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be ready to go as soon as the weather breaks.”
    â€œI hope you lose that English pistol in a drift. All the other deputies carry Colts and Remingtons and Smith and Wessons. Six-shooters. The time will come when you wish you had that extra round.”
    â€œIf five won’t do it I might as well haul around a Gatling. You’ve just got a thistle in your boot about the English.”
    â€œPort drinkers and sodomites.” He clacked his store teeth, shutting off that avenue of discussion. “Inspector Vivian replied to my wire. His office is in Moose Jaw. He’s reserved a room for you at the Trappers Inn there.”

    â€œI’m sure it’s full up this time of year. This is the rainy season in Paris.”
    â€œYou will of course leave such observations this side of the international border. I intend to press for Bliss and Whitelaw’s extradition and would rather not bog down the process in a petty cultural squabble.”
    â€œIf I were you I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it until your best deputy manages to capture them both alive.”
    â€œMy best deputy is in Fort Benton picking up a prisoner. In any case your responsibility is to advise the North-West Mounted Police and to offer your assistance in the fugitives’ apprehension. You are not to behave as a one-man committee of public vigilance.”
    â€œWhen did Tim Rourke become your best deputy?”
    â€œWhen you stopped listening to me. Did you hear what I just said?”
    â€œI heard. Bliss and Whitelaw’s scalps have nothing to fear from me. I didn’t know any of their victims.”
    He leaned back in his chair, retrieved a cigar from the humidor on the bookshelf, and used the platinum clipper attached to his watch chain to nip off the end. “That’s the reason I selected you for this mission,” he said. “All the men I can count on to follow my instructions to the letter have some personal stake in this manhunt. If they’re allowed to go on much longer, there won’t be a lawman west of St. Louis who isn’t related to or familiar with someone they’ve killed or robbed or set fire to.” He lit the cigar with a long match and blew a thick plume at the ceiling. “I’d offer you a smoke, but I know you don’t indulge.”
    â€œI’m saving myself for that eight-hundred-dollar brand at the Coliseum.”
    â€œMcInerney.” He frowned through the smoke. “I hope Rourke doesn’t take long getting back when the weather breaks.
I don’t trust the county jail to hold a hard-time prisoner for long.”
    â€œIf all you need is someone to take McInerney to Deer Lodge, I’m your man.”
    â€œYou have business in Canada.”
    â€œI’m not going after Bliss and Whitelaw knowing just what’s in the papers. There’s a man in Deer Lodge who knows more about them than anyone.”
    â€œIf you mean John Swingtree, he won’t talk. He’ll die in prison.”
    â€œHe might talk if I promise him a commutation.”
    â€œI can’t offer that even if I wanted to. Only Governor Potts can do that.”
    â€œI didn’t say I’d keep the promise.”
    He drew on his cigar, watching me, then propped it in the brass artillery-shell base he used for an ashtray and slid a sheet of stationery bearing his letterhead from the stack on the desk. “You’ll need a letter from me before they’ll let you see him.” He dipped his pen.
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    The next day I went to see Oskar Bundt. A glum pack of city employees was at work in the street, shoveling the heavy snow into piles alongside the boardwalks. The sky was iron colored but looked less oppressive than it had for a week. We were in for a thaw.
    The gunsmith, Bundt, was Scandinavian, but he could seldom get anyone to believe it. He was Finnish on his mother’s side, and the line went straight back to the squat, swarthy Huns who had fled