there’s the Lazy K, Kim Stover’s place,” when they both spied two riders swinging out to the main trail from the modest spread.
One was a hatless woman with a halo of sunset-colored hair and buckskin riding togs. She rode astride, like a man. She sat her mount well, though.
The rider to her left was a man in a mustard Stetson and faded blue denim, on a gray gelding almost as big as one of du Val’s plow horses. The man needed a big mount. He was at least a head taller than any human being should have been. Longarm didn’t ask if he was Timberline. It would have been a foolish question.
The two parties slowed as they met on the trail. Since all of them except Longarm had been introduced, the railroad dick did the honors. Timberline smiled, friendly enough, and said, “Glad to know you, Deputy. Like I always say, the more the merrier!”
The girl was less enthusiastic. She nodded politely at Longarm, but sighed, “Oh, Lord, another lawman is all we need!”
The others had told him the big ramrod was sparking the widow, so Longarm swung in beside Timberline as the entire group headed back to Crooked Lance. He explained his mission as Timberline listened politely but stubborn-jawed. The leader of the local vigilantes was maybe thirty, with coal-black sideburns, and cleanshaven. He sat his gray with the relaxed strength of a man used to having horses, and men, do just about anything he wanted them to.
He heard Longarm out before he shook his head and said, “If it was up to me you could have the rascal, Deputy. Hell, I was for just stringing him up the afternoon we caught him skulking about this little lady’s spread.”
“Yeah, I heard you found him with a running iron on him.”
“Well, to tell the truth, I can’t take all the credit. Miss Kim here, spied him hunkered down near the creek in some brush as me and a couple of my hands rode up to her front porch. Had not ladies been present, that would have likely been the end of it. The skunk lit out when he saw us coming. Windy Dawson, one of my hands, made as nice an overhand community-loop as you’ve ever seen and hauled the thief off his pony at a dead run. Miss Kim, here, said not to kill him right off, so Windy dragged him into the settlement and we threw him in the jailhouse.”
He swung around in his saddle to say to the girl on his far side, “You see why we shoulda strung him up that first day, honey? I told you he was a mean-looking cuss, and now we even have a federal lawman up here pestering us for him!”
The widow said, “Nobody’s getting him until they do right by the folks up here!”
Longarm saw he’d been barking up the wrong tree. The lady might not be related by blood to the money- hungry Stover family, but she’d surely picked up some bad habits from her inlaws!
Speaking across Timberline, Longarm said, “What you’re doing here ain’t legal, ma’am.” Behind him, Sheriff Weed called out, “Save your breath, Longarm. I’ve laid down the law till I’m blue in the face and nobody hereabouts seems to know what law is!”
Longarm ignored him and explained to the determined-looking redhead, “You’re holding that Cotton Younger on a citizen’s arrest, which is only good till a legally appointed peace officer can take him off your hands.”
Kim Stover’s voice was sweetly firm as, not looking his way, she said, “The Crooked Lance Committee of Vigilance was elected fair and square, mister.”
“I hate to correct a lady, but, no, ma’am, it wasn’t. Crooked Lance ain’t an incorporated township. The open range hereabouts ain’t constituted as a county by Wyoming Teritory. So any elections you may have held are unofficial as well as unrecorded. I understand the position you folks are taking, but it’s likely to get you all in trouble.”
For the first time she swung her eyes to Longarm, and they were bitter as well as green when she snapped, “We’re already in trouble, mister! You see a schoolhouse hereabouts? You see a town hall or even a signpost telling folks we’re here? Folks in Crooked Lance are poor, mister! Poor hard-scrabble homesteaders and overworked, underpaid cowhands without two coins to rub together, let alone a real store to shop in!”
“I can see you’re sort of back in the nothing-much, ma’am, but I fail to see why you’re holding it against me and these other gents.”
“I never said it was your fault, mister. We know who’s fault it is that Crooked Lance gets the short end every time! It’s them damned big shots out in the country you all rode in from. The cattle buyers who short-change us when we drive our herds in to Bitter Creek. The politicians in Cheyenne, Washington, and such! They’ve been grinding us under since I was birthed in these mountains, and now we mean to have our own back!”
Timberline noted the puzzled look in Longarm’s eyes and cut in to explain, “When Miss Kim’s husband, Ben, was killed, them buyers over to the railroad tried to get her cows for next to nothin’! Luckily, me and some of her and Ben’s other friends made sure they didn’t rob her before Ben was in the ground. We drove her herd in with our others and all of us stuck together on the price of beef.”
Kim Stover added, bitterly, “A little enough herd it was, and a low enough price, after all the hard work my man put into them damned cows.”
Longarm nodded and said, “I used to ride for the Jingle Bob and a couple of smaller outfits, ma’am. So I know how them eastern packers can squeeze folks, dead or alive. But Uncle Sam never sent me here to bid on beef. I’m packing a federal warrant on that owlhoot you folks caught, and I mean to ride out with him, one way or another.”
“Not before we settle on the price,” Kim Stover snapped.
Timberline added, still smiling, “Or whup damn near every rider in this valley, fair and square!”
“There’s five of us, Timberline.”
“I know. I can likely scare up thirty or forty men if push comes to shove. But I don’t reckon it will. These other four gents and me have had more or less this same conversation before you got here. And, by the way, in case you ain’t asked, the five of you ain’t together. We figure you’ll be bidding against one another before Cotton Younger leaves this valley.”
Sheriff Weed called out, “I’ve told you I’ll split the reward with you all, Timberline. This federal man aims
