When Longarm and Marshal Casey joined the others atop the flat roof across the way, Longarm saw he'd guessed right about the Henry rifle the sneaky cuss had been pegging away with. It lay beside him on the tar paper as he stared up wide-eyed from his bloody mangled face. Longarm's return fire had left cat's whiskers of splintered sun-silvered wood sticking to the raspberry jam around his shattered teeth. But one of said teeth was gold, the staring eyes were oyster gray, and the heavy brows above them met in the middle.
The tan ten-gallon hat over by a smoke flue went with his fancy tooled Justin boots and buscadero gun belt. So Longarm wasn't too surprised when he hunkered down to find a tooled leather wallet on the corpse with a library card allowing he was Thomas Taylor out of Amarillo.
He told the other lawmen assembled, 'This adds up to a serious want known bests as Texas Tom Hatfield. He had state and private bounties posted on him. We wanted him for robbing a post office. The states of Texas and Arkansas want him for back-shooting peace officers in both jurisdictions. The Pinkertons are paying the most because of a train he robbed in Kansas.'
He rose back to his considerable height and turned to the town law to soberly add, 'I am telling you all this because I'm up this way with other fish to fry. My own boss frowns on his deputies filing for reward money. You'd be welcome to as much as you can collect on this son of a bitch if you wanted to claim him as your very own and save me some paperwork.'
Marshal Casey shot a sweeping look across the faces of his own men, there being no others up there with them, yet, and declared in a certain tone, 'The son of a bitch put up a hell of a fight when we asked him what in thunder he was doing up here with that infernal Henry and no hunting permit. But just for the private peace of my soul, Deputy Long, what in blue blazes was this all about?'
To which Longarm was forced to reply, 'I ain't sure. This rascal had a rep for back-shooting lawmen, on his own or for pay. Since I just recognized him as a wanted killer, he might have recognized me earlier and decided to kill me on his own. It's just as possible, and as likely, somebody else wanted me killed lest I be getting warm. If I knew whether I was getting warm or not I wouldn't have to guess so hard.'
He moved toward the fire steps they'd all climbed up as he continued, 'I got to get it on back to my hotel with a package I dropped across the way. Had this skunk known where I was staying, he wouldn't have been following me around. I reckon he, or they, were watching for me by the Western Union. That's where I'd watch for a lawman on a field mission if I'd just heard he was in town.'
One of the younger deputies started to ask how come the late Texas Tom had scaled those fire stairs with yonder rifle instead of just letting fly with it over by the telegraph office.
Before Longarm or Casey could reply, a more weather-beaten deputy snorted in disgust and said, 'He wanted to get away with it, you asshole. All sorts of folk point fingers at you when you gun a man on the streets of Cheyenne in broad-ass daylight. If he hadn't missed from up here, he'd have just laid low ahind yonder false front until his gunsmoke and the excitement faded away. Weren't you paying any attention when we shot it out with him, just now?'
The kid deputy grinned sheepishly and allowed he'd forgotten. So Longarm knew he was free to climb down from the roof and elbow his way against the current of the gathering crowd.
There was hardly anybody on the far side of the street in front of the notions shop. He saw nobody had lifted the brown paper package he'd thrown against the siding near the entrance. As he bent to pick it up, Daisy Gunn A. K. A Crawford joined him, breathless, barefoot, and back in her mannish duds, to sob, 'Oh, Custis! I knew you were mixed up in it as soon as I heard the shots and folk in the hall commenced yelling about a shootout betwixt lawmen and a rooftop sniper!'
Longarm grabbed her gently but firmly by one thin arm and frog-marched her inside, where the nice old lady was holding a broom as if to repel boarders as she wailed, 'Get out of here before I call the law, you ruffian!'
Longarm moved Daisy back from the front glass as he told the little old lady, 'I am the law and I only talked rough because you were in the line of fire, ma'am. This other lady, though you wouldn't know it, is the one I just bought them more ladysome duds for. Now, I have yet another business proposition for you. How much would you charge me to let my deputy, here, dress up more girlish and stay here with you as if she was hired help or a visitor from other parts?'
