001 - Longarm

Maybe it was just the waste. People lived such a short while at best. Man was born with a death’s-head less than an inch below the soft skin of his face. By the time he was old enough to talk, he knew the graveyard waited just up the road ahead. What was it that made some men rush the process so?

He remembered that first one in the dawn mists of Shiloh, shouting fit to bust as he charged through the spring greenery into another boy’s gunsights. He remembered the kick of the old Springfield against his shoulder as the world dissolved in gray-blue smoke for a long, breathless moment and how, as the smoke cleared, that other boy had been lying under a budding cherry tree with a surprised look on his face, and how the cherry blossom petals had fluttered down like gentle, pink snowflakes as the body stopped twitching. The first man he’d killed had been fourteen or so. A farm boy, from the looks of his dead hands as they lay, half open, near the stock of his musket in the cherry blossoms. It was later, when the kitchen crew brought the evening grub up to the line, that he’d noticed the ball of fuzzy, gray nothingness in his gut. He hadn’t been able to eat a thing. By the second evening of the battle, he’d been hungry as a bitch wolf and pinned behind a stone wall without so much as a plug of tobacco to chew on. He’d learned, by the time they marched him beyond Shiloh Church through the sniper-haunted forests, not to let his feelings show. But he still wondered sometimes, late at night, who that other boy had been, and why he’d been in such an all-fired hurry to end the life he’d hardly started.

CHAPTER 25

“The City of the Saints” lay at the base of the Wasatch Range, staring out across the desert to the west. Salt Lake City had grown some since Longarm had been there a few short years before. The outlying houses now extended into the foothills and the party had to ride for more than an hour through the town before they could get to the part they were headed for.

Little kids came out of the somber Mormon houses along the gravel road to stare at the big party riding in. Some of the kids threw sassy words or poorly aimed horse turds at them before scooting behind a picket fence. Longarm didn’t know whether they were just being kids, or whether the Mormons were still telling them bedtime stories about how cruel the outside world could be. As long as they didn’t improve their aim or throw something solid, it wasn’t worth worrying about.

Timberline was leading the mount Mabel Hanks, handcuffed to the saddle horn, was sitting. Mabel had simmered down to a sullen silence, with a just-you-wait! look in her smoldering eyes.

Longarm found himself riding alongside Kim Stover, who seemed sort of quiet herself, since breaking camp. Longarm thought he knew what was bothering her, so he didn’t say anything. They were riding in at an easy walk, for they were too far from the center of town to lope the rest of the way in and Longarm had warned his Wyoming companions not to make sudden motions in sight of the sometimes-truculent Mormon folk they were paying a call on.

After perhaps five minutes of silence, the redhead said with a disgusted tone in her voice “I’d as soon you’d ride with someone else, Deputy Long.”

“Oh? Well, you can drop back if you’ve a mind too, Miss Kim. I’m up here near the head of the column ‘cause I know the way to Main Street and will likely be dismounting first, at the Federal Building.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I mean to head direct to the depot.”

“I never try to change a lady’s mind, but I did offer you and yours a free ride up to Bitter Creek. I figure it’ll take an hour or so to do the paperwork on my prisoner. Then I’ll be free to see about getting all these hands and horses fixed with transportation.”

“You’re not taking that woman back to Denver?”

“Nope. They never sent me to get her. I’ll let the Salt e office do the honors. Maybe ride back to Denver in one of them fancy Pullman cars. Be nice to stretch out between clean sheets for a change and I’m overdue for a good night’s rest.”

“I should think you’d enjoy another night with Mabel Hanks. But I suppose you’ve tired of her, eh? You men are all alike.”

Longarm rode in silence for a time before he sighed, observing, “I might have known you gals would have your heads together on the only subject womenfolk never get tired of jawing about.”

“Don’t look so innocent. She told me everything.”

“She did? Well, why are you keeping it a secret? Where did she say she buried Kincaid and that other feller from Missouri?”

“Damn it, she didn’t talk about any murders. She told me about you and her, in Bitter Creek.”

“Well, I know I can hang the sniping in Bitter Creek on her. I was hoping she’d let her hair down to another woman on the details of her life of crime.”

“Don’t pussyfoot with me, you animal! She says you had your way with her in-in a fold-up bed. She said that’s why her poor little husband tried to kill you. He was defending her honor.”

Longarm fished a cheroot from his vest pocket and lit it without comment.

After a time, Kim asked, “Well?”

“Well what, ma’am?”

“Aren’t you going to deny it?”

“You reckon you’d believe me, if I did?”

“Of course not. Her description was, well, vivid.”

“Funny, ain’t it? Ten aldermen of the church could swear a man was tuning the organ of a Sunday, and if one woman told his wife he’d been at a parlor house instead…”

“Then you do deny it!”

“Ain’t sure. Maybe I better study on it before I say one thing or t’other. I don’t aim to have you think I’m all that wicked. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want you to put me down as a sissy.”

Despite herself, the redhead laughed. Then she recovered and said, “I don’t think she could have made that up about you folding her up in the wall when her husband busted in on you.”

“By golly, that’s a good touch I’d never have come up with! Next time the boys are bragging in the pool hall, I’ll see if I can get them to buy such an interesting yarn.”

He puffed some smoke ahead of him, and addressing an invisible audience, pontificated, “That story about the one-legged gal in Dodge was right interesting, Tex. But did I ever tell you about the time in Bitter Creek I made mad gypsy love to this gal married to a midget?”

“It does sound sort of wild. Are you suggesting she told me a lie? Why would any woman lie about such a thing?”

“Don’t know. Why do men swap stories about Mexican spitfires and hotblooded landladies? Old Mabel’s likely practicing up for when we carry her before the federal district judge, up ahead. Wait’ll she gets to where you helped hold her down while Timberline and all them other riders behind us took turns with me at whatsoever.”

“Oh! Do women play such tricks on you when you arrest them?”

“Not all. Only three out of four. Some ladies who shoot folks are sort of modest.”

“She is a murderess and the wife of a gunslick, isn’t she? I hadn’t considered that angle.”

“I know. Most folks are more partial to dirty stories.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve wronged you, but damn it, she made it sound so real!”

“Do tell? Who’d she say was better at it, me or the midget?”

This time her laughter was less forced. She recovered and grinned, “I daren’t repeat what she told me. As a woman who’s been married, I’m not sure all the… details were possible.”

Longarm didn’t answer.

After a while, Kim said, “Yes, I see it all now. She’s been trying to drive a wedge between us. I’d forgotten she was facing the rope. Tell me, do you think they’ll really hang her?”

“If she’s found guilty.”

“Brrr. It seems so… so awful to think of a woman hanging.”

“Ain’t much fun for anybody. Mary Surratt was a woman, and they hung her for conspiring to kill Abe Lincoln. Some folks figured she was innocent, too.”

“Oh, my what an awful thought! Doesn’t it bother you to think of innocent people getting hung?”

“A mite. But since I’ve never hung nobody, it ain’t MY worry.”

“I can’t believe you have no pity for her. Even after what he did.”

“I feel pity for everybody, ma’am. Mostly, I feel pity for the victims more’n I do the killers. Deputy Kincaid and likely that other feller had families. They’d likely expect me to do the right thing.”

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, eh? Isn’t there something else about mercy in the good book?”

“Sure there is. I’ve read things written by philosophers. They say two wrongs don’t make a right. They say the death penalty don’t really stop the killings out our way. They say all sorts of things. But when it’s their own son or daughter, husband or wife who’s the victim you’d be surprised how fast they get back to that old ‘an eye for an eye!’”

“Someday, we may be more civilized.”

“Maybe. Meanwhile, we don’t hang folks because they’ve killed someone. We hang ‘em in order that someone else won’t get killed. Ever read what Emerson and them have to say about reform? Maybe some killers can be reformed. I don’t know what makes a man or woman a killer. But I do know one thing. Not one killer has ever done it again, after a good hanging!”

It was a long time before she broke the silence once more to say, “I think I understand you better, Longarm. I’m afraid I had some cruel thoughts about you. I thought maybe you were bringing Mabel Hanks in for those killings just to, you know, wipe the slate. I can see you’re a proud man, and a man sent on a mission that fell apart when it turned out we’d captured the wrong man. I thought, just maybe, you were out to nail just anyone, in lieu of Cotton Younger.”

“Not quite, ma’am. Don’t think I could get anyone to buy Mabel Hanks as Cotton Younger. She ain’t built right.”

CHAPTER 26

The Federal Building was near the Mormon Temple grounds on the tree-shaded Main Street of Salt Lake City. A crowd of curious onlookers gathered as the big party of strange riders stopped in front of the baroque outpost of far-off Washington.

