with a sigh he said, “We were wondering where you rode off to, Sattler. Right now, I sure feel dumb. But I wasn’t sure anyone out this way but the foreman was High Dutch. Must have come in handy for old Wolfgang here. A real Irishman would have had to be a true top hand to be hired on as one.”
Ignoring the lawman he had the drop on, the erstwhile town law of Sappa Crossing asked his grinning confederate, the fake Trooper O’Donnel, “Was sonst noch? Was wunschen Sie?”
Wolf Ritter smiled boyishly as he drew his own gun and said, “I think this will be more fun if we all speak English. As I told you out in the stable when I asked you to cover me, this one was much too clever for anyone’s good, including his own.”
He nodded at Longarm and demanded, “Who told you who I really was? Speak up. Don’t make me resort to cruelty.”
Longarm smiled wryly and replied, “Were you planning on kindness? Nobody had to tell me. You just now said I was clever. It was what we call the process of eliminating. I just kept eliminating and eliminating until here we are. If it’s any comfort, you’re pretty clever too. I reckon you learned to move so tricky under that sneaky Otto von Bismarck. I read how he tricked Louis Napoleon into guessing all wrong about his plans time and time again. A plain old crook would have simply killed Horst Heger. But you didn’t know who he might have gone to aside from your old pal, the town law, here. So you razzle-dazzled that old LeMat you had no further use for to make it appear Heger had recognized a desperate drifter, in the hopes I’d assume you’d drifted on by the time I got here. You knew I’d take my time to get here, once you’d had Heger wire a distant office, or wired for him. I still have some loose ends to tie up.”
Wolf Ritter chuckled fondly and said, “No, you haven’t. I’m trying to decide whether it would be more amusing to let you join us for a last supper and watch as we all have this little slut for dessert, or whether it would be wiser to kill you here and now.”
Over at the far end of the sofa, Iona was huddled with her old Athair, trying in vain not to cry as the full meaning of this scene sank in.
Longarm said, “I might have known you’d be scared of a grown man with only two guns backing your vaudeville villainy. You ain’t really hiding any dueling scars under that dyed mutton-chop down your cheek, are you? Fess up, as long as I’m fixing to die anyways. Ain’t it true you paid a skin doctor to scar you a tad under ether? I was reading how some of you Prussian college boys get your he-man scars the safe and painless way.”
The renegade officer smiled coldly and softly said, “It’s a good thing you are not a worthy swordsman, you oh- so-clever peasant!”
Longarm shrugged and said, “I had me some cavalry drill with the saber one time. Why do you ask? Are you offering me a fair sword fight?”
Wolf Ritter started to say something sneery. Then he frowned, smiled and decided, “Why not? It would be just the thing to work up a good appetite for food and other pleasures of the flesh. Werner, cover the kitchen with that shotgun. Martin, see nobody comes in the other way to disturb us as I give this lout a lesson in manners!”
Sattler protested, “I liked your first idea better!”
But Ritter pointed at the MacSorley sword collection with his own six-gun as he sweetly suggested, “Choose your weapon, my Yankee cavalier!”
So Longarm stepped over, unhooked that big two-handed claymore, and drew the cloth-yard of ancient steel from the cracked leather of its scabbard, saying, “I’ve always wanted to try one of these here crusader swords. Heavier than I expected, but the balance ain’t bad.”
The Prussian saberman laughed incredulously and helped himself to a more saberlike Highland broadsword, hefting it as he agreed the gents who’d made these lethal blades had known what they were doing.
Longarm asked if he meant to duel with a broadsword in one hand and that Schofield in the other.
Wolf Ritter smiled boyishly, holstered his six-gun, and shifted the basket hilt to his other hand, saying, “I naturally parry and thrust right-handed. En garde, you poor clumsy oaf!”
So Longarm, never having fought with a claymore all that much, got into a sort of baseball batting stance with the two-handed weapon as the smaller man with the lighter sword dropped into a more regular saber fighting stance with the tip of his own chosen weapon swaying like a steel cobra between them.
As Longarm stood his ground like a lethal baseball player, the renegade officer nodded thoughtfully and decided, “He’s not quite so dumb as he looks. I am naturally used to dealing with right-handed swordsman. I now have to consider how one takes on a left-handed lumberjack! That clumsy claymore only has to get in one solid blow and you might not stand so solidly afterwards!”
From his post near the front door Link said, “Left, right, im Scheissenhaus already! Shoot him and let’s be done with him! We don’t have time to play games here!”
The sadistic Prussian purred, “But we do! Nobody else can enter without permission of the foreman, and you haven’t quit just yet. How are we doing with that Chinaman in the kitchen, Werner?”
Sattler replied, “He’s cooking supper and keeping his mouth shut if he knows what’s good for him. But I think Martin’s right about our riding!”
Wolf Ritter didn’t answer. He lunged at Longarm instead. Longarm had figured he might. So when the experienced but formal swordsman bored in with a formally flashing feint and slash, Longarm whirled completely around to his left, to come out of his spin with that monstrous Highland sword gripped right-handed for a normal attempt at a home run, just as Ritter’s broadsword whistled through the space Longarm had occupied at the beginning of his diagonal slash.
The startled Prussian saw what had to happen next and tried to recover and parry, just a tad too late to really help, when a bigger man had already launched his own horizontal swing with a heavy three-foot meat chopper!
It felt to Longarm as if he was busting glass and chopping through a head of cabbage as the claymore in his hands snapped Ritter’s blade to send flashing steel in one direction and Ritter’s dyed head in the other!
Iona screamed like a banshee as the headless Prussian stood there spouting gore for almost a full second before the knees buckled. Then everyone was staring slack-jawed at the big bloody claymore Longarm had swirled up to thud into and hang from the ceiling rafters. That gave Longarm another instant to whip out his double derringer and fire it twice. Once was enough to part Werner Sattler from his shotgun. Then Martin Link was screaming loud at Iona, gutshot, flopping about on the floor while Longarm dove headfirst at the sofa, grabbing his
