After his horses had watered, he saddled the horse he’d ridden that day, a roan, and rode out in a line parallel to the Arizona Rangers’ tracks. He rode on the eastern side of the chewed-up ground. Sure enough, as he had thought, he had not gone more than a mile when he found a set of tracks, what appeared to be two horses with one bearing more of a load than the other, branching off to the southeast. It made Longarm smile. It was such a simple trick he was amazed that Shaw would even bother with it. But then, he must have figured it would take such a little effort that it was worth doing. When Shaw had left the cabin, sometime earlier that day after he’d retrieved his money, he had disguised his direction by riding over the tracks of the posse, going far enough to hide his real intentions, but not so far as to cause himself any real inconvenience. It only served to confirm to Longarm what he’d already been thinking, what Shaw’s final destination was. Looking at the tracks, Longarm knew, with a sense of satisfaction, that he and the outlaw were going to meet again and in the not-too-distant future.
Back at the cabin he sat, smoking and thinking and staring into the fire. It went back to when he and Shaw had met up by accident in Durango, when Longarm was taking some leave and had gone down to kick up his heels. They had been in a whorehouse discussing the relative merits of the Mexican putas. Shaw had said he didn’t know why he bothered with such as he had two girls that he kept at his ranch that would put anything they had seen to shame. Longarm had been amazed. He’d said, “Ranch? Ranch? You got a ranch, Jack?
I got a hard time seeing you messing with cattle. Or even raising horses. I’d guess you to be too busy on the owlhoot trail to take time for such.”
Shaw had laughed and admitted that he really wasn’t much of a rancher.
He’d said, “I guess it is kind of stretching it for me to call the place a ranch, since I don’t keep no cattle and shore as hell don’t raise no horses. Too easy to steal.” He’d said that what animals were on the place belonged to the Mexicans he kept there to look after things. He’d said, “Mostly what I like about it is it’s on the flat-ass prairie and you can see anybody coming for miles. I don’t like being snuck up on if you take my meaning.”
He had not identified the whereabouts of the ranch, but he had made several references to a town called Douglas. The only Douglas that Longarm knew about was in the extreme southeastern corner of the Arizona Territory, very close to the New Mexico line and right on the border with Mexico. The Mexican town across from Douglas was Aqua Prieta, and Shaw had mentioned it several times, mostly complaining about the lack of trade goods in the primitive place and the necessity of crossing into Arizona if you wanted to find good whiskey or cigars or cartridges. Longarm was satisfied that Shaw lived on a hacienda someplace outside of Aqua Prieta. If he did, Longarm was sure to the point of certainty that he could locate the ranch.
But that, of course, was only half the battle. The other half would be taking Shaw in, and that was no small chore. Jack Shaw, as far as Longarm was concerned, was no ordinary outlaw. Fortunately. If they were all as smart as Shaw, he reflected, his job would be a good deal harder.
As the night came on, so did the cold. Looking up at the sky, Longarm noticed that the moon was definitely on the wane. Outside, there was much less light than there had been. It was coming on to the phase of the moon that Shaw had been waiting for. Longarm calculated it to be at least a two-day ride to Douglas, and that on good horses. Probably, Longarm thought, Shaw had been able to make fifteen or twenty miles after picking up the money sometime that morning. He’d be camped somewhere along the route to Benson, which was directly on the way to Douglas and Aqua Prieta. If Shaw pushed it, the next day he could be camping close enough to the border to cross over in the dark the following morning. Longarm knew he had no hope of catching the man. He only wanted to stay close enough behind him to take him while he was at his ranch relaxing with his two women after the labors of the trail. Longarm knew he could not push the two horses. Neither one of them could take it. He had some hopes of buying another when he reached Benson, which he calculated was twenty-five miles away. He hoped to buy a good horse, but since the money would be coming out of his pocket, he had to be able to buy a horse for a good enough price that he could hope to trade it or sell it later.
Which was one irritating feature about his job. Since a federal marshal could requisition a horse or horses from any federal installation, including the cavalry, the government took the position that any horses a marshal might be forced to buy on his own were his problem. It was all well and good to say you could recquisition horses, but when you were in the middle of a place where there weren’t any government installations and you needed a horse, what in hell were you supposed to do? Billy Vail had said that that came under the heading of the fourteenth paragraph of the federal marshals’ directive, which said that a marshal should be resourceful and conserving of government property and expense. That a marshal should use his intelligence in all cases that proved to be the exception to ordinary situations, and take prudent actions to bring matters back to where they could be managed by approved and regulated methods. Longarm had wanted to know what in hell that meant. Billy Vail had said, “It means you ain’t supposed to let yourself get afoot unless you are near a government facility where you can get a remount.” Longarm had still wanted to know what you were supposed to do if you were afoot and there was no government facility available. Billy Vail had growled and said, “Then you better be a helluva horse trader or you are gonna be money out of pocket.”
It made Longarm smile to himself. He wished to hell he was back in Denver, sitting with Billy, eating a big steak and perhaps looking forward to a visit that night with that lady who ran the dress shop.
Now she was a woman he could have used to distract himself the night he was lying in the little wash. But he stopped himself. He still had too much trail left before he could let himself start thinking like that.
He was hungry that night. He calculated he’d eaten exactly two meals in the past three or four days, and neither of them had been much to get excited about. Outside, in the corral, the horses nickered occasionally. He knew they weren’t calling to other horses; probably asking where the groceries were. Longarm wondered the same thing himself. He’d made his bed in front of the fireplace, and it was still burning enough to throw rosy glows against the walls of the cabin.
Longarm had set his mind to wake up in about four or five hours. Since he knew where he was headed, he could travel in the dark. it would be a lot easier on the horses. With any luck he could reach Benson and get them some feed not too long after daylight.
Chapter 10
In the end he had to feed the coffee to the horses out of his hat. It didn’t much matter since the hat was pretty well gone anyway. But it did irritate him that he’d have to spend a few minutes and use one of his shirts to wipe the thing out after the horses got through drooling and slopping around inside the crown.
Fortunately, both horses liked the coffee. He gave them each about a quart. By the time he was ready to break trail, they both seemed to have a good deal more energy. As he was saddling up he had to smile, remembering the young deputy marshal he’d told about the coffee trick.
The young man had come back to him a few weeks later as reproachful as a Sunday School teacher. He’d told Longarm that just because he was young and inexperienced wasn’t any reason to play such a mean prank on him. Longarm had been puzzled until the young deputy had said, “Hell, Longarm, that damn horse spit and spewed coffee all over me. Like to have burned a brand-new five-dollar shirt off my back, to say nothin’ of what it done to my bare skin.”
Longarm had stared at him a long time, too dumbfounded to say a word. He could not believe that the young
