Free Murder in Dogleg City by Ford Fargo Page B

Somebody shot him in the back down in Cribtown last
night.”
    “ Oh, my,” Offerman said.
“That’s terrible. I have been warned not to go down there too late
at night, I hear it is crawling with cutthroats and robbers. No
offense, Marshal, you can’t be everywhere at once, I
suppose.”
    “ He wasn’t robbed,” Sam
said, “that’s the peculiar part. He had a pocket full of cash when
we found him.”
    “ Perhaps he offended
someone?”
    “ Perhaps,” Sam said. “May
I ask what you talked about with him?”
    “ Nothing, really,”
Offerman said, “we barely spoke. He was rather far along in his
cups, I’m afraid, and was soliciting my opinion about keno. I told
him I was unfamiliar with the game. That was about the extent of
it, apart from some drunken mumbling I couldn’t
decipher.”
    Sam nodded. “Thanks for your time,
Mister Offerman. Bob, I believe I’ll amble over to the Wolf’s Den
and see how they’ve been getting along today without my presence—I
expect I’ll be back after supper. Good day, gentlemen.”
    Sam headed south on Third Street,
tapping the boardwalk jauntily with his walking stick as he went.
He walked past Li Wong’s laundry shop, and caught a glimpse of Li’s
beautiful daughter Jing Jing through the window. The marshal
generally ignored the Chinese unless they were causing trouble—they
were sort of in the background, from his perspective, rather like
squirrels—but he could definitely see why so many of the men in
town were panting after her. If Soo Chow ever did manage to recruit
her for his stable, the marshal would make a point of giving her a
try.
    He turned left onto Grant Street,
which the mostly-Texan cowboys preferred to call “Useless S.
Grant.” Let them have their sour grapes, Sam figured, everyone
knows who won the war and was sitting in the White House. He passed
the artist, Reginald de Courcey, headed back to his studio—brushes
and canvas under his arm—no doubt from one of his frequent
sketching and painting expeditions in the countryside.
    “ Hello, Marshal,” the
artist said amiably in his proper English accent. “Warm enough for
you?”
    “ I suppose it’ll do,” Sam
said. “How’s business?”
    “ A little slow right
now—but I’m using the downtime to paint some landscapes that I
suspect I can get a pretty penny for the next time I get to
Wichita. Have a good evening!”
    “ Same to you.”
    The Wolf’s Den was geographically not
that far from the Eldorado, but it was worlds away. Everything
about it felt different, even in the late afternoon. Where Tom
Scroggins was friendly, and pleasant company on a slow evening,
Breedlove’s house gambler Preston Vance radiated a taciturn,
antisocial aura. Three or four toughs lounged around the bar at
night, ready at a moment’s notice to subdue any serious
troublemakers—one of them, a drifter named Wesley Quaid, was
already present. Instead of Sven Larson’s jaunty piano, the young
Texan Roscoe Parsons played Mexican tunes on a guitar.
    And Ira Breedlove watched over it all
from the end of the bar. Ira lived in an upstairs room, and almost
never left the property—but his web extended all over
town.
    He stood there now, and Sam joined
him.
    “ Ira,” the marshal said in
greeting.
    “ Sam. I see you’re getting
around well.” Ira did not look at the marshal directly—it was more
a dismissive than an anxious gesture.
    “ Well enough. Better than
Laird Jenkins.”
    Sam watched Breedlove carefully,
hoping for a reaction, but received none.
    “ Mister Jenkins got
himself backshot last night,” Sam added.
    “ So I heard.”
    “ No one seems to know much
about him,” Sam said. “Except Asa Pepper seems to think he was
working for you.”
    “ Really.”
    “ Oh yes, really. Normally
I wouldn’t trust Asa as far as I could throw his black ass—but he’s
not stupid. He certainly wouldn’t kill somebody right outside his
place and just leave him there. Though he may have had reason