Brownlee scowled. “You ain’t said nothing about your split of the rewards.”
“No split. Federal officers aren’t allowed.”
“I’ve heard that. I’ve also knowed fellows that’ve had to pay shares to deputy marshals.”
“Not working out of the Denver district, I bet.”
“I wouldn’t know about that shit.”
“I would.”
“So anyhow, you wanta go see your boy Berman?”
“That’s what I came all this way to do, Mr. Brownlee. It surely is.”
“Lemme change outa these gum rubber boots an’ I’ll take you to the son of a bitch. It won’t take me but a minute.”
Chapter 7
A pale woman at the general mercantile said her man could be found at home this afternoon. She gave Brownlee a look of undisguised fear when she said it. But then, Longarm remembered, it was no secret here that Brownlee was accusing the man who called himself Thomas Gedrey of being Cy Berman.
“I know where he lives,” Brownlee said. “C’mon.”
Longarm made the mistake of looking into the woman’s haunted, stricken face. Then he followed Brownlee out, realizing too late that he should have thought to enter the store by himself.
Brownlee pointed. “It’s right around the corner here. We’ll go to the side door. That’s where a neighbor would call.”
Longarm nodded. He didn’t much like Adrian Brownlee. But the man’s advice on that point was sound. A knock at the front door is always more suspicious than one at the kitchen.
As they walked around the side of the small house Longarm reached inside his coat and withdrew the Colt, holding the blued-steel revolver low at his side where it would be ready without being obvious. He motioned for Brownlee to stand away, then aproached the door and tapped lightly on it.
Inside the house he could hear the scrape of chair legs on a bare floor and the approach of footsteps.
The man who very slowly and cautiously pulled the door open was of middle age, with graying hair and a pencil-thin mustache. He was in shirtsleeves, wearing a flannel shirt with the cuffs rolled back off strong forearms.
There was a star-shaped badge pinned over the left breast pocket of his shirt.
The man held a stubby shotgun that had been cut down to pistol size. A 16-gauge, Longarm guessed. And one lethal little sonuvabitch at close range.
“I take it you’d be Sheriff Dillmore,” Longarm observed.
“I would. And you?”
“Deputy United States marshal out o’ the Denver district. The name is Long. I’ll be glad t’ show my badge if you like. I can reach for it slow an’ easy.”
“Long, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“You got a nickname?”
“Longarm.”
“I’ve heard of you. They say you’re straight-arrow.”
“I’d like to think whoever says that is right,” Longarm replied.
“They say you’ll give a man a chance before you shoot.”
Longarm nodded. “Any that’ll let me. I get no pleasure from another man’s hurt.”
“Tom. Step over here and show yourself. Long, I’d appreciate it if you’d take a good look at this man before you do anything that can’t be undone.”
As a show of good faith the sheriff of Ross County laid his ugly little shotgun on a nearby lamp stand and stepped back two paces.
From the far side of the Gedrey kitchen a man stepped out of the shadows.
Longarm’s belly muscles contracted. And then turned loose.
“By God,” he declared. “You sure as hell look like enough to the man t’ be his brother. Damn near like enough to be his twin.”
“You know Berman?” Dillmore asked.
“I do.”
“Well enough to know this ain’t him?”
“Ayuh, I know him that well. And I never seen this fellow before.”
Both Dillmore and Gedrey visibly relaxed. “Come in out of the cold, Marshal, and join us for some coffee.”
No such invitation was extended to Adrian Brownlee, but he came in out of the snow too.
“Why did you come all this way, Longarm, when I wired your boss there was no need?”
“Your wire didn’t say much.”
“Said all that needed saying. There wasn’t cause to arrest Tom here. That’s what I told him. At twenty-six cents a word too. You got any idea what my budget is? Believe me, you don’t want to know. I sent him what was necessary in the wire, and followed that with a letter explaining everything. Three cents to mail the whole letter. Twenty-six cents a damn word for the wire. With my budget the marshal is lucky he got any wire at all.”
Longarm decided the best idea here would be to let Dillmore get his story out in his own good time. Besides, the coffee was good.
“This man is Thomas Andrew Gedrey. He’s named for his grampa Thomas Dillmore and his uncle Andrew Dillmore. I’m A.T. to my friends. To you too if you like. I’m named for my father Andrew and my grampa Thomas. My father and Tom’s mother are brother and sister. So I’ve known Tom all his life and mine. I told Mr. Brownlee here that Tom isn’t his man Berman. He didn’t believe me.
“But the son of a bitch looks so much like Berman!”
Brownlee didn’t have time to say more. Gedrey was out of his chair in a flash and had Brownlee by the scruff of the neck, hauling him away from the table like you would an unruly dog.
Adrian Brownlee was half a foot taller than Tom Gedrey and probably forty pounds heavier. Gedrey threw him bodily out the side door and into the snow as easily as if he’d been discarding a pail of used dishwater.
“Sorry about that,” he said when he returned to the table.
“No need t’ apologize,” Longarm said. “It’s your table. I don’t see as you need to accept insults at it.”
Gedrey grunted and sat hunched over his coffee.
“You really do look an awful lot like Berman,” Longarm observed. “But he has a meanness in him that pinches his mouth and puts cruelty in his eyes. There’s none o’ that in you. I’m sorry you had t’ be bothered. But with a man like Berman we’d do anything it takes t’ bring him in. I hope you know there’s no ill will toward you. Just toward that murderer Berman.”
“I understand that. No hard feelings.” Gedrey reached forward to shake on that.
“No hard feelings,” Longarm affirmed.
But dammit, he surely did wish it had been Cyrus Berman in this gold camp after all.
Dammit.
Gedrey brightened and sat up straighter in his chair. “Tell you what, Deputy. Why don’t I cut us each a piece of my Edna’s pie to go with this coffee. She bakes a might fine pie if I do say it on her.”
“It’d be my pleasure, Mr. Gedrey.”
“Tom,” the recent suspect corrected as he went to get the pie.
“Fine, Tom. An’ it’s Longarm to you an’ A.T. here.”
Chapter 8
Failure was not exactly what Longarm had hoped to report to Billy Vail, but failure—at least in a manner of speaking—was his result here. Cyrus Berman was still out there somewhere, free to rob and murder and thumb his nose at all the deputies who wanted so badly to nail his ears over their mantle.
Longarm got directions from A.T. Dillmore, and found the telegraph office housed in a cubicle at the back end of the small shop that also included what passed for the post office in Talking Water. Apart from being a part-time telegrapher and postal clerk, the proprietor of the shop made shoes, repaired harness, sharpened knives or scissors, and for all Longarm knew read palms and told fortunes too. But he was just guessing about those last two. All the rest was documented by the myriad signs posted inside the shop and out. It was probably because there were so many signs and any one of them could get lost amid all the confusion that he hadn’t noticed the telegraph office sign when he’d been there earlier seeking directions to Adrian Brownlee’s place from the post office.
The man nodded when Longarm stepped inside and stamped the wet, clinging snow off his boots.