Other folks were coming out to their front gates as Longarm and the well-known local stockwoman passed on foot with the neighborhood bully. Fox Bancroft asked why the little shit couldn’t spill his guts along the way if he was of a mind to.
Longarm said, “Confession is good for the soul, but it can play bob with the prosecution in a delicate case. I don’t mean this here slashing Romeo is delicate. I mean he’s under-age and they’re going to try to sell the jury on his being loco en la cabeza. I never might have come anywhere close to him if he and some other Howards hadn’t been mighty slow and bothersome in your public school.”
She made a wry face and said, “I sure feel sorry for poor Rose Burnside. We thought her kid brother, Bubblehead, was the only village idiot we had to worry about. Can you imagine how she must have felt when they came for him, refusing to believe her when she swore he couldn’t be the one they were after?”
Longarm said, “Nope. Neither can you. Nobody but Miss Rose will ever know what it felt like to have that particular sweet and harmless problem child of voting age on her hands.”
Closer to the center of town, they were joined by Tim Sears Senior and Remington Ramsay. The hardware man said, “We heard you caught up with somebody down this way and, good grief, is that the Tendring boy you seem to have arrested there?”
Longarm replied, “Yep. I had to. The charge is murder most foul and attempted rape. This is the Howard little Timmy meant.”
The missing child’s father shook a fist in the young prisoner’s face and demanded, “What have you done with my wife and child, you murderous simp?”
Howard Tendring III told him to go screw himself. Longarm blocked the outraged father’s backhand swing, and the big strong hardware man pulled Sears away, soothing him the way you calmed a spooked critter.
Longarm said, “I doubt he knows, Tim. Help us get him over to the county jail and we’ll study on who’s holding your wife and your boy.”
As the growing procession moved on, it was Remington Ramsay who asked what Longarm had in mind about the missing mother and son.
Longarm sighed and said, “If I knew anything for certain, I’d be proud to share it with you. By the way, did you know what all that railroad paper on Mavis MacUlric’s walls is worth? I do because I wired a railroad stock slicker about Credit Mobilier earlier.”
The hardware mogul said, “It’s not really that good for papering walls. I offered her par value on the matured bonds. She’s too smart to think a construction company pays dividends to shareholders after it’s been out of business for years.”
Before Longarm could ask why anyone would want to pay anything for any worthless railroad paper, they were joined by Pronto Cross who demanded, “What on earth are you doing with this lad in handcuffs? I know young Howard and his family, Longarm! He may be a tad unruly, but you can’t be serious about him kidnapping Timmy Sears!”
The big kid lowered his face, as if ashamed to be seen by anyone he knew, as Longarm said, “Ain’t holding him on kidnapping. It will be up to your local courts to decide, after I turn him in to them, but I’d say he’s an easy win for murder in the first, whether little Timmy can testify against him or not. If push comes to shove, I can come up with three other kids who stand ready to identify him as the one Timmy meant when he mentioned his overgrown playmate Howard.”
Pronto Cross said, “Oh, Lord, I’d best rustle up more help whilst you get him over to the jail, and bar all the outside doors and windows. For whether you are right or wrong, there’s liable to be hell to pay as soon as the Minute Men learn they might have hung the wrong half-wit the other night!
Chapter 20
Sheriff Wigan’s two deputies were surprised, but willing to hold young Howard Tendring till their boss got back to town to tell them differently. The kid still refused to talk politely to anybody but his momma or his Uncle George. When one of the deputies backhanded him, Longarm said, “Leave him be. His mother and her lawyer, lover, or whatever ought to be along any time now.”
So they locked him up in one of the patent cells and commenced to douse the inside lamps and get set for anyone else who might come to call that evening.
Fox Bancroft asked Longarm which window he wanted her to man. He said, “No offense, but you ain’t a man, and seeing you have that pony out front, I’ve got a better chore for you.”
He ripped two pages out of his notebook and spread them on a windowsill to jot hasty messages by the light of the street lamp outside.
Handing them to the redhead, he explained, “I’d be obliged if you could send these wires for me at the Western Union and not show ‘em to anyone else you meet along the way.”
She started to argue, nodded soberly, and left Longarm, the two sheriff’s deputies, and Remington Ramsay feeling sort of lonesome in the county jail.
Ramsay joined Longarm at the open window near the bolted front door to muse, “Pronto could be wrong. It’s not as if they had anyone all that ambitious egging them on. I’m pretty sure Porky Shaw was the main ringleader last time, and everyone on both sides knows what you did to Porky Shaw.”
Longarm said, “Porky had a pal with a ten-gauge Greener who shot up my room. Nobody on the side of the law has seen fit to tell me who he is. Let’s talk about him, Ramsay.”
The big hardware man said, “The reason I told Mavis MacUlric I’d buy her worthless railroad bonds at par is that I tried to help her when I first heard she was having financial trouble. She acted like I was trying to buy her fair white body, for Chrissake!”
“Weren’t you?” asked Longarm dryly.
Ramsay snapped, “Damn it, my intentions are pure toward Mavis MacUlric. I’ve never had the time or inclination to chase skirts for the hell of it. I was true to my late wife while she lasted, and I was there when Martin MacUlric died of that heart stroke after his own long and happy marriage.”
“That made you hot for his widow?” demanded Longarm, who’d noticed on his own that Mavis MacUlric wasn’t suffering from warts on her nose or a flat chest.
