“To drag a dead horse inside your cabin, because he’d be dead before you could tighten the noose around his neck. I can promise you that.”
“Don’t try and corner me now, Longarm. Don’t try and hem me up. I get plumb excited when that happens. I’m liable to come around one of them corners with a gun going in either hand. I know you ain’t got no cover.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“What’d you do, kill that packhorse? He get tired of drinkin’ water and come wanderin’ over placed just so?”
Longarm could picture Jack Shaw standing just inside the cabin door, a rifle in his hand, his hand to his ear, trying to place exactly where Longarm was. He said, “Naw, Jack, he foundered himself.”
“Foundered himself? On what?”
“I had a load of dried shelled corn on his back, and he ripped the pack and the corn spilled out, and between that and the water he was getting out of your windmill barrel, he managed to do the trick.”
“That would just about do it,” Shaw said. “I bet he swelled up like an old maid’s hopes.”
“He’d pop you stuck a pin in him.”
“That sun gonna be up pretty good right quick. You reckon he’s swelled up now, you let him cure under that sun for a few hours. I reckon by tonight he ain’t gonna smell so good. Reckon you can stand that?”
“Well, Jack, I been a lawman a good many years. I reckon I’ve smelled worse.”
“You ain’t meanin’ nothin’ personal by that, be you, Custis?”
“Aw, hell, no, Jack. You ain’t lowdown and rotten like some of them crooks I got to deal with. You can’t help it because you was born without.”
There was a pause. “Without what?”
“Without a conscience. Hell, Jack, you don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Punishing you for robbery and murder and various other crimes would be like whipping a schoolboy for liking pie over potatoes.”
There was a longer pause. Then Jack Shaw said, “You ain’t nowhere near as funny as you think, Longarm. Meanwhile, that sun is going to get higher and higher, and you are going to get hotter and hotter and drier and drier. How much of this do you think you can take?”
Longarm calculated for a moment. Then he made up his mind and said, “Jack, there is something we need to talk on.”
“What?”
“Well, Hank Jelkco really done you a harm when he didn’t cut that telegraph wire. The last thing I did before I left the train and started after you and your bunch was to get off a wire to the commander of the Arizona Rangers company in Phoenix. They could show up today.
Or they could show up tomorrow. I figure they can’t be more than two days behind me at the most and likely making a hell of a lot better time than I did.” Shaw said, “Aw, bullshit, Longarm, you expect me to believe that kind of trifling talk? Hell! Pull my other leg, it’s longer.”
Longarm shook his head even though he knew Shaw couldn’t see him.
“Naw, naw, Jack. Listen to the sound of my voice. Do I sound like I’m shoveling it up? I tell you there was a wire got off to that headquarters detachment of Arizona Rangers in Phoenix. And I can guarantee you that I marked the trail I was tracking you over. I broke off limbs and I scuffed up the sand. At one point I took a five-dollar shirt out of my saddlebags and tore it into strips to mark the way.
They will still have to go through all those jumps and dodges you led me through, but they will get here.”
Shaw was still skeptical. “Yeah? How come you just now bringing this up? How come you didn’t tell me yesterday? How come you waited until you seen you couldn’t get me on your own, and figured you’d better invent you some story? Ain’t that about the size of it?”
“No, it ain’t. I didn’t tell you yesterday because you might have taken off on me. I couldn’t tell you until I was in this position where I knew for certain I could stop YOU.”
Shaw had a little worried note in his voice. “You are funnin’ me about them damn Arizona boys, ain’t you? Them damn Rangers don’t like me one little bit. I done made ‘em look bad too many times.”
“I know that, Jack.”
“Hell, they likely to not even take me back into town. They likely to drag me behind a horse, drag all the hide off me. Who would have custody?
Hell, you’re a federal officer, Custis.”
“Yeah, but we are in Arizona Territory and there will be a bunch of them and only one of me. Custody is something you argue about later in court. If a squabble starts over it on the spot, it’s generally the strongest side that wins. But I do believe a court would later rule that I, by rights of being a deputy U.S. marshal, would have custody. Or should have had custody.”
“Goddammit!” Shaw said bitterly. “That’s small comfort, Longarm, damn small comfort. Hell, that bunch is about half outlaws they ownselves. And they is a bunch of Mex’s in with them. They liable to skin me alive.”
Longarm nodded. “There is that chance, Jack.”
There was a troubled silence. Longarm could hear Shaw sigh and curse softly to himself. After a moment he said, “Well, Custis, I appreciate you putting me on to this fact. I reckon now I’ll have to take my chances with you. I don’t figure you can last. I’m about halfway willing to bet my neck that that sun gets you before it is good and dark tonight. And I’m willing to bet that you might even pass out from that heat. Or go out of your head. What do you reckon?”
Longarm hated to tell him. He was afraid it might make Jack Shaw do something rash. Of course that wouldn’t be so bad either. Get this affair over with and get on back to town. Longarm was promising himself as fine a time as
