practical as some men I know, but he was hardly a fool who’d paper our upstairs wall with valuable stocks and bonds.”
Ramsay gravely replied, “I never found your late husband anything but sensible when we were talking business, ma’am. At the same time, we’ll never have a better chance to steam all that Confederate and Credit Mobilier bond paper off, clean it, dry it, and see just what you’ve had hidden up yonder all this time. You and your Martin were likely right about it being worthless. But it never hurts to ask, and it’s certainly not worth anything, even as wallpaper, hidden under the new patterns you just picked out!”
Longarm said something about having to get on over to the Western Union, and left them to hammer that dumb-sounding dispute out. But even as he walked the short distance to the telegraph office, he wondered whether Remington Ramsay was an easygoing innocent cuss with nothing up his sleeve, or one mighty slick confidence man out to skin a poor widow woman. For it worked either way. Marrying up with a gal sounded like a mighty desperate way to get her valuable wallpaper, while a widow woman who had some of the same would tend to trust a man who came right out and helped her cash in on unsuspected wealth to where he might not have to marry up with her to rob her blind.
Striding across the sandy street in the dazzling morning sunlight and noting it was shaping up to be a scorcher, Longarm muttered, “Gals in love with a sweet-talking lover are likely to sign anything, and Ellen says she was nearly taken by such a bastard earlier!”
He caught himself mapping out a plan of action, and warned himself with a cynical laugh, “Forget it! You’d have never heard about all the woes of a somewhat horny and mighty nice-looking widow woman if you hadn’t wound up playing slap and tickle with another gal entirely. Dropping Ellen like a used snot rag to go after Mavis would be mean to the both of them. It ain’t as if you were planning on staying in these parts. So even if you could save Mavis from that hardware monger for a spell, she’d likely wind up going back to him as soon as your back was turned.”
He entered the cooler telegraph office to find no messages there for him, and sent a slew of his own messages in every direction. Then he said he’d be back, and moseyed up the street to the town marshal’s office. He found it far smaller than the sheriff’s office and county jail on the far side of the courthouse. Pronto Cross was seated at a desk in the middle of the twenty-by-forty-foot frame building. The one holding cage they had, empty at the moment, shared the back wall with the crapper and rear exit. Save for a few extra chairs and the gun racks along one wall, the effect was spartan, and made the modest space seem bigger than it really was.
Cross got up from the desk and said, “You just missed Timmy Sears and his mother. She brought him over to talk to you, like I asked last night. Seeing it was so early and you weren’t here yet, they said they’d be back in a spell. She said something about shopping, and he was asking if she’d buy him some marbles.”
By tacit agreement the two of them stepped outside to the shaded plank walk so the Sears woman would see Longarm was there as she and her kid dashed all over the tiny town in the hot sun.
Longarm offered the town law a cheroot, and got them both lit up before Cross told him, “I didn’t question the boy again about the time he spied Bubblehead Burnside fleeing the scene of his crime. His folks weren’t too happy about the boy having to go over it all again. Tim Sears Senior says little Timmy has been pestering them since the killing about what such words as rape might mean. Seems the other kids have been talking to him about what happened to their Sunday school teacher. But that might be the least of our worries.”
Longarm took a thoughtful drag on his own smoke and said he only had a couple of gentle questions to ask little Timmy. Then he asked what other worries Cross might be talking about.
The town law said, “Two strangers in town. Got off the morning train and vanished into thin air. Never stopped anywhere to order a meal or hire any horses. So where are they at? You know there’s no proper hotel here in town, and I have my two roundsmen canvassing everyone with rooms to let.”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Try her this way. Strangers to you might not have been strangers to somebody in town without a sign in their front window. What did these spooky strangers look like?”
Pronto Cross said, “Spooky strangers. I didn’t get too close a look at either. I was standing across from the open platform in the shade when they got off unexpected. I figured they might be with you, no offense, because of the dark suits and six-guns carried cross-draw. I had no sensible-sounding reason to dash across the street and introduce myself, so I never did. I figured they’d settle down somewhere, with or without asking about you, and I could approach them more delicate. So I let ‘em walk on by, blast my sweet nature, and now I don’t know who they were or what they got off here to do!”
Longarm took another thoughtful drag and decided, “They could be no more than innocent visitors. If they’re holed up for the moment with local kith or kin, you’ll see them around town sooner or later.”
“What if I don’t?” asked the town law. “What if they ain’t innocent at all? What if they’re here to rob the bank or something?”
Longarm said, “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. Get word to anyone with a horse to hire that you’d sure like to hear about anyone new in town hiring a horse. There’s no train in or out of here this side of supper time. Can you see bank robbers escaping afoot across open sand-hill range with enough of a load to matter?”
Cross smiled thinly at the picture and said, “I wish the damned sheriff was handy today. He’s rode down to Ogallala, and I can’t tell his deputies what to do without his permission. So how am I supposed to stake out the livery, the bank, and Lord knows what-all with just my own two elves?”
Longarm said, “It’s getting too hot to put the stew on the stove before you know you’ll be serving any, Pronto! All you know for certain is that two gents you don’t know got off that train to do, so far, not a solitary thing. It’s quiet as hell all up and down the street right now. Matter of fact, I don’t see anything going on, and the only living soul in sight would seem to be that tabby cat across the way, licking its fool self in the shade. You say Sheriff Wigan had to go down to the main line at Ogallala?”
Cross nodded, but said, “Don’t ask me why. I don’t tell him when I go to the card house, and that reminds me. What’s this I hear about you telling Deacon Knox to get out of town?”
Longarm answered with a clear conscience, “I advised him it might be good for his health. I caught him dealing slapjack with a one-way deck last night. But I wasn’t the one who ordered him to leave town.”
Cross said dryly, “I know. They tell me Fox Bancroft was out to shut down the whole shebang. She’s always been a willful child. How do you like the owners of the Aces and Eights sending away for some outside help? Deacon Knox is just a two-bit tinhorn, but I happen to know who really owns that joint.”
Longarm said, “So do I. We were just now discussing wallpaper. I didn’t want to discuss more serious business in front of a lady. But since that other lady and her kid seem to be hiding out in some fool ladies’ notions or candy store, what else can you tell me about old Remington Ramsay?”
