Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

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.