anyone would be dumb enough to use a cypher because that would be easy to spot, next to code.'
She said she thought a code and a cypher were the same.
He pocketed up the spent brass and explained the difference while he helped her down the steep steps, saying, 'You ain't the only one, Miss Rita. What most everybody calls the Morse Code ain't no code at all. It's cypher, which is a series of individual signs or symbols standing for letters of the alphabet. Don't matter whether you use dots and dashes, numbers or substitute letters. Anyone else can see at a glance the message is encyphered, and that's why crooks hardly ever use cyphers. Anyone as smart can figure your cypher out in time, once he knows he ought to.' She didn't seem to be following his drift. He said, 'A coded message is tougher to crack because it ain't half as easy to see it's in code. Codes are most often substitute words or sentences agreed upon in advance or written down in code books used by the sender and receivers. If somebody in Cheyenne wanted to tell a pal here in Keller's Crossing somebody like me was coming or not coming, they only have to word innocent-sounding messages a tad different. A message allowing Aunt Rhodie's goose had died in the millpond or from getting hit on the head with a walnut would only seem important to the ones who knew a millpond meant yes and a walnut meant no.'
Rita brightened and said, 'With Aunt Rhodie's goose meaning you, to them and them alone, right?'
He shrugged and said, 'If that was the code they'd agreed on. What will you bet they're using other code words and phrases?'
As he helped down the last step inside the tower, she dimpled up at him to declare, 'We can eliminate the majority of folk in these parts who haven't been sending or receiving telegrams at all, right?'
He shook his head and replied, 'Wrong. It's a sure bet that most of the folk in these parts have to be innocent. But a real sneak could send a coded message by wiring somebody innocent to do something, with a confederate watching for them to do it. I told you codes could be tougher than cyphers to break.'
As they stepped out into the church nave, one of her kid deputies came over to them holding a beat-up old trapdoor Springfield with as pleased an expression as a tabby cat delivering a dead sparrow to its mistress.
He said, 'We just found this in the flower bed by the side steps down to the churchyard, Miss Rita. That door bolts from the inside, and guess how we found the barrel latch? Looks like the jasper as shot out your front window got in here by forcing the front latch, then left by that side exit to slither and sneak his way through the tree-shaded tombstones to parts unknown!'
The newspaperman, Big Jim Tanner, joined them to ask who they were looking for in connection with this latest outrage. Before Longarm was able to nudge her, the lady undersheriff said, 'Deputy Long, here, is of the opinion we're after a hired gun called Ram Rogers and at least one companion. They were in cahoots with that Texas Tom who tried to ambush Deputy Long in Cheyenne and got shot by Wyoming's own Marshal Casey down yonder!'
Longarm wanted to kick her. But he knew he wasn't even supposed to kiss her before he knew for certain he wasn't going to have to arrest her. She seemed a good old gal, but somebody in those parts had to be as two-faced as that Roman statue, Mr. Janus.
For his own part Longarm told the newspaperman, 'I ain't accused nobody of nothing for the record, Big Jim. I understand your desire for all the news that's fit to print. But I'd be much obliged if you just held your fire, for now and, if you will, I'll give you the very first officious statement. Do we have a deal?'
Big Jim frowned thoughtfully and replied, 'It sounds like a one-way marriage agreement in which I agree to love, honor, and obey you without any right to kiss you. You are so right about my having a newspaper to put out, and my readers have the right to know a hired gun is running loose in their township like a mad dog off its leash!'
Longarm snorted. 'Aw, come on. I only told Miss Rita another shady character named Ram Rogers as a possible suspect. There's no solid evidence it was him and not some other mad dog up in the bell tower just now!'
Rita said she wanted to question this Ram Rogers whatever he was and allowed she was headed over to their J.P. to ask for a writ she could use to run the rascal in on suspicion, if nothing else, for a good seventy-two hours.
Longarm started to warn her not to swear out a felony warrant with no more to back it but the unsupported accusations of a known con man.
