Since she’d told him what he was supposed to ask, he felt no call to correct her. Sometimes Longarm was surprised by what he could learn just keeping his mouth shut and his ears open.
As she moved to serve an old cuss at the far end things got back to normal for a lazy afternoon in a taproom. Gents who’d stopped talking to see what a stranger might have to say for himself went back to talking among themselves, mostly in High Dutch. Longarm found the lingo sort of infuriating. Some words sounded almost the same as English, but just as you figured you were following the drift, it lit out like a cutting horse in another direction entirely. He’d leafed through a dictionary one time to confirm that while Hund meant hound, Henne meant hen, and a Kuh was a cow, they up and called a rabbit something that sounded like “hoss,” and you asked a lady if she’d like to fart when you meant to take her for a buggy ride. A lot of their innocent words sounded sort of dirty. He wondered what dirty words in English sounded like in High Dutch. There was no polite way to ask that barmaid. So he didn’t.
Two other gents dressed like Kuhhirten or cowboys were having what sounded like a soft but heated argument at a corner table behind him. They were too far away for Longarm to make out any words. But once you’d spent a few hours listening to furriners, it was surprising how Tennessee an old boy could sound when he twanged just loud enough to hear.
Longarm edged along the bar until he had a better view of them in the back-bar mirror. Neither seemed aware of him as they argued softly but seriously. From gestures and expressions alone, Longarm got an impression one was all for moving on, while the older and cooler-looking cuss was for staying right where they were, as if they were waiting for someone.
Longarm was good at faces. But he couldn’t match either of the nondescript cowhand types with any serious descriptions on file. So he finished his beer, left some small change on the bar, and sauntered out without looking back.
He moved faster out on the walk. He’d almost made it back to the town hall when two other total strangers seemed anxious to have a word with him.
The taller of the two said, “If you’d be Custis Long, Miss Iona MacSorley would like a word with you. I’d be Marty Link, the ramrod of the Lazy B, and this here’s Trooper O’Donnel, our boss wrangler. Miss Iona is waiting for the three of us at that tea-room across from the church.”
Longarm said, “You can tell her I’ll try. But right now I suspect I might have more pressing business. I have to have a look at a couple of strangers the town law picked up. If they’re anyone I know, I might know where some of their friends are right this minute.”
The two Lazy B riders fell in with him as he explained further on the way to the town hall. O’Donnel quietly asked why the three of them didn’t just round up the two in the saloon and march them on up to join their pals.
Longarm sighed and waved the muzzle of his Winchester at the sort of sinister reflection the three of them made in a hat shop window as he asked, “Would you let a sight like that come at you without getting spooked, innocent or guilty?”
Link said he followed Longarm’s drift. The three of them wore sun-faded denim and businesslike gun rigs. The hatchet-faced Martin Link had a ferocious beard, while Trooper O’Donnel’s battered features were framed by mutton-chops the color of rusty bobwire. On top of all that, Longarm explained, he was only guessing about the two still at large. There was no law of nature saying all those in town who weren’t Russian Dutch had to be pals.
The three of them joined that same kid deputy inside. When Longarm explained, Sattler’s young sidekick led them back to where, sure enough, two other gents dressed more cow than sodbuster sat morose as hell in a boiler-plate box painted baby-shit green.
One grinned out sheepishly at Longarm. The more experienced lawman nodded and said, “Afternoon, Fingers. Figured someone like you had a couple of his pals trying to make up their minds about some moves to be made mighty soon.” Turning to the others on his side of the bars, he explained. “This wayfaring stranger swept up unexpectedly would be the one and original Fingers Fawcett, just out of Jefferson Barracks after some hard time over a federal post office safe. Old Fingers can open your average combination lock without half trying and … right, this other poor simp would be Juicy Joe Walters, famous for knowing how to milk nitro out of dynamite without killing his fool self.”
The older Fingers Fawcett shrugged and said, “You ain’t got anything on us, Longarm. Like you said, I just got out, and Joe here ain’t got no dynamite on him.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “It’s early yet. Let me guess as to just what all four of you came here to set up. The winter wheat harvest is about to commence. All prices are rising this summer. So a heap of Eastern grain buyers have already started sending advance checks on wheat futures.”
He turned to the Mennonite kid and asked, “Are you with me so far?”
The kid said, “Sure. My Uncle Franz just banked the check he got from Chicago.”
Martin Link didn’t seem to grasp the notion. So Longarm explained. “Never mind why some grain dealers pay in advance, hoping the grain will be worth more by the time it’s shipped. Just remember this is a small town with a bitty bank, already commencing to fill up with the just rewards of a whole lot of plowing last autumn.”
Trooper O’Donnel objected. “You said those Eastern buyers only send checks as advances on the harvest.”
Longarm said, “I’ll explain along the way. I have to go arrest a couple more. If you gents would care to be deputized for an hour or so, there’s bounty money on whoever robbed that other bank at the county seat a few days ago.”
The two Lazy B riders exchanged grinning glances, and the young town deputy said he wanted to go with the three of them. But Longarm warned him he might catch Ned if he left those two birds in the hand unguarded. So the kid allowed he’d stay and guard them, but he wouldn’t like it.
Walking back down to the Ganselblumchen, Longarm explained how any grain merchant’s checks would be cashed by mail right off by any bank with a lick of sense.
He said, “It’s sort of sad how many checks bounce when the futures market ain’t going the way the wise-money boys were betting. But when you pay a farmer for his crop in advance, the money is his from the day he takes your check to his own bank.”
Trooper O’Donnel soberly observed, “In other words, that innocent-looking little bank near the schoolhouse is overflowing with cash, even before that harvest these squareheads keep talking about!”
It had been a statement rather than a question. So Longarm replied, “You gents are more familiar faces if they’ve been here any length of time. So what say you two go in the front way whilst I circle around to drift in from that beer garden? That way we’ll have ‘em covered from three directions when I tell ‘em they’re under arrest, see?”
They did, and that was the way it might have gone, had both those rascals been seated at that same corner table when Longarm strode in from out back, Winchester down at his side.
But there was only one, drinking alone. Longarm glanced at Link and O’Donnel, who’d entered from the front and taken up positions at either end of the bar. Link met his eye and shrugged. Longarm shrugged back and turned to bear down on the one left in the corner. Then O’Donnel yelled, “Longarm! Duck!” and Longarm would have, had not the one in the corner been slapping leather on him as he rose, teeth bared and eyes brimming with desperation. So Longarm could only hope that gun going off behind him was aimed somewhere else as he crabbed to one side and whipped his Winchester up, yelling, “Freeze!” and then, when that didn’t work, bounced the cornered desperado off one wall to crash down through his own less effective gunsmoke. He’d missed the toe of Longarm’s left boot by a good three inches.