Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (11 page)

The deputy said they'd been expecting him, and added that the boys from the Saint Paul Federal Court had already questioned everyone at all involved, without finding out too much.

When Longarm groaned inwardly and asked whether other deputies had called on Israel Bedford, lest he not know those serial numbers had been recorded, the sheriff's deputy said cheerfully, "Hell, you can't hardly ask a man where he got a treasury note without explaining why you're asking, can you?"

Longarm grimaced and growled, "Sometimes it don't pay to be quite so direct. I don't suppose anybody wondered what a suspect might do with other listed treasury notes he'd been fixing to spend once they told him how they'd spotted the first ones?"

The local lawman shrugged. "There was no need to pussyfoot. Everyone knows Captain Bedford is as honest as the day is long, and your federal pals left content with his story."

"Which was?" Longarm asked.

The deputy sheriff answered, "Livestock transaction. Bedford has some of the finest riding stock in the county for sale. Serves his mixed mares with a pure Morgan stud these days. Told us he'd sold a saddle-broke filly and a promising colt for that hundred-dollar note. Said the buyer was an Indian, or mayhaps one of them Metis, or Red River breeds. Anyways, others out his way say they'd seen a whole family of dusky wanderers around the right time. The one who paid cash for Bedford's stock was dressed like a white man. Had a more Indian-looking squaw and a mess of raggedy kids tagging along, from toddlers to kids in their teens. Us county riders tried to help your federal deputies cut the trail of the prosperous savages, but the sod's as thick and springy as it gets out yonder, and they were traveling with neither a cart nor travois so... What the hell, it ain't as if Captain Bedford is famous for robbing folks and wasn't there something about an Indian riding with that gang when they shot up that government office at Fort Collins?"

Longarm shrugged. "We can't ever get everyone to agree on how many there were in the gang. One witness figures five all told. Another counted six or eight as he bled on the floor. He may have just been excited. Nobody on the streets of Fort Collins seems to have counted shit as the gang left cool as cucumbers and slow as innocent churchgoers. But Tyger and Flanders did have at least one associate called Chief. I'm still working on his full name. The army sure kept casual records as they were chasing Little Crow with such informally recruited columns."

The somewhat older Minnesota man nodded. "Don't I know it. I rode with Sibley's Volunteers, and we had to laugh at those ragtag Galvanized Yankees when they rode tear-ass all over after Sioux we'd already shot the liver and lights out of."

He got up to stride over to a file cabinet as he continued. "We thought some of the regulars were all right, though. Captain Bedford was in charge of his column's remount and quartermaster detail. Not as picky as some West Pointers when it came to sharing supplies in the field with comrades in arms. Made hisself a heap of friends out this way."

Longarm nodded and said he'd heard as much. Then, since the son of a bitch was helping himself to a swig from that jug without offering to share, Longarm allowed he had other fish to fry, and got back out to the square before he found himself saying something unprofessional. It wasn't easy, knowing half-ass federal men and selfish county men who openly favored his prime suspect had totally fucked up his original plan of action.

CHAPTER 9

The Granger's Savings & Loans was just off the square, and a handsome young gal peering out through the bars of the teller's cage didn't look scared of strangers as Longarm came in just as they were fixing to shut down for the afternoon. When he flashed his badge and told her what he'd come for, she vanished for a moment, and then unbolted an oaken door from the inside to run him back to the branch manager's private office.

The bank was run by a P.S. Plover, a portly white-haired cuss who rose behind his acre or so of desk in a neighborly way to wave Longarm to another padded chair and offer a cigar from his big brass humidor. "That was quick," he said. "I just posted my letter yesterday and I didn't expect Saint Paul to send anyone this side of Monday."

Longarm accepted the Havana claro with a nod of thanks, and took his seat before he replied. "I ain't from the marshal in Saint Paul, Mister Plover. I ride for Marshal Vail out of Denver, and I'm here in response to that purloined treasury note you all detected. You say you've written more since?"

As he lit his fancy smoke the banker explained. "I'm pretty sure I can name that breed who bought stock off Israel Bedford with one of those hot treasury notes, Marshal Long."

Longarm modestly replied, "I'm just a deputy marshal, but lots of folk make that same mistake. Just let me get out my notebook before you name the mysterious Indian for us, hear?"

As Longarm gripped the cigar with his teeth to break out his notebook and a pencil stub, the banker said, "He's not pure Sioux. Looks like a full-blood, if you ask me, but he claims to be white on his daddy's side and hence eligible to own land, sign contracts without a white sponsor, and in sum, make a perfect pest of himself with his full-blood squaw and platoon of trashy breed brats."

Longarm poised his pencil and cocked a quizzical brow, so the banker said, "His name's Chambrun, Wabasha Chambrun, for God's sake. Claims to be the spawn of a French-Canadian mountain man and a squaw of the Osage persuasion."

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."