woman he admired, back in the early days of the California gold rush. He beat that charge but got arrested soon after for killing another man while he was robbing a stagecoach. But he busted out before they could hang him, and the next anyone heard of him he was a vaguely sinister young man with no visible means of support around Lewiston, Idaho. Before his past could catch up with him, he'd moved on to the new Montana gold fields and run for sheriff during the confusion of the war back East.
Longarm fished out a smoke of his own as he told the tinhorn he was starting to worry about his wild tale. He said, 'If Henry Plummer could get elected sheriff while more responsible men were too busy to bother with local politics, anybody could do it. Plummer was wanted on every charge but farting in church. But they elected him, and in less time than it takes to tell, he'd gathered close to two hundred outlaws from all over to rob the stages he earmarked with chalk after asking the management, in his capacity as sheriff, which ones were most worth robbing.'
Longarm lit his cheroot and added, 'Had he been content just to get rich, he might have gotten away with it. But once you rob so much that business comes to a standstill, folk commence to study their neighbors harder. Once the vigilantes whupped a full confession out of one member of the Montana Innocents, as the gang was called, old Plummer and ten or twelve other ringleaders were invited to the same evening rope dance. But they'd sure lived high before they'd hung high, and some would-be mastermind is always trying to repeat the past performances of some earlier mastermind who might have gotten away with it--if only.'
Longarm took a thoughtful drag on his smoke, let it out, and demanded, 'Where do I find said mastermind so's I can ask him?'
Deacon Knox shook his head and said, 'You shot my main contact with the outfit. Texas Tom knew me well enough to tell me where we'd be meeting next. I suspect Ram Rogers and the gal he has holding his horse, or his dick, depending, must have been spooked as me when you nailed Texas Tom with a head-shot, blind, at that range!
Longarm shrugged modestly and said, 'It just takes practice. Let's talk about why Texas Tom was up on that roof to begin with. Have you any notion why my arrival in Cheyenne made them so morose?'
Deacon Knox shook his head and said, 'I told you they never told me they meant to kill you. The deal was for me to point you out so's they could steer clear of you.'
'Didn't anybody say why they wanted to steer clear of me?' Longarm insisted.
The tinhorn thought back, then tried, 'Ram Rogers said something about you being there when Rusty Mansfield was gunned, down Denver way. He said you'd had the chance to talk to any number of witnesses, and there was just no telling what you'd heard or how warm you might be.'
Longarm grimaced and said, 'I'm flattered as hell. But I purely wish I had the least notion what he suspected I might know. Because all I know for certain is that I'm missing something about all this!'
CHAPTER 12
Longarm had long since learned not to warn a suspect of a possible slip by following up on it too tight. Every time he'd pressed Deacon Knox about his own intended assassination, the tinhorn had insisted neither the late Texas Tom nor the still armed and dangerous Ram Rogers had taken them into their full confidence. So in the end he'd told the slippery Deacon they were square and advised him to get out of Wyoming Territory while he was ahead.
After he'd done that he'd circled back to tail the white-suited sneak in the tricky flickersome night-lights of downtown Cheyenne. But while it was easy enough to keep an eye on that linen suit and big white hat from a discreet ways back in the early evening street life, Deacon Knox spoiled it all by having a couple of stiff drinks at a saloon near the depot and then going on to the same to pay his way out of town aboard the next westbound U.P. as if he'd been paying attention to Longarm's fatherly advice.
Longarm doubted it would be prudent to pussyfoot any closer to the railyards, recalling what Deacon Knox had let slip about others guessing he was bound for Keller's Crossing and knowing which night train was most likely to get him there. The tinhorn was likely on the level about not wanting to be mixed up in the killing of any man who rode for Billy Vail and the attorney general of the whole U.S. of A. But it would have been expecting too much of a born crook to ask for the finger-pointing rascal to point a finger at his erstwhile chain-gang mate. Old Deacon had doubtless described Ram Rogers the same as the wanted fliers posted on the surly breed because he'd known the lawman he was talking to had surely read at least one.
