“Pardon me?”
“Please.”
With a small shrug of her shoulders the woman turned to face away.
Longarm reached forward and quickly snapped the steel bracelet of a handcuff onto her left wrist, yanked it hard back, and clamped the other cuff securely on her right wrist.
“What the hell are you-?”
“It’s best you should understand that I don’t figure to screw around with you. You set me up, woman. You brought me out here deliberate as hell an’ set me up t’ be murdered in cold blood. Can’t be no other way, as I see it. So don’t expect no sympathy or gentle treatment. Long as you’re in my custody, woman, you toe the line. Otherwise I put leg irons an’ a gag on you too an’ pack you in like a hog being carried to slaughter. And if you really give me trouble, it could happen that you’ll be shot whilst trying escape. Understand?” The last was pure bullshit. But she didn’t need to know that.
“I’ll have your badge for this, damn you.”
“You an’ your boyfriend had your chance t’ get that. Since you can’t take it off my corpse, I reckon you got t’ pay the penalty for failing. Now shut up an’ hold still while I shake you down t’ see if you’re carrying iron.”
Without further preamble he bent down and stuck a hand under the back of her gown. He intended to take no more chances with this murderous bitch and her as yet unknown playmate.
Chapter 34
Shocked scarcely began to describe the expressions of the others stranded at Burdick’s when Longarm brought the blue-gowned woman in wearing handcuffs—and, incidentally, cussing to make a mule skinner blush. The woman sure as hell had a mouth on her.
In a few terse and well-chosen words Longarm explained just why it was he had put her under arrest. “Quick as I can get her before a federal judge,” he concluded, “she’ll be charged with conspiracy to assault a federal officer. Maybe some other stuff if I can get the U.S. attorney t’ go along. Way I see it”—he paused to take a deep, satisfying drag on the cigar—“she’ll do three years at the least, ten if we can finagle the deal so she comes up before old Judge Hardash. Hardass is what most call him behind his back. An’ he owes me a favor besides.”
“But why would this poor woman want to harm you, Marshal?” Jean Burdick asked.
“I’m not real sure ‘bout that, ma’am. My guess is that her boyfriend got her t’ do it. Hell, could be that’s how she makes a living, setting men up for the boyfriend t’ shoot.”
Mrs. Burdick’s hand flew to her throat in horror, and she looked wildly around at the men—all of them strangers to her—who were gathered in her common room.
If what Longarm claimed was true, one of these men was a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer. And likely had been for quite some time past.
“I think,” Mrs. Burdick said, “we should get my husband in here. After all, he is in charge.”
“Yes, ma’am. As you wish.”
Longarm shoved the veiled woman onto a stool in a corner of the big room, being none too gentle about it, and growled, “Sit still if you like, or I can shackle you in place an’ make sure of it. Your choice.”
She said nothing. Because of the veil he could not see her expression. Likely that was a blessing, he decided.
“Long.”
“Yes, Tyler?”
“Do you know who the woman’s, um, alleged accomplice might be?”
Longarm’s only answer was a wolfish grin.
Let the son of a bitch read that and work it out for himself, Longarm thought with grim satisfaction.
Mrs. Burdick was back within moments, Howard and all four other station employees trailing along behind her. Burdick looked concerned. The stagecoach crews looked like spectators gathering for a prizefight. Or perhaps something even more bloodily entertaining.
“What is this, Long? Have you really placed this lady under arrest?”
“Ayuh, I sure as hell have, Howard. Though I think it’s kinda pushing credibility t’ call her a lady.”
Longarm took hold of the brim of her chapeau and gave it a yank, pulling away hat and veil alike.
The woman who was revealed to view had auburn hair and hard features, her cheeks marred by childhood pox scars and her mouth set in a thin, furious scowl. She had pale eyes and uncommonly thick eyebrows.
It took him several moments of searching through his memory to come up with a name to go with those features.
“I’ll be damned.”
“That’s the first true thing you’ve said yet, you son of a bitch,” the woman told him.
“Clementine Bonner, right?”
“Up yours, shithead.”
“Yeah, that’s you, all right.” To the others in the big room he said, “Miss Bonner is on a gracious plenty of wanted posters. Mostly from Nebraska, Missouri, some from Illinois an’ Minnesota, if I remember a’right. The lady’s specialty, y’see, is murder. She’ll spot a mark she thinks has a wad o’ cash on him an’ bat her eyelashes some. Though God knows why anybody’d want t’ make the two-back beast … uh, excuse me, Miz Burdick, I kinda forgot m’self there.”
