“We wouldn’t be able to … do it again.”
Longarm laughed. He stroked his hand down the smooth line of her back to the swell of her hips, then caressed her bottom, kneading the firm globes. She snuggled against him.
“I’m sure glad I met you, Custis Long.”
“So’m I.”
“You’re better’n any ol’ Brazos Devil.”
That comment brought Longarm back at least part of the way to reality. And as it did, something bothered him, some nagging little annoyance that he couldn’t quite grasp.
Before he could think about it anymore, Lucy bent her head and started tonguing his nipples, which was more than a little distracting. Longarm couldn’t bring himself to ask her to stop just so he could think about things for a while, so he told himself to worry about it later. For the time being, he was content to enjoy what she was doing to him. He reveled in the languorous contentment that washed over him.
Then it all went away when he realized what he had heard earlier. He had little or no conscious memory of it now, but while they had been making love, a part of his brain that stayed alert had taken note of a particular noise in the night. Obviously, the sound hadn’t represented an immediate danger; otherwise that facility of his—a sixth sense, he supposed you could call it for lack of a better term—would have warned him, no matter what he was doing. But still, it had been filed away in his brain, and now he recalled it.
The rapid hoofbeats of a galloping horse, heading west out of Cottonwood Springs.
Who would ride out of the settlement in the middle of the night, especially going hell-for-leather like that, with practically the entire countryside afraid of the Brazos Devil? Longarm knew he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he found out the answer to that question.
“It ain’t like I want to do this,” he said to Lucy as he took hold of her head and tilted it up toward him, “but I got to get back to town.”
“But Custis-” she began.
He kissed her, finding her lips with his in the dark. “Like it or not, we both have other reasons for being in this part of the country, Lucy, so we’d best get on about them. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, since we’ll all be scouting around in the same area looking for that critter.”
“All right,” Lucy said grudgingly. “But this better not be the only time you and me get to have some fun on a buffalo robe.”
“I think I can promise,” said Longarm, “that it sure won’t.”
Chapter 10
Catamount Jack was still sleeping undisturbed; Longarm could tell that by the loud snores issuing from the old mountain man’s mouth. He left Lucy at the campsite with a warning not to let the fire burn down too far during the night, then walked briskly back toward Cottonwood Springs.
He wished he had brought one of the horses out here. He could have covered the distance to town much more quickly if he had. As it was, it took him several minutes to reach the town, and the time seemed longer than it really was. Longarm had never thought of himself as the nervous type, but tonight he kept hearing noises that made him look over his shoulder. He had never known himself to be so spooked, especially not by the notion of a critter that might not even exist.
He found the town in an uproar. Groups of men stood around in front of the buildings, talking loudly. Longarm heard the words “prisoner” and “jail” as he walked past some of the men, and he stopped to grasp the arm of one of the townies.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What’s got everybody in such a state?”
The man pulled loose from Longarm’s grip, then looked more closely at him in the light that spilled through the windows of a nearby building. “You’re that federal marshal, aren’t you?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Longarm said.
“And you haven’t heard about what happened?”
Longarm reined in his impatience. “If I’d heard, I wouldn’t be asking,” he said reasonably.
“I guess not.” The man paused, obviously enjoying the dramatics of the moment, then said, “Your prisoner broke out of jail tonight.”
Instantly, Longarm remembered the distant shouting he had heard while he was at the campsite outside of town. He recalled as well the hoofbeats of a galloping horse that had sounded a little later. That could have been Mitch Rainey fleeing Cottonwood Springs on a stolen horse, he thought.
“Where’s Marshal Burley?” he asked tautly.
“Still down at the jail,” the citizen replied with a nod of his head in that direction. “I hear tell Doc Carson’s down there with him. The marshal got hurt somehow.”
Longarm hoped the injury wasn’t serious. He wasn’t overly fond of Mal Burley, but he would never wish ill to a fellow lawman, as long as the star-packer was of the honest persuasion. Longarm thanked the townie for the information, then turned and headed for the jail as fast as his long-legged stride would take him.
Burley was seated behind the desk when Longarm walked into the office. Doc Carson stood beside the local lawman, probing with those delicate fingers at the back of Burley’s head. Burley winced and said, “Hell, Doc, watch what you’re doing. It feels like Rainey just about caved in my skull back there.”
“I think you’ll be fine, Mal,” Carson said. “You’ve got a knot on your head the size of a goose egg, but other than that you seem to be all right. There’s no sign of any brain fever.”
Burley looked up and saw Longarm. A guilty scowl creased his face. “Hello, Long,” he said. “I guess you’ve heard about what happened.”
“Not enough,” snapped Longarm. “How’d Rainey manage to get out of here?” Now that he knew Burley wasn’t
