approaching popped open and a gnomish figure with a white beard and fright wig popped out on the veranda to say something mighty scary in Hebredian Gaelic.
Iona replied in her imperious English, “Bleidir was about to bite into the boghan of this guest’s mount, Athair. He’s come to tell you he shot that tarbh tosgach the boys called Reb.”
The gnome laughed and grinned up at Longarm to say, “Ceudfailte agus toirlinn! That poorly cut bull was a devil, and have you eaten your fill this day?”
Longarm allowed he’d barely recovered from breakfast, leaving out the naughty parts, as he dismounted and let their hands take charge of his horseflesh. As he followed the gnome and his daughter inside he saw she was tiny and darker, now that she was on her feet with her hat hanging down her spine on its chin-cord. A redheaded Scotch gal he’d met a spell back had explained how nobody knew where those pockets of small dark elfin folks had come from before recorded history. She’d warned him never to ask any such folks if they were kin to that dark mysterious half-sister of King Arthur, Miss Morgana the Fairy.
The two little people sat him down before a baronial ‘dobe fireplace with a big round leather shield and some handsome cutlery over the timber mantel. Then Iona went to fetch some refreshments, and her father made him repeat his adventure with their queer-steer. Longarm couldn’t resist asking why they hadn’t shot old Reb themselves.
The older man’s English sounded plain enough. He had more music to his voice than his more Americanized daughter, but neither sounded at all like those vaudeville Scots who said things like, “Tis a bragh bricht moonlit nicht tonicht!” and insisted that was Scotch-English.
None of the old-timers he’d met in these parts, save for good old Opal Red-Dog, seemed inclined to make much sense. They all acted as if they had something, or somebody, more important on their minds. Longarm wasn’t of a mind to discuss the price of beef with the owner of the rogue he’d shot. So he asked if it was all right to smoke, and old MacSorley said he’d be proud to have one. So in the end the shooting of that queer-steer ran Longarm two and a half cents as they both lit up his brand.
They’d barely done so when there came a distant rumble, as of thunder, in the clear morning sky.
Old MacSorley said, “Och, mo mala, I wish they wouldn’t do that. It upsets my crodh and if each loses no more than a pound as it runs about, such losses add up!”
Longarm said he didn’t think much of dynamiting clear skies in the hopes of rain either. When he got no argument about that, he casually asked how MacSorley and his fellow beef growers felt about a wetter summer than usual, aside from the noise.
The older stockman shrugged and said, “Is coma learn, and I doubt the other stockmen care that much either, as long as the trails are dry and the crossings low by the fall roundup. We’re on ground too high to worry about flooding, and a wet or dry summer evens out for our crodh. Why do you ask?”
Longarm said, “They pay me to ask nosey questions, sir. I agree with you on that rainmaking operation over to Cedar Bend. But I was told some old boys fixing to harvest their winter wheat any minute have made threats against those Ruggles gals.”
The crusty old Hebredian snorted, “Och, that’ll be the day when an Anabaptist sgagair gathers the comas to raise his hand against a full-grown woman!”
Iona, coming back into the room with a loaded tray, trilled out, “He means they’re gutless sissies, Custis. Which girls do you want beat up, those silly sisters or the runaway wife who’s driven our only good gunsmith to distraction?”
As she put the tray of cake and coffee down on a nearby rosewood table, Longarm blinked uncertainly and decided to risk it. “Might we be talking about a Sappa Crossing gunsmith named Heger, Miss Iona?”
She swung her small shapely derriere around to perch it on a low leather hassock as she calmly replied, “Horst Heger is the only gunsmith in Sappa Crossing and the only good gunsmith this side of the county seat. Do you take canned cow and sugar, Custis?”
He said he preferred his coffee black, and as she served them she elaborated. “I should say he was the best gunsmith in these parts. I don’t know when I’ll ever get back a fowling piece I left with him a good two weeks ago. I’m not the only one who’s noticed how distracted he’s been acting since his child bride ran off on him with some saddle tramp a month or more ago.”
Longarm silently sipped some black coffee. She’d been truthful as to the brand. It was almost impossible to brew a bad cup of Arbuckle, which was why it was so popular in cow camps. But it tasted even better poured by a dainty hand from a coffeepot. He had some of their fine marble cake as well before he decided the risk of asking these outsiders outweighed asking Horst Heger’s High Dutch neighbors, or the distraught gunsmith himself. So he asked Iona MacSorley what else they’d heard about the small-town scandal out here a half-hour from town.
She said she’d never had much truck with Heger’s missing wife, save to notice she seemed shy and sort of pretty in a dishwater-blond way. The Scotch-American gal explained, “She didn’t speak much English. Or at least she never had anything to say to me in any lingo. Since my only truck with those Mennonites is purely business, I can’t give you any exact dates. I never asked my gunsmith where his fool wife might be when I didn’t see her peeking through the door in the back at us. I was over to the ladies’ notions shop, picking up sewing supplies, when I overheard an English-speaking nester woman complaining about her man being low on birdshot shells because that fool of a Dutchman had forgotten to send for them.”
Iona cut another slice of cake for Longarm, without waiting for him to finish the first, as she went on. “I spoke up about the fowling piece he never seemed to get around to fixing, and that was when the Mennonite shopkeeping lady told us we had to be patient with the poor man because his woman had strayed. That’s what religious folks call a wife running off with another man, straying.”
It was her gnomish father who quietly asked why a law man from out Denver way gave toad squat, or something that sounded as bad in the Gaelic, about the domestic tranquility of a local gunsmith.
Longarm decided half truth might be the best policy, and tried to sound as bemused as he washed down some cake to gather his thoughts, then told them both, “I’m following up a report on a wanted man who may have passed this way with an unusual side arm. So my boss suggested I have a word with any gunsmiths such a gunslick might have done business with.”
It didn’t work. Iona had already shown herself more interested in guns than most gals. When she asked what was so unusual about the gun of that wanted man, Longarm thought some more, decided a lie might be riskier than partly revealed truth, and said, “A lethal cap-and-ball antique called a LeMat, Miss Iona. It was invented in France, but heaps of Confederate gunsmiths copied it during the war because it was right popular with their cavalry raiders.”
