Chapter 17.

It was mid-afternoon when Longarm and his five fellow lawmen reined in near that saloon in Camino Viejo. They stopped there first because Longarm recognized the pretty Morgan mare Wesley Jones had ridden out on, tethered with a half dozen more to the saloon's. .h.i.tch rail.

The man in black, now dusty as well, seemed to be holding court at the table farthest back. The seven or eight others with him were all on their feet and, recognizing Longarm and the man they knew as Poison Welles, made way for them.

Jones rose to his feet, smiling uncertainly as he said, "Not a sign of Apache off to the south this time. I see you boys got back early too.

How'd you make out?"

Longarm soberly replied, "Darts Malloy is dead. So are Jennings and Alderthorpe."

Jones gasped, "My G.o.d, what happened? You brush with them Apache?"

Longarm said, "Nope. Let's talk about them Apache. Jicarilla on the prod and off their usual range who don't have any lookouts posted to smoke-signal our own movements as we tear-a.s.s all over after 'em."

Jones said, "Well, we've been figuring them for kids, acting on their own with no serious chiefs in charge."

Longarm smiled thinly and said, "That's likely why they rode past a grown man and his mount standing in the open by the light of the silvery moon. That's likely why they'd been camped, or paused to put on their costumes, in a haunted canyon. I have it on good Jicarilla authority that the mere sight of what they call a chindi will kill you on the spot after dark. Yet there they were, eating fish cold from the can without any camp fire, smack dab on top of an Anasazi ghost town. It makes one wonder, don't it?"

Jones tried. "h.e.l.l, if the fool Apache were acting usual we'd have caught up with 'em by this time, right?"

It was Rod Duncan who quietly observed, "One would certainly think so.

Me and a couple of these other old boys have scouted Jicarilla in the past. They were out in force as late as '73. Yet try as we might, we could never cut the rascals' trail. It's been my own experience that when experienced trackers can't find anybody to track, there's n.o.body to track."

"Or there's somebody else," Longarm amended, adding, "We naturally never tracked sign left by other Regulators far enough to mention. So who do you reckon scared all them local settlers, and even butchered a bunch of riders from other parts, to set a good example for those in these parts who might not have been scared enough yet?"

Jones licked his lips and stepped back to give himself more room as he stammered, "How do you expect me to answer for the loco ways of infernal Apache, Henry?"

Longarm said, "Aw, come on, you know who I am. You've known since the first day your boss hired me. But lucky for me, neither of you spotted Inspector Duncan here for anything but a harmless blowhard you could use as a tool."

Then he said, "As for why we'd like you to answer some questions about them fake Jicarilla, it's obvious as h.e.l.l you were them!"

The man in black was good. He dropped to the floor and tipped the table on its side between them as he went for his side arm. Longarm drew and fired four rounds at the bare pine tabletop. It took more than an inch of pine to stop two hundred grains of lead backed by forty grains of powder. But the results were far from neat as Jones stopped the deformed slugs, and a heap of pine slivers, with softer flesh.

Meanwhile Duncan and his own boys were backing Longarm's play with blazing guns of their own. For naturally the hirelings who'd been riding directly under Jones had as much to answer for, and hoped to beat the hangman's noose with gunplay of their own.

They lost, of course, with one of Duncan's boys pinked along one rib by a bullet, and all but the barkeep and another man on the other side dead. The one survivor had been as quick as the barkeep when it came to reaching for that pressed tin ceiling. So he was doubtless good for a signed statement.

Chapter 18.

Duncan had instructed his own deputies to head off other Regulators as they rode in and either arrest or deputize them pro tem, depending on whether they'd been riding at certain times with the late Wesley Jones, alias Frenchy O'Donnel, or, like most of the outfit, just going through the motions as tools of the boss lady. So just Duncan and one of his deputies tagged along as Longarm strode on to the card house to confront Queen Kirby.

The big redhead must have heard the noise, judging from the way she greeted them, seated in her office behind that writing table as the one back-up man positioned himself just outside the door to make certain they weren't disturbed.

Queen Kirby smiled weakly and asked, "What's going on? Why are you staring at me that way, Henry?"

Longarm said, "You know who I am and I sure feel silly about that.

You'll be pleased to hear your lover boy never gave you away as he lay oozing his last just now. But Thomhill gave up without a fight, and as soon as he confessed he'd met up with you all on the carnival trail, it all came back to me where I'd seen your pretty face before. You always have liked to make total fools of mere mortal men, haven't you, Dolly Moore? You've come a long way since you had that freak show back in Saint Lou. Don't do that, Dolly!"

But a monstrous Le Mat revolver was already rising from behind the writing table in a jewel-encrusted hand. So Longarm fired point-blank with the derringer he'd had palmed just to be on the safe side. And that red wig flipped skyward as the now gray-headed Queen Kirby, or Dolly Moore, flew backwards with the chair and all, in a flurry of velvet and scattered pearls.

