the shade.”
Longarm could see how fortunate he was in the way his saddle horse had fallen. Probably as a result of being totally played out, when Shaw had shot him, he had crumpled straight down on his own legs rather than falling on his side. He looked, Longarm thought, remarkably like a horse sleeping. But his position was going to make it an awful lot easier for Longarm to get his saddle loose than if the horse had fallen over and pinned a stirrup or was lying on the girth cinch.
But right then all that Longarm wanted was his set of manacles. He stood facing Shaw, covering him with his rifle, while he felt around inside his saddlebags for the handcuffs. His hand almost immediately touched a bottle of the Maryland whiskey, but he resolutely bypassed that and rummaged around until he found the manacles. He pulled them out, starting toward Shaw, only detouring to pick up Shaw’s shirt. He came within five yards of the outlaw, who was sitting hunkered down on the hot prairie. Longarm motioned for him to stay down as he came up. He wrapped the manacles in the shirt and pitched the package to Shaw. He said, “Put your shirt on and cuff one of your wrists with the irons. And I better hear it take up to the last click.”
It was all done quickly. When Longarm was satisfied, he had Shaw start toward the corral, walking behind him and off to one side. It seemed to Longarm that Shaw was not as tall as he’d remembered. But then, it had been some time since they’d been side by side. Still, he reckoned Shaw to be at least two or three inches shy of his own height of a little over six feet. But that didn’t really make much difference. In Longarm’s line of work it didn’t matter about the size of the man so much as the size of the gun he was carrying. Longarm couldn’t remember many instances when he’d had to “scuffle around in the dirt like some schoolboy,” as Billy Vail had complained about an arrest he’d made in his earlier days.
At the corral Shaw once again balked when Longarm told him to sit down at the corner post and hug it. “Like your best girlfriend.”
Shaw said, “Hell, I know what you want. You plan to manacle me to this post. Well, I won’t do it. I want out of this sun.”
Longarm said reasonably, “So do I, Jack. But I don’t reckon there is anything to hook you to inside the cabin, and anyway, I need to be able to see you. Most of the work is going to take place out here. I don’t want you out of sight.”
In the end Shaw sat down, put both his arms around the post, and then cuffed his own wrists. Longarm walked over close to see that the cuffs were indeed locked and in place. He said, “Jack, you ought to be proud. I generally don’t take nowhere near as much trouble with other folks. But then other folks ain’t Jack Shaw. The only person I’ve ever known was meaner or more dangerous than you was a girl name of Lily Gail Borden. She was a holy terror. Nearly got me killed a half a dozen times.” Shaw said, “I don’t reckon I care for the companion.” He turned his head and spat. “Some damn woman.”
“She wasn’t just some woman. She was the original black widow. Don’t get it in your mind that you got to be big and strong, Jack. I’m paying you a compliment when I compare you to Lily Gail.” Shaw said, “Hell, Longarm, I don’t want to hear none of yore stories.
You got me, now let’s hurry up and get the hell gone before them Rangers show up.”
It took better than an hour to get them ready to travel. Longarm had to get his saddle and bridle off the dead horse and pick one out of the bunch of five he wanted to ride. He asked Shaw which was his horse, and was told it was a big gray gelding who looked strong and powerful and full of go, but he was not the kind of horse Longarm would have picked for the brutal ride. Instead he chose to saddle a lanky, long-legged, lean bay horse for himself that he took to be close to a six-year-old. Shaw said, as if in derision, “That hide was Hank Jelkco’s mount. Damn fool.”
Longarm didn’t know if he was talking about the man’s choice in horses or the way he’d forgotten to cut the telegraph wires. As far as Longarm was concerned, an old border cattle thief like Jelkco would have a good idea for a staying horse, a horse with plenty of bottom that could stand rough usage and keep on getting a man down the road.
Longarm figured that a man like Jelkco, who wasn’t very skillful at anything else, would have to have had a good eye for a getaway horse or else he wouldn’t have managed to get as old as he had. His mistake had been not being able to read men, especially men like Jack Shaw.
Longarm knew for a fact that many a man was eager to ride with Jack Shaw because he’d been a lawman, which to them meant he’d be straight and fair and know the secret ways to get around the law. Well, not only wasn’t Jack Shaw straight and fair, he didn’t know any secret ways around the law, mainly because there weren’t any.
Longarm found quite a quantity of revolvers and rifles, along with a good amount of ammunition, inside the cabin. Shaw had a bedroll and several big canvas water bags, but nowhere near as much grub as he’d let on to having. In the end Longarm found a canvas tarp that Shaw had been using as a groundcloth. He turned that into a pack, lacing it over one of the three remaining horses. After that he took time to get himself something to eat. He’d already drunk his fill of water, just standing on his tiptoes, bracing himself against the big, high barrel and sticking his mouth right into the stream of water that was being pumped out of the ground by the creaking, rusty blades of the windmill.
Shaw had been right about that part, at least. The water was cool and sweet, almost like artesian water, but Longarm knew that it was a shallow well that had tapped into one of the underground springs that dotted the country. After that he ate some of Shaw’s dried beef, a few stale biscuits, and a can of peaches and a can of tomatoes. It was a long way from his idea of a meal, but it beat the hell out of what he had had for the last day or two. He was inside the cabin, enjoying the cool shade, for so long that Shaw started hollering. Longarm just let him shout, and finished off his meal with a good drink of his Maryland whiskey and part of a cigar. He smoked it only a third of the way down, and then carefully tamped it out and put it back in his pocket. He was down to two cigars besides the partial one. That was getting seriously low on tobacco.
When he came out to saddle and bridle Shaw’s horse, the outlaw was fairly writhing with fear and rage. He said, “Goddammit, Longarm, are you tryin’ to get me taken up by them Arizona Rangers? Hell, Grammaw was slow but she was old. What in hell you been doin’?”
“I been having a bite, Jack. Didn’t you invite me to?”
“Hell, you can eat up the trail somewheres. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Soothe your mind, Jack. We got plenty of time.” Longarm reached in his saddlebags and came out with a short little telescope. He pulled it out to its fullest length and trained it north, toward the last few foothills and mountains where Jack Shaw had come out on the prairie. He looked the country over carefully. All he could see moving was a doe and a couple of fawns. He compressed the spyglass and put it back where it had come from. “So far no sign of them,” he said. “We ought to be out of here in about a half an hour. No more. By the way, I didn’t see your winnings from that robbery in the cabin. Where are they?”
