Waco picked up the shot glass, threw back the heroic slug of one-hundred-proof, and declared, “Never met nobody with a pimp mustache. Never met no Spider Lady, and I took it on faith old French Barbara was with Buster instead of off to join some circus as a sword swallower. She swallowed me one payday for an extra two bits, all the way to my balls, and I ain’t built delicate.”
Longarm grimaced and poured another drink as he insisted they’d been talking about a gal who sounded more dangerous. He said, “French Barbara and those other two riders, Currier and Landon, could be in serious even as we speak. There’s no saying what Miss Medusa Le Mat will decide on as soon as she hears Buster and another party to her plot have been gunned down this evening.”
Waco drained the shot glass, slammed it back down awkwardly, and said, “That’s right. I was fixing to call you on that shooting, you rascal! Have you been trying to talk me out of that?”
Longarm poured yet another drink as he quietly replied, “We can’t shoot it out before you pay me that ten dollars you owe me. Meanwhile, this gal none of us know by her right name has spun the same sorts of webs before. She meant to use your pal Buster, and all the pals he recruited for her, to pull a big holdup around payoff day, which is only a few days off.”
Waco said that was what Buster had told him.
Longarm said, “I ain’t finished. She was planning to double-cross them as soon as they rejoined her after the robbery. She aimed to gun the menfolk, and either escape with the gal as two-little-maids-from-school-are-we, or swap duds with her female dupe and leave her behind as a red herring, or as a dead gal who could be taken for any gal anyone recalled from around the bank. What does this whore French Barbara look like, by the way?”
Waco shook his head again, stood taller, and decided, “Innocent, for a trail-town whore with such scandalous ways with cowboys. She’s around thirty, give or take a few beatings, with soft brown hair like that gal in Mister Foster’s romantical song. She likes the song about that other Barbara Allan too. Says she’s always dreamed of having a good-looking cuss like Sweet William die for the love of her. I wish she was here right now. I’d tell her I loved her and then I’d make her suck me off. Is that why you’re so interested in her, Longarm?”
The much more sober lawman smiled thinly and explained, “I’ve got more than one gal I’ve never seen on my plate. Do you know Rose Cassidy, bought the old Nesbit place near Minnipeta Junction a spell back?”
Waco said, “As well as any man can say he knows such a mean-eyed gal. They say she’s a widow. She must have screwed at least one man in her day, since she has a grown-up daughter nobody can get close to neither. Old Rose must not have enjoyed the experience. She acts as if all men were shit on the walk with her wearing Sunday shoes!”
Longarm said, “I’m sorry her marriage didn’t work out. I’m more interested in what she looks like. Her daughter’s one of them blue-eyed brunettes with Irish features. Would it be safe to say Maureen Cassidy favors her mother’s side of the family?”
Waco reached for the shot glass, knocked it over instead, and said, “Mother and daughter are both Irish-eyed brunettes, only the kid’s way more friendly. You have been trying to get me drunk, you sneaky rascal! You’re trying to make me forget you gunned my pal and I took a solemn oath to shoot you down like a dog. Ask anyone in here if I didn’t promise to avenge old Buster Crabtree’s untimely death!”
Longarm said, “Later. After you pay me that ten dollars and help me figure out what’s been going on.”
Waco protested, “I ain’t got your infernal ten dollars. I’ll just have to owe it to you whilst we have it out man to man!”
Longarm firmly insisted, “I can’t let you take advantage of me that way, Waco. You pay up like a man or I flat out refuse to fight you. How would it look if everyone said I shot you over a lousy ten-dollar debt?”
Waco stepped clear of the bar as he replied in the formal tone only the dead drunk can muster, “You presume a lot when you presume you can beat this child in a man-to-man confiscation … constitution … whatever.”
Longarm said, “I’ll drink to that. I know what Miss Medusa Le Mat looks like from our personal confrontation. Neither of the gals we seem to be missing looks too much like her, from the way they both describe. Let’s start at the beginning, with her local recruiting officer out to rustle up more help than she usually feels the need of. She might have heard, the same as me, that the big payoff coming up at the end of the month will be heavily guarded.”
Waco said, “I said I wanted to fight you now, damn it.”
Longarm went on, half to himself, “Buster and her other gunslick were spooked as stock on loco weed this evening. It looks as if they got spooked about Rose Cassidy before it came time to take over her place and leave French Barbara there with spare mounts.”
“I’m fixing to count to ten,” said Waco McCord, swaying like a tree in the wind. “When I get to ten I mean to go for my gun, and you can go for your own or go to hell for all I care!”
Longarm said, “Putting myself in the high-button shoes of that murderously cautious gal with the ten-shooter, I might well be on my way for parts unknown by now. She has to know she didn’t really kill me that time. So she has to know I’ll recognize her on sight, right after nailing at least one of her top guns. If I ain’t clear on that other jasper, Miss Medusa Le Mat has no way of knowing how much either one of them could have told me this evening, as a dying statement or some indiscreet letter or laundry mark on either of ‘em.”
“I’m starting to count now,” declared Waco McCord.
Longarm said, “Go ahead. But what time does that last train come through here after sundown?”
Waco said, “Four, five, ten. The train comes through at ten, I mean, and where was I before you throwed me off my tally?”
Longarm sighed and suggested, “Why not start all over? I’ve plenty of time to meet that night train at the stop just down the way. You don’t mean to pay me back first, eh?”
Waco said, “I’d be proud to, if I had the money. But I don’t, and you see how it has to be, don’t you, Longarm?”
Longarm nodded soberly and stepped clear of the bar, shifting his derringer to his left hand so he could pocket it without tying up his gun hand.
The move was not wasted on Waco, who said, “That was mighty white of you, old son. You had the drop on me all the while, but you’re man enough to fight me fair and for that I do salute you.”
