Longarm and the Desert Damsel

LONGARM AND THE DESERT DAMSEL

By Tabor Evans

Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 by Jove Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-515-11807-9

Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

The Putnam Berkley World Wide Web site address is HTTP://WWW.BERKLEY.COM

JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Printing history Jove edition / February 1996

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him … the Gunsmith.

LONGARM by Tabor Evans The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

SLOCUM by Jake Logan Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

McMASTERS by Lee Morgan The blazing new series from the creators of Longarm. When McMasters shoots, he shoots to kill. To his enemies, he is the most dangerous man they have ever known.

Chapter 1

It had taken him two days to walk from where he’d lost his horse to the stage relay station somewhere between Gila Bend and Buckeye in the western part of the Arizona Territory. It was June and it was hot and it was the desert. He had made the walk on half a bottle of whiskey and a two-quart canteen of water. Besides that, and two cans of stewed tomatoes, he’d had nothing else to sustain him. He’d walked mostly at night, when it was cool enough to be called cold, and laid up as best he could in the featureless country during the day. There wasn’t a tree or a bush or even a good rise in the ground to shelter him from the relentless sun. So there had been nothing for it except to sling his saddle over one shoulder and his saddlebags over the other and keep footing along, putting one boot in front of the other.

It hadn’t been the sun so much, or his hunger and thirst. Mainly it had been his feet. He’d never willingly walked over a hundred yards in his life, and to walk as far as he was being forced to in boots had been torture. By the second day he’d developed blisters. He’d tried to toughen and cure his feet by washing them in whiskey but it hadn’t done a lot of good except to make him laugh that he’d ever have used his precious, special brand of Maryland whiskey to wash his feet in. But there’d been no choice. Water was too precious. He hadn’t run upon many such occasions in his life when water took precedence over good whiskey, but he’d finally found one when there was no debate.

The land was rough: sandy and rocky with little patches of bunch-grass. Its only redeeming feature was that it was flat. The ground was flat and endless and the air was crystal clear and dry. He reckoned a man could see a hundred miles in any direction. In fact, he had spotted the stage relay station a full six hours before he was able to walk to it. The last of those six hours it had seemed like the little cluster of buildings and corrals was receding rather than getting closer. By the time he had staggered into the main building he was limping badly on sore and blistered feet.

His name was Custis Long and he was a deputy U.S. marshal operating out of the southwest district in Denver, Colorado. He had been a deputy marshal for longer than he cared to remember, but it was difficult to tell how old he was. His weathered and tanned face said forty years or better, but the lithe movements of his muscled, well-proportioned body said closer to thirty. He was a little over six feet tall, and even after a week in the Arizona desert still weighed about 190 pounds, because he didn’t carry around much fat to lose. He was called Longarm by his friends in a good-natured way, and the same by the men he hunted and brought to law for a different reason. His last name was Long, but he was the long arm of the law because he would cross the continent to catch you if you were his quarry. Some said he would cross the ocean, but that theory had never been put to the test. But the word among the bandit community about Custis Long was that it wasn’t a question of would he get you once he set in on your trail. The only question was how long before you found him in your pocket with your gun in his hand and his gun aimed right at you.

But as he entered the main building of the little stage station his badge was in his pocket, and it would stay there unless it was needed. He didn’t advertise himself as a peace officer unless he was on a job and it was necessary. He’d found that people acted differently around you when they found you were a law officer, especially a federal officer. So unless it came up for a good reason, none of the people at the stage stop would know what he did for a living.

Right at the moment he walked into the blessed shade of the way station he considered himself off duty. He had just spent a week, in cooperation with the Arizona Rangers, chasing six convicts who had escaped from the territorial prison at Yuma. They had killed and captured five of them, and Longarm had been in lone pursuit of the last one when his horse had come a cropper. If nothing else was to be gotten out of the incident, he’d learned, in a way that would never leave him, why the slender bone in the front foreleg of a horse was called the cannon bone. He had been running his horse over the flat prairie, trying to come within rifle shot of the fleeing convict, when he’d heard a sound like a gunshot. For a second, as his horse had started going down by its head and he’d made plans to try to jump clear, he’d thought his animal had been shot. But then, after he’d rolled across the sandy prairie and gotten up and dusted himself off, he’d seen his mount trying to get up. It was then he’d seen the sickening sight of the poor animal’s right foreleg and the grotesque way it was bent where there was no joint. He had hastened to the animal, soothing him with one hand as he’d pulled his revolver with the other. One shot and it had been over. The animal had been just a cavalry mount he’d requisitioned at the Yuma territorial prison from the army post stationed there. Still, he hated to see any animal hurt like that. But that was the chance you took when you ran a horse hard over country that you didn’t know. The western desert of Arizona was smooth to the casual eye, but it was pitted with many a hazard that could cause a horse, running at top speed, to throw himself off just enough to cause injury. Longarm had long marveled that, as big and strong as horses were, they didn’t hurt themselves more considering the delicacy of their joints and some of their bones.

But after that there’d been nothing to do except to go looking for the nearest shelter. He’d had a map of the country that he’d gotten from the army, and as near as he could tell, his best hope had been to hike it for the stage station that looked on the map to be about twenty miles north of Gila Bend. He felt fortunate it was there since there was so little else in the country. Which, of course, was one of the reasons for locating the territorial prison in Yuma. As someone had once observed, Yuma was closer to Hell than to the United States. Nobody was expected to try to escape from Yuma for the simple reason that, without the resources, a man wouldn’t last two days in such country. Yuma was in the extreme southwest corner of Arizona, very near an intersection with California and Mexico. You were in bad country at the prison, but it was a garden spot next to what you’d run into if you tried to flee in any direction. For that reason very few men ever successfully escaped. Oh, sometimes they got away from the prison itself, but the prison of heat and the wide-open empty spaces eventually executed them in a far more painful way than was ever used at the prison.

The breakout had been assisted. Depending on what you believed, and who you believed, either three or four men had been waiting for the six convicts when they had freed themselves from the prison. The breakout party had brought tools to free the prisoners of their leg irons, and had obviously been well provisioned. The Arizona Rangers had been called in to track the fugitives, and they in turn had called for Longarm’s assistance since he had caught and imprisoned the escapees’ ringleader, Carl Lowe. Longarm had taken a train down through Flagstaff, and then to Blythe, California, and then down to Yuma. By the time they’d set off in pursuit the prisoners and their accomplices had had a forty-eight-hour lead. Then there was further confusion when the Rangers had insisted that the captives would flee straight south to Mexico. Longarm had pointed out the clear sign that indicated the escapees were fleeing east, but the Rangers had been unconvinced. They’d claimed it was false sign to throw them off and further delay the pursuit. Longarm had patiently explained that the country to the immediate south was rough and uninhabited, with no water and very little in the way of fodder for the fugitives’ animals. He’d taken the position that the outlaws were going to head east for some fifty or sixty miles, and then turn south into an area of Mexico that was peopled, dotted with villages, and lush with water and grass. The Rangers had resented him telling them how to operate in their territory, and Longarm had just shrugged and advised them to go their way and he’d go his. Even though he was based in Denver, much of his business was done in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, so he knew that country as well as he did his own backyard. When someone had once asked him why he was always in such places he’d said, “Because that’s where the outlaws are. Ain’t no use hunting bandits in church, at least not the kind that carry guns.”

In the end the Rangers had agreed to follow his lead, which was just as well for him since they had the packhorses and the supplies. Four days later they’d run the crowd to ground in the Aquilla Mountains, a small range in the middle of the desert floor that the convicts and their helpers had chosen as a place to rest. In the running fight most of them had been accounted for except for three who had escaped toward the east. Longarm had followed along with the Rangers until it became clear to him that one of the men they were chasing had broken off from the others and was heading due north. There were towns in that direction and a small railroad, and Longarm had insisted the lone escapee was the most important. The Rangers had disagreed, and Longarm had taken a fresh horse, gotten him watered and fed, and then taken off in hot pursuit of the solo escapee. He had gotten close enough to see that it was a man, riding a horse and apparently pulling a pack animal. That had been when he had made the mad dash. It had come up a half a mile short. After he’d put his animal out of its misery, he’d stood for a long time staring after the small figure that was barely discernible through the shimmering heat waves. He’d felt sure it was Carl Lowe.

But there had been not a damn thing he could do about it. His first duty was to try and save government property, namely himself. He knew the Rangers wouldn’t be coming to look for him, so he’d gotten out the map and begun putting sand between himself and his dead horse.

At first he thought the station was just manned by one old codger. He’d appeared almost as soon as Longarm had slumped down on a bench in the outer room. The man was thin and gaunt and had lost most of his hair, and would have lost his pants if they hadn’t been held up by a frayed pair of red suspenders. But what he lacked in youth and flesh he more than made up in energy and talk. The instant he came into the room he said, “Say, been a-watchin’ you a-comin’ this way. Could tell right off you wasn’t much of a walkin’ man.” He gestured at Longarm’s saddle, which the marshal had dropped at his feet. “Now that thang there, case you don’t know what is, that there is a outfit you put on a horse. A man ain’t supposed to carry it like I seen you a-doin’. That there is a saddle and fits a horse’s back.” Then he cackled like he’d never had so much fun in his life.

Longarm slowly raised his head. He said, “Mister, would you have so much as a drink of water? Don’t even have to be cool. Just has to be wet. I’d like to turn this sand in my throat into mud.”

The quiet words seemed to have an instant effect on the man. His mouth dropped open and he said, “Why, bless Pat, whatever in this world be I a-thinkin’ about.” He gave his sagging trousers a quick hitch and spun on his heels. “Course you’d be wantin’ water, my stars and garters! Damn fool old man! Be right back with some fresh well water.”

Longarm just sat there, slumped on the bench, not feeling much of anything except the pleasant absence of the sun. He couldn’t be sure because such things were hard to measure, but he might be more tired than he’d ever been in his life. Of course there had been the time some years back when he’d caught a gang of low-down scoundrels who’d robbed a whorehouse and the madam, in gratitude, had given him free run of the place for as long as he could last. He’d been pretty tired then, but he’d been younger and the young tended to bounce back faster. Right now he wasn’t sure he planned to ever walk another step the rest of his life.

Then the old man was back with a wooden bucket of water and a dipper. He set it on the bench by Longarm and said, “Thar you be. Now you take some of that and then we’ll see to gettin’ you some other stuff might help. Don’t take that water down too fast. You do and it’ll cause yore stummick to dispute you.”

Longarm reached for the handle of the dipper. He said, “This ain’t the first time I been thirsty. Just the first time I’d rather have water than a woman. Or whiskey.”

The old man, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his scrawny neck, said, “My stars and garters, you do be in bad shape, mister. Well, you just nurse down a little of that well water and then we’ll take a measure of the sitshiation.”

The water tasted of alkali and was nowhere near cool, but to Longarm it was worth about a dollar a drop. He drank a careful dipper slowly, taking a small swallow at a time but never taking the dipper from his mouth until he’d drained it. After that he put the dipper back in the pail, waited a moment, and then brought it, brimming full, back to his lips.

The old man looked alarmed. He said in his high, reedy voice, “Look out! Look out! You’ll founder yoreself for shore!” But Longarm only took a short drink, and then rested the dipper on his thigh while he looked around the room he was in. The building was made of native rock and heavy timbers that appeared to Longarm to be railroad cross-ties. The room he was in was about twenty feet by twenty feet with a wooden floor and heavy timber rafters. The roof was of tin and didn’t do much to cool the sun. He thought that if somebody had had the sense to put a real ceiling in the place, it might drop the temperature at least ten degrees. But it was so much cooler than outside he was not about to complain.

There were several benches like the one he was sitting on scattered about, and a long wooden table with backless benches. He figured that was the dining table. There was also a big fireplace at one end, and a plank set across two barrels with some bottles of whiskey behind it. That, Longarm guessed, was the bar, though what a bar was doing in such a place was beyond his ability to comprehend, at least for the moment.

He could see that there was another room in the back, and then an entrance to a breezeway that ran to another building that was smaller than the one he was in. He reckoned the building at the end of the short breezeway was the cook-shack or kitchen. It was a common practice in such country to set the kitchen off from the rest of the house. The poor cook might roast, but there was no sense in the rest of the house having to suffer from the extra heat. The other room, he guessed, must be the private quarters of the stationkeeper, who he assumed was the old man. He guessed he was in a kind of passenger room, though what such an extravagance was doing in a relay station was more than he could imagine. On any stage line in the Southwest and West relay stations were set up approximately every twenty miles, depending on the terrain. That was the distance a team could be expected to make good speed. A relay station, therefore, existed solely for the purpose of hooking on a fresh team and giving rest and sustenance to the animals that had just come off their run. But sometimes such places were designated as holdover stops for the passengers so they could have a meal and a rest from the arduous travel. Those places were usually where the change of driver and shotgun guard occurred. Without moving his head much Longarm guessed that this relay station was one of those places.

The water was starting to revive him, but it was also letting him know just how nearly done in he’d come close to being. Longarm took another drink and then said in a croaky voice, “I got to get these boots off. Feet are in a hell of a shape.”

The old man went to bend over, but Longarm stopped him. “No, they can’t be pulled off, not just like that.” He put the dipper down, leaned over, and pulled up his jeans until the tops of his boots were exposed. “Pour some water in there, if you will,” he said.

The old man picked up the bucket, but before he poured he said, “Blisters?”

Longarm nodded. “On blisters.”

“Hot damn!” the old man said. “You be in luck, mister. My old woman is out back bilin’ clothes right now in lye soap. She gets finished, I’ll fetch in some of that lye water. Best thang in the world for galled feet!”

Longarm said tiredly, “Let’s get the boots off before we go to soaking my feet.”

He watched while the old man poured a generous amount of water down the top of each boot. Even though it was nearly lukewarm, the water brought instant relief to his aching, burning feet. Fortunately he’d been wearing an old pair of boots that had nearly put in their time and were worn and loose. But still, his feet were so swollen he knew it was going to be a chore to get the boots off. But the water would make the leather slicker and cause it to expand just a little. The old man said, “You ready to give ‘er a try?”

Longarm looked at the wooden floor. It was scarred and stained, but it was still inside the house. He said, “I reckon we better go outside. I dump a load of water on your wife’s floor, she’s liable to run me back out in that desert.”

But the old man said, “Pshaw! She don’t kere a fig ‘bout that. This ol’ floor has seen worse than a little water on it.” He bent down and took hold of Longarm’s right boot. “Let ‘er rip.”

Longarm leaned back and slowly wiggled and pulled. Slowly his stockinged foot emerged. It had come out much easier than he’d thought, and not so much water had spilled on the floor.

“Now the other’n. I’ll take ‘er right easy an’ you sing out iffen I’m goin’ too quick.”

In another moment he was sitting in his stocking feet, his head down almost between his knees. The left foot appeared more swollen. At least it had wanted out of the boot less than the right. Longarm took a long slow breath while the old man took his boots outside to empty the rest of the water out of them. He was about to call out for the stationkeeper not to leave his boots in the sun to dry when the old man appeared with them and put them carefully against the wall, saying, “I’ll grease the inside of these with some tallow I got. Keep ‘em from stiffening up. You better get them stockings off and let’s see what we got to work with.”

Slowly, painfully, Longarm peeled off his thick, woolen socks and then looked down at his feet. They were dead white except for some angry blotches along the sides and the back. There were red spots on a few of his toes and the balls of each foot, but they looked considerably better than he’d expected.

The old man said, “Why, pshaw, them ain’t so bad. I seen worse on horses had to be shot.”

Longarm said, mumbling, “I washed ‘em in whiskey.”

The old man’s head shot up. Longarm could see the signs of a drinker in his eyes and his face. “You warshed ‘em in what?”

“Whiskey. I started out I had two quarts of water and a half a quart of whiskey.” With an effort he unslung the strap of the canteen from around his neck. It clanked to the floor with an empty sound. “I got here with no water, but a little bonded Maryland corn whiskey. I think the alcohol saved my feet.”

The old man looked at him, marveling. He said, “I heard me many a trick in my time, but that is the beatenist. Takes some kind of man to give the whiskey to his feet and the water to his belly. My stars and garters, you’ll be up and around in no time. How far you say you walked?”

Longarm shook his head. “Don’t know. Walked for two days. Never done that before. How far can a man walk in two days? Ten miles? Twenty?”

“More like thirty or forty if he stays at it right steady. Say you got lost?”

Longarm half smiled. “Something like that. Horse broke his leg.”

The old man stood up and frowned. “You ain’t tellin’ me you was out in yonder country with just the one mount?”

Longarm took off his hat and wiped his brow. He set his hat along the bench to let his head cool off if it would and said, “Well, I hadn’t planned it that way, but that’s the way it worked out. You the stationkeeper?”

“Yessir, yessir,” the old man said. He put out a bony hand. “Higgins be the name. Herman Higgins. Right glad to see you.”

Longarm shook hands. “Name is Custis Long, Mr. Higgins. I am right grateful for your help. I had me a map and this looked to be the closest help. I’m glad you were here.”

The old man’s face went blank “Wa’l, I’ll be straight with you, mister,” he said, “they was just about a fuzz away from skiddin’ the whole kit and caboodle twenty miles west, but I talked ‘em out of it right at the last minute. I said, reckon what would happen if some pilgrim come walkin’ in from the east an’ we was gone! Wouldn’t want that on yore conscious, would you? Well, sir, they seen my point and they took it an’ that’s why you found us where we be.”

Longarm tried to smile, but he couldn’t put much into it. He said, “Well, anyway, my feet thank you.”

The old man snapped his fingers as if he had just recollected something important. “The lye water!” He scooped up the bucket by the rope handle and took off toward the back. “Won’t be ary a minute!”

“Not too hot!” Longarm yelled after him. “And not too strong!”

He wasn’t all that sold on lye water. From what little he’d heard about people getting blisters on their feet, you were supposed to grease them down good with axle grease or some such. Lye water seemed a trifle harsh a treatment.

But even then, with his feet paining him and his body given out and used up and dried out, he was still rankled about Carl Lowe. The man now had a minimum of two days on him, but as soon as Longarm could lay his hands on a horse he intended to be right back after Lowe. He had a pretty good idea where Lowe was going, and if he could arrive in time, he thought he might catch up with the man.

Higgins came bustling back with his bucket. It was full of grayish water that smelled a little like sulphur and had steam rising from it. Longarm calculated that any liquid that had steam rising from it in the heat of an Arizona day was hotter than he cared to stick anything in, especially his sore feet. He said, “Water that down a little, Mr. Higgins, if you please. And cool it off.”

Higgins said happily, “Oh, it’ll be just fine in a minute. You just set right still while I fetch you a restorative.”

Longarm watched while the wiry little man sprang across the room, went behind his makeshift bar, and poured something out of a bottle into a glass. At first Longarm had thought Higgins was along in his sixties, but he had so much energy and verve that Longarm was rapidly revising his estimate downward. Higgins looked no bigger than a scrawny banty rooster, and his crop of three-or four-day-old whiskers was peppered with white, but he had the energy of a man not much more than forty or so. He came bounding back to Longarm holding out a water glass half full of an amber liquid. He said proudly, “That there is rum. And it is rum of the finest kind. That is Spanish rum made down in Mexico. I generally charge four bits a shot for that drink, but it is on the house seeing as how I am rescuing you.”

Longarm took the glass doubtfully. Given a choice of drinking the lye water or the rum, it might have been a tossup. He drank whiskey by choice, and would drink brandy or wine or beer, but he had never cared for rum. But he couldn’t hurt the old man’s feelings. And besides, it might make him feel better. He put the glass to his lips and drank off half the liquor, repressing a shudder. If Higgins thought what he had was good rum, then Longarm didn’t want to try any he was not so proud of. But he said, “Aaaaah. Boy, that hit the spot.” Higgins nudged the bucket close to Longarm’s feet. “‘Bout time we got on with the doctorin’.”