Longarm dismounted and told some of the hands to keep the crowd back as he and Timberline helped the handcuffed woman down from her horse. A worried-looking bailiff came out to watch as they led Mabel Hanks, sputtering and cursing, up the stone steps.

Longarm noticed Kim Stover tagging along at his side and muttered, “You’d best wait out here, ma’am.”

“I’ve ridden too long a way to miss the ending, Longarm. I promise not to say anything or get in the way.”

He saw there was no sense in trying to stop her, so he dropped it. He nodded to the bailiff and said, “I’m Deputy Long. Denver office. You likely got the wire I sent from Ouray Reservation about this suspect. Where do you want her?”

“Judge Hawkins ain’t arrived yet, Deputy. We’d best get her to his chambers and I’ll send over to his house for him. Ought to be just finishing breakfast by now.”

Longarm followed the uniformed man inside, along with Timberline, Kim, and Mabel Hanks, who kept swearing at them. They went up a flight of marble steps with iron railings to the second floor, where the bailiff ushered them into a deserted courtroom and then into the judge’s smaller, private chambers beyond. When he had left them alone there, Kim asked, “What happens now?”

Longarm said, “We wait. Waiting is the worst part of this job.”

Timberline asked, “Do we have to sit through a trial like?”

Longarm said, “No, just a preliminary hearing before the judge. He’ll set her bail and a date for the trial. She’ll likely spend a month or more waiting ‘fore it gets serious.”

Kim asked, “Won’t you have to attend the trial, Longarm?”

“Sure. They’ll send me back from Denver when it starts. But like I said, we’re getting to the slow part. By the time it’s all wrapped up you two will be up in Crooked Lance, fighting the buyers over the price of beef. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed a cowboy.”

Mabel Hanks suddenly spat, “I’ll never swing for it, God damn your eyes! This is a raw, pure railroad job you’re pulling on me, Longarm!”

“Oh, I don’t know. I disremember if you said Cedric killed Kincaid.”

“You know he didn’t. The poor little mutt wouldn’t hurt a fly, you big bully!”

“Let’s save it for the judge. It’s tedious to remind you over and over about them.44-40 slugs he was throwing my way in his innocence.”

As if he’d been announced, Judge W.R. Hawkins came in wearing everyday duds and a frown. He was dabbing at some egg-stains on the front of his vest as he sat behind his imposing desk and asked, “What’s all this about, Deputy Long?”

Longarm saw that the others had all found places to perch, so he lowered himself to a chair arm and asked, “Don’t we rate a proper hearing with some bailiffs and all, Judge? Ought to have a matron for this lady, too. It’s a long story and I’d like to get the cuffs off her.”

“Just give me a grasp of what we’ve got and we’ll work out the niceties as they come up. I’m holding regular court in less’n an hour.”

Longarm shrugged, fished the key from his pants, and tossed it over to Timberline. “Unlock her and sort of stand over there by the door, will you? I reckon Mabel knows enough to be a good girl, but we gotta do things proper, court in an hour or no.”

He waited ‘til Timberline had carried out his instructions before he began to tell the whole story from the beginning. After a few minutes he started to describe the sniping in Bitter Creek.

“Hold on, now,” Hawkins cut in. “Did you see this lady firing at you from across the street?”

“Not exactly, but we found high-heel prints and a.30-30 is a womanly rifle, Your Honor.”

“Hmmph, I’ve seen many a cowboy in high heels, and as for a.30-30 being womanly, I hunt deer with one myself! Are you saying I’m a sissy or that I took a shot at you in Bitter Creek?”

“Neither, Your Honor. I’m saying it’s circumstantial evidence.”

“Damn slim, too! Keep talking.”

Longarm told the rest of it, with a few more interruptions from the judge. When he got to the part about the Mountie stealing the corpse of Raymond Tinker the judge laughed aloud and said, “Hold on! Are you saying that fool Canadian, backed by them rascals in the State Department, is packing the wrong man all the way back to Winnepeg in high summer?”

“Yessir, he seems to take his job right serious.”

“By jimmies, I can’t wait to tell the boys at the club that part. But you lost me somewhere, Deputy Long. You say it looks like this lady killed at least two, maybe three men. What have you to say for yourself, ma’am?”

Mabel Hanks said, “He’s full of shit! This whole thing’s nothing but a lovers’ spat.”

“A lover’s what?”

“You heard me, Your Honor. He’s just mad at me ‘cause I wouldn’t leave my husband for him. I’ll admit he turned my head one night. He is good-looking and, well, I’m a poor, weak woman. But I saw the error of my ways in time and went back to my true love. He said he’d fix me for spurning his wicked advances, and as you see, he’s trying fit to bust!”

Longarm found something very interesting about his fingernails to look at as the judge raised an eyebrow and observed, “Now, this is getting interesting! What have you to say for yourself, Deputy Long?”

“I’m a poor, weak man? The question before you ain’t no morals charge, Your Honor. So I’ll save a lot of useless talk by offering no defense to her wild allegations. I brought her in for killing folks, not for… never mind.”

Hawkins stared at the woman thoughtfully for a long, hard moment. Then he nodded and said, “I’ve known Deputy Long long enough to suspect he wouldn’t hang a lady for spurning his wicked advances, ma’am. However, since you aren’t represented by an attorney, it’s the duty of this court to cross-examine in your behalf.”

He turned to Longarm and said, “leaving aside your improper reasons for arresting this lady, what in thunder do you have on her?”

“I’ll admit it’s mostly circumstantial Your Honor, but…”

“But me no buts. If she killed Kincaid and that other lawman, where are the damned bodies?”

“Your Honor, you can see we’ll never find body one, ‘less the killer tells us where they’re hidden. We do have the body of Sailor Brown, and this woman and her late husband were in Crooked Lance when somebody gunned him.”

“As was a whole valley filled with folks, damn it. What on earth is wrong with you? Where did you leave Your brains this morning? Don’t you remember Sailor Brown was a wanted man with papers on him? Hell, anyone who did kill him could come forward to claim the reward!”

Longarm looked surprised and asked the prisoner, “How about it, Mabel? As you see, there’s no charge to the bushwhacking of the old man. Can’t you ‘fess up just a little and help us clear things up a mite?”

“Oh, go to hell! You’ll not trick me again. You told me you’d marry up with me in Bitter Creek, remember?”

“Now, that, Your Honor, is the biggest lie she’s told so far, and since we first met, she’s told some lulus!”

“Let’s get back to the murders she’s accused of. Frankly, I’m surprised at you, son. You’ve never brought a prisoner in with such flimsy evidence to back your charges.”

“I’ll allow the killer was tricky, Your Honor, but I’m doing the best I know how.”

“This time your best isn’t good enough. Holding her for killing folks we can’t even say for sure are dead won’t keep her overnight. You got anything, anything at alL you can prove?”

Longarm looked uncomfortable as he suggested, “Maybe if we sent her into another room to be searched for evidence… Miss Kim might be willing to help.”

Timberline, leaning against the door, spoke up, “We patted her down for shooting irons, remember?”

“I know, but we never really stripped her down for a proPer search. Why don’t we send the two of ‘em in the next room… there’s no other way out of here and who knows what we’ll find stashed in her corset?”

The judge frowned and said, “Deputy Long, you are stepping on the tail of my robes! What are you UP to, son? You know I can’t order a search unless I order this other lady to search for some thing.”

Longarm said, “What I’m hoping Miss Kim will find on her will be, uh, documentary evidence, Your Honor. She and her husband were bounty hunters. There were no reward papers or telegrams in their packs when I arrested ‘em both.”

“That’s better. What am I to tell this other lady to look for in the way of papers?”

“Letters, telegrams, anything tying ‘em in to someone in Missouri. Maybe someone named James or Younger.”

The judge nodded and Kim got to her feet, saying, “Let’s go, Mabel. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Damn it! I don’t have nothing on me!”

“That may be so, dear. Why don’t we get it over with?”

The judge got to his feet and opened the door to his dressing room. The two women went in, with some grumbling on Mabel’s part, and Hawkins shut the door. His voice was ominous as he said, “Now that we are alone, let me tell you something, Deputy Long. I think you are wasting my time! You’ve been a lawman too long to bring a prisoner in on such flimsy evidence! Have you just gotten dumb, or was there anything at all to that fool women’s story about you bedding down with her?”

Longarm grinned and said, “Hell, she’s just a no-account adventuress, Your Honor. She did take that potshot at me in Bitter Creek, but you’re right. It’d be a waste of time to prove it and her midget husband probably put her up to it. He was the dangerous one of the pair. Without him, she’ll likely end her days in some parlor house. Not that she won’t give right good service in bed.”

judge Hawkins looked thunderstruck as he almost roared, “You knew you didn’t have the evidence to hang her?”

