She sighed and said, "We just lost a good old redbone hound to coyotes. He busted his chain, the poor thing, to go chasing off into the dark after a coyote bitch in heat."
Longarm eased over to the front window, gun in hand, as he nodded and said, "Lots of dogs get killed that way out here. Nobody knows for certain whether it's assassination or a crime of passion. Anything canine will flirt with anything canine of the opposite sex. But any dog that meets up with a pack of coyotes on the prairie is in a whole heap of trouble!"
He could make out moving shapes across the road, thanks to the full moon. But he waited until the moonlight bounced his way from a pair of spooky eyes before he decided, "Your hound's old sweetheart seems to be looking for him tonight with her big brothers. I make it four, no, five coyotes all told."
From the bed, Cora said, "Damn. I told Leroy to make certain he planted that calf deep!"
She went on to explain how they disposed of stillborn calves on a dairy farm. There seemed to be a small bovine graveyard across the way. She sold off her live veal, of course, once giving birth had the cow letting down her milk again.
Longarm observed coyotes had been known to dig up dead folks from graves dug too shallow. As he came back to bed he said, "That's how come they say six feet down. Albeit coyotes will seldom dig more than four. Takes a good sniffer to smell dead meat through even a yard of dirt."
She said she didn't want to think about death, and so he put the gun aside and they got lively as hell for a short sweet spell.
He had her coming dog-style when a distant rumble tingled the air all around them and she murmured, "Goody! It's fixing to rain again, and you won't find anyone waiting for you on the streets of Trinidad at midnight after all!"
He started to point out that the moon still shone outside from a cloudless sky. He decided it might be smarter to just screw her to sleep. So he did. He almost knocked himself out in the process, but unlike Cora, he knew he had something more important to do before the clock struck twelve.
He had her snoring softly with a contented smile on her moonlit face before eleven. She only murmured another man's name in her sleep as he rolled out of bed, gathered everything up, and got dressed in the kitchen to sneak out across the barnyard.
He might or might not have heard a woman wailing after him on the night winds as he loped into town, anxious to get set up before that Amarillo night train pulled in.
As he rode down the main street of Trinidad, things ahead were lit up as if it was way earlier on Saturday night. Longarm reined in and dismounted on the edge of the big crowd gathered in the street between the livery and his hotel. He saw firemen in leather helmets up on the roof of the Dexter, wading around through considerable smoke. He asked a townsman what was going on. The Trinidad man replied, "Big explosion across the way. Dynamite. Blowed a hotel guest through the roof and set off a fair-sized fire."
As Longarm whistled soundlessly, another townsman volunteered, "They got the crazy Bohunk anarchist who done it. Confessed of his own free will. Said he was after another Bohunk who'd been fornicating his old lady, ain't that a bitch?"
Longarm said it sure was, and elbowed his way through the crowd to break out his badge and pin it on before making his way across the tangle of fire hoses in the muddy street.
A county deputy sporting a pewter badge started to tell Longarm he had to stay back. Then he recognized Longarm's federal shield and they shook on it.
When asked, the Las Animas lawman allowed the victim had been the late Zoltan Kun, now only fit for a closed-casket service. The killer they had over in the county jail, the crazy dynamiting bastard, was one Attila Homagy, recently a blaster at the Black Diamond Mine.
The county lawman said, "He must have really wanted that other cuss dead. Laid for him upstairs till he got in tonight, and heaved eight sticks of forty-percent Hercules in after him. The coroner's boys say it rolled under the brass bedstead, and still went off with enough force to send what was left of old Zoltan Kun through the roof!"
Longarm said, "He told me he wanted the man who diddled his woman dead. I know Attila Homagy. You say they're holding him over at your county jail? That'd be ahind your courthouse, right?"
The county man nodded and moved off to shoo some kids. So Longarm got back to his tethered livery pony, mounted up, and circled to the nearby Courthouse Square. He'd been warning others not to leap to easy conclusions. So he paid his first visit to the county morgue. A cheerful coroner's helper assured him they had Zoltan Kun on ice, but suggested Longarm shouldn't look at him unless he really had to.
Longarm said he had to. So they slid the remains out of their glorified icebox, and the morgue man had been right. A man got torn up considerably when you blew him through a roof.
The morgue man explained, "The blast damaged the rooms below and to either side, even though the roof was built lighter. It was lucky the dynamite went off fairly early on a Saturday night after payday. None of the other guests were in when the lath and plaster went to flying."
Longarm stared down thoughtfully at the naked, shredded cadaver. He finally decided, "That much body hair usually goes with receding hairlines and a bald spot. Hair's the right color too, and you can still see he was bigger than average. You say they're holding the man who did this to him?"
The morgue man nodded and said, "Jail's right across the square. Little Bohunk in a seersucker suit came in before they found this body on the roof. Said he'd blown the cuss up for screwing his wife. Ain't that a bitch?"
They shook on it and Longarm crossed over to the jail behind the courthouse, where another small crowd had gathered out front. Longarm bulled through with the help of his badge.
Inside, he found a portly gray gent with a gilt sheriffs badge jawing with the desk deputy. Longarm identified himself and told the sheriff what he wanted. The older lawman shrugged and said, "Come on back if you want to talk to him. I don't see it as a federal crime, no offense, and I doubt we'll be able to hold him past Monday."
As they moved back toward the patent cells Longarm said, "I just heard he was pleading the unwritten law. But don't damaging property still count?"
The sheriff said, "The hotel can sue him, for all our prosecuting attorney is going to care. It's an election year, some of the Bohunks are commencing to vote, and the late Zoltan Kun was popular as smallpox. I have it on good authority that Magda Homagy wasn't the only greenhorn gal the bully had his own way with." They found Attila Homagy alone in his cell reading the Good Book. He rose with a sheepish little smile to come over to the bars, saying, "I'm sorry about accusing your fellow deputy Longarm."
Longarm said, "I wish you'd quit shitting me, Homagy. You never chased me all over the far away Indian Territory without finding out who I was. You tracked me all the way back here. Told a room clerk how you meant to meet my train, and then blew up Zoltan Kun instead. What makes you act so odd, Attila?"
The older man said simply, "I found out I'd been fooled by a false-hearted woman. My Madga told me the man she'd been seen with while I was out of town was a famous American lawman. You know how I felt about that. I'm glad I never killed you before I learned the truth."
Longarm said, "So am I. I know Zoltan Kun screwed your wife. He bragged he had, to me. How did you find out?"
Homagy looked pained and replied, "The same way. I was not fooled by the false name you registered under. I took a room later, meaning to kill you when you got in. I met Zoltan Kun at sunset as he was going out, through the lobby. He recognized me. He asked if I was after him. He laughed when I said I was after the man who stole my Magda. He said he didn't know who she'd run away with, but agreed she'd been a grand bus. He said this with neither shame nor worry, as if I was not man enough to do anything about it."