Hard Pan shook his head and said, “Nope. All of them sit tall in the saddle and look mean, the way you’d want a bank robber to look if you was scouting ahead and giving them the high sign to move in. How might this shit about Rose Cassidy tie in?”
Longarm sipped thoughtfully and replied, “My first suspicion was that the more sinister lady was lining up a hideout just outside of the Junction. I’m having trouble fitting a baby-faced cuss the half-witted Maureen Cassidy recalls as Uncle Chester. He don’t answer to tall and mean-looking. Have you ever caught yourself planning a chess move when the name of the game was checkers?”
The older lawman smiled sheepishly and said, “All the time. We know the simple answer is usually the simple answer. But it feels so good to think you’re smart. Are you suggesting this Romeo old Rose was mixed up with had something to do with her vanishing so mysterious?”
Longarm sighed and said, “It gets less mysterious if you let Uncle Chester ride alone. Say old Rose caught him messing with her beautiful but dumb daughter after he’d been messing with her. Then say she handed him the shovel and told him never to darken her door again.”
Hard Pan put down his beer scuttle and asked, “You mean we could be talking about a lover scorned?”
Longarm shrugged and said, “Who’s to say what a saddle tramp who’d want to play musical beds with a mother and literal child might wind up doing? Most of us mortal men hold secret hard-ons in reserve for the ones who got away. Maureen didn’t act as if she’d have been a tough conquest for any man when I talked to her. Uncle Chester could have had a grand notion about coming back to the old Nesbit place when old Rose wasn’t there to run him off, see?”
Hard Pan whistled softly and asked, “Where do you reckon he done Rose dirty? She ain’t been in to Florence recent. I asked around as soon as I got Pat’s wire this afternoon.”
Longarm told him about the grim investigations of Silent Knight and Lash Flanders around that wooded draw. He was only doing so to respect his elders. So he was surprised but not upset when the bright small-town lawman said, “Well, I never. That sure explains that cordovan stud we’re still holding over to the municipal pound.”
Longarm blinked and said, “Rose Cassidy was riding a cordovan stud the last time anybody saw her alive and well. You say it wound up in your stray corral?”
Hard Pan nodded and said, “Had to. Some son of a bitch tethered it near the railroad stop all day without fodder or water. Now that you’ve recalled Rose Cassidy to me, somebody at the time made mention of the abandoned pony looking something like the favorite mount of that widow woman over by Minnipeta Junction. I paid less mind at the time because I hadn’t heard old Rose or her cordovan stud were missing. Besides, the critter was saddled mannish with a center-fire dally-roper.”
Longarm broke out a couple of cheroots as he silently tried to put odd pieces together.
Hard Pan suggested, “Mayhaps he hid that sidesaddle and left the gal’s pony tethered by the railroad stop so’s we’d assume he took the train clean out of here whilst we was having this very conversation.”
Longarm nodded and said, “Works as well more ways than one. There’s nigh as much dark as light along the trails at this time of the year. I noticed, riding in, how easy it would be to ride most anywhere on anything with nobody but the owl birds really looking you over. So all we know for certain is that somebody met up with a sidesaddled stud in that wooded draw, then abandoned it here in Florence with a beat-up Texican saddle you could likely pick up cheap at many a hockshop. How many hockshops are we talking about here in Florence, pard?”
Hard Pan thought and decided, “Four, counting the saddle shop as loans out money to cowhands with their saddles as security. Ain’t none of ‘em open at this hour, though.”
Longarm thumbed a match head alight for the two of them as he said anyone who’d remember that center-fire roper at the moment would likely recall it as well in the morning.
He got his cheroot going, sipped more suds, and allowed he was more interested in talking to Greek George, the peddling man, at that hour.
Hard Pan said, “You won’t find him here in town at any hour now. I understand that once he recovered from that beating Lash Flanders gave him the other night, he limped home to his true love, Osage Opal. She’d be the breed widow woman of a hog farmer over on the other side of Cottonwood Creek. Osage Opal stayed on after old Bill Ziegel up and died from a heart stroke slopping hogs. Greek George has been staying with Osage Opal ever since, when he ain’t out peddling and pestering gals in other parts. The place ain’t hard to find, by day or night. Just follow the Marion post road until you smell hogs, a heap of hogs. I’ve never fathomed how critters that taste so good can smell so disgusting.”
Longarm chuckled dryly and said, “You remind me of a devoted cunt-licker who often made similar comments. I reckon my visit to that hog spread can wait until morning too.”
Hard Pan Parsons agreed it was getting late, and asked Longarm where he’d been planning to bed down, adding an invitation to his own place just up the way.
Longarm thanked him and allowed he’d made other plans. So the two lawmen shook and parted friendly, with Hard Pan headed back to his office and Longarm drifting on toward the distant but familiar sounds of an out-of-tune piano being tortured beyond endurance.
As he paused outside in the darkness to peer over the top of the bat-wing doors, Longarm saw he’d been right about that rendition of “Aura Lee” that could have just as easily been “Lenora.” For the pianist seated at an upright against the rear wall with her back to Longarm could have only been the one and original Miss Red Robin from Chicago by way of Texas.
Nobody else with such a fine figure played piano that badly in a flaming red velveteen dress that almost matched the dyed hair pinned up to expose the ivory nape of her neck. Longarm knew for a fact she was a natural brunette. Sort of. Red Robin shaved between her shapely soft thighs as well as under both arms—to keep from picking up nits as she bummed around from one boom town to another, she’d told Longarm the last time he’d asked.
It was Red Robin’s sixth sense for boom times that inspired Longarm to part the swinging doors and mosey over to her end of the bar, or so he tried to tell himself. Undersheriff Brennan, just up the road a piece, was communicating by wire regularly with the town law of Florence, and a stranger in town just never knew how many local deputies might be keeping an eye on him.
But what good old Pat didn’t know for certain about good old Red Robin wasn’t likely to hurt either gal, and Longarm really had a good reason to question Red Robin about her sudden appearance in a dinky cow town between roundups.
She went on playing, or trying to, as Longarm quietly ordered plain beer and admired a cameo profile for the moment. They’d met a spell back down Texas way, and screwed one another silly in many a boom town since. For Red Robin followed the clinking of glasses and the jingle of money, playing piano with much the same smoothness but still getting handsome tips for her efforts, considering her reluctance to put out for born suckers.
As he sipped his own beer schooner, Longarm saw Red Robin had placed an empty one at one end of the piano. It was a quarter full of coins, with a couple of silver certificates dropped in by big spenders.
Longarm waited for Red Robin to pause, and then he waded through all the applause to circle round and drop a silver cartwheel of his own in her glass.
As he’d hoped, Red Robin caught the sound of silver on glass with considerable skill for a tone-deaf gal, and smiled sweetly up to thank him. Then she saw who it was and grinned like a mean little kid, adding, “I’ll get you for that!”
Longarm moved back to the bar on her far side as Red Robin forged ahead, trying in vain to play “Peggy Gordon” as per a shouted request from the crowd.