could turn in for bounty money. He’d been sort of fuzzy about paying her any wages and owed her for two weeks. To Helga’s credit, or slow wits, she’d been living on the odds and ends of grub back here in the kitchen without dipping into the till.
Longarm tried to help her out in a graceful way by allowing he was in the market for a couple of dollars’ worth of Remington .44-40s and suggesting she had no call to record the sale before her boss came up with her back wages.
But while Helga led him back out front and rustled up the hundred rounds for him, she explained all such sales had to be entered in yet another notebook, although a smaller one, under the till.
He asked to see it as the buxom gal primly put his two cartwheels in the till. He saw at a glance that this extra record only dealt with ammunition. He saw why when he noticed some entries were notations on special orders. Thanks to the many mighty clever or ambitious machinists Who’d noticed the original breech-loading or revolver patents had run out in recent years, there was now a whole lot of makes and models on the market, some of them shooting mighty odd ammunition, such as that special caliber for the czar’s picky cavalry. Longarm looked for some, and sure enough, found more than one order for that .429-23 made for all those Smith & Wesson six-guns specially ordered by the Grand Duke Alexis while he was hunting buffalo with Bill Cody.
The czar’s fool cavalry had never taken delivery on those fool revolvers. So S&W had put them on the American market, cheaper than a matching model that fired regular American brass. You found out after you bought one that you had to send back East, to one factory at three cents a round, to load your bargain side arm.
Longarm guessed, and Helga confirmed, that the Russian S&W was a lot more popular than it should have been in Russian-Dutch Mennonite country. He saw they had more on hand than the average shop of this size would have. But then, try as he might and going back over a month, he failed to find any mention of that queer ammunition you fed a LeMat.
Helga didn’t seem to find that meaningful. So he told her, “Tough to sell an unusual gun at a high price without letting anyone peg a few shots out back. Let’s see if there’s any shells in the thing.”
As she followed him along the other side of the counter to where he’d placed the LeMat from the busted-up front display, Helga shook her blond head and insisted, “Ich glauben nicht. An idiot only would leave a loaded gun in das Fenster!”
But when Longarm examined the massive LeMat more closely, he found the shotgun chamber empty but five live rounds in the nine-shot wheel. He raised the loaded weapon to his mustache and sniffed before he told her, “It ain’t been cleaned since someone fired at least three rounds. One chamber was riding empty under the firing pin, but you can see the spent brass in these other three.”
She gasped, “So. schmutzig! Any gun will outrust when you clean it not after firing, ja?”
Longarm went on emptying the LeMat as he agreed. “That’s about the size of it. I doubt anyone ever intended to sell this antique. Twenty dollars was way too high a price to set, Heger had no ammunition for a big spender who might have wanted the fool thing, and like you just said, leaving a gun to lay about with a fouled barrel ain’t the way you’re going to keep it in mint condition!”
He held up the empty LeMat to squint through it at a chink in those front boards, then whistled and marveled, “I wouldn’t give five dollars for this poor brute with a hundred rounds of that fancy French ammunition thrown in! As your boss has likely told you already, the sulfur and saltpeter traces left in the grooves after hot spinning lead has wiped away every trace of oil can suck moisture from the air way faster than clean steel just left to rust.”
He put the weapon, now less valuable, back on the countertop and mused aloud, mostly to himself, “Try her this way. Ritter’s having as much trouble loading a freak gun, he knows it’s been mentioned on more than one wanted flyer, so he drops by a trail-town gunsmith to trade it in for something less unusual. Heger recognizes him but naturally never says so. He goes along with the deal, more interested in getting the rascal out of his hair than-“
“Bitte, who is this Herr Ritter?” Helga cut in.
Longarm said, “Never mind. If you’ve ever met him since, he was using another name. Heger must have expected him to be in town for a spell. That’s why he put the LeMat in the window. He priced it high so he’d still have it on hand when someone like me showed up.”
She said she didn’t know what he was talking about. He smiled and assured her she wasn’t to worry her pretty little head about it. Then he asked why she was getting all teary-eyed.
She said, “I am not so a stupid cow! Maybe I don’t so good the English speak, but I can read and write and also add and subtract!”
He said he was sure she was running the shop just fine, and promised to come back later with some sensible groceries before he rode on.
Chapter 11
Longarm collected some odd looks as he strode up to the town hall with his Winchester muzzle aimed politely at the planking. he figured it was likely because of his mustache. He’d noticed most of the homesteading Mennonites wore full beards, Abe Lincoln beards, or shave their whole face. Mennonite gals must have disliked whiskery kisses as much as Mexican gals admired them. He noticed it was the younger and more likely single locals who shaved and got regular haircuts. At the rate they were going those total furriners would be passing for real Americans in no time, and folks would think names like Taft, Treumann, or Welk had always gone with these parts.
When he got to Wemer Sattler’s office, a kid deputy told Longarm the town law was still out trying to separate the sheep from the goats. He said they were holding a couple of drifters back in their one patent cell, but doubted either one had pegged a shot at anyone in recent memory.
Longarm said he’d be over at that saloon with the unpronounceable name when and if Sattler wanted him. The kid deputy laughed and said Gansenblumchen just meant Daisy. Longarm was too polite to ask why they had to use such long words for every fool thing.
Once he got there, the Gansenblumchen turned out to be a beer garden as well as a saloon. You drank inside when the sun was blazing down hard at the tables and chairs set up under cottonwoods and paper lanterns out back.
As his eyes adjusted to the sudden shade inside, Longarm saw the taproom was better than half empty. That made sense in mid-afternoon on a working day. He figured the mostly older gents nursing mostly beer were in town with a crop in the fields and a woman interested in some pokey shopping. Many a saloon would have no call to open during business hours if women shopped like men and just got it over with.