As the smoke still hung above the writing table, Longarm moved around it for a better look, grimaced, and said, "Takes a spine shot to snap their heads back that hard. Dead as a t.u.r.d in a milk bucket. But we've got that fairly full confession and some of the others may fill in a few gaps as we round 'em up drifting in."

Rod Duncan gulped and said, "She must have hoped you'd hesitate just long enough. I know you had to do it. I was there. But Jesus, I'm sure glad it wasn't me as had to gun a woman, pard!"

Longarm said, "I never did. Dolly must have been so used to the common courtesies accorded the unfair s.e.x that he lost track of the fact I'd just told him I knew who he was.

"Who he was?" gasped the New Mexico lawman.

Longarm said, "Used to be a bearded lady, traveling with decent tent shows. Put on a less decent act whenever he, she, or it wasn't stopped.

When I caught the act in Saint Lou a few years ago, he had half a man's suit and half a lady's gown on. You paid extra to go in the back and watch the he-she takes its duds off. I was as big a fool back then.

Cost me four bits to discover he-she was just a soft-built boy. I wasn't interested in the girlish ways he could act for just a few dollars more. Reckon enough others were to finance more ambitious projects. Read a flyer later about this soft-built but hard-headed he-she marrying up with some rich mining man and robbing him blind on their honeymoon. Reckon old Dolly persuaded him she was saving it for her wedding night. Old Frenchy back there was the one true love of Dolly's life."

He finished reloading and put the derringer away as their back-up man stared goggle-eyed in the doorway and Duncan said, "Far be it from me to argue that the two of them weren't acting sort of strange. But what in thunderation was the motive for all this confusing s.h.i.t?"

Longarm said, "I'll give you a copy of my report once I have everything tidied up complete. I got one more arrest to make first, and if you think I just felt silly gunning a lady in a red wig and pearls, you don't know the half of it!"

Chapter 19.

Longarm had learned in his boyhood that things didn't always go as a body might plan them, and that sometimes it might be best to just play the cards a fickle fate dealt you.

He didn't want to stage a possibly awkward scene in front of a summer-school cla.s.s. So he waited until he was sure Meg Campbell had come home from her job at the schoolhouse before he went calling.

He caught Trisha Myers in another big fib when the gal who came to the door turned out to be a stunningly beautiful brunette with deep blue eyes a man just wanted to drown in. But he figured it made more sense to show her his badge and identification.

She invited him right in and sat him down at her kitchen table to coffee and cake him as she allowed that Trisha had mentioned him, but had never told her he was a lawman.

He suspected why she sort of avoided his eyes when he asked what else the ash blonde might have said about him. The schoolmarm was blushing but composed herself as she murmured, "Just that the two of you were becoming ... good friends. What's this all about, Deputy Long?"

He said, "My good friends call me Custis. They told me over at the hotel that Trisha didn't work there anymore. She wasn't at her own place, either. I finally found some old boys who'd been spitting and whittling in front of the tobacco shop when she'd ridden by, headed down the coach road to Santa Fe most likely. The wires ain't up yet, and I ain't sure I want her stopped in any case. Might that have been your mare she lit out on, Miss Meg?"

The schoolmarm sat down across from him, shaking her head firmly as she said, "My Pixie is right out back, if you'd care to see her."

Longarm said, "I'll take your word for it, ma'am. No lady capable of such fine marble cake would tell really dumb lies."

She met his eyes this time as she blazed, "See here, I've not a thing to hide from you or any other lawman! I haven't been the one in bed with an impossibly endowed man night after night, d.a.m.n it!"

He didn't ask how disappointed she felt about that. He just smiled sheepishly and said, "She told me you were a dried-up old prune. But I ain't charging her with that big fib. I'm trying to determine how deep she was in more serious stuff. I turned to her to borrow your pony for me that night. I figured I might be able to confide in a waitress gal who didn't work for the late Queen Kirby. I figured wrong, and the two of them were playing me for a total sap until mighty recently."

Meg Campbell brightened and said, "So that's what it was! Did you say the late Queen Kirby? What happened to her?"

Longarm said, "You go first and I'll tell you the whole tangled tale from the beginning. What were you about to say something was?"

The brunette said, "Trisha boasted that whether you were willing to take her away from all this or not, she was going to leave town on her own high-stepper, with money to start over in a real town. I guess I'm as nosy as I ought to be, and so I naturally kept after her about it. But all I got was that certain parties were willing to pay good money to learn harmless little secrets. Do you think she was telling Queen Kirby you'd been, you know, up in your hotel room?"

Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "I doubt Queen Kirby cared about my love life. That's all a matter of taste--literally, in Queen Kirby's case. But it's sort of soothing to know Trisha was only a dumb blonde after all. I doubt she'd ever be able to tell us more than we already know, and what's a little betrayal betwixt friends?"