Longarm said, “Nobody important to this case. Think of it as a mean kid prank. What’s important is that the confusion worked to the advantage of Ritter and his pals. Tiny Tim Breen and Slick Dawson, rattled by the unexpected arrests of their pals, hung around town long enough for me to get into a saloon shootout with ‘em. Then a pair of worse crooks backed my play, partly to avoid having to look yellow in front of men who knew them and partly because Ritter, as Trooper O’Donnel for Gawd’s sake, liked to kill total strangers. So I was really taken for a buggy ride by what had started out as simple slickery. I might or might not have fallen for the first simple plans to have a federal lawman declare the notorious Wolf Ritter and not a small-town marshal had ridden off with all that money, but once other events conspired to confound me further …”
Kurt Morgenstern asked insistently, “Aber weiso would the real Wolfgang von Ritterhoff want anyone to think he’d ever been anywhere near Sappa Crossing already?”
Longarm explained. “So we’d think he’d gone somewheres else after committing another crime with his famous LeMat, of course. My boss, Marshal Billy Vail, thought a High Dutch-speaking community would be a swell place for High Dutch crooks to hide out in, as soon as he’d had occasion to think about such a place. But Ritter had established himself in these parts as an Irish top hand, and he figured he’d look even less like his real self if we figured he’d pulled another of his crimes just passing through. Let me get back to the way I was thrown off his scent by other skunks.”
He flicked ash from the tip of his cheroot and continued. “With the safecrackers she’d known and cherished dead or locked up, old Brunhilda was stuck with plenty of nitroglycerine and confided that to another occasional caller, who worked as a part-time town deputy when he wasn’t pussyfooting around by the river the way randy young gents are tempted to when they don’t have much money and an old bat don’t charge much. He knew we were searching for a missing gunsmith and a heap of money because he got to hang about the town hall more than most crooks. So he told a pal, and they put two and two together to figure wrong about what was really in Heger’s vault. You all know how that turned out. Most of you were at that other hearing earlier when I finally started to notice how many leads seemed to end where a town marshal vouched unsupported. As I’d been about to say when he bolted, I was having a time figuring out how some parts fit together. I found it tough to buy a wanted outlaw on the run with a gun to be sold on consignment. Yet old Werner kept assuring me all my handy suspects were known to him as a bunch of local boys. I had a little trouble deciding how even a famous outlaw would have known about that secret fund for the Ruggles sisters unless someone in town told him about it. I couldn’t see Horst Heger confiding he had a fortune in his vault to a man he’d just recognized as a holdup man. But you all saw how Sattler bolted, and now he’s in the smokehouse with a bullet in his chest and his head busted in with a rolling pin, so are there any more questions?”
The deputy coroner declared that since earlier witnesses had described the wild gunfight inside this very house, along with what all three crooks had admitted in plain English, he aimed to dismiss this last witness with a commendation for a job well done.
It still took them until almost midnight to break up and get on back to town with the three bodies. So Longarm was yawning as he groped his way out to the stable and started to saddle the bay while telling it they’d have to go easy on its lamed paint pal.
Iona MacSorley joined him there in the warm horsy darkness in what seemed her nightgown. He hoped for her sake she was wearing boots. He howdied her, and explained he meant to get the livery mounts home before the sun rose high enough to sweat them. She murmured, “Athair is fast asleep in his own wing of the house, and nobody comes near my quarters before breakfast time if they know what’s good for them!”
He said, “That’s swell. We’ve all had a rough day and you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep, Miss Iona.”
She asked, “Why didn’t you tell them it was I who took that shot at you in front of the gunsmith’s window? Just to get you to come back here for the night, of course. I’d have hit you had I been aiming at you.”
He nodded soberly and said, “I saw you nail that yard dog with a hip shot, Miss Iona. I had no call to cause you embarrassment or mix your neighbors up with more details than they needed to get down. So let’s agree no harm was done and say no more about it.
She stepped closer. He saw she really was standing there in a thin nightgown as she putted, “Now that we’ve settled that, let me make it up to you, Custis. Come back to my quarters with me or, for that matter, would you like to climb up in the hayloft with me here and now?”
He ignored the hand she’d placed on his sleeve to shake his head and reply, firmly but not unkindly, “I aim to make it to Cedar Bend around sunrise, Miss Iona. So why don’t you run on to bed and I’ll just be on my way.”
He knew she was wearing boots when she stamped a foot wetly on the stable floor and demanded, “What’s wrong? Why do you slight me so? Don’t you think I’m pretty? Have I done something to offend you?”
Longarm smiled wryly down at her in the dim light and said, “Nobody could be as pretty as you think you are, but you ain’t bad looking, Miss Iona. As for how offensive I find you, I ain’t got time to list ‘em all. Let’s just say I don’t cotton to gals who shoot dogs just for acting like dogs, snap at the hired help just because they ain’t allowed to snap back, and peg shots at me just because I never swooned at the sight of so much loveliness.”
She sobbed, “I told you I was only teasing, darling!”
But he said, “I ain’t your darling. I don’t like you, Miss Iona. I reckon what you done to that dog was what really disgusted me. I ain’t so fussy. In my time I’ve swapped spit with gals I might not want to be seen in public with. I’ve gone farther than that with gals I reckon some lawmen would have arrested. But I’ve never been the darling of anyone as spoiled rotten and mean-natured as you. So I’ll be on my way now , and you’d best stand aside if you don’t want me leading these two ponies across that silk nightgown with stable muck on all eight hooves.”
So she got out of the way, saying dreadful things about his mother and his manhood as he mounted out in the moonlight, ticked the brim of his Stetson to her, and rode off at a trot before she could run in the house and get a gun.
Longarm laughed as he reined in on a distant rise to get his bearings as he lit a smoke. Then he told his mount, “That wagon trace to Cedar Bend is yonder, beyond that clump of soap weed. I know you both think me a fool. Some night, when I’m all alone in some strange hotel with a copy of the Police Gazette and a hard-on, I’m likely to cuss myself for passing up anything that perky and sweet-smelling. But I really didn’t like her and, even if I had, good old Osage Olive will be waiting for us over in Cedar Bend come morning, just in time for breakfast too.”
He carefully doubled the match stem so he wouldn’t set the dry prairie ablaze, and wryly added, “All right, Osage Olive ain’t half as pretty, but it wouldn’t be possible for such a selfish little snot like Iona to move her hips so generously. So Powder River and let her buck!”
