“Tough shit. Now get outa that bed and turn around so I can put some cuffs on you.”
“Look, dammit, I’m sick. I’ve been up and down all night and all morning with fever and diarrhea. I feel like I’m going to die. Every muscle and joint I have is aching. Come back and arrest me tomorrow if you like. I’m not going anywhere. No one is. Not until this storm lets up.”
“Marshal,” the other man said.
“Yes?”
“George and me both have been sick all through the night. If you think he did anything, or me either, from about ten o’clock last night on, check with the people here in the hotel. They’ve had to change our chamber pots every hour or so all through the night and all this morning. Neither one of us has been able to hold any food down. I don’t know what we got, tainted food or whatever, but it’s got the both of us down. Don’t take my word for that. Ask them down at the desk. They know we’ve been here right along.”
“Since ten last night?” Longarm asked. “Neither one of you was out this morning?”
“Neither one of us has been able to sit up, much less stand on his own two feet. Not since last night. Ask them. Ask the boy. Jimmy, is it? He’s been doing for us since early this morning when he came around with the hot water. Ask him.”
“Don’t think I won’t,” Longarm said.
“Listen, I hope you will. Really. George does too. And Marshal.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t judge George too harshly. He blusters and carries on sometimes, but he’s really a good fellow. Honestly.”
Longarm scowled. But he put his gun away. There was no doubt that both men in this room were sick. He could see it. For that matter, he could smell it. The interior of the room had that dank, sour stench of puke and fever. And no one, not the finest actor, could likely fake the flushed and sweaty look that George had on his ugly face.
But if both these men really hadn’t left their room today—which Longarm would damn well check with Jim Jennison Junior and the other employees of the hotel—then who the hell had been shooting at Longarm lately? And why?
He turned and rather reluctantly retreated through the shattered door.
Dammit, he grumbled to himself. He wondered if he could slip the damages for that door past Billy Vail’s clerk Henry when Longarm made out his expense voucher for this trip.
Chapter 30
For a change the telegraph operator was in and available for business. Longarm wrote out his messages and sent them, billing the charges to the United States Department of Justice.
Then once again he went shivering back into the teeth of the storm.
By now it was much too late to meet the barber/ undertaker at Darby Travis’s cabin, so Longarm looked for him at the barbershop as before.
The door was unlocked, although there was no sign of life in the shop. Once inside, however, Longarm could hear sounds of someone stirring around in a back room.
“Hello. Is anybody here?”
The barber came out, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and a smile on his face. The shirt cuffs stayed where they were, but when he saw who the visitor was, his expression fell on the double quick. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Sorry, but someone tried to shoot me on my way to meet you.” Longarm shrugged. “It’s what you might call an occupational hazard.”
“Did you hear the livery burned down?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Someone really shot at you?”
“Is your concern professional? Or personal?”
The barber grinned just a little. “So maybe business hasn’t been all that great lately.”
“I’ll let you give me a haircut if it will help out, but I draw the line at volunteering for your other services.”
The barber’s grin got bigger. “Speaking of which, and no help from you, I might add, I got the girl loaded onto the sled and brought her back. I was starting to work on her just now.”
“Good.”
“Incidentally, it was a good thing you made me get out there when you did. There were some kids in the cabin, just like before. They had the covers off her and were doing God knows what before I got there and scared them away. Probably having a circle jerk, the little bastards. Fortunately, I know who they are. I’ll tell their daddies, and I can pretty much promise you that those boys will be making some woodshed visits. And taking their meals off their mantels for a while.”
“You can’t blame them, I suppose,” Longarm allowed. “God knows I was a horny little shit my own self when I was young. But you can’t let it go on either. It isn’t right, never mind what Nancy did for a living.”
“Come on into the back if you like,” the barber offered. From the way he said it, with an exaggerated normalcy that suggested a shyness that the man would rather not admit to, Longarm suspected it was highly unusual for anyone to be invited to look in on that side of his livelihood. A professional courtesy perhaps, acknowledging Longarm’s livelihood, which also dealt with death? Naw, probably not. He was just reading stuff in where it didn’t belong. “Glad to,” was all he said, and the barber led the way.
The room was small and kept toasty warm with a coal-burning stove. Nancy’s slim, pale form was laid out on a broad, very heavy table.
