Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

It helped him as well as Dame Flora if he repeated the meanings of each sign in English. So when the fat gal raised her pudgy hand, fingers spread, and pivoted it on her wrist he muttered, "Wants to ask a question." He told her to go ahead and ask, with his own fist near his mouth, fingers opening and closing.

She pointed at him, drew her palm across her own brow, made it snake-slither, then put her fist to her heart before she put the back of it to her lips with the index finger pointed at him. So he said, "I think she's asking if I might be the white man they call the one with a Shoshoni heart."

Then he modestly said, "Ayee," knowing that meant yes in Ho, and so she grabbed him in a happy bear hug and began to yell fit to bust until a Shoshoni boy came in from out back with a broom and a puzzled expression. He spoke English. So it was easier for him to say, "Aunt Tahcutiney wants me to lead you over to our big chief's cabin, Taibo with Our Kind of Heart."

Longarm said that sounded swell, gulped some coffee, and

grabbed the sandwich off the plate to eat on the fly as he followed the boy out the back door with Dame Hora still following him. It was dark as an overcast night figured to get outside by this time. When he asked the Shoshoni boy whether they'd be walking or riding, the boy said he was walking and that it wasn't too far for a real man. So Longarm said to just lead on, but warned the Scotch gal in high-buttons she'd likely be more comfortable just waiting inside till he returned.

She said she wasn't about to sit and fidget now that they were so close, at last, to some answers about those missing spinsters.

He told her, "Ain't sure how close we might be to anything right now. Not even where we might be heading. So don't say I never warned you and don't expect us to carry you if you can't keep up."

She said she wouldn't. As they crunched along over uncertain footing after the barely visible outline of the young Shoshoni, she asked him why he didn't like her.

When he said he liked her as much as anyone else he knew around Fort Hall, she said she wasn't used to being spoken to so curtly by her social inferiors.

To which he could only reply with a wry chuckle, "I'd already got that feeling about you, ma'am. May-haps that's what inspired me to keep things plain and simple. If it's any comfort to you, I ain't your social inferior. I'm a bom and bred American from West-by-God-Virginia, and my ancestors whupped your ancestors twice."

She hissed like a stomped sidewinder, muttered something awfiil in Gaelic, then laughed despite herself and said, "I'll have you know it was the Sasunnach, I mean the English, you colonists had so much fun with. But your point's well taken, so lead on. Mo MacNial na Barra."

Lx)ngarm answered, simply, "Can't. If this kid ain't leading us the right way we're lost, and who's that other cuss you seem to have me mixed up with, ma'am?"

She laughed again and said, "Mixed up indeed. The

MacNial, the high chief of a small but proud island clan, was invited to court by one of our German Georges, but since he'd arrived in the rain with his tartan plaid wrapped around him and the eagle feathers drooping on his wet blue bonnet, he was lucky to get any place at the king's table at all. You know, of course, that guests are seated beginning at the head of the table in order of rank?"

He said he'd heard as much, complicated as it sounded. So she explained, "The MacNial was seated below the salt, or near the unfashionable end of the table, among mere Sirs and even Right Honorables. Being a true Highland gentleman he said nothing but simply started eating, with his hat still on, in the Highland fashion."

Longarm said, "Hebrews and cowhands too. Saves having to fuss with your fool hat before or after. Is that why I remind you of this cuss, because I've been chawing on this sandwich with my hat on all this time?"

She said, "No. You see, after a time the king, at the head of his table, noticed the chief's four feathers, sensed they might mean something, and had one of his servants make some discreet inquires. One can imagine His Majesty's chagrin when it developed they'd seated a ruler in his own right below the salt. At any rate an equerry in a white wig was sent down to The MacNial to offer a full apology and move such a distinguished guest up by the head of the table. But by then the chief had started eating and so all he did was glance up to shout, the length of the table, 'Och, dinna' frush yersel', Gordie. Wherever The MacNial may be seated already is the head of the table!' "

Longarm didn't laugh. He swallowed the last of his slim supper and said, "Makes sense to me. I don't see what all the frush was about neither."

She replied, in a softer tone, "That's what I meant. I think I see why the Indians call you a white man with an Indian heart. They seem to see things less, well, frushy than the rest of us."

