Bancott and Quinn had piles of warrants out on ‘em. But never in connection with the same crime. It’s as if a mixed bag of owlhoot riders, hearing things were confusing in a tiny town with a mighty modest law force, showed up separately.
“Only to join forces when they met or somebody hired them,” the dentist proclaimed.
It hadn’t been a question. But Longarm answered it, saying, “If it works out that simple I’ll buy you a good cigar. We know Ginger Bancott was sent to kill that Englishman before he could tell Widow Farnsworth how to run her railroad. Then Amos Payne killed Bancott, and so it couldn’t have been him who killed Payne, Deputy Keen, and a female prisoner who might have been acting as a ringer for the real Bunny McNee. Everywhere I’ve wired has McNee down as sort of a soft boy, not a real gal.”
The dentist nodded and said, “The killings at the jailhouse had to be the work of Quicksilver Quinn. Then he came after you at the school and-“
“Rein in and back up!” Longarm cut in. “How could one killer have shot three victims with two different guns? Or assuming a two-gun man, or one .45 loaded willy-nilly with longs and shorts, why would he then go after me? I hadn’t said I knew who’d killed my federal want along with your town law. I was fixing to leave town. I’d have been gone by this time had they let me. We agreed about this time yesterday that Quicksilver Quinn was never going after anybody again. He was dead before poor little Sarah vanished. I don’t see how he could have tried to drygulch me earlier today either.”
When they went over it all another tedious time, and agreed it seemed impossible to put any of this recent wild behavior together in a sensible pattern, the dentist declared Miss Sarah DuVal, as French Sarah had been more formally known, had met her death when some unknown son of a bitch had choked the life out of her. Then he banged his gavel and allowed it was over for now.
As Longarm lit a fresh smoke outside, he noted the sun was just fixing to go down behind the mountains to the west. Most of the folks in town had naturally had their suppers before heading over to the hearing. So it was getting to be that lazy, all too short time of the day they called gloaming, when the older folks rocked out on the porch swings and the kids played kick the can as the cool shade of evening spread across their play before bedtime.
A female voice from behind him whispered, “You will drop by our place for at least some coffee and cake, won’t you?”
He quietly replied, “Maybe later. I know you fashionable folk eat late. But I ain’t sure I can make it before, say, eight or nine.”
Then he saw he’d been talking like a fool to Flora Munro instead of the older gal who’d already invited him to a late supper.
He stared all about till he saw the back of Constance Farnsworth’s shay driving off. So he couldn’t even tell her he might be tied up in town for a spell.
Young Flora was blushing in the gloaming light as she dimpled up at him and said, “Why, Deputy Long, whatever gave you the notion I’d invited you to supper? Can’t you see it’s after seven o’clock at night? I just thought you might like to drop by on your way home and, well, meet my mom and dad.”
He gulped and managed not to let his horror show as he quietly asked if her folks didn’t milk cows a ways outside of town.
When she said their spread was an easy walk if he didn’t have a pony, Longarm laughed and said that while he’d be proud to walk ten miles to meet such a pretty gal’s mom, he had to help their Constable Rothstein track down the rascals they’d been talking about inside. So the pretty young thing flounced off to where her kid brother was holding their buckboard for her, and Longarm strode on through the gathering shadows. Two little girls were playing jacks on the porch steps as he went by a mustard-colored cottage with a lamp already lit behind lace curtains. It was that hour in the day when a tumbleweed gent got sort of tempted to quit tumbling and put down some roots.
But a couple of houses up some shrew was shrilling at her man through their own lamp-lit curtains about it being time he got off his lazy rump and found a better-paying job. So then Longarm remembered why he’d held off this long on settling down.
It was sad but all too true that they called that first month a honeymoon because that was about as long as the sweetest gal could hope to stay sweet. In his time he’d met many a gal who’d seemed a combination of Cleopatra and Little Bo Peep, only to wake up in bed one morning with the Witch of Endor. When you thought about it, old Cleopatra had nagged Marc Antony into trying for a better job and winding up in an early grave.
He had fonder memories of loving gals, such as good old Roping Sally up Montana way, who’d died before they could get used to his screwing and start wondering why he didn’t hit Billy Vail for a decent raise.
The only gals who never nagged him about the way he carried on were gals who seemed to carry on the same way. Sometimes they served to remind him why other gals might fuss at a man for his natural ways. He knew he had no right in this world to feel miffed about Red Robin heading over to Holy Cross with some other horny son of a bitch he just hated to picture in certain positions with her. But he was honest enough with himself to know that pissed him off. Fair or unfair, there was something bred deep in the bones of men that made them want to hog all the gals in their cave and bash in the heads of any other male brutes who messed with them. He paused in mid- stride to ask a telegraph pole beside the walk, “Say, pole, do you reckon we ought to look into that married woman poor old Amos Payne had been messing with on the side?”
The pole didn’t answer. It still saved Longarm’s life when what sounded like a big metal hornet went buzzing through the space his natural stride would have carried him to if he hadn’t paused in mid-stride that way. The muzzle blast of that first rifle shot caught up with the buzzing as Longarm dove headfirst over a picket fence to wind up in a weed-grown yard on his rump, gun in hand, as he tried to figure where that rifle shot had come from. The echoes off the walls all about would have made it tough enough without all those townsfolk running outside to yell back and forth over their yard fences. The old lady who owned the weeds he was sitting in came out to call Longarm a fool kid, and then something worse when she spied a grown man acting that silly on her property.
One of Rothstein’s kid deputies tore up the walk, gun in hand, to ask what was up. Longarm rose, his own gun down at his side, to tell the old lady he was sorry and tell the local lawman he didn’t know, adding, “Somebody just pegged another shot at me. As you can see, he missed.”
From her porch the old lady wailed, “There ain’t supposed to be no gunfire within the city limits. Come November my man is voting Democrat! There’s been way too much gunfire in John Bull of late!”
As Longarm stepped back out on the walk, they were joined by the new Constable Rothstein himself. Nate had heard enough as he’d come running to declare, “This is getting serious as hell, Longarm. Who do you figure it could have been?”
