Longarm hadn’t expected him to.
Longarm knelt a while in silence, wondering why his gut felt so empty. It was all over. He’d done the job he’d been sent to do—and he had done it damned well, in all modesty. So why did he feel so shitty?
It wasn’t that he’d just killed another man. He’d gotten used to that part. It went with the job. He’d given this poor jasper the chance to come with him peaceably and politely, and where in the U.S. Constitution did it say a lawman had to treat a wanted killer fairly?
No, he didn’t feel guilty about killing Johnny Hunts Alone. He’d owed the man for saving his ass that time, but the breed had only been acting natural when he spied that gun barrel trained on them from across the street. Nobody was all bad. The man he’d just killed had likely been decent to his friends and good to his horse, too. Had he been given more of a break than he’d asked for, he’d be riding out about now with a dead lawman lying here, and not feeling all that sorry about it.
As to tricking Hunts Alone into killing the one man the law couldn’t touch, Longarm thought that had been right slick, if he said so himself. He’d file it that he’d gunned Johnny after tracking him from the murder of a government official and there’d be no scandal worth mentioning. It was all as neat as a pin. Perhaps he was feeling sad because, no matter how many of them died, poor Roping Sally would never come back with her tomboy smile and rollicking rump to brighten up a tedious world.
He got to his feet again, brushing the stable dust from his knee with his hat, and stepped outside.
More sightseers were running to the sound of the more recent shots and Longarm saw one was Sheriff Murphy. Longarm said, “Take charge of the body in there, will you, Murph? By the way, there’s a reward on the cuss. I’ll write you up for an assistment, if you want.”
“Why, that’s neighborly as hell, Longarm. But who in thunder did you shoot this time? The doc says Chadwick’s done for!”
“I didn’t shoot Chadwick. The man who did is inside, dead. You’ll find he’s that jasper who said he worked for the army, Jason. His real name was Hunts Alone and he was a Blackfoot on his mom’s side. Now you know as much as I do and I’ve got other chores to tend to.”
Leaving Murphy in charge at the livery, Longarm jogged up the street to where Chadwick lay naked on a wagon tarp near the watering trough. The coroner looked up brightly and said, “You’re delivering ‘em fresh these days. This poor cadaver’s still breathing. No need for an autopsy, though. The cause of death was a bullet through the spleen and a shower of battery acid. I just knocked him out to ease his way out of this world. Before he went under, he said something about a double-cross.”
“He likely thought one of the folks offering him bribes was spooked about it. Did he mention any names?”
“No, and he won’t. Even if he’d lived—I mean for the night—he’d have been in too much pain to talk sense. Those third-degree acid burns must smart.”
The deputy marshal pulled at a corner of his John L. Sullivan mustache. “Hell, I wanted him to confirm a few things. No way to bring him around for a minute or two?”
“I’ll try.”
The coroner started to give the charred body an injection. Then he shook his head and said, “He’s gone. Maybe I gave him a mite more morphine than I should have.”
“I reckon it was your Christian duty, Doc. I can see the bones in his face and the eye holes are still smoking.”
“Yeah, it was a hell of a way for any man to die,” the coroner agreed.
Longarm shrugged and muttered, “Oh, I don’t know. All things considered, I suspicion the mother-loving son of a bitch got off easier than he deserved!”
A man in the crowd marveled, “Jesus, Deputy, when you hate, you hate serious, don’t you?”
Longarm swept the crowd with his cold, gray-blue eyes as he nodded and said, “Yep, and you might spread the word that I’ll be back if anyone ever, ever raises another finger against my friends out at the Blackfoot reservation!”
He assumed, as he walked away, that they’d gotten his message. If they hadn’t, what the hell, he’d meant every word.
Chapter 16
It was another midnight by the time Longarm reached the agency after one last, tedious ride out to fill Calvin Durler in on all that had just taken place.
He found the young Indian agent in a chair next to the kitchen table, sprawled face-down across it and out like a light. There were no bullet holes in Durler, but a jar of white lightning stood on the table near his snoring head, three-quarters gone.
Longarm considered shaking him awake, but decided not to. Drunken young men whose women had just lit out on them tended to be testy, even when they were able to hear you. So Longarm snuffed out the kitchen lamp to keep the poor kid from cremating himself and stepped outside.
There was a light in Prudence Lee’s window, but it was late. He thought maybe he’d just light out and the hell with it. If Durler had any questions they couldn’t answer for him in town, he could write to Denver when he sobered up.
But Prudence must have heard his chestnut’s hooves, for she popped out on the porch to hail him, saying, “I was so afraid you’d leave without coming by to say goodbye. Is it true you’re finished here?”
“Yep. I’ve returned the hired mule and buckboard to the livery, made arrangements to return the army’s horse to Fort Banyon, and I’ve bought a through ticket to Denver. My train pulls out tomorrow.”
“Oh? Then surely you intended to spend the night out here?”
“Not hardly. Calvin’s drunk as a skunk and it gets tedious listening to folks blubber about lost love. I’ve got a room in town for the night—or what’s left of it.”
“The least you can do is come inside and sit a spell,” Prudence said. “I’m so confused about all that’s
