Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (25 page)

Longarm shook his head and said, "The Chambruns Won't own the land to mortgage it before they prove their claim, and now there's something I hadn't even considered until just now, bless your hearts!"

They naturally wanted to know what he was blessing them for.

Longarm explained, "I got an interesting line on that Bee Witch you gents may have heard about."

Tegner laughed and said, "Oh, her? She's crazy but harmless enough."

Longarm said, "I'm not so certain she was crazy, but she surely seems to be missing. Worse yet, I suspect she was working a secret survey for somebody planning yet another bridge across the river, up by Chambrun's claim."

The two local lawmen agreed they'd never heard such an outlandish suggestion about the crazy old Bee Witch.

Longarm insisted, "She was charting proposed crossings on a sort of fancy tracing paper out to her house raft. I looked for the tracings by lamplight and broad day. They weren't on board. Neither was she. I don't know whether she just abandoned her false identity because she'd finished what they'd sent her to do, or whether somebody waylaid her and destroyed her work to delay her employers considerably."

Sheriff Tegner frowned through his own tobacco smoke. "What good would that do anyone trying to keep somebody from building another span across our river? Lord knows we could use more this side of the one way up by Fairfax, and a good site is a good site. So why wouldn't they just send some other sneaks to survey the same way?"

Longarm replied, "I just said that. Meanwhile, a homesteader with an unproven claim smack in the path of a railroad wouldn't be able to hold out for a fraction of what a landowner free and simple could demand and likely get!"

Sheriff Tegner gasped, "Hot damn! It's an election year as well, and none of my white pals like those trashy Sioux to begin with. I'll get right out there to arrest the son of a bitch in person and-"

"I'd wait till I had a better case," Longarm said. "For all we know for certain, there's no case to begin with. I'd hate to have a murder victim turn up alive and well if I was running for sheriff this November."

Tegner called him a spoilsport, and asked why Longarm had brought the whole mess to his attention to begin with.

Longarm explained, "I got to. I promised a lady I'd find out why her Miss Jasmine, the Bee Witch's given name, never came back from an errand here in town. I'm handing you some other odd doings on a plate before I have to leave as well."

"You're going somewheres?" asked the sheriff's younger deputy.

Longarm nodded. "Since the two of you are real lawmen, you know real life don't work the way it seems to in those detective yarns by Mister Poe, Mister Twain, and such. In real life it seems one damned crook after another is pulling off some crime with no consideration of the cases we're already working on."

They agreed that was for damned sure. So Longarm explained, "My own Marshal Vail sent me here to New Ulm when that money from that payroll robbery turned up in the old stamping grounds of at least the leaders of the gang involved. I seem to have stumbled over other odd doings, and I mean to leave you a full report on paper before I leave. But as you just pointed out, that payroll seems to have been spread all over, meaning there's no particular significance to the transaction that brought me here, albeit you'll notice some assimilated Indians seem to be up to some mighty murky real-estate dealings."

The local deputy said, "You got to watch Indians once they learn to read and write. I hear old Quanah Parker's wheeling and dealing in Texas real estate since he decided to live white."

Longarm shrugged and said, "That's my point. A lady friend of mine down Texas way calls Chief Parker her Uncle Quanah, and seems to think he's sort of cute in his long braids and stovepipe hat. Meanwhile, like a heap of slick-talking Indians, or official Indians, such as Miss Belle Starr of the Cherokee Strip, Uncle Quanah can be as Indian as need be to draw his government allotments, and as Parker from Texas as he likes when it comes to making deals with other white cattlemen."

The deputy nodded sagely and said, "Charges a dollar a head if you want to drive your herd to market across Comanche land, or six cents an acre if you want to graze there, now that most of the buffalo are gone."

Longarm said, "Let's stick to your own Santee of fond memory. I was told flat out that a good many local Indians you ran out of these parts years ago mean to come back, living white, after gaining legal title to some of their lost Santee Sioux reserve."

