste any more time.'
Longarm nodded and said, 'Riding with a full-blood and a red-haired cuss with such distinctive features did cause folks to remember who might have robbed them, once they made a more serious habit of it. From gang members we've interviewed since, the less distinctive-looking Calvert Tyger was getting broody about reading his name in the papers, albeit we all know it was his wilder-looking sidekicks folks described while laying the blame on his doorstep. So he'd given the others orders not to rob anybody for a spell. It must have really put his nose out of joint when he read in the papers about his gang, or a close facsimile, robbing your office and killing federal employees in the process!'
The mousy Stenographer gal gasped, 'My heavens, are you suggesting that wasn't the Tyger gang robbing us in broad day and murdering poor Mister Godwynn and those younger clerks?'
Longarm nodded grimly and replied, 'That's about the size of it, ma'am. If it's any comfort, the gang had a furious falling out over it, with Tyger and Chief deciding to get rid of fellow riders they had down as big fibbers. Brick Flanders and his bunch kept saying they had nothing to do with any payroll robbery, and tried to excuse a train robbery that went wrong by complaining they were broke and needed the money. Tyger and Chief, trying to lay low, must have had conniptions when hundred-dollar treasury notes taken from your payroll office kept turning up all over the country as if Santa Claus was on a spending spree. An outlaw who went on spending such hot paper after learning from the papers it was hot would have to be awesomely stupid. We tried to keep the papers from reporting how your boss, the late Paymaster Godwynn, had made that list of serial numbers. But once they'd turned up all over, getting all sorts of folks hauled in to say where in blue blazes they'd come by the money...'
She nodded primly and said, 'That was why Mister Godwynn made that list of serial numbers. It must be very difficult to cash a hundred-dollar treasury note recorded as stolen from the government!'
Longarm said, 'It sure is. Brick Flanders had his faults, but he'd been riding the owlhoot trail better than a dozen years, and he'd have never tried to spend big bills he knew we had records on. He'd have fenced them for, say, two-bits on the dollar to a money-washer willing to sit on 'em for a couple of years and cash them in once they'd had a chance to cool down. I'm sure Calvert Tyger knew as much as we do about disposing of outlaw loot. He must have felt mighty vexed at his old pard when Flanders naturally kept saying some other red-haired cuss with a glass eye and gold front tooth had held up a government office and gunned a federal paymaster in cold blood for no good reason. Or did they offer some explanation why they shot all the male witnesses and let you live, Miss Lorena?'
She stared owlishly at him in the purple twilight. 'How should I know? Clifford and me agreed at the time they'd been awfully mean. As they were leaving the leader did say something about leaving nobody to tell the tale. But mayhaps the last young boy out the door just didn't have it in him to shoot a girl.'
Longarm nodded thoughtfully. 'That works. So does somebody pretending to be a more famous outlaw, using theatrical makeup or a mighty fine wax mask. Another lady who's gotten to chatting with me about a former beau says Chief, Baptiste Youngwolf, was with his boss in Denver at the time of your robbery up this way. Tyger must have been willing as me to figure one Indian would be recalled much like yet another by a robbery victim. Unfortunately for Flanders, Tyger was way more certain it had to be him pulling jobs on the sly and making an outlaw laying low more famous than he'd ever mean to be.'
Longarm shifted his weight in the swing and removed his hat so she could see his grave features more clearly as he placed his hat in his lap. 'There's no call to go on with that comedy of errors and coincidence. Suffice to say that gang's no more, and now I want to talk about the money, Miss Lorena. I can promise you won't hang by your pretty little neck, and you'll still be fairly young when you get out if you'd care to turn state's evidence now.'
She stared at him thunderstruck. 'State's evidence of what? Are you accusing me of being in on the robbery with that gang?'
Longarm said, 'Nope. Accusing you of making false accusations. A grievously grazed bookkeeper and miraculously unscathed stenography gal sold everyone but me a titanic taradiddle about an inside job, and now you'd best tell me where the two of you hid the money.'
She wailed, 'What money? Those outlaws rode off with all the money we had after they'd murdered everyone but Clifford and me! Haven't you been paying attention to the newspapers? Treasury notes with serial numbers recorded by poor Mister Godwynn have been turning up all over creation!'
Longarm nodded pleasantly. 'It had that gang confused as well. For which I reckon we ought to thank you. But since I see you still think you can fib your way out of it, here's what I'm fixing to testify at your trial.'
He leaned back more comfortably and continued. 'Everyone knows how handling large sums of money can tempt our weaker brothers and sisters. So outfits that deal in such temptations set up all sorts of checks and balances to make it nigh impossible to embezzle funds without being detected.'
She protested, 'You can't mean that! Neither Clifford nor I were ever left alone with the contents of that office safe!'
Longarm replied, 'I just said that. Funds coming in or going out have to be noted in the daily ledgers as well. I was recently going over some bank records in New Ulm, and it hit me then how tough a time a thief would have cooking books kept in more than one hand by more than one money-wrangler. So I don't doubt the ledgers of your payroll office would tend to go along with your fairy tale about red-bearded ogres with glass eyes and gold teeth, Miss Lorena. But that other list, kept separate in block lettering but purported to have been the notion of Paymaster Godwynn, is a whole other kettle of fish.'
