Edith.'
The J.P. asked Longarm if he had the address of the scamp.
Longarm shook his head and said, 'If I did I'd wire somebody else to pick him up, Your Honor. I want him alive and talking and there's limitations to Miss Rita's girlish approach to serving writs and warrants, no offense.'
CHAPTER 16
Longarm had to escort Rita back to her own place because he was a gent and because he wanted his pony and Winchester back.
Once he had them he retraced his course on horseback to the center of town and dismounted at the Western Union to send a heap of wires in every direction.
As he handed the profitable sheaf of yellow forms over to the dry and dusty-looking clerk he introduced himself and said, 'I know all about the company policy laid out by your late Mr. Cornell and I hope you understand he's dead and I'm riding for the federal government, which allows you all to string considerable miles of wire over federal open range.'
The clerk said, 'You still don't get to read any private messages sent or received at five cents a word by this private company. I had this same conversation a few days ago with some other federal deputies out of Cheyenne.'
A skinny kid with a goofy Adam's apple came in with his spurs ringing to ask where they wanted him riding next. any wires for him to deliver. The string-bean in tight but faded denim said he'd be out front where he could admire the ladies shopping if they needed him.
As soon as they were alone again, Longarm told the clerk, 'I could get me a court order if I had to, friend.'
To which the clerk replied, 'You have to, and don't you come at me with any writ from that fat-assed Edith Keller. For we've established how much weight she really carries with the territorial or federal courts in Cheyenne.'
The old fuss didn't know he'd already answered a question Longarm had been meaning to ask somebody who knew. He smiled thinly and told the old-timer he'd noticed old Edith could lose a few pounds. But it didn't work. The Western Union man said, 'Don't try to butter me up. I'm paid to be firm about company policy, and my company is not at all impressed by crossroads J.P.s of any description. Our customers pay good money for our services, and we mean to serve them right.'
Longarm said, 'Don't get your bowels in an uproar, old son. All I need is some delivery times and dates. The messages I suspect a local sneak has been sending and receiving are doubtless in code to begin with. But you'd have records of who got a particular wire from a particular town on a particular day, wouldn't you?'
The clerk shrugged and said, 'You'd better find a judge with the weight to sway a nationwide corporation with friends in high places while I put your own messages on the wire. I know who you are, Longarm. Other clerks have reported how persuasive you can be when you want to read over their shoulders. Other clerks have gotten in a whole lot of trouble, and I told you I've already had this conversation with other lawmen. So, like the Indian chief said, I have spoken!'
He sounded like he meant it. Longarm didn't want to set his skinny jaw any firmer by arguing with him. So he paid for the wires that he couldn't send collect, and they parted as friendly as the crusty old cuss seemed to get.
Out front, that string-bean was sitting on the edge of the plank walk, ogling a gal across the way that Longarm didn't think as much of. Longarm stepped down off the walk to untether his pony as he told the kid, 'I'd be U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long and I'm expecting a heap of answers to the wires I just sent. I'm fixing to check into the hotel across the way, and I'd be obliged if you got them to me as fast as they come in.'
The kid said, 'They call me Pony Bodie and I hope you understand there's a delivery charge, Deputy Long?'
Longarm nodded and said, 'I never ask nobody to work for me free. I can't be traipsing back and forth betwixt the hotel and your office if I'm to get anything else done around here. So you just leave any messages at the hotel desk if I ain't in, and I'll settle up with you on your service charges when I can. I take it you're a sort of private contractor, not on the Western Union payroll?'
Pony Bodie sighed and said, 'I always wanted to be a telegrapher, or mayhaps a fireman, when I grew up. But delivering wires for folk who don't want to pick 'em up at the desk inside pays better than weeding yards or beating rugs. So what the hell.'
'You get to ride out to the surrounding spreads a lot?' Longarm asked as if he didn't really care.
Pony Bodie shrugged and answered, 'Some. Not as often as I have to leg it here in town, though. Stockmen and homesteaders only get wires on rare and important occasions. The merchants and businessmen here at the crossing wire back and forth at a nickel a word like they had money to burn.'
Longarm allowed he'd heard it cost money to make money and led old Socks across the main street afoot, not wanting to press the delivery boy too hard, this soon, within earshot of the crusty clerk inside.
At the Pronghorn Hotel across the way they told him not to be silly when he asked if he could hire a room with a bath. But at least the shitter down the hall had a modern flush tank, and they had a water tap you could use to refill the basin that went with the corner washstands in the small but fairly tidy rooms on the second floor.
They charged seventy-five cents a night for travelers laying over without riding stock. Longarm allowed a dollar a day for horse and rider sounded fair. But he followed old Socks around to their stable to make sure they knew what they were doing out back.
They did. The half-dozen other ponies they were boarding were all alive and well with a sunny corral and fresh straw bedding in the stable stalls. He left his borrowed saddle in the tack room and took the Winchester up to his hired room.
He left it leaning in a corner, took a shit down the hall, and headed next for the Riverside News just up the street on foot.
When he went inside he found they had a long counter cutting off the front of the twenty by forty-foot forespace from a typewriter-topped editorial desk, some filing cabinets, and a hand-cranked flatbed press in the back. Ben Franklin might have found the setup newfangled. Longarm had seen fancier.
The only individual on the premises seemed to be a gal about the right age but too pretty for that string-bean down by the Western Union. But that wasn't saying much. She was just a plain young gal with nothing wrong with her, save for a smudge of ink on one cheek. Her mousy brown hair was pinned up in a bun with a pencil shoved through it. You couldn't say much about her figure, either way, because she wore an ink smudge printer's smock of mattress ticking over whatever else she might have on.
She came over to the counter from the composing galley where she'd been sticking type, her type stick or box-like metal holder still held in her ink-stained left hand, and got prettier as she smiled across the counter at him to ask what she could do for him.
Longarm resisted the temptation to tell her that all depended on whether she was married-up or not. She looked sort of country for that sort of teasing. He'd been wearing his badge since he'd ridden in. So he had no call to offer her more than his name before he told her, 'I'd sure like to look through your morgue, ma'am.'
She looked blank and answered, 'Morgue? That would be over at the county seat, Deputy Long. We have a sheriff's substation, but dead bodies are examined by the county coroner and-'
'Newspaper morgue.' He cut in, explaining, 'That's what they call the files of dead stories worth saving at the Denver Post and other such high-falutin papers. You know what airs folk put on in them bigger cities.'
She brightened and said, 'Oh, I think I did hear that term when I was working on the school paper back in Iowa. You'd better talk to Big Jim Tanner, my boss, about that. I just work here. I'm Inez Potts. They call me Inky Potts. I'm not sure just what we've been saving in yonder files. I know we don't have room to save complete back issues, and so the boss, not me, cuts out all the advertising and boiler plates.'
'Boiler plates?' Longarm asked before he recalled that meant national and world-wide news supplied to small-town papers for a modest fee by the bigger news and features syndicates. They shipped what looked like boiler plates of made-up type, cast in one piece back East.
He was working on how he wanted to talk her into going behind her employer's back when Big Jim came in, puffing a cigar and looking as pleased as punch to find Longarm jawing with his hired help.
Inky went back to work as soon as she'd turned Longarm over to Big Jim, telling her boss the lawman wanted
