Waco wailed, “I ain’t got no wife and you’re trying to change the subject! Did you or did you not blow a pal I used to ride with through that gaping hole in the front of this very building?”
Longarm said, “I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little .44-40 because he was slapping leather at me. Had you been standing in my boots by yonder piano and he’d been drawing on you, you’d have done the same. Leastways, I hope you’d have done the same. You don’t look like a damned fool with suicidal tendencies.”
A voice of reason from across the taproom called out, “He’s saying it like it was, Waco. There was two of them and that lawman didn’t start it. They was the ones as started it. Two to one without a word of warning!”
Waco sighed wearily and muttered, “God damn it, I told old Buster that woman was fixing to get him killed!”
Longarm moved closer to the bar and picked up an abandoned bottle, since the barkeep was nowhere to be seen, as he quietly observed, “I just shot it out with Buster and another gent. You say there was some gal egging him on to get himself killed?”
As Longarm refilled Waco’s shot glass, the burly Texan nodded and explained in as reasonable a tone as a man in his condition could manage, “Buster called her the Spider Lady. I never met her myself. But I could see she wanted us to take all the risk whilst she wound up with equal shares.”
“Us?” asked Longarm, setting the rotgut aside as he used the same left hand to fish out a smoke, his gun hand being occupied all this while with that double derringer.
Waco numbly replied, “I never said I’d ride with them. Buster was trying to recruit some extra hands for the Spider Lady, and he knew I was at least as tough as he was. But I told Buster I’d risk stealing stock before I’d stick up a bank with a bunch of total strangers!”
Longarm told him, “You were smarter than you could have known, old son. If Crabtree’s Spider Lady was the crazy-mean gal we know by yet another name, she wasn’t about to settle for shares. We call her Miss Medusa Le Mat because a Medusa is a monster who kills everyone who sees her face, in this case with a Le Mat ten-shooter.”
Waco blinked at Longarm, shook his head as if to clear it, and demanded, “Are you saying that if you hadn’t just gunned old Buster, that Spider Lady was fixing to gun him later?”
Longarm nodded soberly. “That’s about the size of it. How come you call her the Spider Lady, Waco?”
The Texas rider picked up the refilled glass and replied in an offhand tone, “Buster called her the Spider Lady. He said she’d wove a clever web for catching money and tangling the feet of the law. He said she said she’d heard about him from another old boy from Texas he’d known in prison.”
Longarm asked if by any chance this other old boy could have been baby-faced and inclined to daily-rope from a center-fire saddle.
Waco hoisted his glass and declared, “Here’s to lips. Here’s to gums. Watch out, belly, here she comes!”
Waco downed the cheap but potent red-eye with one gulp, gasped, and wheezed, “I told you I never met none of the bunch. Hold on. Buster did say French Barbara Allan from the Junction had throwed in with the Spider Lady for fun and profit. Buster said the Spider Lady didn’t put out for her pals on the trail, but French Barbara would be more than willing to service three or four a night just to keep in practice. I don’t know what could have gotten into French Barbara, aside from old Buster, I mean. She had a good steady job at that trail-town whorehouse. It ain’t smart to risk your neck for a fifth or less of a bank robbery when you can make good money steady with your honest efforts.”
“Is that why you turned down the deal?” asked Longarm knowingly.
Waco growled, “Damned right! I can hire on most anywheres as a top hand who ain’t afraid to back my boss in a bounty, brand, or water dispute. I ain’t about to back the play of some smooth-talking she-crook who’s not willing to talk to me face to face!”
Longarm poured another drink for Waco as he murmured, “I just said you seemed smarter than you look. Let’s see if I have it straight in my head about this mysterious she-crook your pal called the Spider Lady. He was acting as her go-between, trying to muster a somewhat bigger gang than usual for her? You’re sure he was dealing with her directly, and not through some other Texican with a pimp mustache and a Schofield .45?”
Waco picked up the shot glass, threw back the heroic slug of one-hundred-proof, and declared, “Never met nobody with a pimp mustache. Never met no Spider Lady, and I took it on faith old French Barbara was with Buster instead of off to join some circus as a sword swallower. She swallowed me one payday for an extra two bits, all the way to my balls, and I ain’t built delicate.”
Longarm grimaced and poured another drink as he insisted they’d been talking about a gal who sounded more dangerous. He said, “French Barbara and those other two riders, Currier and Landon, could be in serious even as we speak. There’s no saying what Miss Medusa Le Mat will decide on as soon as she hears Buster and another party to her plot have been gunned down this evening.”
Waco drained the shot glass, slammed it back down awkwardly, and said, “That’s right. I was fixing to call you on that shooting, you rascal! Have you been trying to talk me out of that?”
Longarm poured yet another drink as he quietly replied, “We can’t shoot it out before you pay me that ten dollars you owe me. Meanwhile, this gal none of us know by her right name has spun the same sorts of webs before. She meant to use your pal Buster, and all the pals he recruited for her, to pull a big holdup around payoff day, which is only a few days off.”
Waco said that was what Buster had told him.
Longarm said, “I ain’t finished. She was planning to double-cross them as soon as they rejoined her after the robbery. She aimed to gun the menfolk, and either escape with the gal as two-little-maids-from-school-are-we, or swap duds with her female dupe and leave her behind as a red herring, or as a dead gal who could be taken for any gal anyone recalled from around the bank. What does this whore French Barbara look like, by the way?”
Waco shook his head again, stood taller, and decided, “Innocent, for a trail-town whore with such scandalous ways with cowboys. She’s around thirty, give or take a few beatings, with soft brown hair like that gal in Mister Foster’s romantical song. She likes the song about that other Barbara Allan too. Says she’s always dreamed of having a good-looking cuss like Sweet William die for the love of her. I wish she was here right now. I’d tell her I loved her and then I’d make her suck me off. Is that why you’re so interested in her, Longarm?”
The much more sober lawman smiled thinly and explained, “I’ve got more than one gal I’ve never seen on my plate. Do you know Rose Cassidy, bought the old Nesbit place near Minnipeta Junction a spell back?”
Waco said, “As well as any man can say he knows such a mean-eyed gal. They say she’s a widow. She must have screwed at least one man in her day, since she has a grown-up daughter nobody can get close to neither. Old Rose must not have enjoyed the experience. She acts as if all men were shit on the walk with her wearing Sunday shoes!”
Longarm said, “I’m sorry her marriage didn’t work out. I’m more interested in what she looks like. Her daughter’s one of them blue-eyed brunettes with Irish features. Would it be safe to say Maureen Cassidy favors her mother’s side of the family?”
Waco reached for the shot glass, knocked it over instead, and said, “Mother and daughter are both Irish-eyed brunettes, only the kid’s way more friendly. You have been trying to get me drunk, you sneaky rascal! You’re trying to make me forget you gunned my pal and I took a solemn oath to shoot you down like a dog. Ask anyone in here if I didn’t promise to avenge old Buster Crabtree’s untimely death!”