Longarm looked sharply at her. 'Are you trying to tell me that these 'shirttail cousins and uncles' murdered your husband in order to get his assets?'
'That's right.'
'Any proof of that?'
'No,' she said after a long silence. 'After it happened, I was in shock and vulnerable. Instead of acting in my own behalf and trying to find proof that I was not guilty, I panicked and ran. I got all the way to Denver, and it was just bad luck that I was caught at the train station.'
Longarm inhaled deeply and then exhaled slowly. 'I tell you something, Lucy. I never met a prisoner that didn't try to play on my sympathy and then stick it to me the minute my back was turned. Now, I don't know if you are guilty as sin or innocent as the Virgin Mary, but I do know that I've got a job to do and that's all that matters.'
'Is it?' she asked, eyebrows arching upward. 'Can you just blindly carry out your instructions regardless of my guilt or innocence? Regardless of what is right and what is wrong?'
'That's not for me to decide.'
She snorted with disgust and shook her mahogany mane of hair. 'You seem like a more intelligent man than that,' she said. 'I'd hoped for better.'
'Too bad,' he said as he touched spurs and led them galloping back into Denver to return the horse he'd taken in order to catch her.
When they arrived in town, Billy Vail was in the street trying to calm the horse's owner, a tall, burly man who looked to be a freighter or a businessman of dubious background.
'There!' Billy said to the irate man. 'I told you that my deputy would bring back your horse.'
'You thievin' sonofabitch!' the big man cursed, grabbing the reins out of Longarm's hands. 'I ought to drag your ugly ass offa that sorrel and beat your head in.'
Longarm ground his teeth in silence. 'I'm sorry, but my prisoner would have escaped if I hadn't taken your horse.' The big man stared at Lucy. 'She's your prisoner?'
'That's right.'
The man doubled up and guffawed so loud that he sounded like a braying mule. Longarm could feel his temperature rising to the boiling point, but he was determined to conduct himself in the honorable tradition of an officer of the law. If he could.
'Deputy, I'll take that pretty wench off your hands!' the big man roared.
Now Longarm had had enough. He started to dismount and shut the braying fool up, but Billy raised a hand to arrest his motion. 'Custis,' Billy said, 'I'll handle this.'
And as Longarm watched, Billy moved over to the big man and stomped down on his foot.
'Hey!' the man cried, hopping up and down. 'That hurt, you little...'
Billy's fist blurred upward in a tight arc that ended in the big man's gut. It was a short, powerful uppercut, and Longarm could have sworn that it lifted the big man an inch off the ground. When the man bent over double and began to gasp for air, Billy hammered him to his knees.
'Thanks again for the use of your fine horse, sir,' Billy said in a cheery voice. 'It was an act of generosity and a real public service. Now, good day! And also to you, Custis, and especially to you, Miss Ortega.'
Billy beamed and waddled back toward the federal building leaving all three of them to stare.
'I guess we might as well ride,' Longarm said, taking Lucy's reins.
As they rode out of Denver a second time, Lucy clung to her saddlehorn. Longarm ignored the curious stares of the pedestrians, horsemen, and freighters that they passed and let the horses gallop until they began to get winded.
'How long will it take you to get me to Prescott?' she asked when they began to walk their horses.
'Maybe two weeks.'
'Took me just seven days to reach the Denver train station,' Lucy said with a superior smirk.
'Well,' Longarm said, 'you didn't have a prisoner to watch.'
'That's true,' Lucy said as she set her eyes on the Rocky Mountains looming up ahead.
CHAPTER 3
Longarm and Lucy rode south along the base of the Rocky Mountains. It was late in September and, high up in the deep canyons, Longarm could see that the aspen were starting to change colors. They were yellow mostly, but some were rust-colored, and Longarm knew that they would turn deep shades of red and ocher as the weather grew colder.
Lucy Ortega said little the first few days of riding. She seemed lost in her own dark reverie, and Longarm respected her wish for silence. He was content to his own thoughts, which focused on how he would spend his three weeks of vacation. He realized that there really wouldn't be enough time to float down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. So perhaps he would take a train over to Baltimore, Ohio, where he had a few friends. On the other hand, the weather might be turning to snow by then, and so it could be wiser to head south, rather than north. Longarm had always enjoyed Taos and Santa Fe, and he knew a few ladies who would be more than happy to help him pass the time.
'So,' Lucy said one night as they camped in the mountains just west of Trinidad, 'how long have you been a lawman?'
'About eight, maybe ten years,' Longarm replied.
'You have a slight Southern accent,' she said, watching him from across the fire. 'Are you from the deep South?'
