A shadowy figure under a tall Texas hat wasn't half as concealed in the inky shade of a cottonwood across from a clean but inexpensive rooming house as he might have thought he was.
So the middle-aged copper badge, who'd survived the Great Hunger and that Great War between the Blue and Gray by moving as fast as need be, but no faster, never broke stride as he spotted whoever was up in that puddle of blackness between him and the next faint street lamp. He just kept twirling his nightstick as if without a care in the world as he swung round the next corner without a second glance at the sinister silhouette he'd have otherwise had to pass right by. For O'Hanlon knew his beat like the palm of his hand, and the yard dog chained in the back of a house on the other side of the block knew O'Hanlon well enough not to bark as the big bluff copper badge eased over its picket fence, softly calling to it, "Keep your gob shut, like the good doggy you are, and one day I might bring you a fresh bone from the Dutchman's shop across the creek."
The yard dog wagged its tail, whether it understood the soothing words or not. So O'Hanlon bent over to scratch it behind the ears before moving on, drawing the blue-steel double-action .36 he'd been issued.
Hence the next thing the somewhat taller man under the cottonwood knew O'Hanlon had the drop on him, and said so casually as he added, from his own side of yet another picket fence, "Anyone can see from your darling hat that you'd not be a Colorado rider, and so now I'd like to hear what you're doing so far from Texas and on my beat, if you take my meaning, good sir."
The stranger didn't sound at all evcisive, or even surprised, as he replied without turning his head or moving either hand, ''Nochd go bragh. Agus I'd be from County Kerry, please God."
To which O'Hanlon could only reply, "I'd be from Monaghan and that's not what I just asked you if the truth be known. Anyone but a Kerry man would know that when a copper badge asks you nicely what you'd be after doing on his beat, he wants you to tell him what you'd be after doing on his darling beatV
The stranger with the Texas hat and Kerry brogue said, "In that case I'd be waiting here for another peace officer who'd be living across the street in that grand rooming house."
O'Hanlon frowned thoughtfully and said, "The only peace officer who dwells anywhere in this neighborhood would be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, the one they'd be after calling Longarm."
The stranger agreed that was who he'd been waiting for. O'Hanlon waited to hear why and, when he didn't, asked.
The stranger turned in a confiding way, allowing O'Hanlon to see more of a shadowy lantern-jawed face as he explained, "I'd be with the Texas Rangers and all and all. So I'm asking you to take the word of a fellow peace officer that the matter is a secret I'd not be at liberty to divulge."
It didn't work. The humble copper badge shrugged and replied he might believe that once he'd seen some sort of identification.
The mysterious stranger on the far side of the fence raised one hand to open his own frock coat, exposing a dim silvery blur pinned to his dark shirtfront as he chuckled fondly and said he hoped a Monaghan man recognized a Ranger badge when he saw it.
O'Hanlon made the mistake of peering closer, even as he said a real ranger would have some other identification to go with a tin star anyone might find in a pawnshop.
He knew just how right he'd been in the few instants of awareness left to him between the moment a .45-55 erupted like a volcano in his chest and when his world, and life,
whirled down and down in a pinwheeling kaleidoscope of ever-darker chaos.
The killer with the Texas hat and Irish brogue was already out of sight before the first windows along the street had popped open and O'Hanlon's body on the grassy side of the pickets had stopped twitching. The man who'd just killed one lawman had been about to give up on Longarm in any case. For they'd told him that unless the target of their annoyance wasn't home by moonrise, it would likely mean he'd gotten lucky at love or some other game of chance in some other part of town.
Longarm didn't seem to worry at all about healthy habits.
It made him awfully hard to kill.
Chapter 4
Longarm's pals on the local force were on the O'Hanlon case before Longarm heard a thing about the killing just across the street from his furnished digs.
Having no call to connect the one with the other, the hard-eyed Denver Detective Squad was reading the sign well but wrong about the time Sandy Henderson was fixing scrambled eggs as Longarm reclined on one elbow, admiring her bare, bruised derriere.
Noting the way O'Hanlon lay sprawled behind that fence in that tree-shaded yard, with his own gun out and the front of his uniform so powder-burned, the detectives assumed the copper badge had been moving in on some prowler he'd spotted in the yard, and either been ambushed by the prowler or walked into a confederate he hadn't expected. The folks who lived in the house O'Hanlon had died so close to had no better suggestions as to just what might have been going on out front as they'd been having supper in the back. They said the first they'd heard of any trouble in the neighborhood was the roar of a man-sized gun. One of the old boys from the meat-wagon crew said it looked as if O'Hanlon had tried to stop at least a .45-55 with his heart. Others from the neighborhood agreed the single shot they'd all heard had sounded about right for a .45 long. Nobody had seen the shootist, of course, so nobody could
say whether it had been a carbine or horse pistol they'd heard. A man could fire a .45-55 from a pistol, if he had mighty good wrists.
The copper badges did the usual canvassing of the neighborhood. Most who lived near Longarm's rooming house, including Longarm, did so because the neighborhood was inexpensive as well as handy to downtown Denver. The few more prosperous neighbors felt a tad reluctant to discuss their sources of income with the Denver P.D., and nobody within blocks seemed to have been robbed or even heard a suspicious sound before the roar of that one fatal shot.
Longarm didn't hear anything about the killing until the next morning, late the next morning, because once he and Sandy had established why Indians liked it dog-style, they'd naturally wound up the good old way in Sandy's bed and sort of overslept.
Both the Post and Rocky Mountain News had the killing headlined on every morning newsstand Longarm passed. He heard a lot more, some of it true, when he dropped by his furnished digs just across from the killing to pack.
Longarm didn't get excited about the location of poor O'Hanlon's demise. He'd heard it was a rough part of town before he'd hired furnished digs on that side of the creek. But he did raise an eyebrow when he heard they'd dug such a serious slug out of a copper badge who must have surprised a burglar and vice versa.
Aside from the neighborhood and the early hour of the killing, a .45-55 seemed a lot of gun for your average residential prowler. The .45-55 carbine round threw a 405-grain slug a good ways with fifty-five grains of powder. Meaning they were talking about a stranger or someone who knew the neighborhood prowling it with a mighty noticeable cavalry carbine. Or, and this was even tougher to buy, they were talking about a petty hit-and-run burglar armed with a bodacious horse pistol indeed.
Longarm himself favored the more practical and most popular AA A O anmiunition a fairly serious shootist could
shove into both his Winchester saddle gun and Colt double-action six-shooter. The .44-40 lobbed two hundred grains of lead with its forty grains of powder, hard enough to stop anything lighter on its feet than, say, a pissed-off grizzly. Many wayfaring riders favored the even lighter and hence cheaper .45-30 rounds for their good-enough Colt single-action Peacemakers. So a rascal gunning copper badges with a .45-55 read more like a hired gun than a burglar to a lawman who'd chased both in his time.