“Hell, Jack, I had to test my rifle, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but you didn’t need to shoot in here. One of them goddamn rock splinters hit me in the ear and cut it. Dammit, you’ve drawed my blood.”
“They say a good bleeding clears a man’s system out, Jack.”
“Yeah, well, I can do without no such foolishness. Hell, if you was going to waste a shell, how come you didn’t shoot that damn packhorse you was so worried about?”
“Now, Jack, you know that would have caused me to expose myself while I took careful aim. If you’d seen me like that, I reckon there would have been more than the horse got taken down.”
The sun was starting to flatten itself on the horizon. It would be dark soon, but it was no less hot for all of that. Longarm knew, of course, that sometime after midnight it would commence to get cold, and not just cold but freezing. That was the damned high prairie for you.
Roast in the daytime and freeze at night. Shaw said, “Be dark pretty soon.”
“Yeah.”
“I reckon to give you a little trouble tonight, Longarm.”
“Aw, yeah, how’s that?”
“Nothing you can’t handle. Man like you.”
“Well, what is it?”
“You’re a gambling man. At least you were. You still of the same bent?”
“I still play at cards now and then if the stakes ain’t too high.”
“Stakes gonna be mighty high this time, Custis, mighty high.”
“Tell me about it. I ain’t got nothing else to occupy my mind.”
Chapter 3
“Well,” Shaw said, “it’s a pretty simple little game. Sometime before dawn I’m going to open the corral gate. You can’t see that from where you are. And some of these horses are going to get out. I’ll make sure you hear that. Now the game for you is going to be to decide if I’m on one of them horses, riding off and making my escape, or not.
Maybe I’m just running the horses out of the corral and then waiting for you to jump out of your hidey-hole and run toward the back to see if that is me waving adios to you. See the game?”
Longarm thought about it. It had actually been worrying him most of the day. He had wished his position had been much more to the side of the cabin so that he could see all of the corral. As it was, he figured he only had a view of not quite half, and the gate was obviously on the other side. All that day he had subconsciously studied the terrain, looking for someplace he could run to that would give him protection where he could see the side of the house and the corral. But the land had been flat as a griddle cake, with not even a semblance of a place to hole up. His only chance had been to shoot the packhorse, but the animal had not stayed in the proper position long enough. The horse he’d ridden in on was too far back, and would have afforded him no better view than he had. Shaw was right. It was a very chancy proposition. If he thought Shaw was making a break and left cover to stop him, Shaw could be still in the cabin with a rifle trained his way. And of course, the other side of that coin was that Shaw might really be riding off. If he did, Longarm would have no way to catch him. He’d make the border easily. Longarm was glad now that he hadn’t mentioned anything about wiring the Arizona Rangers to Shaw.
Longarm said, “You ain’t going to open that gate and let your horses out, Jack. You’d be crazy.”
Shaw let out a whoop of laughter. “Longarm, I thought you knew a little something about cayuses. How far you reckon these old ponies are going to go away from this water? Hell, I’ll probably have trouble keeping them out long enough to fool you.”
He was right, Longarm thought. Shaw could drive the horses out of the corral, but they wouldn’t stay out long. He said, “You got a point, Jack. But that old knife cuts two ways. If I tell you right now I’m going to take the bait, you ain’t going to know whether to believe me or not. So that means you won’t try to break out tonight. And if I’m convinced of that, then I won’t show myself. But if you are of a mind to try it, it might be you chewing up some of this prairie. Might be a gamble either way you look at it.”
Shaw laughed softly. “Got to hand it to you, Custis, you still play a hell of a hand of poker.”
All of a sudden it was night. For just a little while it was dark, and then the biggest, roundest, most golden, brightest moon Longarm had ever seen filled the sky and threw light and shadows everywhere. You really didn’t see it back in the valleys and draws of the mountains, not even when you were topping out on the terrain, because there was no flat horizon to judge it by. It was awesome. Longarm said, “See what you mean about the moon, Jack. Unfortunately, I ain’t got no paper to read.” Shaw said, “You probably got a better view of it. I’m fumbling around in the dark here trying to make my supper. All I got is dried beef and biscuits and cheese and canned peaches. I don’t reckon you’re hungry, though.”
“I ate earlier,” Longarm said. “Say, I still don’t understand why you felt it was necessary to go through three batches o mountains. You switched your trail enough almost made me dizzy. You’d have been a lot better off, once you come out of the Mescals, making straight for the border. Instead you wasted four days rummaging around in that rough country.”
Shaw chuckled. “Well, I tell you, Longarm. It’s considerably easier to get rid of folks you don’t want tagging along in tangled country. You can’t do ‘em in quite as easy out in the open, if you get my drift.”
Longarm shook his head. “I ain’t never goin’ to understand how them boys let you knock ‘em off one at a time. Was they that dumb or that easy?”
“Greed, Longarm. Plain old simple greed. Most of ‘em knew I was picking off the weak ones, except for the first two they thought was brought down by fire from the train. But the rest of ‘em, each one of ‘em, thought they was gonna be the one I’d share the proceeds with.
Remember them last two? Looks like I shot both of them, don’t it?”
