rough country in New Mexico. Look at a ranch out there.”
“Well, where are your headquarters? Can’t I go there and wait? Do whatever work I’m supposed to do? Ain’t they in Phoenix? Big cattleman like you ought to have a headquarters in a going town like Phoenix.”
“I thought you didn’t believe I was a cattleman.”
“I don’t, but as long as you want to say it, it’s my job to agree with you. Isn’t that my job, to be agreeable?”
He cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “Truth be,” he said, “my headquarters are up in Colorado. In Denver.”
“I bet it’s nice there. Think I would like it?”
He looked away. “Oh, hell, Rita Ann, now you are teasing me.”
“No, I’m just trying to get you to say that the money you gave me was a handout. Wasn’t it? You didn’t think I’d take it if you didn’t make up some cock-and-bull story about a job.”
He swerved his head back to her, stung. He said with heat in his voice, “Let’s just wait and see, missy, whether there’s a job or not.” He dug down in his jeans and came out with his roll. He peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and tried to put it in her hand.
She put her arms behind her back. “I don’t need any more money. And I didn’t do what I did for money. I did it because I liked it and because I wanted to.”
“You are going to take this,” he said. The scooped top of her blouse was slightly open. Before she could react he shoved the bill down inside. Then he stepped back. “Just like you, I did that because I like to and because I want to. You can’t just have it your way.”
She studied him through slitted eyes for a second, and then she stepped up close to him. She put her hand on his cheek and stretched up and kissed him softly on the lips. She left her hand there for a second. “You’re a sweet man.” Then she dropped her hand, turned on her heels, and walked back into the station.
He said, “Hey, wait a minute! I still don’t know your last name.”
Over her shoulder she said, “I have to go churn now. I’ll tell you some other time.”
Longarm stared after her, biting his lip. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, a broken, woebegone, timid little woman in a dowdy gray dress had gotten a hand up on him. He didn’t know the how or the why of it, but he was damned if he was going to let the situation continue. When he danced, he liked to be the one doing the leading, even if he wasn’t certain what the tune was.
It was late afternoon. Longarm was sitting in the Higginses’s front room reading a week-old newspaper when he heard talking from the common room. It was men’s voices, several of them. He recognized Mister Higgins’s high-pitched gabble, but the others were strange. He wondered if the doctor had come in to try and cadge some real whiskey, but there was more than one strange voice and he knew it couldn’t be the Mexicans. He got up from the easy chair he’d been sitting in and walked over to the door that opened on the common room. He peeked through the little slit that the door made where it was hinged to the wall. It wasn’t much of a view, but the men were moving around and, one by one, they came into view.
They didn’t appear to be anybody special, just three rough-looking characters who’d come in out of the sun. Higgins was behind the bar, pouring out whiskey for them. Longarm strained to get a sight of any of their gun rigs. One turned in just the right way, and Longarm could see that he was wearing a cutaway holster and a well-cared- for large-caliber revolver. But the thing that caught his attention was that the man had a tiedown on his holster. A tiedown was a little leather thong attached to the outside of the holster. A man could pull it up and loop it over the butt of his revolver to keep the gun from jostling out when he was riding in rough country or doing anything else that might cause the gun to fall out. A cutaway holster did not envelop much of the revolver, just the barrel and about halfway up the cylinders. It was made that way to facilitate getting the gun into play as quickly as possible. Men who did business with revolvers wore cutaway holsters, and men who did business with guns in which they were constantly on the move and had to be ready for anything, wore tiedowns on their cutaway holsters. These were not ordinary cowhands or workingmen passing through. A cowhand wore a holster that nearly swallowed his pistol. Since he seldom needed it, other than to shoot an occasional rattlesnake or drop the lead steer in a stampede, he was more concerned with not losing it. But these men did not want to lose an instant in the use of their weapons.
Longarm could feel little warning signals going off in his head. What were three gunmen—and that’s what they appeared to be—doing showing up at a relay station in the middle of nowhere? A relay station that might be passing along a half-a-million-dollar bullion shipment? And with Carl Lowe just escaped from prison? Longarm did not like the way matters were shaping up at all.
He wanted a look at their horses. He wanted to see if he could tell how far they had come, what quality animals they were, and if the men were leading pack animals. But there was no way out of the Higginses’ living quarters except through the door he was at, and he did not want the men to get a look at him, not just yet. He turned and went into the back where Mrs. Higgins and Rita Ann were taking turns working at the churn. He got Mrs. Higgins’s attention and motioned her to follow him. He led her into the front room with her wearing a worried look. “Is something gone amiss, Mar-Mr. Long?”
He said, “Sylvia, there are some men out at the bar drinking whiskey. I need to speak to Herman, but I don’t want the men to know I’m here. I want you to go out and, just as casual as you can, tell Herman you need him in the back for a moment. Can you do that?”
Her eyes got round and she began to look nervous. “Why, why, why, I reckon I can, Is we fixin’ to be held up? Robbed? Murdered?”
He shook his head. “No, no, Sylvia. Nothing like that. This is just ordinary peace-officer work. But I need to speak to Herman without anyone being the wiser. And I don’t see no use in you telling Rita Ann about this little errand.”
She hesitated, wiping her hands on her apron. “Just tell him I need to see him back here?”
“Yes. Something about the churn. Tell him it will only take a moment.”
She sighed, looking as if she were being sent on a dangerous mission. “Well, I’ll shore try.”
He watched as she slipped through the door and then went up to the bar and tapped her husband on the shoulder. For a moment he frowned and shook his head, but then she folded her arms and gave him a look and he began to nod. Longarm saw him say something to the three men, then come around the bar end and follow his wife