Longarm looked at the water and then at his tender-looking feet. He picked them up and held them poised over the bucket. Then slowly and tentatively, he gradually eased them down in the murky waters. At first he thought the water was too hot, but then he realized it was the lye water playing hell with the raw places on his feet. He let out a yowl and jerked his feet out of the bucket. Glaring at Higgins, he said, “Damn, Herman, that kind of smarts! How about weakening that down a little?”

Higgins looked doubtful, but he went over to the long, rough dining table and came back with a pitcher of water. With Longarm urging him on, he finally poured about a glassful of fresh water in the bucket. He said, “Ain’t gonna do you no good a’tall iffen it ain’t got some bite to it.”

Longarm gave him a look and growled that it had more bite than a bulldog as it was. Then he grudgingly put his feet back in the water. The dilution, as far as he was concerned, had not helped a bit. But he gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep his feet down in the bucket. Such was the agony that he even emptied the glass of rum without tasting it.

Higgins said, “See, what it does is toughens up the skin so it ain’t raw and sore anymore.”

Longarm said, “I believe if a man was to bathe in the stuff, it would toughen his hide so he’d come out bulletproof. If it didn’t kill him.”

Higgins said, “Let me get you another restorative.” And before Longarm could stop him he’d plucked the glass out of his hand and skipped over to the bar to fetch back some more of his “fine Spanish rum.”

Longarm said, “You ain’t got so much as a cigar around here, do you? Or a rope that is smokable?”

“Got a seegar!” Higgins said triumphantly. “Got two of ‘em, as a matter of fact. Might have a little age on them. We ain’t exactly set up for retail trade.”

Higgins brought the drink back and handed it, along with a musty-looking cigar, to Longarm. Then he found himself a ladder-backed cane-bottomed chair and drew it up in front of the marshal. He said, “Walked two days, did ya. I reckon you are glad to set a spell.”

Longarm found a match and got the cigar drawing, though it was hard work. He took a sip of the rum, to be polite, and said, “Mr. Higgins, I’ve got to get my hands on a horse. I got business up the road.”

Higgins shook his head. “I’m mighty sorry to tell you that you are out of luck in that department. And the southbound stage done come through this morning, and the northbound ain’t due for three days.”

Longarm drew hard at the cigar. It was at least tobacco. “It’s north I need to go, Mr. Higgins. Surely you’ve got some kind of horse around here. Hell, this is a relay station.”

Higgins nodded. He swept his arm toward the back of the room. “You walk right out there, mister, an’ you can pick you out any Spanish mule you want. Probably got thirty on the place. You want to travel up the road on one of them little onery cusses, you are more than welcome.”

Longarm grimaced. He was irritated at himself. He knew this stage line. Knew its route and knew its purpose. It ran from the gold mines down near the Mexican border beginning at Lukeville up through Gunsight, to Ajo, through Gila Bend, and finally into Buckeye, where it linked up with the railroad that ran east and west out of Phoenix. It was not really a passenger line, its main purpose being the hauling of gold bullion out of the mines located around the Organ Pipe Cactus Mountains. They didn’t even use the big, comfortable Butterfield coaches, preferring wagons that were about twice the size of a buckboard and were covered with a canvas top. They were pulled by a team of eight fine-boned Spanish mules that could go at a gallop for the twenty miles between relay stations, and then maybe go another twenty before they dropped dead. The teams were so hard to stop that, sometimes, the driver had to circle his team out in front of the station until the stationkeeper, or someone, could get hold of the leaders and bring them to a halt. No horses were ever used in the rough and dry country. They couldn’t take it the way the little mules could. Unfortunately, the little mules were too ornery to make riding stock.

Longarm said, “Damn!” He thought a minute. “Mr. Higgins, I’ve got important business to the north that just won’t wait three days. Ain’t you got some kind of wagon or buggy I could hitch a couple of those mules to?” He reached into his pocket and partially exposed his roll of bills. “If it is a matter of money …

Higgins looked sad. “Mr. Long, I’d mighty like to accommodate you and without a dollar bein’ spent. But the fact is these here mules an’ all the property, fer that matter, is company property an’ ain’t mine to do with as I sees fit. So money don’t come into it at all. I taken a likin’ to you right from the start. Man gone through what you’d done an’ still had him a sense of humor. So I’d he’p you if I could. But they ain’t a conveyance or a buggy or even a sled that will get you a mile from this place. Now, I don’t know if that thinkin’ is directed at the stationkeeper or not, but they won’t let me nor none of the rest keep a horse or anything else a body can use for travel. The stationkeeper arrives here on the stage, an’ when he is ready to quit the place he’s got to leave on the stage.” Higgins snorted. “Make a man think them folks didn’t trust us to stay on the job.”

Longarm suppressed a smile. “Well, it would seem that way,” he said. He slowly stood, his feet still in the lye water, and looked down at himself. “Lord, I’m a mess. I’d give a pretty penny to get washed off.”

Higgins said, “You got clean clothes?”

Longarm nodded toward his saddlebags. “Oh, yes. But I ain’t putting them on as filthy as I am.”

Higgins began bobbing his head. “You just never mind that. You soak yore feet a little time more, an’ I’ll go out back and run my ol’ woman in the house, and you can take this bucket out by the well and just douse yourself down. How’s that sound?”

Longarm said, “Sounds mighty good to me. What about the grub department? I ain’t had much in that line the last three or four days.”

Higgins’s head bobbed again. “You never mind that. We’ll get that tended to in time. Now, whyn’t you go ahead and set down and finish yore rum, an’ I’ll go out an’ tell the old woman to get set to move her matters into the house.” He gestured at Longarm’s clothes. “An’ she can give them a washing whilst she is about it.”

Longarm sat back down on the bench and watched as Higgins hurried out the back. He was the busiest person Longarm thought he’d ever seen.

When the stationkeeper was out of sight, Longarm thoughtfully poured the rest of his glass of rum down in the lye water. He figured it would do his feet a hell of a lot more good than it would his stomach.

But Higgins was also wrong about the mules and the other company property. They weren’t his to lend or give, but they were Longarm’s to requisition. The stage line was a public conveyance running over a public road with the government’s permission. Longarm, as a federal officer, could make use of anything he chose, from a mule to a coach and driver if it came down to it. But right then, he didn’t want Higgins to know he was a federal marshal. The old man was already falling all over himself with hospitality. Longarm couldn’t imagine what he’d be like if he caught sight of the badge. Just then Higgins came in from the back. “Mr. Long, we be gettin’ all set up for you out back. My ol’ woman is gatherin’ up her doin’s and the back will be yor’n. ‘Less you be over-modest, you ought to be able to get yoreself a good cleanin’ up. I reckon I can maybe even find you somethin’ to dry off with.”

Longarm said, “I doubt that will be necessary, Mr. Higgins. I reckon the hard part will be to get any water to stay on without drying up in that sun before a man can do any washing.”

He stepped carefully out of the bucket of lye water. He’d expected his feet to be very tender on the rough wood floor, but they felt surprisingly normal. He looked down. They were as white as ever, but a good deal of the redness had gone. He said, surprised, “Hell, Mr. Higgins, I think this lye water might have been just the ticket.” The old man nodded vigorously. “Do it ever’ time. That there stuff will cure ever’thang from a hernia to a broken heart. You get yore gear and I’ll fetch that bucket. You can use it to douse down with.”

Longarm gathered up his saddlebags and limped across the floor. But he was limping more in fear of pain than actual pain.

Higgins said, “Soon’s we get you stripped, I’ll give yore dirty duds to the ol’ woman an’ she’ll get ‘em slicked up nice an’ clean for you.”

It was coming on to late afternoon. Longarm and Higgins were sitting where they had previously. Longarm was wearing a pair of clean, heavy wool socks. He was not about to try his boots yet, and in fact, Higgins had discouraged the idea vigorously until Longarm’s feet had had two or three more treatments of the lye water. Longarm was feeling almost human. He was clean and wearing clean clothes and had managed to shave, though working up a lather with lye soap produced about the same results as if he had been using a rock. The only thing missing for his return to normal was food. He spoke to Higgins about it, making sure Higgins understood he could pay.

Higgins said, “Now, we do be a vittles station fer the passengers. They lays over here right at a half to three quarters of an hour, depending on what a rush the driver is in. They gets the company fare of pinto beans and grits and cornmeal and either canned tomatoes or canned peaches. We give ‘em coffee too. Course we ain’t got no beef. But ever’ damn fool comes through here expects a steak and will even demand it.” He shook his head and snorted. “A few months in the winter and we can nurse a side of beef along, but right now? Hell.” He pointed toward the front of the building. “Was I to hang a side of beef out there at sundown, it’d be froze nearly by dawn. Then, by mid-mornin’ it’d be plumb thawed. By noon you’d be walkin’ upwind of it, and by three in the afternoon a fly wouldn’t light on it.” He gave a disgusted sound. “An’ there is them as comes in here wantin’ beef! My stars and garters.”

Longarm said, “Some of them beans and grits and cornbread sound pretty good to me.”

Higgins threw up his head. “Why, nosir! Not on yore tintype! Why, I feel like I brung you back from the dead. Me and my ol’ woman keep ham and bacon fer ourselves, and she’s got her a run full of chickens out there. Fries one up on occasion or makes dumplin’s with it. My ol’ woman kin cook, I’m a-tellin’ you.”

Longarm had met Higgins’s “ol’ woman.” She had proved to be a pleasant-faced woman in her late thirties or early forties. What flesh Higgins was missing she had taken for herself. Not that she was fat, Longarm thought, just pleasantly plump. He wondered how she stayed so good-natured out in the middle of the desert.

Longarm said, “I wouldn’t want to put her to no trouble. Sylvia.” That was her first name, and she had insisted that Longarm call her that.

“Pshaw!” Higgins exclaimed. “She’d get her feelin’s hurt she would if you didn’t let her cook fer you. I’ll get her to whomp you up a big bait of eggs and biscuits, and would you druther ham or bacon?”

“Ham’s fine with me. And I would sure drink a cup of coffee. Still got a little of my whiskey left to sweeten it with.”

Higgins got up to go deliver Longarm’s order. He frowned. “Now you don’t be shy ‘bout drinkin’ my rum. Ain’t no use in swillin down them corn squeezin’s when they is good rum to drink.”

Longarm tried to look guileless. Privately he was about halfway convinced that it was the half-glass of rum he’d poured in the lye water that had done his feet the most good, but he didn’t want to take the slightest chance on hurting his host’s feelings. “Herman,” he said, “I am much obliged, and I know a good drink when I taste one. But I got to tell you, that little trip through the desert left me in a kind of weakened state and I ain’t up to that stout a drink just yet. I reckon I better stick to corn whiskey.”

Higgins snapped his fingers. “My stars and garters! I never thought! What in the world is the matter with me.” He shook his head and slapped himself on the forehead. “I’m gettin’ the poorest set of manners in the country. Sylvie will be on me I don’t watch out. And oh, can she be a wampus kitty! Whoooeee!”

When Higgins came back, Longarm was trying to smoke the second cigar the old man had given him. But when he’d bathed and shaved he’d managed to clean his teeth with some baking soda and salt, and his clean mouth only showed off the age of the cigar more. Nevertheless, he was giving it a valiant effort. He’d had a good swallow of his Maryland whiskey, and was feeling content except for the worrisome problem of Carl Lowe.

He said to Higgins, “Herman, I have just got to get up north. I need to make it to a railroad junction somewhere close to Phoenix. Are you and your wife the only ones here?”

“Well, they is the two Mexicans helps me with the stock. But they ain’t got nothin’. I tell you, Mr. Long, the company jes’ won’t let you have no way to get around on yore own. They done lost too many stationkeepers like that. Gets mighty lonesome and mean out here and some folks can’t take it and they light ‘em a shuck out of the place. Been plenty drivers come pulling in to a station with a team all lathered up and snorty and nobody to meet ‘em and no fresh team ready. Course I tell ‘em if they’d get married couples like me an’ the ol’ woman, they wouldn’t have that trouble.”

“Yeah,” Longarm said, discouraged. “I can see how that would be a problem for them.” He grimaced. “That next station north is twenty miles, right?”

“Yessir.”

He studied the far wall for a moment. “I wonder if I could ride one of those little mules twenty miles. I wonder who’d give out first, him or me.”

Higgins said, “I doubt if it could be managed. I got to tell you, Mr. Long, them mules ain’t the tamest critters you ever been around. And they damn shore ain’t saddle-broke, as them Mexicans has found out to their sorrow. You must have some all-fired powerful business waitin’ on you to have you frettin’ like this. Laws, it ain’t been much more’n five hours since you staggered in here near dead. Now you are afire to get on out under that sun again.”

Longarm sat thinking for a moment. Maybe he was worrying himself overmuch and maybe for nothing. For all he knew the man that had gotten away had not been Carl Lowe. Maybe Carl Lowe was either dead or back in prison, and some two-bit outlaw had disappeared over the horizon leaving Longarm staring after him. But Longarm couldn’t help worrying. He worried because Carl Lowe was a man to worry about. Not that he was a violent man or a gunhand or even a murderer. His history showed that he had never raised a hand against his fellow man in anger in all his life. Nevertheless, he was as dangerous a man to the economic well-being of the Southwest territories as there was around.

For most of his life Carl Lowe had been a quiet, law-abiding citizen who had worked for the Wells Fargo Company in California in its original business of transporting gold bullion from mine sites to government mints. Carl Lowe was a man of well-above-average intelligence and was of a mechanical bent. He had devised some of the first safes and strongboxes that Wells Fargo had used. In time he had become their chief designer of methods for getting gold and silver safely from one place to another. And along the way he had become something of an expert locksmith.

Then he had suddenly disappeared and, not long afterward, there had come reports from survivors of train robberies that there was a man who could take a few tools and open a safe it would have taken twenty sticks of dynamite to blow open. And do it pretty quick in the process. It wasn’t just Wells Fargo safes either. The brand or manufacturer didn’t seem to matter. This quiet little man who went to work while the rest of the gang stood around with drawn revolvers could open anything. That was a valuable man to have around. Blowing up safes was a risky business. Most robbers didn’t know much about dynamite, and they generally ended up blowing themselves and the safe and whatever money or gold there was all across the landscape.

It had taken two years of hard work, but Longarm had finally run Carl Lowe to ground. What had made him so hard to catch was that he would not attach himself to any one gang. He was a freelance and rented out his services to whoever could afford him. Then, once the job was finished, he would simply take his proceeds and disappear. After a long, frustrating search Longarm had finally run him to ground by employing the services of a sentenced bank robber who would get a reduced term in prison—if he could put Longarm in touch with the elusive Mister Lowe. It had worked. Representing himself as a man who intended to rob a train, Longarm had finally met Carl Lowe. In the course of their conversation Lowe, to make clear his value, had recited the details of his last few jobs. It had been the same as a confession and Longarm had arrested him immediately. Lowe had drawn twenty-five years in prison, but had not even served one when the prison break had occurred.

Longarm was convinced that the breakout had been arranged for only one man, Carl Lowe, and that the other convicts who’d been freed had been used to scatter and confuse the pursuit. That part, Longarm thought grimly, had worked. He’d tried to make it clear to the Arizona Rangers what the prison break was all about, but they hadn’t been willing to listen. To them, one escaped convict was the same as another. When Longarm had tried to tell them that the whole affair had been arranged by some gang needing Carl Lowe’s services, they’d looked at him like he’d fallen on his head.

But still, he did not know for sure that Carl Lowe was still on the loose. He might be dead and buried by now. He said to Higgins, “I take it there’s just you and Sylvia and the two Mexicans here?”

Higgins scratched his balding head. “Wa’l, thar’s the doctor and the hoor. Though truth be told, I ain’t all that shore he be a doctor. Stays drunk mostly. He got off the southbound stage with the hoor.” Longarm blinked. He said, “The what?”

“The doctor?”

“No, the other.”

“The hoor?”

Chapter 2

Longarm frowned, perplexed. “What in hell is a ‘hoor’?”

Higgins pulled his head back. “Why, you look long enough in the tooth you’d of run across a few hoors in yore time. I ain’t never had no truck with ‘em myself, me an’ Missus Higgins bein’ married long’s we have. But they do a right good trade amongst the single men and them as ain’t around no girls.” Longarm blinked for a minute. “Are you talking about a whore?”

“Ain’t that what I been sayin’? One of them women the ladies of the church is always tryin’ to get run out of town. One of them you pays.”

“A whore, a prostitute.”

Higgins gave him a matter-of-fact look. “Wa’l, you can dress it up in all kinds of highfalutin words if you be of a mind, but a hoor is a hoor and that is that.” He put up a hand. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I ain’t got nothin’ agin ‘em personal. I be of the live-and-let-live school. Poor girl probably got led astray somehow. This one is a mighty pitiful case. Got throwed out by her own kind. Just this mornin’. She was on the southbound coach. Was a whole gaggle of ‘em goin’ down to Gunsight to work the miners that work in the gold mines down there. I reckon them girls make more money than the miners, you take my meaning. Their lode don’t ever run out.”

“And she’s here?”

Higgins waved vaguely at the door that led off the big room. “She be back there in our private quarters takin’ a rest. Missus Higgins felt right sorry for the little thang. I reckon she got some rough treatment.”

“What happened?”

Higgins shook his head. “Damned if I know. Coach pulled in with that doctor, if he is, which I doubt, and a passel of them hoors. Was five of ‘em. They was all yellin’ and screamin’ at this young woman that be back in the bedroom. Wouldn’t let her go on with them. Seemed they was some kind of company and they fired her right here. Turns out she is in a kind of fix. Ain’t got a nickel to her name and no return ticket back north.” He shook his head. “I reckon we’ll have to try and help her some.”

“What did she do? I mean, to get the other ladies, hoors, mad at her? Was they cussing her?”

Higgins shrugged. “I never took in the whole of it. That doctor come staggerin’ up first and claimed he was sick and needed him a drink of whiskey right pronto or he was gonna cave in. I was behind the bar fixin’ him up when this young woman, Rita her name is, come through kind of lookin’ down in the mouth and tryin’ not to cry. Was Missus Higgins kind of took her in hand. Then the doctor, if he is one, passed out on me, and I couldn’t get the driver and his guard to help me load him back aboard the stage, it just bein’ a quick stop, and they went on. Them other’ns was a bunch of painted women if you ever seen any. Whoooee!”

Longarm was about to ask another question about the doctor and his wherabouts when Mrs. Higgins came in with his meal. She’d fried him half a dozen eggs and given him a good big ham steak, along with grits and ham gravy and biscuits and honey. On her second trip she brought him a pot of coffee and put a cup in front of him and one in front of Mister Higgins. For the next half hour Longarm didn’t do much talking or thinking, just concentrated on reducing the pile of groceries in front of him to a bare plate. But one thought that occurred to him as he ate was the telegraph wire. Most stage lines had one, and he’d seen the line as he’d staggered up to the station. He knew it would be a private line and was only strung from one end of the stage run to the other. But it was a method of communicating. He could have Higgins wire to the operator in Buckeye and have him wire, through the public telegraph, to Yuma to find out who had been caught and who had gotten away. It would mean revealing to Higgins that he was a deputy marshal, but he reckoned the old man would keep it to himself.

Higgins had brought him a bottle of whiskey and he’d sweetened up his coffee with it. It was nowhere near as good as his Maryland whiskey, but then he didn’t have much of that left, and there was no use wishing for steak when all you had to eat was suet.

His mind turned for a second to the “hoor,” Rita, and the doctor. He wondered where the doctor was, and for just a moment his mind played with the idea that the man might be Carl Lowe. But that didn’t make any sense. Still, he wanted a look at him and he wanted a look at the girl. Finally he pushed his plate back, unable to eat another bite. He said, “Whew! Herman, your missus can cook up a storm! Lord, I ain’t tasted anything that good since I don’t know when.” He ran a critical eye over Higgins. “Herman, what I can’t understand is how come you don’t run to more flesh the way Sylvia feeds.”

