“It’s all right, Marshal,” Longarm called to the local lawman. “I’m just back here talking to the prisoner.”
Burley appeared in the open door, a frown on his face. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you waltzing into my jail like that, Long.”
Longarm shrugged. “I didn’t figure you’d mind. Sorry if I stepped on your toes.”
“Well, it’s all right, I reckon,” Burley said grudgingly. “Rainey is your prisoner, after all, and if I’d been here I wouldn’t have minded letting you talk to him.”
“Marshal, why don’t you take me on to Denver, like you said you were going to?” Rainey demanded of Longarm. “I don’t have anything to do with this business here.”
Longarm shook his head, forestalling any protest Burley might make to the suggestion. “One bite at a time,” he told Rainey. “That’s the way we’re going to eat this apple.”
Burley and Longarm ate lunch together at the Red Rooster Cafe, just around the corner from the hotel. The breakfast Longarm had had in the hotel dining room had been all right, if nothing special, but the fried steak and potatoes served up at the Red Rooster made Longarm’s taste buds stand up and salute. So did the peach cobbler with which he concluded the meal.
“That was mighty fine,” he told Burley as they left the cafe. “Much obliged to you for recommending the place.”
“The chili’s even better,” Burley told him, “but I wouldn’t eat it if I was going to be in polite company any time in the next twenty-four hours.”
Longarm grinned, then changed the subject by saying, “I was thinking about taking a ride out to Thorp’s ranch. Reckon you could tell me how to find it?”
Burley had seemed almost human there for a minute—fried steak and peach cobbler had a way of doing that to a man—but his pleasant expression disappeared, only to be replaced by the usual sour frown. “What do you want to do that for?” he asked.
“Thought I’d see if he wants an extra hand along on that monster hunt he’s getting up.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Burley said dubiously.
“I can take that Englishman right to the spot where something spooked Rainey,” Longarm pointed out. “Maybe he could pick up the trail there.”
“Rainey claims he didn’t see anything. I thought you believed his story.”
“I believe he and his partner found that jewelry and didn’t have anything to do with Mrs. Thorp’s disappearance or Hardcastle’s murder. But I know damned good and well he saw something that scared the piss out of him. I was there. I never saw a man so shook-up in all my life.”
Burley nodded slowly. “Maybe you should go along with that Lord Beechmuir then. You ever have any dealings with English lords and ladies, Long?”
“A little, here and there,” Longarm said. “I reckon underneath all the airs they put on, they’re just folks like you and me.”
“Like you, maybe.” Burley shook his head. “Not like me.”
He went on to give Longarm directions to Thorp’s ranch, which wouldn’t be difficult to find. Longarm had stabled the Appaloosa and the chestnut at the only livery barn in Cottonwood Springs, so he headed over there to saddle up the Appaloosa.
The ride out to the Rocking T took about an hour, as Longarm expected it to. He followed the Fort Griffin road west out of Cottonwood Springs and turned to the north on a smaller road before reaching the river. The ranch house was about two miles up that road.
Also as Longarm expected, the house Benjamin Thorp had built for his bride from New Orleans was quite a place. It sat on a hilltop with a spectacular view of the entire Brazos River valley to the west. There was a one- story stone house in front that might have been Thorp’s original homestead and ranch house, but spreading out behind it with a wing to either side was a three-story, whitewashed frame structure with white-columned porches flanking the stone house. The arrangement gave the house a bizarre look, half Texas frontier and half antebellum plantation. Longarm found it attractive in a strange sort of way, although architecture was not one of his interests. Down the hill from the big house were barns and corrals and a long, narrow bunkhouse where the hands of the Rocking T undoubtedly lived. Longarm had seen quite a few cattle during his ride out to the ranch, and all of the animals had looked fat and healthy. Evidently, Benjamin Thorp had himself a prosperous spread here to go with that bank he owned in town.
Longarm didn’t see the wagons that had brought the visitors from Cottonwood Springs. The vehicles had probably been put away in one of the barns, he thought, and the teams turned out in a corral. The trail he was following split in two, one path going toward the bunkhouse and the barns, the other curving up the hill to that hybrid house. That was the one Longarm followed.
A fence made of logs supported by stone pillars ran around the yard in front of the house. Longarm swung down from the Appaloosa and tied the reins to one of the logs. There was a gap in the fence that served as a gate, with a flagstone walk on the other side of it. Longarm followed that to the front door of the stone structure. He slapped a heavy brass knocker up and down a couple of times.
To his surprise, the big Sikh answered the summons. Longarm was just about as tall as Absalom Singh. He nodded to the fierce-looking foreigner and said, “I’ve come to see Mr. Thorp and Lord Beechmuir. Name’s Custis Long. I’m a U.S. deputy marshal.”
Longarm didn’t know if Singh spoke any English or not. Stolid and expressionless, the man stepped back to let Longarm enter the house.
Benjamin Thorp came through a door on the other side of the room, which was furnished with a heavy sofa, a couple of chairs, and a bearskin rug on the puncheon floor. On one side of the room was a fireplace with a massive stone mantel over it. A pair of horns decorated the wall above the fireplace. Longarm could tell from the wide sweep of the horns that they had come from a Texas longhorn.
Thorp had a big cigar in his mouth. He took it out and said, “What are you doing here, Marshal?”
“Came to talk to you and Lord Beechmuir. I want to go along on the hunt for that critter.”
