sun. A horse couldn’t really carry enough water on his back to satisfy his own needs. It was an odd thing to think about, but it was true. Longarm had seen the proof of it many times.
It was warm work, walking down the uneven road in his high-heeled boots. But there was no help for it. The next time he lost a horse he would be afoot. Even not riding, he glanced back anxiously from time to time to see how the black was doing. The horse was covered with lines of dried sweat all over his glistening black hide. The glistening was caused by fresh sweat and not good health. But at least, Longarm reflected, he still had enough water in him to sweat.
Longarm didn’t know how far he had walked, but he knew it was approaching one o’clock when he and the horse topped a little rise in the road and he saw, in the distance, a small line of three wagons. He stopped and shaded his eyes, peering through the shimmering heat waves.
It was a long moment before he was able to discern that the wagons were heading his way. Only then did he allow himself a drink of water.
Once again he filled the crown of his hat with the liquid and let the black snuffle around in it. He said to the horse, “Maybe, when them wagons get here, we can get some of this stuff in your belly.”
He rode into Douglas at a little past seven o’clock. He had made the trip in one day even though it had cost him a horse. When they arrived it was difficult to say who was the most tired, Longarm or his remaining horse. He went straight to a livery stable and had the black put up in a stall with strict instructions on his watering and feeding.
He wanted the horse to eat hay before he ate anything else such as grain, and he made it clear to the stable hands that he was fond of the animal and that he was a federal marshal, and that it would be in their best interests to give the animal the best care they knew how. He didn’t come out and say it, but he conveyed the impression the best he could that he would arrest the lot of them if anything happened to the horse.
After that, he went down to a hotel and got a room and ordered up a bath. When it came he sat in the tub, ordering the Mexican boys who were fetching the hot water to “keep it coming and make damn sure it’s hot.” After he had washed for a while, he fetched a basin over to the tub and shaved while he was soaking in the hot water. The parts of him that weren’t still sore from lifting the roof were tired and sore from walking the two or three miles he’d trod along in his high-heeled boots. His feet felt like they had blisters all over them, but fortunately, the unaccustomed activity hadn’t gone on long enough to produce any serious harm. His feet were just sore.
Once he’d seen the wagons, he and the black had stood there by the side of the road and let the freighters come to them. They had had water for his horse, and had even sold him some grain mixed with shelled corn to give the animal something solid for his stomach. The feed and the water had revived the black enough so that they had stepped along and made Douglas without camping. Longarm was starting to have a real respect for the tough little animal. He hadn’t looked like much, but he was proving to have a lot of bottom.
Once he’d gotten about four layers of dirt and a week’s worth of whiskers off him, Longarm rustled around in his saddlebags and found a clean shirt and socks, and even a pair of jeans he’d only worn for two or three days— and that had been in town. They were nearly as good as new. After he’d changed clothes and combed his hair, despairing of his hat, he went downstairs and ate in the hotel dining room. Douglas was a border town and border towns, Longarm knew, were pretty much the same from the tip of Texas all the way up the line to California. In a border town you were neither in the United States or Mexico. You were in a border town, and there wasn’t any other way to describe it.
He had beef stew and biscuits for supper that night, and he ate until he was full. After that he sought out the best of the saloons, and drank some brandy and played a little poker. He’d put his badge in his pocket, so the other players treated him like an ordinary citizen and managed to win twenty dollars off him. He didn’t much care. It was pleasant to sit and do something besides chase bandits over barren country. He had no intention of keeping on to Aqua Prieta that night, even though it was only about a half mile away. Shaw could wait. Either he’d be there the next day or he wouldn’t. All Longarm knew was that he was going to sleep all night in a bed. He went down and checked on the black, and then he went to his hotel room. He’d bought a bottle of brandy, and he intended to bite off a piece of that and then wear the bed out.
The next morning he had breakfast, and then mounted the black and rode on over to Aqua Prieta. It was difficult to tell when you passed from the U.S. into Mexico since the country didn’t change at all and Aqua Prieta just looked like a poor section of Douglas. The only marker was a shack with a uniformed guard slumped inside, drinking something out of a bottle. There was a post with a sign on it that said, “Bienvenudos a Mexico.”
“Welcome to Mexico.” That, Longarm thought, was a laugh. The only thing welcome in Mexico was your dollars, and they’d have been just as happy if you’d mailed the money across or wrapped it around a rock and chunked it. Still, Longarm in the main liked Mexico. He liked the peones, the campesinos, the vaqueros, the working people of the country. He found them, even as poor as Job’s turkey, to be serious, dignified, and courteous to a fault. They were a proud people, even in their poverty, and strictly honest. It was said in Mexico that you could leave a roasted pig in the middle of a plaza and unless a rico, a rich man, or a politico, which was one and the same, came by, the pig would be there the next day. Longarm had always thought it was a good story, but he’d doubted he’d much care for pig, roasted or not, after it had been sitting out in the Mexican sun for a couple of days.
Once into Aqua Prieta, he tied his horse in front of a cantina and got a beer and began in his poor Spanish, asking about the ranchero of el pistolero gringo. The third man he asked knew, or seemed to know, who he was talking about. The man said he was a farmer, a campesino, and described Jack Shaw even to the birthmark. Longarm’s informant, who was a sun-dried little peon wearing white pants tied at the ankle and a wool poncho over his white shirt, said that Shaw lived on a large hacienda about two miles to the west and south of town. Longarm asked the man if he would be willing to show him to the hacienda in return for a little gift for his family, a little gift of money. You never, Longarm knew, wanted to insult a proud man, no matter how poor he was, by trying to give him money for an errand he would consider a duty and an honor to do for a stranger.
It was all right, however, to offer the gift of money for his family, his wife and nifios. That was a perfectly acceptable gesture.
The man rode a small mule without a saddle. Longarm had to slow the black to his pace. A little way out of town Longarm could see immediately what Shaw had meant about being able to spot anyone coming from a long way off. Except for groves of ash and mountain pine and mesquite that were sparsely scattered about, the land was flat and mainly uninhabited, though a few small farms were struggling to grow little patches of corn.
Longarm was almost certain he recognized Shaw’s place even before the little Mexican said anything. He pulled up the black and pointed at a big adobe building at least a mile in the distance but looking closer because of the thin air. “Es este por el senor gringo del pistoles?”
“Does this belong to the American with the pistols?”
“Si.”
“Seguro?”
