than anyone else where that rascal’s hid out.”
“Let’s see, now. He sends me to get killed. Then, amid the general congratulations, him or Mabel slips you out, they put a barlow knife against your eyelid to gain your undivided attention. It figures. It ain’t like they had to transport you out of the valley. They just wanted a few minutes of Apache conversation with you. Once they knew where to pick up Jesse James, you’d be useless baggage to dispose of. Hell, they might even have let you live till the vigilantes found you.”
“Damn it, I don’t know where Jesse James is hiding!”
“Lucky for you I come along, then. I suspicion you’d have told ‘em, whether you knew or not. That Cedric Hanks is a mean little bastard, ain’t he?”
“You still think I’m Cotton Younger, don’t you?”
“Don’t matter what I think. You could be Queen Victoria and I’d still transport you to Denver to stand trial as Cotton Younger.”
The owlhoot’s expression was sly as he asked, cautiously, “Is cattle rustling a federal charge, Longarm?”
“No. It’s a fool thing to say. You rustle up some grub or you rustle apples as a kid. You don’t rustle cows, boy. You steal ‘em! If you ride with a running iron in your saddle bags, it’s best to be honest with yourself and call it what it is. Cow theft is a serious matter. Don’t shilly-shally with kid names for a dangerous, dead-serious profession!”
“If I was to admit I was a rustler—all right, a cow thief—named Jones, would you believe me?”
“Nope. I ain’t in a believing business. You don’t know what fibbing is until you’ve packed a badge six or eight years. You owlhoots only lie to decent folks, so you seldom get the hang of it. In my line, I get lied to every day by experts. I’ve been lied to by old boys who gunned down their own mothers. I’ve taken in men who rape their own daughters. I’ve arrested men for the sodomy-rape of runaway boys, for torturing old misers for their gold, for burning a colored man to death just for the hell of it, and you want to know something? Not one of them sons of bitches ever told me he was guilty!”
“Longarm, I know I’ve done wrong, now and again, but you’ve got to believe me, I’m only…”
“A professional thief who’s done more than one stretch at hard labor. You think I don’t recognize the breed on sight? No man has ever come out of a prison without that whining, self-serving look of injured innocence. So save me the details of your misspent youth. I’ve heard how you were just a poor little war orphan, trying as best he could to make his way in this cruel, old world he never made. I know how the Missouri Pacific stole your widowed mother’s farm. You’ve told me about the way they framed you for borrowing that first pony to fetch the doctor to your dying little sister’s side. You’ve told me every time I’ve run you in.”
“That’s crazy. You never seen me before!”
“Oh, yes, I have. I’ve seen you come whining and I’ve had it out with you in many a dark alley. The other day I killed you in a barber shop. Sometimes you’re tall, sometimes you’re short, and the features may shift some from time to time. But I always know you when we meet. You always have that innocent, wide-eyed look and that same self-pity in your bullshit. I know you good, old son. Likely better than you know yourself!”
“You sure talk funny, mister.”
“I’m a barrel of laughs. You just set while I saddle up the mounts. We’re almost to the high prairies near the south pass and we have to ride a full day out in the open. You reckon you know how to sit a McClellan with your hands behind you, now? Or do I have to tie you to the swells?”
“I don’t want to be tied on. Listen, wouldn’t it make more sense to wait for dark before we hit open ground?”
“Nope. We have them others coming at us through the trees right now. I figure we can get maybe ten, twelve miles out before they break free of the trees. I’d say they’ll be here this afternoon. By then we’ll be two bitty dots against the low sun. The course I’m setting ain’t the one they’ll be expecting, but there’s no way to hide our trail by daylight. If we make the railroad tracks sometime after dark, they’ll cut around the short way, figuring to stop any train I can flag down.”
“What’s the point of lighting out for the tracks then, if they’ll know right off what your plan is?”
“You mean what they’ll think my plan is, don’t you?”
The moon was high, washing the surrounding grasslands in Pale silver as the prisoner sat his mount, watching Longarm’s dark outline climb the last few feet to the Crossbar of the telegraph pole beside the tracks. He called up, “See anything?”
Longarm called back, “Yeah. Campfire, maybe fifteen miles off. Big fire. Likely a big bunch after us. Leastways, that’s what they want me to think. You just hush, now. I got work to do.”
Longarm took the small skeletonized telegraph key he’d had in his kit and rested it on the crossbar as he went to work with his jackknife. He SPliced a length of his own thin wire to the Western Union line, and spliced in the Union Pacific’s operating line, next to it.
He attached a last wire and the key started to buzz like a bee, its coils confused by conflicting messages on the two lines he’d spliced into. Longarm waited until the operators up and down the transcontinental line stopped sending. They were no doubt confused by the short circuit. Then he put a finger on his own key and tapped out a rapid message in Morse code. He got most Of it off before the electromagnet went mad again as some idiot tried to ask what the hell was going on.
Longarm slid down the pole, mounted his own stolen horse, and said, “Let’s go.” He led them west along the right-of-way. He rode them on the ties and ballast between the rails. The horses found it rough going and stumbled from time to time. As the bay lurched under the prisoner, he protested, “Wouldn’t it be easier on the grass all about?”
Longarm said, “Yep. Leave more hoofprints, too. Reading sign on railroad ballast is a bitch. That halo forming around the moon promises rain by sunup. Wet railroad ballast is even tougher to read.”