“Sure.” Longarm said, “She never gunned them lawmen. He did.” He pointed to where Timberline stood, stiffened against the door, slack-jawed. Longarm added, conversationally, “Don’t do anything foolish, Mister Younger. We both know I can beat you to the draw nine times out of ten!”

Timberline gasped, “What are you saying, damn it! I thought I was your deputy!”

“Oh, I deputized you as the easiest way to bring you in without having to fight a score or so of your friends, Mister Younger. You might say the nonsense with Mabel Hanks was a ruse. It was you I wanted all the time. Your Honor, may I present the Right Honorable Cotton Younger from Clay County, Missouri, and other parts past mention?”

Just then the door flew open and the two women sailed out, fighting and fussing. Mabel had a firm grip on Kim Stover’s red hair and Kim was holding firm to the corset around her otherwise naked body as they landed in a rolling, spitting heap between Longarm and the man against the door!

Longarm muttered, “Damn!” as Timberline opened the door and crashed backward out of the chambers.

Longarm drew as he leaped over the cat-fight on the rug and came down running. As he left the room, a bullet tore a sliver from the jamb near his head and he fired across the deserted courtroom at the smoke cloud in the far doorway.

He ran the length of the courtroom and dove into the hallway headfirst, landing on his belly and elbows as he slid across the marble floor beneath the first shot fired his way at waist level.

He rolled and fired back at the tall, dark figure outlined by the window at the end of the long hallway. The target jacknifed over its gunbelt and feinted sideways for the stairwell, falling with a.44-40 slug in the guts!

Longarm leaped to his feet and ran to the stairway, hearing a series of bumps and the clatter of metal on the marble steps. The man called Timberline lay on the landing, sprawled like an oversized broken doll. His gun lay beyond, still smoking.

As Longarm went down two steps at a time, a bailiff appeared on the steps, coming up. Longarm snapped, “Go down and bar the doors. He’s got a score of friends outside!”

Federal bailiffs were trained to obey first and think later, so this one did as he was told. Longarm knelt to feel for a pulse. Then he stood up again and began reloading his warm double-action, muttering, “Damn it to hell! Now we’ll never know where Jesse James is hiding!”

CHAPTER 27

It seemed simple enough to Longarm, but Judge Hawkins made him repeat the whole story in front of a court reporter and Kim Stover and a few of the more stable folks from Crooked Lance he’d decided to let in. The hearing was held in the outer courtroom, with Timberline—or rather, Cotton Younger—stretched out under a sheet on the floor. The coroner said it had been the fall down the steps that finished him with a broken neck, though he’d have died within the hour from the bullet wound.

As the court reporter put it down on paper, Longarm explained, “The late Cotton Younger rode into Crooked Lance five or six years ago, wanted dead or alive in lots of places and worn out with running. He took the job offered him at the Rocking H, and discovered he had a good head for cows. They promoted him to foreman and he became a respected member of the valley community. He had a fine lady he was interested in, and maybe, if things had gone better for him, he’d have stayed straight and we’d have never known what happened to him.”

Kim Stover cut in to insist again, “Timberline couldn’t have been Cotton Younger! He doesn’t answer those wanted-poster descriptions at all!”

“That’s true, ma’am. He’s a head taller now than his army records showed. But you see, he ran off from Terry’s Column as a teenager. It sometimes happens that a boy gets a last growing spurt, along about twenty or so. He was tall when he rode into Crooked Lance. Taller than most. The rest of you probably didn’t notice another saddle tramp at first. By the time it was important just how tall he really was, he was five or six inches taller. Must have been some comfort to him, when his real name came up in conversation, but as you see, he still dyed his hair.”

“Where would he get dye like that?”

“It wasn’t easy. He likely used ink. His hair was too black to be real. Not even an Indian has pure black hair. Natural brunettes have a brownish cast to their hair in sunlight. His was blue-black. I noticed that right off. Noticed a couple of slips, too. He knew the old man I found on the mountain had been shot, before I said one word about his being dead. Another time, he referred to Sailor Brown as the old tattooed man. I don’t remember mentioning what I found under his beard to anyone in Crooked Lance, but a boy who’d ridden with him would have known about Brown’s tattoos.”

Judge Hawkins said, “I’ll take your word for it you shot the right man, Deputy Long. Finish the story.”

“All right. Cotton Younger was hankering after the widow Stover, here. Don’t know if he had anything to do with her being a widow, so let’s be charitable. Kim Stover and her friends liked to play vigilante when the cows were out minding themselves on the range. So when they spied the late Raymond Tinker just passing through, they grabbed him, searched him, and found him with a running iron. Cotton Younger was just showing off as usual and there’s no telling what they’d have done with the cow thief if the poor stranger hadn’t answered to the old description of Cotton Younger!”

“That’s the corpse you pawned off on the Mountie, right?”

“Yessir. Had to. Once word was out that a sidekick of Jesse James was being held in Crooked Lance, every lawman in creation converged on the place to claim him for their own. While I was whittling away some of the competition, the other dead man, here, was sweating bullets. You see, he didn’t want lawmen sniffing around. Sooner or later, any one of us might have unmasked him as the real Cotton Younger. He got word by wire that Kincaid and another lawman from Missouri were riding in. He busted up the wire and laid for ‘em. He knew anyone from Missouri might recognize him on sight, and by now, he was trying to pass the cow thief off on us as the real article.”

“What about Sailor Brown? I thought he was a friend of Cotton Younger.”

“He was. Or, that is, he used to be, in another life. Brown rode in with me, pretending to be some crazy old French Canuck, and aiming to get his old pal out. He never got to see the man in jail, but it didn’t matter. When a bunch of us rode over to talk to this lady here about the fool notions her friends had on holding Tinker for the reward money, Sailor Brown took one look at what everybody called Timberline and knew what was up. He was also wanted himself, and the Mountie rattled him some by talking French to him. Brown didn’t savvy more’n the accent. So Brown was riding out, likely laughing about how his young friend had slickered us all when said young friend put a bullet in him.”

“To make certain no one in the outside world would ever learn of his new identity, right?”

“there you go, Your Honor. That takes us to the midget, Cedric Hanks, and the lady being held over in that jail cell as a material witness. They were what they said they wer, bounty hunters. They knew they didn’t have the weight to ride out with the prisoner. They only wanted him to tell ‘em where the James Boys were, so they could collect on that much bigger bounty. They were playing their tune by ear, pumping the rest of us for information, obstructing us as best they could. Sort of like a kid tries to fix a stopped clock by hitting it a few licks and hoping.”

“You say the midget was the more vicious of the pair?”

“No sir, I said the smartest and most dangerous. I’ve sent a few wires and gotten more on ‘em to go with what the railroad detective first told me. Little Cedric had a habit of collecting his bounties the easy way and was probably in on more killings than we’d ever be able to prove. So it’s just as well he made things simple for us by acting so foolish. He was at least a suspect when he got killed trying to escape, so my office says I’m not to worry about it overmuch. I intend to hold his wife seventy-two hours on suspicion anyway, before we cut her loose. She said some mean things about this other lady and she’d best cool off until Miz Stover’s out of Salt Lake City.”

Longarm turned to the redhead and said, “I’ve been meaning to ask about that set-to before. I went to all that trouble to get Cotton Younger in here peaceable, pussyfooted to get you gals out of the room before I announced his arrest, and there you two were, rolling and spitting like alley cats between us, and he was able to make a break for it!”

Kim Stover blushed and looked away, murmuring, “If you must know, she passed a very improper remark and I slapped her sassy face for it. I suppose I shouldn’t have, but she sort of blew up at me. After that, it’s sort of confusing.”

“I’d say you were winning when the bailiffs halled you apart. You’re gonna have a mouse over that one eye by tonight, but she collected the most bruises.”

“She bit me, too. I daren’t say where.”

Judge Hawkins took out his pocket watch and said, “we’ve about wrapped this case up, and damned neatly, too, considering. By the way, Deputy Long, do you know a Captain Walthers, from the Provost Marshal’s office?”

“Yessir. They’ve heard about this over at Fort Douglas, have they?”

“Yes. I just got a hand-delivered message, demanding Cotton Younger as an army deserter.”

“You reckon they’ll get him, Your Honor?”

“Justice Department hand over spit to the War Department? I turned the fool message over and wrote, ‘Surely you jest, sir!’”

“They won’t think that’s funny, Your Honor.”

“So what. I thought it was funny as all hell.”

