“What was that message you sent on the telegraph wire?”
“Sent word to my boss I was still breathing and had you tagging along. Told him I wasn’t able to transport you by rail and where I was hoping to meet up with such help as he might see fit to send me.”
“We’re headed for Thayer Junction, right?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, hell, we’re at least ten miles northwest of Bitter Creek and headed the wrong way. You reckon we’ll make Thayer Junction ‘fore the rain hits?”
“For a man who says he don’t know many train robbers, you’ve got a right smart railroad map in your head. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: where did you figure to run a cow you stole in Crooked Lance? It’s a far piece to herd stolen cows alone, ain’t it?”
“I keep telling everybody, I was only passing through! I had no intentions on the redheaded widow’s cows.”
“But you had a running iron for changing brands. A thing no cow thief with a brain would carry a full day on him if it could be avoided. So tell me, were you just stupid, or did you maybe have one or two sidekicks with you? If there were sidekicks who didn’t get caught by the vigilantes it would answer some questions I’ve been mulling over.”
“I was riding alone. If I had any friends worth mention in that damned valley I’d have been long gone before you got there!”
“That sounds reasonable. I sprung you solo. A friend of yours with the hair on his chest to snipe at folks would likely be able to take out Pop Wade, or even the two I whopped some civilization into. That wasn’t much of a jail they had you in, Younger. How come you didn’t bust out on your own?”
“I studied on it. We’re doing what stopped me. I figured a couple of ways to bust out, but knew I’d have Timberline and all them others chasing me. Knew if they caught me more’n a mile from the Widow Stover and some of the older folks in Crooked Lance they’d gun me down like a dog. Timberline wanted to kill me when they drug me from the brush that first day.”
“He does seem a testy cuss, for a big man. Most big fellers tend to be more easy-going. What do you reckon made him so down on you, aside from that running iron in your possibles?”
“That’s easy. He thought I was Cotton Younger, too. Lucky for me he blurted the same out to the widow as she was standing there. When he said I was a wanted owlhoot who deserved a good hanging, she asked was the reward worth mention, and the rest you know.”
“Timberline’s been up here in the high country for half a dozen years or more. How’d he figure you to be a member of the James-Younger gang?”
“The vigilance committee has all these damned reward posters stuck up where they meet, out to the widow’s barn. That’s their lodge hall. Understand they hold a meeting there once a week.”
“Sure seems odd to take the vigilante business so serious in a town where a funeral’s a rare occasion for an all-day hootenanny. While you was locked up all them weeks did you hear tell how many other owlhoots they’ve run in?”
“Pop Wade says they ain’t had much trouble since the Shoshone Rising a few years back. Shoshone never rode into that particular valley, but that’s when they formed the vigilantes. They likely kept it formed ‘cause the widow serves coffee and cakes at the meetings and, what the hell, it ain’t like they had a opera house.”
“Kim Stovers more or less the head of it, eh?”
“Yep, she inherited the chairmanship from her husband when the herd run him down, a year or so ago. Pop Wade’s the jailer and keeps the minutes ‘cause he was in the army, one time.”
“And Timberline’s the muscle, along with the hired hands at his and other spreads up and down the valley. You hear talk about him tracking anyone else down since he took the job?”
“No. Like I said, things have been peaceable in Crooked Lance of late. Reckon they’re taking this thing so serious ‘cause it beats whittling as a way to pass the time. You figure it should be easy to throw them part-time posse men off our trail, huh?”
“They’d have lost us long ago if we only had to worry about cowhands. I’m hoping that Mountie joined up with ‘em, along with Captain Walthers and the bounty-hunting Hanks family. Mountie’d be able to follow less sign than we’ve been leaving.”
“Jesus! You reckon this rough ride down these damn tracks will throw him off?”
“Slow him, some. Hang on, we’re getting off to one side. I see a headlamp coming up the grade.”
Longarm led his mounted prisoner away from the track at a jogging trot until they were well away from the right-of-way. Then, as the sound of a chuffing locomotive climbed toward them on the far side of a cut, he reined them to a halt and said, “Rest easy a minute. Soon as the eastbound passes I’ll unroll my slicker and a poncho for you. I can smell the rain, following that train at a mile or so down the tracks.”
“We’re right out in the open, here!”
“That’s all right. The cabin crew’s watching the headlamp beam down the tracks ahead of ‘em. Folks inside can’t see out worth mention through the glass lit from inside. Didn’t your cousin Jesse ever tell you that?”
Before the prisoner could protest his innocence again the noisy Baldwin six-wheeler charged out of the cut and passed them in a haze of wet smoke and stirred-up ballast dust. Longarm waited until the two red lamps of the rear platform were fading away to the east before he put Captain Walthers’s poncho over the prisoner and started struggling into the evil-smelling stickiness of his own tightly rolled, oilcloth slicker. He smoothed it down over his legs, covering himself from the shoulders to ankle but didn’t snap the fasteners below a single one at the collar. He’d almost been killed once, trying to draw his gun inside a wet slicker he’d been fool enough to button down the front.
In the distance, the locomotive sounded its whistle. Longarm nodded and said, “They’ve stopped the train to search for us. Means one of ‘em flashed a badge or such at the engineer. Means at least five minutes for them to make certain we didn’t flag her down for a ride. I’d say the searching’s going on about six or eight miles from here.