He sighed and said, "Don't bank on that, ma'am. They mean I try to understand them, not that they can't act just as complicated, as you'll see once we meet up with some of 'em, if ever we meet up with any of 'em."

He managed not to pester their silent and almost invisible Indian guide until, somewhere in the night, they heard someone singing in a high-pitched but sleepy-sounding way. Then they saw faint lights ahead and their young guide called out. The singing stopped. Then a male voice called back in Ho, and the kid told Longarm and Dame Flora, "Pocatello makes you welcome if you come with good hearts and don't want to sell him anything."

Longarm said that sounded fair. So the kid yelled some more and then they headed on in. When she saw about a dozen blanket-wrapped forms seated cross-legged on the front porch of a log cabin, back-lit by an oil lamp on one windowsill. Dame Flora marveled, "Why, they seem to living in a real house, as if they were white people."

He said, "Yes, ma'am. It gets cold as a banker's heart up this way come January, so would you squat in a tipi you had to put up yourself when the government was willing to build you a fine cabin?"

She dimpled and said she understood. He told her to keep future comments to herself, lest folks feel she felt too good for them. He was pleased when she said she'd let him do all the talking.

But now they were close enough for the Indians on the porch to make them out as well. A bearlike figure wrapped in a cream and black-striped Hudson Bay blanket rose to a tad above average for a Ho, all Ho being shorter than your average lanky Lakota, and began a speech in a curious mishmash of English, Chinook, and Ho. Lx)ngarm gravely replied he'd been on fair terms with the late "Big Um" too, hoping they were talking about Brigham Young. Trying to introduce Dame Flora, even with sign thrown in, was a real bitch. Then a sort of sweet old female voice cut in to hush the chief and offer

to translate, in better English than Longarm was used to speaking.

Moving in closer, they saw she seemed to be someone's mummy, the Egyptian kind, wrapped in a real old-timey blanket made by wrapping thin strips of rabbit fur 2U'ound weepah cords and weaving them into a sort of thick fuzzy burlap. The old woman's long hair was whiter than Pocatello's blanket. She said she was called Wadzewipa, and when the young boy from the agency said she was a porivo, the old gal sighed and said, "I am no such thing. I am only a guest who came over the mountains from Fort Washakie to speak for my young nephew, Pocatello, and make sure the Taibo didn't cheat him."

Longarm braced a booted foot on the porch steps and chose his words carefully before he said, "Hear me, Wadzewipa, and tell your nephew I ride with the Taibo who want to buy that land, but not as one of those who will try to set the price."

The old woman softly replied, "We know who you are. The Ute were right to name you Saltu Ka Saltu. What is it you really want from Pocatello?"

Longarm gleinced at Dame Flora, sighed, and told her, "If I say I'm doing this partly for you, can you sort of forget the details of this conversation, ma'am?"

She said her kind didn't hold with idle gossip. So he turned back to the Indians and said, "I know better than to try and trade with you like a Chinook with stolen ponies. Tell Pocatello I offer this freely, as a good enemy in war and a brother in peace. Tell him my people want that land he is willing to sell them more than they may have told him. Tell him he could get at least twice as much silver if he can hold out until the crops are sprouting after the last snows."

Wadzewipa stared silently for a time before she sighed and said, "I think you know what you are talking about, my tua. Everyone knows how much Pocatello can buy for his people, with cold and hungry moons coming, for sixty thousand dollars."

"Four hundred thousand acres are worth more," Longarm told her.

She raised a frail hand to hush him, saying, "Pocatello is not going to sell them that much land. A good seventy-five thousand are important acres. The Taibo can have the rest. Do you think he could really get a hundred and twenty thousand dollars for, say, three hundred and twenty-five thousand acres?"

Longarm nodded and said, "Easy. They want that land more than Pocatello does, and twice what they've offered is still cheaper by far than even a modest war. All Pocatello has to remember is that they will be counting on the coming winter to weaken his resolve. The B.I.A. has to get you all through the winter alive, albeit without fancy trimmings. That's the law of the land. Come springtime, with him holding out for a halfway fair price . . ."

''Hai-hai-yee! Be quiet and let me tell them!" she cried with a delighted cackle. As she did so in their own lingo Dame Flora calmly asked Longarm, "What was the name of that Yankee chap who sided with the Indians against his own kind that time, Simon Girty?"

