The deputy agreed that her mount being abandoned under a man’s roping saddle was a poser. Longarm said, “If Miss Medusa Le Mat and her pals didn’t roil the waters with unusual events, we’d have doubtless caught up with ‘em by this time. Let’s put that cordovan stud on the back of the stove for now, and worry about it after we make sure Medusa Le Mat had something to do with Rose Cassidy’s disappearance.”
The kid deputy looked uncertain, and asked who might have abducted that lady horse breeder from the junction if it hadn’t been those odd-acting bank robbers.
To which Longarm bleakly replied, “Someone else acting odd. Pat Brennan just arrested a cuss called Mannix for doing away with his wife and an innocent delivery boy out her way without a lick of help or even inspiration from Miss Medusa Le Mat. A heap of bandits are running free today because it was too easy to blame it all on Frank and Jesse instead of scouting seriously for sign.”
The deputy stared owl-eyed and demanded, “Are you trying to tell me there could be more than one killer running loose in these parts?”
Longarm shook his head and answered not unkindly, “I ain’t trying. I’m telling. Only the Good Lord and Old Nick know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, and women, as soon as you study on it. We don’t know for certain that anybody killed Rose Cassidy. If somebody has, we have more motives than you could shake a stick at. Somebody might have been out to lay her half-witted daughter, or ride her handsome horse, or hell, she could have run across mean saddle tramps who just robbed and raped an unescorted female because she was riding unescorted. Like the old hymn goes, farther along we’ll know more about it. Silent Knight and Lash Flanders are searching for old Rose with a willing crew of shovel hands. I feel certain they’ll let us know the minute they find out anything.”
The deputy couldn’t argue with that brutal logic. So they shook on it, and Longarm went into the livery to saddle up that chestnut and do some scouting of his own.
He crossed the tracks, forded the shallow Cottonwood Creek, and followed the post road as directed until sure enough, he smelled a whole lot of hogs being raised for market on the garbage of Florence.
The chestnut didn’t want to turn in there, and Longarm wore no spurs on his army boots, lest they get in the way of his footwork or jingle when a man wanted to tread sort of softly.
But Longarm had strong wrists and more willpower than any critter. So they rode in across the dooryard with a tied-up bulldog cussing at them all the way until a hefty but not bad-looking breed gal opened the door of her soddy to cuss the bulldog silent and inform Longarm she wasn’t in the market for anything he could possibly be out to sell her.
Longarm rode closer and flashed his badge before he reined in to dismount and tell her he wanted a word with Greek George.
She started to say she didn’t know who he was talking about, read the fair but firm expression in his gun- muzzle-gray eyes correctly, and proved how sensible her Osage Nation had always been about the federal government.
For while the Cherokee had sided with the Confederacy, and the Lakota just lifted horses and hair wherever they could get at them, Osage Opal had Greek George out front to greet their federal visitor in no time.
Greek George still looked as if he’d been dragged through a keyhole backwards, with some of the swelling giving way to purple bruises all over a face that might have been pretty a good many years and more than one good beating ago. The two of them sat on boxes along the shady north wall of the soddy as Osage Opal brought out coffee and cake to them. Greek George said to tell his old pal Lash that he’d decided not to press charges when the circuit court convened in a week or so.
The peddler said, “It was all a misunderstanding, inspired by the malice of a woman scorned. I know what they say about me and the way I may comfort some of the ladies along my route. But that Miss Portia Sloan who told her menfolk I’d felt her up is suffering from delusions of attractiveness. I swear, a corncob would cringe at the thought of being shoved up her stinky old cunt.”
“Never mind how you learned how that gal’s twat smells,” Longarm said, cutting in. “Rose Cassidy was on your route. Rose Cassidy seems to be missing. We suspect she met with foul play in that wooded draw just this side of the Bar Circle Six. Your turn.”
The self-confessed womanizing peddler, who didn’t seem to talk all that Greek, asked when Rose Cassidy might have vanished. When Longarm said it was hard to say for certain, given the memories of a feeble mind and other witnesses who hadn’t been taking notes, Greek George moaned aloud and said, “I swear I don’t know shit about that stuck-up Black Irish gal or her idiot child. You’re right about my stopping at the old Nesbit place a time or two, right after they moved in. But whether a man’s selling notions or trying to get laid, he has to be able to tell when he’s wasting his time. There are only so many hours to a day, or even a man’s life, once you study on how little time they give us on the dance floor. The girl wasn’t as unfriendly. I didn’t know she was a half-wit until I gave her some free samples and her mother came at me with a manure fork.”
The sardonic peddler thought back, sighed, and said, “I tried just one more time, knowing from experience that a housewife who puts the dogs on you might buy a teapot or sit on your lap when you show up at another time of the month. But that Rose Cassidy stayed cold-eyed as a copperhead no matter how a man smiled at her. I suspect she was one of them lizzy gals who don’t like men any time of the month.”
Longarm didn’t follow up on that. Men who tried and failed were always accusing women of lesbian leanings. He asked, “How come you called her Black Irish? Was she darker than her daughter, Maureen?”
Greek George shook his battered head and said, “Black Irish doesn’t have anything to do with anyone’s complexion. It’s the way the Irish themselves separate Irish Catholics from the Protestant ones they call Scotch Irish, see?”
Longarm nodded sheepishly and said, “I should have remembered that. I’ve been to more than one Irish wake, black or orange. I don’t see how the missing woman’s religious persuasion might account for her vanishing like that without a church of any description for miles.”
Greek George placed a finger alongside his swollen nose and winked knowingly as he replied, “I was raised Baptist because my elders just couldn’t find any Eastern Rites church where they wound up in Alabam’. But they was furriners. I’ve noticed English-speaking settlers tend to settle near their own sorts of churches, unless they don’t hold with churchgoing, or maybe want to keep to themselves.”
Longarm sipped some of Osage Opal’s good strong coffee as he tried to recall how many folks with Irish names he’d met in these parts.
Greek George said, “there ain’t no Papist church a day’s ride from that old Nesbit place Rose Cassidy bought a few months ago. So neither she nor her dumb daughter had any call to spend much time in town, or receive visitors
