Longarm shook his head slowly even though Shaw couldn’t see him. “I wouldn’t count on that, Jack. Not day or night. I got an angle on that corral and I would see you trying to slip off. You have seen me shoot. And like you said, I can make sure of it by shooting your horses. Naw, I wouldn’t count on that.” There was silence for a time. Then Shaw said, “You know, Custis, all I got to do is go out that back door, climb up on the roof, and you will be in plain sight. Easy pickings.”
“Jack, that roof is flat as your first wife’s chest. You show yourself up there and you gonna be the one in plain sight. Right over a pair of iron sights. I couldn’t miss if I tried.”
Shaw said, “Longarm, I am starting to regret you paying me this visit. Course we’ve got the night to go yet, and then tomorrow. And don’t be too sure I can’t get away from you while you are napping. I can lay up nearer to the border and be just as happy while I wait for a dark night.”
Longarm glanced at the sun again. If anything it seemed higher in the sky. He felt as if he had been talking to Jack Shaw for the better part of the afternoon, but time just wouldn’t seem to pass. He glanced over at the packhorse, who had moved a little nearer to the corral but had apparently not smelled the water. But now the little breeze had died and the windmill had stopped creaking around. He felt sorry for the poor old horse, but he didn’t know what he could do. He couldn’t waste a cartridge. He had few enough as it was.
He shifted around, trying to get more comfortable. The canteen was temptingly close to his hand, but he knew he dared not drink yet. He calculated he was in for a long siege. He yawned. It frightened him.
To sleep was as good as a bullet through the head. But Lord, was he tired! He felt like he’d been dragged behind a stampede for a hundred miles. Every part of his body ached, and he had lied pretty much as big as it was possible to lie about the sleep he’d gotten. He reckoned in the last five days he hadn’t amassed more than ten, maybe twelve hours total. It had been hard tracking as the outlaw gang had left one small range of mountains and cut over and picked up another one, all the time heading generally south. He’d wasted valuable time following false leads left by other men who’d passed through the same country, and lost ground and time climbing down into gullies to discover the bodies of the outlaws that Shaw had been slowly eliminating one after the other.
Shaw called out, “Hey, Custis! You ain’t sleepin’, are you?”
“Naw. Just wonderin’ what kind of deal me and you can make. You give yourself up and I’ll split the reward money the railroad is sure to put up on you.”
“Tch, tch, tch. Custis, I’m ashamed of you, lying like that. You didn’t used to carry on so. You and I both know that federal marshals can’t collect reward money. What you want to go and tell me a whopper like that for?”
“Just passing the time, Jack. All I got to do.”
“Whyn’t you tell me how you tracked us? That’d make pretty good listening.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you managed to do away with that bunch so you’d have all the money to yourself without a couple of them getting wise somewhere along the line?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your riding partners, your gang. The men you killed.”
Shaw laughed. “Why, listen to you, Custis. Next thing you’ll be accusing me of robbing trains.”
“C’mon, tell it. Either you are slicker than I thought, or them was one dumb bunch of outlaws.”
The words were no more than out of his mouth than he heard the faint hiss of a bullet and felt the breeze as it passed just in front of his forehead. The hard crack of the rifle came right on the heels of the passing slug. Longarm ducked instinctively, drawing his revolver as he did, and edged an eye over the rim of the wash. Somehow Jack Shaw had gotten a better angle, found a higher position to allow him to aim down on Longarm.
His glimpse caught Jack Shaw just stepping down from a chair by the side of the door. Longarm shoved his revolver through the brush and fired as Shaw was jumping back. He saw the slug catch the leg of the chair, making splinters fly and jerking the chair out of Shaw’s hand.
He’d fired too quickly to have had any hope of hitting the outlaw, but he had to make the man understand he couldn’t take too many liberties.
From the cabin he could hear Shaw laughing. “Hell, Longarm, ain’t no use getting all upset. Yore hair looked like it needed parting. You didn’t have to ruin my chair.” Longarm said dryly, “I bet you got other’ns, Jack. But let me give you a piece of advice. Stay off of them. Man can get hurt standing on chairs. Especially around doors or windows.”
“I guess that means you ain’t going to come up for a drink. Bad business, a man drinking alone.”
“Jack, if you’d like to give yourself up I reckon I could be forced to take a drink. Just step on out the door with your hands in the air and that will settle everything.” Shaw said dryly, “I’d like to, Longarm, I damn shore would. But I got a idea you’d want me to go to that Cross-bar Hotel in Yuma for more than a few years. Problem with that is some of the folks living there be ones I put there myself when I was on the other side of the badge. You can see my point, can’t you? I reckon those folks might not treat me too kindly.”
Longarm glanced up as he noticed the packhorse slowly trudging toward the corral. He’d stepped on his lead rope so often that it had finally broken off at the halter. But Longarm could see that the load the horse was bearing was shifting toward the corn side. The water drum was empty on the other side, and the weight of the corn was gradually pulling the load down on one side of the horse’s flanks. Soon enough it would spook the horse and he’d go to kicking at it. The result of that, as soon as the horse spooked, would be a broken leg or neck or both.
The little breeze had picked up again and the horse had sniffed the water. As he neared the corral, Longarm could see the horses inside come crowding over to the railing of the pen. He counted five horses.
They all looked in good shape. Longarm guessed that the horses Shaw had driven hard had been turned loose when they’d played out. He watched as the packhorse came up to the corral fence. The horses inside pressed forward eagerly, reaching out with their muzzles to test and smell and identify this newcomer.
Shaw said, “C’mon, Custis, tell me how you trailed us. That was a job of work you done. I never figured nobody could stay with our tracks the route I took. And how did you get onto us so fast? Hell, I didn’t beat you to this cabin by much more than twelve hours, maybe fourteen. You must have been hell on quick at getting to the site of the robbery.”
Chapter 2