CHAPTER 28

The train ride from Salt Lake City to Bitter Creek took about nine hours—a long time to go it alone and far too short a time sitting across from a very pretty redhead with a black eye.

They’d wound up things in Salt Lake City by mid-afternoon. So the sunset caught them more than half way to where Kim Stover and the others were getting off. They’d had dinner in the diner alone together, since the others were considerate, for cow hands, and Kim had stated that she was mourning Timberline’s demise, and was ready to forgive and forget where Longarm was concerned. He’d asked a friendly colored feller for some ice for her eye, but all it seemed to do was run down inside her sleeve, so she’d given up. He thought she was as pretty as a picture in the evening light coming in through the dusty windows, anyway.

She was studying him, too, as the wheels under the Pullman car rumbled them ever closer to the time when they would have to say goodbye. She licked her lips and said, “Your cigar is out again.”

“It’s a cheroot. I’m trying to quit smoking.”

“Don’t you allow yourself any bad habits?”

“Got lots of bad habits, Miss Kim. I try not to let ‘em get the better of me.”

“Is that why you never married?”

He looked out at the passing rangeland, orange and purple now, and said, “Soldiers, sailors, priests, and such should think twice before they marry. Lawmen should think three times and then not do it.”

“I’ve heard of lots of lawmen who’ve gotten married.”

“So have I. Knew a man who let ‘em shoot him out of a circus cannon for a living, too. Didn’t strike me as a trade I’d like to follow. He left a wife and three kids one night when he missed the net.”

“A woman who thought enough of a man might be willing to take her chances on widowhood.”

“Maybe. More to it than that. A man in my line makes enemies. I’ve got enough on my plate just watching MY own back. Could run a man crazy thinking of a wife and kids alone at home when he’s off on a mission.”

“Then you never intend to settle down?”

“After I retire, maybe. I’ll be pensioned off before I’m fifty.”

“Heavens! By the time I’m fifty we’ll be into the twentieth century!”

“Reckon so. These centuries do have a way of slipping by on us, don’t they?”

“You mean life, don’t you? I’m staring thirty down at medium range and there’s so much I’ve missed. So much I never got to do. My God, it does get tedious, raising COWS!”

Well, the price of beef is rising. You’ll likely wind UP rich and married up with someone, soon enough.”

She suddenly marveled, “My God, if You hadn’t come along when you did, I might have married Timberline, in time! There’s not much to choose from in Crooked Lance, and a woman does get lonesome.”

“I know the feeling, ma’am. Reckon we were both lucky, the way it all came out in the wash.”

“you mean you were lucky. You must be pretty pleased with yourself, right now. You got the man they sent you after, solved the murder of your missing partner, and made fools of your rival law officers. I’ll bet they’re waiting for you in Denver with a brass band!”

“Might get a few days off as a bonus. But I got a spell of travel ahead, first. This train won’t be in Cheyenne ‘til the wee, small hours. Pullman car is routed through to Denver, but we’ll likely sit in the yards for a spell before they shunt it on to the Burlington line. Be lucky if we make Denver by noon.”

She looked up at the ornate, polished paneling and said, “I never rode in a Pullman before. How do they fix it into bedrooms or whatever?”

“These seats sort of scrootch together over where our legs are, right now. A slab of the ceiling comes down to form an upper bunk, with the stuff that goes on this bottom one stored up there. They run canvas curtains around these seats. Then everybody just goes to bed.”

“Hmm, it seems a mite improper. Folks sleeping all up and down this car with only canvas between ‘em.”

“The wheels click-clack enough to drown most sounds. I mean, sounds of snoring and such.”

“Be a sort of unusual setting for, well, honeymooners, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t know. Never had a honeymoon on a train.”

“I never had one at all, damn it. What time do you reckon they’ll start making these fool beds up?”

“Later tonight. Maybe about the time we’re pulling Into Rawlings.”

“That’s a couple of stops past Bitter Creek, ain’t it?”

“Yep. We’ll be getting to Bitter Creek before nine.”

“Oh.”

They rumbled on as night fell around them and the porter started lighting the oil lamps. Kim Stover rubbed at a cinder or something in her good eye and said, “I reckon I’ll walk up to the freight section and see to my pony.”

Longarm rose politely to his feet, but didn’t follow as she swept past him and out. And likely out of his life, forever, a bit ahead of time.

He sat back down and stared out at the gathering darkness, wondering why he didn’t feel like dancing. He’d pulled off a fine piece of work, with no loose ends worth mentioning and no items on his expense voucher they could chew hem out for, this time. Not even Marshal Vail would blanch at paying for that horse he’d lost, considering the laugh they’d had on the War Department. So why did he feel so let down?

It wasn’t on account of shooting Cotton Younger. He’d been keyed up and braced for it ever since he’d noticed that funny blue shine to that too-black hair.

“Come on, old son,” he murmured to his reflection in the dirty glass. “You know what’s eating at you. You can’t win ‘em all! This time, you got into damn near every skirt in sight. Including some you’ll never know the who-all about! So just you leave that redheaded widow woman alone. She’s the kind that needs false promises, and that ain’t our style!”

The train ate up the miles in what seemed no time at all. Longarm couldn’t believe it when the conductor came through, shouting, “Next stop Bitter Creek! All out for Bitter Creek!”

He glanced around, wondering if she was even coming back to say goodbye. It didn’t seem she was. But, what the hell, mebbe it was better this way.

He got to his feet and walked back to the observation car as the train slowed for Bitter Creek. He was out there, puffing his cigar, as the train pulled into the station.

He glanced over at the winking lights of the little cow town as, up near the front, the sounds of laughter and nickering horses told him they were unloading from the freight section. He started to lean out, maybe for a glimpse of red hair in the spattered, shifting light. But he never saw her.

Someone fired a pistol into the air with a joyous shout of homecoming. Even though they had a long, hard ride ahead, the Crooked Lancers were a lot closer to home than he was. Then again, he didn’t have a home worth mentioning.

As laughter and the sound of hoofbeats filled the air, the train restarted with a jerk. He stood there, reeling backwards on his boot heels as they pulled out of the place where it had all started. Some riders waved their hats and a voice called out, “So long, Longarm!”

He didn’t wave back. He threw the cheroot away and watched the lights of Bitter Creek drop back into the past. As they passed a last, lighted window on the edge of town, he wondered who lived there and what it was like to live anywhere, permanently.

Then he shrugged and went inside. The observation car was dimly lit. The bartender had folded up and closed down the bar for the night. He walked the length of the train back to his own seat, noticing that they’d started making up the Pullman beds and that the centers of each car were now dim corridors of swaying green canvas that smelled like old army tents. After a short while he got up and went to his own berth and parted the curtains to get in.

Then he frowned and asked, “Where do you think you’re going, Miss Kim?”

The redhead was half undressed on the bunk bed. So she just smiled shyly and said, “We’d best whisper, don’t you reckon? I’m sort of spooked with all these other folks outside these canvas hangings.”

He sat down as she moved against the window side to make room for him. He took off his gunbelt, saying softly, “You got lots of cows expecting you, Kim.”

“I know. They’ll keep. You warned me when we met I was destined to get in trouble with the law.”

“Before I take off my boots, there’s a few things you should know about me, honey.”

“Hush. I’m not out to hogtie you, darling. I know the rules of the… game is sort of wicked-sounding. Let’s just say I was hoping for at least two weeks with you before I go back to punching cows. You reckon we’ll last two weeks?”

“Maybe longer. Takes most gals at least a month before they’ve heard all a man’s stories and start nagging him about his table manners. I reckon that’s why they call it the honeymoon.”

“You must think I’m shameless, but damn it, I’m almost thirty and it’s been lonesome up in Crooked Lance!”

“don’t spoil the wonder by trying to put words to it, honey. We got lots of time to talk about it between here and Denver.”

And so they didn’t discuss it as he took off his boots, removed his clothes, and finished undressing her in the swaying, dimly lit compartment while she tried not to giggle and the engine chuffed in time with their hearts.

A good two hours later, as the night train rolled on for Cheyenne, Kim raised her lips from his moist shoulder and murmured, “Will you tell me something, darling?”

He cuddled her body closer and asked, “What is it, kitten?”

“Am I as good in bed as that hussy, Mabel Hanks?”

He didn’t answer.

She raked her nails teasingly through the hair on his chest as she purred, “Come on. I know you had her. She told me something about you that I thought at the time she had to be making up.”

“That why you tagged along?”

“Partly. But I’m afraid I might be in love with you, too. But, yeah, it pays to advertise. I thought she was just bragging, but I’m glad she was right about you.”

He decided silence was his best move at the moment. But she moved her hand down his belly and insisted, “come on. ‘Fess up. Am I as good as Mabel?”

