Link laughed indulgently and muttered, “Go on inside with her before she turns you into a toad. I’ll have O’Donnel handle this chore.”
Longarm nodded and followed what seemed a wise suggestion. Once in the house, Longarm found the imperious young gal and her baronial father seated by that big fireplace, as if to admire the cold hearth and all those swords and daggers over it. Iona said they’d all get their supper within the hour as old MacSorley poured him a dram of malt whiskey from a cut-glass decanter and sat down on the same sofa.
He’d poured one for himself and seemed to want to clink glasses. So Longarm let him, and assumed “Air du shlainte!” meant something a tad nicer than it sounded in that old country. It was hard to tell High Dutch or Highland Scotch apart when you spoke neither lingo. They both had those throat-clearing sounds you never heard in plain American.
It wouldn’t have been polite to tell his host he sounded like a furriner of any sort. So he said the whiskey was good, and admired the cutlery around that shield above the mantel.
Martin Link came back inside as old MacSorley began to lecture Longarm on the warlike display. From the way Link and even the old man’s daughter rolled their eyes, it was easy to see old MacSorley had given the same lecture before.
It was less tedious to a guest who’d never heard about targes, sgean dubhs, and claymores before. Sgean dubhs were those small but wicked daggers Scotchmen stuck in their socks. MacSorley said it was a point of honor to never draw from your sock unless you meant to kill somebody. The basket-hilted broadswords on either side of that round studded targe were what Scotchmen waved to make a point that might or might not be settled peacefully. When Longarm said he’d been led to believe those straight sabers were claymores, the older man pointed at the one old-time sword with a far longer blade and a hilt made for a man’s two hands, saying that that was the true claymore or great sword of the Isles. He said mainland clansmen who spoke almost as much English as their Sasunnack enemies called their broadswords their claymores out of ignorance, or while showing off. He added that the correct Hebredian for any sort of sword was “Claidheamh. Longarm wasn’t rude enough to say he didn’t care.
Trooper O’Donnel came in to announce he’d unsaddled Rocket and draped Longarm’s saddle over a rail to dry while he visited.
Longarm set his glass aside and rose to thank O’Donnel with a shake, adding, “Have a cheroot on me. We were just now talking about old country ways. Do you talk any of that Irish Gaelic, Trooper?”
As Longarm reached for that cheroot O’Donnel replied, “I used to know a few words. But my people spoke mostly English and I grew up on this side of the water.”
Longarm got out the cheroot, saying, “Do tell? I didn’t know the Irish Famine and Great Migration was that far back. But you’d know Irish history better than me. I’ve been smoking this brand a spell and it ain’t all that bad. Haben Sie Streich helzer?”
Trooper O’Donnel was too slick to reply in High Dutch, but he did nod before he’d had time to think, and then he was staring down the cold unwinking eye of a .44-40 as Longarm quietly said, “Don’t neither of you squareheads move a thing but your hands. I want ‘em all up!”
MacSorley and his daughter were staring goggle-eyed as Longarm explained, “That wasn’t exactly Gaelic I threw by surprise just now. I asked him casual, in his true native tongue, whether he had the matches to go with that smoke. Now would one of you be so kind as to relieve these two Dutchmen of their six-guns whilst I cover them?”
But before either could move, a familiar voice told Longarm from behind, “I have a better idea, Longarm. Drop your gun before I blow you in two with this ten-gauge!”
Longarm didn’t have to wonder what that was sticking in his back so firmly. As he tossed his .44-40 on the sofa with a sigh he said, “We were wondering where you rode off to, Sattler. Right now, I sure feel dumb. But I wasn’t sure anyone out this way but the foreman was High Dutch. Must have come in handy for old Wolfgang here. A real Irishman would have had to be a true top hand to be hired on as one.”
Ignoring the lawman he had the drop on, the erstwhile town law of Sappa Crossing asked his grinning confederate, the fake Trooper O’Donnel, “Was sonst noch? Was wunschen Sie?”
Wolf Ritter smiled boyishly as he drew his own gun and said, “I think this will be more fun if we all speak English. As I told you out in the stable when I asked you to cover me, this one was much too clever for anyone’s good, including his own.”
He nodded at Longarm and demanded, “Who told you who I really was? Speak up. Don’t make me resort to cruelty.”
Longarm smiled wryly and replied, “Were you planning on kindness? Nobody had to tell me. You just now said I was clever. It was what we call the process of eliminating. I just kept eliminating and eliminating until here we are. If it’s any comfort, you’re pretty clever too. I reckon you learned to move so tricky under that sneaky Otto von Bismarck. I read how he tricked Louis Napoleon into guessing all wrong about his plans time and time again. A plain old crook would have simply killed Horst Heger. But you didn’t know who he might have gone to aside from your old pal, the town law, here. So you razzle-dazzled that old LeMat you had no further use for to make it appear Heger had recognized a desperate drifter, in the hopes I’d assume you’d drifted on by the time I got here. You knew I’d take my time to get here, once you’d had Heger wire a distant office, or wired for him. I still have some loose ends to tie up.”
Wolf Ritter chuckled fondly and said, “No, you haven’t. I’m trying to decide whether it would be more amusing to let you join us for a last supper and watch as we all have this little slut for dessert, or whether it would be wiser to kill you here and now.”
Over at the far end of the sofa, Iona was huddled with her old Athair, trying in vain not to cry as the full meaning of this scene sank in.
Longarm said, “I might have known you’d be scared of a grown man with only two guns backing your vaudeville villainy. You ain’t really hiding any dueling scars under that dyed mutton-chop down your cheek, are you? Fess up, as long as I’m fixing to die anyways. Ain’t it true you paid a skin doctor to scar you a tad under ether? I was reading how some of you Prussian college boys get your he-man scars the safe and painless way.”
The renegade officer smiled coldly and softly said, “It’s a good thing you are not a worthy swordsman, you oh-so-clever peasant!”
Longarm shrugged and said, “I had me some cavalry drill with the saber one time. Why do you ask? Are you offering me a fair sword fight?”
Wolf Ritter started to say something sneery. Then he frowned, smiled and decided, “Why not? It would be just the thing to work up a good appetite for food and other pleasures of the flesh. Werner, cover the kitchen with that shotgun. Martin, see nobody comes in the other way to disturb us as I give this lout a lesson in manners!”
Sattler protested, “I liked your first idea better!”
But Ritter pointed at the MacSorley sword collection with his own six-gun as he sweetly suggested, “Choose your weapon, my Yankee cavalier!”
So Longarm stepped over, unhooked that big two-handed claymore, and drew the cloth-yard of ancient steel from the cracked leather of its scabbard, saying, “I’ve always wanted to try one of these here crusader swords. Heavier than I expected, but the balance ain’t bad.”
The Prussian saberman laughed incredulously and helped himself to a more saberlike Highland broadsword, hefting it as he agreed the gents who’d made these lethal blades had known what they were doing.
Longarm asked if he meant to duel with a broadsword in one hand and that Schofield in the other.
Wolf Ritter smiled boyishly, holstered his six-gun, and shifted the basket hilt to his other hand, saying, “I naturally parry and thrust right-handed. En garde, you poor clumsy oaf!”