satisfy both of them, for the moment, and as she slid to her knees to talk French, he managed to get her to her unsteady feet and moving in the right direction by soothing, “Later, in my room. We’ll do it undressed and I’ll lick you to death besides!”
She scampered away in the dark with a knowing chuckle as Longarm got his breath back and wondered how much time he’d lost.
He led the bay out, tethered it at a safe distance, and came back. He worked mostly by feel as he saddled the captain’s walking horse with Walthers’s own army saddle, bridled it with the headgear he found, and led it out behind him, soothing the nervous walker with honeyed words. He recovered his own mount and led both over to the creek, where he led them across and tethered them to a willow.
Then he splashed back, crossed the inky darkness of the Stover grounds, and after a long, cautious looksee, scooted across the road. He worked his way through the shadows to the back of the log jail. The chinked corner logs afforded an easy climb to the almost-flat roof. Longarm crept across the roof until he could peer over at the two guards by the front door. Then he settled down to listen.
It took forever before one of the guards asked, “Any sign of him?”
It’s too early, Slim. The gal said he’d be coming about nine.”
“We’re to be knocked out, ain’t we? What say we sort of scrootch down?”
“You scrootch down, damn it. We got more’n an hour to kill ‘fore he comes over from the hotel.”
“I wish we had a man inside. That big bastard’s faster’n spit on a stove with that.44 of his, and I ain’t never gunned nobody before.”
“Don’t worry, I have. He won’t have a chance. I’ll just blast him with both barrels of number-nine buck as he bends over to see if I’m sleepin’ sound.”
Longarm decided he’d heard as much as he needed to. So he gathered his legs under him, dropped off the roof, and materialized before their startled eyes, pistol-whipping the one with the shotgun into unconsciousness as he warned the other, quietly, “You say shit, and you’re dead.”
The frightened guard didn’t do anything but drop his Henry rifle to the earth without a word. Longarm knew that the key the midget had slipped him was probably worthless, so he said, “Open her up.”
“I don’t have a key, mister.”
“Are you funning with me, boy?”
“Honest to Gawd! Pop Wade has the key, not us!”
“Is Younger inside?”
“Yes, but…”
And that was all he had to say about it as Longarm knocked him out, slid him down the logs to rest by his partner, and went to work on the door.
One blade of Longarm’s jacknife would have gotten him arrested if he’d been searched by a lawman while not carrying a badge. The cheap, rusty lock was no trouble for his pick. He opened the door silently and went in, squinting in the darkness as he called out, quietly, “Younger, you just keep still and don’t say a word till I tell you to.”
“What’s going on?”
“That was three words, you son of a bitch. Say one more and I’ll feed your heart to the hawks!”
There was no further comment from the improvised cell as Longarm picked the lock. He told the prisoner to come out, locked his wrists behind him with handcuffs, and taking the youth by the elbow, said, “You come this way and make sure it’s silent as well as sudden.”
The prisoner tripped over one of the unconscious guards and gasped, “Who done that?”
“I did. Shut up and stand right there while I roll ‘em inside and lock the door. All that idle chatter of yours is making me testy as hell!”
It only took half a minute to shove the guards inside and lock the door a second time. He grabbed Younger’s elbow again and led him at a trot across the road, through the Stovers’ grounds, and across the creek. He boosted the prisoner up into his own saddle, knowing his own bay would be predictable on the lead. Then he climbed aboard Captain Walthers’s walker and led out at a brisk pace as the prisoner yelped, “Jesus! I can’t ride like this! There’s a big slit in this saddle an’ my balls is caught in it!”
“You just hush and do the best you can, boy. My orders are to bring you in dead or alive. You yell one more time and I don’t have to tell you which it’ll be.”
The prisoner fell silent, or tried to, as Longarm followed the trail he’d followed du Val-Brown along by memory. He managed to miss riding through a tree, but the branches whipped both of them in the dark as Longarm set as fast a pace as he dared to in the dark. Once the prisoner announced, apologetically, that he was about to fall off.
Longarm said, “You fall and I’ll kill you,” and his horsemanship seemed to improve miraculously.
Longarm led his charge to the clearing he remembered and beyond, guiding himself by the stars as he glimpsed them through the overhead branches. They weren’t on any trail he knew of. The riders from the valley would know every trail for a good two day’s ride from Crooked Lance.
They rode through timber and they rode through brush. A couple of times they almost rode over cliffs but Longarm trusted his mount to see well enough to avoid obvious suicide, given a gentle hand on the reins and not going faster than its night vision could cope with.
As they topped a rise high above the valley, Longarm reined in and looked back and down. They were tOo far away to hear more than an occasional rallying shot, but little lights were moving back and forth on the valley floor. Longarm chuckled and said, “They’ve missed us. But there’s no way to try to read our sign before sunup, so we’ll rest the critters here for a minute and be on our waY.”
The prisoner decided it was safe to speak and asked, “What in thunder is going on?”
