Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

A more familiar voice called out behind Longarm, claiming to be Sergeant Nolan of the Denver P.D. and demanding to know what all that noise was about.

Longarm called back, "I wish I knew, Nolan. I'd be Long, out of Justice, pinned down over here with a prisoner I just got off that Burlington train with. I might have hit our surly welcoming committee, but you never know, so keep your head down till we can get us some light on the subject!"

Nolan didn't work for Longarm, so once he'd issued orders of his own he joined the two of them on the cement behind the saddle, saying, "I sent my boys to fetch some bull's-eye lanterns. Do you reckon they were out to free this other bastard here?"

Longarm shook his head and replied, 'Tanner ain't exactly what I'd call a bastard, Sarge. He's a convicted killer, I'll allow, but he just now saved my bacon by spotting an ambush I was too dumb to see."

Nolan said in that case he'd shake with a man who'd just saved the man he owed his own stripes to. Longarm said he'd rather Nolan keep an eye on Tanner as he moved in on that other shootist. So Nolan said he'd be proud to, and

after some belly-down awkwardness Longarm had himself uncuffed. He reloaded and holstered his side arm, and slipped his sixteen-shot Winchester from its saddle boot to do some serious hunting.

He rolled well clear of their meager cover in dead silence, and rose as quietly to cross the tracks and platform beyond in a low running crouch. He saw why nobody was shooting at him when he got to the blurred form sprawled on the cinders of the track bed beyond. There was just enough light to make out the checked vest. The big white hat was upside down a couple of cross-ties away. Longarm dropped down there with him and kicked that Walker Conversion clean out of sight before, his Winchester across his own thighs, he said not unkindly, "I was wondering how come you seemed to be more scared than hurt by those last pistol rounds. Where did I hull you before you dropped, and whatever possessed a grown man to behave so foolish?"

"He shamed me, Mamma," the bully sort of croaked, adding in an even softer gurgle, "The gal was too stuck up to play with me, like that Sally Anne who sneered at us and wouldn't invite me to her birthday doings that time. I was fixing to show her, like I showed that Sally Anne out back in our alley, only this bigger boy homed in and hit me, right in front of Sally Anne!"

Longarm sensed light and movement and got up to see a Denver copper badge coming their way with a bull's-eye lantern. Longarm directed the other lawman to shine the wan beam on the wealthy cattle baron who'd been sent back to what sounded like a sort of deprived childhood. They both saw the poor bastard would never be worried about old age. The copper badge whistled softly and declared, "Smack through his rib cage, twice. Lord only knows how come he's still breathing. Who was he, Longarm?"

The dying man at their feet declared, "My mamma may take in washing since my daddy fell off in that stampede, but someday I'll be big as any of you and then I'll show you!"

Longarm quietly suggested, "The railroad will have his name for us. He was a mucky-muck from out Chicago way traveling in his own private compartment, and like you just heard him say, he was out to show us."

Sergeant Nolan joined them, hauling Longarm's saddle and Tanner along. Longarm told them all, "I had words with him on the train this afternoon and let that be a lesson to us all. I thought we were only arguing about a gal. He seems to have taken it as some sort of mortal insult to his family honor."

The man at their feet groaned, "Please make it stop. Mamma! I paid them back for low-rating your red hands and no proper hat to wear in church. But now I'm feeling mighty poorly and I wish I could have some of that medicine you take all the time for your troubles."

Then they heard a dreadful gasp, followed by an heroic farting, and then nothing at all as Blue Tooth Tanner sighed and said, "I wish he hadn't reminded me. How soon did you say it might take to have me flapping like a fish and shitting like a fool at the end of the hangman's line, Longarm?"

Once he'd nudged the cadaver with a boot tip to make dead sure Longarm soberly replied, "Not as soon as they might have planned. They say this was a cattle baron I just had to gun, sind it's been quite a spell since you could even gun a hobo within the city limits of a state capital without explaining your reasons to a coroner's jury. So aside from feeling much obliged, I'm going to have to call you as my only witness to a shoot-out in self-defense. Mister Tanner."

His prisoner gasped and swayed in weak relief as he asked in a tone of laconic desperation, "Are you saying they might let me off with Life at Hard if you was to tell 'em how I just saved you?"