"That ain't fair," Sheriff Tegner protested. "I rode with the Sixth Minnesota, and don't try to feed me that shit about Mister Lo, The Poor Indian. I was there when we had to bury white men, women, and bitty babies, all swelled up and flyblown, out on the prairie after the savages scalped 'em, stripped and raped 'em, the men and babes included! I heard that whining shit about them Sioux not getting their rations on time with a war going on back East, and I neither know nor care whether crooked traders short-stopped hard cash as well. Hardly a white person they butchered in revenge could have known doodly-shit about the government's dealings with Indians they'd been assured were friendly. It was that same old refrain you hear from every sniveling crook, red or white, once he's caught!"

The deputy nodded and chimed in falsetto, "Honestly, Sheriff, it was all my cruel landlord's fault! He evicted my poor momma for not paying her rent, so I naturally raped that lady across the street for revenge!"

Longarm grimaced and said, "You don't have to convince me. Like I said, right or wrong, this syndicate of breeds and pure-bloods seems interested in local real estate and may or may not be up to something worse. I'm going to have to leave it up to you, interesting as I found it, because my boss feels I'm wasting time around here."

He nodded at the deputy he'd talked to before and explained, "Like I told you earlier, we had too many Calvert Tygers burning to death in rooming house fires. My boss figured, correctly as it just turned out, somebody was trying to convince us Calvert Tyger was dead out Colorado way. So when he got word about that payroll money turning up here where Tyger commenced his shady career, he added two and two to come up with a wrong number."

Longarm took the vile cigar out of his mouth to hold it over the back of the chair and let it smolder politely as he sighed and continued. "I wasn't the only deputy working for Billy Vail, of course. He had a half-dozen others poking about closer to home. So the day before yesterday Deputy O'Foyle out of our office came across yet another Calvert Tyger registered as a guest of the Colfax House near the Overland Terminal in Denver. So that night, Billy Vail had deputies at the hotel, and sure enough, they caught a son of a bitch fixing to set fire to the place after midnight, and never mind all the innocent men and women upstairs, whether they were married to one another or not!"

Sheriff Tegner whistled and declared, "Hot damn! If I caught me a firebug out to cremate yet another Calvert Tyger, I vow I'd soon make him tell me why!"

Longarm nodded soberly. "Old Billy did. It takes him a tad longer, since he hates to leave bruises, but he usually gets the straight story with his gentler means of persuasion. The unfortunate they caught, who's facing a good jolt in prison even with the charge reduced from attempted murder to arson, was a well-known petty thief with a serious drinking problem. He says--and Billy Vail believes him--he was recruited for the job by a more prosperous sinister stranger who gave him a hundred up front with the promise of another hundred after the hotel went up in smoke with yet another Calvert Tyger." The local lawmen looked blank. It was the younger deputy who asked, "But how did they murder another such gent if the plot to set his hotel on fire failed?"

Longarm said simply, "They couldn't. We have the supposed Tyger in protective custody too. His real name's Peppin, and he'd never heard of Calvert Tyger before someone who describes a heap like the cuss who recruited the firebug offered him drinking money and a free room if only he'd play a little joke."

Longarm took a thoughtless drag on that cigar before he remembered why he'd taken it out of his mouth. "The generous sneak told Peppin he was working for a rich mining man who wanted his wife to think he'd checked into the Colfax House alone during a business trip down to Denver."

Sheriff Tegner decided, "Sensible story. Just sneaky enough for an average drunk to buy. The plot was for this Peppin to die as another Calvert Tyger, a famous outlaw, whilst he thought he was covering up for some rich dog and his play-pretty at another hotel in town, right?"

When Longarm nodded, it was the local deputy who demanded with a puzzled frown, "To what end? What's the point of somebody letting you find Calvert Tyger dead over and over again?"

