He stepped back to the doorway as the Mountie and Sheriff Weed came in, guns drawn. Longarm shook his head and said, “Nope. We were wrong. You think he’s in the hotel?”
Weed said, “Not hardly. His two geldings ain’t in sight neither. You reckon he’s lit out?”
Longarm said, “Maybe. But why?”
“He was a funny old cuss. Said he’d come to gun this jasper, here. Likely he saw there was no way he could, and…”
“After riding all the way from Canada, without even saying adios? I rode in with him. Du Val didn’t strike me as a man who makes sudden moves without a reason.”
The prisoner bleated, “You fellers got to protect me! I don’t like all this talk about my getting gunned!”
Ignoring him, the Mountie said, “The reason I was keeping an eye on him is that there’s something very odd about that man. For one thing, I don’t think he’s a Red River breed.”
“You waited till now to tell us? I took him for a Canuck.”
“No doubt, but then, you don’t speak Quebecois.”
“You mean when you and him were talking French and he said yours was sissy?”
“Yes, he said I spoke with a Parisian accent. My mother was named DeVerrier. My Quebecois is perfectly good.
“Why in thunder didn’t you say so?”
“Like you others, I’ve been playing my own hand for Her Majesty. I knew he was an imposter, but I didn’t know why. I still don’t know why, but, under the circomstances…”
The railroad dick came over to join them, saying, “He ain’t anywhere near the general store or hotel, gents. What do you reckon his play might be?”
Longarm said, “He’s either lit out for good, or he wants us to think he’s lit out for good.”
“Meaning another play for our prisoner, come dark?”
Longarm moved over to the cage and asked the prisoner, “You have a friend with a long gray beard and a passable Canuck accent?”
“I never saw the varmint! Pop, there, told me about him trying to bust in, but…”
“Or bust you out,” Longarm cut in, turning away. He didn’t expect the prisoner to confirm his suspicion, but it was worth thinking about.
Sheriff Weed said, “We’ll have to take turns tonight, keeping an eye peeled for the hombre.”
Longarm stared morosely at him for a moment before he shook his head and said, “That’s doing it the hard way. Why sweat him out when I can ask him what he’s up to?”
“Ask him? How do you figure to ask that old boy word one, Longarm? None of us knows where he is!”
“Not right now, we don’t. But there’s a good hour’s daylight left and I know where he turned off the trail.”
“Hot damn! You reckon you can track him down before sunset?”
“I aim to give it one good try.”
Longarm rode his bay slowly through the crack-willow on the wrong side of the creek, snorting in annoyance as he spotted another big hoofprint in a patch of moist earth. The man calling himself du Val was wasting their time and getting himself brush-cut for nothing. There was little use taking to the tall timber to hide yourself when you traveled with two big geldings wearing oversized draft shoes. The sun was low and he was well clear of the settlement, now. The evening light made the occasional hoofprint easy to read in the orange, slanting rays. In fact, aside from the way du Val had vanished and the odd tale the Mountie told, the signs read as if the oldtimer was simply heading for Bitter Creek without taking too many precautions about his trail. Longarm considered that as he rode on. Was du Val setting him up for a bushwhacking, or had he simply given up?
Longarm ducked his head under a low branch and, as he rode out into a clearing, spied one of du Val’s pets, grazing quietly in the gauzy light. The other was outlined against pale aspen across the clearing. Neither mount had a rider. Longarm reined back into the shadows of the line, sweeping the far side cautiously with his eyes. He slid the Winchester from its boot as he dismounted.
He circled the clearing instead of crossing it, clucking to the gelding near the treeline as he approached it. Neither plowhorse paid much attention to him. They were tired and settled in for the evening. They were either stupid, even for farm animals, or nothing very exciting was about to happen.
Longarm saw a human knee sticking up out of the long grass near the grazing animal he was approaching. He froze in place to study it, then moved closer, his Winchester at port-arms. The man lying in the grass on his back groaned. Longarm dropped to one knee, raising the barrel of his rifle and feeling with one hand under the long beard as he said, “Evening, du Val. Where’d they hit you?”
“Lights and liver, I reckon,” the old man sighed, his French Canuck accent missing. Longarm’s hand came out wet and sticky as the dying man complained, “He didn’t have to do it. I’d never have told.”
Longarm wiped his fingertips on the matted beard, then lifted it away from the old man’s chest which was tatooed with a panoramic scene of a once-important sea battle. Someone had put a rifle bullet right between the Monitor and the Merrimac. Why he was still breathing was a mystery. He was one tough old man.
Longarm asked, “Who bushwhacked you, Sailor?”
