When they’d both watered the pines Longarm stared thoughtfully about and decided, “I reckon I’d best cuff you to a stout branch and leave you here for now. We’ll pick a low one so’s you can stretch out on the pine needles if you want. I’ll bring you some grub and water.”
The prisoner asked why. Longarm just cuffed him to a low-grown limb and left him to figure it out. He was more polite when Ann asked him, back at the buckboard. He said, “If he ain’t with us, when anybody asks, we won’t be fibbing when we say he ain’t with us, see?”
She told him he was smart again. He stood by the buckboard, opening cans on the tailboard with his pocket knife, as she got her own tarp from under the seat and spread it on the grass nearby. He mixed the contents like a barkeep until he had three cans filled with the same concoction of cold canned beans and tomato preserves. He excused himself a moment and took the prisoner’s rations to him in the woods. He handed the can to Hogan and said, “This may hold you. You don’t need water with such slop. If you hear loud voices from back here, don’t call out to ‘em. Miss Ann and me hardly ever yell. Savvy?”
Hogan had had time to guess the plan. He said he meant to stay quiet as a church mouse. Longarm told him that might not be quiet enough and went back to join Ann on her tarp.
It didn’t take long to polish off their own slop. Rank having its privileges, they got to wash theirs down with water and a dash of Maryland rye Longarm carried in a saddlebag for snakebite and such social occasions. She asked for more and, after she’d had it, said, “It’s funny. I’ve been up all night and I’m bone-tired, but I don’t think I could go to sleep right now if I was back home in my bed.”
He resisted the temptation to tell her he wished they were both back home in her bed, and settled for, “It’s the tension one feels at times like these. I’ve gone three or four days and nights without sleep on a serious case, not even trying. I reckon it’s like that Professor Darwin says. We’re all descended from keen hunters because, before we got civilized enough to live softer, folk who couldn’t keep up when times got tense never got to have descendants.”
“My, you do read a lot. Anyone can see you’re a keen hunter, as well. But you look sort of… well, confused, now, Custis. I mean, I can see it, deep in your eyes, that your thoughts are running around inside so fast they seem to be bumping into one another.”
He smiled thinly. “Remind me never to play poker with you. You’re all too right. It ain’t my thoughts bumping noses. I know what’s going on. It’s conflicting duties that are giving me such a bother. Life would be easier on a lawman if it let him just hunt one rascal at a time. But I’m sworn to uphold the law no matter how many fools I see breaking it. So I got to run that wife-killer in and, at the same time, I feel like a fool foxhound who’s been sidetracked by a rabbit.”
She sighed. “I understand. You’re doing this for me, aren’t you?”
He knew she’d like him better if he said that was it, but he replied, “Not entire, no offense. It is my sworn duty to see justice done, and that poor brute don’t figure to get much justice off a jury of his neighbors. He ain’t got no friends. I know he’ll be treated fair by the federal district court in Lander. So we got to get him there, and we will. Meantime, it’s out of my way, and I know I’m losing my lead on that more serious killer. What you may see running around behind my eyes is that I know I could be making two awful mistakes at once by trying to do my job two ways at the same time.”
She dimpled and said, “Oh, heck, I thought it was because I let you kiss me that other time.”
Her sunbonnet hardly got in the way at all. But she still untied it and let it fall off as he kissed her again, harder. For, while he was somewhat confused about his duty to the law, Longarm knew his duty when it was spelled out for him by dimples and big blue eyes.
They wrestled friendly on the tarp for a spell and she didn’t fuss when he ran his free hand over her from the waist up. But when he got his hand under her skirt, kissing her as warmly as they both seemed to feel, she protested in a stifled voice, “Stop that this instant!” So he did.
She sat up, red-faced, and didn’t look at him as she added, “I meant out here under the open sky, in front of God and everyone.”
He started to ask who could see them, surrounded as they were by such tall grass. But by then he’d sat up, too. So he had to mutter, “Oh, Lord, I’ve seldom met a gal who was right so often, but when you’re right you sure are right!”
They could both see the dozen-odd riders headed their way up the slope, riding sort of spread out and wary. Longarm told her, “Stay put and just follow my lead,” before he got to his feet and waved a howdy with his hat.
That brought them closer, faster. As he spied the tin star one rider in the lead was wearing Longarm called out, “I reckon I know who you boys are after. I sure hope it ain’t me.”
The county deputy reined in to stare poker-faced down at Longarm and the girl he could now see behind him. He said, “The boy told us about you two, when he run in to say his father had beat his mother to death. We know who done it. Would you mind telling us how come you rid this way instead of coming into town? When we got to the cabin, even the body was missing.”
Longarm knew better than to fib about the bundle they were all staring at, now. He said, “That’s easy. I’m law, too. Federal. The Hogan woman was killed on federal land. That’s her, on the buckboard. We figured to take her up to the federal court at Lander.”
The older star-sporting gent staring hard from his saddle said, “You figured wrong. Blanche Hogan was murdered in Fremont County, and the county wants both her and the skunk as murdered her. In case you’re wondering, I’m Fremont County.”
Longarm said, “I never said you was from anywhere else. As you can see, we don’t have her husband with us. So let’s not act greedy. You boys look all you like for him and, meanwhile, we’ll just carry her on up to Lander.”
The older lawman in charge of such disgusting odds shook his head. “We’re holding the trial in Saint Stephens, and that’s where we mean to take the corpse, see?”
“Not hardly. You don’t seem to have anyone to try, and you surely don’t want a lady turning funny colors in your witness box,” Longarm told him.
“We has to prove she’s dead, don’t we?”
“Well, sure you do. But anyone can see she is, damn it.”
