Read Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds for Free Online Page B

payroll robbery? I needed 'em to read more'n you needed 'em to wipe your ass with, damn it!"
    Longarm smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Boss. I didn't know you were working that case, and I was reading too. I'll buy that toasted cadaver hauled out of the Dugan rooming house as the real Brick Flanders, if you'll let me run over to Durango with a federal writ allowing me to open the so-called grave of the late Calvert Tyger."
    Vail shook his bullet head. "I got a better place for you to head. But next week will do. My old woman told me all about that Sunday-Go in Eastern Park. For she's on the same entertainment committee as a certain young widow woman you've asked me not to mention by name."
    "I don't mind missing that shindig as long as it's in the line of duty," Longarm said.
    Vail chuckled. "What's in the line of duty, the Sunday-Go or a mighty long train ride back to southwest Minnesota?"
    Longarm blinked. "That's far enough to get me out of a hair-pulling contest, I reckon. But whatever for? I told you when I got back from that last wild-goose chase to Rice County that neither Frank nor Jesse had been anywhere near Northfield since that big bank robbery and shootout back in the autumn of '76, and this more recent as well as more profitable robbery is hot! I mean that literally. For I somehow doubt all that paper money burned away in not one but two roominghouse fires."
    He looked about in vain for an ashtray on his side of the desk, flicked ashes from his cheroot on the rug, and observed, "They say it's good for carpet mites. I'll believe the real leader of that gang died from smoking in bed after I see who's buried in his grave. It don't add up, Billy. Five or more outlaws light out with a government payroll, most of it in high-denomination treasury notes with their serial numbers on file. Then the only two gang members we know by name go up in smoke, bang, bang, and we know for a fact that last fire was deliberate!"
    Vail sighed. "I wish you children wouldn't interrupt your elders. I don't want you wasting time over Durango way because it ain't as important who got buried, or even how he died, not only yonder but many a day ago. You track where the trail's still warm, old son, and one of those very treasury notes you mentioned turned up more recently at the Granger's Savings and Loans in New Ulm, not Northfield, Minnesota."
    Vail leaned back in his seat and picked up Reverend Dyer's letter to wave at Longarm as he continued. "I don't think Frank or Jesse cashed it either. Even if New Ulm wasn't closer to the Dakota line, the son of a bitch who paid for his seed corn and a mess of hardware with a hundred-dollar treasury note has his local name and address on file with that merchant who broke such a whopping wonder of paper money for him. You can't bite a hundred-dollar note to test it, you know. So it's a wise notion to write down who came in with it, and he did."
    Longarm nodded soberly. "I had to break a twenty-dollar silver certificate in a Chinese restaurant one time. It sure got noisy, and it was just as well I was packing my badge and identification."
    Vail said, "It was a bank teller who spotted the serial number and told his superior, who naturally made some noise at the merchant who'd deposited it, until said merchant got out his books and could produce the homesteader and homestead claim number of the jasper I want you to move in on in your own discreet way. Both the townsmen who spotted the note and the sheriff's department of Brown County have been slicker than usual, contacting us instead of blundering in, thanks to that cautiously worded flyer we'd listed all of them serial numbers on. The homesteader who spent that stolen treasury note filed his claim under the name of Israel or Izzie Bedford. Claims to be a New Englander who rode with General Pope against Little Crow's Santee."
    Longarm grimaced. "I caught him in a lie already. Long Trader Sibley, as the Indians called him, had already whipped the Santee good