Higgins shrugged. “Beats me and the missus both. Ain’t got ary a idea. Oh, it ain’t ‘cause I don’t eat. I can pack it away with the best of ‘em. Sylvie says it’s because I never sit still long enough for any of it to stick.”

Longarm smiled. “Yeah, you do kind of remind me of a chapparal the way you dart around, busy as a bee. You are of kind of a nervous nature.”

“Sylvie says I wear my clothes out from the inside the way I fidget around in ‘em.”

Longarm said, “Herman, I reckon you got an instrument where you can tap into that telegraph line running outside.”

“Aw, yeah,” Higgins said. “Got a wire runs right here into the house. Got me a key back yonder in the livin’ quarters.” He gave Longarm a serious eye. “Company won’t hire you till you learn to tap out that code with that key. Took me a spell to get it down, but I’m a pretty fair hand now. Course ain’t much call to ever use it. Ask for supplies to be sent. One thing and another. Notify other stations when a stage is runnin’ way late or when we have a breakdown.”

Longarm said, “Well, that is right handy, Herman, because I’m going to need you to send a message for me.”

Higgins frowned, and then he looked sorrowful. He scratched behind his ear. He said, “Doggone it, Mr. Long, ain’t nothin’ I’d like better’n to accommodate you but, see, this here telegraph line ain’t public. It be a private operation for the company I work for. They don’t allow no private use if you take my meaning.”

Longarm said, “I’m going to need you to make an exception for me, Herman. It’s pretty important.”

Higgins was looking very uncomfortable. “Now, Mr. Long, I done took a likin’ to you an’ I’d shore like to help. But it’d be worth my job I was to get on that instrument and be sendin’ out messages hadn’t got nothin’ to do with company business. I’d give anything if I could, but I can’t.”

Longarm said, “Herman, I’m going to show you something and I’m going to depend on you being able to keep a secret. Can you do that? I got reasons for it.”

Higgins pulled his head back and gave Longarm a look that said the question should never have been asked. “Pshaw!” he said. “Why, Mr. Long, they is secrets been dropped in me six, seven years ago and ain’t hit bottom yet. That is how deep my secret poke is. Why, my stars and bars, if it is a secret you want kept, then I am yore man.”

Longarm said, “Just be sure you keep that in mind.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his badge. He laid it on the table. “Herman, I’m a deputy United States marshal and I need to use your telegraph wire on official business. And since you are a transportation outfit that is regulated by the federal government, you are obliged to aid me in any way you can.”

Higgins stared at the badge with his mouth open. “My stars and bars and Gertie’s girdle! Take a look at that thar! Hot damn, I knowed you was somebody special minute you come staggerin’ in off that desert. Somethin’ told me to treat this feller right because he is a he-horse! An’ by golly, I was right! Wait’ll I tell the missus!”

Longarm wagged a finger at him. “No, no. This is between me and you.”

Higgins’s face fell. “You mean to say I got me a real live federal marshal here an’ I can’t even tell my ol’ woman? Glory be! You have any idea how wearin’ this place is on a body? Biggest excitement we get is a sandstorm, an’ here you come an’ I can’t even say nothin’. Pshaw!”

“Herman, this is important government business. It might be that it doesn’t matter who knows, but right now I’m kind of operating in the dark, so I think it’s best just to play my cards pretty close to my shirt buttons. You take my meaning?”

Higgins’s eyes got round. “Boy, howdy, yessir, I do, Mis-Marshal Long. I …” He suddenly stopped and stared at Longarm. “Yore last name be Long, don’t it?”

“Yes. So what?”

Higgins said slowly, “They is a right famous federal marshal got the nickname of Longarm. Now that wouldn’t be you, would it?”

Longarm shrugged. “I get called that from time to time.”

Higgins let out a long breath. “Laws a-mercy! Dog my cats if that don’t beat all. I got the very marshal they call Longarm settin’ right here at my table! Man that has caught more outlaws than the whole of the Texas and Arizona Rangers put together! You talk about your red-letter days! Whooooeeee!”

Longarm smiled slightly. “Herman, you are going to have to collect yourself here. Now where is your telegraph set up?”

Higgins jerked his head toward a door. “Back there in our livin’ quarters. I bet what you are gonna send is gonna be real secret, ain’t it?”

Longarm frowned. “Well, I’m seeking information. It ain’t all that secret.”

“Boy, I’d give a dollar to know what it was all about.”

Longarm stared at him in disbelief. “But Herman, you will know. You are the one going to send and receive for me. I don’t know how to work one of those damn things.”

Higgins’s eyes got big again. “Great sakes alive! That’s right. I’m gonna be in the know. Hot damn!”

Longarm looked at the door to the living quarters. “You said that girl was back there?”

“Yeah, she be layin’ on the bed. Or she was.”

“Well, I’d rather not have anybody back there who isn’t necessary. Which means just you and me. Like I say, this may come to nothing, but I’d still rather keep it mum.”

Higgins began moving around vigorously inside his clothes. He got an earnest look on his face. “Wa’l, you can count on me, Marshal Long, Longarm.” He shook his head. “Damn, I can’t believe you are settin’ under my very roof. Why, you are more famous than Billy the Kid or William Cody or any of ‘em. My dogs and cats!”

“I need to do this pretty quick,” Longarm said. But in the back of his mind he was wishing that his boss, Chief Marshall Billy Vail, could hear what Higgins had said.

Higgins immediately leapt to his feet. “Right you are, Cap’n. You just step this way.”

Longarm followed him through an open door and into a small sitting room. It was rough and small, but Longarm could easily see the touches Sylvia had added to make the place more livable. Over in the corner Longarm saw a little table and, sitting on it, a telegraph key. A wire ran in through the small window to make the connection to the line running outside.

Higgins had gone to the door of another room and Longarm followed him, looking over his shoulder. Inside there was a woman lying on the bed. At first she appeared quite plain and a good ways past her youth. But she jumped to her feet as soon as Higgins opened his mouth, and stood beside the bed smoothing her skirt. Then he could see that she was no more than twenty-five or twenty-six and quite appealing. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a buxom figure and a pretty enough face. There was something hard in her eyes and in the set of her mouth, but Longarm thought that was just brought on by her recent hard luck.

Higgins said, “Miss Rita, I hate to disturb you but me and this gentleman got business back here. If you could wait out yonder in the common room I’d be much obliged. There is that padded bench if you are still a little light-headed.”

“No,” she said, “I’m fine. Tell your wife how much I appreciate her kindness.”

Longarm liked her voice. It was soft and controlled and sounded as if the woman had been around people of quality. He said, “Sorry to disturb you.”

She ran a cool, appraising look over him as she walked past. “Don’t concern yourself,” she said. “I was ready to get up.”

They waited until she was through the door and in the public room, and then Higgins went to the door of their private quarters and closed it. It was a good, heavy door, and Longarm felt they couldn’t be overheard. He said, “Mr. Higgins, if you’ll take your place at the key, I’ll tell you what to say.”

As if he was about to perform some sort of ceremony, Higgins went solemnly to the little table and sat down, adjusting his chair just so. Over his shoulder he said. “I got to get on line an’ give the man at the other end my signature. First thang you got to do. It’s by the book.”

“You do that.”

With a certain awkwardness Higgins tapped out a few words with the key. Longarm didn’t know what he had said because he didn’t know Morse code. He’d always been intending to learn, but had somehow never gotten around to it. Higgins sat back in his chair and waited. He explained over his shoulder to Longarm, “Now I got to wait for the other end. That’s the feller on duty in Buckeye.”

Longarm nodded. “Sounds mighty complicated to me, Herman. I’d never be able to do this without your help.”

Higgins preened. “Always happy to help the law. And especially law like you, Marshal Long. How well does a feller have to get to know you to call you Longarm?”

Longarm suppressed a smile. “Actually, I ain’t all that fond of the name. Most of my friends call me Custis. I reckon we know each other good enough for that, Herman.”

Just then the key started chattering. Higgins listened until it fell silent, then looked around at Longarm. “He be ready for us. You can let ‘er rip.”

“You don’t need me to write it down?”

“Naw. Jes’ give it to me in fits and starts. I’ll get it.”

Longarm said, “Something I forgot to mention. The man at the other end has got to be able to get to a main telegraph line. Hook into it or something. This telegram is going to the warden at Yuma prison.”

Higgins’s mouth fell open, but he recovered. “Oh, that ain’t shakes fer him to do. He’s right there on the railroad at Buckeye and he’s already hooked into that regular telegraph line, whatever you call it. The one runs alongside railroads.”

“All right. Then you need to tell him to wire the warden at Yuma and ask him what happened to the escaped prisoners from the breakout a week ago. This is official business and I need to know in a hurry. Be sure and make it clear that it is Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long inquiring. I need to know about all the prisoners. Make that part plain. Now, have you got that?”

“Plain as paint.” Higgins hunched over his key and slowly began tapping out his message. As he worked he said, “I reckon that ol’ boy on the other end is gettin’ the September surprised outten him that this is comin’ from a shore-‘nough federal marshal. I reckon he’ll burn that line up to Yuma.”

He tapped for a few more minutes and then stopped and sat back. “We’ll see if he got it.”

In a moment the key chattered for a few seconds and then fell silent. Higgins looked over his shoulder at Longarm. “Charley, that’s the feller at the other end, wants to know if I know a man can get fired pranking around on the company telegraph.”

Longarm stepped forward. “You tell Charley that it is a federal offense to interfere with a United States marshal in the performance of his duty and that Marshal Custis Long is not taking kindly to this delay. Understand?”

“I reckon I do.” Higgins put his finger to the key and sent the message in short, staccato bursts. When he finished he looked pleased. “I reckon that will build a fire under him,” he said.

The key chattered, but only for a second. Higgins said, “That got his attention, but he says it will be a few minutes as the main line south is tied up. I’ll need to set right here. Whyn’t you go get you a drink of whiskey.”

“I think I will,” Longarm said.

“I got to stay here close.”

“All right.” Longarm opened the door and walked out into the public room. He went over to the bar, found a likely-looking bottle, and poured himself a drink. The young woman was sitting at the bench near the front door where his saddle still lay. He said without looking at her, “Care for a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’m buying.”

She hesitated. “I … No, thank you.”

But he poured her a drink anyway, crossed the common room, and put it in her hand. She took it readily enough, and he reckoned she didn’t want to be accepting favors because she was broke. It made him think of something he’d wondered many times. Why was it the man who was broke who had so much pride?

He lifted his glass and said, “Luck.”

She made a halfhearted response to the toast before she put the glass to her lips. “Yeah, luck.”

He smiled. “And all bad, huh?”

Her face went hard and she flicked a glance at him. She said, “I see my host, Mr. Higgins, has been telling you about the poor little whore who got pitched out by the other whores and ended up on his doorstep without the price of a penny candy.”

He pursed his lips and said, lying, “Well, no, he didn’t exactly say that. All he told me was you were a lady in some kind of distress—exactly what he didn’t know. Said you seemed to have had some kind of argument or falling out with some other ladies you were traveling with.”

She laughed. “Oh, bullshit. That old man didn’t know what to think of the mess that landed in his lap. Me and that drunken bum that claimed to be a medical doctor.” She laughed again and shook her head. “If it wasn’t happening to me I’d think it was funny. I thought I’d come about as low as I could when I ended up stranded in Phoenix. But hell…” She looked around. “Right now Phoenix looks like paradise to me.” She threw down the rest of her drink. “That is, if I ever get back there. I am busted. I don’t have the price of a ticket.”

Longarm cocked his head to one side and looked at her. “How come you were laying down? You sick or something? Is that why the other working girls threw you out?”

“No.” She shook her head. “They threw me out because I caused a ruckus when I found out how the split worked, what my end was going to be. Forty percent. Like hell.” She shook her head again. “No, I didn’t lay down because I’m sick. I haven’t eaten in a couple of days and I was feeling weak. The old man’s wife is a real nice lady.” She suddenly looked up at Longarm. “But don’t be telling them I’m hungry. I’m not taking any charity.”

“You’re going to accept a free ride back to Phoenix when the northbound stage gets here. What’s that?”

She eyed him steadily for a moment. “I doubt you got the brains to follow this, but try,” she said. “I had a ticket bought for me all the way to the south end of this line. I ain’t come even halfway yet. I figure they still owe me about the same amount of miles it is back to Phoenix. Now, if you can get charity out of that, you’re more than welcome.”

He nodded his head slightly. “That’s a nice bit of logic. Handy too. Especially when one has got more pride than sense.”

She bristled. “What the hell are you talking about? Don’t they owe me the miles or not?”

He smiled. “Yeah. But going south. If you want to be strict about it. You bought a southbound ticket. It entitles you to go south. Don’t say nothing about north.”

She gave him a level, fierce look. “Why don’t you go to hell, fellow, whoever you are.”

He said carelessly, “I’m the man who is going to give you a job to earn your way back to Phoenix. And maybe a few dollars more.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of job? On my back?”

He shook his head. “No, not quite. From time to time I’ll need some things written down. That’ll be your job. To write them down.”

“Who in hell do you think you are kidding? You know what I am. Don’t talk to me about writing anything down. I know what you want down, and it’s the underwear I got under this dress. Only you ain’t going to get it.”

He nodded. “I don’t want it. Under other circumstances and other conditions and maybe a different time, maybe yes. But not now and not under this set of circumstances. You savvy? So you can just get off acting like the hard-assed whore with me. You don’t look like you ever put out for money in your life. I think this was your first try and you got scared and jumped ship.”

She was turning pink in the face. She said, “Say, just who in the hell are you? Did I ask you to tell my fortune? I’ve heard of a few folks got by just fine in life by minding their own business.”

“As to who I am, my name is Custis Long, if it makes any difference. And as to business, I’m offering you a job. Do you want it or not? It ain’t got a damn thing to do with your clothes. In fact you will do all your business with me fully dressed. Understand that? Now, you want a job or not? I doubt there are many more around here. And this one pays cash.”

She narrowed her eyes. He noticed they were light blue. “You wouldn’t be trying to offer me charity in a left-handed way, would you?”

He looked at her. She was trying to sit so proud and defiant, and not quite bringing it off. She was wearing a gray dress of some cheap gingham material, but she had a nice lace dicky around her collar. Or it would have been nice if it hadn’t turned gray from the alkali dust. He said, “Listen, Rita, if that is your name, I wouldn’t give you the sweat off a sow’s snout without full return on my money. You’ll welcome charity by the time I’m through with you.”

She didn’t look quite so sure and some of the hardness had left her face. Relaxed, she was quite pretty. She had her hair pulled back in a bun, but he thought it would be about shoulder length and shining if she unpinned it and let it down. She said, “What-what would be my duties?”

He snapped it out. “Woman of all work. I say frog, you jump. Take down notes, fetch and carry, listen to my ideas and give me your opinion. Your duties are whatever I need at the time. Job is on the block. Going, going, go-“

“I’ll take it!”

“Fine,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his roll of bills, and peeled off a ten-dollar bill. He said, “Your first job is to go get me another drink.” He handed her the bill. She took it hesitantly. “There’s an advance on your salary. When you’ve brought me that drink you are to go look up Mrs. Higgins and buy you some lunch off her. And then-“

She jumped up. “So it was charity. By damn I-“

He reached out a hand and shoved her down. “Look, dammit, I can’t have somebody working for me that is all weak in the knees from hunger. I don’t want no more damn arguments from you. I’m a businessman. I own a large cattle company. I ain’t used to my employees arguing with me. Now, do as you are told.”

She got up slowly and took the glass out of his hand. She had a thoughtful look on her face. He watched as she walked over and went behind the plank bar. She hunted a moment, found the bottle of whiskey, and poured one of the glasses full. Then she looked across at him. “Am I supposed to have another one?”

“You’re on my time now,” he said, trying to sound severe. If the girl wanted convincing she had a job, he was going to be damn certain she got the message. He said, “You don’t drink on my time. You work.”

She nodded, and then brought the drink back across the room to him. As she handed it to him she held up the ten-dollar bill and said, “Am I supposed to pay Mrs. Higgins for the drinks when I buy myself some lunch?”

He shook his head. “I’m running an account with the old man. Besides, that is your money. That’s an advance on your wages. I’m paying you five dollars a day until we get to Phoenix, and then we’ll see what you’re worth. Now go find Mrs. Higgins and see if she knows where that drunken doctor is. I want to get a look at him.”

She gave him an amused look. “Going to give him a job too?”

He gave her a brief glance. “Ever notice how close those two words were? Hire and fire? Just one letter.”

“I’m going,” she said.

He watched with a faintly amused expression as she hurried from the room. But along with the amusement was an appreciation for the way her hips worked beneath the dowdy dress. He wondered if there were any clothes about that would fit her. He would like to see her better dressed. Also, he thought, he would like to see her completely undressed. He’d been out on the desert a long time, and it had been a spell since his last visit to his lady friend in Denver who was in the dressmaking business. He did not, however, think it would be a very good idea to take this Rita to his dress-shop lady and grandly ask her to fix the little gal up.

He remembered his boots, and walked over to where they were sitting by the door. He turned them upside down and a little water ran out. It was still too hot outside to put them in the sun, but he edged them out a little further where they might dry faster. He was getting tired of walking around in his stocking feet, and he figured it was just a matter of time before he picked up a splinter from the rough floor.

He took his drink to the table, and was just settling down to enjoy it and the stump of the cigar Higgins had given him when the door of the living quarters burst open and Higgins said excitedly, “It come. I got you a answer. All the way from Yuma.”

Longarm waved his hand in a downward motion, and Higgins clamped his hand over his mouth. Longarm got up and walked across the room. Higgins said, “I’m right sorry. I jes’ got so excited it burst right out.”

“You got to watch that, Herman. Bursting out ain’t no way to keep secrets.”

“I got the message wrote down in here. I write a fair hand so you ought to be able to figure it Out. Sounds mighty, mighty serious to me. This law work is deadly stuff, ain’t it.”

“Yes,” Longarm said dryly. He followed Higgins into his front room and over to the desk. Higgins handed him a piece of paper with some words printed on it in pencil. The message said:

DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL CUSTIS LONG

ALL ESCAPED PRISONERS ACCOUNTED FOR EXCEPT CARL LOWE. BELIEVE ONE OR TWO OF THOSE WHO AIDED ESCAPE MAY ALSO HAVE ILLUDED ARREST. RANGERS CONTINUING SEARCH, BELIEVE LOWE MAY HAVE FLED TO THE SOUTH. ADVISE ANY DETAILS YOU MAY HAVE.

It was signed by the warden of the Yuma territorialprison. “Damn!” Longarm said. “Damn, damn, damn! I was afraid of that!” He wadded the piece of paper up and pitched it back on Higgins’s little desk. “I told them he wouldn’t head south! He’s got no business in Mexico. That wasn’t why they broke him out of prison!”

Higgins was standing by with his mouth open and his eyes wide. He said, “It’s bad, is it, Marshal? Real bad?”

Longarm seemed to realize where he was. He looked at the little old man. He said, “Nothing for You to worry about, Herman. It’s just law work. Law work gone wrong.”

“Is they anything I can do?”

Longarm grimaced. “Not unless you can figure a way for me to get up in the Phoenix area. That’s where I think I need to be.”

“But didn’t it say the chase was to the south?”

Longarm laughed. “Yeah, The chase. They’re chasing their tails is the only chase they are involved with.”

Higgins scratched his head. “I shore don’t know no way for you to get north till the stage comes through.”

Longarm shook his head. “You said something about grease, Herman. I need to try and get my boots back on.”

Higgins frowned. “Might be yore feet need ‘nother dose of lye water.”

“Oh, I think I can do without that.”

