Longarm looked up more annoyed than the pretty secretary, knowing the U.S. Bill of Rights better. Pat looked embarrassed, and said some of her deputies had been poking around out at the old Nesbit place.
She said, “They found a wad of money that would choke a horse and a box of French .40-caliber rounds, out back amid some hay bales.”
Longarm asked if they’d found that notorious Le Mat Duplex ten-shooter. When Pat sheepishly admitted they hadn’t, Longarm told her he and Miss Lucy were trying to pin down some dates and places tighter. He said, “I met up with this stage magician gal one time. She was able to show me how a medicine man was impressing the Lakota all out of proportion. Most magic is simple, once you know how it’s done. Folks who don’t believe in magic are as easy to trick because they tend to look for trapdoors and invisible wires a good magician don’t need. I suspect the misdirection Miss Medusa Le Mat’s been using is a version of what they call One Ahead in stage magic.”
Pat smiled awkwardly, and said she had to get on out to the old Nesbit place. She asked if he was coming. When he told her he was a mite busy with his own chores, she stomped out, slamming the door behind her.
Lucy Wojensky laughed lightly, rose, and went over to bar the door with her throw-bolt, demurely observing, “I don’t like it when people barge in without knocking. You know what she was expecting us to be up to, don’t you?”
Longarm murmured, “One Ahead is used by mind readers, pretending to read written messages handed to them from the audience before they open the envelope.”
Lucy insisted, “I heard she was sweet on you, the poor old thing. When some gossip told her we were up here together alone …”
“The stage magician ain’t reading the message in the envelope he’s holding up sealed. He’s repeating what was in the envelope he opened ahead of it. Everyone who’s submitted a message knows what he or she wrote down. So of course they think the magician must be the bee’s knees when they hear their message being read, never considering the rascal just opened another envelope right in front of ‘em!”
Lucy said, “I can see how that silly stage trick works. What are we going to do about Undersheriff Brennan? I mean, we’re going to have to be very discreet if she already suspects us!”
Longarm nodded and told her, not unkindly, “Sometimes your best bet is to keep life simple. Those French bedroom farces are only funny on stage. In real life nobody laughs. I like this proven claim up in the Nebraska cattle country. It ain’t so far. I could likely get there faster by rail, even allowing for some tricky transfers. For trains move so much faster than you can beeline aboard a bronc.”
As he rose to his feet, Lucy almost wailed, “What are you talking about? What about us, Custis?”
As she plastered her shapely self against the front of him, Longarm kissed the part in her hair and wistfully told her, “I ain’t got the time if I had the nerve. I hope you won’t think me a sissy, ma’am. I have been known to carry on scandalously with plainer gals when things didn’t add up as risky.”
She clung to his shirt, sobbing, “What risk? I’m not afraid of that skinny Pat Brennan! What can she do to us, Custis?”
He quietly answered, “She might cry. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you, Miss Lucy. I ain’t got time here in Minnipeta Junction to do right by any lady, see?”
She must not have, judging from the china cup she hurled against her door as he shut it after him on his way out.
Some gals were like that when they didn’t get their way.
So, a little over seventy-two hours later, as Longarm reined in his fresh livery mount on the lee side of a Nebraska swell and got down to do some crawling, he moved in on another lady with his loaded and locked Winchester cradled across his elbows.
He removed his Stetson near the skyline and peered over the rise between two clumps of soap weed. The modest spread in the draw ahead looked deserted, save for faint smoke rising from the stovepipe poked through a sod roof and the one red pony lazing in the pole corral behind the shithouse.
Longarm told a lady bug creeping up a soap-weed spine, “One of ‘em keeping the fire burning. Everyone else and their mounts must be over to that railroad stop four miles south.”
The lady bug spread her tiny wings and flew away to see if her house was on fire and her children were fixing to burn. Longarm chewed a grass stem for a million years. Then Maureen Cassidy came out of the soddy with a catalogue, headed for the shithouse out back.
As everyone knows, it takes some concentration as well as time to do what needs to be done in a shithouse with a catalogue. So after Maureen had done it, dropped her skirts back down, and ambled back to the house, she found Longarm seated inside at the kitchen table, with his .44-40 resting beside his Winchester ‘73, as he smiled up at her pleasantly to say, “Morning, Miss Maureen. You’ve no idea what a time I just had finding you.”
The pretty little thing gasped, “Oh, praise the Lord! I was afraid nobody would ever find me! That mean old Matt has been messing with my ring dang doo ever since he made me ride off with him! Why do you men like to mess with girls like that? He says I’m supposed to come with him, and when I tell him I’ve already come all this way with him, he gets mad and hits me!”
Longarm quietly assured her, “I won’t let Matt Currier hit you, Miss Maureen. Where might he be right now, and how many pals might he have with him by now?”
She looked as if the arithmetic was tough on her as she said Matt had ridden into town alone on some mysterious errand.
Longarm didn’t ask, but she volunteered, “I was studying on running away. But his pony is faster and I ain’t sure where this place is. Matt says we’re in Nebraska. I don’t know where Kansas might be from here.”
Longarm rose to his feet, picking up his six-gun, as he told her they were only a few days ride from Minnipeta Junction, adding, “Texas is farther. But there is more time for that move. Would you come over here by the front door, Miss Maureen?”
She did, almost skipping, and asked him if they were planning a hot reception for that mean old Matt when he got back from town.
Longarm said, “We ain’t. I am, Miss Maureen.”
Then he spun her against the wall and handcuffed her wrists behind her back as she cussed and pleaded in her half-witted way.
He marched her over to the one bed, shoved her down across it without ceremony, then got his Winchester from the table as he told her, “You can drop the feebleminded act now. Just be still and we’ll talk about your future later. I think I hear hoofbeats outside.”
He was sure he did a few minutes later. He cracked open the window sash by the front door and dropped to one knee to cover the dooryard with his Winchester.
A few moments later a lean young jasper on a spunky paint pony rode into view, calling out to his honey that he was home.
Then Maureen was on her feet at another window, yelling fit to bust as the rider who had to be Matt Currier reined in, slapped leather, and spun his mount to ride off as he pegged a blind shot at the soddy.
Then Longarm had emptied his saddle with a more carefully aimed shot, and you could see from the rag-doll way the youth landed in the dust that he’d never known what hit him.
“You bastard!” wailed the pretty young brunette in a tone of common-sense despair.
Longarm levered another round in the chamber as he quietly told her it had been her fault as much as his own. Then he added, “Just let me tidy up out yonder and I’ll tell you what else you done wrong.”
Chapter 22
That was easier said than done. The spunky paint had run off a piece, and wouldn’t respond to Longarm’s gentle calls. The tall deputy had been through a war one time. So he’d gotten used to killing total strangers. But it was odd how he’d pictured Matt Currier with a different face entirely.