He smiled thinly and said, "You'd know better than me, since he was a British agent, ma'am. I ain't out to scalp or even slicker my side unfairly. Less than a million dollars for half that much well-watered land is a steal and you know it." j

She smiled demurely and replied, "I'm beginning to think ' you must have some Scottish blood in you, and canny Low-lander at that. But I still don't see why you've been so free \ with your business advice, Custis."

He told her to just wait. So she did, and after a lot of good-natured chatter old Wadzewipa smiled up at them to announce, "We think your words are wise and that your heart is as good as our Ute cousins and favorite enemies I say. My nephew wants to know if there is anything we can j doforjoM."

There was, but they couldn't. The old woman's fifty- or sixty-year-old nephew seemed to care as she translated. But j

neither he nor any of the other important Shoshoni could shed light on that fool smoke talk to the south, let alone missing spinster gals. Old Wadzewipa looked mighty weepy as she sadly told them, 'They know nothing, nothing, of any missing girls, and all our young men, all, are on the reservation. We told them not to do anything silly with people coming to give us so much silver. We did not know we could get even more if we held out a little longer. Pocatello says you have his word there will be no raiding, not even for chickens, until after he gets all that silver for his people!"

Lx)ngarm asked more questions anyway. While the old woman was translating. Dame Flora asked how much of the money anyone but old Pocatello was ever likely to see.

He said, "All of it. Indian politics ain't like our own. When an Indi£Ln leader robs his own people they never speak to him again, if he's awfully lucky. I don't think it would occur to a traditional, like Pocatello, to spend one dime on his personal comforts. You get to be a big chief by acting big."

She nodded soberly and decided, "Like the old Viking or Highland chiefs. I agree with you on bankers' hearts. It was the Sasunnach who introduced such customs to Caledonia the Wild."

Old Wadzewipa turned back to sort of sob, "They know nothing about those medicine wheels either. The Tukaduka who fashioned them are gone, all gone. I am ashamed to say it, but they know nothing about a dead woman either."

Lx)ng2irm nodded grimly and told her, "I never thought Indians sending smoke signals near a dead lady they knew about made sense to begin with. You mind if I ask you a more personal question. Miss Wadzewipa?"

She told him to go on. So he said, "Some others I met down by Zion were jawing about the famous Sacajawea of the Lewis and Clark expedition. They'd been told she might still be alive, living somewhere among her own people."

Wadzewipa sighed and said, "Sacajawea means nothing, nothing, in Ho."

Longarm nodded soberly and said, "Yes, ma'am. Bird Woman is what they called her in their reports to President Jefferson. They said she was a swell translator who spoke French and Indian tolerably, and Shoshoni, of course, more fluently."

Wadzewipa sighed and said, "I know the story of Bird Woman. Some say she died a long time ago, before all her children and others she loved."

He tried gently, "They say her real name was Boinaiv, and that she never died, Umbeah."

The old woman choked back a gasp of anguish and finally croaked, "I know what is in your heart, but please don't address me as your mother. I am nobody's mother, nobody's. My skookumchuka have all become ghosts and it is not good to mention the names of ghosts. This grass girl of whom you speak no longer walks the earth."

He persisted gently, "We wouldn't be talking about her at all if we knew for certain she was dead, ma'am. Might you know whatever became of her in later years?"

It was Dame Flora's turn to choke back gasps as the older woman murmured, in a matter-of-fact way, "She was passed around by men, as such women are, while they are young and pretty. After a time men left her alone and maybe she was of more use at councils, having known many men of many nations, and speaking many tongues. What did these people who were asking about the grass girl of so long ago want with her, if ever they found her?"

Longarm said, "They wanted her to go into a Wild West show with them, ma'am. They thought a heap of my kind would pay lots of money to see the bird woman who led Lewis and Clark clean across the continent in the Shining Times."

The old woman didn't answer. Beside him. Dame Flora murmured, "Custis, you don't really think . . ."

But he said, "I don't know what to think. What do you think, Miss Wadzewipa? Have you ever hankered to join a Wild West show, in case I meet up with those show folk again?"

The old woman laughed incredulously and said, "A'a/ That must be the one thing that's never happened to me, in a lifetime that has seen many happenings! Can't you just tell them Bird Woman is no more . . . my tuaT'

He nodded and said, "Sure I can, Umbeah. Everyone with a lick of sense knows Bird Woman lies buried over at Fort Union. So it's been nice talking with you all, but now this other lady and me better get on back to the agency before they come looking for us."

