Longarm wrote down the name, mildly observing, "Squaw means woman in most Algonquin dialects. Osage, Santee, and other such Sioux-Hokan speakers say something like Wee-yah for women in general. Meanwhile, whilst they talk much the same lingo, real Osage range farther south than you'd have expected your average Canadian trapper to range in the Shining Times."
The banker shrugged. "I have them down as Santee Sioux too. But try to prove it, and even if you could at this late date, who but the Land Office has any say in the matter of their homestead claim?"
He took a drag on his own cigar before adding, "In any case, the rascal who stuck Israel Bedford with that hot treasury note came in here bold as brass just yesterday to open a savings and checking account with us."
Longarm grinned wolfishly with the cigar at a jaunty angle and asked, "With yet more of those treasury notes from the Fort Collins robbery?"
The older man splashed cold water on that. "Well, not in so many words. He presented four hundred and thirty-seven dollars to Magnusson out front, in bills of smaller denomination, but I had told all my tellers to watch out for prosperous Indians, and so they naturally asked him, in a cool and casual way, if he was by any chance the same Mister Chambrun who'd bought that nice riding stock off Israel Bedford. So guess what he admitted bold as brass!"
Longarm whistled thoughtfully. "Stupid as hell too, if he knew where that bigger bill came from. Could we have your smart Dealer join in with the rest of this conversation, lest we drop even one detail in the cracks?"
The banker nodded and banged a desk chime near the humidor as he agreed, "Good thinking. I should have asked her to stay to begin with. She was the one who brought that hundred-dollar treasury note to MY attention when a shopkeeper got it off another depositor last week."
The willowy-hipped but top-heavy blonde came in to join them with a puzzled smile. Her boss waved her to another seat and explained, "I want you to tell Deputy Long just what you know about both the Bedford and Chambrun accounts, Vigdis."
Longarm jotted down "Vigdis Magnusson," figuring that might not get you teased as much by the other kids in your school if they'd been stuck with Swedish names as well.
The beautiful blonde explained in her educated but lilting English how they'd already known about the respectable Captain Bedford paying for seed and supplies with that paper a dark sinister stranger had stuck him with. She said she couldn't rightly say why a Polite breed or assimilate had struck her as sinister when he'd come dressed white and with a batch Of innocent paper and Specie.
She said the sinister stranger had given his name as one Wabasha Chambrun, had allowed he and his family were settled in and trying to Prove their own homestead claim up the river a ways, and had said that he'd heard it was safer to keep his money in a bank and pay his bigger bills by check.
The big blonde sounded a mite puzzled as she confided to Longarm, "I'm not sure why such a simple story from such a Polite homesteader simply asking to open an account with us made me feel all tingly and sneaky. But it did, and so I found myself asking if he was the same Mister Chambrun who'd bought that adorable colt Off Captain Bedford. He admitted he was, with neither shame nor hesitation!"
P.S. Plover nodded sagely. "There You have it, young Sir. I naturally reported what Vigdis told me, in writing, that very afternoon. When are you Planning to arrest the thieving redskin?"
Longarm put the notebook away so he could take the cigar out of his mouth as he explained. "I ain't planning to arrest nobody right off. It ain't that I'm lazy. It's just that I've found it tough to start a fire with wet matches or keep a cuss in jail on weak evidence. And by the way, who's holding that treasury note at the moment?"
Plover blinked in surprise and said, "Why, we are, of course. In its own sealed and marked envelope, in our vault, lest we mix it up with innocent bills. I offered it as evidence to the sheriff as soon as I saw its serial number was on that list. But the sheriff told me I'd best hold on to it for the time being because he'd be reporting what seemed a purely federal matter to you federal officers."
Longarm nodded and said, "He did good. Put a man with a lawyer in a county jail on an interstate federal charge, and he'll be out on a writ and likely long gone before anyone like me is likely to be in town. I'd just have to find some safe place to store the evidence for now if I was to ask you to turn it over, so I won't."
The smart buxom blonde asked who'd get stuck in the end, knowing there was no way to exchange a counterfeit note for the real thing, once you'd been dumb enough to get stuck with it.
Longarm told her, "We're not jawing about queer money, ma'am. We're talking about stolen goods. Once that bill in your safe ain't evidence any more, the Fort Collins paymaster who replaced the murdered one will likely reclaim it."
She protested that it hardly sounded fair to stick her bank for funds stolen clear out Colorado way. So he said, "I hadn't finished. Didn't that merchant get the note from Bedford to begin with? And didn't he get that money from this Wabasha Chambrun?"
She clapped her hands like a delighted girl-child and exclaimed, "That's right! We can ask Captain Bedford to make good on the note, and then he can ask Wabasha Chambrun to make good on the note, and... where does it all end in the end?"
Longarm shrugged and said, "On the gallows, once we backtrack to the gang member as commenced such complicated cash transactions. The Point is that this bank won't be stuck in the end for that hundred dollars. So I'd sure like it to stay where it is for now."
P.S. Plover scowled across his desk and complained, "I'm not sure I like your tone, young Sir! Are you Suggesting we might try to pass that treasury note on? Have you forgotten it was I who brought it to the law's attention in the first place When I could have just pretended to Overlook it and passe it on?"
Long shook his head. "Nope. If I had you down as a party to that payroll robbery, I wouldn't be asking you to hold on to that evidence for us."
He leaned forward to flick cigar ash in a tray On Plover's desk as he continued. "I need more evidence before I go arresting anybody. I mean to talk to both Bedford and Chambrun as smooth as Miss Vigdis here might have. I ain't sure what I'll do after Bedford says he got that paper Off Chambrun and Chambrun tells me he came by it just as innocently."
Plover asked what made Longarm so certain the mysterious newcomer to Brown County would be able to offer such a good excuse.
Longarm said, "He'll have to. Would You just admit you robbed and gunned a federal Paymaster even if you had?"
CHAPTER 10
Somebody in these parts had to be lying. Until he was sure who it was, Longarm felt it best to play his own cards closer to his vest than usual. So once he'd checked out his saddle and other possibles at the depot he refrained from heading for a livery as he otherwise might have. He just braced the awkward load on his left hip, leaving his gun hand free as he headed back to the Pedersson place, with his eyes peeled and hugging the sunny side of the street because that was the side you met the fewest on when the afternoons got this hot.
Ilsa Pedersson looked a tad older than before, after all that eye-to-eye smiling at Pretty young Vigdis Magnusson, but she'd tidied up her grayer hair and changed into a fancier gingham print and fresh apron by the time Longarm got back as if to remind him how stale his own shirt must look despite his bath and a store-bought shave with bay rum. But she allowed he looked way more civilized than when he had hunkered down in her tulip bed, and said she'd show him right up to his room so he could store that army saddle and such before she served him another snack out back.
He said he'd rather just tote his riding gear on back to her carriage house if she'd meant what she'd said about hiring him one of her ponies.
She said he'd be riding her jumper, Blaze, but Pointed out that it would soon be suppertime, To which he could Only reply with a wistful smile, "I can smell what you got in your oven from here, ma'am. But they sent me here to put in a day's work for a day's pay, and I've just about time for a couple more calls before sundown if I start right now."