“Honey, there ain’t no comparison. You’re at least ten times better.”

“Then prove it to me. Let’s do it some more.”

So they did. But even as her lush flesh accepted his once more, he found himself wondering. Did this make it Kim Stover and her mother-in-law, Kim Stover and her sister-in-law, or all three of the Stover women?

SPECIAL PREVIEW

Here are the opening scenes from LONGARM ON THE BORDER, second novel in the bold LONGARM series from Jove.

CHAPTER 1

Even before he opened his eyes, in that instant between sleep and waking, Longarm knew it had snowed during the night. Like the hunter whose senses guide him to prey, like the hunted whose senses keep him from becoming prey, Longarm was attuned to the subtlest changes in his surroundings. The light that struck his closed eyelids wasn’t the usual soft gray that brightens the sky just before dawn. It had the harsh brileance that comes only from the pre-sunrise skyglow being reflected from snow-covered ground.

opening his eyes, Longarm confirmed what he already knew. He didn’t see much point in walking across the room to raise a shade at one of the twin windows. The light seeping around the edges of the opaque shades had that cold, hard quality he’d sensed when he’d snapped awake.

Longarm swore, then grunted. He didn’t believe in cussing the weather or anything else he was powerless to change. He was a man who believed swearing just wasted energy unless it did something besides relieving his own dissatisfaction.

Last night, when he’d swung off the narrow-gauge railroad after a long, slow, swaying trip up from Santa Fe to Denver, he’d noted the nip in the air, but his usually reliable weather sense hadn’t warned him it might snow. It was just too early in the year. It was still fall, with the Rocky Mountains’ winter still a couple of months away. Longarm hadn’t been thinking too much about the weather last night, though. All that had been in his mind was getting to his room, taking a nightcap from the bottle of Maryland rye that stood waiting on his dresser, and falling into bed. On another night, he’d probably have followed his habit of dropping in at the Black Cat or one of the other saloons on his way home, to buck the faro bank for a few cards until he relaxed. He’d started to cut across the freightyard to Colfax instead of taking the easier way along Wynekoop Street. What he’d seen happen in New Mexico Territory had left a sour taste in his mouth that the three or four drinks he’d downed on the train couldn’t wash away.

There was little light in the freightyard. The acetylene flares mounted on high standards here and there created small pools of brightness, but intensified the darkness between them. Longarm was spacing his steps economically as he crossed the maze of tracks, sighting along the wheel-polished surface of the rails to orient himself, when he sensed rather than saw the man off to his left. He couldn’t see much in the gloom, just the interruption of the light reflected on the rail along which he was sighting.

“Casey!?” Longarm called. He didn’t think it was Casey, who was the yard’s night superintendent, and more likely to be in his office, but if it was one of Casey’s yard bulls on patrol, using the boss’s name would tell the man at once that Longarm wasn’t a freightyard thief.

A shot was his answer. A muzzle-flash and the whistle of lead uncomfortably close to his chest. Longarm drew as he was dropping and snap-shot when he rolled, firing at the place where he’d seen the orange blast. He didn’t know whether or not he’d connected. He hadn’t had a target; his shot was the equivalent of the warning buzz a rattlesnake gives when a foot comes too close to its coils.

Faintly, the sound of running footsteps gritting on cinders gave him the answer. Whoever had tried the bushwhacking wasn’t going to hang around and argue.

For several seconds, Longarm lay on the rough, gritty earth, trying to stab through the darkness with his eyes, using his ears to hear some giveaway sound that would spot his target for him. Except for the distant chugging of a yard-mule cutting cars at the shunt, there was nothing to hear.

Longarm didn’t waste time trying to prowl the yard. Being the target of a grudge shot from the dark wasn’t anything new to him, or to any of the other men serving as Deputy U.S. Marshals in the unreconstructed West of the 1880s. Longarm guessed that whoever had been responsible for the drygulching attempt had been sitting in another car of the narrow-gauge on the trip up from New Mexico. God knows, he’d stepped on enough toes during his month there to have become a prime target for any one of a half dozen merciless, powerful men. Any of them could’ve sent a gunslick to waylay him in Denver. The attack had to originate in New Mexico Teritory, he decided, because nobody in Denver had known when he’d be arriving.

Brushing himself off, Longarm had hurried on across the freightyard and on to his room. Bone-tired, he’d hit the sack without lighting a lamp, dropping his clothes as he shed then!

On the dresser, the half full bottle of Maryland rye gleamed in the light that was trickling in from the window. Its invitation was more attractive than the idea of staying in the warm bed. Longarm swung his bare feet to the floor, crossed the worn gray carpet in two long strides and let a trickle of warmth slip down his throat. As he stood there, the tarnished mirror over the dresser showed his tanned skin tightening as the chilly air of the unheated room raised goosebumps.

Crossing the room to its inside corner, Longarm pulled aside a sagging curtain to get to his wardrobe. Garments hung on a pegged board behind the curtain. He grabbed a cleaner shirt than the one he’d taken off, and a pair of britches that weren’t grimed with cinders from his roll in the freightyard last night.

He wasted no time in dressing. The cold air encouraged speed. Longjohns and flannel shirt, britches, woolen socks, and he was ready to stamp into his stovepipe cavalry boots. Another snort from the bottle and he turned to check his tools. From its usual night resting place, hanging by its belt from the bedpost on the left above his pillow, Longarm took his.44-40 Colt double-action out of its open-toed holster. Quickly and methodically, his fingers working with blurring speed, he swung out the Colt’s cylinder, dumped its cartridges on the bed, and strapped on the gunbelt.

He returned the unloaded pistol to the holster and drew three or four times, triggering the revolver with each draw, but always catching the hammer with his thumb instead of letting it snap on an empty chamber, which could break the firing pin. When Longarm had returned the Colt to its holster after each draw, he made the tiny adjustments that were needed to put the waxed, heat-hardened leather at the precise angle and position he wanted, just above his left hip.

Satisfied now, he reloaded the Colt, checking each cartridge before sliding it into the cylinder. Then he checked out the.44 double-barrelled derringer that was soldered to the chain that held his railroad Ingersoll on the other end. He put on his vest, dropping the watch into his left-hand breast pocket, the derringer into the right-hand one. Longarm always anticipated that trouble might look him up, as it had in the freightyard last night. If it did, he intended to be ready.

Longarm’s stomach was growling by now. He quieted it temporarily with a short sip of rye before completing his methodical preparations to leave his room for the day. These were simple and routine, but it was a routine he never varied while in civilized surroundings. Black string tie in place, frock coat settled on his broad shoulders, Stetson at its forward-tilted angle on his close-cropped head, he picked up his necessaries from the top of the bureau and stowed them into their accustomed pockets. Change went in one pants pocket and his jackknife in the other; his wallet with the silver federal badge pinned inside was slid into an inside breast pocket. Extra cartridges went into his right-hand coat pocket, handcuffs and a small bundle of waterproof matches into the pocket on the left.

As he left the room, he kicked the soiled clothing that still lay on the floor out into the hallway ahead of him. He’d leave word for his Chinese laundryman, Ho Quah, to pick it up and have it back that evening. He closed the door and between door and jamb inserted a broken matchstick at about the level of his belt. His landlady wasn’t due to clean up his room until Thursday, and Longarm wanted to know the instant he came home if an uninvited stranger might be waiting inside: for instance, the unknown shadow who’d thrown down on him last night. Anybody who knew his name was Custis Long could find out where Longarm lived.

Not only the rooming house, but the entire section of the unfashionable side of Cherry Creek where it stood was still asleep, Longarm decided, after he’d moved on light feet down the silent hallway and stopped to look over the street before stepping out the door. The night’s unexpected snowfall, though only an inch or less, made it easy for him to see whether anyone had been prowling around. He took a cheroot from his breast pocket and champed it in his teeth, but didn’t light it, while he studied the white surface outside.

There was only one set of tracks. They came from the house across the way, and the toes were pointed in the safe direction—for Longarm—away from the house, toward Cherry Creek. Just the same, he stopped on the narrow porch long enough to flick his gunmetal-blue eyes into the long, slanting shadows. He didn’t really expect to see anyone, though. The kind of gunhand who’d picked the safety of darkness once for his attack would be likely to wait for the gloomy cover of hoot-owl time before making a second try.

His booted feet cut through the thin, soft snow and crunched on the cinder pathway as Longarm walked unhurriedly to the Colfax Avenue bridge. He turned east on the avenue; ahead, the golden dome of the Colorado capitol building was just picking up the first rays of the rising sun.