A little later he wandered outside to stand against the front wall of the stage station and stare out across the wasted prairie and think. His boots felt a little awkward and his feet were tender, but he felt nearly back to normal after his two-day trek across the barren plain. It was still hot enough to fry a bald man’s brains, but the sun was heading down. In a couple of hours it would be twilight and cool.

Try as he would he could not think of any way to get hot on Carl Lowe’s trail. The damn Arizona Rangers had insisted on hunting to the south. Otherwise, if they had taken Longarm’s advice, Carl Lowe would be back in prison, But that was the damn Arizona Rangers for you. They figured every fugitive that was loose was going to break south for Mexico, especially in that part of the territory. Ordinarily that might be right, but Carl Lowe was no average outlaw. And the folks who had gone to some trouble to break him out of prison weren’t going to take him to Mexico either. His skills would be wanted where there were some rich banks or railroad mail cars full of gold and cash. Longarm figured that had to be up north somewhere around Phoenix. That whoever had done it had broken Carl Lowe out for a purpose. Longarm had no doubt about that, and he had no doubt that the purpose involved a safe or a strongbox somewhere. And every hour Longarm sat out in the middle of the desert in a damned relay station was just that much more time he was getting behind.

He hunkered down, picked up a little stick, and began drawing a map in the sand showing where he was, where he had last seen Lowe, and the location of Phoenix and other places of opportunity. He was busy thinking of possibilities when Higgins came out. He looked ruffled and confused. Longarm asked him what was the matter. He said, “My wife says that hoor is a-workin’ fer you. I told her the sun had got to her. But I thought I’d come ask you.”

Longarm laughed slightly. “It’s a fact, Herman. Rita is my, uh—oh, I don’t know—assistant I guess you’d call it.”

Higgins looked slightly hurt. “I kind of thought me an’ you was pretty much on top of thangs, Marshal Longarm. I didn’t figure you to need other hired help.”

Now Longarm did laugh. “You got it all wrong, Herman. She ain’t working for me like you think.”

But Higgins wasn’t mollified. “I didn’t see where we needed a hoor in the outfit. Was a woman needed, why, Sylvie would have fit right in.”

Longarm frowned. He said, “You keep calling her a ‘hoor,’ Herman. You don’t know that she is.”

Higgins squatted in the sand across from Longarm. “Wa’l, she was in with a passel of hoors an’ they run her off. What else I supposed to think?”

“You could have a horse in with a herd of cattle, but that wouldn’t make a cow out of the horse, would it?”

Higgins reluctantly studied the question. Finally he took off his hat and scratched his head. “Wa’l, no, I reckon not.”

Longarm said, “Look here, Herman, you got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The girl needed some help. She was weak because she hadn’t eaten. I couldn’t just walk up and hand her some money. She’d of thrown it back in my face. So I kind of made her up a job. She’s my fetch-and-carry assistant.” He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “You’re my thinking-and-action assistant. There’s quite a bit of difference there.”

Higgins’s face brightened. “Aw, yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah, she is just yore fetch-and-carry girl. I get it now.” He let out a high-pitched cackle. “Shore! Hell, you ain’t a U.S. marshal fer nothin’.” Then his face suddenly turned concerned. “Did you say that girl was weak on account of not eatin’?”

Longarm nodded. “Yeah. But I’d already figured that out.”

Higgins protested. “But we offered her a meal. More than once. We shore did, Marshal. Whyn’t she take it?”

Longarm shrugged. “Some people got more pride than they do sense. I could see it in her face minute I laid eyes on her.”

Higgins looked pained. “That makes me feel right bad, knowin’ they was a human being under my roof goin’ hungry. Hell, I thought she was just stuck up and onery. She claimed we owed her a ride back to Phoenix cause she hadn’t used the balance of her southbound ticket. I could see the logic in that, though it’s agin company rules. But I was gonna bend them. I hate it she wouldn’t take a meal with us, though. Hell, breakfast was just over when the coach come through and she got shoved off. My missus wouldn’t thought nothin’ of fixin’ her a meal.”

Longarm stood up. “Let’s get out of this heat, Herman. What little fat I got is starting to sizzle.”

“it is still a mite warm. I don’t seem to notice it so much anymore.”

Longarm touched Higgins’s arm. He said, “Now, Rita doesn’t know I’m a federal officer. You didn’t let that out, did you?”

Higgins looked insulted. “Why, I reckon I didn’t! What you take me for?”

“But you did tell your wife.”

“Well, it so taken me by surprise ‘bout you hirin’ that girl that it jus’ kind of come out natur-” He stopped and stared at Longarm, misery in his face. “Oh, I’m just a damned ol’ fool. Thar I went and broke my word. Aw, hell!”

Longarm patted him on the back. “Doesn’t matter. You’d of told her sooner or later. Wives just ain’t happy until they know everything their husbands do.”

Higgins said, “Ain’t that a fact! You must be a married man yourself, Marshal.”

Longarm said dryly, “Not very damn likely. But let’s just hold that information about me to you and your wife. Certainly we don’t want Miss Rita to know.”

“You reckon her to be a good woman, Marshal?”

“I reckon her to be slightly confused right now. But then so am I.”

“How you gonna run down that outlaw you be after?”

Longarm shook his head. “I don’t know, Herman. I just flat don’t know. Or if I do, I don’t know that I do.”

Chapter 3

Rita said, “What made you so sure I wasn’t a prostitute? How did you know I hadn’t been doing tricks on my back?”

Longarm laughed. “I’ve known a good many ladies in the trade, Rita, and they’ve all got certain characteristics. Mind you, I ain’t running them down. I don’t ordinarily have to pay for it, but I’ve given more than one respectable house a little of my patronage. And been well satisfied, I might add.” He looked over at her with a small smile. “But you ain’t nothing like them. I’m not saying you’re better. Don’t know you well enough to say that. All I’m saying is you don’t play the part very well.”

“How so?”

He laughed again. “Hell, Rita, it’s-“

She broke in. “It’s Rita Ann,” she said. “I’ve always been called that. But the women I was in with thought it a good idea to drop the Ann. Said it made me sound kind of tame. But you ain’t explained how you knew.”

He shrugged. “Hell, it’s obvious. Here you are in the middle of the desert, broke and hungry and not at all sure what you are going to do. Then I show up in your gunsights, the first real prospect you’ve seen. Higgins is out because his wife is right there. The doctor is drunk and probably broke. That leaves the two Mexicans, and you wouldn’t have been ready for them. But here I was, and even if I wasn’t dressed like a swell, I might have enough money in my pocket to get you out of your bind. A real whore would have been on me like a bad case of poison ivy. And as soon as you’d found out I had a few dollars to rub together, you’d have been rubbing yourself all over me and promising me the best time I’d ever had in my life. You’d have said your heart had just gone pitty-pat the second you laid eyes on me an you were still weak in the knees. But what did you do? Hell, you give me a look that would have burnt through saddle leather, and then turned your smart mouth on me when I offered you a drink and a little help. That ain’t the way a whore acts, Rita.”

She gave a little laugh. “No, I guess not.” She thought a moment. “But it’s funny what you said about my heart doing a little flip-flop. When I saw you in the bedroom door that’s kind of what happened to me. You were the best and the kindest-looking thing I’d seen in a long time. You looked like a gent.”

“Must have been the hunger. You damn sure didn’t act like it when you got up off that bed.”

“It was because I had thought them things that I acted like that. Hell, I didn’t know you. The last thing I needed was to get my fingers burned again.”

“What do you mean by that?”

They were walking out in the early twilight, heading down toward the shack the Mexican mule handlers occupied. It was cool now that the sun was nearly down, and the sky had changed from a washed-out blue to an explosion of streaks of yellow and red and even deep purple. She said, tossing her head, “Oh, I don’t know. It just seems like I never had no luck with men.”

He stopped and looked at her. “Rita Ann, you ain’t old enough to be making statements like that.”

She sighed and heaved her shoulders. “Maybe it just seems like it on account of this last little experience I had.”

“Is that what put you in your present position, your last experience?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so.” She looked up at him defensively. “But I’m not blaming anyone but myself, you understand. I’m twenty-two years old and old enough to account for my own mistakes.”

“What kind of a mistake was it?”

She shrugged and looked away. “The stupid kind.” She folded her arms under her breasts and hugged herself. “I was living in Saint Louis, living at home with my mother. My daddy had passed on. It wasn’t a bad life. I had a good job waiting tables in the restaurant of one of the finest hotels in the city. And I had my share of beaus. They were kind of dull, but they were good young men. Then one day this man showed up at the hotel. All dashing and elegant and handsome as hell. He was a gambler. He’d just come off a riverboat on the Mississippi. Anyway, he took an interest in me, and after about two turns around the bed I was his toy. You couldn’t have pried me loose from him with a crowbar. He said gambling on the river was finished, said the big money was out West and would I go. He said Phoenix or someplace like that. Said everybody out there had a pocketful of gold and no brains.” She sighed. “So here we come. For a little while it was all right, but then he started losing. He never said nothing, but when he come in, late, he wasn’t in no mood for anything except more booze. We kept changing hotels until we finally ended up in a boardinghouse. His temper got worse and worse, and then one day he was gone. Left me flat. Naturally I didn’t have any money. Every nickel we had went for his stake, as he called it.” She shrugged and dug at the sand with the toe of her slipper. “I felt like a damn fool. Woman in love. Hah! Damn. I had gone blind was what it was. All of a sudden those dull young men back in Saint Louis looked pretty damn good.”

“So what did you do? Head for the nearest madam?”

She shook her head. “Not right away. I tried getting work waiting tables, but Phoenix is a rough town. hash houses in them places didn’t want any little nice Rita Anns with nice manners. Slinging hash ain’t just an expression, I found out. So I tried getting work cleaning houses. Whatever I could find. Nothing I could do paid anything. It was all I could do to earn enough to keep body and soul together, let alone earn enough for a train ride home.”

“Couldn’t you have wired your mother? Got her to send you some money?”

She gave him a look. “After the stunt I pulled? After walking out, running out, without so much as a goodbye? I don’t know about your family, Mr. Long, but we got a little pride in mine. I done my mother wrong and I sure as hell wasn’t going to turn to her for help after I’d made such a mess.”

Longarm said, “I think I know how this story ends, but you might as well say the words.”

She gave a laugh. “Yeah, I don’t reckon it is so original. I finally decided I could starve to death sitting on it or I could sell it. So I went around to a local house and talked to the madam. She didn’t have any cribs open, she said, but she knew about this crew of girls was going down south in Arizona near the border to relieve a crew that had been working down there for several months taking care of miners. I didn’t even know where the damn place was. I don’t know anything about this country except it could use a little water. Anyway, she sent me to this lady name of Rosy, and she put me in with five other girls was going down.” She threw out her arms. “That’s what I’m doing here.”

“What caused them to throw you out of the stage?”

“They didn’t throw me out. I got out. I got out when I found out all I was going to get was forty percent of the money I earned. If I charged ten dollars, I had to turn six into Rosy. That wasn’t the way it was explained to me in Phoenix. So I said to hell with it. I’d been done in by one bastard. I wasn’t going to let some bitch do it to me also.”

“What made them think they could get away with it?”

She shrugged again. “Hell, they know you’re broke. They knew I was green. Hell, they were going to have to teach me how to act. Seems that you don’t make love when you’re a whore the same way you do when you’re just a woman. Said I was going to have to pay for the privilege. If they’d of told me that in Phoenix, I could have made my mind up and taken it or left it. But here they thought they had me over a barrel. Well, ain’t nobody makes me do nothing I don’t want to. I would have got out in the middle of the damn desert if it had come to it. I slugged Rosy a pretty good one. Split her lip for her.”

Longarm smothered a laugh. “But you are still here. Still a long way from Saint Louis.”

“You don’t have to remind me.”

They had started walking again. They were walking by some corrals that were crowded with dun-colored Spanish mules. At the end of the corral was a rock shack. Smoke was curling out of the small chimney at one end of the cabin. Longarm said, “What about the doctor? How come he got pitched?”

She laughed dryly. “I don’t know if he was drunk or out of his head or what. But a few hours before we got to here he announced that he was the doctor supposed to inspect all the girls to see if they had the clap or whatever. And then he commenced to give it a try right then and there on the stage. My word, you never saw such a ruckus. He was trying to get in under the skirt of this young girl—Wilda, I think her name was—and she was kicking and screaming and squirming around. Hell, you couldn’t even see the doctor, if he is one, he had crawled so far up her skirt. Well, everybody piled in on him. Rosy has got a big old purse made out of cowhide, and she nearly beat him to death with it. The driver finally stopped and the guard came back and got matters straightened out. The doctor had lost his glasses and it took a time to find them. Rosy said that either the doctor got put off or they were getting off and just see how those miners at the other end of the line would like that. So the driver decided the doctor had to go. He tried to whine to me once we got here, but I didn’t want no part of him.”

It had been Mrs. Higgins who had told Longarm where he might find the doctor. She’d said, “Them Mexicans have got a big jug of either tequila or mescal, probably both. I reckon he’s down there drinkin’ with them. I don’t think he’s got much money. He inquired at the bar what whiskey cost, and when Herman told him four bits a shot, he kind of looked disappointed and wandered out the back. He’s been down there around the Mexicans most of the day. Maybe he’s swapping them some doctorin’ for a little of that poison they drink.”

Now Longarm said to Rita Ann, “You reckon he’s a real doctor?”

She shrugged. “I got no way of knowing. He’s got a little black leather bag like doctors carry, but the only thing I seen him come out of that with was a bottle of whiskey. He never said much of anything until he went crazy and started that foolishness about examining the girls.” She suddenly stopped. “Say, what is your interest in the man? He’s just a bum. What would a big cattleman care about him for?”

The question caught him off guard and for a moment he fumbled. “Why, I don’t know. Curious, I guess.”

“Curious about what? Some old drunk claims to be a doctor?”

He frowned. “What the hell has got into you, Rita Ann? You seen me walking around in my stocking feet. You already know I nearly burned my boots off walking out of that desert. I kind of halfway hoped this man, if he is a doctor, might be able to do something about these blisters I still got. Might have some ointment of some kind.”

She put her hand to her mouth. She shook her head. “I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. Here you been nothing but nice to me and I speak sharp to you. My mother always said this mouth of mine was going to get me in trouble.”

He tried to put a light tone to it. “I reckon you forgot who was boss for a moment. Let’s walk on. See if this man is still alive. If he’s drinking mescal he might not be.”

Ten yards further on they came to the little rock and adobe shack. The Mexicans were nowhere in sight, but a small man in a dirty black suit and a dusty white shirt and string tie was sitting on the ground by the front door. He looked up as they arrived. He was, Longarm noted, wearing wire-rimmed glasses that looked bent and barely held their perch on his nose. He put a finger to his glasses and pushed them up as he studied Longarm and Rita Ann from his sitting position. He had a quart bottle of what Longarm took to be mescal between his legs. It was not quite half full. The little man said, “Ah, visitors. Be welcome, be welcome. I am Doctor Amos Peabody, general surgeon and physician of Baltimore, Maryland.”

Longarm looked down at him. “You’re a long way from home, Doctor.”

The little man nodded. “That I am, that I am.” He made an effort to scramble to his feet, but only succeeded in reaching a kind of crouching position with his shoulder braced against the cabin wall. He peered at Rita Ann. “I do not believe I have had the pleasure of either the acquaintance of this young lady or yourself, sir.”

Longarm noticed that he didn’t slur his words, but he didn’t seem to have a great deal of control over his body. He did, however, manage to keep one hand clamped around the neck of the mescal bottle. Longarm said, “No need to be formal, Doctor Peabody. I just had some sore feet and wondered if you might have any blister ointment, but I see you don’t have your bag with you.”

Doctor Peabody had gradually worked his way up to an erect position, though he was not deserting the support of the cabin wall. He said, “I have my bag, sir, certainly. No medical man would be without that necessary accessory. Unfortunately, I do not have the appropriate balm for your ailment. But I recommend goose grease, sir. Yessir, goose grease, finest remedy for iritated flesh.”

Longarm laughed slightly. “They may have geese in Baltimore, Doctor, but ain’t many in Arizona Territory.”

“Of course not, of course not!” Doctor Peabody said. “What was I thinking? Then chicken fat. Yessir, chicken fat. And unless my ears have deceived me today, there are sounds of the very fowl somewhere about the place.”

Longarm nodded at the bottle. “That mescal you’re drinking, Doctor?”

Doctor Peabody held the bottle up and started as if surprised to find it in his hand. “By the heavens you are right, sir. Mescal it is. And home-brewed by the Mexicans who occupy this hutch. Fine stuff it is, sir. I’d offer you a drink, but I don’t seem to have a clean glass. Or any glass for that matter.” He looked vaguely around. Then he shoved the bottle toward Longarm. “Of course, if you don’t mind a libation straight from the gourd, as the saying goes …”

Longarm shook his head and stepped back. “No, I reckon not, Doctor. That stuff is too strong for me.” He stood a moment, studying the doctor’s face. There was something wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Certainly the doctor looked disreputable enough, with several days’ growth of whiskers on his face and his thinning hair awry and mussed. It was the eyes, Longarm thought. There was something not quite right about the man’s eyes. But he couldn’t see what it was. Maybe it was the way his glasses were teetering at such an odd angle. Maybe that was it. Rita Ann had said the doctor had lost his glasses in the scuffle. Maybe it was the bent frames. Longarm said, “Well, we’ll let you get back to it, Doctor. Just wanted to see what you might have in the medicine line.”

The doctor straightened himself a little more. “Be glad to have a look at your ailing members,” he said. “Very nominal charge.”

“No, I’m all right for now,” Longarm said. He took Rita Ann by the arm and turned her away. “We’ll be seeing you, Doctor.”

But Peabody swayed away from the cabin wall and peered at Rita Ann over his crooked spectacles. He said, “This young lady, sir—I am being presumptuous, I know—but I have the most compelling feeling that I have had the pleasure of her company before.”

Rita Ann said quickly, “Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve never been to Baltimore.”

The doctor scratched at his scraggly whiskers with his free hand and said, “My dear, the fair city of Baltimore hasn’t been my abode in many a sorrowful year. No, I meant more recently.” He swayed and caught himself against the wall.

Longarm said, “Reckon not, Doctor. You have yourself a real pleasant evening.”

“And the best to you, sir, and your lady friend.”

When they were far enough away Rita Ann said with a laugh, “The crazy old bastard doesn’t remember that we were on the same coach for nearly a night and half a day.”

“Maybe so,” Longarm said thoughtfully. “Or he may well have known who you were. Something about the good doctor bothers me.”

She laughed again. “Why should you give him a moment’s notice? Heavens, that old drunk? Looks like he’s been rolled in the dirt.”

Longarm glanced at her gown. “Speaking of that. Ain’t you got any other clothes? That gown makes you look like a widow. Ain’t you got anything with a little color in it?”

She made a face. “My bag went with the coach. In the confusion and arguing I never did get it off. I guess it’s nearly to Mexico now. I wore this dress on purpose. I didn’t want to stir up any jealousy or hot blood from anybody. I figured the less notice I called to myself the better off I’d be.”

“How you going to get your bag back?”

“Mister Higgins was kind enough to wire down to the end of the line and ask them to send it back. I hope it arrives on that northbound stage day after tomorrow. If it doesn’t…” She shrugged. “Every stitch I own is in there.”

They had supper that night with Mr. and Mrs. Higgins in their quarters, eating at the little dining table in the outer room. Mrs. Higgins fixed chicken and dumplings, and topped it off with a peach cobbler she’d made out of canned peaches. Longarm pronounced it as maybe the finest meal he had ever had. And in a way it was, given the situation and the setting. Mrs. Higgins said, “Oh, how you do take on.” But she pinked with pleasure and made sure his coffee cup stayed full.

Later he got her aside and talked about Rita Ann’s plight. He said, “The poor girl is going around dressed like a street beggar or somebody about to go into a nunnery. That sure ain’t calculated to lift her spirits. I know ya’ll ain’t of a size, but is they any chance you might have something she could cut down to fit her? I’d be more than glad to pay.”