Reservation Indians didn't need to have such things explained to them. So the young kitchen helper simply said he'd show Longarm and Dame Flora how to get back. As they followed him Dame Flora explained she and her servants had already been assigned to guest rooms in an outbuilding near the headquarters building. So Longarm figured the agency would have worked such matters out with his own party by now, and added that he hoped they didn't expect him to double up with anyone who snored.

She rather archly observed that that fat cook might not snore and certainly liked him. He'd already considered that and put it out of his mind without much strain. So he called ahead to their Ho-speaking guide, asking the kid just what the name Wadzewipa might mean.

The boy said, "Hard to say in English. Try someone who is lost, hopelessly lost, with no place to go back to."

Longarm thanked him and muttered he'd suspected it might mean something like that.

Dame Rora moved closer to murmur, "It has to be her, don't you think so, Custis?"

Longarm shrugged and replied, "Ain't paid to think about ladies who ain't done nothing wrong and just want to be left alone. They pay me to worry about ladies who've done something bad or had something bad done to them, like that lady of the locket."

"Una Munro," sighed Dame Flora, adding, "It's nice to meet such a gentleman of discretion. It's been over a year

since I have, and there are times I wish I didn't have to be so discreet myself."

He asked what she had to be so discreet about, aside from her nosing high and low for those missing Scotch spinsters. But she just shot a thoughtful look at the dark outline of their Shoshoni guide and suggested they discuss it in private later.

But of course they never had to. Longarm was a man who could take a hint as well as he could keep a secret. So he hardly needed to be slapped across the face with female underdrawers when Dame Flora hung around, staring at pictures on the walls, all the time an agency clerk was telling Longarm how to find the quarters they'd assigned him in a lean-to at one end of the stables.

They'd both been around enough to know it was far more discreet for a lady to slip into a gent's private quarters late at night than vice versa. So he was expecting her before she came discreetly tapping, and had her in the bunk bed with her skirts up and drawers down before she could finish all that high-toned sophistry about a grown woman's need to keep her plumbing in working order.

She said she was glad after he'd plumbed her good. She asked him why he thought she couldn't stop talking, even after he'd made her come, hotter than she'd expected to, and proceeded to strip her down to do things right now that he, at least, felt less awkward.

He told her she was talking too much lest he ask her things she might not want him to.

She started to deny that, laughed, and decided, "You're right, and I really do find it tiresome to make up a life story no blackmailer could ever use every time I wind up in this ridiculous position. And speaking of positions, just what do you think you're trying to do with that amazing erection now, darling?"

He got a better grip on her shapely but firm horsewoman's hips as he sort of let his old organ-grinder find its own way while he told her, "We call this dog-style. Once we get you up on your hands and knees all the way, I mean."

She laughed and said, "You lovable lout, you can't get it in me that way unless you let me raise my knees a bit more and ... Ooh, I see you can, and I must say it feels divine at that angle after so long without having a man in there at any angle."

He almost said he was glad he hadn't had any the night before too. But he didn't. She'd been right about the stories folks make up in bed together. It was less complicated to just let the loving tell its own sweet story. But damned if she didn't go on talking after he'd rolled her on her back to fuck her downright romantically.

Chapter 14

They were stuck up at Fort Hall the better part of a week because the dudes Lx)ngarm was supposed to ride herd on kept expecting Pocatello to settle for less than the fairer price he went on demanding no matter how many times they powwowed or how they asked old Wadzewipa to translate their cheaper offer. And Dame Flora wasn^t about to turn back without Longarm's help in her search for those missing women.

Longarm didn't mind. Old Flora was even more fun in broad day, on pine needles, when they went riding now and again to exercise their ponies, they said. For the creamy-skinned Scotch gal was auburn-headed all over, and she said she enjoyed watching his shaft parting that pretty fuzz down yonder when he did it to her braced on arms as straight and stiff.

Aside from so much pleasure, the stay was good for his business as well. Thanks to the government telegraph and the leisure he had to use it free, Longarm was able to telegraph all over creation, and with some of the answers he had time to wait for, waiting for old Senator Rumford to raise the ante or fold, he was able to tidy up some of his own concerns without missing a meal or as many sessions of sweet slap and tickle as a lady might want.

