Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

Longarm just felt sort of sick as he assured Tanner he meant to put that down in writing. It would have been needlessly unkind to hazard even a guess as to how long a stay of execution they might be talking about.

Chapter 2

It was far shorter stay than Longarm had expected, and he was used to the ways of the fair but firm Judge Dickerson. It might have taken longer back in the days of the Pony Express and mail coaches. But thanks to modem wonders of wet-cell electricity and the help of both Western Union and the railroads involved, it was soon established that the late W. R. Callisher of ten-gallon and .45-caliber notoriety had been as noted for his nasty temper as he had for his railroad stock and beef herd.

Even better for Longarm, the railroad wired in depositions from that conductor and more than one of his train crew regarding Callisher's oafish behavior aboard that train as well as the nice way Longarm had tried to deal with him.

The coroner's jury was pleased to take Blue Tooth Tanner's more direct testimony involving events taking place shortly before and after he'd spied a white hat in the gloom of that train shed and instinctively recognized the intent behind its sudden movement as Callisher dropped into a gunfighting crouch. But the real clincher was the deposition from the Prussian Consulate, translated into English and signed by a Frau Erica Von Lowendorf, who praised the actions of the obvious Amerikanisch aristocrat who'd saved her from the unwelcome attentions of an obvious

Amerikanisch peasant as she was on her way to join her husband, the military attache at Fort Bliss, Texas. So Longarm could have had himself decorated by Der Kaiser if he'd wanted to traipse all the way to Berlin Town. Everyone closer to home allowed he'd done 'em proud and only done what was right by a homicidal pest.

So the morning after he got that in writing Longarm made a point of getting to his office in the Denver Federal Building early.

This seemed to shock young Henry, who played the typewriter and warned visitors in the reception room that they needed some sensible reason, if not an appointment, to see the one and original U.S. Marshal William Vail, hiding out in the back.

Longarm didn't need an appointment, since he worked there, but he'd still learned to ask the pasty-faced Henry whether the boss was in alone before he barged back to the office.

When he asked that morning, Henry nodded but asked, "What happened? Were you unlucky at cards or does she hanker for more than the usual flowers, books, and candy? We just got paid last week and we put you in for all three trips you made last month at six to twelve a mile, so—"

"I ain't scouting for sm advance on next month, Henry,'* Longarm cut in, moving on by without elaboration lest the fool kid think him a sentimental fool.

He found their superior, known to his pals as Billy Vail, in a better than average mood in his oak-paneled office, which could have used a good airing. The older, shorter, and far stouter marshal insisted on smoking pungent fat cigars with all the windows closed against the thin crisp autumn air of the Mile High City.

As Longarm sat uninvited in the one decent leather-covered chair on his own side of the older lawman's cluttered desk. Vail shot a glance at the banjo clock on one oak wall. "You can't leave early for that harvest festival at the Grange Hall. I know she's pretty and that you ain't had any

with her yet. My wife tells me all the gossip. But we still give the taxpayers a full day's work in this damned outfit, you homy cuss."

Longarm got out a cheroot of his own in self-defense, smiled sort of sheepishly, and refrained from allowing that the gossip about that particular pretty neighbor was a tad behind the times. For any man who boasted about his screwing would likely brag about his other body functions as well.

After lighting his own smoke, Longarm quietly said, "I was just down the hall talking to Judge Dickerson's clerk. You drink personally with the judge himself, don't you, Billy?"

Vail nodded. "All right, you can knock off at five if you just have to. I already asked. The answer is no. Tanner's been found guilty of Homicide in the First and sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, dead, dead. Period."

Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring and declared, "Billy, I was walking into it like a big bird with blinkers on. Callisher was after me, not my prisoner. If Blue Tooth had just done nothing at all I'd have likely wound up dead with him still alive and free to help himself to my handcuff key, my money, and my gun."

Vail blew a thicker, more pungent donut and simply replied in a card-dealing tone, "He could have. But he didn't. One's inclined to doubt he'd have gunned that innocent bystander, that schoolmarm down to Castle Rock, if he'd been bom with the ability to plan ahead on short notice. He spotted hostile intent and sounded a waming by instinct, the way a yard dog might have. You don't owe him any more than that, old son."