Doc Hobart declared it was his professed opinion that both men had died of gunshot wounds to the upper body, and added that the embalming would be easier if they just took his word on that.
Before anyone could answer, Red Robin barged down the cellar stairs, asking for Longarm in a worried tone. Longarm said, “Don’t come any closer, Miss Red Robin! These dead boys ain’t got any pants on!” Red Robin said she didn’t care, and added, “Waco McCord is over in the Sunflower armed, drunk, and dangerous, looking for the man who gunned his old pal Buster Crabtree. When some fool told him it was you, Waco said mean things about your mother and allowed he knew your face and meant to shoot you on sight!”
Chapter 18
Hard Pan Parsons said the best way to capture Waco McCord alive involved one deputy distracting him and another circling behind him with a throw rope, after Waco had been given time to get good and drunk.
Longarm had a better idea. Smiling fondly at his old pal Johnny Behind the Deuce, Longarm said, “It’s been my experience that men who like to talk about a fight ahead of time are sort of hoping to be talked out of it. In any case, I didn’t know Waco was in that tight with old Buster Crabtree yonder, and I’d rather talk to him whilst he ain’t totally out of his head.”
The others there tried to talk him out of it. But Longarm soothed the town law by allowing it would be all right to arrest old Waco if he insisted on a fight and won.
Johnny Behind the Deuce said he had a five spot saying an unusual event such as that wasn’t about to take place. So in the end Longarm was alone when he stepped through the bat-wings of the Sunflower and calmly told the one man standing with his back to the whole vacated bar, “You owe me ten dollars, Waco.”
Waco McCord stared owlishly at Longarm, gun hand hovering near the grips of his own six-gun, and replied in a voice of confusion, “Don’t you go changing the subject, Longarm! They say you just gunned my old pal Buster Crabtree, and I mean to clean your plow! So fill your fist and let’s get to it!”
“That’s a mighty low way to avoid a debt of honor,” Longarm insisted, raising his voice lest anyone still there miss a word as he went on. “A man who’d let a pal pay his fine, then gun him so he wouldn’t ever have to pay him back, would likely sell you his wife’s ass for drinking money!”
Waco wailed, “I ain’t got no wife and you’re trying to change the subject! Did you or did you not blow a pal I used to ride with through that gaping hole in the front of this very building?”
Longarm said, “I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little .44-40 because he was slapping leather at me. Had you been standing in my boots by yonder piano and he’d been drawing on you, you’d have done the same. Leastways, I hope you’d have done the same. You don’t look like a damned fool with suicidal tendencies.”
A voice of reason from across the taproom called out, “He’s saying it like it was, Waco. There was two of them and that lawman didn’t start it. They was the ones as started it. Two to one without a word of warning!”
Waco sighed wearily and muttered, “God damn it, I told old Buster that woman was fixing to get him killed!”
Longarm moved closer to the bar and picked up an abandoned bottle, since the barkeep was nowhere to be seen, as he quietly observed, “I just shot it out with Buster and another gent. You say there was some gal egging him on to get himself killed?”
As Longarm refilled Waco’s shot glass, the burly Texan nodded and explained in as reasonable a tone as a man in his condition could manage, “Buster called her the Spider Lady. I never met her myself. But I could see she wanted us to take all the risk whilst she wound up with equal shares.”
“Us?” asked Longarm, setting the rotgut aside as he used the same left hand to fish out a smoke, his gun hand being occupied all this while with that double derringer.
Waco numbly replied, “I never said I’d ride with them. Buster was trying to recruit some extra hands for the Spider Lady, and he knew I was at least as tough as he was. But I told Buster I’d risk stealing stock before I’d stick up a bank with a bunch of total strangers!”
Longarm told him, “You were smarter than you could have known, old son. If Crabtree’s Spider Lady was the crazy-mean gal we know by yet another name, she wasn’t about to settle for shares. We call her Miss Medusa Le Mat because a Medusa is a monster who kills everyone who sees her face, in this case with a Le Mat ten- shooter.”
Waco blinked at Longarm, shook his head as if to clear it, and demanded, “Are you saying that if you hadn’t just gunned old Buster, that Spider Lady was fixing to gun him later?”
Longarm nodded soberly. “That’s about the size of it. How come you call her the Spider Lady, Waco?”
The Texas rider picked up the refilled glass and replied in an offhand tone, “Buster called her the Spider Lady. He said she’d wove a clever web for catching money and tangling the feet of the law. He said she said she’d heard about him from another old boy from Texas he’d known in prison.”
Longarm asked if by any chance this other old boy could have been baby-faced and inclined to daily-rope from a center-fire saddle.
Waco hoisted his glass and declared, “Here’s to lips. Here’s to gums. Watch out, belly, here she comes!”
Waco downed the cheap but potent red-eye with one gulp, gasped, and wheezed, “I told you I never met none of the bunch. Hold on. Buster did say French Barbara Allan from the Junction had throwed in with the Spider Lady for fun and profit. Buster said the Spider Lady didn’t put out for her pals on the trail, but French Barbara would be more than willing to service three or four a night just to keep in practice. I don’t know what could have gotten into French Barbara, aside from old Buster, I mean. She had a good steady job at that trail-town whorehouse. It ain’t smart to risk your neck for a fifth or less of a bank robbery when you can make good money steady with your honest efforts.”
“Is that why you turned down the deal?” asked Longarm knowingly.
Waco growled, “Damned right! I can hire on most anywheres as a top hand who ain’t afraid to back my boss in a bounty, brand, or water dispute. I ain’t about to back the play of some smooth-talking she-crook who’s not willing to talk to me face to face!”
Longarm poured another drink for Waco as he murmured, “I just said you seemed smarter than you look. Let’s see if I have it straight in my head about this mysterious she-crook your pal called the Spider Lady. He was acting as her go-between, trying to muster a somewhat bigger gang than usual for her? You’re sure he was dealing with her directly, and not through some other Texican with a pimp mustache and a Schofield .45?”
