“Your apology is accepted, Marshal. Please continue.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He touched the brim of his Stetson in Mrs. Burdick’s direction, then went on. “Clementine here likes to get a fella drunk an’ take him off somewhere private. Except while he’s busy gettin’ his pants off, she sidles up behind an’ makes like she’s gonna hug him. Least that’s the way we figure it from what’s found afterward. Nobody’s ever survived t’ tell us for sure. Thing is, she gets behind a fella like that an’ slips a loop o’ piano wire over his head. One good tug is all it takes. A garrote, I think the rig is called. It crushes the windpipe. Pull real hard an’ it can practically cut a man’s head off. Though I don’t think she’s ever quite managed t’ accomplish that. Came close a few times, though.” Longarm smiled. “There’s some lawmen I know over east of here that’re gonna be real happy t’ see Clementine sitting in a federal prison where they can file extradition papers on her.”
“You bastard,” she hissed.
“You’d have t’ ask my folks ‘bout that, not me,” Longarm responded.
“Trust me.”
“Yeah, Clementine, I’ll just do that. You bet.”
“But what about the man who shot at you?” Burdick asked. “You say she has been working with someone here?”
“That’s right. Murder for hire would be my guess. Though who would want me dead I really don’t know.” He smiled, although no mirth reached his eyes. “Not anyone in particular, that is. For sure, though, I never seen any of these fellows before this trip here. An’ none of them is on any posters that I know about. So whatever reason someone has for wanting me dead, I’d say it’s a cash transaction an’ our boy is a professional gunman.”
“A gunfighter using a .22 pistol?” Burdick asked, his voice expressing rather obvious disbelief.
“That reminds me, Howard. You an’ the other fellows can quit looking for that gun. I thank you for your effort, but there’s no pistol hidden over there t’ be found.”
“But how-?”
“Right under my damn nose,” Longarm said. “The whole time the gun was right under my nose an’ I never noticed.”
“I don’t understand,” Burdick said.
“None of us did. Which was the whole point o’ this guy’s way o’ doing business. You know how Clementine has her favorite weapon an’ method? Well, so does her boyfriend. An’ I got to say that he’s a kinda clever sonuvabitch. Until you figure it out, that is.”
Longarm dipped two fingers into his vest pocket and pulled out the scrap of misshapen lead that had caught inside his wallet a little while earlier.
“This right here is what gave him away,” he said with a great deal of satisfaction.
At the rear of the crowd that had gathered close around Longarm and his prisoner there was a slight stir. People began edging nervously away in anticipation of more gunplay.
Chapter 35
“Oh, I don’t think you folks got much t’ worry about here. My guess is that our boy would rather take his chances in a court o’ law than standing face to face against me with a six-gun.” Longarm grinned.
“Isn’t that so, little man?” Longarm said to the mild, meek-looking little dandy with the cane and the fancy clothes.
“Me? You would accuse me? But really, sir. You searched me yourself this morning. All these gentlemen saw. I had no revolver then and I have none now.”
“That’s right, mister. You didn’t have no revolver. Nor no pistol o’ any kind. That’s just as true as true can be.”
“Then surely, sir, you cannot think-“
“Oh, but I do. An’ I can prove it easy enough. You think you still got the wool pulled down over my eyes? ‘Fraid not, mister … what is your name anyhow?”
The little man straightened to his full height. Which was at least half a head shorter than Longarm even so. “I, sir, am Herbert Amos Hancock.”
“Called?”
“Mister Hancock to you, sir,” the little man said with a brave show of haughty disdain.
“Yeah, sure, Herbie,” Longarm drawled. “You wanta lay down your gun now, please?”
“I already told you, Marshal. I have no firearm. As you yourself determined not two hours ago.”
“Herbie, lemme put it this way. I can show these folks what I mean after I take the thing off your dead body. Which I will damn sure do—shoot you down, that is—if you don’t lay down the weapon. I can take it that way or else you can hand it over nice an’ quiet, after which time you an’ me will talk about a deal.”
“A deal, sir?”
“Ayuh. The big thing you win is that you get to keep on breathing for a spell. Second thing is that once we chat, an’ you tell me who it is that hired you … and why … then I tell the judge how cooperative you been and-“
“Marshal. Marshal Long? Listen to me.” It was Clementine Bonner. Longarm wasn’t real surprised. If there were favors going to be passed around, Clementine would want to make sure she was first in line and to hell with her erstwhile partner.
“Yes, Clemmie?”
“Now wait just a minute there, Marshal,” Herbert Amos Hancock rushed to say. “It was me you offered the deal to, not that woman.”
Longarm was not exactly amazed. There is damned small sign of loyalty among criminals. They might talk about “honor among thieves,” but the truth of the matter is more “devil take the hindmost” than any sort of honor or decency. But then, hell, why would you expect decency out of criminals anyhow?
“Y’know, Herbie, you’re running it right close t’ the line seeing as how you still haven’t laid down that gun of yours.”
Hancock dropped his cane like the duck-head grip had of a sudden become burning hot.
“What the hell?” someone in the room asked of no one in particular. “That isn’t a gun, is it?”
Longarm was not paying attention at the moment, however, and did not bother to answer. His concentration remained on Herbert Hancock and Clementine Bonner.
The two of them seemed right determined to be the first one to spit out the answers that might help lead to a moderation of their eventual prison sentences.
At virtually the same moment they each spat out the name Longarm wanted. And then glared at each other in obvious fury.
Longarm ignored that too.
He motioned Hancock to move back away from the cane, then went forward and swiftly frisked the man for the second time that morning to make sure there were no weapons that he didn’t know about.
When he was done with that he bent and retrieved the fallen malacca.
“That can’t be …”
“Sure can,” Longarm said. And after a moment he added with some satisfaction, “Not only can be, it is.”
He turned and showed the others what he’d found.
The rubber tip of the cane slipped easily off to disclose the muzzle of a slender rifle barrel.
The heavy grip that was so cunningly shaped to look like a mallard-head grip for an ordinary walking stick was in fact a deceptively simple—and beautifully concealed—single-shot action. A twist and tug on the head cocked the mechanism and dropped a spring-loaded trigger into view. A pair of grooves cut as if by accidental scrape into the wood that sheathed the barrel would no doubt serve as rudimentary sights. Rudimentary, perhaps, but very effective in the hands of someone as thoroughly familiar with his weapon as Herbert Hancock obviously was.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Jesse whispered. Then he quickly added, “Beggin’ your pardon, Miz Burdick.”
“Jesse, I agree with you,” she told him, “although I shouldn’t put it in quite those words.”
“Yes’m.”
“How in the world did you figure that out, Marshal?” Howard Burdick wanted to know.
“Once I had this slug here in hand it wasn’t all that hard. I mean, we all heard the shots. They were sharp and tinny. Sounded for all the world to all of us like a .22 pistol. Which it couldn’t have been. I figured that much when I saw how far away the shooter was from me when he fired outside just a little while ago. I never heard of anybody that could shoot that good with a .22 pistol. Then when I got hold of this little slug an’ took a good look at it—well, see for yourself.” He handed it to George, who looked it over, nodded, and passed it on to the next man.