by Tabor Evans
He stomped the slack wire flat in the tawny summer-cured buffalo grass, led Socks through, and tethered her to a post on the far side while he restapled the wire with a gun butt so's they could go on.
All the barbed wire they encountered east of the drift fence had been strung around quarter-section hog and produce spreads settled to supply the transportation hub ahead. So Longarm never had to ride more than a furlong either way to swing around a corner post. From time to time they'd catch a wave in passing a soddy, pen, and windmill complex. But Longarm would just wave back and ride on, knowing there was no way to rein in closer for directions or gossip without staying long enough for two helpings of coffee and cake. He was in a hurry and still tasting that sorghum syrup whenever he burped.
He walked Socks up the rises and trotted her down, trail-breaking at a cottonwood-lined prairie creek to put some water in her and get rid of some of his breakfast coffee. Then they rode on, topped only a few more rises, and saw Keller's Crossing laid out in all its glory on either side of the broad braided river down yonder.
His low-flying-bird's-eye view cleared up the hazier picture he'd had in his mind's eye. The simply laid single line of the other railroad that would have taken him longer ran along the south bank of the river on ties laid flat on the flood plain with little or no ballast. It was likely under water and surely under deep snow a good part of the winter months. But nobody shipped beef or produce in the winter, so what the hell.
The town, mostly private homes and two-story business blocks of frame construction, sprawled north and south of the river crossing with that grain elevator, a lower water tower and a couple of acres of stock-pens at the south end of the north-south main street and river ford. That tall white steeple and a few more imposing homes with mansart roofs rose from the north half of town, where stage coaches from the Montana gold fields reined in on that side of the crossing.
Having been through many such a trail town, Longarm would have bet money the quality folk and higher-toned businesses would be found on the far side, upwind of the stock pens and railroad spur.
But there was only one way to be certain. So Longarm rode on in, with his loaded and locked Winchester riding crossways across his thighs and his last trail-smoke snuffed, lest even a whiff of smoke get in his eyes as he swept all sides ahead of him with an expression of calm he didn't feel, knowing somebody in that infernal town ahead had posted hired killers in Cheyenne to keep him from getting this far. And knowing his unknown enemy was sure to feel might chagrined from the moment anybody in Keller's Crossing announced his arrival!
Someone always announced the wonder of a stranger riding in on his own betwixt rail or stage arrivals. Longarm had given up the notion of riding in as somebody else as soon as he'd considered it. For his secret enemies would be on the prod for any stranger fitting his description, while the usual small-town pests would be more apt to start up with an apparent drifter than a paid-up lawman. So he'd pinned his badge to his denim jacket in plain view to avoid any words that might be awkward to take back. He suspected he'd made a smart move when he rode past the first neighborhood grocery near the south end of town, where a motley group of shabby men and one fat woman in a cheap flashy dress had clustered on the front steps to spit and whittle. He got dirty looks from some of the men and a sassy gesture from the flirty fat gal. But nobody yelled anything calling for a dismount.
He rode on past trashy frame houses and some boarded-over and shut-down shops and saloons. Business picked up between the open railroad platform and the shallow ford. But he saw nothing in the way of a public office. So when he came upon some kids throwing 'dobes in the river ahead, he reined in to ask for directions.
The kids knew more about digging 'dobes with their penknives than the running of their township. Like kids in Denver, Omaha, and other parts of the stoneless high plains, they'd been raised busting windows and dusting heads with clods of dried mud, or adobe, available in such endless supply that high-plains kids had 'dobe fights about as often as they had snowball fights, albeit it smarted worse to get hit with a missile only a tad less dangerous than a solid rock.
Longarm hit pay dirt when he thought to ask them where their jail was. Small-town kids always pointed out jails and whorehouses to new arrivals.
They told him the jail was just beyond the stage terminal across the river. So that was where he rode, finding the North Platte barely fetlock deep this long after the last good rain, and reined in where, sure enough, they'd erected a small brick jailhouse next to a bigger frame building declaring it was the local substation of the county sheriff's department. So he reined in, dismounted, and tethered old Socks to the rail out front before he and his Winchester strode on in.
