Longarm quietly suggested, "The railroad will have his name for us. He was a mucky-muck from out Chicago way traveling in his own private compartment, and like you just heard him say, he was out to show us."
Sergeant Nolan joined them, hauling Longarm's saddle and Tanner along. Longarm told them all, "I had words with him on the train this afternoon and let that be a lesson to us all. I thought we were only arguing about a gal. He seems to have taken it as some sort of mortal insult to his family honor."
The man at their feet groaned, "Please make it stop. Mamma! I paid them back for low-rating your red hands and no proper hat to wear in church. But now I'm feeling mighty poorly and I wish I could have some of that medicine you take all the time for your troubles."
Then they heard a dreadful gasp, followed by an heroic farting, and then nothing at all as Blue Tooth Tanner sighed and said, "I wish he hadn't reminded me. How soon did you say it might take to have me flapping like a fish and shitting like a fool at the end of the hangman's line, Longarm?"
Once he'd nudged the cadaver with a boot tip to make dead sure Longarm soberly replied, "Not as soon as they might have planned. They say this was a cattle baron I just had to gun, sind it's been quite a spell since you could even gun a hobo within the city limits of a state capital without explaining your reasons to a coroner's jury. So aside from feeling much obliged, I'm going to have to call you as my only witness to a shoot-out in self-defense. Mister Tanner."
His prisoner gasped and swayed in weak relief as he asked in a tone of laconic desperation, "Are you saying they might let me off with Life at Hard if you was to tell 'em how I just saved you?"
Longarm just felt sort of sick as he assured Tanner he meant to put that down in writing. It would have been needlessly unkind to hazard even a guess as to how long a stay of execution they might be talking about.
Chapter 2
It was far shorter stay than Longarm had expected, and he was used to the ways of the fair but firm Judge Dickerson. It might have taken longer back in the days of the Pony Express and mail coaches. But thanks to modem wonders of wet-cell electricity and the help of both Western Union and the railroads involved, it was soon established that the late W. R. Callisher of ten-gallon and .45-caliber notoriety had been as noted for his nasty temper as he had for his railroad stock and beef herd.
Even better for Longarm, the railroad wired in depositions from that conductor and more than one of his train crew regarding Callisher's oafish behavior aboard that train as well as the nice way Longarm had tried to deal with him.
The coroner's jury was pleased to take Blue Tooth Tanner's more direct testimony involving events taking place shortly before and after he'd spied a white hat in the gloom of that train shed and instinctively recognized the intent behind its sudden movement as Callisher dropped into a gunfighting crouch. But the real clincher was the deposition from the Prussian Consulate, translated into English and signed by a Frau Erica Von Lowendorf, who praised the actions of the obvious Amerikanisch aristocrat who'd saved her from the unwelcome attentions of an obvious
Amerikanisch peasant as she was on her way to join her husband, the military attache at Fort Bliss, Texas. So Longarm could have had himself decorated by Der Kaiser if he'd wanted to traipse all the way to Berlin Town. Everyone closer to home allowed he'd done 'em proud and only done what was right by a homicidal pest.
So the morning after he got that in writing Longarm made a point of getting to his office in the Denver Federal Building early.
This seemed to shock young Henry, who played the typewriter and warned visitors in the reception room that they needed some sensible reason, if not an appointment, to see the one and original U.S. Marshal William Vail, hiding out in the back.
Longarm didn't need an appointment, since he worked there, but he'd still learned to ask the pasty-faced Henry whether the boss was in alone before he barged back to the office.
When he asked that morning, Henry nodded but asked, "What happened? Were you unlucky at cards or does she hanker for more than the usual flowers, books, and candy? We just got paid last week and we put you in for all three trips you made last month at six to twelve a mile, so—"
"I ain't scouting for sm advance on next month, Henry,'* Longarm cut in, moving on by without elaboration lest the fool kid think him a sentimental fool.
He found their superior, known to his pals as Billy Vail, in a better than average mood in his oak-paneled office, which could have used a good airing. The older, shorter, and far stouter marshal insisted on smoking pungent fat cigars with all the windows closed against the thin crisp autumn air of the Mile High City.
As Longarm sat uninvited in the one decent leather-covered chair on his own side of the older lawman's cluttered desk. Vail shot a glance at the banjo clock on one oak wall. "You can't leave early for that harvest festival at the Grange Hall. I know she's pretty and that you ain't had any
with her yet. My wife tells me all the gossip. But we still give the taxpayers a full day's work in this damned outfit, you homy cuss."
Longarm got out a cheroot of his own in self-defense, smiled sort of sheepishly, and refrained from allowing that the gossip about that particular pretty neighbor was a tad behind the times. For any man who boasted about his screwing would likely brag about his other body functions as well.
After lighting his own smoke, Longarm quietly said, "I was just down the hall talking to Judge Dickerson's clerk. You drink personally with the judge himself, don't you, Billy?"
Vail nodded. "All right, you can knock off at five if you just have to. I already asked. The answer is no. Tanner's been found guilty of Homicide in the First and sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, dead, dead. Period."
Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring and declared, "Billy, I was walking into it like a big bird with blinkers on. Callisher was after me, not my prisoner. If Blue Tooth had just done nothing at all I'd have likely wound up dead with him still alive and free to help himself to my handcuff key, my money, and my gun."
Vail blew a thicker, more pungent donut and simply replied in a card-dealing tone, "He could have. But he didn't. One's inclined to doubt he'd have gunned that innocent bystander, that schoolmarm down to Castle Rock, if he'd been bom with the ability to plan ahead on short notice. He spotted hostile intent and sounded a waming by instinct, the way a yard dog might have. You don't owe him any more than that, old son."
Longarm nodded soberly but said, "I'd hardly hang a yard dog, even a biter, for waming me just in time there was a weasel in my henhouse."
Vail shmgged. "Neither would I. But Tanner wasn't found guilty of being a mean yard dog by a jury of his peers. He owes a life for a life, and his saving your life
don't cut no ice with Judge Dickerson, or the kith and kin of that innocent young schoolmarm he gut-shot down in Castle Rock for no better reason!"
Longarm started to protest, then sighed and allowed, "I reckon there's no sensible answer to your draconian words of wisdom. But there sure are days I don't enjoy this job. Old Blue Tooth's sent word he'd like for me to come by and visit with him some more in the time he has left. I've already done that more than once. I've brought him tobacco, sweets, and some books before I found out he can't read. I know what he's going to ask me and I know I'm just going to wind up saying I'll try some more."
Billy Vail nodded soberly and said, "I've had to stand by as they hung someone I wasn't really sore at in my time. It can go with this job when the job's done proper and impau--tial. We know you've done all you can for the poor dumb cuss. So if I was you I wouldn't go to see him any more."