her and left her for dead when they found her bleeding to death on the cement floor down yonder!”
Nurse Calder sniffed and said, “Dr. Forbes let me read all that. Then I assisted him in the examination of your accused rapist. Howard Burnside had the mind and sex drive of a pre-school child. He had the sex organs to go with them, and there was no indication she’d been raped in Mildred Powell’s autopsy report!”
A tall young man wearing a low-crowned Stetson rose to his feet in the crowd and called out, “Hold on, there, ma’am. I’d be Rafe Jennings and I was holding Miss Mildred’s head on my knee, trying to help her breathe, as she told me and Nick Olsen yonder she’d been raped and stabbed by old Bubblehead—or Howard as she called him.”
The taffy-headed gal in tan shrugged and replied simply, “She was confused, or you heard her wrong. It’s possible for a woman to have sex with a man without retaining any, ah, results in her vagina. But even if he’d been wearing a condom, that immature Mongoloid idiot was simply not man enough to rape anybody!”
The lout who’d raised a cheer for the Minute Men laughed lewdly and asked, “Did you take a yardstick to both them dead boys, ma’am? Is that true about hanged men having hard-ons after they’re dead?”
More than one man present laughed uncomfortably. But if the cool-eyed Nancy Calder was embarrassed, she failed to show it. Staring right at the crude cowhand, she sweetly replied, “You might or might not defecate or ejaculate as You died instantly with a severed spinal column. I can assure you they’d have dropped real loads and shot their wads if you’d strangled them slowly.”
The cowhand protested, “Hold on. Don’t you go saying it was my notion to kill them boys last night!”
That really got the crowd to buzzing. Doc Forbes pounded the table and declared them both out of order. So Nurse Calder sat back down.
That allowed the panel to jaw back and forth about crossing some Ts or dotting an occasional I. In the end they decided to send a bill of John Doe indictments on to the county prosecutor and let him worry about it.
As the hearing was declared over and everyone tried to get over to the Red Rooster at once, Longarm stayed put in his corner until, sure enough, Nurse Nancy Calder moved along one wall toward him, looking sheepish as she nodded and said, “You’re right. I should have kept my big mouth shut. I think I was called up here to verify the sex-mad rages of Mongoloid idiots. I’m sorry if I let everyone down, but at least I have that brain to carry back to the agency with me, if only I can get permission from the next of kin. I’m not sure Dr. Forbes likes me anymore.”
Longarm said, “Just stay put a minute and let the stampede die down, ma’am. Doc Forbes is all right. He’s just a small-town sawbones depending on the county machine for the difference betwixt living well and struggling. I don’t think he’d lie deliberately. I just heard one witness testify the dead gal accused that Burnside boy. As to that brain you two took out of his odd-shaped skull this afternoon, I might be able to help you out there. His sister, Miss Rose, is sitting wake on him over to the funeral parlor. Let me do the talking and we might be able to get her permission.”
He explained about his earlier conversation with the dead boy’s next of kin. She agreed it was worth a try, and allowed a written statement from a peace officer, confirming an oral agreement, would cover her with the Bureau of Indian Affairs if push ever came to shove.
As they followed the last of the crowd outside, the sun was all the way down and the western sky was painted red and gold where it wasn’t already purple. So the lighting was a tad tricky as they moved around to where they’d tethered their mounts. But Longarm made it an even half-dozen men blocking their paths, all but one under broad- brimmed hats, with the odd one a derby.
Getting right to the point, one of them announced, “We don’t hold with trash-talking sluts coming here to accuse our pals of lying, you Indian-loving slut!”
Longarm moved the gal out of his line of fire as he quietly but firmly declared, “You say that one more time or call this lady one more name and I am going to clean your plow, cowboy!”
“You think you’re big enough?” jeered another voice from the coyote pack.
Longarm said, “You’d best mount up and go on home after the doc, Nurse Calder. We might be holding another coroner’s hearing here directly.”
Then another party loomed out of the darkness to declare in a no-nonsense tone, “That’ll be enough for tonight, boys. Go on home, Tom. You too, Latigo. I mean it, and we all know what happens if I have to repeat myself!”
It seemed to work. As the surly crowd dispersed without a lick of back-sass, Longarm nodded knowingly at the pewter badge worn by the darkly dressed figure who’d come to their rescue.
Longarm started to introduce the nurse and himself. The sardonic lawman in black said, “I know who you two are and you both make me nervous. I’d be Pronto Cross, the town marshal. I thought me and Sheriff Wigan had a gentleman’s agreement. I don’t concern myself with anything that might take place a furlong outside of town, and in return nobody rides at full gallop or discharges his firearms in town.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “I have heard tell of a town-tamer called Pronto Cross. They tell me he blew a wild cowboy off his pony when he rode it through a schoolyard down Kansas way.”
Pronto Cross shrugged modestly and replied, “School was in session and he’d been warned. When people pay you to preserve law and order in a town, you’re supposed to preserve law and order. No offense, but neither of you federal employees are making my job any easier in Pawnee Junction!”
Nurse Calder said, “I was just about to leave! They told me the Pawnee were savages when I signed up to work out this way! I’ve yet to meet any Indian who openly admired cowardly killers who gang up on women!”
Pronto Cross laughed softly and assured her, “Nobody in that bunch was a Minute Man, ma’am. They were just young jaspers who forgot the way we expect ‘em to act in town.”
Longarm nodded grimly and said, “I’d been wondering how come your county sheriff led those two prisoners out back to the mob instead of making a stand inside brick walls. You and your town deputies would have had to come to help if the shooting had started within the town boundaries. Is it safe to assume Sheriff Wigan knows all the Minute Men on a first-name basis too?”
Pronto Cross answered innocently, “Most everyone in the county can name most everyone else, if he cares to. You must have noticed by now that nobody cares to. Do us all a favor, Longarm. Wind it up before anyone else gets hurt. I’ve passed the word to leave you alone until you leave. I don’t know how long I can hold them off. I’d like to do more for you, but it’s an election year and a man can only do so much before he has to look out for his own skin, if you follow my meaning.”