A teenage deputy dressed as if for Buffalo Bill's road show sat at the center desk in a fringed buckskin shirt, despite the season. He had buck teeth and a weak chin for such a mop of straw-colored hair and whispy mustache. But he didn't sound as stupid as he looked when he allowed they'd been expecting Longarm and added that his boss, Undersheriff Rita Mae Reynolds, would receive him at her town house over by the churchyard.
As he wrote the street number in his notebook, Longarm asked how come they called the lady's house in town a town house, as distinct from any other house in town.
Her kid deputy explained that undersheriffing was only a sideline with Miss Rita Mae, who ran eighteen hundred head of beef a hard ride off to the northeast, on old Sioux Treaty land.
Longarm agreed it made sense to have quarters at both ends of a hard ride. Then he casually asked if their mighty active undersheriff had been running cows or running for office first.
The kid said Miss Rita Mae had been in college, back East, learning about business administration and such, when her uncle Clay Reynolds had up and died childless, leaving her the herd he'd just driven up the Goodnight Trail to the greener grass of Wyoming Territory. The kid said Miss Rita had been asked to accept her appointment as the township's undersheriff by the Cattleman's Protective Association. She being a member, even if she wasn't a man.
Longarm smiled thinly as he listened in to a smoke-filled room in his own head. He'd warned some other ladies they might not be thinking too far ahead with all this clamoring for rights and responsibilities. It was doubtless a bother to be told from birth that gals weren't allowed to play some games. But speaking as a man who'd dodged many an army shit detail and been stuck with the death watch at more than one public hanging, Longarm knew how anxious men in position to "Designate Authority" could be to pass the buck to anybody they could volunteer for a tedious chore.
The Wyoming Cattleman's Protective Association met in the new Cheyenne Social Club and prided itself on being modernistic to the point of that newfangled Arts and Crafts furnishings and the first electric lights west of the Big Muddy. So they'd naturally be slick enough to put one of their own in as sheriff and appoint dimwits or smart but willing gals to lesser positions of responsibility. It was the wave of the future, to hear all those women's suffering gals go on about how awful it was to let men have all the dangerous jobs.
As he went back out front, Longarm saw they had a hotel across the way, doubtless meant for travelers laying over between stage and rail connections, or buyers coming out here to the end of the rails in search of cheaper beef to ship. He saw they had a taproom with one street entrance, and it had been an all-morning dusty ride from Dwyer and that other rail line. But Billy Vail hadn't sent him all this way to drink on duty. So he forked himself and his rifle back across old Socks and rode on.
He shoved the Winchester in the saddle boot provided by his Dwyer pals as he saw how noonday strollers along the main street stared at him. Once you knew the range would be less than thirty yards in either direction, a six-gun fired faster and handier, anyway.
He saw the storefronts to either side looked more prosperous than the ones south of the tracks. Most were frame or even brick, this close to said railroad. For neither the sod walls you saw north of the Arkansas nor the 'dobe o
ne you saw on the high plains south of same stood up to the ferocious weather out this way as well as balloon frame and shiplap sheathing. There didn't seem to be as many saloons as your average trail town would support. But that was their misfortune and none of his own, seeing barbershop gossip was more reliable as a rule.
He spied the imposing address on the far side of a half-empty churchyard and rode along its picket fence, absently reading off family names because he'd found folk with kin under imposing tombstones tended to run things a day's ride out in all directions.
The kid deputy had allowed they'd been expecting him. But Longarm was surprised when a colored boy in serving livery came out front to take charge of his mount as he was still dismounting.
The boy asked Longarm's permit to take Socks around to the back and stall her with fodder and water. Longarm said that was jake with him as long as they made sure the thirsty mare had her fill of water before they fed her anything dry.
The boy had been taught his place. So he never told Longarm such needless instructions were insulting to an old pro of fourteen.
