Longarm replied, “Can’t say. Let’s hope so. We could use such a break. If they got away without a scratch they could volunteer to posse up with you and go chase themselves!”
Rothstein looked blank and asked when Longarm meant to form a posse.
Longarm said, “I ain’t. But if I was you, I’d surely consider it. Of course, I’d count noses and scout about for blood-stains by the dawn’s early light before I led one about in circles.”
Rothstein stammered, “I don’t understand. I’m only a deputy constable. With poor old Amos lying there dead, wouldn’t that make you the senior lawman in these parts?”
Longarm shook his head. “It’s up to your own mayor and board of aldermen whether they want to hire someone with less seniority and put him over you. If they did that to me I’d quit. It’s your own local law force that just got massacred, and that dead gal in the back was still your prisoner up until such time as your late Constable Payne could have signed her over to me. I just got here. You know the surrounding folks and country better than me. So let’s not argue about jurisdiction. I got me a mess of wires to send if your Western Union is open at night!”
Chapter 12
Knowing his own office in the Denver Federal Building wouldn’t be open this late, and seeing that Marshal Billy Vail would still be out of town with any luck at all, Longarm wired Henry at his home address in hopes of saving a low deputy and a federal matron a fool’s errand. The late Bunny McNee would keep a spell in that root cellar, with neither of those male cadavers likely to make her yell for a chaperone. He sent more questions about the three of them to all the law outfits at night-letter rates, seeing he could hardly send them collect and knowing how Billy Vail felt spending one whole nickel a word. Night letters were sent slower and cheaper by the telegraph company during slow spells in the wee small hours when there was nothing better to send. The messages sent at night-letter rates would be delivered when Western Union got damned well ready to do so, long after old Henry was told at a nickel a word not to send anybody to John Bull after all.
By the time Longarm left the telegraph office, he saw the street lit up like a Christmas tree around the jailhouse. The shootout had been held just before country folks’ bed time, and it wasn’t as if the dinky town had an opera house or one of those new roller-skating rinks. Longarm wasn’t all that exhausted. But he didn’t feel up to any more free lectures on basic law enforcement. So he headed back to his hotel, knowing he might face a long day in the saddle if anybody cut any sign in the morning. The annoying thing about the doctrine of posse comitatus was that every able-bodied rider was required by common law to saddle up and ride along, jurisdiction be damned. He’d left his McClellan saddle back in Denver, and he naturally didn’t have a pony up this way. But he somehow felt sure Rothstein was likely to fix him up just fine. Green lawmen could be like that when they felt they could use some advice with their first big chore.
As he entered the lobby of the Elk Rack, the night clerk called him to the desk, waving a folded slip of paper as he explained how Ruby, the colored waitress at the beanery across from the jail, had left it for him around eight that evening.
Longarm reflected he’d have been up at Widow Farnsworth’s around then as he took the message with a nod of thanks. He saw it was in pencil on the back of an order form from the beanery. It read:
Dear Sir:
Thank yew for sending this girl to take my supper order. I had already hurd yew were firm but fare and I have had about enuff of this dum game. Nobody sed nothin about nobody getting kilt. Sew if yew cum too see me rite away I will tell all.
Sincere as Hell
Tess Jennings my reel name
Longarm whistled softly and confided to the night clerk, “Had not I been supping with another lady when this arrived, I might’ve been there when somebody meaner came calling on the late … whoever! You ain’t the one and original Mister Cooper in charge of this hotel, are you?”
The night clerk laughed and replied, “I’d be home in bed like him if I was. Why do you ask?”
Longarm said, “Let’s try it this way. In all your born days at that desk have you ever laid eyes on Bunny McNee, the kid who stayed here without paying, in broad daylight?”
The night clerk shook his graying head and answered, “Only seen him once, fleeting, in any sort of light. He checked in one noon when Mister Cooper was standing behind this desk. The hotel help says he never went out much. Even had his meals upstairs in his room and added to his bill. That’s another reason he ran up such a bodacious bill. Like I said, I saw him that one time, around four or five in the morn when I was half asleep. I wondered what he might be up to at that hour. I didn’t know till later he was skipping out on us. Is it true he was really a she? Just heard some others talking about it when I was sipping black coffee in the kitchen.”
Longarm allowed he found a heap of things about his dead federal want confusing as hell. Then he headed next door to their dining room.
Matilda Waller was seated alone at a corner table, going over her waitress tabs while there was nobody in the place to serve. As she looked up at Longarm with an uncertain smile he nodded curtly and told her, “I have got to talk to another waitress. If I ain’t back by the time you’re fixing to leave, don’t leave. We might have a lot to talk about!”
As he strode out the far door to the street the waitress gasped, “After you’ve asked some other waitress first? I should think not, no matter how long Peony said it was!”
Longarm never heard that. He was moving fast in his low-heeled cavalry stovepipes. He wore boots suited to riding or walking with the weary legwork of a lawman in mind. He was starting to know the center of John Bull better than he’d ever wanted to, running around it like a confounded errand boy! Thanks to the crowded street out front, the beanery across from the jail was still doing business. He asked the manager which of his two colored gals might be Ruby. He didn’t get much cooperation until he flashed his badge and repeated his request in a firmer tone. Ruby turned out to be the older and more motherly-looking one. She verified what the night clerk at his hotel had said about her delivering that message from the late Tess Jennings, also known as Bunny McNee. Ruby said, “It was slow, just after most of our regulars had finished their suppers. So Mister Bob, the gent you were just fussing at, said it was all right if I ran that white gal’s note over to the law. You had to feel sorry for the chile. She’d cried herself all red-eyed in that jail cell, and when she asked me to help her I couldn’t say no.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “I can see you have a kindly way about you, Miss Ruby. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you delivered her message. Did she tell you any more than what was on the paper, by the way?”
The motherly waitress smiled sheepishly and confessed, “Of course I read it. It wasn’t sealed up and why did
