you come back out.”
She asked what that might be.
When he told her, she said he was a big meany. But just the same, she piled all the furniture together and poured lamp oil over it before she struck a match, tossed it on the pile, and came out once more, just ahead of a whole lot of smoke.
As she joined Longarm in the meager shade of the dried-out trees behind the hedge, Goldmine Gloria archly asked if he was satisfied at last, smoothing her thin gingham shift in a manner to suggest she stood ready and able to satisfy most any other commands he meant to issue.
He stared soberly across the way at the ‘dobe. The smoke now issuing from all doors and windows would have been tough as all get-out to breathe, had anyone been trying. Then he nodded and said, “You must have been telling the truth. It happens, I’ve been told. We’ll let the smoke clear. Then I’ll see about loading the three of them aboard the ponies I led over this way earlier and getting all four of you to town.” Goldmine Gloria shyly said, “I have a teeny-weeny question to ask. You promise you won’t fuss at me?”
He smiled thinly and replied, “I ain’t mad. You shooting the last of them makes for a neater report on my part. My boss can be such an old fuss when he sends me after a want and I wind up having to kill the cuss. If you’re asking whether you’ll be entitled to the bounty money on old Harmony, you’ll have to take that up with the powers that be. I’m a lawman, not a lawyer, and it beats me whether a gang member is entitled to claim the reward on another or not. Worth a try, I reckon. Lord knows you may need the money for your golden years by the time you get out.”
Goldmine Gloria blanched and gasped, “Surely you jest! I did it for us, not the reward money! He was about to crack up and kill both of us, honey.”
Longarm nodded at the half-dozen ponies tethered back from the hedge in the meager shade of the dried-out orchard, and took one of her arms to steer her that way as he said, “Don’t be so formal. Call me Deputy Long. I ain’t taking you in on any federal charge. I have better things to do, and it ain’t as if you met up with me the other night as pure as the driven snow. What makes you so mean, Goldmine Gloria?”
She tried in vain to pull free as she protested, “You can’t turn me over to the Pinkertons. They’ve made up all sorts of awful lies about a poor orphan girl who was only trying to get by. I’d do anything, anything you could possibly desire of a woman, if only you’d try to see things my way!”
Longarm chuckled softly and replied, “I know you would. But I ain’t sure I could think the way you do. Thanks to you, most of my regular stuff went on to Deming without me. So I had to borrow this pony and such from the Yuma law.”
She gasped again in horror as he calmly produced a set of handcuffs and had her fastened to a small dead tree before she knew it.
He said, “Wait here whilst I gather up your playmates and get us all set to ride back to town. What sort of fruit did your late husband have in mind before you let this spread go back to pure desert?”
She sobbed, “How should I know? He said it would take seven long years before they’d bear fruit, and time’s cruel teeth give a woman so few years to spare! I wanted to enjoy my youth and beauty while I had them. I still want those few short years, Custis! You know I’ve never been really wicked. Let me help you catch crooks! I know a lot of crooks I’ll bet you’re looking for and we’d make a great team. I can help you track crooks by day and make your nights sheer paradise because I’ve read this Hindu love book and memorized every page!”
Longarm began to untether three of the ponies as he wistfully remarked, “This pretty widow lady I know up Denver way has a copy of that Kama Sutra some mighty imaginative Hindu wrote. Some of the positions are uncomfortable, and we found more than one just plain impossible. I’ll be back directly and we can see to your comfort in the Yuma jail.”
As he started to turn away, the brassy blonde demanded in a colder tone, “Wait. Won’t you at least tell me how you found out I owned this remote homestead in the middle of nowhere?”
Longarm smiled thinly and shook his head, saying, “Not hardly. I paid for my education and you’re already too smart by half. But I can give you a hint. A smart-ass little birdy told me.”
She nodded wearily and said, “We were afraid you might have gotten something out of Sam Ferris when the two of you were locked up together down in Puerto Periasco.”
Then Longarm spoiled it for her by soberly shaking his head. “If it’s any comfort to you, I tried in vain to get old Sam to talk. He seemed to be sore at me for some reason. He wasn’t the one who as much as told me all about this spread outside of Yuma.”
She frowned and decided, “You’re conning me. You never got a chance to question any of the others. I was the only one you ever had more than a few words with, and I know I never told you anything!”
He leaned the empty Big Fifty against another tree and gathered up the reins as he told her, “Look on the bright side. It’ll give you a puzzle to ponder late at night as you while away your jail time.”
So he never told her, no matter how she cussed and pleaded all the way back to Yuma, where they parted unfriendly.
But once he got back to his home office and filed his report, his immediate superior, the crusty U.S. Marshal William Vail of the Denver District Court, seemed less than satisfied as to some details.
Thus it came to pass that on a payday afternoon, as Longarm was anxious to go calling with a bunch of violets and a copy of the Kama Sutra in a plain brown wrapper, he found himself literally on the carpet in Billy Vail’s oak- paneled and smoke-filled back office.
A million years went by as Longarm sat smoking milder tobacco in the leather chair across a cluttered desk from the older, shorter, and far beefier Billy Vail, who seemed to enjoy reading reports over and over as the banjo clock on the wall ticked away whole minutes of fun a man could be having most anywhere else.
At last the older lawman lowered the typed-up first copy with a puzzled sigh and declared, “All right. You did well enough, I reckon. I sent you to bring back Harmony Drake and you at least produced that sepia-toned photograph they took before they nailed the coffin lid in Yuma. You paid for that out of your own pocket, of course?”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, “I owned up to his death in that report. I confess off the record I got a deal on the burials. Knowing how you feel about us putting in for bounty money, I suggested a pal on the Yuma force might as well, provided he’d care to take those dead boys off my hands, along with Goldmine Gloria.”
