The town law made a wry face and said, “Aside from the fact that his shit don’t stink? He owns half the town. He says he only rents out space to the highest bidder and has no personal interest in the whoring and gambling that may go on under roofs he tar-papered personal. I’ve wired places he says he’s done business in in the past. As far as I have been told in return, he’s never been charged with anything really serious.”
Longarm soberly asked, “What’s on his yellow sheets that may not sound really serious?”
Pronto Cross shrugged and said, “Put a man in a Chicago hospital with his fists back in ‘76. Busted the arm of a blacksmith down in Ogallala just after he came out our way. In both cases the victims are said to have insulted his late wife. You’ve likely noticed old Ramsay runs to size, and still does a lot of heavy work alongside his hired help. I’d approach him polite if I was going to ask him about the Aces and Eights, pard.”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Ain’t my row to hoe. Up to the township to decide such matters. In the lawful manner, I mean. What have you got here, the usual mayor and board of aldermen handing out business permits for a nominal fee?”
Cross nodded and said that was about the size of it, adding that the county council collected the property taxes. A hot and dusty-looking younger gent was coming their way up the walk now. As he approached he wearily called out, “You must have seen two pistol-packing ghosts, Boss. I’ve been all over this fool town and not another soul seems to have seen hide nor hair of your mysterious strangers!”
Pronto Cross said, “Never mind about them for the moment. Deputy Long here has been waiting a spell on Mrs. Sears and her Timmy. Might you have any notion where they could be right now?”
The roundsman shook his head and said, “Not hardly. Last time I saw ‘em they were here with you.”
Pronto Cross replied, “They went off to buy some ribbon bows or mayhaps some root beers. Try the candy shop down the other way and send Stretch to me if you run across him, will you?”
The already overheated roundsman went off muttering, softly cussing all mothers of small witnesses who couldn’t sit still on hot days.
Longarm and the town law smoked their cheroots down twice, and the tall drink of water called Stretch had joined them to say he had no idea where the fool kid and his mother might be either, by the time it commenced to make Longarm uneasy.
He said, “The only sensible place nobody has looked would be the house they live in. The boy or his mother might have taken to feeling poorly in this heat, or just went home for an early noon dinner.”
But it took Pronto Cross less than a quarter hour to establish little Timmy Sears and his mother were neither at home nor at the saddle shop where Tim Sears Senior worked.
The worried father joined the search, which didn’t take long in a town as small as Pawnee Junction. But search high or search low, nobody they talked to could say, or would say, where in blue blazes the missing mother and son had disappeared to in bright sunlight on what had been described as a short shopping errand.
So Pronto Cross said, “Damn, if only Sheriff Wigan was here, I’d ask him to posse up!”
Longarm said, “You don’t have to wait on him. I’m here, and as a federal lawman I have the authority to convene a posse comitatus. So why don’t we get cracking? It’s barely past noon, and how far could anybody carry a small boy and his mother across wide-open range?”
Chapter 17
It took less than an hour to gather better than fifty willing riders and swear them in as a federal posse. Most of them worked or spent a lot of time in town. None of them showed up with masks on. So there was just no saying how many might have assembled for other riding in these parts in the past. Tim Sears Senior himself showed up with a saddle mule and a Spencer .52 carbine. Remington Ramsay had changed his bib overalls for old cavalry pants and rode a handsome cordovan Morgan, armed with a brace of Navy Colts and his Springfield .45-75. A couple of sheriff’s deputies as well as both of the town marshal’s roundsmen volunteered. Longarm was the one who pointed out that somebody in the law-enforcement trade ought to be watching all the stores as well as their one bank. Pronto Cross laughed sheepishly and allowed he’d forgotten those strangers who’d come in aboard the morning train.
Cross told his own boys they couldn’t tag along, and one sheriff’s deputy agreed to stay behind and make sure nobody carried off the courthouse in broad daylight, as everyone else rode south along the railroad tracks at first.
They split into two parties at that railroad trestle the Minute Men had used more than once as a handy gallows. Cross led one bunch circling to the west. Longarm and his two dozen riders took the east, and they agreed to meet near that impoundment north of town.
The legal definition of a township extended roughly three miles north, south, east, and west of the city hall on Court house Square.
In practice, few cow towns sprawled half that wide when you took in the modest produce, butter, and egg spreads catering to the local market. One of the townsmen riding with him told Longarm they grew mostly garden truck off to the western upwind farms close to town. Longarm didn’t ask why they penned more pigs, chickens, and dairy cows over this way downwind. There sure were a lot of small hardscrabble spreads within sight of First Calvinist’s white spire. When Longarm commented on that, Remington Ramsay volunteered that filing homestead claims within the limits of a township was not allowed. He said you had to beg, borrow, or steal a plot of ground that big before you and your pals incorporated a township on top of it.
Longarm dryly asked if that was how Ramsay had wound up with so much property in town. The big frog of the little puddle sighed and said, “I wish I’d got here first. But I thought you read my history of Pawnee Junction. It was carved out of a railroad grant, sold off in one-hundred-by-two-hundred-foot lots at fair prices when they laid out a water stop hereabouts and decided they might as well drum up some freight and passenger business. I confess with a clear conscience that the lots my late wife and me bought cheap are worth way more now.”
Longarm muttered, “You said in your book how that great-uncle back in the old country cornered the market in imported lumber. I don’t see how anybody could ride through countryside this settled in broad day with an unwilling woman and child, do you?”
Neither the local big frog nor any of the lesser lights within earshot saw fit to argue. Longarm spied two small snot-nosed kids watching them over some snow fencing alongside the wagon trace they were riding. He swung across the roadside weeds to talk to them rather than yell, the little gal already staring big-eyed and ready to bolt.
He reined in his livery bay at conversational range and asked the kids if they’d seen another little boy and his