Dame Flora seemed to want a lot of them. She said she was

sure old Angus was getting some of little Jeannie and didn't want her hired help to get ahead of her.

Murgatroid Westmore's memory improved wondrously as soon as Lx)ngarm was able to uncover his true name and all the other silly things he was remembered for back home in Tennessee. Longarm had little trouble convincing the surviving member of Tim McBride's gang that most any federal prison had to be an improvement on Tennessee State Prison, or that seeing he was sure to do more hard time on those old local wants than Uncle Sam was likely to give him, it was mighty dumb to hold out the pure shit on pals who were too dead to care whether one peached on them or not.

So once Westmore and some confirming wires had identified all the bodies in the springhouse for certain, the agency buried them a polite distance from their more respectable and hence respected dead Indians. Westmore was even willing to help with information on those other poor souls who'd crossed Longarm earlier, with such sad results. According to Westmore, W. R. Callisher, the crude cattle baron Longarm had shot it out with in the Burlington train shed, had been acting on his own as the stupid bastard everyone had said he was. All the other attempts on Longarm along the way had been inspired by Pappy, or Tim McBride, to keep a savvy lawman from doing just what Longarm had done in the end.

Westmore denied any knowledge of missing Scotch spinsters, moonshiners running com to Indians, or Indians running smoke puffs up into the sky. Longarm decided his prisoner was likely telling the truth. He'd been holding out on Westmore just a mite. He'd meant what he said about forgetting to tell Tennessee he had their want on ice for them, provided Westmore wanted to cooperate. But he'd forgotten to tell Westmore about that murder warrant the state of Missouri had outstanding on a mean little bastard. He figured he might as well let that sheriff's deputy from Liberty, Missouri, tell Westmore once he got to Fort Hall. They likely owed the poor shit a few more days in Fool's Paradise for being so talkative.

Getting in touch with Zion County regarding the true names and records of those rascals in their potter's field was sort of complicated. Longarm decided to hold off until he passed through there on the way back. None of them would be going anywhere, and it hardly seemed likely anyone would ever want them dug up.

Since Dame Flora kept pestering him about those missing gals, when she wasn't pestering him to go riding with her, Longarm even got in touch with an old pal from Scotland Yard. It had been possible to cable London since just before the war, and while Scotland Yard was nowhere near Scotland, they did keep tabs on most all such shit anywhere in the British Isles.

His old pal. Inspector Fennel, who'd been looking for that mean Englishman in Colorado that time, wasn't able to tell Longarm and Dame Flora anything they hadn't already figured out, though.

As the pretty gal had already told Longarm, nobody could recall what the person or persons placing the classified proposals in the Scotch newspapers might have looked like. Fennel suggested by wire, and Longarm agreed, it hardly seemed likely nobody would recall a red Indian or even an obvious Yank. Dame Flora said she'd already had her Angus check that out. It seemed Angus had been a private detective she'd hired back home, first to see what he could find out for her there, and then to bodyguard her and Jeannie once she decided to track the missing spinsters all the way to the wilds of Deseret. She said his affair with her maid had started somewhere this side of the Mississippi and that she'd been feeling mighty left out, although her kind never dallied with the hired help, even when they were far better-looking than crusty old Angus.

Checking with the B.I.A. itself, Longarm had no trouble establishing Pete Robbins as a notorious pest who'd been run off more than a dozen times for running bad booze to wards of the government. A warrant signed by Judge Isaac Parker over to Fort Smith had likely inspired Robbins and his trash

to run and keep running on learning Longarm was a deputy U.S. marshal. More than one such gent had been after them over in the Cherokee Strip a spell back.

And so, in sum, Longarm was more than anxious to get back into action by the time Senator Rumford and Chief Pocatello had agreed to disagree, for the rest of that year at least. Rumford got the Fort Hall agency to hide and hang on to all that silver for him so it wouldn't have to be packed all the way back again when, not if, the government agreed to Pocatello's terms. When plump Congressman Granger opined a couple of cold snaps would doubtless bring even a stubborn old savage to his senses, the older and far more talked-out Senator Rumford agreed with Longarm that Pocatello and that wise old medicine woman would be as likely to up the ante once they'd shown they could make it through another winter the same as ever.