Another servant opened the front door as Longarm mounted the steps of the imposing front porch, framed between two sort of castle towers sheathed in ship-lap and painted sunflower yellow with cream trim.
Longarm was led to a side parlor, where a vision in sky-blue silk with auburn hair piled high and only a little suntan to show for her riding back and forth rose from the spinet she'd been practicing on to greet him with a smile and wave him to a silk upholstered sofa he hesitated to sit down on in denim jeans.
As the servant, a sort of motherly colored mammy instead of the butler she could doubtless afford, headed back to the kitchen to fetch them some refreshments, the glamorous Undersheriff Rita Mae Reynolds, for that was who she really was, asked Longarm why they were still holding her deputy, the murderous little Ida Weaver, in connection with the shooting of Rusty Mansfield in Denver.
They both sat down, with Longarm's hat in his lap, as he told her nobody was holding any Keller's Crossing gals in Denver. He said, "Our law clerk carried her to the Union Station personal and saw her off on the afternoon northbound, day before yesterday, Miss Rita. She should have arrived long before this child, having almost a full day's start."
The swell-looking undersheriff of perhaps twenty-six or -seven summers stared at him with thoughtful amber eyes he felt like drowning in, as if she thought he was hiding something, while she insisted the other pretty girl who'd gunned that outlaw had never come back.
Longarm frowned thoughtfully and truthfully replied, "I wish I'd known that before I left Cheyenne last night. With one thing and then another I wound up all over Cheyenne, talking to all sorts of folk, but I didn't know I was supposed to ask if anybody had seen little Ida Weaver. So I never."
The motherly colored servant came in with a silver salver of tea and shortcake with the serving-trimmings as Longarm was asking the lady of the house what she knew about the late Texas Tom or his pal, Ram Rogers.
Rita Mae thought about it before she shook her glorious head to reply, "I don't have any wants or warrants on either name. Should I?"
She commenced to pour as Longarm said, "They tried to stop me in Cheyenne. As you see, they didn't. They were working with a cardsharp called Deacon Knox. How about him?"
The mighty refined peace officer replied, "We don't allow cardsharps in this township. One lump or two, Deputy Long?"
To which Longarm replied, "I'd as soon take tea straight, and my friends call me Custis, Miss Rita Mae. I saw some shut-down establishments down by the tracks and stock pens. But how you police your own jurisdiction is no never mind of my department. I reckon you know they sent me up your way to investigate this outbreak of desperados being shot down like dogs, all over this country, by Wyoming wildwomen packing warrants and badges from these parts?"
The beautiful undersheriff smiled alluringly at him as she handed him his cup and a wedge of shortbread, saying, "Of course I do. I'm rather proud of coming up with such an easy way to rid the West of so many disgusting old things."
So there it was, as plain and simple as a puddle of dog piss on the rug with her smiling as innocent as a pup who'd never been house broke, and now the question before the house was what they expected him to do about it.
He said, "You'd best start at the beginning, Miss Rita Mae. A heap of other peace officers have been alarmed by your draconian notions on law enforcement. But I try to keep an open mind until I've heard the whole story." She nibbled as much shortcake as a mouse might have, washed it down with her own tea, and began, "My friends just call me Rita, and it all began last March with a shooting in one of the rowdy saloons I hadn't shut down yet. The victim was a young Irish railroad worker. His killer was a brazen bully who'd just been paid off for a cattle drive and got to drinking and bragging as he waited for his train ride back to the Texas Panhandle."
Longarm thought, nodded, and said, "That would be the late Amarillo Cordwain, shot down like a dog by a sweet little thing as he was on his way to another man's funeral in the rain, right?"
