Higgins got up to go deliver Longarm’s order. He frowned. “Now you don’t be shy ‘bout drinkin’ my rum. Ain’t no use in swillin down them corn squeezin’s when they is good rum to drink.”
Longarm tried to look guileless. Privately he was about halfway convinced that it was the half-glass of rum he’d poured in the lye water that had done his feet the most good, but he didn’t want to take the slightest chance on hurting his host’s feelings. “Herman,” he said, “I am much obliged, and I know a good drink when I taste one. But I got to tell you, that little trip through the desert left me in a kind of weakened state and I ain’t up to that stout a drink just yet. I reckon I better stick to corn whiskey.”
Higgins snapped his fingers. “My stars and garters! I never thought! What in the world is the matter with me.” He shook his head and slapped himself on the forehead. “I’m gettin’ the poorest set of manners in the country. Sylvie will be on me I don’t watch out. And oh, can she be a wampus kitty! Whoooeee!”
When Higgins came back, Longarm was trying to smoke the second cigar the old man had given him. But when he’d bathed and shaved he’d managed to clean his teeth with some baking soda and salt, and his clean mouth only showed off the age of the cigar more. Nevertheless, he was giving it a valiant effort. He’d had a good swallow of his Maryland whiskey, and was feeling content except for the worrisome problem of Carl Lowe.
He said to Higgins, “Herman, I have just got to get up north. I need to make it to a railroad junction somewhere close to Phoenix. Are you and your wife the only ones here?”
“Well, they is the two Mexicans helps me with the stock. But they ain’t got nothin’. I tell you, Mr. Long, the company jes’ won’t let you have no way to get around on yore own. They done lost too many stationkeepers like that. Gets mighty lonesome and mean out here and some folks can’t take it and they light ‘em a shuck out of the place. Been plenty drivers come pulling in to a station with a team all lathered up and snorty and nobody to meet ‘em and no fresh team ready. Course I tell ‘em if they’d get married couples like me an’ the ol’ woman, they wouldn’t have that trouble.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, discouraged. “I can see how that would be a problem for them.” He grimaced. “That next station north is twenty miles, right?”
“Yessir.”
He studied the far wall for a moment. “I wonder if I could ride one of those little mules twenty miles. I wonder who’d give out first, him or me.”
Higgins said, “I doubt if it could be managed. I got to tell you, Mr. Long, them mules ain’t the tamest critters you ever been around. And they damn shore ain’t saddle-broke, as them Mexicans has found out to their sorrow. You must have some all-fired powerful business waitin’ on you to have you frettin’ like this. Laws, it ain’t been much more’n five hours since you staggered in here near dead. Now you are afire to get on out under that sun again.”
Longarm sat thinking for a moment. Maybe he was worrying himself overmuch and maybe for nothing. For all he knew the man that had gotten away had not been Carl Lowe. Maybe Carl Lowe was either dead or back in prison, and some two-bit outlaw had disappeared over the horizon leaving Longarm staring after him. But Longarm couldn’t help worrying. He worried because Carl Lowe was a man to worry about. Not that he was a violent man or a gunhand or even a murderer. His history showed that he had never raised a hand against his fellow man in anger in all his life. Nevertheless, he was as dangerous a man to the economic well-being of the Southwest territories as there was around.
For most of his life Carl Lowe had been a quiet, law-abiding citizen who had worked for the Wells Fargo Company in California in its original business of transporting gold bullion from mine sites to government mints. Carl Lowe was a man of well-above-average intelligence and was of a mechanical bent. He had devised some of the first safes and strongboxes that Wells Fargo had used. In time he had become their chief designer of methods for getting gold and silver safely from one place to another. And along the way he had become something of an expert locksmith.
Then he had suddenly disappeared and, not long afterward, there had come reports from survivors of train robberies that there was a man who could take a few tools and open a safe it would have taken twenty sticks of dynamite to blow open. And do it pretty quick in the process. It wasn’t just Wells Fargo safes either. The brand or manufacturer didn’t seem to matter. This quiet little man who went to work while the rest of the gang stood around with drawn revolvers could open anything. That was a valuable man to have around. Blowing up safes was a risky business. Most robbers didn’t know much about dynamite, and they generally ended up blowing themselves and the safe and whatever money or gold there was all across the landscape.
It had taken two years of hard work, but Longarm had finally run Carl Lowe to ground. What had made him so hard to catch was that he would not attach himself to any one gang. He was a freelance and rented out his services to whoever could afford him. Then, once the job was finished, he would simply take his proceeds and disappear. After a long, frustrating search Longarm had finally run him to ground by employing the services of a sentenced bank robber who would get a reduced term in prison—if he could put Longarm in touch with the elusive Mister Lowe. It had worked. Representing himself as a man who intended to rob a train, Longarm had finally met Carl Lowe. In the course of their conversation Lowe, to make clear his value, had recited the details of his last few jobs. It had been the same as a confession and Longarm had arrested him immediately. Lowe had drawn twenty-five years in prison, but had not even served one when the prison break had occurred.
Longarm was convinced that the breakout had been arranged for only one man, Carl Lowe, and that the other convicts who’d been freed had been used to scatter and confuse the pursuit. That part, Longarm thought grimly, had worked. He’d tried to make it clear to the Arizona Rangers what the prison break was all about, but they hadn’t been willing to listen. To them, one escaped convict was the same as another. When Longarm had tried to tell them that the whole affair had been arranged by some gang needing Carl Lowe’s services, they’d looked at him like he’d fallen on his head.
But still, he did not know for sure that Carl Lowe was still on the loose. He might be dead and buried by now. He said to Higgins, “I take it there’s just you and Sylvia and the two Mexicans here?”
Higgins scratched his balding head. “Wa’l, thar’s the doctor and the hoor. Though truth be told, I ain’t all that shore he be a doctor. Stays drunk mostly. He got off the southbound stage with the hoor.” Longarm blinked. He said, “The what?”
“The doctor?”
“No, the other.”
“The hoor?”
Chapter 2
Longarm frowned, perplexed. “What in hell is a ‘hoor’?”
