After he’d been at it a spell, Longarm got to wondering why he was soaring through the night like an owl-bird with a headache, high above the stars. Then it came to him that he was looking up, not down, at the starry desert sky and that his only resemblance to any species of bird was that he seemed to be lying spread-eagle on his back as naked as a jay.
He naturally tried to do something about that, and decided to stop and think some more when somebody drove a red hot hat pin into his bare back. For the sons of bitches had staked him by his wrists and ankles aboard an ant pile, and this was no time to wake a million or more red harvesters from their evening repose!
The night air all around was goose-pimple cold by now. It wouldn’t warm enough to really stir the multitudes just under him before the sun rose a bit. But once you’sorted all those stars into constellations, they read that it was well past midnight. That meant he had four to six hours to bust loose, without busting more of the crust he lay upon. They’d left him a swell choice. He could relax and just wait to be eaten alive after sunrise, or invite thousands of tiny venomous jaws to enjoy him as a late-night snack by straining at his bonds!
As he lay there considering his grim options, he became aware of a dark figure standing over what would be the head of his grave if the bastards had had the common courtesy to just gun a man and bury him. After a spell, Longarm croaked, “Howdy, you son of a bitch. I hope you’ll forgive my not rising.”
There came no answer. Longarm called his mysterious tormentor a mighty silly son of a bitch, adding, “Shoot and be damned, you asshole. The show you’re waiting to see don’t start until well after sunrise, and I hope they bite you too!”
Then, as he gingerly craned his neck for a better look, he saw that the Milky Way sort of outlined one of the figure’s shoulders, if it had had a real shoulder. Then the pattern fell in place and Longarm marveled, “Now why would they have wanted to strip me bare-ass, then hang my duds on cross sticks like they were building a damned old scarecrow?”
His head still throbbed, but it was working better now, so before long he decided, “Right. It’s far more noticeable from a passing train. Billy Vail sent me all the way to Arizona to transport a paid assassin with an escape-artist rep. So Drake and his pals knew full well that as soon as I didn’t come back to Denver with him, Denver would come looking for me and him.”
His duds didn’t even flutter in the chill night air.
Longarm almost shrugged before he remembered all those tiny jaws under him. “They slickered me in a way that makes Samson in the Good Book look like a suspicious banker,” he continued out loud. “At least he got to lay Miss Delilah before she made a chump out of him. So they had to know I worked for a smarter lawman, and we all heard that conductor commenting on the three of us getting off here.”
An August meteor shot across the Milky Way on high. So Longarm made the only sensible wish a man in his position could think of, and added aloud, “The all-points Billy Vail sends out by wire will trace the three of us this far. That conductor warned us about Victorio’s band being off the reservation this summer. Victorio ain’t about to lead his bronco bunch west betwixt the Fourth Cav at Fort Apache and the Sixth Cav at Fort Huachuca, even in cooler weather. But how many white eyes know this, and what are they likely to say when they find yours truly eaten alive on an ant pile Apache style, with my prisoner and a pretty white gal missing? Would you want to trail bronco Apache across this desert in high summer when everyone but the army agrees it’s a proper chore for the damned old army?”
He reflected nobody who’d seen him getting off that train with what seemed a sick prisoner and a nursing sister would be in any position to describe anyone else. But that line of reasoning only worked if Drake’s pals had wiped out even the modest population of a small flag stop.
“I’m sorry, Victorio,” Longarm muttered aloud. “Some of my own kind can beat any Indian born at thinking mean, and you’re still likely to get blamed for another one of your famous massacres here.”
Then he heard a soft female voice call out, “Onde esta, El Brazo Largo?”
Since Brazo Largo meant Longarm in Border Spanish, the tied-down man so addressed was inspired to quietly call back, “Aqui. Quien es?”
Then a small dark angel of mercy who smelled just awful hunkered over him with the starlight gleaming on the keen blade of her barlow knife. When Longarm warned her about the ants, she said she knew. She’d heard those ladrones laughing about what they were planning to do to him long before they’d done it.
His dusky rescuer worked gently and carefully on the rawhide the sons of bitches had bound him with. So he only got bitten on the bare ass one time as she helped him roll free of the sleepy but pissed-off ant pile. He grabbed his duds and got them well clear of the milling red ants. They’d stolen his six-gun, badge, and identification, along with his watch and derringer. But he was mildly surprised to discover they’d left him his Stetson and stovepipe army boots, as well his tweed pants, long underwear, and hickory shirt.
As he hunkered amid stickerbrush to cover his nakedness, he learned the gal answered to Rosalinda. She said she spoke more English than the pals of Harmony Drake had thought. So once she’d heard them discussing their plans for her, she’d hidden out a full day in the last place a stranger to such parts might think to look.
An August afternoon on the flat roof of a ‘dobe trading post, listening to them talking about you below, accounted for the poor little thing’s dire need of a bath. She and her sweated-up cotton shift now reeked with the combined odors of mesquite smoke,‘dobe dust, and armpit all over.
Once he was dressed, although flat broke and without a weapon to his name, Rosalinda led him toward the only lamplight left, explaining how los ladrones had lit candle stubs all about to make the deserted flag stop seem more lively. She said she’d put them out to prevent the place from going up in flames as she’d heard them intending.
As they got to the trading post door she’d left ajar, Longarm saw an arrow stuck in the jam. It might have struck him as more artistic if it hadn’t been one of those gussied-up toy arrows they made to sell tourists along the railroad lines.
He wrinkled his nose and said, “It’s nice to know they’re capable of some mistakes. That blonde they had laying for me on the night train from Yuma was too slick for this child by half! She forced a card on me, like a tinhorn dealing to a greenhorn! I was the one insisting on getting off here! They must have been laughing like hell as they rode off with my badge, my other stuff, and my prisoner!”
She said they surely had been as she led him inside, waving at the trade goods scattered carelessly and the candle stub set in a pile of tinder under a wall shelf as she explained, “As I told you, they did not know I spoke English, or that I was right above their heads as they were plotting. I knew who you were as soon as I heard one of them say they could sell your pistol and identification in Sonora to los rurales. Everyone this close to the border knows of the reward on the head of El Brazo Largo.”