Then he wondered why he'd want to say a dumb thing like that. For Billy Vail and the attorney general had asked him to find out what these Wyoming wildwomen were up to and old Rita, for all her dimples and auburn hair, was talking sort of wild right in front of him. So he held his tongue and went along with the rest of them as they all made their way afoot down the main street and around a corner to a mansart-roofed frame house painted puke green with chocolate brown trim.
They all trooped inside to find the formidable Edith Penn Keller, J.P., presiding over her crowded parlor from a big keyhole desk set on a raised and carpet-covered dais at one end, with a gilt plaster goddess of Justice at one end and a stack of law books at the other.
The J.P., herself, was a fat lady of about forty with her dark hair drawn up in a tight bun as she sat there in black poplin judicial robes, reminding Longarm of a big black broody hen setting on a clutch of billiard balls somebody had slipped under her big ass as a joke. She was fining a young cowboy two dollars for disturbing the peace as Longarm followed Rita, two of her kid deputies, and Big Jim from the Riverside News in. It sounded fair to ask two dollars off a kid who'd roped and drug a watering trough the night before. But when J. P. Keller saw who'd come to admire her, or see her, least ways, she ordered everyone else to clear her court. So it wasn't clear how the case of the trough-roping cowboy would ever be resolved.
Her undersheriff introduced Longarm to the bossy older woman and Longarm found it tougher to smile at this one.
Had she been born a man, Edith Penn Keller, J.P., would have been one of those puffed-up bullfrogs who don't want anybody to tell them anything, but want to tell everybody everything.
Having been born a woman, she was one of those puffed-up cow-frogs who didn't want anybody to tell her anything but wanted to tell everybody everything. So Rita had barely explained they wanted to have Ram ne Melvin Rogers brought in for questioning before the blustersome older woman declared, 'Consider it done, dear heart. I'll have my law clerk type it up for you before suppertime and run it over to you. Ram Rogers aka Melvin Rogers wanted on suspicion dead or alive!'
Longarm couldn't help himself. He said, 'No offense, your honor, but you can't put that on a properly made- out arrest warrant.'
Edith P. scowled at him to reply, 'Nonsense. I do it all the time. Didn't you just tell us the man was a hired gun who might know something about the disappearance of Deputy Ida Weaver as well as those attempts on your own life?'
Longarm said, 'Yes, ma'am. I want to question him, not pay my respects at his funeral. Didn't them other federal and county lawmen tell you it ain't considered seemly to order anybody executed before they'd had a fair trial and been found guilty of a capital offense?'
She allowed she'd gotten some nit-picky letter from the district attorney over to the county seat. Then added she'd been appointed to her township position fair and square and ought to know what she was doing.
Longarm sighed and said, 'You don't, if you think you can sentence a man to death on a suspicious writ. All you ladies have been lucky none of the outlaws you've sent girls after drew and fired first. For many a slick lawyer's gotten a client off on self-defense with way less documentary proof.'
It was the newspaperman who asked what Longarm meant by that. The J.P. only seemed to think he was joshing.
Longarm said, 'Wherever Ida Weaver is, right now, she came into a Denver saloon with the stated purpose of serving the late Rusty Mansfield with a document signed by your J. P., giving her permit to shoot him on the spot. Before that, the ladies had established that same intent by shooting other wanted men, earlier. Had Rusty Mansfield blown little Ida Weaver away, in front of me and everyone, he'd have had a pretty good excuse to present in court, and it only takes one juror to get you off if you can persuade him you had any excuse at all!'
Big Jim Tanner sighed and said, 'I fear he makes a valid point, Your Honor. As I've tried to tell you, myself, your girlish deputies would have every right to defend their own lives against known killers by shooting first and asking questions later, serving a more delicately worded legal document.'
Rita said, 'You'd better just summon Mr. Melvin Rogers to appear before you, and I'll see it's served on him,
