and San Antonio and that’s at Hondo. He could get off there and go to Brownsville or Del Rio. The best thing I can do is wait and see what happens. But I don’t know how I’m going to follow a man who knows me.”
She said, “He’ll go home. Why not just go to his house and wait?”
Longarm said, “I don’t think this is the kind of business that he wants his new bride to know that he’s involved in and I don’t think he’ll be parading the three men with him around town.”
“Who are these three men?”
Longarm shook his head. “One is an embezzler who has two hundred thousand dollars that old Richard would like to get his hands on. I would reckon the other two are a couple of pistoleros. Unfortunately, the man who sent this”-he waved the wire in the air-“didn’t say if they were Mexicans or what. I don’t know, but he may have a couple of hard boys from this side. I don’t know quite what to do. I guess the only thing I can do is to be standing somewhere near that depot when the train gets in tonight and keep an eye out to see what happens.”
She said, “What if they start back across the border to the hacienda?”
Longarm gave a shudder. He said, “Well, I reckon that I’ll just be obliged to go with them.” He got up. It was 4:45 by his watch. “The first thing I have to do is go get me a good horse. We nearly rode those two old nags to death. They need a rest.”
Longarm knew a horse trader who was about halfway honest, a commodity not that common in Laredo. He left the hotel and walked the four or five blocks to where the man had a small horse lot and stable. For $200, he bought a six-year-old bay gelding that wasn’t much to look at but that Longarm knew had a lot of staying power in him and also some quick speed. He borrowed a saddle from the trader, mounted the horse, and put him through his paces, making sure he was nimble enough to get around in heavy brush and also strong enough to force his way if he had to against slow going in the heavy country. The horse had a big-barreled chest and the big hams that showed his quarter-horse blood. He was a horse that would be able to keep up whether Harding was heading for his hacienda twenty miles deep into Mexico or going to his hunting lodge or anywhere else. If Harding went by horse, Longarm felt he had the horse that could stay with him.
When he was satisfied with the animal, he returned the saddle and gave the trader the $200. They made an agreement that if Longarm returned the horse within a week in the same condition he had left in or better, the trader would buy him back for $175. It would be a good deal for the trader. Longarm figured the horse would fetch four or five hundred up country somewhere, maybe even in Denver, but, of course, that would mean another squabble with Billy Vail about him shipping an animal at government expense. Never mind that he’d had to pay for the telegram out of his own pocket and never mind that he’d lost a revolver that would cost $75 to replace.
The trader had thrown in a halter and lead rope, so Longarm walked back to the hotel’s livery stable leading the animal. He took the bridle off the roan he had been riding and adjusted it to fit the big bay gelding. Then he took off the saddle blanket and the saddle and adjusted them both to fit the new horse. He left the bay loosely girted in a stall by himself and gave the boy a dollar to make sure that he got well fed and watered and to make sure that he was kept ready to go.
Now there didn’t seem to be anything left to do but to wait until eight o’clock that night for the train to come in. After that, all he could do was to follow wherever Judge Harding led. The only fear in his heart was that Harding might have bought a ticket for Laredo but never arrive there, going instead to some unknown location. That would put an end to the whole matter and Longarm could expect to spend the rest of his career searching for the judge and the embezzler and whoever else was with Harding. He didn’t even want to think about what Billy Vail would say to him if he let the two culprits slip through his fingers.
Sarah became increasingly nervous as dusk fell and the time stretched toward eight o’clock. The idea of her husband being back in the same town as her frightened her so that she trembled at times. Longarm did his best to reassure her but her only response was to beg him to stay with her and not go out. He answered her that, of course, he had to go because neither she nor anyone else would be safe so long as a crooked federal judge was in office and free. He said, “Sarah, that man has got to be punished. Not only for what he did to you and to me. Do you have any idea how many people, innocent people perhaps, are now serving time or were hung because he’s just a mean son of a bitch? Folks like that have got to be stopped. I’ve got to stop him, Sarah. You’re going to have to be brave. You’re in no danger. He has no idea you’re in this hotel, and Martin Silver will make sure that your room is watched. No one can get through that door. No one. I’ll leave you a pistol. You can shoot one. You may not think you can, but you can. I’ll cock it for you so all you’ll have to do is aim it and pull the trigger.”
Slowly Sarah began to calm down. Longarm gave her a weak drink of whiskey and water. After she got that down, she seemed better. They had dinner sent up again and ate well on chicken and rice and some mixed vegetables.
Longarm questioned her again about where Harding’s hunting lodge could be. More and more he was convinced that was where the man would head with his prisoner. An out-of-the-way place where he could, at his leisure, convince Earl Combs to tell him where he had hidden the money, and also an out-of-the-way place where Earl Combs could be disposed of once he had given Harding the information he sought. Two hundred thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money. Longarm thought there was very little Harding wouldn’t do to get his hands on that sum.
But Sarah wasn’t really sure where the hunting lodge was, rack her brain as she would. She said, “You must remember, Custis, that I wasn’t here that long. It wasn’t long before I was in exile, before he caught me, before I nearly went crazy with longing and grief and the desire to flee. Now, of course, I can only look back and wonder how I could have been so stupid as to not have run away from the man. But I really don’t know exactly where the hunting lodge is located.”
To the best of her recollection, it had been west of town some ten or fifteen miles and down by the river. She said, “I somehow have the feeling that it was on an island somewhere near a wide part of the river. Something that Richard said makes me think that, but I can’t be sure. He was drunk one night and bragging about what they had done with the women they had there. Apparently they had taken out of the jail a lot of the women that Richard had sentenced and brought them down to the hunting lodge. There was something about making them swim out to the lodge, but I don’t know. It’s been so long and I really had no reason to pay attention.”
Finally it was time to leave. Longarm made it swift and abrupt. There was nothing else to talk about. He cocked Chulo’s pistol, showed her how to pull the trigger, and said, “Keep this door locked and don’t let anybody in. Don’t worry about how long I’ll be gone because I don’t know. Could be that he’s not going to come and I’ll be right back. But if I’m not, don’t think the worst. I’m a hard man to kill.”
She smiled bravely at Longarm and gave him a kiss. She saw him through the door and then locked it behind him.
He left the hotel, got his horse, and rode down to the depot. He tied the horse on the freight end of the depot platform, well back in the shadows. It was a moonlit night, too moonlit for Longarm’s purposes. The moonlight had helped them the night before in their escape, but now it was a hindrance to his plans. He stepped up on the passenger platform and looked down the tracks. It was ten minutes before eight and there was still no sign of the