George Masters’s barbershop wasn’t open yet, and Longarm needed food more than a shave. He didn’t fancy the cold free-lunch items he knew he’d find in any of the saloons close by, so he went on past the barbershop corner another block and stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall diner for hotcakes, fried eggs, ham, and coffee. He stowed away the cheroot while he ate. The longer he held off lighting it, the easier it would be for him to keep from lighting the next one.

Leaving the restaurant, twenty-five cents poorer, but with a satisfactorily full stomach, Longarm squinted at the sun. Plenty of time for a shave before reporting in at the office. He walked at ease along the avenue, which was just coming to life. The day might not be so bad in spite of the snow, he decided, feeling the warmth from his breakfast spreading through his lean, sinewy body.

He grinned at the bright sun, glowing golden in a blue, crystal sky. Deliberately, he took a match from the bundle in his pocket, flicked it into flame with his thumbnail, and lighted his cheroot.

Smelling of bay rum, his overnight stubble removed and his brown mustache now combed to the angle and spread of the horns on a Texas steer, Longarm walked into Marshal Billy Vail’s office before eight o’clock. It gave him a virtuous feeling to be the first one to show up, and even Vail’s pink-cheeked, citified clerk-stenographer wasn’t at the outside desk to challenge him. The Chief Marshal was already on the job, of course, fighting the ever-losing battle he waged with the paperwork that kept coming from Washington in a mounting flood. Vail looked pointedly at the banjo clock on the wall.

“This’ll be the day the world ends,” he growled.

“What in hell happened to get you here on time, for once?”

Longarm didn’t bother answering. He was used to Vail’s bitching. He felt his chief was entitled, bound as he was now to a desk and swivel chair, going bald and getting lardy. Desk work, after an active career in the field, seemed to bring out the granny in a man, and Longarm felt that he might bitch about life, too, under the same circumstances.

Vail shoved a pile of telegraph forms across the desk. “I guess you know you raised a real shit-stink down in New Mexico. You’d better have a good story to back up your play down there. I’ve got wires here from everybody except President Hayes.”

“Chances are the word ain’t got to him, yet,” Longarm replied mildly. “Don’t be feeling disappointed. You might get one from him too, before the day’s out. You want me to tell you how it was?”

“No. In fact, I’m not sure I want a long report in the file telling exactly what happened. Think you can write one like the one you handed in after that Short Creek fracas a few years back?”

Vail was referring to a report Longarm had turned in about his handling of another political hot potato that had consumed a month of time, resulted in eight deaths, and upset a hundred square miles of Idaho Territory. The report had simply read, “Assigned to case on May 23. Completed assignment and closed case July 2.”

“Don’t see why not.” Longarm considered for a moment before he went on. “I figured things might be hottening up down around Santa Fe, at the capitol. Some gunslick tried to bushwhack me when I got off the narrow-gauge last night.”

“The hell you say.” Vail’s tone showed no surprise. “You get him?”

“Too dark. He ran before I could sight on him.”

“Well, keep your report short. I won’t have to explain things I don’t know about. Besides, I want you out of this office before that pot down there boils over clear to Washington.”

“Suits me, chief, right to a tee. There’s snow on the ground and a smell of more in the air, and you know how I feel about that damned white stuff.”

“If it’ll cheer you up any, the place you’ll be going to is just a little cooler than the hinges of hell, this time of the year.” Vail pawed through the untidy stacks of documents on his desk until he uncovered the papers he was after. “Texas is Yelling for us to give them a hand. So is the army.”

“Seems to me like they both got enough hands so they wouldn’t need to come running to us. What is wrong with the Rangers? They gone to pot these days?”

Vail bristled. As a one-time Texas Ranger, he automatically resented any hints that his old outfit wasn’t up to snuff. Huffily, he said, “The Rangers have got more sense than to bust into something that might stir up trouble in Mexico. Here’s what Bert Matthews wrote me from Austin.” He read from one of the papers he’d uncovered. “He says, ‘You see what a bind we’re in on this, Billy. If one of my boys sets foot across the border and gets crossways of Diaz’s Rurales, we’d risk starting another War with them. Whoever goes looking for Nate Webster’s got to have Federal authority back of him and can’t be tied to Texas. That’s why I’m looking to YOU to give us a hand.’”

Longarm rubbed his freshly shaved chin and nodded slowly. “I hadn’t looked at it that way. Makes sense, I suppose. What’d this Nate Webster do?”

“As far as Bert knows, he didn’t do anything except droP out of sight somewhere on the other side of the Rio Grande. So did two black troopers who deserted from the 10th Cavalry, and a captain from the same outfit who went off on his own to bring them back.”

“Wait a minute, now. That Rio Grande’s a damn long river,” Longarm Observed. “It’s going to take a while, prowling it all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. I got to have a place to start looking.”

“You have, so settle down. I wouldn’t be so apt to send you if it wasn’t that all four of them disappeared from the same place. Little town called Los Perros. Dogtown I guess that’d translate into. You ever hear of it? I sure as hell never did, but it’s been a spell since I left Texas.”

Longarm shook his head. “Name don’t ring a bell with me, either. Where’s this Los Perros place at, in general?”

“It’s to be close to where the Pecos River goes into the Rio Grande.”

“Rough country in that part,” Longarm said. “if it’s there, I reckon I can find it, though. I aim to circle around New Mexico instead of going there the straightest way. If I show my face in old Senator Abeyet’s country before the old man wears his mad off, I’d have to fight my way from Santa Fe clear to El Paso.”

“You steer clear of New Mexico Territory, and that’s an order,” Vail agreed. “You’ve stirred up enough hell there to last a while.”

“Now, don’t get your bowels riled up, Chief. I’ll figure me out a route. Just let me think a minute.” He leaned back in the red morocco-leather chair, the most comfortable piece of furniture in the marshal’s office, and began aloud. “Let’s see, now. I take the KP outa here tonight and switch to the MT at Pueblo. That gets me to Wichita, and I’ll make a connection there with the I-GN or the SP to San Antone. Pick me up a horse and some army field rations at the quartermaster depot there and ride to Fort Stockton. That’ll beat jarring my ass on the Butterfield stage, and it’ll get me to spittin’ distance of the border a lot faster.”

“Tell my clerk,” Vail said impatiently. “He’ll write Your travel vouchers and requisition your expense money. Here. Take these letters and read them on the train. They’ll give you the whole story as good as I can. Now, get the hell outta this office before I get a wire from the attorney-general or the president telling me to suspend you or fire you outright.”

“Which you can’t do if I ain’t here.” Longarm grinned. “All right, chief. Time I close this case and get back, things ought to’ve cooled down enough to get me off the political shitlist.”

During the three train changes and four days and nights it took Longarm to reach his jumping-off Place deep in Texas, he spent his time catching up with lost sleep and studying the letters Marshal Vail had gotten from the Texas Ranger captain and the post adjutant at Fort Stockton. He was looking for some sort of connection that might tie the four disappearances together, but couldn’t see any.

Ranger Nate Webster had been working on a fresh outbreak of the style of rustling along the Texas border that had come to be called the “Laredo Loop.” Cattle stolen from ranches in central Texas were hustled across the Rio Grande’s northern stretches, their brands altered, and with false bills of sale forged to show that the steers had been Mexico-bred and bought from legitimate ranchers in the Mexican states of Chili Cohuila, or Nuevo Leon. Then, driven south, the rustled herds were taken back across the river at Laredo and sold there to buyers. Laredo was the only point along the Texas-Mexico border where railroad shipments crossed. It had long been a center for livestock sales. Even with Mexican cattle selling well below the market price for Texas beef, the profits were huge. Nate Webster’s investigation had led him to Los Perros, where he’d been heading when he reported to ranger headquarters in Austin. That had been in July. He hadn’t been heard from since.

About a month before the ranger made his last report, the two troopers from the all-black 10th Cavalry—the “buffalo soldiers,” as they’d been named by the Indians, who saw in the blacks’ hair a resemblance to buffalo manes—had deserted from Fort Lancaster.

Lancaster was an outpost of Fort Stockton; it was one of a string of such small posts dotted along the El Paso-San Antonio road. The men had left a trail that the Cimarron Scout summoned from Fort Stockton had no trouble following. He followed it to Los Perros. Captain John Hill, the Charley Troop commander, had gone with the scout. The captain had sent the Cimarron back to report and had himself followed the deserters’ trail across the Rio Grande. Like Webster, like the deserting troopers, Hill had vanished on the other side of the river after leaving Los Perros.

“Dogtown” Longarm muttered to himself, drawing on four-year-old memories of the last case that had taken him to Texas. “Los Perros. Mouth of the Pecos. Wild country. Big enough and rough enough to swallow up four hundred men, let alone four, without much trace left. Hope I ain’t forgotten what little bit of the local lingo I learned.”

