If she’d been leading up to it, she was pretty slick. He stared at her for a long hard minute, then he shrugged and said, “If you need a loan, just till I can get word to your kinfolks…”
“Sir!” she gasped. “Whatever are you suggesting?”
“Ain’t suggesting. Offering. Seems to me you and the boy, here, are in a pickle. I won’t insult no lady with numbers, but if you’ll let me put a few day’s room and board on my own tab…”
“That’s out of the question, sir! I can see you are a gentleman and I understand your offer was meant in kind innocence, but, really…!”
“Let’s say no more, then ma’am. It was a fool thing to say to a lady.”
For the first time she smiled at Longarm, lighting up the dusk-filled space between them a bit, as she said, “On the contrary, it was… well, I’d hardly call it gallant, but I understand, and I think you are a very sweet person, Mister Long.”
Longarm looked out the window, redfaced, and said, “I see some lights up ahead. We’re pulling in to Bitter Creek. Would you be likely to cloud up and rain all over me if I helped you with your things?”
This time she laughed, a pretty skylark laugh, and said, “I’d be honored if you escorted us to the hotel Mister Long.”
Longarm got to his feet to follow as she rose and moved back to her own seat for their luggage, with little Cedric in her wake between them. Longarm noticed that she had a nice, trim waistline too. If only she didn’t have that ugly little kid with her… Under his breath, he muttered to himself, “Now just you back off, old son! They didn’t send us up here to spark a widow woman, ugly kid or no! How are you going to get them, their luggage and your own mount and gear unloaded without losing more’n half of it? Damn that prissy kid. What’s he gotten you into, anyway? Don’t you know better than to talk to strangers on a train?”
The hotel in Bitter Creek wasn’t much, but it was the only one they had. After checking the widow and her son into one room and himself into another, and ignoring the leer in the old desk-clerks eye, Longarm went out, leaving her and the boy at the hotel and his army bay in the livery stable next door.
It was still early evening and the streets of Bitter Creek were crowded, not because there were a lot of people in town but because the town was so small. Nobody around the hotel had ever heard of the Widow Hanks or her in-laws at Crooked Lance. It was hard enough to find someone who’d admit there might be a place called Crooked Lance, “a day or so up yonder.” That wasn’t much help.
Longarm strode down the plank walks until he came to the town marshal’s office and went in. The deputy he found seated at a packing-crate desk seemed impressed by his federal badge and willing to help. So Longarm hooked his rump over the corner of the improvised desk and asked where in thunder Crooked Lance might be, adding, “This place I’m looking for is downright spooky, Deputy! You tell me it’s been shifted again…”
“Hell, we got it on a map over on the wall, Deputy Long. You wouldn’t be the one they call Longarm, would you?”
“You can call me that. You can call me anything but late for breakfast if you’ll answer some questions.”
“I figured you was Longarm. That Jasper they’re holding up in Crooked Lance must be somebody important, huh?”
“You know about Cotton Younger up in the Crooked Lance jail?”
“Sure. All sorts of people have been coming through here looking for him. I’ve been showing ‘em the same map you see on yonder wall. Seems like a lot of fuss and feathers over a cow thief, if you ask me!”
“Did another Deputy U.S. Marshal pass this way, asking for directions to wherever?”
“Sure, couple of weeks back. You looking for him, too?”
“Maybe. Was his name Kincaid?”
“Yep, now that you mention it, that’s who I think he said he was.”
“All right. We know Kincaid got as far as here and was last seen headed up to Crooked Lance. Who were these others you say were interested in that old boy they have up there?”
The deputy considered before he replied, “Don’t remember the names. There was a feller from the Provost Marshal’s Office, War Department, I think he said he rode for. Then there was this lawman from Missouri, county sheriff I think. Oh, yeah, and there was one real funny lookin’ jasper in the damndest looking outfit you ever saw. Had on a red jacket. I mean blinding red! Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Northwest Mounted Police!”
“Don’t think so. He said he was from Canada. what in hell did that poor cow thief up there do?”
“Enough to get a lot of folks riled at him. Funny nobody seems to have gotten to him, though! Tell me what you know about Crooked Lance.”
The other lawman shrugged and said, “Ain’t much to tell. Just a two-bit crossroads. Ain’t hardly a proper town, like Bitter Creek.”
“It’s my understanding this Cotton Younger’s being held by a vigilance committee. How does your boss feel about vigilantes operating in his neck of the woods?”
“Don’t make no nevermind to us. Crooked Lance is a long, hard ride from here. Besides, they ain’t what you’d call mean vigilantes. Just some old boys who keep an eye out for road agents, cow thieves, and such. They’ve never given folks hereabouts no trouble.”
“Do you know who runs things up there?”
“Hell, nobody runs Crooked Lance. It’s just a wide spot in the road. There’s a post office and the