But since he only knew Ram Rogers by description and ill repute, and had even less on the shemale accomplice who could be staked out most anywhere, Longarm had to reconsider his immediate travel plans.
A stranger in town didn't lay low in waiting rooms, saloons, or an all-night chili parlor. As he drifted back from the part of town those rascals would expect to see him in, he considered returning to that hotel across from the Pilgrim to see whether little Sue still liked him. But parting was a sweet pain in the ass when you only had to do it once and he wasn't sure he could get it up again with a block and tackle if Sue had stopped cussing him.
He'd missed his supper during all the earlier excitement, and now that he found himself and his Winchester hugging the shadows with nothing better to do, he felt hungry as a bitch wolf hunting prairie dogs.
But all the places he passed that served grub were lit up inside like display cases for the perusal of any gunslick shopping for a target along the darker walks. So there had to be a better way.
It came to him as he'd circled aimlessly, or so it had seemed, to the stretch of Central Avenue where he'd had that shootout with the late Texas Tom.
He'd already decided not to hole up with any other lawmen there in Cheyenne before he was certain where those gunslicks Deacon Knox had been with knew anyone else with an ear to the neighborhood gossip. He'd never told anyone he'd been told to stop over in Cheyenne for some courtesy calls on other lawmen. Whatever the gang's leaders had heard about him being in the Parthenon Saloon in Denver at the time of Rusty Mansfield's death by gunfire, they should have expected him to arrive that afternoon on the passenger varnish and lay over by the depot just long enough to catch the earlier local he'd been forced to miss. Not the night freight that only went as far as Fort Laramie.
As he stood on the plank walk in front of Covina Rivers's notions shop, dark and shuttered at this hour, it came to him she and little Daisy were no more than a door knock away. So he moved to the side door betwixt the shuttered front window and that now half-empty rain barrel to knock on it.
A familiar voice from inside called out, 'We're closed for the night. You'll have to come back in the mornin'.'
Longarm called back that he didn't want to buy any ribbon bows or yard goods, and his voice must have seemed familiar, too. Because old Covina opened up to greet him at the bottom of the stairs in a flannel robe with a candlestick in one hand and her long gray hair down.
She said, 'Daisy and me have been pulling taffy in our nighties. What on earth brings you here at this hour? You told us you'd be out of town aboard that late local.'
Longarm replied, 'I noticed. Since last we discussed my travel plans, I've changed them some, and even worse, it seems somebody out to gun me knows my next move by the time I can manage to make it.'
She told him to come inside before somebody saw her talking to a man in her nightgown with her hair down, land's sakes.
As he stepped inside, he could smell hot buttered taffy, and he'd never known he liked the sticky sweet shit that much as his empty stomach rumbled.
She led him up the narrow stairs as he told her what he'd been up to since that afternoon, leaving out his friendly meeting with the Lakota nation but telling her what Deacon Knox had said about hired killers hiring others to finger him there in Cheyenne.
She gasped. 'Heavens, you say you even suspect your fellow lawmen, Custis?'
To which he replied, 'Not all of 'em. Maybe none of 'em told any drinking pals that much about me with any malice aforethought. You know how idle gossip makes its rounds until somebody with way more interest overhears it. I know neither you nor Daisy could have told Deacon Knox and his pals I was planning on missing that last afternoon local up to Keller's Crossing because I thought I'd make it, as I was leaving here, earlier. I had time to catch my intended train when I found out someone had been acting cute and could be laying for me at the Pilgrim Hotel. Their tinhorn scout gave up when I hadn't shown up by the time I should have left town. When he rejoined his pals, they told him they'd been watching at the depot and I still had to be in town. So they figured I meant to catch the later train tonight and sent him back to the Pilgrim to see what else he could find out.'
By then they were up in her kitchen, where young Daisy sat grinning in her own nightgown, from the stock