Mrs. Higgins said, “Let me think a minute.” She wrinkled her brow for a time. Then she said, “You know, there was a Spanish woman through here a few years back. Spanish, not Mexican. She had to get off the coach on account of not feeling well. Had a world of luggage. If I remember right there was one case got left, and I think it had some gowns in it and maybe even some clean linen. We notified the company but they was never a word said or a claim put in. Now if I can just remember where I stored that valise.”

While she was thinking, Longarm brought up the possibility of Rita Ann getting a bath. Mrs. Higgins just waved her hand. “Ain’t nothin’ to that. We got a cistern on top of the station here, and it feeds water down into a little bathroom I got there at the back. Got a Sears and Roebuck galvanized tub. And the water won’t need heatin’. Lord knows, it nearly gets up to boilin’ during the day. Tell you what, you and the mister go out and have a drink. You send Rita Ann on back to me and we’ll get something worked out.”

She stopped him as he was starting to turn away and said, with a twinkle in her eye, “Gettin’ sweet on the girl, are you?”

He gave her a wink. “Sylvia, I been sweet on all the girls nearly all my life.”

“Well you send her on in here. We’ll see what we can do.”

He and Higgins got themselves a drink at the bar, and then went and sat at the long table in the common room. Higgins, as if Longarm had led him to a great discovery, was drinking whiskey along with him. He said wonderingly, “Why, I don’t know whatever come over me to think that rum was so fine. Somebody must of sold me a bill of goods.” He held up his glass of cheap whiskey. “Now this is the real stuff, yessir, and I am much obliged for you straightening me out. Took a marshal of the federal government to do it, by golly, but it got done.”

Longarm had had an extremely difficult time getting Higgins to take twenty dollars in payment for his food and lodging. He’d finally fallen back on the lie that the government required him to pay for any services he received from civilians and that it was a breach of regulations if he didn’t. Now he was faced with getting the stationkeeper to take another twenty for what Mrs. Higgins was doing for Rita Ann. His argument was that she had become his employee and as such, came under the regulations. After some argument Higgins finally accepted the additional money. Longarm said, “Remember, Herman, I’ll be riding free. The law allows me to do that. And you did send that telegram for me. It all works out pretty square all around.”

Higgins refilled their glasses and said, “You found that doctor, I take it?”

“Yeah. Name is Peabody.”

“What’d you think?”

Longarm rubbed his jaw. “I ain’t sure. He was slumped down on the ground and he looked kind of short and fat and mighty drunk. But then he stood up and he was bigger than I thought. Also, he don’t talk so drunk. Course I have known hombres like that. Could drink whiskey until it was leaking out their ears and you’d never be able to tell it. But he kept looking younger the more I looked at him. I can’t figure it.” He suddenly laughed. “Told me to put goose grease on my feet.”

Herman said, “Goose grease? Would chicken fat do as well?”

“He said that too, but my feet ain’t feeling all that bad. I guess he’s a doctor. He’s mighty well spoken. Talks highfalutin as hell.”

“I taken notice of that my own self. But I reckon he is going to have to sleep down there with them Mexicans. We ain’t exactly set up for nightshirt company.”

Longarm looked around. “I can sling my sleeping roll anywhere in here. If that is all right with you.”

“That’s mighty all right with me, Marshal. Onliest thang is I don’t know where to put Miss Rita Ann.”

Longarm said, “Well, I seen a divan in your front room. She ain’t very big. Couldn’t you give her a blanket and let her bed down on that?”

Higgins nodded. “Why, I don’t see why not. ‘Specially since she is connected to you.”

“I’d be obliged.”

Longarm calculated that they had been out in the common room drinking whiskey for about two hours when the door to the private quarters opened and Rita Ann came through followed by Mrs. Higgins. Longarm took a long look and said, “Well, now, that is more like it.”

The dress Rita Ann was wearing was of definite Spanish origin, but it fit her like it had been made for her. It was light blue and of some light, sleek material. It fit snugly around her waist and hips, and then flared out to a ruffled hem at the bottom. The bodice was a deep V cut, and the bosom of the dress was high, to lift Rita Ann’s breasts so they looked bigger and more erect. Longarm stared at the V of white, very lightly tanned skin with just the hint of Rita Ann’s breasts bulging into the opening. She had taken her hair down, and he saw it was a sleek, golden brown that caught the highlights from the kerosene lamps and threw them back.

Mrs. Higgins said, “Don’t she look purty!”

Mr. Higgins said, “Why, I can’t believe it’s the same girl.”

Rita Ann giggled. She said, “I’m just grateful to have a bath and be wearing clean underwear. Mrs. Higgins, I ain’t ever going to be able to thank you.”

Sylvia gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I never done nothin’, Rita Ann. And them clothes have just been laying around here doing nobody no good.” She said to Longarm, “There’s another dress and a skirt and blouse. This was just the dressiest of the bunch, so we thought we’d give you boys a treat.”

“It sure worked,” Longarm said. To Rita Ann he said, “Sure makes a difference.”

She walked over to him and whispered in his ear. “Yeah, but now I do feel like a hooker.”

She was wearing just a hint of perfume. He said, “Well, you don’t look like one. You look elegant. Mighty ladylike. And I’m glad to see you let your hair down.”

She leaned against the far end of the plank bar. “I’m glad you approve. I always like to please the boss.”

Higgins cleared his throat and got his big watch out of his vest pocket. He said, “Sylvie, do you know it is goin’ on fer ten o’clock? It’s a good ways past our bedtime. We can let Miss Rita Ann shake down on the divan, can’t we?”

“Oh, my goodness, yes. I can fix that up real comfortable. I got a eiderdown quilt, dear, that is warmer than a good man on a cold night. But, Herman, if I mean, if Mr. Long is going to sleep out here, you better build him up a fire in the fireplace. This room gets mighty cold at night, Ma-” She had almost made the mistake twice and it flustered her. She said quickly, “I’ll be goin’ and gettin’ your bedclothes, Rita Ann.”

“I’ll help.”

Longarm helped Higgins put some big log chunks on the fireplace dogs and get it all lit. Higgins said, “They bring us the wood in from down south whenever anybody thinks ‘bout it. Ain’t much to be found hereabouts.”

“I wouldn’t reckon,” Longarm said.

Higgins said, “I’m right sorry about the way my old woman nearly give the business away. I’ll speak right sharp to her about that.”

“No, don’t. No harm done and she has been mighty nice. Besides, it may not matter about the girl knowing. I might tell her myself in a couple of days. Except then she won’t take no more money from me.”

“I’d better get to bed, Marshal. We rise right early here. But I reckon you do too.”

Longarm walked back to the bar. “I’ll be ready for the coffee before it stops brewing.”

Higgins bade him good night, and then disappeared behind the door of his quarters. Longarm sat at the bar, nursing the last of a drink, wondering if Rita Ann would come out to bid him good night. Likely she wouldn’t. She’d think that the Higginses would notice and might not approve.

He was surprised five minutes later to see the Higginses’ door open and Rita Ann come through, closing it behind her. She came straight to him and leaned sideways against the bar, very near. He could smell that faint perfume she was wearing. She smiled. “Really like the dress?”

“I reckon,” he said, his voice a little husky. He took a quick drink of whiskey, trying not to let his imagination get to work.

She said, “I’d like to thank you for what you’ve done for me.”

He gave his head a quick shake, trying not to notice how the bosom of the dress cupped her breasts. He said, “No thanks needed. None wanted or expected.”

“I still want to thank you.” As she said it she leaned slightly closer.

He studied her for a second. “How, by punching my card?”

She frowned. “What?”

He shook his head quickly and poured some more whiskey in his glass. “Nothing. You want a drink?”

“No. I want to know what you meant.”

In spite of her denial he pulled over a fresh glass and splashed a little whiskey in it for her, and then added some water out of a pitcher. He pushed it in front of her. He said, “It’s nothing, just an old saying. Used to be a whorehouse down in Del Rio that would give cards out to their regular customers. Each card had ten little boxes on it, and every time a customer would come in the lady he was with would punch out one of the boxes, punch his card. When he had ten boxes punched the next time was free.” He shrugged. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

She was still frowning. “You damn sure shouldn’t have.”

He gave her a look. “You come out a while ago and said you felt like a hooker. I didn’t know it was such a touchy subject.”

“I was trying to tell you I wanted to thank you.”

“Well, how the hell else was I supposed to figure you meant it? What was you going to do, come over and offer to oil my saddle?”

“For all you know, I was going to offer to wash your shirts.”

“Mrs. Higgins already done that.”

“Oh? And what did you do for Mrs. Higgins?”

He looked around quickly. She had a small smile on her face. It made her look younger than she was. He said, “You over your little pout?”

She moved close enough that she could put her arms around his shoulders and cup her hands behind his neck. But she made no move to bring her face closer to his. She said, “I can’t figure out who the hell you are.”

He looked away. “I told you. I’m a businessman in the cattle trade.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve known businessmen and you’re not a thing like them. You’ve got too much of an air of, of authority about you. Even I can feel it, and Mr. and Mrs. Higgins act like you hung the moon. You act like a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. Are you some kind of boss of this stage line?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m sure not. I’m no more to this stage line than you are.”

“Then how come Mr. Higgins uses the telegraph for you?”

“He used it for you, didn’t he? Wired about your bag.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t tell him what to say and he didn’t come running when he got an answer.” She wrinkled her brow. “You’re somebody. I just don’t know who. I could tell that even Peabody felt it, the way he got to his feet.”

“That was for you. Standing for a lady.”

“No. He didn’t get up until you started talking.”

He sighed. “Lady, you got you some kind of a big imagination.”

“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe not. I may not be the smartest thing on two feet, but I ain’t just come to town for the county fair either.”

“Drink your drink.”

“Are you going to let me thank you?”

He turned and looked into her eyes. They were light gray, hard to see clearly in the lamplight. It made him think of Doctor Peabody’s eyes. He still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with them. But he put Peabody out of his mind. This girl was here and very close. He could smell and feel the femaleness of her. He said, “Take a look around. You see any place private? And so far as outside, I don’t know about you but I ain’t going to take my clothes off out there. It’s cold as a well-digger’s ass. Besides, I’ve told you you don’t owe me anything.”

She leaned her head closer, bringing her face only a few inches from his. “What if I was to tell you that it ain’t got nothing to do with thanks. What if I was to tell you it was me. I told you I got that feeling the first time I saw you.”

He jerked his head away. “I appreciate the thought, but I invite you to look around again. Ain’t much privacy here.”

She smiled. “Oh, I reckon something can be worked out. Where you going to spread your bedroll?”

He nodded toward the far back corner where the fireplace was. There was about a six-foot space between the end of the big table and the roaring fire. He said, “Why, over there. Why?”

“You want me to help you spread your roll?”

He shook his head. “I been able to do that for myself for quite a long time. Never needed no help before.”

“I think you need help. And I’m the girl can give it.” She brought her lips to his. Gently her tongue forced its way into his mouth, and her arms tightened around his neck. For a long moment they kissed. He could feel a pounding in his temple and feel desire rising through his body. When she pulled back he was panting slightly. He said, “What in hell did you do that for? Get me all aroused and then nothing can be done. Hell!”

“We’ll see,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him again, a brief but passionate kiss that brought his arousal up another notch. Then she stepped back. “Put your bedroll down. Sleep tight.”

He felt the light touch of her hands on the back of his neck disappear, and then, before he could reach out for her, she had turned and was gone. In a few steps she reached the door to the Higginses’ living quarters, opened the door, and slipped inside. He saw the door firmly close behind her. “Son of a bitch!” he said in a half whisper. She had left him feeling like an unexploded firecracker. Taken all in all, he’d just as soon she’d kept her match to herself and not lit his fuse if she wasn’t going to take it all the way. But then, he thought, maybe she intended that the kiss be her thanks. If that was the case, she set a mighty high store by her kisses.

He said “Hell!” out loud, and then turned his glass up and finished his drink. Hers sat untouched. It was watered, but he didn’t care. He took it down in two gulps, and then got off the high stool he’d been sitting on. It was late. And getting later. The best thing he could do was spread his bedroll and get what sleep he could. He crossed to his saddle, untied his rolled blankets, and took them and his saddle over in front of the fire. The stones of the fireplace were just starting to heat up and spread warmth. It felt good. The inside of the station had grown cold as the night had worn on.

He got his blankets arranged to where he was in the shadow of the end of the table and a couple of yards from the fire. He didn’t want to get too warm at first and then freeze when the fire burned down. He set his saddle at the end of his bedroll for a pillow. After that he looked around. There were still two lanterns burning, and he went to each and turned down the wick until they went out. Then, by the light of the fireplace, he went back to his bed, sat down on the hard floor, and took his boots off. He was pleased that his feet were not as tender as he had expected. He thought, however, that he would leave his socks on for extra protection.

He took off his gunbelt and laid it carefully beside his saddle. His gunbelt featured a big silver concave belt buckle. It was big and it was concave for a reason. Inside the buckle, held by a steel clip, was a two-shot .38-caliber derringer. He made sure the little gun was still secured safely before he tucked the gunbelt half under his saddle with the big Colt .44-caliber revolver with the six-inch barrel sticking out where it was quick to hand. After that he took off his hat and his shirt and laid them ready to hand. He unbuckled the belt that held up his jeans and unbuttoned the first few buttons, but he didn’t take them off. Normally he would have slept naked, but he might not be up and dressed before the Higginses came out. Even though he wouldn’t be as comfortable, he figured it was better to at least keep his pants on. He got under two blankets with just one and his slicker between the hard, wooden floor. It didn’t much matter to him. He could sleep on the top of a flagpole if he was tired enough, and he was plenty tired after his trip across the desert.

He got himself settled, lying on his side, facing the fire. Normally he went right off to sleep, but the girl was bothering him. She could have gone a month or more without getting him as fired up as she had. Well, he thought, maybe she didn’t know any better and was just trying to be nice. And then there was always Phoenix. They would both be heading in that direction, and a good opportunity might present itself to take the situation beyond a kiss that had been like liquid fire.

He squirmed around and tried to turn his mind in a different direction. He thought of Carl Lowe, wondering where he was and just what job he had been broken out of prison to perform. Maybe he hadn’t been assisted in the break, and even if he had, maybe it hadn’t been for a purpose. But Longarm was damn hard pressed to believe anything to the contrary. Somewhere, someplace up the road was a safe or a strongbox just waiting for Carl Lowe’s touch. Longarm felt extremely frustrated that all he could do was lie on the floor in a relay station and wait.

And then there was Doctor Peabody. Longarm could not imagine anyone, even a doctor from Baltimore, Maryland, trying to perform an examination on a passel of whores in a moving stage in the middle of the Arizona badlands. And doing it just before they were to get to a relay station where he could be conveniently put off the stage. He was supposed to have been drunk, but Longarm didn’t believe that anyone ever got that drunk.

He lifted his head off his saddle and shook it. Hell, either he’d had too much of Higgins’s bad whiskey, or he was getting an imagination like a five-year-old kid. He was jumpy, sure enough, and Miss Rita Ann hadn’t helped matters in the slightest with her kiss and her promise. Hell!

Just then a movement caught his eye in the dark. He raised his head again, peering through the dim light. He thought he’d seen the door to the Higginses’ quarters open, but his angle of view was bad.

Then something loomed into his vision. For a second he thought it was Mrs. Higgins. Then she spoke softly, and he realized it was Rita Ann, obviously wearing one of Mrs. Higgins’s sleeping gowns.

She came to the edge of his bedroll and looked down at him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Then, as he stared mesmerized, she slowly pulled the flannel nightgown over her head and stood there before him, naked in the flickering firelight.

Chapter 4

In the glow of the flickering fire he could see her white skin as it was touched here and there by light and shadow. She started to kneel down beside him, but he said, “No, don’t. Stay like that for a moment. I want to look at you.”

He sat up, the blankets falling down to his waist, and his eyes focused on her. He let his eyes travel up and down her, savoring her erect breasts that were about the size of small grapefruits. But they came quickly to a shapely point, ending in small, dark nipples set in big, round rosettes. When the fire blazed up, he could see that they were crinkling and puckering, either with the chill of the air or with her excitement.

Her legs were long and straight. She was standing with them apart so that the place where they met ended in a little inverted U rather than a V. The V was her auburn-colored bush that ran at least three or four inches up her belly. She said, “I’m cold.” He threw the covers back.

She said, pointing, “You’ve got your jeans on. I thought you’d be ready.”

As fast as he could he unbuttoned the last of the buttons, and then began shucking his pants. She said, “What about your underwear?”

“Don’t wear any.”

“That’s good.” She knelt down beside him, took the end of the legs of his jeans, and jerked them off. Then carefully, she put her hand on his chest and pushed him back. She said, “You just lay there. I want to do this the way I like.”

They were both whispering. He said, “What about the Higginses?”

“They’re snoring. You just lay there and let me do it. You don’t yell, do you?”

He was starting to have to grit his teeth, the desire was rising so strong in him. He could smell the musk of her even though she was three feet from his nose. He lay back with his head on the seat of his saddle. By looking over his cheekbones he could just see what she was doing. She had straddled his legs, down just above his ankles. He saw her bend over, and then a delicious thrill ran all through him, making him shudder, as she took him in her mouth. He let out a long, low “Aaaaaaaah.”

She lifted her head. “You like that?”

“Oh, yes,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, yes, oh, yes.”

She whispered, “You’ll like this too.”

He felt his testicles suddenly go warm, and then felt sensations shooting through them, each in turn, as she took them in her mouth and bathed them with her tongue. He let out another sigh, straining to keep it as quiet as he could. He said, whispering, “You better not do too much of that.”

And then she was taking his member in her mouth again and slowly rotating her lips up and down it, and then half around and then back half around. He could feel himself swelling toward a climax. With an effort he fought down the feeling. “Oh,” he said, to warn her. “Oh, oh, oh.”

Silently she went to all fours and crept up his body. She came up to his face and lowered her lips to his, and for a moment locked him with her mouth and her tongue. He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed them down. It was clear she wanted to do it exactly as she wished. He lay there, his arms at his side, the ache in his groin growing, the pounding in his temple increasing, the desire inside him about to burst out.

Then she slowly started back down him, kissing his chest and then his stomach as she moved. Finally she stopped and raised up. He could clearly see the curly thatch that protected the pink insides of her vagina right over his member. Then, with a quick movement of her hand, she guided him inside her and settled down on him, taking all of him, taking him into her wetness and warmth. He let out a gasp and clenched his fists. Then, supported on her knees, she began to grind up and down and around, sometimes going slow and then suddenly making little short quick bursts up and down. All the time she held his eyes with that smile playing on her lips.

It was as if she could feel when he was just about to explode. Just as he’d reach the top, feeling there was no stopping, she’d suddenly cease her motion and hold very still, watching him. When it seemed he had subsided, she would start bringing him back up again. The fire was warm, but it was not the heat from the fire that was putting sweat on his face. He had never felt such delicious, painful ecstasy in all his life. The woman was playing him like a cat would a mouse.

She suddenly went through a quick series of grinds and then a burst of thrusts. He opened his mouth, about to make a soundless scream, when she abruptly stopped. He thought that now he would really scream, with anguish. He couldn’t take it any longer. And then she smiled. She said, “Now!”

But she didn’t move her hips. Instead, she somehow began milking him with the muscles she had inside her vagina, pulling him up and pushing him down. Squeezing him and releasing him. He was so sensitized that it took no more than a half a minute of the massaging before the world suddenly went black and then exploded in a torrent of flashes of yellow and red and orange. He could feel himself tumbling, quivering, shaking, rolling over and over and over. He could feel himself thrusting his middle toward the sky, trying to reach some unattainable target in the heavens. He strained and he strained and he strained.