Then, because it was his philosophy that a man Shouldn’t cross rivers before he tested them to see how deep and cold they ran, Longarm ratcheted back the rubbed plush daycoach seat, and went to sleep with the smell of old and acrid coal dust in his nostrils. A little stored-up shuteye might come in handy after he hit the trail on horseback from San Antonio to the Rio Grande.

At the I-GN depot in San Antonio, Longarm swung Off the daycoach and walked up to the baggage car to claim his gear. He’d left everything except his rifle to the baggage handlers, but it would have been tempting fate to leave a finely tuned.44-40 Winchester unwatched in a baggage car or on a depot platform between trains. The rifle had ridden beside him all the waY from Denver, leaning between the coach seat and the wall.

AS always, he was traveling light. He swung the bedroll that contained his spare clothing as well as a blanket and groundcloth over one shoulder, draped his saddlebags over the other, and picked up his well-worn McClellan saddle in his left hand. Then he set out to find a hack to carry him from the station to the quartermaster depot.

“To the quartermaster depot?” the hackman echoed when Longarm asked how much the fare would be. “That’s a long way, mister. Cost you 1-50 to go way out there. It’s plumb on the other side of town and out in the country.”

“We got to go by Market Plaza to get there, don’t we?” Longarm asked. When the hackman nodded, he went on, “I’ll pay the fare, even if it does seem a mite high, provided you’ll stop there long enough for me to eat a bowl of chili. I got to get rid of the taste of them stale butcher-boy sandwiches I been eating the last few days.”

“Hop in,” the hackman said. “It’s my dinnertime, too. Won’t charge you extra for stopping.”

Counting time taken for eating, the ride down Commerce Street and then north on Broadway to the army installation took just over an hour. The place was buzzing with activity. After more than five years of debating, the high brass in Washington had finally decided to turn the quartermaster depot into a large permanent incampment, and everywhere Longarm looked there were men at work. Masons were erecting thick walls of quarry stone to serve as offices, others were busy with red brick putting up quarters for the officers. A few carpenters were building barracks for the enlisted men on a flat area beyond the stables, where the hackman had pulled up at Longarm’s direction.

Not until he’d been watching the scene for several minutes did Longarm realize that there was something odd. There was only a handful of soldiers among the men working around the quadrangle the buildings would enclose when all of them were completed. The hackie lifted Longarm’s saddle and saddlebags out Of the front of his carriage. Longarm got out and paid the man. He stood with his gear on the ground around his feet until the hack drove off. Then he slung his saddlebags and bedroll over his shoulders, picked up the saddle, and started for the nearest uniforms he saw, a clump of soldiers gathered around a smithy’s forge a few yards away from the stable buildings.

Longarm singled out the highest-ranking of the group, a tall, lantern-jawed sergeant. “I’m looking for the remount duty noncom,” he told the man.

“You found him, mister. Name’s Flanders.”

“My name’s Long, Custis Long. Deputy U.S. Marshal outta the Denver office. I need to requisition a good saddle horse for a case I’m on.”

“Well, now. You wanta show me your badge or something, so I’ll know you’re who you say you are?”

Wordlessly, Longarm took his wallet from the pocket of his frock coat and flipped it open to let the sergeant see the silver badge pinned between its folds. The sergeant studied it for a moment, then nodded. He measured Longarm with his eyes.

“How far you gonna be travelling?”

“To the border.”

“You’re a sizeable man, Mr. Long. You plan to pack any more gear than what you’ve got here?”

“Nope. This is all I need.”

“Follow along, then. I guess we can fix you UP.”

Longarm followed the sergeant around the stable to a small corral where a dozen or so horses were milling. The rat-a-tat of carpenters’ hammers nearby was obviously making a few of the animals nervous; they were walking around the corral’s inner perimeter. The others stood in a fairly compact group near the center of the enclosure. Most of them were roans and chestnuts, but there was one dappled gray a hand taller than the rest who stood out like a peacock among sparrows.

“Don’t try to palm off any of them walking ones on me,” Longarm warned the sergeant. “Last thing I need’s a nervous nag.”

“Maybe you’d rather do your own picking, Mr. Long.?” the sergeant suggested.

“Maybe I better, if it’s all the same to you.”

Longarm was still carrying his Winchester. He tilted the muzzle skyward, levered a shell into the chamber and fired in the air before the sergeant knew what he intended to do. Two of the horses at the corral’s center reared, three others bolted for the fence. Most of those that had been fence-walking either reared or bucked. The gray was among the handful that had not reacted to the shot. Longarm studied the dapple through slatted eyes. A light horse made a man stand out more than a roan or chestnut would, but he told himself that could be both good and bad. He pointed to the animal.

“I’ll take the gray, if he stands up to a closer look. Bring him over and let me check him out,” he told the sergeant.

“WelL now, I’m sorry, Mr. Long. That’s the only one I can’t let you have.”

“Why not? Is he officer’s property?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Make up your mind, Flanders. Either he is or he ain’t.”

“He ain’t exactly officer’s property, Mr. Long. Thing is, Miz Stanley, that’s Lieutenant Stanley’s lady, she’s took a liking to Tordo, there. Rides him just about every afternoon. She’d be mighty riled if I was to…”

“This lieutenant don’t own the horse?”

“No, sir. Except, we was going to ship Tordo up to Leavenworth for their bandsmen, seeing we got no band here, and the lieutenant stopped us because his lady’d took a shine to the nag.”

“I suppose Miz Stanley’d be just as well off if she got her exercise on another horse, wouldn’t she?”

“No, sir. Begging your pardon, Mr. Long, she’d want Tordo.”

“Happens I want him, too. He’s the best-looking of that bunch out there. Bring him here and let me check him over. You can give the lieutenant’s lady my regrets next time she wants to ride.”

Longarm’s tone carried an authority that the sergeant was quick to recognize. He opened his mouth once, as though to argue further, but the deputy’s steel-blue eyes were narrowed now, and the soldier knew he was looking at a man whose mind was made up. Reluctantly, the sergeant walked over to the gray and put a hand on its army-clipped mane. He walked back to where Longarm stood waiting. The horse, obedient to the light pressure of the man’s hand on its neck, walked, step for step, with the sergeant.

“Seems to be real biddable,” Longarm commented.

“Tordo’s a good horse, Mr. Long. Can’t say I blame you for picking him out.”

Longarm checked the gelding with an expert’s quick, seemingly casual glances. Teeth, eyes, spine, cannons, hooves were all sound. His inspection lasted barely three minutes but when it was completed Longarm was satisfied with the choice he’d made.

“He’ll do, sergeant. Make out the form for me to sign while I’m saddling him. Or is this the kind of post where I got to find a commissioned man for that?”

“No, sir. Most of the officers are out on a field exercise, anyhow. I’ve got the papers over yonder in the stable. I’ll have ‘em ready by the time you’re ready to ride. If you don’t want to bother saddling him, I’ll call a trooper to do it for you.”

“I’d as soon do it myself, Flanders. You take care of the requisition form.”

Longarm saddled the dapple with the same economy of motion that marked all his actions. He’d finished cinching the girth and had sheathed his Winchester in the scabbard that angled back from the right-hand saddle fender and was knotting the last rawhide string around his bedroll when a woman’s voice spoke behind him.

“I don’t know who you are, but that’s my horse you’re saddling.”

Without turning around, Longarm replied, “No, ma’am. It’s the U.S. Government’s horse.”

“Don’t be insolent! Take that saddle off at once and find yourself another mount! I’m ready for my afternoon canter.”

Longarm turned around. He doffed his Stetson as he spoke. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but I ain’t about to do that. I need this one in my work.”

“Just who are you? And what kind of work do you do?”

“I’m Custis Long, ma’am. Deputy U.S. Marshal from Denver. And I’m on a case, which is all I need to say, I guess.” Longarm realized he was speaking arbitrarily, which wasn’t his usual way with a woman, but this one was being just too damned high-handed.

His abrupt manner surprised and puzzled her; that was clear from the expression on her face. Longarm took the moment of silence to inspect her. He wondered if she kept one full black eyebrow higher than the other when she wasn’t angry. But she wasn’t what you’d call pretty, he decided; her features were just a mite too irregular. Her nose arched abruptly from the full brows down to wide nostrils now flared with displeasure. Her lips were compressed, but that didn’t hide the fact that they were on the full side. Her chin was thrust out aggressively. Her eyes were dark, and her hair was dark, too. It was caught up in ringlets that dropped down the back of her neck to her shoulders.