The beautiful but mighty unusual peace officer nodded innocently and confessed right out, "I didn't know what I was going to do about our own killing before that Irishman's weeping widow came to me with her aching heart set upon vengeance. As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm not a gunslinger. I hold a postgraduate degree in business administration. I run my substation here in town the way I run the beef operation left to me by a dear old wild and woolly cattleman. I've hired a good crew of experienced cowboys to manage my home spread and herd. They don't give me enough to hire the sort of lawmen I'd choose, myself, for my deputies. I don't have a man over twenty backing my play, as others might put it. None of the nice young boys I have to work with have ever been in a gunfight with a real killer. They can patrol the town and surrounding range for mad dogs and petty thieves. There was no way I could send anyone on my regular payroll all the way to Texas with a murder warrant to serve on a really mad dog like Amarillo Cordwain!"
Longarm said, "We can talk about a murder warrant issued by a local J.P. later, Miss Rita. Tell me how you tracked that first killer all the way to Texas without any experienced man-hunters at your beck and call."
She answered, simply, "That part was easy. The nasty Texas rider made no attempt to cover his tracks. Everyone knew he hailed from the Texas Panhandle, and he was down there bragging on killing a fool Harp up Wyoming way."
"Who's everybody?" Longarm insisted, adding, "I understand how a friend of a friend of a man who works in a barbershop might spread such gossip, but sooner or later you ought to be able to backtrack it to the one who got the ball rolling."
She thought and decided, "I was told by Mr. Tanner, the owner of our own Riverside News. You'd have to ask him who told him. We've gotten such tips from newspaper men, railroading men, and just men riding through. As you just said, a friend of a friend tells a friend, and a man wanted dead or alive shouldn't be walking about bold as brass just because he feels he's safe across a few state lines!"
Longarm sipped tea thoughtfully and decided, "I've heard a heap of gossip about Senator Silver Dollar Tabor, his imposing Miss Augusta, and that mighty sassy Baby Doe married up with another gent entire. I ain't sure just who told me what, now that you've reminded me. So it's easy to see how you could find out where an owlhoot rider had wound up without recalling just who'd told whom. Tell me how come that Irish mourner wound up shooting her man's killer down in Texas, ma'am."
Rita said, "I told her she could. She wept and swore and tore her bodice when I explained how little I could do about a killer so vile and so far away. When she hissed like a serpent that she'd be after shooting the gobbeen herself if she was a man and all and all, it suddenly came to me that there was nothing on the Wyoming statutes preventing a distaff undersheriff from swearing in another woman as a deputy. So I did and you know the rest. Armed with a warrant and a pepperbox.36, Deputy Maureen found it childishly simple to take the train down to Texa
s, ask about for the handsome devil, Amarillo Cordwain, and simply shove her pepperbox in his smiling face and pull the trigger one time!
Longarm said, "Once as he was standing and five times more as he lay oozing brains at her feet. I told you I read the reports, ma'am. Who told her to serve that warrant on him so direct?"
Rita shrugged and said, "The feeling was mutual. The distraught Maureen O'Boyle gave me the idea when she said she'd shoot Cordwain on sight. I was the one who suggested she hide her feelings until she could work her way as a helpless female within point-blank range."
Longarm whistled softly and said, "They sure taught you how to delegate at that business school. My boss, Marshal Vail, has already said admiring things about your delegated authority getting the drop on unsuspecting hard cases. Let's talk about the others, now."
She seemed willing, not holding anything back as she went on and on about nine such executions in all.
As Longarm and others had surmised, the combination of a remote location and all that cross-country traffic passing through a tighter than usual bottleneck had conspired to attract the attention of more than one dangerous tinhorn or out-and-out road agent. When Longarm told her what Deacon Knox had said about some mastermind inviting crooks from all over the West to a township with a lady undersheriff, Rita sighed and said she and her own pals had suspected as much.
Then she said, "Things have actually started to ease up, after the rash of robberies we had earlier in these parts. I'd like to think my sending girls to do what many consider a man's job had something to do with it. We were out to prove it was just as dangerous to break the law around here as anywhere else. I thought we were winning. That stage holdup pulled by Rusty Mansfield and some others was the last highway robbery in this county, and that was over a month ago."
He asked about the latest Texas killer killed down Texas way since the killing he'd witnessed in Denver.
