anyone had sent any wires meant for him.
They had. Old Billy Vail had wired from Denver that yet another of those recorded treasury notes had surfaced at a bank back East in Boston, for Pete's sake, and hence old Billy wanted Longarm to come on home. He'd considered Longarm's reports about the member of the gang he'd apparently caught up with, or vice versa. But he still thought Longarm could be chasing his own tail.
For as the older lawman tersely pointed out, it stood to reason a member of the gang with local connections might have headed for New Ulm after they'd divided the proceeds of that payroll robbery before they'd split up in every known direction. Some of the hot paper had shown up around the renegade scout's old stamping grounds for the same reasons he had. But as far as anyone knew, none of those Galvanized Yankees who'd led a young Chippewa astray had been Minnesota boys, and other treasury notes from the same robbery kept turning up all over creation. So what was a senior deputy doing where he'd already run one of the rascals to the grave?
Everything his boss had wired made sense. But so did another wire from the Navajo Agency at Shiprock. The Indian Police had finally spotted the bloated body of that cuss Longarm had sent flying into the San Juan from a couple of railroad transfer points back.
Better yet, they'd matched some scars and a silly tattoo with a couple of wanted posters, state and federal. So the young cuss who'd lost that fight with Longarm as they'd been crossing the white water of the San Juan had been a known road agent called Mermaid Morrison. Or else there'd been two pallid youths with the same bullet scars and a mermaid tattoo who might have felt they had just cause to tangle with a paid-up lawman aboard moving trains.
Longarm got out his notebook to make certain. Then he tore off a telegram blank to wire Vail he might not be finished in New Ulm yet. For another suspect they had down as a possible member of the Tyger gang had sure been anxious to prevent him from ever reaching New Ulm, and come to study on it, why had Youngwolf been trailing him with a shotgun like so if he'd been the only member of the gang for miles?
Longarm wired he'd have never spotted the gang member he'd nailed if the fool Indian hadn't broken such fine cover, as if to prevent him from spotting something else. Then he allowed he'd head home after he'd found out what they both seemed to be missing so far.
CHAPTER 22
Longarm's crotch still sat sticky in the saddle, but the rest of him was dry enough, by the time he'd topped the clay bluffs west of New Ulm to follow the rail line's service road with the morning sun at his back.
The same sun was only commencing to dry the rain-smoothed mud of the service road. So it seemed easy at first to read the sign of the one two-spanned carriage or wagon, most likely, preceding him towards Sleepy Eye after that short but serious shower.
Then he spotted a hoofprint overlapping a wheel rut to the right of the center strip of grass, and knew two horses had been pulling the wheeled vehicle while the other two, although moving stirrup to stirrup as if a team, had been packing two riders. There'd have been better than one set of wheel ruts if he'd been reading two buckboards, and a lone rider leading a pack brute would have left most of the hoofprints of both critters along one or the other dirt-strip.
By this time Longarm's tobacco was dry enough to smoke. So he lit up without reining in as he idly wondered why he gave a hoot about morning traffic along a public right-of-way. A one-span carriage or buckboard had left New Ulm first, followed within a few minutes or a whole heap of minutes by a couple of riders, with all concerned no doubt headed for Sleepy Eye, where the rail line crossed another northwest-to-southeast county road, meant to serve the folks along that side of the higher ground between the Minnesota and Sleepy Eye.
The horse apples he spied on the road ahead from time to time were of more import to the bluebottles and buffalo gnats buzzing over them as he passed. He'd gotten back to pondering more serious puzzles. So he'd almost put the ordinary signs of ordinary travelers out of his mind, but not all the way out of his mind, when he spotted sign that wasn't there.
A less experienced tracker, or even an Indian who didn't give a hang, might not have noticed something that wasn't there. But just the same, before there'd been four steel-rimmed wheels and four sets of steel-shod hooves heading down that same road. Now he only read the sign of four wheels and three critters.
Longarm casually drew his Winchester from its saddle boot as he rode on, sweeping the range ahead with his thoughtful gun-muzzle-gray eyes as he tried to come up with innocent reasons for that one rider to hive off across the gently rolling and grove-speckled prairie all about. The most logical reason involved a shortcut for a nearby homestead after keeping company with that other rider a ways.
Had they in fact been riding side by side to begin with? Wasn't it possible that one-span vehicle had left first, followed by a lone rider headed for Sleepy Eye, followed by yet another who'd cut across yonder grass at an angle after...
'Anything's possible,' Longarm said aloud to his own mount. Then he asked the buckskin, 'Would you walk more than half-ways to Sleepy Eye along this muddy wagon trace if you were really headed for another place from the beginning?'
When the buckskin failed to answer, Longarm reined her to his left, towards the railroad tracks, as he observed, 'I've seldom seen you critters match your strides so tight unless the pal you were striding with was right close. But why are we arguing, when it's so easy for us to just swing clear of any sneaky bullshit?'
The buckskin balked a bit at crossing the loose railroad ballast and snaky steel rails. But Longarm rode with his knees tight and a firm as well as gentle hand on the reins. So they got across with no more than a little crow- hopping, and she settled down as soon as they were on soft ground again and he'd whacked her a couple of times with the barrel of his Winchester.
He rode due south, away from the rails at an angle, till they were better than an easy rifle shot from the tracks. Then he reined to his right some more, explaining, 'It's better to be safe than sorry. That mysterious rider who dropped out of our parade couldn't have expected us to do what we just done. So even if he's hunkered off the road up ahead behind some sticker brush, he's going to have a long wait before he bushwhacks this child!'
Thanks to the clearly visible telegraph poles along the railroad right-of-way, it was just as easy to find the railroad flag stop ahead while riding most of the way across wet bluestem and more kinds of wildflowers than you saw on the higher and drier plains further west. When he saw a church steeple and grain elevator out ahead, Longarm had no call to cross the tracks a second time. He just kept riding until, sure enough, he came to that country road serving folks to the south as well as the north of the flag stop.
Sleepy Eye was called a flag stop because cross-country trains only stopped there if someone on board wanted off or the station master at Sleepy Eye flagged down the train because somebody wanted on. Freight and livestock were usually taken aboard on a more formal schedule, maybe once or twice a week.