So Dame Flora and her help tagged along, and even helped, when the dudes Longarm had to ride herd on headed back to civilization.

The going was faster now, because they didn't have to cope with overloaded mules. They still had to camp one night on the trail, to the delight of Dame Flora and likely Jeannie. Old Angus was a sort of husky cuss when you watched him splitting firewood in his shirtsleeves.

They all made it into Zion without anything more exciting than that taking place. By general agreement, everyone checked into the Overland overnight stop again. The stock was due for a good rest before pushing on down the delta in any case.

Longarm had meant to wait till after noon dinner to scout up the local authorities, figuring they'd be eating too. But Bishop Reynolds and that county coroner, Lukas, came over to pester him when they heard he was back in town. So Longarm joined them out in that big front room, saying, "I meant to come over to your courthouse later in the day."

Lukas said, "You' 11 be pleased to know we buried that poor gal you sent us over on the temple grounds. When those show

folk told us you suspected she might be one of them missing Mormon brides, the bishop here said it seemed wrong to plant even a would-be Saint in Potter's Field."

Longarm nodded at the church elder and lawman and said, 'That was neighborly of you, sir, and she really did come all this way to marry up with some Saint, or some son of a bitch who told her he was, before he helped himself to her dowry and murdered her the way he must have murdered others. The one we found was a Miss Una Munro. I got her home address and all written down somewhere. She didn't have anyone more likely to bury her decently than you Christian folks already have."

Lukas said, "Well, I never. I thought for certain she'd been killed by Indians. Them show folk told us you all found the body on Wagonwheel Hill, near the ashes of an Indian signal fire."

Longarm shrugged and said, "So someone wanted us to think. Only I think that that smoke talk was meaningless, and was designed to lead me to Miss Munro's body, just like it did. You don't have to be Indian to toss wet grass on a cow-chip fire, you know."

Lukas laughed uncertainly and said, "No argument about that. But why in thunder would anyone want you, a paid-up federal lawman, to find the body of a murdered woman on federal open range?"

'They hoped to keep me from suspecting where they'd planted her and all those others to begin with," Longarm answered laconically as he groped absently in his vest pockets while explaining. "Dame Flora MacSorley and her Scotch detective agency traced almost all those missing Scotch gals as far as the Mormon Delta, after which I suspect they were disappointed in love, considerably, by a suitor more interested in their dowry dinero than their fair white bodies."

As the two local men exchanged thunderstruck glances Longarm got out a cheroot, saying, "I'll ask you to forgive my manners this one time. Bishop. I get an awful green taste

in my mouth every time I have to consider how sick at heart as well as terrified those poor slickered spinsters must have felt, at the end of such a long trail, when they discovered the man of their dreams was a nightmare out to murder and rob 'em."

"Those are monstrous charges as well!" Bishop Reynolds declared severely as Longarm fumbled for a waterproof match with his other hand.

Longarm seemed to be having trouble thumbnailing a light as he quietly observed, "I know. That's why I was meaning to mosey over to your courthouse this afternoon. Got to get me some snoop warrants. Got to find more evidence before I charge anybody with playing Bluebeard with all those Scotch bluebelles."

"Justice Atwell is a Saint who answers to me!" snapped Reynolds with a stem look at Longarm's unlit cheroot. He added in an even more imperious tone, "Just tell us where you'd like to search here in Zion County and I'll say yes or no."

Longarm finally got his match going as he replied with a thin smile, ''Bueno. I'd start with your temple tithing ledgers, seeing you've offered to help."

The churchman and lawman got so excited Longarm shook his light out and said soothingly, "Now nobody but a total fool could expect a gang like this to keep written records of some insane plot. But wouldn't the temple tithe records give us the names of all the local Saints who ever sold land, stock, or supplies to anyone at any profit, along with the name of any buyer who might or might not have had a sensible explanation as to where he got the money?"

Bishop Reynolds scowled and said, "Of course." Then he showed he rated his badge as well by blinking thoughtfully and deciding, "By Moroni's golden tablets, I follow your logic!"

Coroner Lukas must have too. Seeing Longarm seemed to be lighting up, at last, with both hands, Lukas went for his gun.

Longarm had been hoping he might. So before the desperate Lukas could draw, the deadly little derringer he'd been palming for some time in his big right fist went off twice, point-blank, in the two-faced lover's contorted face!