Longarm said, "That's one of the things Billy Vail wants me to look into as soon as I get back to Denver. The first notion that comes to mind would be that the real gang leader wants us to think he's dead so he can settle down and enjoy all that payroll money. I can go along with old Billy's thesis that the real Brick Flanders, with his red beard, glass eye, and gold front tooth, would be better off drugged and burnt up in a fire than tagging along with a leader those two bums from the Colfax House describe as sort of smooth-talking but bland-looking. Another member of the gang could have changed the rooming house register easy enough before his fire burned up the already dead Brick Flanders."

Sheriff Tegner whistled again. "I can see why you ain't as worried about land grabbers who might or might not waylay a colored lady now and again. Anyone who'd burn folks up in his own name, over and over again, has to be just plain mad-dog mean!"

Longarm shrugged. "Billy Vail feels, and I'm inclined to agree, the surviving members of the gang have some motive, nasty as it may seem. It ain't as if Calvert Tyger ain't been at it as long as Frank and Jesse, you know, albeit he's been way more cautious and not half as active. So why would a careful occasional cuss who's always allowed things to cool down betwixt jobs suddenly take to burning his own self up in fire after fire, whilst still on the dodge for that big Fort Collins job?"

Sheriff Tegner said, "I follow your drift. You'd think that once he and his pals got away clear with all that money, they'd leave Colorado entire instead of trying to convince you their leader was still in the state, albeit burnt to a crisp."

The younger local deputy volunteered, "I'd let that money I took cool down before I spent it too. I forgot to ask about the hundred dollars they gave that one cuss to set fire to that hotel the other night."

Longarm shook his head. "Billy Vail didn't forget. It was in ten- and twenty-dollar silver certificates. We just don't know whether the crooks who stole the money knew those serial numbers had been recorded. It ain't the usual routine. But the paymaster up there in Fort Collins did it, poor bastard, and now nobody will ever be able to ask why. Suffice it to say it's one of the few breaks we've had on this case. Had the money been untraceable, and had Calvert Tyger simply left the state, as you suggested, we'd be sniffing a mighty stale and musty trail by now."

He got back to his feet, saying in a brighter tone, "Meanwhile we ain't, Lord love all crooks, too slick for their own good, so like I promised, I'll put all I know about your local mysteries on paper before I leave town. I've just a few more errands to tend in New Ulm before I do. So I'd best get cracking."

They rose as well to shake and part friendly with him. Longarm strode out front and headed next for the bank. Some cynical sage had once written, doubtless in French, that a stiff prick had no conscience. But even after he'd cooled off, he'd promised the poor worried Mato Takoza he'd see what he could find out about her missing Miss Jasmine when he got to town. So here he was, and now that he knew the Bee Witch had sometimes called herself Miss Jasmine Smith, as unlikely as that sounded, there was an outside chance she'd cashed checks or money orders at one bank or another. The folks she worked for would have hardly funded her with cash or money orders she'd have to cash less discreetly at the post office or Western Union.

By this time it was going on noon, and the streets of New Ulm were starting to get hot as well as less crowded. For folks working in a town this size tended to go home for their noon dinners.

So Longarm spotted the cuss keeping pace with him, a pistol shot back, sooner than he might have had the walk been more crowded when he glanced at window glass in passing. A man With a job such as his learned to do that every chance he got. So Longarm was pretty certain the dark figure on his ass was really on his ass, once he'd crossed the street, actually out of his way to the bank, and spotted that same mysterious cuss at the same distance, behind him, in the plate glass of a dress shop.

The cuss wasn't reflected sharp enough to make out in detail at that range, but Longarm could see he was dressed cow, although a tad fancy, in a silver-trimmed black charro vest and shotgun chaps. His features were a dark blur under his big black Stetson Buckeye with its high crown pinched army-style, That didn't mean near as much to Longarm as the fancy Cleveland twelve-gauge the cuss had cradled casually over one forearm, as if he might be after duck or quail in the center of town.

Certain the cuss was tailing him, although uncertain about the motive, Longarm strode on as if he hadn't noticed, and swung the next corner as he might have if he'd been headed for somewhere down that side street to begin with.