case for the law, any minute.”
Longarm nodded grimly and said, “That’s why I ain’t left yet. I don’t know if we’re still inside Saint Stephens Township but we are on federal range, homesteaded or not. Nobody but Uncle Sam’s land office really owns this land entire until it’s been improved and dwelt on, some.”
He turned to the nester hugging his kid in the doorway and called out, “How long have you folk been here?”
The boy said, “About two years, come fall.”
Longarm sighed and said, “I was afraid of that. If she don’t make it, we’re talking federal.”
Then he said, “If you two gents are through hugging one another, we’d best get back to work. I got some canned food in my saddlebags. But I ain’t about to walk all the way to the creek for pot water.”
Big Dan said he’d go. Longarm said, “Not hardly. I mean to keep a closer eye than that on you. I’m already chasing one murderer all over Robin Hood’s barn, and there are limits to my patience. I want the boy to go for water. You’d best stay here and start chinking them log walls, hear?”
The man looked surprised. “How can you worry about a chore like that at a time like this?”
Longarm answered, “That’s easy. I can’t see you doing it without a grown man here to make you, and any fool can see it needs doing.”
Then he excused himself and stepped outside to find that shotgun and empty it as he called, “You can come out and start pulling grass up, now. Make sure you don’t pull nothing but grass if you don’t want your chinking to fall out. Plantain and dock wilts a lot as it dries.”
The nester came out, staring uncertainly at the slopes all around. Longarm said, “I don’t care which way you pick. Just so you don’t go too far.”
The boy came out, toting a cast-iron pot and a wooden bucket. Longarm nodded and said, “That ought to do her, in two trips. Your dad will need at least a couple of pails of water to mix with the grass and mud.”
“is it all right if I help him, mister?” asked the kid.
Longarm shrugged and said, “He’s your kin. It’s your cabin as needs the chinking.” So the son went one way and the father another as Longarm strode over to the midwife’s buckboard and told her dapple-gray draft pony, “We’d best unhitch you so’s you and old Ramona can graze. Lord knows when any of us will be able to get out of here.”
As he was leading the gray from between the shafts, the gal who owned it came out, smiled when she saw what he was up to, and said, “Oh, thank you. You must have read my mind. My name is Ann Fletcher, by the way.”
He told her it wasn’t his fault that his folk had named him Custis and as he led both horses around to the back she stayed in step with him as if she had something else on her mind.
He tethered both brutes on long leads to the corral rail, to let them graze outside it. She said, “I heard what you were telling Dan Hogan about wife-beaters before. I thought I was the student of psychology in these parts. But I guess a lawman has to know more than most about such matters as well, eh?”
He shrugged and began to unsaddle Ramona as he said, “It helps some. I wish it helped more. I meet most of the gents I have to arrest some time after they should have talked to a head doctor.”
She told him he was nevertheless an unusually understanding gent. He got the saddle off, draped it over a corral rail, and rubbed Ramona’s back with the saddle blanket before putting that aside to dry as well. As he turned back to her he said, “I don’t know if I done these folk any good or not. If she dies I have to take him back into town to stand trial for it. If she don’t, he might stop beating her, or he might beat her some more until he kills her, or his son kills him, or whatever. As long as everyone’s alive and more or less well when I ride out again, it won’t be my unwelcome chore. Do you know how to cook?”
She blinked in surprise, dimpled at him, and said she’d never had any complaints. So he said, “That’s good. My cooking don’t bother me, or I wouldn’t cook that way. But I have had complaints. I got some pork and beans, tomato preserves, half a smoked sausage and some real Arbuckle coffee. There ought to be some wild onion higher up, or even mountain cress, if it ain’t all dried out. We’ll need some padding to feed so many on one rider’s iron rations. So I’d best poke about.”
She stayed with him as he walked upslope behind the homestead. He didn’t mind. She was nice company and, as it turned out, not bad at herbing. From time to time she’d bend over to pluck a weed he wasn’t so sure one ought to eat. When he came up with a fistful of bitty wild onion bulbs and mentioned death camus she said, “Those are onions. I have an easy way to keep from eating death camus by mistake. I never eat any kind of camus.”
He chuckled. “That’s a good way to be sure. Even Shoshone have been known to poison themselves that way. But the camus that’s safe to eat sure tasted good, one time, when I was left afoot a spell with nothing better to eat.”
She asked when that had been. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t like to dwell on Indian scouting. I like most Indians, when they ain’t on the warpath.”
She looked away and said, sort of tight-lipped, “I don’t. The Shoshone killed my husband two summers ago. Was that the uprising you just spoke of?”
“Yep. I’m sure sorry I shot off my fool mouth about Indians, Miss Ann. I didn’t do so to rake up hurtful memories.”
“I know. I can tell you don’t like to hurt anybody. I must say you sure picked an odd profession for such a kind-hearted man.”
He shrugged and said, “It pays better than herding cows, and I don’t figure I’m hurting most folk. Most folk come decent. By putting away the few bad apples in the barrel, one could say I was sort of helping the majority of the folk I meet.”
Then he grinned sheepishly. “There I go, trying to explain my fool self to a lady who reads books about psychology.”
She laughed sweetly. “That’s what they say we all do, about some things. The world could use more men who excuse their actions your way, Custis. I get to see a lot of meanness in my line of work, too, and it’s amazing