Then, spent, he suddenly slumped back. For a second his head whirled, so that he didn’t know up from down or front from back. But a few seconds later he opened his eyes. He was panting hard, but other than that, seemed unhurt. She was smiling down at him. “Did that feel good?”

He was too short of breath to speak. All he could do was croak, “Goodness! My goodness.”

She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips. “Good night.”

Before he could say a word she was suddenly gone. He turned his head just in time to catch the motion of the Higginses’ door opening and closing. She was gone. Only the scent of her musk lingered to prove that she had been there.

He lay still for a few moments, slowly coming back to himself. He finally realized he was freezing to death with the blankets thrown back and his bare skin exposed to the chilly air. He jumped up, took two small logs off the wood stack, and threw them on the fire, jumping out of the way of the shower of sparks. Then, as quickly as he could, he pulled his jeans on, not bothering to button them back up. Finally he lay down and got under his two blankets. He laid his head back on the seat of his saddle and stared up at the ceiling, now visible by the glow from the replenished fire. Hell, he thought, did I dream that? Was she really out here? Did she just milk me and milk me dry? Did I ever even touch her? His hands ached for the feel of her breasts, her belly, her thatch, the warmth and caress of her vagina. But they were empty. He had touched her with his eyes and his imagination, but nothing else. She had been the ringmaster. All he’d done was lay back and be astonished.

He shook his head. The girl was no hooker, but if she wanted to be she could make a fortune. He’d never known a woman who could do what Rita Ann could. She could tease you and tempt you and hold your hand just away from the cookie plate, and then, all of a sudden, gorge you until you didn’t think anymore. She was truly something. He remembered her in the gray gown, remembered thinking how unremarkable and almost dowdy she’d seemed, about as exciting as an old-maid schoolteacher. Well, he wasn’t going to think that anymore.

With an effort he took his mind off her and turned on his side and forced his mind to go blank. As it was he was dead for sleep and, even if he hurried, he was probably going to get no more than five hours’ worth.

He awoke to the sound of someone moving around on the floor near his bed. He opened his eyes carefully, not sure for a second where he was or what time it was. He saw a pair of boots and then some old khaki pants, and looked up. It was Higgins putting more logs on the fire. He could see that it was still dark out, but the old man appeared to be up for the morning. Longarm sat up, rubbing at his eyes.

Higgins said, “Marshal, you awake? Hope I didn’t wake you up slinging these blamed logs around, but the old woman wanted this part of the place warmed up before her and the girl come out. She thought we’d all eat breakfast out here.”

“What time is it?” Longarm’s mouth felt like glue. “Hell, I was sleeping hard.”

“‘Bout half past five. But you can nod on off again if you be a mind. It’ll be a good half a hour ‘fore Sylvie can get breakfast fixed. Though she’s got Rita Ann a-he’pin’ her. That’s a right pert girl, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Longarm said. He yawned. Higgins was dressed in the tops of his long underwear with just his suspenders to hold up the old pair of pants he was wearing. The fire was heating up, and Longarm threw back the covers and went to hunting for his socks. When he’d found them, he pulled one on each foot and then put on his boots. He picked up his shirt and stood up. “I better move my bedroll before you set it on fire.”

Higgins looked around quickly. “I gettin’ fahr on you?”

“Naw. I just said it for a good excuse to get my old bones moving.” He began rolling up his blankets and slicker. He said, “Wonder about the doctor.”

“What about the doctor?”

“Wonder where he slept.”

Higgins turned around. “With the Mexicans, I’d reckon. I made it plain as paint to him that we wasn’t no hotel an’ didn’t have no room fer overnight guests. Said he was welcome to as much of the prairie as he could occupy.”

“Wonder what he thought about me and Rita Ann.”

Higgins turned away, dusting his hands. “Wa’l, that wouldn’t be any of his business. He come in here like a fine gentleman like yoreself an’ matters might of been different. But he staggers round here tryin’ to get free whiskey, he can go to blazes for all I care. I reckon we’ll eat on this end of the table, close to the fire. It won’t be quite sunup by the time Sylvie gets it on the table. And shore as hell won’t have warmed up none.”

“Wonder how the doctor made out last night. It was some cold, I would reckon.”

“Pshaw!” Higgins said. “Tanked up as he was, he’d of melted a heavy snowfall. Nosir, that man couldn’t have frozen in a snowbank. I wouldn’t go to lightin’ no matches around him. Nosiree, Bob. An’ if he was in here I’d make damn sure he never got close to the fahr.”

Longarm walked over close to the bar to get away from the now-roaring fire. He expected that Higgins had either gotten caught up in his own words and forgotten what he was doing, or was planning on heating the outside as well. The bottle of whiskey was sitting where he’d left it the night before, and even though it wasn’t daylight yet, he poured a little in a glass, added some water, and then took a mouthful and swished it around to clean his mouth up a little. He’d have liked to wash his face and the back of his neck, but the only water was at the back of the Higginses’ bedroom, and that was blocked off by whatever the ladies were doing.

He said to Higgins, “Don’t you reckon you ought to open the front door?”

The old man came over, sweating lightly. “What would I want to do that for?”

“Might be a rattlesnake out there is about froze. Might save his life.”

Higgins wheeled around and looked at the fire. “You know, I might have got that blaze built up a little. By golly, you are right. Gonna be too hot to eat at that end of the table. I reckon I had better open the front door. Let some air in here to mix around.”

He had barely gotten it open when Sylvia and Rita Ann came out of the household quarters, each of them carrying a platter. Higgins had lit several lamps, and Longarm got a good look at Rita Ann. She was wearing a flowered skirt and a plain white short-sleeved blouse. The skirt was short, coming just above her knees, and the blouse was of a thin material and tight, accentuating the shape and erectness of her breasts. She gave Longarm a sly smile and said, “Good morning, Mr. Long.”

“Good morning,” he said. He stared at her, thinking of how she’d looked in the gray dress the day before and then how she’d been that night. She was like a stick of dynamite, just lying there in a brown paper wrapper until you set it off. And then you got the surprise. And the explosion. And the fireworks. He kept staring at her, hoping she’d make some kind of sign so he’d be certain he hadn’t dreamed the night before, but she went serenely on with helping Mrs. Higgins lay breakfast.

Mrs. Higgins said, “Herman, whatever has possessed you?” She was fanning herself with an empty plate. “I thought it was hot in that kitchen but, laws, you have set the very fires of Hell loose in this place!”

Higgins looked guilty. “I got the front door open. She’ll cool off right quick.”

“Well, we can’t eat till it does. Laws, a person couldn’t put a bite of food in their mouth in such heat. Wouldn’t be healthy.”

Longarm went over to his saddlebags and got out his toothbrush and a bar of soap. He asked Mrs. Higgins if he might go in the bathroom and clean up a little.

She said, “Why, bless you, yes. Rita Ann will show you where they’s some bakin’ soda and salt for your teeth, won’t you, dear?”

Rita Ann looked over at Longarm. “I’d be right happy to,” she said.

He followed her through the door and into the Higginses’ quarters, and then through the second door and the bedroom. There was a small door off to the right that he had never noticed before. She led him into a little shack that he guessed had been added on to the main building. It was half bathroom and half kitchen, separated by a blanket curtain. The kitchen had a big cast-iron range and a sink set in the middle of drainboards and sideboards that ran the length of the little room. She led him over to the sink, which was armed with a water pump. With a lithe motion she reached up in a cupboard and came down with a box of salt and another of baking soda. To that she added a glass. While she pumped the glass full she turned to him with a smile and said, “How did you sleep last night, Mister Long?”

He said dryly, “I had the feeling something rousted me out around midnight. I can’t be sure because it came and went so fast.”

She handed him the glass. “I didn’t think it came so fast. Maybe left quick.”

He gave her a look, and dipped his toothbrush in the water and then in the soda and the salt. She was standing very near him, with the both of them facing each other while turned sideways to the sink. Without looking, she reached down and unbuttoned the middle buttons of his jeans and thrust her hand in. He had the toothbrush in his mouth, and could only jerk and make a muffled sound in surprise. Still looking him straight in the face, she began to fondle him. He could feel himself becoming aroused, feel the swelling starting like a rutting bull. He took the brush out of his mouth and said, “Rita Ann, are you crazy? Mrs. Higgins could come in at any second.”

But she paid him no heed. All of a sudden she dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth. He gasped and almost bit the end off his toothbrush. His mouth was full of soda and salt and he was suddenly gasping for breath.

Holding him firmly by the backs of his thighs, she began to piston her head back and forth, taking his whole member inside her mouth with each stroke. He gasped and flung his toothbrush on the counter and looked down. Her blouse had gaped open, and he could see her firm breasts tipped with the small nipples like raspberries. He put his hands on her head, making a halfhearted attempt to stop her, but it was too late. He could feel the crescendo of passion rising and rising in him until there was no way to stop it. He was gasping for air, clutching at her fine, silken hair. He said, “Rita Ann—you’ve got to-” He never finished. The fire she had set blew out of control and the whole mountain went up, erupting as the streaks of red and yellow and orange flames flashed in front of his eyes. He sagged sideways, clutching at the counter for support, too weak to stand on his feet.

A time passed. It could have been a moment, it could have been ten minutes. He didn’t know. The next thing he knew she was standing up, putting him back in his jeans, and buttoning him up. She said, as he gasped and hung on to the counter, “You better hurry up and wash up or you’ll be late for breakfast. I’ve got to get these biscuits out of the oven and out to the table.” Then she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. While he hung on, his breathing gradually returning to normal, he heard the oven door clang and then she was calling out as she left, “Hurry up now, Mr. Long. They got honey to go with the biscuits. I sure hope it has cooled off in there.”

When he could, he straightened up and looked toward the door through which she had disappeared. She was, he thought, the damnedest woman he’d ever run into. She left him completely flummoxed. What she’d done to him had been done before, but never in the kitchen, and never when he was trying to brush his teeth, and never with two other people waiting breakfast. “Son of a bitch!” he said out loud. “Between carrying in the bacon and the biscuits.”

It was still too hot, and they had to eat at the far end of the table down near the door. It was just coming daylight as they sat down to the meal. They had something Mrs. Higgins called “egg loaf.” It was a lot of eggs mixed with some flour and baking powder and a little milk and then baked. It was served by the big spoonful. Longarm thought it was good, though he could have done just as well with plain fried eggs. But Higgins raved about it, so Longarm figured that was why it was on the menu. They had thick slices of bacon and biscuits with honey. There was also cream for their coffee. Mrs. Higgins said, “We keep three milk cows, but it’s so hard gettin’ the company to send down enough of the right kind of feed and hay that one or the other of ‘em is always going dry.

Longarm ate, but he also spent a good deal of time staring at Rita Ann. Mrs. Higgins said, “I tell you, this girl is just a joy. Help around the kitchen? My goodness, you have no idea how good she is in that kitchen.”

Oh, yes I do, Longarm thought silently. But he said, staring at Rita Ann, “Is that right?”

“Just like the daughter I never had.”

“Daughters can be just full of surprises,” Longarm said, still looking at Rita Ann. She smiled back at him, and then reached over and poured his coffee cup full.

When the meal was over, Longarm took his coffee and went over to the bar and drank off enough to where he could put a fair amount of whiskey in it. Then he returned to the table. The women were up and clearing away. Higgins was relaxing with his own cup, sweetened with honey. He said, nodding toward Longarm’s coffee, “I can’t take the whiskey right off. It goes agin my stomach.”

Longarm took a sip. It had become clear daylight outside and the sun was already making its presence felt. If Higgins’s fire didn’t die down soon, the combination of the two would make it mighty warm in the room. Longarm said, “It’s a bad habit. But I’ve got myself so stove up over the years, takes a little doing to get my old bones to moving. guess I use the whiskey about like you’d use liniment. Or a switch to a mule.”

Higgins looked toward the door. “Going to be a hot one.”

“Now when exactly is that northbound stage due?”

“Supposed to get in here tomorrow at three in the afternoon. Course they never do. But they generally run pretty close, half an hour, give or take.”

Longarm studied his coffee cup. “Mr. Higgins, I want to ask you a question I know you are not supposed to answer, but I got to ask it and you got to answer because it is government business. Does your stage line carry gold bullion?”

Higgins laughed. “I can answer that easy enough. Lord, yes. Don’t you see, that was the whole purpose why the line was set up. Passengers is just a kind of extra freight. Not that we don’t carry considerable freight. We do. Sometimes they’ll hook up two stages in tandem and put maybe twenty mules on and carry a passel of freight.”

“So they ship bullion? Pure bullion?”

“Yessir. Smelted down right there at the mine so’s to make it as small a load as possible. They tell me they even get the silver outten it so’s it be pure gold.”

“How long has this been going on?”

Higgins shook his head. “Wa’l I can’t say prezactly, but a good little while. Three, four years. Soon as them mines down there in them mountains close to the border commenced paying off, why, the company went to thrashing around to find a way to get the gold north to the mint to sell it to the government. I believe they first off tried sending it in armed caravans, but that never worked. Might as well have held up a sign tellin’ the world they was transporting gold. Mexican bandits liked to have got fat off such stunts. Lot of men got killed. Finally the company set up this stage line. Course they’d of much rather had a railroad, but ain’t nobody got the money to lay track across some of that country. So they started in the stage business.”

Longarm said, “And the idea is that nobody knows which run is carrying the gold, is that about right?”

The old man nodded. “Ain’t no flies on you, Marshal. But that ain’t the biggest trick. The strongbox they send it in is what is the tough nut to crack. Why, they ain’t a chisel made can get through that hardened steel. Hell, the safe itself weighs near five hundred pounds, and you add a half million dollars worth of gold to that and you got yourself a load. Ain’t ten men, if everyone of ‘em could get a holt, could lift it. And ain’t no way to get past the lock. Nosir. They got a key down yonder they lock it with and one up yonder in Buckeye they unlock it with. In between times she stays shut tighter’n an old maid’s cookie jar.”

Longarm thought, unless you have a Mr. Carl Lowe handy. But he said, “How can the stage handle that kind of weight?”

“They built for it. Extra stout with extra wide-rimmed wheels.”

“Don’t the ones bearing the gold cut a deeper track?”

Higgins laughed. “Ever’ one of them stages is carrying a safe. And ever’ safe has got something in it. Some of ‘em got gold inside and some of ‘em got a load of lead.” He gave Longarm a wink. “Ain’t no flies on them folks pays me a salary. That’s why we use such big teams and have the relay stations so close together. Regular stage might use just four mules, maybe six, and put the stations forty miles apart before they changed teams. Nosir, this here is a first-class outfit.”

“You ever been held up?”

Higgins said, “Well, I can’t speak about that, Marshal, because I don’t know. But I do know that the company let it be advertised far and wide what kind of safes they were using and just what a tough nut they were. Newspapers carried articles about how the safes had to be loaded and unloaded with a block and tackle. What’s the good of holding up one of our stages if you can’t make off with the goods?”

Not, Longarm thought to himself, unless you’ve got a man who can open the safe on the spot and then all you got to transport is the gold. It made sense to him. The only problem was that he didn’t have the slightest idea where Carl Lowe was or when he and his gang, and Longarm had no doubt a gang of some kind had been formed, intended to strike.

“Who knows there is gold being loaded down at the south end?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know the who.”

“Do you know when a shipment is coming through? I’m just asking.”

“Good heavens, no! My stars and garters. Ain’t but damn few knows that. None of the drivers or guards knows. I guess the men who load it up know, but they don’t know till the last minute, and I’ve heard they get locked up for the next twenty-four hours after they’ve built a load. Course that may just be talk.”

“Then who does know?”

“Well, I reckon they is two or three fellers down in the south knows. And then they is a couple up in Buckeye on the lookout fer it. Least that is what I heered.”

“How do they know?”

Higgins sipped at his coffee and picked at bread and biscuit crumbs on the table. “They say they wire up from the south to the folks in Buckeye. But that’s just talk.”

“But wouldn’t that put the word out? Telegraphing like that? Everybody on the line would know.”

“Aw, they supposed to use some kind of code. They is messages goin’ back and forth all the time so you never know which one is about the gold. They might wire up to Buckeye and say they is runnin’ short on pickaxes and that might be the signal the gold is going the next run.”

Longarm drained his cup and stood up. He said, “Herman, I got a bad feeling that the stage coming in tomorrow is not carrying lead bars.”

Higgins looked instantly distressed. “Aw, no. I shore hope it is. Seein’ as you and Miss Rita Ann gonna be on that stage. You shore?”

Longarm shook his head. “A hunch. Just a hunch. But it is a strong one.”

“What had we better get to doing?”

Longarm smiled. “Nothing I know of, Herman. It’s just a hunch. I’m not recommending you wire down to the border and tell them to hold off. Frankly, it’s mainly about that fellow I had you telegraph about. The one broke out of prison. He’s got me jumpy. Likely I am fighting my head. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Higgins stared at him for a second. “Man says they is a rattlesnake likely loose in the house, an’ then says not to worry. My stars and garters, Marshal, robbin’ means guns and guns means killin’. I got my old woman to worry about.”

Longarm shook his head. “If there is any robbery planned, it won’t be done at a relay station. It’ll take place out yonder, out in the big middle of nowhere, so there aren’t any witnesses. But get it out of your mind, Herman. Besides, I’m here.”

Herman nodded his head slowly. “Yep. That you are, Marshal. For which I thank my lucky stars.”

The morning passed slowly. Longarm saw very little of Rita Ann. She seemed occupied in the back with Mrs. Higgins, sewing or something. Higgins said they were working on the clothes the Spanish lady had left to make them a better fit. “You know them women. Get a needle in their hand and a piece of cloth and nothin’ won’t do till they’ve changed it all about.”

Mid-morning Longarm walked outside for a look around. He walked to the back and saw the two Mexicans working with the mules, sorting them out. He figured it was a considerable job adjusting harness for that many mules. Not that they were of a much different size. As a bunch they were pretty uniform, but there was no harness made that would fit all the mules in a team. Longarm figured the Mexicans tried to keep them bunched as to size, but that also was not such an easy task because he knew that a team, even horses, had to be temperamentally suited, and if they weren’t, they would never pull together.

He walked over to the corral fence and watched the Mexicans working. It was clear they knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it with an economy of motion and as little excitement to the animals as possible. Up close the mules looked bigger. Longarm knew that most people thought of Spanish mules as small up against, say, a saddle horse. But they weren’t that much smaller. A big horse might weigh eleven or twelve hundred pounds, with the majority being closer to a thousand. But he calculated that the mules, the majority of them, were not much more than a hundred pounds less than that. And mules, for some reason, were stronger than horses. They weren’t as fast, but they could outlast and outwork nearly any horse you put one up against.

Longarm looked down the fence line to the shack. He didn’t see Doctor Peabody. Likely he was inside either nursing a hangover or nursing the bottle of mescal. Maybe both. He wondered what kind of arrangements the little man had made with the Mexicans to take him in. According to Higgins, he was broke. Maybe he wasn’t as broke as he let on. Longarm thought about looking in on the good doctor, but decided against it. Doctor Peabody was a mystery, and he might turn out to be the wrong kind of mystery, but Longarm was content to wait and see how the cards fell out.

They had ham steaks and mashed potatoes and redeye gravy and canned string beans for lunch. There were also corn dodgers and fresh butter. When Longarm commented on the pleasure of the butter, Mrs. Higgins said, “Laws, that reminds me. I got a churn full of milk clabbering. I don’t get to churning, it will go sour just sure as shooting.”

Rita Ann said, “I’ll be glad to do it, Mrs. Higgins.”

Mrs. Higgins patted her arm with her plump hand. “Bless you, girl, you are going to spoil me rotten.”

Longarm gave her a look just as he was about to take a bite of cornbread. “Yeah, Rita Ann, you are just so sweet sugar wouldn’t melt in your mouth.”

She cocked her head and gave him a crooked little smile. “You should know, Mister Long, being my employer.”