The older gal told him not to be ridiculous. Then, being a gal, she asked him what they were talking about.
Longarm explained, 'I am U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. This here is Deputy Daisy Crawford. Like you can see, I've had her disguised as a boy because she's working undercover for the U.S. Government and me. Them shots just fired at me from across the way may mean the crooks we're after have been watching us a spell. Me and Miss Daisy were checked into the Pilgrim Hotel. By now the other side might know this.'
The older woman stared primly at the raggedy barefoot waif he'd just described as a girl checked into a hotel with him and sniffed, saying, 'You should both be ashamed of yourselves, working under cover or on top of the covers!'
It was Daisy who blazed, 'He ain't been fucking me, ma'am. He's been so pure it makes me want to puke!'
The older woman looked away, red-faced and trying not to bust out laughing. Longarm said, 'I ain't asking you to hide me, ma'am. I need a place to hide Deputy Daisy where I won't have to worry about her as I do some scouting ahead.'
She didn't look convinced.
Daisy asked what he was talking about, asking, 'Didn't you tell me we were fixing to sneak out of town together as soon as it got dark?'
Longarm nodded and said, 'I did, and like Mr. Robert Burns wrote, the best laid plans of mice and men get old and gray when the other side could be on to 'em. They may or may not know I checked into that hotel with a ragamuffin of indeterminate sex. Whether they've taken you for a sissy boy or a mighty rough gal, they'll be expecting us to still be together when, not if, they notice we ain't at the Pilgrim Hotel no more. So I'd be harder to spot, sneaking about alone, while you'd be harder to spot doing the same, in a whole new outfit, as soon as I figured it was safe to send for you, see?'
Daisy didn't. It was the more worldly shopkeeper who set aside her broom to explain, 'I see his plan and it makes a lot of sense, dear. He chose some much more feminine clothes for you, earlier. If we did something about those farm girl braids... Perhaps an upswept hairdo with just a little discreet powder and paint... I could introduce you as a niece I'm breaking in, unless you'd feel safer hiding out up in my quarters above the shop.'
Daisy said, 'Oh, Lord. I've been cooped up less than one day in a hotel room and it feels like being in a soft jail. I got this gun in my hip pocket if anybody comes in here after me.'
Longarm and the older woman exchanged more grown-up glances. He shrugged and said, 'I had to deputize her in a hurry. The right sort of help can be hard to find at short notice.'
The little old lady smiled thinly and replied, 'So I can see. May I consider myself one of your posse, or would you describe us as a harem?'
Longarm laughed easily and said, 'My boss would never go along with that notion and, even if he would, I ain't a Turk nor Mormon, ma'am. So I reckon we'd best describe you as a concerned citizen, and how much is this going to cost the justice department?'
The little old lady said, 'People who know me well enough to ask such questions call me Covina, Covina Rivers. If Daisy, here, is willing to help around the shop, make her own bed upstairs, and behave herself in general, we'll call it even. As you said, good help is hard to find.'
Longarm said she had to charge Daisy's grub at the going army and civil-service rate of four bits a day. So they shook on it, and old Covina carried Daisy and her new duds to the back of the store, where she was supposed to change and stay put until quitting time.
As she drifted the other way with Longarm, she told him she knew how to make a tomboy look like a young lady. She suddenly blurted out that she'd been considered poised as well as pretty, one time.
Longarm smiled down at her in the doorway to reply, 'You're still a handsome woman, Miss Covina. I've known ladies with older-looking faces who did wonders and ate cucumbers with a little help from a bottle of henna or sepia tincture.'
She sniffed and said that would be a cheap trick. He had no call to argue. Portia Parkhurst, attorney-at-law seemed sort of proud of her gray hairs, all over, as well. As they parted in the doorway he tried not to picture either sweet old thing allowing him even a peek at their pubic hairs by lamplight. He assured old Covina he'd wire
