was the real Longarm we just talked to, where has he been all this time?”
Wes said, “Somewheres, I reckon. We know he rid out of the Dulce Agency to poke his nose into our own business and-“
“No we don’t,” Queen Kirby said with a chuckle. “You just heard me tell him about those land-rushers way up the valley. So how you know the real Longarm isn’t poking about up yonder, having heard some of them are hiring guns, and not having heard a thing about our bigger play down this way?”
Longarm grinned in the darkness right under her feet as he waited for what came next. But all that came next was a bitch from Wes about some stockman who couldn’t seem to savvy he was supposed to pay off his gambling markers.
Queen Kirby told Wes not to worry about it, adding she’d own the deadbeat’s land and cattle before long in any case. So Wes asked her about some other business dealings, and Longarm decided to quit while he was ahead.
He rolled out from under the card house and made his way out of there without being spotted in the tricky light of early evening. But even as he headed for the town livery he realized there was no way to take out even one of those bays without Queen Kirby learning he’d gone night-riding. So he headed back to his hotel on foot, his mind in a whirl as he considered whether to risk his ass one way or another. For he had to ride over to that mesa sooner or later, and it sure seemed sooner was best.
His mind made up, he trudged on toward the lamp-lit side entrance, muttering, “Perfidy, thy name is woman, and you’re likely to feel a fool when she tattles on you!”
Then he sighed and said, “Aw, shit, stealing a horse would be taking an even bigger chance, and you know you have to get a damned horse off somebody!” He knew Queen Kirby owned neither his hotel nor that dining room.
The dining room was still open and that dishwater blonde seemed pleased to see Longarm. But she told him the kitchen had shut down for the night if he wanted anything more than cooling coffee or a slice of something colder. Seeing there was nobody else out front, he took a deep breath and asked if she thought she could keep some right important secrets that wouldn’t mix her up in anything indecent.
She sat him down at a corner table and then sat down beside him, smiling a tad indecently as she confided, “My daddy was a Myers of clan Menzies, and I was raised on the tale of brave Jeannie MacLeod, who refused to say where Prince Charlie was hiding, no matter how the redcoats beat her and raped her!”
Longarm resisted the chance to allow the gal couldn’t have enjoyed the beatings and got out his wallet instead as he said, “I need a horse as bad as that old cuss in Shakespeare’s play, Miss Trisha. I got the two I rode in with over in Queen Kirby’s own livery. Don’t see how I’d get either out for some night-riding without them telling her.”
The waitress stared thunderstruck at his federal badge and identification as she marveled, “You mean you ain’t the Henry Crawford I’ve been… getting to know all this time? Well, I never, and there’s the mail coach coming through around midnight if you have to get out of town without anyone but me knowing about it, Henry. I mean, Custis.”
He put a hand on her wrist as he put the wallet away, explaining, “Ain’t ready to leave for good. Got to snoop around over by La Mesa de los Viejos, and it’s too far to walk both ways before sunrise.”
She gasped, “You don’t want to go over there alone! They say there’s spooks, crazy hermits, or just some sickness in the canyon soils. In any case, nobody lives over yonder or rides over yonder since the old-timey cliff dwellers all got sick and died a thousand years ago!”
He patted her wrist reassuringly and said, “We heard different. Your government and mine wants me to see just what in blue thunder is really going on over yonder, and like I said, I need a mount to lope me over there and back before dawn. How are we doing so far?”
Trisha said, “Heavens, I don’t keep a horse of my own. I’ve no occasion to go that far from this place I work or my hired cottage down by the river.”
She placed her other palm on the back of his already friendly hand. “I’d be afraid to ride out into the open range around town. It was Apache country until mighty recent, and some say Apache riders have been seen out there since!”
Longarm said, “If they were visible to the casual eye I doubt they could have been Jicarilla, Miss Trisha. You don’t know anyone you could borrow a mount from, saying you were brave enough to ride off somewhere you just had to get to tonight?”
She started to say no. Then she brightened and said, “Meg Campbell! Over by the schoolhouse! She does ride her own pony and, seeing she’s from a Highland family as well, we ought to be able to confide in her, Custis!”
Longarm said, “I’d rather we didn’t. Two can keep a secret if one of them be dead. A secret shared by three ain’t much of a secret to begin with. Couldn’t you just tell her some white lie, borrow her pony on the sly, and lend it to me eight or ten hours, Miss Trisha?”
The waitress thought, sighed, and said, “Lord, I don’t know what excuse I’d give for borrowing her pony over night. She knows I don’t have a sweetheart, and she’s homely enough to snoop if I told her I’d met somebody since the last time we talked.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “I wasn’t going to ask you to risk your good name. But since you just came up with such a swell excuse, couldn’t you say you had to ride out to a big spender’s cow spread to admire his stamp collection or whatever? I don’t see how your schoolmarm chum could hope to follow you once you borrowed her only mount.”
Trisha said, “She wouldn’t be able to snoop around any rancho I just made up. But she knows where my cottage is and it’s only a short walk from her own!”
He shrugged and said, “Nobody would expect to find their pony by any cottage in town if they’d lent it out for a midnight tryst somewheres else, would they?”
Trisha explained, “Meg Campbell’s nice, but she’s inclined to be nosy. What if she knocked, knowing it wouldn’t matter if nobody was there, but meaning to ask me where her pony was if anyone came to the door?”
Longarm started to say she couldn’t simply pretend to be out. Then he had a better notion and suggested,
