“Oh, go to hell! You’ll not trick me again. You told me you’d marry up with me in Bitter Creek, remember?”
“Now, that, Your Honor, is the biggest lie she’s told so far, and since we first met, she’s told some lulus!”
“Let’s get back to the murders she’s accused of. Frankly, I’m surprised at you, son. You’ve never brought a prisoner in with such flimsy evidence to back your charges.”
“I’ll allow the killer was tricky, Your Honor, but I’m doing the best I know how.”
“This time your best isn’t good enough. Holding her for killing folks we can’t even say for sure are dead won’t keep her overnight. You got anything, anything at alL you can prove?”
Longarm looked uncomfortable as he suggested, “Maybe if we sent her into another room to be searched for evidence… Miss Kim might be willing to help.”
Timberline, leaning against the door, spoke up, “We patted her down for shooting irons, remember?”
“I know, but we never really stripped her down for a proPer search. Why don’t we send the two of ‘em in the next room… there’s no other way out of here and who knows what we’ll find stashed in her corset?”
The judge frowned and said, “Deputy Long, you are stepping on the tail of my robes! What are you UP to, son? You know I can’t order a search unless I order this other lady to search for some thing.”
Longarm said, “What I’m hoping Miss Kim will find on her will be, uh, documentary evidence, Your Honor. She and her husband were bounty hunters. There were no reward papers or telegrams in their packs when I arrested ‘em both.”
“That’s better. What am I to tell this other lady to look for in the way of papers?”
“Letters, telegrams, anything tying ‘em in to someone in Missouri. Maybe someone named James or Younger.”
The judge nodded and Kim got to her feet, saying, “Let’s go, Mabel. It’ll only take a minute.”
“Damn it! I don’t have nothing on me!”
“That may be so, dear. Why don’t we get it over with?”
The judge got to his feet and opened the door to his dressing room. The two women went in, with some grumbling on Mabel’s part, and Hawkins shut the door. His voice was ominous as he said, “Now that we are alone, let me tell you something, Deputy Long. I think you are wasting my time! You’ve been a lawman too long to bring a prisoner in on such flimsy evidence! Have you just gotten dumb, or was there anything at all to that fool women’s story about you bedding down with her?”
Longarm grinned and said, “Hell, she’s just a no-account adventuress, Your Honor. She did take that potshot at me in Bitter Creek, but you’re right. It’d be a waste of time to prove it and her midget husband probably put her up to it. He was the dangerous one of the pair. Without him, she’ll likely end her days in some parlor house. Not that she won’t give right good service in bed.”
judge Hawkins looked thunderstruck as he almost roared, “You knew you didn’t have the evidence to hang her?”
“Sure.” Longarm said, “She never gunned them lawmen. He did.” He pointed to where Timberline stood, stiffened against the door, slack-jawed. Longarm added, conversationally, “Don’t do anything foolish, Mister Younger. We both know I can beat you to the draw nine times out of ten!”
Timberline gasped, “What are you saying, damn it! I thought I was your deputy!”
“Oh, I deputized you as the easiest way to bring you in without having to fight a score or so of your friends, Mister Younger. You might say the nonsense with Mabel Hanks was a ruse. It was you I wanted all the time. Your Honor, may I present the Right Honorable Cotton Younger from Clay County, Missouri, and other parts past mention?”
Just then the door flew open and the two women sailed out, fighting and fussing. Mabel had a firm grip on Kim Stover’s red hair and Kim was holding firm to the corset around her otherwise naked body as they landed in a rolling, spitting heap between Longarm and the man against the door!
Longarm muttered, “Damn!” as Timberline opened the door and crashed backward out of the chambers.
Longarm drew as he leaped over the cat-fight on the rug and came down running. As he left the room, a bullet tore a sliver from the jamb near his head and he fired across the deserted courtroom at the smoke cloud in the far doorway.
He ran the length of the courtroom and dove into the hallway headfirst, landing on his belly and elbows as he slid across the marble floor beneath the first shot fired his way at waist level.
He rolled and fired back at the tall, dark figure outlined by the window at the end of the long hallway. The target jacknifed over its gunbelt and feinted sideways for the stairwell, falling with a.44-40 slug in the guts!
Longarm leaped to his feet and ran to the stairway, hearing a series of bumps and the clatter of metal on the marble steps. The man called Timberline lay on the landing, sprawled like an oversized broken doll. His gun lay beyond, still smoking.
As Longarm went down two steps at a time, a bailiff appeared on the steps, coming up. Longarm snapped, “Go down and bar the doors. He’s got a score of friends outside!”
Federal bailiffs were trained to obey first and think later, so this one did as he was told. Longarm knelt to feel for a pulse. Then he stood up again and began reloading his warm double-action, muttering, “Damn it to hell! Now we’ll never know where Jesse James is hiding!”
CHAPTER 27
It seemed simple enough to Longarm, but Judge Hawkins made him repeat the whole story in front of a court reporter and Kim Stover and a few of the more stable folks from Crooked Lance he’d decided to let in. The hearing was held in the outer courtroom, with Timberline—or rather, Cotton Younger—stretched out under a sheet on the floor. The coroner said it had been the fall down the steps that finished him with a broken neck, though he’d have died within the hour from the bullet wound.
As the court reporter put it down on paper, Longarm explained, “The late Cotton Younger rode into Crooked Lance five or six years ago, wanted dead or alive in lots of places and worn out with running. He took the job offered him at the Rocking H, and discovered he had a good head for cows. They promoted him to foreman and he became a respected member of the valley community. He had a fine lady he was interested in, and maybe, if things had gone better for him, he’d have stayed straight and we’d have never known what happened to him.”
Kim Stover cut in to insist again, “Timberline couldn’t have been Cotton Younger! He doesn’t answer those wanted-poster descriptions at all!”
“That’s true, ma’am. He’s a head taller now than his army records showed. But you see, he ran off from Terry’s Column as a teenager. It sometimes happens that a boy gets a last growing spurt, along about twenty or so. He was tall when he rode into Crooked Lance. Taller than most. The rest of you probably didn’t notice another saddle tramp at first. By the time it was important just how tall he really was, he was five or six inches taller. Must have been some comfort to him, when his real name came up in conversation, but as you see, he still dyed his hair.”
“Where would he get dye like that?”
“It wasn’t easy. He likely used ink. His hair was too black to be real. Not even an Indian has pure black hair. Natural brunettes have a brownish cast to their hair in sunlight. His was blue-black. I noticed that right off. Noticed a couple of slips, too. He knew the old man I found on the mountain had been shot, before I said one word about his being dead. Another time, he referred to Sailor Brown as the old tattooed man. I don’t remember mentioning what I found under his beard to anyone in Crooked Lance, but a boy who’d ridden with him would have known about Brown’s tattoos.”
Judge Hawkins said, “I’ll take your word for it you shot the right man, Deputy Long. Finish the story.”