Longarm sighed and said, 'Yep, and old Attila is a liar above and beyond the call to duty too. I'd best go have another word with him. If I were you gents, I'd let the coroner worry about how they'll get her out of there and over to the morgue in one piece!'
He didn't have to argue with them to get them out of that fetid drift. As all but the watchman headed back to town, Longarm split off at a cinder path leading up through the warren of Bohunk Hill.
This time he insisted on sensible directions, and seeing it was the Sabbath, he found Bela Nagy and his family at home in their tar-paper shack.
The gnomish Nagy looked more like a white man on his one day off. He introduced Longarm, sort of, to his bigger and fatter wife. She didn't speak English. Longarm had to take her husband's word she was honored, wanted to feed him some grape pie, and knew he hadn't been the American who'd messed with that horrid Magda Homagy up the way.
Nagy said their daughter, Eva, was in the back, feeling poorly because she'd just heard a friend had died.
Longarm gently but firmly declared, 'I'd like to meet your Eva, Mister Nagy.'
Nagy protested. 'She is not dressed. Even if she was, she no speak English. Why you want to see Magyar girl who can only weep right now?'
Longarm said, 'You can trot her out here or I can come back with a search warrant. It's up to you.
So Nagy swore in his own lingo, went in the back, and returned with a willowy young blonde wearing a flannel chemise and a black eye. Nagy said defiantly, 'Here she is. You still think we did something bad to her?'
Longarm smiled thinly and decided 'Nothing she might not have had coming. You all heard about Zoltan Kun, eh?'
Eva Nagy savvied enough English to cover her face with her hands and bawl. Her mother smacked her again and chased her into the back.
Longarm smiled thinly and asked, 'Did you put your foot down before or after you heard about her balding admirer getting blown through the roof?'
Bela Nagy scowled and said, 'Last night I was here, home from mine, when Zoltan come to take out Eva for buggy ride. I tell him what you tell me about father who lets daughter get dirty with older men. He laugh and say he maybe needs night off himself. Zoltan Kun was not a nice man!'
Longarm said he wouldn't argue the contrary, asked Nagy to tell his wife he couldn't stay for grape pie, and left while the womenfolk were still fighting in the back.
He rode on back to town, left the mount at the livery so it could be cared for better as he traipsed around town, and headed over to the county jail to have a more serious talk with Attila Homagy.
His man wasn't there. The desk deputy agreed it was a ridiculous mix-up, but a county politico looking for the immigrant vote had just bailed old Attila out.
They'd convinced the easygoing J.P. who'd issued that search warrant that a man who'd come forward of his own accord after killing a man in accord with the unwritten law hardly deserved to spend the Sabbath locked up like a common criminal.
Longarm swore, and tore across the square for another word with that same J.P. His Arapaho housegirl said he'd gone visiting. She couldn't or wouldn't say where.
Longarm managed to thank her instead of cuss her. He doubted anyone sneaky as Attila Homagy would hang around town until the proper county court opened on Monday. Longarm tried to think himself into the older man's boots as he strode back toward the livery near the depot. He decided he'd be too smart to buy a train ticket or ask for his old buggy back, whether he knew the law had impounded it or not.
A coal-mining man who knew his way around by rail might know a bum could ride for many a mile without a ticket aboard an open coal gondola. They were easier to get into than the average box car. But while Trinidad shipped a heap of coking coal to all points east, it was the Sabbath and no freight would be moving out of the Trinidad yards... or would it?
Railroads, shipping lines, telegraph outfits, and such paid way more attention to round-the-clock profits than the Good Book. The freight dispatcher over at the yards would know more about his own timetable. So that was where Longarm headed next.
After a short, interesting conversation Longarm was a quarter-mile up a quiet siding, spooking big butterfly- winged prairie grasshoppers as he eased along what might have passed for a string of gondolas just waiting for Monday, if that dispatcher hadn't said a switcher would be moving them over to the main line in a few minutes.
As any railroad bull could tell you, a man hidden in a car with a gun had the edge, if you went about rousting him wrong.
Longarm moved to the far end of the string, drew his.44-40, and took his time climbing the steel-runged ladder over the coupler, holding on with his left hand.
He peered over the top rim. The gondola was almost filled to the brim with coal. He rolled atop it and worked forward, crunching some in spite of himself.
The next gondola held only coal as Longarm leaped the gap between, crunching the coal much louder. As he tried to ease onward more silently, he heard a not-too-distant puffing, and glanced up to spy locomotive smoke puffing his way. It was that switch engine, coming to pick up the string.
Longarm didn't care. He kept going until, another car forward, he spotted movement and called out, 'I see you, Homagy. Stop right there if you don't want a bullet up the ass!'
The shorter and older Hungarian paused and turned his way atop the coal in the next gondola. He'd gotten rid of his seersucker and had on darker and more practical denim work duds. Longarm didn't worry about his own tobacco brown tweed pants as he leaped into the same gondola with his man, but they were both staggered when that switch engine banged into the far end and jerked the whole string into motion with a crunch of steel knuckles.
Moving forward again, Longarm told Homagy, 'I see you noticed we found your wife where you'd left her, you poor heartbroken cuss. Would you like me to tell you how the rest of your charade was supposed to read?'
