Another Sappa Crossing man protested, “You mean he abandoned his shop and all those guns?”
Sattler shrugged and said, “He wasn’t selling enough of them to pay his bills. It was not at all wise to let him get his hands on so much cash all at once, nicht wahr?”
Trooper O’Donnel piped up, his English a contrast to the Mennonite version Longarm was getting used to. “I can tell you how pressed he was for cash. I dropped by a week or so back to have him outfit my store-bought S&W with ivory grips. He asked me to pay in advance. He said the factory back East wouldn’t send ‘em C.O.D. any more.”
There came a thoughtful rumble from men on both sides who’d dealt with the missing gunsmith. A Cedar Bend man called out, “He was never the same after his woman run off on him. Did you get them ivory grips, Trooper?”
The Lazy B rider grinned in the moonlight and called back, “I sure did. From Miss Helga when she filled my pre-paid order. You can ask her if you like. My point is that her boss was cutting things close to the bone, and your marshal here tells me you laid more money on him than his business would take in all year if business had been better! No offense, boys, but that was just plain dense!”
Kurt Morgenstern asked the Cedar Bend lawman defensively if they were sure Horst Heger hadn’t paid off those Ruggles sisters.
The deputy shrugged and said, “If he did, they sure spent it all in a hurry. They left here ragged-ass-broke and begging us for eating money as far as the railroad.”
The burly smith wanted to ride on after them anyway.
Longarm raised his voice to announce, “I have some wires to send. I’ll ride after them and see what they have to say in McCook. I don’t want anyone else butting in. So now I’ll be riding on, and anybody following this child by moonlight will be in considerable peril, for like the Indian chief said, I have spoken!”
Chapter 15
The difference between your average livery mount and a good cow pony was the difference between a schoolyard bully and a full-grown prizefighter. The roan mare loped with a mile-eating rotary gait. Her left hoof hit the sod ahead of the right, then her left and right rear hooves landed in the same order so her powerful haunches could launch her forward for another quick round. Rocket was a good name for her.
The late night air was chilled by that brief storm, and the melting hail had left cool clear water puddles almost anywhere man and mount wanted to rein in for a five-minute breather. So they made time that old Pony Express would have been proud of, and got into McCook as the sky was pearling lighter to the east.
To save tedious conversations about other horseflesh at the livery, Longarm stabled old Rocket behind the hotel near the Western Union. Then he hired himself a room near the bath, and went across the way to send a mess of telegrams.
Knowing he wouldn’t have any answers for a spell, he found an all-night beanery near the railroad stop and ordered waffles with plenty of butter and sorghum syrup to go with his ham and eggs.
As he sat at the counter smiling back at the waitress, who’d dressed up as a Harvey Gal but flirted with the customers anyhow, he got her to jawing about current events in the prairie railroad town. Hardly anybody heard as much small-town gossip as a hash slinger in an all-night beanery. She said some railroad yard hands had been jawing about a real looker camped in a Gypsy wagon over on the far side of the water tower, just off railroad property.
Longarm changed the subject to other strangers who might have had a coffee or more while waiting for a train. It was easy to see the sass took considerable interest in such customers. It was a shame she was so flat-chested and had such a silly grin. But even after he identified himself as the law and encouraged her to think harder, she failed to recall anyone answering to his description of either Wolf Ritter or that missing gunsmith, Heger. She wasn’t the first one he’d talked to who’d pointed out that neither description was all that astonishing. Men around forty, of medium height and build, with dishwater-blond or light brown hair maybe going gray, had a coffee or even a glazed donut all the time while passing through town.
He decided he’d have a glazed donut with his second cup of black coffee too. She’d been able to tell him that someone who sounded like a Ruggles sister had made it to town ahead of him. So neither Ritter nor Heger could have ridden in whooping like a Texas badman while shooting at street lamps.
He left a dime tip to show he’d noticed how friendly she’d been, and went back outside in the dawning light to find his way afoot to at least one big red wagon.
It was light enough to make out distant colors by the time he’d waded through trackside weeds past the water tower. So he knew those two bulky wagons farther out than he’d expected had to be the rainmaking expedition.
As he strode in, he found the younger one who seemed to do all the work seated on the fold-down steps of their circus quarters in the lighter of the two. There was no sign of the mules they’d had back near Cedar Bend, and the gal looked as if she’d been crying. Her feet were bare and her light brown hair was unbound as she sat there in a dragon-splattered kimono of fake silk, poking at a dead cookfire with a stick. As she spied him approaching, she looked up with what he read as mixed hope and dread.
She said, “You’re that lawman who was talking to Roxanne down by Cedar Bend. Has she been arrested?”
Longarm ticked the brim of his hat at her and replied, “Not as far as I know, Miss Rowena. You gals made good time across the prairie with these big red wagons. You must have been driving like the devil in the flesh was after you.”
The gal smiled wanly and replied, “When you fail to work up as much as a heavy dew after weeks of corn killing drought, it’s not too safe to loiter about. We were halfway here when that damned line squall blew out of the west last night. I wanted to go back and see if we couldn’t at least parlay that into a few square meals. But I guess Roxanne was right. You quit when you’re ahead when your hydrogen acid runs out and you owe half the merchants in the county. She said when she went off with the little money we had left that she’d bring back at least some coffee and staples. I was half asleep when I agreed to it. Now I can see what she meant by quitting while she was ahead.”
Longarm said soothingly, “Ain’t hardly anything open in town at this hour. I didn’t think you were kin to the real Dan’l Ruggles, but you really are sisters, ain’t you?”
Rowena laughed wryly and replied, “Not exactly. We met as cell mates less than a year ago. I was doing six months for shoplifting. She’d served half her jolt for pulling the old Gypsy switch on the wrong alderman’s wife. But you’ve had time to find out all about us, being as professional in your own way, right?”
Longarm didn’t want her to think he wasn’t omnipotent. So he had no call to ask how two adventurous young gals had come by all this rainmaking flim-flammery. He said, “I told your sister—I mean Miss Roxanne—your confidence game wasn’t covered by federal statute. I want you to keep that in mind as I ask you a more serious question. I ain’t after you on any charge, and such money as you may or may not have betwixt you is none of my beeswax. Do we understand one another so far?”
The disconsolate gal in the thin kimono shrugged her sort of pretty shoulders and asked, “What ‘s to understand about money we don’t have? I told you we were run off as nearly flat-broke failures. We were so sure it just had to rain after weeks and weeks without any.”
He said, “Welcome to the High Plains in summertime. I know about the escrow fund set up for you ladies by the Grange at Cedar Bend. That was the money you never got because it never rained before you ran out of gas for your balloons. Do you have any of that dynamite left, by the way?”