She was wearing a cavalry trooper’s regulation campaign hat, although it didn’t have the regulation four dents in its crown. A soft, plain white blouse was pulled tightly over upthrust breasts. Her feet, in gloss-polished riding boots were spread apart to show that she was wearing a split riding skirt that dropped nearly to her ankles. Her hands were planted on her hips, and from one wrist a riding crop dangled by its looped thong.

Longarm’s unconcealed inspection didn’t cause her to drop her eyes or seem to embarrass her. When she found her voice, she said, “Mr. Long, there are ten or fifteen other horses over there in the corral. One of them will be just as satisfactory as Tordo for your use.”

“I’m sorry if it makes you mad, ma’am, but the plain fact of it is, where I’m heading for, my life might depend on me having the best horse I can throw my saddle on.”

As though he hadn’t spoken, she went on, “I’ll find Sergeant Flanders and tell him to get you another horse. Meanwhile, you will take that saddle off Tordo at once!”

“I ain’t about to do that, ma’am. Let’s see, you’d be Lieutenant Stanley’s wife, I guess?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Not one bit, Miz Stanley. Except it ain’t going to do you no good to call the sergeant. He told me you’d be mad, when I’d made up my mind which horse I wanted. It didn’t matter to me then, and it don’t matter none to me now.”

She stamped a booted foot. “Long, if you don’t take that saddle off Tordo right this minute, I’ll…”

“You’ll do what?” Longarm had held his temper, but he was getting angry now. “I need this gray for my business. You just want him for funnin’. It’s a government horse, and I figure my claim to it’s just a lot better’n yours is. Now, I can’t waste no more time arguin’ with you. I got my job to tend to.”

As Longarm turned away to mount the gray, she moved cat-quick, raising the riding crop to slash at him. As fast as she acted, Longarm reacted faster. He caught her arm as it came down and held it while he took the crop off her wrist and tossed it on the ground. She brought up her free arm to slap his face, but Longarm grasped it before the blow landed. For a moment, they stood there with arms locked, anger flowing between them like an electric current where flesh touched flesh. Then she relaxed, and Longarm released her.

They were glaring, eye to eye, when Sergeant Flanders came hurrying up. His arrival broke the tension. He said, “Now, let’s don’t you and Marshal Long go having words, Miz Stanley. I hope you ain’t blaming me. I told him …”

“It’s all right, sergeant,” she broke in. “Mr. Long’s explained that you tried to tell him I laid claim to Tordo.”

“I’ve convinced the lady my claim’s better’n hers, sergeant,” Longarm said. “Now if you’ll give me that form you got, I’ll sign it and be on my way.” He took the requisition Flanders had in hand, rested it on the saddle and scrawled his name on the proper line. Handing the form back to the sergeant, he said, “Now, if you’ll show me where the commissary’s at, I’ll swing by there and pick up some rations and be on my way.”

Flanders pointed to a sprawling warehouse-type building a short distance away. Longarm nodded and swung into the saddle. Touching his hatbrim to the woman, he rode off, leaving them looking at his back as he made his way to the commissary. He didn’t turn to look back at them.

CHAPTER 2

Following the directions he’d gotten at the commissary while waiting for the rations he’d drawn to be assembled, Longarm rode due west from the quartermaster depot. The houses of San Antonio lay to his left; the city was just beginning to push northward. The line of closely settled streets stopped nearly two miles south of the army depot, although there were a few scattered dwellings, most of them marking small farms, between the bulk of the town and the military installation.

Longarm was taking his time, getting acquainted with the habits of the gray horse. Tordo had been well trained. The animal responded to the pressure of a knee and the touch of a boot-toe with as much readiness as it did to the rein. For the most part, after he’d satisfied himself that the dapple was the kind of mount he could trust, Longarm let the horse pick its own way across the grassy, tree-dotted plain that sloped gently to the banks of the San Antonio River, half a mile ahead of him, now.

He’d reached the riverbank and was looking for signs of a ford when thudding hoofbeats caught his attention and he turned to look behind him. Mrs. Stanley, mounted on a roan that must have been her second choice of the horses in the corral, was overtaking him fast. Subconsciously, Longarm noted that she sat on the horse well, holding to the saddle easily as the roan loped toward him. He reined in and waited. She drew alongside and brought her mount to a stop.

“if you’re looking for a ford, the best one’s only about two hundred yards upstream,” she said. “If you don’t mind company, I’ll ride with you a little way.”

“If you’re scheming to talk me into swapping horses, you’ll just be wasting your time,” Longarm warned her. “Otherwise, I’ll be right pleased to have you ride alongside me, Miz Stanley.”

“I promise that I won’t try to persuade you.”

She seemed to have gotten over her fit of anger; her voice was light and pleasant. “I really rode after you to apologize for the way I acted back at the depot. I don’t usually behave so thoughtlessly.”

“Wasn’t no need to come apologizing, ma’am. I don’t hold grudges over things that don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

“Just the same, it was childish of me. I understand why you’d need the best horse you can find, in your job. It must be a dangerous one.”

“I reckon it is, sometimes.” Longarm wasn’t given to dwelling on the dangers of his work. In his book, a job was a job, and you did it according to your best lights.

“Here’s the ford,” she said, pointing to the spot where the river’s green water took on a lighter hue as the stream spread out to run wide and shallow over a pebble-covered underwater limestone shelf. Turning their horses, they splashed across through water only inches deep.

“Guess you must ride this way pretty often,” he suggested after they’d covered a few hundred feet on the west bank of the river.

“Almost every day. Riding’s about the only relaxation I have in this dull little town. Especially now, when my husband’s away on a training exercise.”

“Funny. I never figured San Antone was so dull.”

“I don’t suppose it would be, for a man. You’ve got the gambling places and the dance halls and saloons. But all I’ve got is the company of other army wives, and we get bored with one another after a few gossipy afternoon teas. At home, now, it’s a different thing.”

“Where’s home to you, Miz Stanley?”

“New York. It’s never dull there. There are the Broadway shows, musicals or dramas, tea dances at most of the big hotels.”

“I can see there’d be a difference. Can’t rightly say much about New York, I never get back there, myself.”

“You should, some time. It’s worth the trip.” She pointed to a thickly-wooded area that lay just ahead of them, where trees in closely spaced clumps spread across a wide patch of grassland that ended on their right at the foot of a high, white bluff. “Of course, you won’t find that in New York. The nearest thing to open country there is Central Park. Though it’s very much like that stretch ahead of us. Perhaps that’s why I feel at home when I see it.”

“I recall this place from when I was here a few years bac! They call it San Pedro Springs, don’t they?”

“Yes. It’s one of my favorite spots. On Sundays and holidays it’s overrun with families having picnics, but on days like today, in the middle of the week, it’s as deserted as the Forest of Arden.”

“Can’t say I been there, either. Matter of fact, I never even got to prowl around that stretch of woods up ahead except once when I was in San Antone before.”

Mrs. Stanley seemed compelled to talk. “Sometimes I bring my lunch out here and stay most of the day. I’ve found arrowheads and pieces of old Mexican army equipment from the Texas-Mexican war of fifty years ago.”

“You interested in history, then, Miz Stanley?”

“Not especially. But it gives me something besides gon gossip to think about.”

They were approaching an especially large growth of hachberry and pinoak trees bordered by low-branched chinaberry trees that formed a wide belt around the taller growth. Longarm kneed the dapple to turn it and skirt the edge of the motte, but the lieutenant’s wife was reining in.

“There’s a beautiful spring in the middle of this grove,” she said. “I just can’t pass by it without stopping for a sip of water.”

Longarm thought the excuse was flimsy, almost as flimsy as her story of having ridden after him to apologize. His work took him to army posts quite regularly, and he’d met bored, restless army wives before now. Almost from the time they’d crossed the river he’d been getting the groin-twitches that he felt whenever he was with an attractive woman who was obviously making herself available to him. He pulled rein and swung out of his saddle before she was quite ready to dismount.

“I’m pretty thirsty myself. We’ll go get some of that spring water together.”

He moved to help her from her horse. She was riding sidesaddle, with her right leg hooked over the horn, and had to swing The leg high over the pommel to free it. Longarm caught her booted foot in one hand and steadied her to the ground, his free arm pressing up the back of her thighs, over the soft bulge of her buttocks to her waist. She was beginning to tremble even before both her feet were on the ground. The trembling increased as he pulled her to him and sought her lips. They locked together, tongues entwined. Longarm felt himself growing erect as she rubbed her hips across his crotch.

She felt the swelling beneath his jeans, pulled away, and panted in a half-whisper, “Hurry! Let’s go into the grove! I want you right now, this minute!”

The End

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