“Ask me if I care,” muttered Longarm. He spotted his flat-crowned, snuff-brown Stetson on the ground not far away and picked it up. It was none the worse for wear, since he had already taken it off and set it aside earlier before he’d started throwing up.
He settled the hat on his head and brushed some dirt out of the wide, sweeping brown mustache on his upper lip. He spat a few times, clearing his mouth of the last of the grit and the aftertaste from being sick. A good healthy shot of Maryland rye would have cleaned his mouth even better, but what was left of the bottle he had bought in Weatherford had been carried off by that stupid gray horse. Longarm sighed again. The trials and tribulations of being a lawman sometimes made him wonder why he kept on packing a badge.
It wasn’t like he wanted to go back to cowboying or scouting for the army, though. His years of riding for Uncle Sam’s Justice Department had been eventful, dangerous ones, but he wouldn’t have traded them for a more settled existence. Having to put up occasionally with murderous assholes like Rainey and Lloyd was the price he paid for the freedom he enjoyed.
“Stay where you are,” Longarm advised Rainey. He went over to the Appaloosa and the chestnut. Rainey’s Appaloosa was the better mount, which was not surprising considering that Rainey was the brains of the two-man outfit. According to the reports Longarm had read, Rainey had seemed to be in charge during the stagecoach holdups the two outlaws had carried out. He had probably planned the jobs, which had netted a few good payoffs and a lot of miserly ones. But the important thing as far as Longarm and his boss, Chief Marshal Billy Vail, were concerned was that several U.S. mail pouches had been stolen, making the crimes a federal matter.
Most of the time Vail would have contented himself with sending wires from the office in Denver to the Texas Rangers and the local law in these parts, advising them of the federal warrants that had been issued on Rainey and Lloyd. In this case, however, Billy had judged it prudent to find an excuse for getting Longarm out of town for a while, so he had sent his top deputy to Texas to run down the two outlaws. Longarm had sworn up and down that he hadn’t known the pretty young redhead was actually the newlywed bride of an elderly but still powerful Congressman, but to no avail.
He had taken the train to Fort Worth, caught a stagecoach to Weatherford, some twenty miles to the west, and rented a horse there. It hadn’t taken him very long to get on the trail of Rainey and Lloyd, since they were proud of being desperadoes and took advantage of every opportunity to proclaim how bad they were to anybody who was willing to listen, but several days of riding in circles through this rugged Brazos River country had been required before he finally closed in on them.
And then his damned stomach had gone crazy on him, which was how he’d wound up facedown in a grave he had dug himself.
Now, surprisingly enough, his belly didn’t feel too bad. He supposed he had gotten rid of everything that was upsetting it. In fact, he was a little hungry. After a night of feeling queasy, he hadn’t eaten any breakfast this morning, so his insides were pretty empty.
Longarm untied the horses and led them over toward Rainey. “There’s a town called Cottonwood Springs not far from here, if I recollect right,” he said. “Ought to be a doctor there to look at your hip, and we can catch a stage there for Weatherford and Fort Worth.”
“Where the hell you taking me?” demanded Rainey.
“Back to Denver, so you can be tried on those federal wants. You haven’t killed anybody as far as I know, so I reckon you’ll wind up in prison for a few years. You’re a lot luckier than your partner, Rainey.”
The outlaw didn’t look like he considered himself lucky. He glowered at Longarm, and when the lawman told him to climb up on the chestnut, he said angrily, “That’s Jimmy’s horse. The Appaloosa’s mine.”
“I think you’ve got more to worry about than who rides which horse,” Longarm told him in a deceptively mild voice. “Now climb up into that saddle.”
Still complaining, Rainey did as he was told. Then he pointed at Lloyd’s body and asked, “What about Jimmy? You can’t just leave him laying out here for the buzzards and the wolves!”
“I suppose you’re right,” Longarm said. Keeping the Winchester pointed in Rainey’s general direction, he walked over to the other outlaw and hooked the toe of his right boot underneath Lloyd’s shoulder. “Since we’ve got a grave right handy …”
A powerful motion of Longarm’s leg rolled the body into the hole. Lloyd’s corpse thumped to the bottom of the grave.
“You want to cover him up?” Longarm asked.
Chapter 2
Calling Longarm a cold-hearted son of a bitch and every other name he could think of, Rainey got down from the saddle and used one of the shovels to fill up the grave. Longarm could have sent the undertaker out from Cottonwood Springs to fetch in the body, but there seemed to be a certain irony in burying Lloyd here, the sort of thing the dime-novel writers called poetic justice. Besides, Billy Vail would accept Longarm’s word for it that Jimmy Lloyd was buried good and proper, even if he didn’t like it.
“I’m liable to bleed to death before you ever get me to town,” Rainey said as he mounted up again.
“Doesn’t look like that stain on your jeans is much bigger now than it was earlier,” Longarm said. “Appears to me that wound’s not much more than a bullet burn. You’ll live to go to jail.” Longarm paused, then added, “That’s if you don’t try anything else funny. If I have to kill you for resisting arrest, my boss won’t ever question it. And I don’t mind telling you, Rainey, I didn’t want to come down here to Texas after a couple of two-bit badmen like you and your partner in the first place. My mood’s just gotten worse since I’ve been here.”
“You shouldn’t ought to threaten a prisoner like that,” Rainey whined.
“Just remember what I told you.”
If the truth were known, Longarm thought, Billy Vail hated it when he sent his top deputy after prisoners and Longarm came back with either corpses or death certificates. But the men a deputy U.S. marshal usually tangled with weren’t the sort you’d find singing hymns in a church choir on Sunday morning. A lawman out here on the frontier couldn’t avoid shooting a few fellas every now and then. So Longarm hoped fervently that Mitch Rainey wouldn’t give him any more trouble. But Rainey didn’t have to know that.
It was early autumn, and the air here was crisp and clean, which only seemed to add to Longarm’s hunger. The landscape was fairly rugged, with lots of hills and bluffs and little valleys. Cedar and post oak breaks dotted the terrain. From time to time, through gaps in the hills, Longarm caught a glimpse of a winding stream, and knew it was the Brazos River. He had crossed and recrossed the stream a dozen times in the past few days as he searched
