her himself. Once those bruises healed and she started living clean and getting her rest, that girl was going to be beautiful.
Ten minutes later, Longarm was striding into the livery.
“Why, you look like a new man!” the owner exclaimed with a wide grin.
“How is Splash?”
“I’ve curried him to a shine and grained him. I’d say he’s ready to ride.”
“Thanks,” Longarm said, paying the man and saddling the paint himself. “How long will it take me to reach Cortez?”
“You’ll be there by sundown, if not sooner.”
“They got a hotel and a livery?”
“Yep, but none as good as mine.”
“I’ll be back through,” Longarm promised.
“Marshal, you be careful when you brace the Marble brothers,” the liveryman said, looking concerned. “They’re real bad.”
“How’d you know that I was a marshal and that I was after the Marble brothers?”
“Everyone in town knows it. Why else would you have been asking about ‘em last night?”
“Yeah,” Longarm said drily, “why else? By the way, did you happen to see a carriage pass through town with a couple of horses in tow?”
“There are a lot of ‘em passin’ through Durango every day.”
“This one was real nice with a black top and red fringe.”
“By jingo, I did see that buggy. Was a man and a real pretty Indian girl at his side.”
“I think she is his hostage.”
“I doubt that,” the liveryman said.
“Why?”
“She was all tight up against him with her arm linked around his waist. She looked real happy.”
“Well I’ll be …” Longarm didn’t finish. Instead, he just tightened his cinch before he stepped into his saddle and headed off for Cortez.
Chapter 16
The Assassin was starting to have second thoughts about what was most important in his life. Before meeting Betty, the only thing that held any meaning was revenge. But now, after almost a week with this woman, he was ready to believe that he could again find happiness. That he might live for something more than to kill the last of the men who had caused the death of his wife and son. Revenge was sweet, but it was a sweet poison that starved rather than nourished the soul. The Assassin wondered if he might be able to fall in love once more. To have even considered this possibility a few weeks before would have been completely unimaginable.
It was a fine day to be alive. Since they had left Durango and headed west toward Cortez, the country had undergone a significant change. Now it was lower, more open, and the high mountain evergreens had been replaced by sage and pinyon as well as juniper. The air was warmer, the colors softer, browns and grays instead of dark greens.
“This looks like sheep country to me,” Betty remarked. “Better sheep than cattle country.”
“Do you know something about sheep?”
“I know a lot about sheep.”
Smith was driving the buggy, and now he turned and looked at her with undisguised curiosity. “How?”
“My father was a sheepman. When I was a girl, we used to summer in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and winter on the high New Mexican deserts. We were nomads. We owned no land, only many thousands of sheep.
“Did your father prosper?”
“For a time. But he didn’t realize that greedy cattlemen would fence the lands so that we could not move our flocks between the summer and winter ranges. In time, there was no place to go except to the worst of the desert. For this reason, our sheep began to starve. We had to almost give them away one winter. That was the year that my father got drunk and shot a rancher who had fenced off his last passageway to the high mountains and our last hope for summer range.”
“He shot the rancher?”
“Yes, and killed him.”
“Then what happened?”
“My father and mother fled to Mexico, but they were caught and hanged.”
“Why did they hang your mother?”
“Because,” Betty said, “she and my father put up a fight and killed a couple more gringos just north of El Paso.”
“Where were you when all this was happening?”
“In Taos with my Aunt Monica. She was ill and I loved her very much.”
