we got down to possibles. He said he figured some married man was carrying on over in the willows, too. The rascal who shot up Fort Halleck must have got out there on his own mount. There ain’t a horse owned by anyone around here that can’t be accounted for at the time of the shoot-up.”
Longarm thanked him and headed back to his hotel, mulling over what he had been told. Assuming young Slade had been keeping that purloined army mount somewhere in Denver and had started riding just after he sung so awful in the Parthenon, it still wouldn’t work. Following the South Platte and its forage and water all this way would have taken even a horse-killer more than the time they had to work with. Aside from having to ride faster than the Pony Express ever had, and then some, the country between here and Denver, while still mighty open, wasn’t so open that a stranger of any description going lickety-split on a lathered horse would not get noticed at all.
By the time he got back all the way he had decided his want had gotten to Julesburg the way he had, by train. There was just no way to ride a horse, invisible, for a good hundred and fifty miles in less than three days, even if one hated his horse. Just as important, the rascal had ridden off, on something, after shooting up that army canteen. So unless he’d boarded a late-night train paying half-fare for a four-legged kid under twelve, which hardly seemed likely, he’d found a mount at this end of the trip.
Longarm went over that gal in the pony cart again. They had not reported a gal shooting up Fort Halleck. On the other hand, a gal could change into a cow outfit and likely pass for at least a short cowhand. But that raised more questions than it answered. The army could hardly have mistaken even a skinny little recruit for a gal, casual as some medical exams might be. While the sly old dog at the livery could hardly have mistaken a he for a she as he stole a feel. Black Jack Junior had to be a he. If he didn’t want folk to know where he was or what he was up to, he’d only have to calm down. Nobody noticed a mousy little runt who behaved halfway sensibly.
Myrtle greeted Longarm in the lobby and asked how he’d made out. He said, “They didn’t have a single horse for sale or hire.”
“Well, I won’t sell you my Blue Boy, but you can ride him all you like for two bits a day,” she said.
He brightened and said he hadn’t known she kept her own stock.
“I was hoping you’d be able to pick one up at the livery,” she said. “I don’t like to hire out my personal mount. Blue Boy has a tender mouth and he’s used to carrying considerably less weight. But if you promise to ride him gentle, and look out for prairie-dog holes, I’ll hire him out just this once.”
He agreed to treat her Blue Boy like a brother and ran up to get his own gear as she called after him that she’d meet him out back. In his room he shucked his coat and string tie. It was going to get hotter before it got cooler. He lugged his gear downstairs and, sure enough, found Myrtle talking to an old steel-gray gelding in the stable out back. She was feeding the brute dining-room sugar cubes and telling it not to be afraid as Longarm joined them to observe mildly, “It’s your horse, ma’am. But they like apples or even carrots just as well, and such treats don’t rot their teeth as bad.”
She said she knew Blue Boy was spoiled, but that she’d never been able to resist a pleading male. He was too polite to point out that a gelding wasn’t exactly a male, once it had been cut. He told the sleek critter how much he Red it, too, and had no trouble saddling up. Getting Blue Boy’s sweet teeth to accept the bit he’d brought along as well was more trouble. Myrtle said he was used to her own bridle and he agreed, grudgingly, since while it was in fact a bridle, it was silver-mounted sissy, and the bit was intended more for spoiling pets than serious riding. As he led the spoiled pet out into the alley, Myrtle followed, and as he mounted up she warned him not to lope too fast in the cruel, hot sun.
He assured her he’d keep to the shady side of the trail and as he heeled Blue Boy into motion—slow motion—it became obvious that, whatever they might be up to, even a brisk trot could not be what the lazy critter had in mind.
He waited until they’d strolled out of sight before he kicked harder and growled, “I know, it’s almost noon and that there ain’t no shady side of the Overland Trail But the sooner we get out of this sun the better, so move you otherwise total waste of sugar cubes!”
Blue Boy stopped dead in his tracks, turned his head back to roll one reproachful eye at Longarm, but decided not to bite his boot tip after all when Longarm stared back sternly and said, “Go on. Just you try it and I’ll kick your sugar-rotted teeth up into your empty skull.”
Blue Boy had some brains, after all. He heaved a defeated sigh and commenced to trot. That jarred a rider astride more than it might a lady seated sidesaddle, but it was a mile-eating if uncomfortable pace, and it was, in fact, too hot at this hour to lope a critter he’d promised to return in good shape.
As they trotted the trail, raising enough dust for a Cheyenne war party, Longarm noted other drifting dust above the horizon all around. That meant the posse riders had split up to circle wide for sign on the flatter prairie this far east of the front ranges. Longarm doubted they’d cut much sign as he stared at the overgrazed range closer to the trail. The ‘dobe soil was summer baked as hard as the bricks one could make from it, without having to fire. At this time of the year you could maybe cut it with a knife, but even a steel-shod hoof wouldn’t leave a serious mark on it. The scrub-brush stubble of wiry dry short-grass would no more hold a hoofprint than a welcome mat on a brick porch. He glanced to the south, where the South Platte had to be running, if there was water in it. For water was the thing to consider when tracking Cheyenne or worse out here in high summer. But he saw by more rising dust that the others looking for Black Jack Junior had that bet covered. If he’d watered his mount over that way it would soon be known. So there was no need for side tripping, and the sooner he got to the army post the sooner they’d be able to fill in some missing facts for him.
It might not have taken that long by the clock but it felt like they’d been trotting on a hot stove all day by the time they got to Fort Halleck.
The name was sort of boastful. The army outpost had never been what one thought of as a fort, back when it had been built to keep an eye on wild buffalo and rampaging Indians pestering the Overland Trail. Since then both the buffalo and the Indians had been whittled down considerably, and there was only a modest post- operating company of army engineers stationed there.
As he turned off the trail running past it, Longarm saw they had nobody posted at the main gate, which was more like a gap in the three-strand bobwire around the quarter section or so. A sun-faded flag hung listlessly from a lodgepole flagstaff that sure could have used more whitewash. The buildings on the far side of the dust- paved parade could have started out most any color. Twenty-odd years of summer dust and winter snow had turned them all to what looked sort of like big gray pasteboard shoe boxes.
He spied a sign that had once been gold and red in front of post headquarters and reined in to dismount. As he was tethering Blue Boy near a watering trough nobody had thought to put water in of late, a burly sergeant came out on the veranda. “This is U.S. Army property, cowboy. Are you authorized to be on this post?” he asked.
Longarm moved up to join him in the shade. “If I wasn’t, I’d be here anyway, thanks to all the guards you
