“Strikes me as damn neighborly. Naturally, you’re expecting a cut.”
“Nope. Can’t take any part of the reward. It’s all yours. I’m going to tell you where the body is and then I’ll expect you to be long gone.”
“Leaving you with one less rival to deal with, eh? All right I’m a man who knows enough to quit whilst he’s ahead. You got a deal. Who killed the Sailor, you?”
“Nope. Don’t know who bushwhacked him. That’s why, if I was you, I’d pick him up tonight and scoot. I’ll ride up the mountain with you to help you pack him on a horse, and to make sure you get away safe. The one who shot him might have other ideas on the subject.”
“Jesus. You reckon they’ll have the body staked out?”
“Doubt it. Looks like somebody shot him down like a dog and left him for the crows. You’d best take that piss now. I’d like to get the two of you off my hands before bedtime.”
The detective laughed and said, “I admire a man who thinks on his feet, and you do think sharp and sudden. How’d you know I wasn’t the killer?”
“You, Weed, and the Mountie are the only ones who couldn’t be.”
“And I’m the one without a real badge. All right, you’ve gotten rid of me. How do you figure to get rid of the others?”
“It ain’t your worry, now. I eat the apple one bite at a time. So take your piss and let’s get cracking.”
By eight-thirty the railroad dick was packing the dead outlaw over the mountains to the transcontinental railroad and Longarm was getting off his bay in front of Kim Stover’s cabin. Light shone through the drawn curtains and somewhere inside a dog was yapping, so Longarm wasn’t surprised when the door opened before he’d had a chance to knock.
Kim Stover peered out at him, the lamplight making a red halo of her hair, as Longarm said, “Evening, ma’am. You folks rode off before I could get around to asking one or two more questions.”
“Mister Long, if you’ve come to make your bid for Cotton Younger…”
“Uncle Sam don’t work that way, ma’am, but let’s leave your odd notions aside for now. You see, there seems to be more’n one outlaw working this neck of the woods. He took a shot at me in Bitter Creek the other night, and tonight I learned he wasn’t funning. I thought we might talk about it.”
“Are you suggesting one of my friends took a shot at you?”
“No, ma’am. I think you and yours are just being surly. You see, somebody came up here to bust Cotton Younger out of your so-called jail. Somebody else gunned him. But that’s all been looked after. What I wanted to ask you about was new faces in the valley.”
“You mean since we captured Cotton Younger? You’ve met them all by now.”
“How about before your friends caught the boy skulking round? You have any new hands on the spreads, hereabouts?”
She shook her head and said, “No. Everyone I know in Crooked Lance has been here for some time.”
“How much time is some, ma’am?”
“Oh, at least five years. Wait a minute. Timberline did hire some new hands when they made him ramrod of the Rocking H. The cattle company that owns it has expanded in the last few years. There’s Windy Dawson, came to work two, maybe three years ago.”
“He’s that short, fat feller who throws good?”
“Yes, Windy’s one of the best ropers in the valley.”
“I took him for a top hand. I’d say he was a cowboy, not a train robber. Anyone else you can think of?”
“Not really. Windy’s the newest man in the valley. there’s Slim Wilson, but he was hired earlier and, like Windy, is considered a hand who knows his way around a cow. I’d be very surprised to learn that Slim wasn’t a man who started learning his skills early, and he’s no more than twenty, right now.”
“What about Timberline?”
“Are you trying to be funny? He’s cowboy to the core, and was one of the first men hired by the Rocking H.”
“Just asking. A man his size stands out in a crowd, too, and I don’t have anything like him on any recent flyers. You mustn’t think I’m just prying for fun, ma’am. It’s my job to put all the cards out on the table for a looksee. I’d say what we have here is a lone gunman who hides good on the ridge lines, or somebody playing two- faced.”
“Your killer has to be one of the men on your side, then. What was that you said about an attempted jailbreak?”
Longarm hesitated. Then he said, “I reckon it’s all right to level with you, ma’am. That old French Canuck I rode in with wasn’t. He made that fool play at the jailhouse door to get a look at the prisoner and maybe slip him a word or two. But he wasn’t out to kill Cotton Younger. He was sent, or came here on his own, to set a kinsman free.”
“And you saw through his scheme? You do know your job, don’t you?”
“Well, it was the Mountie that made him for a fake Canuck. Who gunned him, or why, is still pure mystery. From the few words I got out of him before he died, he seems to have had a misunderstanding with someone, and I know it wasn’t the man you have locked up; they never got to see each other.”