Then Longarm let go of his spent derringer like a hot coal when he saw Bishop Reynolds slapping leather as well! Longarm's empty gun hand dove for an eternity through gun smoke thick as molasses in January as he sickly saw the older man was too quick on the draw to beat from half-so-far behind. But then the trusty Mormon's six-gun blazed more than once, and Longarm saw Reynolds wasn't aiming at him after all. So he crabbed farther from the line of fire as he got his own gun out, at last, to throw down on the stubby figure in the dining room archway he'd just had his back to.

He didn't fire. Nobody had to shoot old Angus again. For the Scotch detective simply dropped his .38 Bulldog with a twisted smile and buckled at the knees to follow it on down while Reynolds was marveling, "He was about to shoot you in the back. Deputy Long!"

Longarm bent to scoop up his empty derringer as he soberly said, 'That's one I owe you and I sure feel stupid! For my pals in Scotland Yard told me someone who blended into a Scotch crowd must have placed all those proposals in Scotch newspapers!"

After that both doorways commenced to crowd up. Poor drab Jeannie, whom the two-faced Scotchman had been screwing, let out a hideous wail to see her Angus sprawled there in the clearing gunsmoke. She threw herself down on him like a sobbing and shuddering bed quilt.

When Dame Flora came out to join her, Longarm moved closer, warning, "Don't risk skunk blood on your own dress, ma'am. As we were just saying, a skunk working in cahoots with others to lure gals and their life savings all this way must have felt mighty slick when you advertised for help and he applied for the job."

Dame Flora protested, "But Angus really was a private investigator, with experience here in the West as a range

detective and . . . Och, mo Dai! I see it all now!"

She didn't really. Nobody did before Longarm and Zion County rounded up all the Lukas help and impounded all the black-hearted bastard's business records. But after that it was simple. The inventive bookkeeping of a rapidly expanding beef baron who'd been buying way more than he'd been selling didn't meant frog spit as soon as one compared it with the more truthful church tithes of honest Mormon neighbors who'd offered exactly ten percent, no more, no less, of each and every sale to their county coroner.

Casually recorded deaths and burials failed to hold up also once one compared the Potter's Field burial of supposed male vagrants with the bones and above all shoes of Scotch females. Some of the frightened hands who'd helped to bury them were willing to fill in the fine print as soon as Bishop Reynolds said it seemed a shame they were just outside Utah Territory, where you got your choice between the gallows and a firing squad.

Billy Vail was as pleased with the final outcome, once Longarm got back to Denver. As they were jawing about it in Vail's office Vail chortled, "Senator Rumford wrote you a letter of commendation once he got back East. You done us proud by saving that silver for Uncle Sam and his Shoshoni wards."

Longarm reached for a smoke as an excuse to look away. What they didn't know about his own Indian policy wouldn't hurt any honest man and might help the Indians some.

Vail continued. "The governor of Missouri sent us a handsome thank you for the capture of Murgatroid Westmore, and the British Foreign Office thinks you saved Lord knows how many more subjects of their Queen from a fate worse than fucking. So there's only a single detail you failed to explain in your official report, old son."

When Longarm innocently asked what he'd left out. Vail demanded, "Where in blue blazes have you been all this time? Them dudes and even Murgatroid Westmore have been back East long enough for us to get wires about 'em."

Longarm lit his cheroot before he mildly suggested he'd had a few last loose ends to take care of out Utah way.

Vail grinned sort of dirty and decided, "I'll bet her end was loose by the time you were done with it. You never said in your report what that Dame Flora looked like, but. . ."

"Hold on. That high-toned Scotch lady and her maid left for the East aboard the same train as Rumford and those other dudes. So you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Billy Vail."

Vail said he'd meant no serious disrespect to a lady who knew Queen Victoria personally, but persisted. "Nobody left for nowhere before you and that Bishop Reynolds had tied up all the loose ends and solved the case entirely. So what, or who have you been dallying with since you parted company with those Scotch gals almost a full week ago, you rascal?"

Longarm didn't answer. That wistfully sweet young widow woman who'd managed that hotel in Ogden hadn't had a thing to do with any federal case, and he'd assured her the night Dame Flora and her maid had checked out that he'd never kiss and tell.