“The lieutenant just gave me a direct order not to do that no more while you’re on this post. Is it safe to assume you mean to stay in Julesburg long?” the bully asked.
“No longer than I have to. But I may be there the next time you’re off duty,” Longarm said.
Fagan said, “I’m glad. For the next time we meet I’ll be in my civvies, wearing my sidearm. Consider yourself warned.”
Longarm said, “Thanks, I’ll keep your word of cheer in mind. I hope you know you’re talking dumb, though. I’m packing a badge as well as a gun. The gun is double-action. So I’d be taking unfair advantage of you, even if you got lucky.”
“Are you scared to face a man, fair, after cold-cocking him?”
“Sure I am. You’re a lot bigger than the gunslick they sent me after, and you’re talking almost as wild. I didn’t cold-cock you. You laid hands on me first and, like I said, getting hit goes with the poorly studied move. I don’t care if you’re still sore about that. But I want you to listen to my own friendly word of warning. If you make me hurt you more serious, I’ll no doubt be let off. I’ve met idjets like you before and, as you can see, they ain’t hung me yet. If you take me, and I doubt you can, they’ll hang you for murder and we’ll both be dead.”
“See here! A man has rights, and you just busted my nose.”
“I said I was sorry, and you’d best see here as well. Things ain’t the way they might have been in the bad old days, and even Black Jack Slade got swung when things might have seemed more casual out here. So you’d best simmer down. I know more than one lawman, less kind-hearted than me, who’d just love to add you to his rep. Fortunately for you, I ain’t looking for a rep. But if you ever meet my sidekicks, Smiley and Dutch, from the same Denver office, watch your fool mouth. They’ve often chided me for my more gentle manners.”
As he swung into his saddle, Fagan bawled, “I ain’t scared of any damn civilian. In my day I’ve fought Sioux and worse!”
Longarm didn’t answer that he’d seen his share of Indian fighting. There was no sense wasting words on a pure fool. He could only hope the fool was only sounding off. He hated it when men told him in advance they were gunning for him. He never knew, when next they met, whether to say howdy or go for his gun.
Having given fair warning before noon, the prairie sun was doing its best to kill everything in sight as it glared down from its inverted bowl of cloudless cobalt sky.
They were a little more than halfway back to town when Longarm spied dust rising from the trail ahead and told Blue Boy, “Easy, now. That ain’t a whirlwind coming at us. Some other damn fool is on the trail in this infernal heat.”
Blue Boy cocked his ears and broke into a happy lope toward what Longarm could now see was a pony cart coming to meet them. It had to be the one the livery hired out for women and children to ride in. It took him only a mite longer to see that the woman abusing the pony in front of her was Myrtle from the hotel. She was wearing the same polka-dot dress, but at least she’d had the sense to shade her head with a big straw picture hat.
As they met, Blue Boy sniffed at her like a begging pup and, sure enough, she fed him another sugar cube and patted his muzzle. She told Longarm, “I was getting worried about you two. All the other riders from town have been back a spell, and thermometers are starting to bust in the shade.”
Longarm told her risking a sunstroke herself was no way to make it any cooler. “I watered this critter just before we left the post, and he spent most of the time out there in the shade. I wish I’d been made to feel as welcome. You say the posse riders have given up on Black Jack Junior?” he asked.
She said, “They had to. He’s long gone, wherever he went. The two riders who work for me—as hotel help, not riders—just told me they’d checked with all the surrounding spreads and homesteads for miles, and that nobody’s seen hide nor hair of the mean little thing. As soon as I had someone to watch the desk I came after you to make sure you hadn’t killed my Blue Boy and to tell you you can stop looking.”
“I wish I could. But my boss has his mind set. The kid ain’t anywhere around here, though. So what say we head for the nearest shade?”
He had meant Julesburg, of course, but she shot him an arch look from the shade of her hatbrim. “That would be a place I know, over by the river. We could enjoy a nice swim and, with something like that in mind, it just so happens I packed a picnic hamper to bring along.”
He looked dubiously down at her. “Miss Myrtle, that same South Platte runs through Denver, a lot closer to the hills, and even there, it ain’t deep enough to swim in at this time of the year.”
“A lot you know. Follow me and I’ll show you a spot where a gravel operation left the river deep enough to drown in.”
Without waiting for an answer, she swung her pony around and drove off the trail. He followed her south, dubiously. Billy Vail hadn’t sent him all this way to go swimming with women. On the other hand, heatstroke had to be above and beyond the call of duty, and Black Jack Junior was as likely to be in the South Platte as anywhere else in the county right now.
It only took them a few minutes, and as they smelled the water, both Blue Boy and the cart pony got harder to handle. They busted through the wall of crack-willow and taller cottonwood rising like a planted hedgerow along the uncertain banks of the wide but shallow stream and let both animals drink like camels, standing fedock- deep in the tea-warm running water.
As Longarm took in the pleasant view he saw that this stretch of the South Platte was a lot wider than the same stream that ran through Denver. To make up for that, with less water this far from the mountain creeks that fed the South Platte, the misnamed river had become a glorified Cherry Creek, with the water braided between flat islands covered with sedge, brush, and even sweet gum. It was hard for a tree to grow up all the way on an island that got shifted about as the water level tried to make up its mind whether it was a summer trickle or a spring flood.
Myrtle said, “Let’s go. The swimming hole I told you about is out beyond that willow bar.”
He figured she should know. So he didn’t argue as they moved on across the running water. It wasn’t much deeper than Cherry Creek, but it was a lot wider, and he had to hope that kid story about quicksand was just