“I wish you’d keep reminding both of us about that. One of us seems to have a tendency to forget.”

“Good vittles, Mrs. Higgins,” Higgins said.

Longarm watched the thin man shovel down the food, and said, “Herman, I don’t know where it all goes. I’ve seen you put away them groceries now for three meals, but I ain’t seen none of it show.”

“He’s a fidget,” Mrs. Higgins announced. “Just fidgets night and day. Commences fidgeting in the mornin’ an’ don’t let up till he’s snorin’.”

Higgins gave her a dark look. “You’d fidget too if you had the weight on your shoulders I got on mine. Never can tell what might be about to happen round here.”

Longarm cleared his throat and gave him a hard look. Higgins dropped his head and looked guilty. He said, “Canned beans is all right, but I’ll be glad of spring and be able to get the real thing.”

After lunch Longarm caught Rita Ann by the arm and walked her out the front door before she could disappear into the back with Mrs. Higgins. She put her hand over her eyes against the sun. “It’s too hot,” she said.

“Not as hot as some other things I know.”

She gave him an innocent look. “Why, whatever are you talking about, Mr. Long?”

“Brushing my teeth.”

“Didn’t you get your teeth washed this morning?”

“Well, yeah, once I got my strength back. But it seemed like I had a little interference there for a few moments.”

They had stopped a few yards from the front of the station. She said, “Didn’t you like it?”

In spite of himself he blushed slightly. “Well, of course I liked it. Any man who wouldn’t like that would have to be dead from the waist down. But look here, what makes you slip up on a man like that?”

She shrugged. “I just like what I like when I want it.”

“I don’t even know your last name.”

She gave him an impish look. “Would that make it better if you did? Would you be able to say, ‘Oh, Miss Smith, that’s wonderful.’” She said it in a high falsetto and laughed.

“Damn you, girl,” he swore. “You are the beatenest woman I ever run into. Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do when you get to Phoenix? You’ll still be in the same fix.”

She cocked her head and eyed him. “You gave me to understand that I had a job with you. How come I won’t have a job of employment in Phoenix as well as here? And where is all them things I’m supposed to be writing down?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Well of course you’ve got a job with me. The only thing is, I got to take off for some rough country in New Mexico. Look at a ranch out there.”

“Well, where are your headquarters? Can’t I go there and wait? Do whatever work I’m supposed to do? Ain’t they in Phoenix? Big cattleman like you ought to have a headquarters in a going town like Phoenix.”

“I thought you didn’t believe I was a cattleman.”

“I don’t, but as long as you want to say it, it’s my job to agree with you. Isn’t that my job, to be agreeable?”

He cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “Truth be,” he said, “my headquarters are up in Colorado. In Denver.”

“I bet it’s nice there. Think I would like it?”

He looked away. “Oh, hell, Rita Ann, now you are teasing me.”

“No, I’m just trying to get you to say that the money you gave me was a handout. Wasn’t it? You didn’t think I’d take it if you didn’t make up some cock-and-bull story about a job.”

He swerved his head back to her, stung. He said with heat in his voice, “Let’s just wait and see, missy, whether there’s a job or not.” He dug down in his jeans and came out with his roll. He peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and tried to put it in her hand.

She put her arms behind her back. “I don’t need any more money. And I didn’t do what I did for money. I did it because I liked it and because I wanted to.”

“You are going to take this,” he said. The scooped top of her blouse was slightly open. Before she could react he shoved the bill down inside. Then he stepped back. “Just like you, I did that because I like to and because I want to. You can’t just have it your way.”

She studied him through slitted eyes for a second, and then she stepped up close to him. She put her hand on his cheek and stretched up and kissed him softly on the lips. She left her hand there for a second. “You’re a sweet man.” Then she dropped her hand, turned on her heels, and walked back into the station.

He said, “Hey, wait a minute! I still don’t know your last name.”

Over her shoulder she said, “I have to go churn now. I’ll tell you some other time.”

Longarm stared after her, biting his lip. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, a broken, woebegone, timid little woman in a dowdy gray dress had gotten a hand up on him. He didn’t know the how or the why of it, but he was damned if he was going to let the situation continue. When he danced, he liked to be the one doing the leading, even if he wasn’t certain what the tune was.

It was late afternoon. Longarm was sitting in the Higginses’s front room reading a week-old newspaper when he heard talking from the common room. It was men’s voices, several of them. He recognized Mister Higgins’s high-pitched gabble, but the others were strange. He wondered if the doctor had come in to try and cadge some real whiskey, but there was more than one strange voice and he knew it couldn’t be the Mexicans. He got up from the easy chair he’d been sitting in and walked over to the door that opened on the common room. He peeked through the little slit that the door made where it was hinged to the wall. It wasn’t much of a view, but the men were moving around and, one by one, they came into view.

They didn’t appear to be anybody special, just three rough-looking characters who’d come in out of the sun. Higgins was behind the bar, pouring out whiskey for them. Longarm strained to get a sight of any of their gun rigs. One turned in just the right way, and Longarm could see that he was wearing a cutaway holster and a well-cared-for large-caliber revolver. But the thing that caught his attention was that the man had a tiedown on his holster. A tiedown was a little leather thong attached to the outside of the holster. A man could pull it up and loop it over the butt of his revolver to keep the gun from jostling out when he was riding in rough country or doing anything else that might cause the gun to fall out. A cutaway holster did not envelop much of the revolver, just the barrel and about halfway up the cylinders. It was made that way to facilitate getting the gun into play as quickly as possible. Men who did business with revolvers wore cutaway holsters, and men who did business with guns in which they were constantly on the move and had to be ready for anything, wore tiedowns on their cutaway holsters. These were not ordinary cowhands or workingmen passing through. A cowhand wore a holster that nearly swallowed his pistol. Since he seldom needed it, other than to shoot an occasional rattlesnake or drop the lead steer in a stampede, he was more concerned with not losing it. But these men did not want to lose an instant in the use of their weapons.

Longarm could feel little warning signals going off in his head. What were three gunmen—and that’s what they appeared to be—doing showing up at a relay station in the middle of nowhere? A relay station that might be passing along a half-a-million-dollar bullion shipment? And with Carl Lowe just escaped from prison? Longarm did not like the way matters were shaping up at all.

He wanted a look at their horses. He wanted to see if he could tell how far they had come, what quality animals they were, and if the men were leading pack animals. But there was no way out of the Higginses’ living quarters except through the door he was at, and he did not want the men to get a look at him, not just yet. He turned and went into the back where Mrs. Higgins and Rita Ann were taking turns working at the churn. He got Mrs. Higgins’s attention and motioned her to follow him. He led her into the front room with her wearing a worried look. “Is something gone amiss, Mar-Mr. Long?”

He said, “Sylvia, there are some men out at the bar drinking whiskey. I need to speak to Herman, but I don’t want the men to know I’m here. I want you to go out and, just as casual as you can, tell Herman you need him in the back for a moment. Can you do that?”

Her eyes got round and she began to look nervous. “Why, why, why, I reckon I can, Is we fixin’ to be held up? Robbed? Murdered?”

He shook his head. “No, no, Sylvia. Nothing like that. This is just ordinary peace-officer work. But I need to speak to Herman without anyone being the wiser. And I don’t see no use in you telling Rita Ann about this little errand.”

She hesitated, wiping her hands on her apron. “Just tell him I need to see him back here?”

“Yes. Something about the churn. Tell him it will only take a moment.”

She sighed, looking as if she were being sent on a dangerous mission. “Well, I’ll shore try.”

He watched as she slipped through the door and then went up to the bar and tapped her husband on the shoulder. For a moment he frowned and shook his head, but then she folded her arms and gave him a look and he began to nod. Longarm saw him say something to the three men, then come around the bar end and follow his wife toward the door.

Chapter 5

Higgins came through the door intent on following his wife. Longarm grabbed his arm as he passed and then put a finger to his lips. He stepped over and shut the door to the common room, and then crossed to the door to the Higginses’ bedroom and shut that door. Higgins was staring at him, mystified. Longarm said, “Who are those men out there?”

Higgins shrugged. “Jus’ some fellers ridin’ through, I reckon.”

“Never saw them before?”

Higgins shook his head. “Not that I recollect.”

“You get many strangers passing through here like that?”

Higgins scratched his head and frowned. “is this law work? Is this serious bid’ness?”

“It could be. Did you get a look at their horses?”

“I seen ‘em when they rode up. Plain ol’ horses, near as I can figure. Didn’t look stolen if that be what you mean. Though I wouldn’t know how to tell a stolen horse. I was standin’ out front so I seen ‘em from a patch away.”

“Which way were they coming from?”

Higgins frowned in concentration. “I’d say more from the west, though it be hard to say. They is some bad ground due south of here, so they might have swung around that.”

“They have any pack animals with them?”

“No, now that you mention it, they didn’t.” Higgins scratched his head harder. “Which is a strange thing. Most folks don’t get off in this country without a pack animal totin’ some extra water and vittles.”

“You never answered when I asked you if you get many strangers passing through here.”

Higgins stared at the door to the common room as if there might be an answer there. “Wa’l, now and again, from time to time, different folks who have had bid’ness down south at the mines come north by this route. Generally the miners take the stage, but now and again a sportin’ genn’lman or a drummer hawkin’ some gadget or a cowhand will come this way, riding from station to station.” He stared at the door again. “Come to think of it, that do be a little strange, three hombres jus’ showin’ up like that out of nowhere. Wonder who in hell they are?”

“What’d they want?”

Higgins was looking more and more concerned. “Wa’l, first thing they wanted a drink of whiskey, an’ then they wanted to know if I had any beds. When I said no, they wondered if they could spread they bedrolls in the lee of the buildin’ in case a wind come up. Said they’d like to make a fahr and would be glad to pay for the wood ‘cause they knowed it must come pretty dear in a place like this.”

“Didn’t ask to eat?”

“Yeah, they done that.” Higgins nodded. “I tol’ ‘em my old woman could fix them some grits and beans and maybe a pan of cornbread. Nothin’ fancy. They said that would be fine.” Higgins glanced at the door again. “Seem like mighty nice fellers. Maybe they ain’t nothin’ wrong with them at all.”

Longarm turned and looked as if he too thought studying the door might tell him something. But then he shook his head. “Herman, I can’t have them hanging around the station, not with that stage due tomorrow.”

“You reckon it might be a bullion run?” Higgins’s eyes got big.

“I don’t know. And neither do you. But there appear to be a few too many coincidences happening around here. Did their horses look hard-used?”

Higgins thought. “Wa’l, fact of the bid’ness is I can’t say. Didn’t notice. Want me to go take a look?”

“No. But they want to overnight here?”

“That’s what they sayin’.”

“And going to travel in the heat of the day tomorrow. Don’t that strike you strange?”

“Wa’l, yessir, now that you mention it. How we goin’ to get rid of ‘em? You want me to go out there and tell ‘em to clear off?”

Longarm shook his head. “No. You don’t have any reason.” He unbuckled his gunbelt and walked over and laid it on the divan. He had been thinking of how to approach the situation. “At least you don’t have a reason right now. But I’m going to give you one.”

“What would that be?”

Longarm unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and started rolling up his sleeves. “I’m going to go out there and start a fight with them. Do you have a shotgun?”

“‘Course. Place like this you’d always have a shotgun. Double-barreled, twelve-gauge. How come you took yore gunbelt off, Marshal?”

“Because I got good reason to think those hombres are gunmen. They wear their revolvers like pistoleros. I hate to do it, but I’m going to get into a fistfight. And I ain’t been in a fistfight in a hell of a long time, but I don’t want guns getting into it. It could be they are innocent of anything except stealing jam, and I don’t want to kill one for nothing.”

Higgins was starting to look nervous but excited. “What’ll you be wanting me to do?”

Longarm said, “Well, there are three of them. One is pretty small and the other is a little pudgy, but there is one my size and maybe a few good years younger. I can’t whip all three, but I can start a ruckus. Soon as I get things going you come running out with your scattergun and go to yelling for us to cease and desist.” He saw the confused look on Higgins’s face. “Go to yelling for us to quit it, to stop. Say there ain’t no fighting allowed in the place and that I am your employee and you ain’t going to stand for them beating up on me. Shoot a barrel into the wall or the ceiling if you have to. I just don’t want to have all three of them stomping on me.”

Higgins licked his lips. “Wha-what do I do if they, if one of them draws a gun or somethin’?”

“They won’t, but don’t worry about it. If one does, I’ll handle it. Now, you got all this?”

“Got everything except my shotgun. It be back in the bedroom.”

“Well, get it, but don’t say nothing. You understand?”

“Why, my stars and garters, Marshal, you reckon I’m crazy? If Sylvie knew what I was about to do she’d have a fit.”

Longarm waited until the stationkeeper had gone into the back and returned carrying the big-bore shotgun over his arm. He had it broken open, and Longarm could see the brass ends of the two big shells. Longarm motioned for Higgins to shut the door behind him. When he’d done so, Longarm said, “You attract any attention?”

Higgins shook his head. “They was busy fillin’ up butter molds. Guess the churnin’ is all done. How you figure to get after ‘em, Marshal?”

Longarm said grimly, “I’ll think of something. Starting a fight is a hell of a lot easier than stopping one. Remember that I’m your employee and when things get calmed down, you tell them they will have to move on. No matter what they say or offer, you make it clear they’d better get on down the road.”

Higgins looked worried. “Them is some mighty rough-lookin’ folks, Marshal. You said one was little and one was pudgy, but they didn’t look all that much like that to me. You ain’t fixin’ to get yoreself in no storm, be you?”

Longarm smiled. “I hope not, Herman. I certainly hope not. But it won’t be the first time. I’m going to close this door behind me, but you stand ready to come through when you hear it getting rowdy. And don’t be bashful about raising your voice. I hate to scrap around on the floor like some schoolkid, but I don’t know any other way.”

“Why don’t you jus’ take this here musket and run em off?”

Longarm looked at him. “If they are who I think they are, that will just put them on their guard. No. I want this to seem like it has nothing to do with what I think they are up to.” He reached up to make sure the pocket where he carried his badge was buttoned. He didn’t want that falling out in the middle of the fight.

Finally he went over and took hold of the knob and turned it. He dreaded how his face and fists were going to feel in a very short time. Even when you won you always got hurt some in a fistfight.

He stepped into the common room. The three men were standing at the plank bar drinking whiskey. They looked up as he slammed the door behind him. The one nearest to him was the smaller man. He had thin features and was wearing a flat-brimmed, flat-crowned tan hat. He looked clean-shaven, but then he didn’t look old enough where shaving had become a problem. It was the next man that took Longarm’s eye. He was at least thirty, with heavy shoulders and big arms. He had a round, hard-looking face with deep-set, small eyes set back under his eyebrows. The third man Longarm couldn’t see very well because he was blocked by the bigger man in the middle. But Longarm did, quickly, see that all three were wearing cutaway holsters with tiedowns over the butts of their revolvers.

It was only a few paces to the bar. He took them in quick strides. The men were watching him, glasses in their hands. He said in a hard voice, “You boys have made a mistake. Ain’t no whiskey for sale here. That whiskey is my private stock.”

It was the big man who turned slightly to face him. He said in a casual voice, “Likely you are wrong there, feller. We bought these here drinks from the stationkeeper. Not five minutes ago. So if it be yore private goods, he don’t know it.”

Longarm had edged up until he was only about two feet from the smaller man. But it was not him that he intended to take out of the fight first. The first punch was going to be the important one, and he intended that for the big man with the big shoulders.

Longarm took a small step to his left to bring the man into range. He said, talking over the head of the smaller man, “That old man don’t run this place, I do. An’ I’m tellin’ you that ain’t whiskey for sale. We don’t take no saddle trash in here and won’t be no grub neither. Now drink down what you got and get out the door.”

The big man pushed himself away from the bar. He said over his shoulder to the pudgy man Longarm couldn’t quite see, “Frank, looks like we got us some homegrown meanness right here. He gonna run us off. Done called us saddle trash. What you think of that?”

Longarm edged further to his left to bring the man who had been called Frank into view. But he didn’t want to see Frank; he wanted to see Frank’s side arm and where it was. It was still in the holster and the tiedown was still over the butt, but Frank’s hand was dangerously close to a position to change all that in the bat of an eye. Longarm said, “He better think it’s a good idea, ‘cause I am fixin’ to start throwing you snakes out of here in just about five seconds.”

The big man had his weight on both his feet. His little pig eyes were watching Longarm with delight. He looked like a man who was about to have some fun. He said, “You hear that, Frank? He called us snakes and said he was gonna throw us all in the sand in about five seconds. All of us. That right, feller?”

Longarm said, “Don’t be calling me any of your family names, feller. Now turn around and walk toward that door.”

The big man laughed slightly and turned his head toward the man behind him. As he did Longarm raised his right hand as if to scratch his ear. But he only got his hand just above shoulder height. There it suddenly turned into a fist and he drove off his right foot, stepping forward with his left, putting his whole shoulder behind the punch. The blow hit the big man flush in the face just as he was turning to face Longarm again. Longarm saw his fist hit the man on the upper lip and the lower part of his nose. He saw blood fly, and felt something crunch beneath his knuckles. It was either teeth or the bone in the man’s nose.

The big man went over backwards, falling into the pudgy man behind him. But Longarm didn’t wait to see the results. The stride of the punch had taken him even with the small man and he pivoted on the balls of his feet, pulling his right boot back, and then hit the smaller man with a sweeping left on the side of the head. The man’s hat flew off and his face banged down on the planks of the bar. As he bounced up Longarm had already drawn his right hand back, and he caught the man under the chin as he was trying to rise. It was more of an uppercut than anything, and it lifted the man off the floor and leaned him partly over the bar before he slid down to the floor.

But even while he was hitting the smaller man Longarm was already moving down the bar to where the pudgy man was trying to scramble up. Longarm saw that he was trying to jerk loose the tiedown on his revolver. With a swift move Longarm kicked out with his right foot, catching the man on the hand with the heel of his boot. The pudgy man yelled and fell back. But by now, his face smeared with blood, the first man was trying to struggle to his feet. Longarm quickly shifted his weight and kicked the first man under the chin with the toe of his left boot. The man made a groan and rolled over on his back, knocking over one of the wooden stools. Longarm took a quick glance behind him, saw that the smaller man was still on the floor and too groggy to be a danger, and whirled and went over the outstretched form of the big man with the bloody nose, diving more than stepping, and hit the pudgy man as hard as he could in the stomach with his right fist. The man instantly doubled up and sat down. It took a half second to get his feet under him, but when he could, Longarm swung from the floor and hit the man under the chin and knocked him over on his back. At that instant he became aware of an outcry behind him. He turned.

“Hold it! Hold it! Quit that fightin’! I won’t have no fightin’ in here! You are scarin’the wimmen!”

Higgins looked wild, his hair touseled and his shirt out, holding the big shotgun almost at the ready. He was yelling at the top of his voice. “Cut out this quarrelin’! Ain’t no fightin’ in here! By damn i’ll let this cannon off the bunch of you don’t settle down! And i mean right now!”

Longarm watched him with mild amusement. The smaller man was not even conscious yet. The pudgy gunman was sitting up, holding his stomach and looking sick. The man with the heavy shoulders had Propped himself up on one arm and was feeling his nose with the hand of the other. There was no fight to be stopped.

Longarm said heavily, “Herman, I’m damn glad you come out here. They was stealin’ whiskey and fixin’ to whip me in the bargain. Keep that shotgun on ‘em. They is a dangerous lot.” He didn’t know if he sounded dumb enough to be someone working at a relay station, but he was enjoying the lying.

Higgins stepped closer, aiming the shotgun down at the men on the floor and sweeping it back and forth. He said in an outraged voice, “By golly, so that’s how you’ll have it! Why, damn it to hell, I ought to let this here blunderbuss off an’ blow the lot of you to Hell!” He looked up at Longarm. “Stealin’ whiskey, was they?”

