but one of the bridles and saddles for the horses. He didn’t figure either Carl Lowe or Rita could ride a horse without either one of those necessary articles.
But by noon of the next day he had discovered the bodies of the stationkeeper, who had been a bachelor, and the two mule hustlers who had worked for him. Longarm put Carl Lowe to work with a shovel and pick burying them in individual graves. After that he felt the necessity of doing something about the three bodies lying in front of the station. He saddled the best of the horses, led him around to the front, and got a rope around Riley Hanks and the gunmen. Then he mounted up and dragged them a mile or two out in the desert, and left them for the coyotes and the buzzards. He took the identification from both men, noting that Hanks had been carrying almost a thousand dollars in cash. That was probably intended for use on their trip to Mexico with the gold.
When he returned, he gave Rita the choice of taking a shovel and burying Anson. When she just folded her arms and walked away, he roped the actor’s ankles together and dragged him off to join his collaborators.
After that he put the horse away and hid the bridle in a stack of hay. There was a small, stout wagon parked at the back of the station, and Longarm asked Rita if that had been the vehicle they had intended to transport the gold to Mexico in. She refused to answer him. He said, “You were all suckers, you just didn’t know it. And that includes that actor fellow you were so fond of. At least I got some respect for him. Once Riley Hanks got his hands on that gold you were all dead anyway. Riley Hanks, or any of his kind, don’t share. So you ain’t lost nothing.”
She rounded on him. “That’s all you know! Anson had it all figured. It would have been Riley and his gunmen who would have perished. We’d have been the ones took the gold to Mexico.”
He laughed. “How the hell were you and Doc going to do away with four gunmen, figuring that I wouldn’t have killed three of them for you, and Riley Hanks and Carl Lowe?”
“Poison,” she said. “Their first meal here would have been their last.”
Longarm shook his head. “You two were a pair of sweethearts, weren’t you. Remind me to keep you out of the kitchen.”
She put on a pout. “Don’t worry. Doc threw away the poison when you captured us. He knew the game was up.”
“He damn sure didn’t go out like it.” He rubbed his neck. “Strong sonofabitch. Like to have broke my head off.”
“Yes, and you had to shoot him. Like a coward!”
Longarm shook his head and walked out to check on Carl. He stood, watching the plodding, methodical way the man worked. Carl Lowe was fairly small, fairly ordinary-looking, and completely indistinguishable from any one of a thousand men. Longarm realized that he could stare at Carl’s face for fifteen minutes and then look away and not be able to give an accurate description of the man.
Carl was more than willing to talk about the robbery and how it had come about. He seemed very anxious to please Longarm. Longarm thought he’d always been anxious to please anyone with power over him. Carl said that the original idea had been Anson’s. His real name was Anson Burke and he really hadn’t been that much of an actor. Carl gave a shy smile. “He was good, all right, you understand, but he preferred other ways to gettin’ his supper. He liked to make fools out of folks and he figured the best way to do that was steal their money. Anson wasn’t a man cared much for folks. Thought he was a good deal superior.”
It had been Anson, whom Carl had worked with before, who had reached him in prison with word about the gold shipments. Carl had gotten word back that he’d be more than glad to help if he could be broken out. But money had been a problem. Carl had recommended that Anson hook up with Riley Hanks. He knew the man had money and he knew he’d bankroll a job if the payoff was big enough.
Carl said cheerfully, “My cut was to be a quarter of the take, plus bein’ broke out of prison. Anson and Riley was gonna split the balance after expenses. Them gunhands was just that, hired gunhands. They didn’t get no split.” Carl shook his head. “But I’ll tell you, Marshal, soon as I figured it was you on my tail, I knowed we didn’t have much chance. Minute I heard you yesterday evenin’ call on us to get our hands up I knowed the dance was over. I just went for the dirt and hoped you’d shoot high.”
Longarm knew that Rita believed he was not going to arrest her. He knew she believed it because she thought he had given her and Anson his word that if they cooperated with him they could write their own ticket. He knew she fully expected to go back to civilization as a free woman at the first opportunity. When he’d been tying her up the night before she’d asked why. He’d answered that he’d killed her lover and he always made it a point to tie up the girlfriends of the lovers he’d killed, especially when he was sleeping under the same roof with them. She had seemed to accept that readily enough.
The station was not a meal stop for passengers. As a consequence it was much smaller than Higgins’s station. The common room was half the size of Higgins’s, and there was no bar, makeshift or not. The stationkeeper lived in just one windowless room. The bathroom was anyplace you cared to go outdoors. There was a kind of kitchen, but it had just a small, wood-burning stove and a big washtub for the dishes and the pots. There was no inside water, just a pump outside the back door of the common room. The first night Longarm had left Carl and Rita tied up in the common room. He’d slept in the stationkeeper’s quarters, blocking the door with a chair. As tired as he had been, one of the prisoners could have gotten loose, sneaked in, and cut his throat and he would have never woken up.
The telegraph key sat on a table in the stationkeeper’s quarters. Longarm looked at it from time to time, but it was just a piece of metal as far as he was concerned. Of no more use than an empty gun.
The second evening he fried up a batch of bacon and opened some cans of tomatoes. There were some stale biscuits, and he appropriated several. He was sitting eating at the small table in the common room when Rita came up and stood behind him. She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. He ignored her presence. She said, “I ain’t mad at you no more.”
He took a quick glance over his shoulder at her face. She was smiling down at him with that crooked little smile she used. He said, “That’s good. I don’t like folks to be mad at me.”
She began rubbing her hand along his neck, and then slipped it inside his shirt and ran her fingers through the curly hair on his chest. She said, “You feel all nice and warm. But I bet I could get you a lot warmer.”
He put his fork down and sat still. In a moment she came around his chair and leaned down with her face close to his. She let her tongue come out and ran it along her lips. “You remember this?”
He started laughing, he couldn’t help himself. He said, “Rita, I got to hand it to you, you are some piece of work. Old Anson’s bones ain’t even picked clean by the buzzards and you are already saddling your next horse. Woman, you just go whichever way the wind is blowing, don’t you?”
