The sky was a starry black curtain fading to gray in the east as Longarm reined in on the Crooked Lance Trail and sat his mount for a time, considering the ink blots all around them. He’d slipped out of the hotel a little after three in the morning, gotten his borrowed army bay from the livery without being seen, and was now a distance from the town that he judged about right for a bushwhacking.
In the very dim light of the false dawn he could just make out a granite outcropping, covering the trail. Longarm clucked to the bay, eased him around to the far side, and tethered him to one of the aspens growing there. He slid the Winchester.44-40 from its boot under the saddle’s right fender and dismounted. He soothed the bay with a pat and left it to browse on aspen leaves as he climbed the far side of the outcropping. He knew the treetops behind him would hide his outline against the sky as the light improved. He lay atop the rock, levered a round into the Winchester’s chamber, and settled down to wait. If he’d timed it right, the sniper with that.30-30 deer rifle would be getting up here just about now, and if the rifleman knew the lay of the land along this trail he’d have a hard time picking a better place to set his own ambush. A million years went by, and the sky was only a little lighter. Longarm was used to waiting, but he’d never liked it much. The stars were going out one by one from east to west, but the sniper seemed to be taking his own good time. What was the matter with the fool? He wasn’t dumb enough to stake out the front of the damned hotel, was he?
He wondered if Kincaid or any of the other missing lawmen had run into this situation. It made more sense than a town where they shot strangers on sight. Kincaid or any of the other missing men could be buried anywhere for a full day’s ride or so. The folks in Crooked Lance, for all he knew, could be just as puzzled as everyone else. With the wire down, they were cut off, so nobody there would know who was coming or when.
He took a cheroot from his vest pocket and put it between his teeth, not lighting it, as he studied what he knew for sure. It wasn’t much, but he could assume the hands who’d captured Cotton Younger and locked him up were acting in good faith. If they’d been on the outlaw’s side, they never would have captured him. If they hadn’t wanted the law to know they had him, they’d have just killed him and kept still about it. Could it be an escape plot?
Maybe, but not on the part of the folks in Crooked Lance, for obvious reasons. The most likely candidates to plot an escape would be friends of Cotton Younger, and if it was true he was tied in with Frank and Jesse James … possible, but wild. None of the James-Younger Gang had ever operated this far west, and if it was them, they were acting differently than they’d ever acted before. He’d studied the working habits of the James-Younger Gang. They were given to moving in fast, hitting hard, and moving out even faster. Cotton Younger was being held in a log jail, probably loosely guarded by simple cowhands. If the James-Younger Gang had ridden out here to spring him, he’d have been long gone by now and there’d be no need for all this skullduggery.
On the other hand, the gang had been badly shot up in Minnesota and were scattered from hell to breakfast. If a lone member of the old clan was trying to help his kinsman… that might fit.
Behind him in the fluttering aspen leaves a redwing awoke to announce its undisputed ownership of the grove. It sounded more like a wagon wheel in need of grease than a bird, and it meant the sun was getting ready to roll up the eastern side of the pearling sky. Longarm could see the trail he was covering more clearly now. In less than an hour things would have color as well as form down there. His sniper was either a late riser or stupid. Or he’d given up for now.
Longarm decided to wait it out till full light. Half the secret of staking-out lay in waiting out that last five minutes. It was tedious as hell, but he’d made some good arrests by simply staying put a little longer than common sense seemed to call for. It was a trick he’d learned as a boy from a friendly Pawnee.
Another bird woke up to curse back at the redwing and a distant peak to the west was pink-tipped against the dark blue western horizon as it caught the sunrise from its greater altitude. Innocent travelers would be taking to the trail soon. Where in thunder was his sniper?
Longarm’s eyes suddenly narrowed and he stopped breathing as his ears picked up the distant scrape Of steel on rock. He saw two blurs moving into view up the trail. What he’d heard was a horseshoe on a lump of gravel.
He could see who it was, now. A lone rider on a big black plowhorse, with a teammate tagging along behind like an oversized hound. As the odd group came nearer Longarm saw that the man on the lead mount was carrying a rifle across his knees. He was riding bareback, his long legs hanging down to the end in big bare feet. The top of him was clad in patched, old-fashioned buckskins, a fur hat made of skunk skin with two feathers cocked out of one side, and a long, gray beard covering the upper third of his burly chest.
He was peculiar looking, but Longarm decided he was likely not his man, as he studied the weapon the rider was packing. It was an old Sharps.50. Single-shot and wrong caliber. The lack of high heels, or even boots, was comforting, too. Longarm flattened himself lower against the granite to let the stranger pass without needless conversation. The odd old man and his pets passed by the lawman’s hiding place without looking up and vanished on up the trail. Longarm stretched to ease his cramped muscles, then settled down to wait some more.
it was perhaps five minutes before he noticed something else, or, rather, noticed something missing. The birds had stopped singing.
Longarm rolled over and up to a sitting position, his rifle across his knees, as he faced away from the trail into the aspen grove his mount was tethered in. The old man in the feathered fur hat was stepping out from between two pale green aspen trunks, the battered Sharps pointing up the slope at Longarm.
Longarm nodded and said, “‘Morning.”
The other called out, “By gar, Wsieu, she must think she’s vairie clevaire, him! Myself, Chambrun du Val she has the eyes of the eagle!”
“I wasn’t laying for you, Mister du Val. My handle’s Long. I’m a U.S. Deputy Marshal on government business and I’d take it kindly if you’d point that thing someplace else.”
“Mais non! You will throw down your weapon at once! Chambrun du Val she’s demand it, him!”
“Sorry, I don’t see things quite that way. You got the drop on me and I got the drop on you. If there’s any edge, it’s on my side. You got one round in that thing. I got fifteen in this Winchester.”
“Bah, if Chambrun du Val she shoot, it is all ovaire!”
“You fire, old son, and you’d best do me good with your one and only try, for I can get testy as all hell with a buffalo round in or about my person! But I don’t see this as a killing situation. I’d say our best play would be to talk things over before this gets any uglier.”
“What is Misieur’s explanation for making the ambush, eh?”