Longarm nodded. “Yessir, they was. An’ threatenin’ me with their pistols. I was scairt for my very life.”

From the floor the man with the big shoulders straightened up. He spat out a mouthful of blood and said thoughtfully, “I think that sonofabitch broke my nose.”

Longarm pointed at him. “See how he is cussin’ me, Herman. How come you let such saddle trash in?”

Higgins shook his head sorrowfully. Longarm could see he was really getting into the part he was playing. “I’ll tell you, this is what comes of tryin’ to do yore feller man a favor. They wanted to shade up an’ I let ‘em. Wanted whiskey an’ I give it to ‘em. Wanted to water their horses and I said shore. An’ now look what come of it. Onliest man I’ve ever had would stay out here and work, an’ they take guns to you and go to beaten’ on yore head! Damn my socks! Ain’t I ever gonna learn?”

The one who had been called Frank let go of his stomach long enough to help himself to his feet by leaning on the overturned stool. He said, gritting his teeth, “Old man, look round you. Who done the whippin’ up? You see any blood on yore damned hired hand? You see a lump on him? Is he down on the floor with blood on his face?”

Higgins waved the shotgun at him. “You better not fool with me, boy! You’ve abused my hospitality all I’m gonna stand fer! Dammit, you don’t know how to act civilized, you can clear out of here and right now!”

Frank said to the man who’d thought his nose was broken, “Wayne, the old man wants us to leave. What do you reckon?”

Wayne was trying to get up, holding on to the bar. He said, “I heard him, Frank.” He stared at Longarm. “For a hay forker he fights pretty good.” Then he shifted to Higgins. “We paid for that whiskey. You taken our money.”

Longarm was watching all three. The smaller one was shaking his head and groaning, not fully conscious. But Longarm didn’t like the way Frank and Wayne had their hands too near their revolvers. He suddenly reached out and took the shotgun from Mister Higgins. He took a quick look to make sure the safety wasn’t on and then said, “By damn, don’t you come round here blackening my name! I got to live here. I saw ya’ll sneakin’ whiskey an’ ain’t no use you denyin’ it. Now the bunch of you can gather up yore traps an’ get on out of here! I’m tired of foolin’ with you and this shotgun just might go off by itself!”

Higgins said warningly, “Don’t fool with him, boys! Don’t fool with him! Got a temper on him like a team of mules! Don’t work him up, now, don’t work him up. I can’t answer fer it. He’s got the shotgun. It’s in his hands. Heaven only knows what might happen now!”

The one called Wayne, keeping his eyes on the shotgun in Longarm’s hands, reached down for the small man, who was still on the floor. He got him by the upper arm and lifted him easily to his feet. He said, “Get up, Potts. We ain’t wanted here. Man holdin’ a shotgun on us. Get yore head cleared.”

Behind him Frank, still holding his belly, said to Longarm, “What’d you start this fight for, feller? We wadn’t doin’ you no harm.”

Longarm gave him a thin smile, but kept to the demeanor of a stablehand. “I never started no fight, feller. You three was makin’ mighty free with my whiskey. We don’t get that stuff in here ever’ day. I told Herman here”—he jerked his head toward Higgins—“that the day this place run out of whiskey was the day I went walkin’ out of here. Ain’t that right, Herman.”

Higgins stepped forward. He said earnestly, “Oh, my, yeah! Laws, I never thought. We was runnin’ low an’ I never thought, not bein’ partial to the stuff myself, but Bull here won’t be caught short without it.”

Wayne eyed Longarm. “Bull, huh? Well, Bull, we’ll get out. But they will come another day.”

Longarm lifted the shotgun menacingly. “You better hope for yore sake that day don’t come. You gettin’ off light as is and it’s only cause of Herman here. Now pick up what you’ve dropped and git outten here!”

Higgins said placatingly, “Now, Bull, you done whipped ‘em. Don’t be kickin’ ‘em when they are down.”

“They mouthed me, Herman. They mouthed me. An’ you know I don’t stand fer no mouthin’. They went to joshin’ me like I was some hick. You know I don’t take to that.”

Higgins looked at them sorrowfully. “I’m right sorry to hear ‘bout that. Bull ain’t the man to rag ‘bout his country ways. Nosir! Best not to do it.”

They were all up now, standing in a line with their back to the front door. Wayne said, a little blood still running out of his nose, “He don’t fight like no hayseed.” He narrowed his little eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “He fights like somebody seen a good many saloon brawls. He knew who to throw the first punch at.”

Longarm did not care for the way Wayne was talking. It meant his little act was not going over as successfully as he wanted. He said, motioning with the shotgun, “You just put some money on the bar fer them last drinks that ya’ll taken while Herman was outten the room. I seen you through the door. You can’t put one over on me. Now, you better let me hear that silver ring.”

Potts was the one closest to the bar. Wayne said, “Put a couple of dollars down, Potts. Turns out the man is going to rob us in the bargain.”

Longarm drew both hammers back on the big shotgun and raised it to his shoulder. “I reckon that mouth you are talking out of ain’t doing too good a job. What say I make you one in yore belly.”

Higgins said, “Now, Bull. Now, Bull. Take it easy.”

But then Potts dug in his pocket and pitched two silver dollars on the bar. He said, “We never taken no second drink, but there’s money anyway.”

Longarm said, “Now, you fellers, as you like to call other folks who don’t care to be called that, ya’ll get to marchin’ backwards out that door. Step along now.”

He followed them stride for stride as they backed toward the front door. Wayne said, “We leave you enough whiskey? You reckon what’s left will handle you till supplies can arrive?”

Longarm said, “Git!”

Frank said, “For a mule hustler you seem mighty at home with that scattergun.”

“It’s a rabbit-getter. But you three be a bunch bigger than a rabbit. Stay bunched up now, on account of I ain’t got but the two barrels and I’d have to get a brace of you with one shot. And I wouldn’t let a single finger get near them fancy shootin’ irons of yores. Make sure none of them little leather strings falls off the handles neither.”

They were at the door. Frank said, “Now what?”

Longarm was keeping about two yards between them. He said, “Now you rush out there and get on yore horses and see how fast you can get out of shotgun range. But by that time I’ll have a carbine in my hand so I’d keep on goin’ was I you.”

“You just a regular Jesse James, ain’t you.”

“Move! Now! NOW!”

They went through the door in a bunch. Longarm ran up to the wall and peeked around the opening. He could see them getting to their horses and mounting. One started to pull his carbine out of the saddle boot, but Longarm stuck the barrel of the shotgun around the door. They turned their horses and spurred away, heading north. As they rode, Wayne yelled back, “I ain’t forgetting this, hayseed. That other day is coming!”

Longarm turned in time to see the laugh building in Higgins. He clamped his hand over the old man’s mouth and indicated he should be quiet. He nodded his head toward their private quarters. Higgins bobbed his head that he understood, and Longarm took his hand away. Higgins immediately giggled, though in a low tone. He said gravely, “Well, Bull, I reckon we handled them hombres.” Then he couldn’t help himself. He slapped his knee and let out a chortle. “Boy, howdy, that was plumb fun! Is law work always this much fun? Hot damn! I got to tell Sylvie ‘bout this. She’ll have a fit, We shore fooled them, huh, Bull? Heh, heh, heh.”

Longarm rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Herman. That one was mighty suspicious. I don’t know if my acting like a stable hand fooled him. I did too good in the fight. Stable hands ain’t supposed to know how to fight like that.”

Higgins’s eyes got round. He said, “Boy, I’ll say you done good in the fight. Last thing I saw move that fast was my ol’ woman when she spilt a big pot of bilin’ grits on the floor and her in her bare feet. You whupped up on them some mighty good. And say, I thought we done pretty good way we played our parts.”

Longarm shrugged. “Herman, those men are up to something. I don’t know what it is, but they make me uneasy. They are not strangers passing through. We didn’t run off innocent men. Those are paid gunmen or I’m a Hoosier. And I never set foot in that state in my life. I don’t think I fooled them.”

“Well, you fooled me. Lordy, I got so carried ‘way watchin’ you knockin’ ‘em around I nearly forgot my part.”

Longarm looked around at him and half smiled. “I was beginning to wonder. Lucky for me I got that biggest one out of the way before he could even matters out.”

“You shore fetched him a lick! Went down like a poled steer. Wait’ll I tell Sylvie ‘bout this!” Longarm suddenly frowned. “Listen, Herman, until I’m sure about what the hell is going on, I don’t reckon we ought to be telling anyone anything. When it comes to explaining this to the ladies, I reckon you better leave it up to me.”

Higgins looked slightly crestfallen. He said, “Shore, if that be the way you want it. But you won’t tell it like I seen it. Or how me an’ you done that actin’ like we was on the stage or somethin’. What’d you think of me comin’ up with that name? Bull. What’d you think of that?”

Longarm looked at him and said dryly, “What’s my last name? Shit?”

Higgins giggled. “See? You won’t put all the good parts in. Can’t I just tell Sylvie about it tonight after we be in bed?”

Longarm shook his head. “You can tell her after we are gone on the stage tomorrow.” He glanced at the door, noting that it was ajar. “I think our birds are already flitting around. Remember, you leave the telling to me.” He raised his voice and called, “Ladies? Ladies? Rough stuff is over. You can come out now.”

They came through the door with Mrs. Higgins in the lead. They looked around. Other than the two overturned stools there wasn’t much to see. Mrs. Higgins fixed her husband with a look. “Mr. Higgins, I’d be obliged to know what has been going on in this place that required you to run for a shotgun.” She looked at Longarm, who was holding the weapon. He hastily set it on the floor and leaned it against the bar as if to distance himself from it. “Has this place become unsafe for civilized folks?” Mrs. Higgins asked.

Longarm said quickly, “Just some riders that got out of hand. Maybe had too much whiskey in them. Not a lot happened, Sylvia. And you get to be right proud of your husband. He set them straight about behavior around here and made it mighty clear.”

Rita Ann walked across the floor and looked at several red splotches on the floor where the man with the nosebleed had spit. She said, “Looks like somebody cut his finger on something.”

Longarm was trying to hide his hands, which he knew were skinned and bruised. They’d swell up if he didn’t get to soaking them fairly soon. He said, “Well, I figured to maybe help ease them out. I didn’t want to see no gunshots getting fired. One of ‘em must have scuffed his knee or his hand or something.”

Mrs. Higgins sniffed. “Sounded to us like was a herd of cattle runnin’ loose through the place.” She rounded on her husband. “Then I hear this one yelling at the top of his lungs about blowing people in half. Laws! Nearly scared me and Rita Ann to death. We never knowed from one second to the other what to think. And couldn’t see much through the crack in the door.”

Higgins said placatingly, “Now, Sylvie, we git them kind through here now and again. We’s jus’ lucky we had Mister Long here to help out with matters. They was only some bullies needed showing the error of their ways. And we done that, didn’t we, Mr. Long.”

“Yes, yes, Herman. We sure did. You did the biggest part of it, of course. But I thought you handled the situation right nicely. You ought to be proud, Mrs. Higgins, Sylvia. Quite a man, your husband.”

Mrs. Higgins gave him a stern look and said, “He ain’t big as a minute and thinks he can take on the world. One of these days he is gonna bite off more than he can chew and then we’ll just have to see about it.” But at the tail end of her look, a little maternal fondness came into the sternness. “I guess I’ll keep him.”

Rita Ann came over to Longarm and before he could react, took his right hand in hers and lifted it up. The scuffs across the knuckle were clear. She dropped it and picked up the left. It had a cut across the first two knuckles. She said, “Looked like it must have been a two-fisted fight. Didn’t go exactly the way you told it, Mr. Long.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, there was a little scuffling. But not enough to write home about. However, I would be obliged to get a pan of warm salty water and maybe soak these here mitts of mine before they get sore.”

Mrs. Higgins said, “I’d be obliged. You jus’ give me a minute to run into the kitchen and I’ll fetch it right out here. Herman, you come along with me. You ain’t out of the woods about this scuffling affair. No, sir. Not by a long shot. I’ll have a few more words with you, mister.”

Higgins said, “Now there you go, Sylvie, makin’ a cow outten a kitten. They ain’t nothin’ else to it.”

But he followed her obediently as she walked back into their living quarters.

As soon as they were out of sight Longarm turned immediately and started for the front door. He wanted to make sure the three men had kept riding and had not cut around to approach them from the back. He was aware that Rita Ann was following him, but he walked 50 yards out in front of the relay station and slowly swept his eyes across the terrain from north to south to east to west and then back north again. He could just pick out some little dots moving along at a pretty good pace. They appeared to be about three or four miles away. It could be the three that had come in the station, or it could be three entirely different men. He meant to speak to Higgins as soon as he conveniently could about putting his Mexicans on watch. It wouldn’t hurt to keep a close lookout until dusk.

Behind him Rita Ann said, “Why did you beat those three men up?”

He whirled around. “What?”

She said, “I could see a little through the crack between the door and the wall. It was almost over by the time we got there, but I saw that two men were laying on the floor and I saw you kick one in the head when he tried to get up. Why’d you do that?”

He stared at her. “Hell, Mr. Higgins told you. They were making trouble. They started in on him and I had to step in and help.”

She shook her head. “No, that is not true. Mr. Higgins was back getting the shotgun when the trouble started. I heard it. You were the one out there. You were the one using your fists. I saw you had left your gunbelt on the divan, which means you had gone out there to fight. You didn’t want to be weighed down by it.”

He gave her a perplexed look. “Who the hell are you? The sheriffs I don’t know exactly how it happened, but Mr. Higgins came back through the door and said it looked like he was going to have to run some hombres off, so I went out to see what was going on. I didn’t wear my gunbelt because I didn’t want to take a chance on any shooting. Damn! Talk about minding other folks’ business! What the hell has this got to do with you?”

“Nothing,” she said calmly. “I only want to know who you are.”

“I’ve told you. How many times I got to tell you?”

“You’re a businessman. Well, from the way you fight I’d recommend you go in the fighting business.”

He said, “I always wondered who the person would be who exasperated me beyond my reason. I think I may be looking at her.” Then he stepped around her and went back into the station, where Mrs. Higgins was waiting with the pan of hot, salty water.

Supper that night was a subdued affair. Higgins said, “You know, I’m gonna be right sorry, Mr. Long, to see you and Miss Rita Ann leave on that stage tomorrow. Place won’t be the same, will it, Sylvie?”

She said, “I should think not. I know I’ve enjoyed the company of another woman. Especially one as bright and gay as Rita Ann.” She sighed. “But then all good things must come to an end. That’s what my dear old mother said.”

Longarm looked at Rita Ann. “And bad ones too, I hope.”

They had gotten to bed early that night, not much after ten. Longarm had turned into his blankets naked, in anticipation of Rita Ann’s arrival. Part of him was aroused, but part of him was also angry. She had called the turn at every juncture. If she came to him this night it was going to be different.

She was so long in coming that he was almost asleep when he realized she was standing by him in the voluminous nightgown she had borrowed from Mrs. Higgins. He sat up immediately as she began to pull the gown over her head. When it fell to the floor she stood there, again reflected in the firelight, while he studied her beautiful body with true appreciation. Then she slowly knelt down, landing on her knees on the edge of his blankets. She was about to reach for him when he took her under the shoulders and lifted her onto his bed on her back. Then, moving too fast for her to realize what he was doing, he was on top of her, prying her legs apart. He fell forward, guiding himself into her and covering her mouth with his at the same time. He held her by the buttocks, one in each hand, and began pulling her into him, making her rhythm match his. He started slowly, but then he began thrusting harder and harder, almost angrily. As he probed her depths he could feel her gasping out of the corners of her mouth, but he wouldn’t let her mouth loose from his. Her hips were starting to arch up, clearing the blanket by six inches. She hoisted her legs and wrapped them around his middle, squeezing him tight. They were locked in an intertwined and frenzied embrace. He kept thrusting and thrusting, pushing her up the blankets.

She began to tremble, and then she began to shake. He poured more savagery into the rhythm of his plunging, speeding it up, filling her, forcing himself deep inside her. She was gasping now, trembling and shaking and clawing at his back.

Then, suddenly, he could hear her yelling inside his mouth. Her screaming went on for a long, long time, kept silent within his own cheeks and lips, as her heels drummed on his back and her nails raked his neck and shoulders.

As suddenly as it had started it ended. She went limp. Her arms slid from around his neck and fell to the blankets. Her legs came off his back and fell down beside his. He took his mouth away and she lay there, her eyes open, her mouth gasping, staring straight up. Very slowly he eased off her, casing off on the side toward the wall. He pulled the blanket up around his shoulder.

He said softly in her ear, “Good night.”

She turned her face and looked at him. “What?”

“I said good night.”

She sighed. “I don’t think I can move.” Then she turned her head back to him. “What about you?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just wanted you to understand there was more than one unselfish person in this bed.”

Chapter 6

The stage arrived a little before three o’clock the next day. They’d been watching for it for a half an hour, and then it topped a little rise a mile away and was suddenly on them. Higgins and the two Mexicans went out into the stable yard to help the driver stop the team. Longarm could see from his vantage point that the mules were worked up and sweating. There were five span of them, ten mules, and the driver handled the double handful of reins with practiced ease. To his left the shotgun messenger, as such men were called, held on to the side of his high seat and waved as they arrived.

Longarm watched as the two Mexicans ran alongside the lead mules, catching them by the harness and turning them in an arc, bending them back so that they began to circle. The driver was standing up in his seat, his hands full of reins, pulling with all his might. But the mules were run out, and after one circle of the yard, they pulled up in front of the station and stopped.

The stage was empty. Longarm walked over and looked at it curiously. It was the same shape as a buckboard except considerably bigger. He reckoned it to be about five feet wide by ten or twelve feet long. It had big, steel-rimmed wheels that were at least six inches wide, the better to ride over the sandy dirt. The stage had an almost flat canvas top and long canvas curtains that could be let down on both sides, presumably to keep out the rain, though more likely the dust and the sun. At the very front was a wooden box that was about three feet wide and ran the width of the bed of the stage. It was high enough so that it extended up behind the driver’s seat and up to the canvas roof. Longarm figured he knew what was in the box, and he didn’t reckon it was used clothes. The end he could see had a door in it with a heavy padlock holding a hasp. He could see that the box not only served its function to hold the safe, but also stuck up high enough to protect the driver and the guard from attack from the rear, And the passengers would have a hard time reaching their way up to the driver’s box if they were of a mind to try. The box blocked their way, and there was nothing to hold on to while they tried to get at the driver or the guard.

He was a little surprised that the stage was empty, but Higgins told him that was the case more often than not. “Most of the traffic we get in people is when they let a bunch out at the mine or a new bunch is going down there or there’s some boss or such taking a vacation. Of course we get passengers will take the stage to get somewhere along the line, but not all that often.”

The driver’s name was Ben, and his guard was a man that Higgins called Wooly. They were both old stage hands who, as they all did, said they wished they had a nickel for every drop of mule sweat they’d wiped off their faces. They were wind-burned and sun-cured and anxious for a drink. Ben said, “We got a little ahead of schedule. Reckon we’ll shade up here a bit.”

Longarm was ready to go. While the drivers rested he carried his saddle and saddlebags out to the coach. There was a rack on top of the stage that he figured was for luggage. He stepped up on the bed of the wagon at the end and slung his saddle into the rack along with his saddlebags. After a moment’s thought he stepped up again, pulled his carbine out of the saddle boot, and looked into the interior of the coach. There were benches along each side with padded backs. He slid his rifle in under the left-hand one near the end. He figured it would be ready to hand from there. After that he went back into the station. Mrs. Higgins and Rita Ann were fussing over a cloth valise that Mrs. Higgins was insisting Rita Ann use to carry her new clothes. Her case had not come in on the stage and it appeared, Rita Ann said, that she’d have to make do with what Mrs. Higgins had given her until the stage company could find a way to get her case to her.