Longarm whistled softly. “A pest like that can be tough to discourage legally. Her word against his and what harm done, Your Honor?”
She demurely replied, “That’s why I told Silent Knight about it when more than one wife came into the Junction to complain. So now the dirty rascal is nursing his own complaints in a sick bed, and by the time he’s able to appear against anybody in court, what harm was done, Your Honor?”
Longarm said, “I follow your drift. So who have you sent them after this time, honey? That Uncle Chester young Maureen told us about?”
Pat blinked innocently and replied, “I never sent anybody after anyone, dear. As I told you before, I haven’t seen them today. They never came by to report that gunplay out by the old Nesbit place.”
Longarm took a drag on the cheroot and decided, “Mayhaps somebody else told them about Uncle Chester. Silent Knight told me he’d tried to court Maureen Cassidy, and Maureen told me about that dirty older man playing doctor with her when first we met.”
Pat repressed a shudder, and snuggled closer as she declared she’d hate to be Uncle Chester when and if those two caught up with him.
She said, “I doubt either of those bullies would trifle with a woman-child they knew to be a half-wit. They both seem to follow Old Testament notions on simple justice. But if you recall your Good Book, some of those notions about an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth make for simple justice indeed.”
He said, “I ain’t got much use for a man who’d molest a half-wit, and I’m sworn to uphold the Constitution. What sort of cruel and unusual punishments do you reckon those bible-reading bullies might have in mind for a dirty dog who’d hand his dick to an innocent young gal?”
Pat grimaced and reached for his as she said she doubted they’d treat his so gently.
Longarm didn’t mind what she was up to down yonder, but he told her, “I’d better see if I can catch up with Uncle Chester first. If neither Lash nor Silent are anywhere in town, they must have figured on finding the rascal somewhere else!”
She said she agreed on that, but failed to see why he really cared what the boys did to a degenerate who trifled with children. She told him, “Maureen is safe at my place. He can’t bother her there.”
Longarm said, “Ain’t worried about Maureen. I want to know what happened to her mother. I’d as soon ask Uncle Chester before they mess him up too much to talk.”
Pat started to stroke him harder as she mused, “We don’t know that saddle tramp did anything to Rose Cassidy, dear. Maureen says she seemed all right when she headed into Florence on business.”
Longarm said, “Florence is a fair ride off, and a heap can happen to a lady on the rolling prairies betwixt hither and yon. I figure Silent and Lash have come to the same conclusion. So I reckon I’ll just ride that way and see what there might be to see.”
She asked if they couldn’t do it one more time before he left. He told her he’d try to come in her twice, seeing he didn’t know when he’d be back. So she forked a naked thigh across him and got on top to take charge this time lest he torture any more political secrets out of a poor helpless girl.
Chapter 13
Longarm knew most country folks were free with cake and coffee and tight with gossip about folks they knew when asked by a nosy cuss they didn’t. So he didn’t stop at any of the few spreads he passed that afternoon, aiming to ride into Florence around nine or ten that evening, when others were less likely to notice.
So he made good time aboard a spunky chestnut Pat Brennan had loaned him, as if to make certain he had to get back to her before he left for good, with his case wrapped up or not.
But just before sundown, miles short of Florence, he crossed a timbered draw to meet up with Silent Knight and Lash Flanders coming the other way with a buckboard and a quartet of colored day laborers.
As he reined in to greet them, Longarm naturally asked how come. Silent Knight pointed at the cottonwoods and hackberry trees behind Longarm to say, “We’re out to solve us a murder. Or to find a murder victim leastways. For we’ve reason to believe Rose Cassidy lies dead and buried somewheres near.”
Lash chimed in. “We got to talking about it betwixt here and town. After we’d chewed it up and spit it out more than once, that draw is the only stretch worth poking about in. These rises all around us are nigh solid chalk under a few inches of sod.”
Longarm nodded and said, “I can see why you’d expect a dead body to be buried in the sandy bottom of a draw, gents. But how come you ever came to such a grim conclusion about Rose Cassidy? Her daughter says she was last seen alive and well riding into Florence on some horse-trading business.”
Silent Knight said, “Nobody in Florence admits to any recent horse-trading with her. And we were asking about her all the way in from Minnipeta Junction. It ain’t been a whole week, and you don’t get that many tolerable- looking women riding this open range alone.”
Longarm said he followed their drift as far as this particular draw. He said that was where they lost him.
Lash Flanders grimly replied, “That was where we lost Rose Cassidy. She stopped to water her bronc at the Edenwald spread, a mile or less to the southwest.”
Silent Knight pointed the other way and said, “She never stopped or even passed the Berger spread when she should have, no more than half an hour later. Jimmy Berger and his boy, Lem, were out by this wagon trace repairing their cattle guard, and she never passed them.”
Lash Flanders was directing their hired shovel crew into the draw at the moment. So Longarm asked Silent if those helpful Bergers had recalled any other riders during the time in question.
The regulator shrugged and said, “Well, sure, they saw other riders, riding both ways along a busy trace in broad-ass daylight! The point is that neither saw a handsome wasp-waisted woman, mounted on a nice-looking cordovan stud with Morgan lines. You’re a lawman. Add it UP.”
Longarm did, wryly noting word had surely gotten around since they’d met up in that Florence jailhouse. He said, “One witness watching a lady riding toward a wooded draw, plus two more who never saw her riding out from it, sure adds up sinister.”
