She gulped and gasped, “You’re hurting me! Deputy Long’s not doing anything to anybody in our reading room. He just came to look something up. He couldn’t be after yo-U. So why don’t you just run away while you have the chance?”
The gunslick ground the muzzle of his gun against the tender flesh of her ear and demanded, “Show me the way as I sort of ride you piggyback with this other arm around your waist. How come you’re wearing a corset, girl? You’re as lightly built as one of your schoolgals!”
Miss Dorman had never considered herself a brave young woman. But she tried to dig her heels in, and when that didn’t work, she tried to steer them the wrong way at the first fork in the corridor. But the experienced gunslick growled, “I reckon we’ll just head thissaways! Is yonder archway the way into this here reading room?”
It was, but Miss Dorman didn’t answer. Quicksilver chuckled and murmured, “You’re fixing to help me whether you aim to or not. You ain’t big enough to stop many bullets. But all I need is the moment of hesitation you’ll inspire when he sees you betwixt us. Get moving and don’t struggle no more. I mean it!”
So in point of fact the burly killer was half carrying the weaker schoolmarm as they came in together fast, with the killer’s six-gun out of her ear and trained dead ahead.
Seeing nothing but Longarm’s Stetson on the heavy oaken table, Quicksilver fired and sent the hat flying before he’d grasped that nobody seemed to be wearing it.
He still figured his target had dropped down out of sight behind that natural cover. So that was the direction he was staring when Longarm made his own move.
Having just replaced the two heavy volumes where they belonged, Longarm had been returning to the reading room from among the stacks when he’d heard the muffled sounds of the struggle out yonder and drawn his own double-action .44-40. So he had a sideways shot at a burly target advancing behind a skinny shield, and not wanting to risk the mousy little gal, he aimed high and fired without warning.
Two hundred grains of hot spinning lead went in one of Quicksilver’s temples and burst out the other with a teacup’s worth of blood and brains as the schoolmarm broke loose to wind up facedown on that reading table screaming fit to bust!
Longarm lowered his smoking muzzle, but held on to the grips in case these critters hunted in pairs. He could see at a glance the hunting days were over for the rascal he had spread across the floor like a bear rug. So he moved to comfort the terrified gal.
“It’s over, ma’am.” he said, placing a gentle free hand on one sobbing shoulder. “They’d have heard that gunshot back up the street. So other lawmen will soon be here whether you keep bawling for them or not, hear?”
She gasped, “He was going to murder you! He told me so! He said I wasn’t pretty enough for a fate worse than death, but I just knew he was going to kill me too!”
Longarm shot another glance at the dead man at their feet, grimaced in distaste, and allowed, “You were likely right about that last part, and I wouldn’t have bet on the first. You’re a right nice-looking gal and he’d have never brought the topic up if it hadn’t crossed his mind.”
She stopped crying and demurely said, “Why, thank you. That was an awfully nice thing to say.”
Chapter 9
It was possible to gun a man and get out of town without further formality, but outside of a Ned Buntline romance of a Wilder West, it wasn’t considered proper. So Longarm explained how pressed for time he’d be once some chaperons arrived from Denver, and the dentist who sat in for the county coroner up at that end of the county set the hearing for that very afternoon.
The coroner’s sub-panel met in the town hall facing the dusty municipal corral, Twelve men good and true lined up along one side of a trestle table to call the shots. Most everyone else of any importance around John Bull got to watch from the folding seats set up for their enjoyment. The layout sort of reminded Longarm of a play or graduation ceremony, but their star, the late Quicksilver Quinn, had graduated to his own bed of ice in that root cellar with what was likely a dead associate called Ginger Bancott.
The identity of the villain Longarm had gunned had been established on the scene by Deputy Rothstein, who seemed to read nothing but old wanted fliers. Miss Dorman from the schoolhouse appeared before the sub-panel as their first witness, ladies first, to primly establish the dead man had been using her as a shield and whispering villainous threats to her as he’d fired the first shot and been shot at in turn. The mousy little gal didn’t have to say anything about fates worse than death. Quicksilver Quinn had been wanted on that charge as well.
Constable Payne and Deputy Rothstein were only asked a few questions as to what they’d found when they tore down the street towards those distant but distinct gunshots. Neither charged Longarm with raping Miss Dorman or gunning anybody but Quinn, of course. So their terse statements were taken down too, and then it was Longarm’s turn.
For some reason there came a round of applause from the onlookers as he rose to take his place before the sub-panel. As he sat himself on the bentwood witness chair he spied many a familiar face in the crowd and nobody looked sore at him. He saw all those folks he’d come up on the narrow-gauge with, save for the small kids who’d been with Flora Munro, present and accounted for.
Widow Farnsworth was there, and to Longarm’s chagrin, so was fat Peony from his hotel, with a skinny galoot that had to be her jealous husband. But at least Longarm didn’t see that asshole kid who’d warned him to stay away from young Flora Munro.
The dentist in charge of the hearings swore him in, heard him out as he gave his own laconic account of the reading room shootout, and then demanded to know why Quinn had been gunning for him.
Longarm answered simply, “I don’t know. Didn’t know who he was before Nate Rothstein nudged my memory by describing the remains on the schoolhouse floor more formally. I was just minding my own beeswax with the Encyclopedia Britannica when, like Miss Dorman says, Quinn busted in with her to shoot my hat. So I naturally shot him.”
There was a murmur of approval along the table as well as from the crowd behind him. Then a crusty older gent in a snuff-colored frock coat demanded to know what Longarm had been looking for in those “sissy furrin books.”
Longarm started to tell them. Then he reflected that the pretty Constance Farnsworth would have to call to serve him more tea and pastry if he solved her problem here and now, like a jackass with better things to do and fancier places to go that evening. They’d have never asked what he’d been up to if he’d said he was killing a
