to paw through the morgue.
Big Jim said, 'That's easy enough. But about us putting our heads together on a news exclusive-'
'I told you why I can't go along with you on that,' Longarm cut in, trying to keep it friendly as he continued, 'I don't hold my cards to my vest to cheat nobody, Big Jim. I just don't want nobody cheating me, and I can tell you I'm dealing with a mastermind--unknown because you know he, she, or it has had me shot at from here to Cheyenne. I'll be proud to tell you all the news that's fit to print, as soon as I find out what's been going on and just who I can trust in these parts.'
'Meaning you don't trust me?' the burly newspaperman demanded in a tone about as warm as January in the South Pass.
Longarm smiled friendly as ever as he asked, 'Is there any reason I shouldn't trust you, Big Jim?'
Tanner grimaced and said, 'All right. You're going to find out in any case. I've given Rita Mae Reynolds tips on more than one owlhoot rider she had warrants out on. Before you say only a master criminal would be able to track down swaggering bully boys by Western Union, what does that make you? Newspapermen scattered all over the country have been comparing notes and sometimes scooping official government handouts since before the American Revolution!'
Longarm went on smiling as he said, 'I read about old Sam Adams printing Patrick Henry's speeches before the Redcoats in Boston had heard he was speaking. Who told you the late Rusty Mansfield was staying at the Tremont House in Denver before you told Miss Rita?'
Big Jim had his temper back under control as he calmly replied, 'Let's just say I have my own confidential sources. You'll no doubt get our pretty undersheriff to tell you I have lots of confidential sources. It goes with my line, which is gathering news. If you want to be one of my confidential sources, I'll be one of your confidential sources. If you intend to treat me like an infernal suspect, see if you can get a court order violating the freedom of the press with us screaming, in headline type, on our extra editions in an election year!'
Longarm shook his head wearily and replied, 'I doubt I could manage in the time I have. But what can I tell you? You are a suspect. It's nothing personal. We call it the process of eliminating, and you ain't been eliminated yet.'
Big Jim snorted. 'Jesus H. Christ, do I look like the ringleader of some vast outlaw conspiracy?'
Longarm shrugged and said, 'Sheriff Henry Plummer never would have been elected if they'd known he had all them Montana Innocents riding for him. From the little I've been able to suspicion, word has been spread, by way of confidential sources, that there's easy pickings in these parts because of the local law being so... refined.'
He saw he'd worded that smarter when Inky Potts shot him a wary glance across the press room. Mentioning skirts around anybody in a skirt could tense things up as tight as shouting 'Greaser' in Nuevo Laredo on a Saturday night.
Big Jim Tanner sneered, 'All right, I'll confess, I've always wanted to scoop the Wyoming Eagle, and nobody invited me to cover the Northfield Raid that time. So I've been trying to engineer as big a shoot-out in front of the Drover's Trust up the block! Or would you rather accuse me of luring road agents here from far and wide so's I could get them to rob somebody and then double-cross them for the loot?'
Longarm said, 'I like that better. But there's one hole in the bucket. Honor among thieves is a myth, and there's been many an old pard back-shot as the robbers were fixing to divvy up the spoils. But a local boy fingering targets for outside road agents would have to gun them sooner and closer, wouldn't he?'
Big Jim nodded and said, 'Rusty Mansfield was spending the money from that stage holdup like he feared the ink would fade when... a certain source wired me where he'd turned up.'
'How did you know it was Rusty Mansfield as stopped the stage and shot Ida Weaver's uncle? The little I have on that one says the road agents were masked, and Rusty Mansfield was neither well known in these parts or alone.'
Big Jim said, 'He was the one dumb enough to brag, once he thought he was far enough from these parts. Just like that mean drunk in the Texas Panhandle boasted of gunning that railroad worker. We're not talking about the likes of Frank and Jesse, Longarm. To begin with, they haven't all been what I'd call a professional criminal. Three or four out of the nine, so far, were no more than evil-tempered brutes who killed in anger without taking a dime for their troubles. What profit would I or any other mastermind make from ordering any gunslicks to behave like that?'
Longarm said, 'I was hoping you could tell me. I'd agree the whole thing was just a string of wild but unconnected incidents if Deputy Ida Weaver wasn't missing and nobody seemed to be shooting at me, personal. It all started late last winter with Amarillo Cordwain gunning that Irish railroad man, right?'
Big Jim nodded, started to say something, then laughed like hell and called out to his type sticker, 'Will you listen to this slick talker, Inky? You just heard me telling him we won't play ball with him unless he's willing to play ball with us, and here I am playing ball with him!'
Then he said, 'Get out of here, Longarm. I have a paper to publish, and we work together my way or we don't work together at all!'
CHAPTER 17
The workday was winding down by then. But Longarm had time to do some eliminating that Billy Vail would have applauded. For in a town that small and close-knit it was easy to eliminate like hell with casual questions about who'd been doing what with whom when what was going on.
He'd known right off that neither he, Rita Mae, nor her household help had been smoking up her front parlor with that old army rifle from the bell tower. It hardly made sense that Preacher Shearer would have had to bust his own locked door to get into his own church and the notion of the sniper busting in before dawn when nobody was on the streets of Keller's Crossing eliminated heaps of others.
For everybody with a regular job near the center of town had been at work instead of up in that bell tower and had plenty of others to back their alibi. Alibi came from a Latin term meaning 'somewheres else,' and it was tough to fathom how anybody could be lying in ambush up among the pigeons and going about their usual chores in front of everybody.
The very few who were too important to be laboring in public, such as that snotty newspaper man, the preacher himself, and most of the public officials of Keller's Crossing had all come running from the wherevers they'd been in response to the gunshots later in the day. So whilst it burned like fire, Longarm had to allow those rifle shots had been fired by somebody who was neither holding a steady job near that church nor a total stranger to those who did. It had to be at least a face they'd seen before. Folk remembered strange faces in small towns, whether they'd done anything or not. Many a horse thief had learned this to his cost when the local vigilance committee rode him down after he thought he'd gotten away clean from a town where nobody was supposed to know he was a horse thief.
As he headed back to his hotel to see if they served supper Longarm reflected that eliminating most everyone he'd met in Keller's Crossing as that sniper didn't mean he, she, or it hadn't been carrying out the orders of somebody more two-faced. He didn't see how he was going to eliminate anyone as the mastermind who'd almost surely done something to that Deputy Ida Weaver and been trying to do something to him ever since he'd talked to the deadly but not-too-bright little gal.
As he approached the hotel, he spied Pony Bodie and another young buckaroo drooling at the passing womenfolk out front of the Western Union. Pony Bodie saw him and got up to lope over, calling out he'd just delivered a wire from Denver to the desk clerk inside.
Longarm reached in his jeans for a silver dollar and handed it over, saying, 'Keep the change. How would you like to make a little more on the side?'
Pony Bodie looked wary and said, 'Lord knows I could use some. But I ain't one for any queer stuff if that's what we're talking about.'
Longarm assured him that wasn't what they were talking about as he tore a sheet out of his notebook that he'd already made some notes on. Handing it to the delivery boy, Longarm said, 'I don't need to read any private telegraph messages that are likely in code to begin with. You'll find just some dates and the names of other towns on this page. I need to know who got a wire here in this township on let's say more than three or four of them dates, and from where.'
Pony Bodie took the slip of paper but pointed out, 'I generally deliver telegrams to all sorts of folk every day in the week.'
