do so. He stumbled to his feet and heard the door at the other end of the hall slamming open. That would be Cy leaving, Longarm knew.
Somehow Longarm had managed to hang on to his gun, so he didn’t have to look for it amid the wreckage of the table. He ran out of the room, and a couple of long strides took him through the hall to the other door. He plunged through it.
The shooting in the back room must have sounded like a war breaking out. It had sure as hell cleared the main room of the saloon. Only the bartender remained, and he was crouched behind the bar. The batwings were swinging back and forth violently. Longarm figured that Cy had just batted them aside on his way out.
“Did you see which way that little fella turned when he ran out?” Longarm flung at the bartender.
The man raised up from behind the bar just enough to wave an arm to the left. “That way! Toward the river!”
Longarm bit back another curse. If Cy reached Juarez, he could easily lose himself in that rat’s nest of streets over there.
Longarm slapped through the batwings and turned left. He heard several startled shouts ahead of him and saw that Cy had knocked a couple of people down in his headlong flight. Longarm gave chase and said, “Sorry, ma’am,” as he passed an angry mamacita who had been knocked off her feet by the fleeing jockey. The woman shook a pudgy fist at Longarm’s back and threw a string of fluent TexMex curses at him.
Cy had a lead, and he was fast, no doubt about it. But he was accustomed to running his races on horseback, not on foot. Not only that, but each of Longarm’s strides made two of Cy’s, and the marshal’s low-heeled boots didn’t slow him down any. Steadily, he closed the gap between them. It helped that Cy was clearing a path for Longarm too.
Cy threw several frightened glances over his shoulder and saw Longarm closing in on him. They were now less than a block from the long wooden bridge over the Rio Grande. Cy put on an extra burst of speed, but it wasn’t enough. Longarm reached out, snagged his collar, and hauled back. Cy stumbled, slowing down abruptly, and Longarm practically trampled him. They wound up with Cy sprawled in the dust of the street and Longarm straddling him. Longarm reached down, got hold of Cy’s shirt with both hands, and lifted him easily. After shaking him like a terrier for a second, Longarm shoved him back toward the Crystal Star. “Come on,” growled Longarm. “Let’s go straighten this mess out.”
The local law was waiting inside the saloon by the time Longarm and Cy got there. As Longarm prodded the jockey inside, the bartender pointed at him and said excitedly, “There he is! That’s him!”
The two men who had been talking to the bartender swung around to face Longarm. They wore town suits, and each of them held a shotgun. They looked as if they knew how to use the Greeners. Each man had a star pinned to the lapel of his coat.
Longarm had holstered his Colt and was glad of that fact; he didn’t want any trigger-happy local badge blazing away at him with a scattergun. Before either of the men could say anything, he told them, “Take it easy, boys, we’re on the same side. I’m a deputy United States marshal. Name’s Custis Long, and I’ll be glad to let you see my bona fides if you won’t shoot me when I go to reaching for ‘em.”
“Federal man, eh?” grunted one of the El Paso star-packers. “Guess we’d better see that identification, Long.”
Longarm took the wallet containing his badge and papers from inside his coat and handed it to the man. After looking inside the wallet, the man handed it back to Longarm and said, “I reckon you’re who you say you are. What the hell was this all about, Marshal Long? And who’s this?” He gestured at Cy.
“This fella’s my prisoner, at least for the time being,” Longarm said.
“I didn’t do anything,” whined Cy. “Marshal Long’s just out to get me!”
“Shut up,” said the local lawman. “I’m waiting, Marshal.”
“Here’s how it was,” Longarm began. “I was keeping an eye on this fella here, and when he bought into a high-stakes poker game in the back room yonder, I did too. But a couple of the other players knew me from somewhere, and they had to be nursing a grudge against me for some reason. They hauled out their hog-legs and started shooting at me.” Longarm shook his head regretfully. “I tried to take the second fella alive, but I wound up having to kill him too.”
“You didn’t recognize either of them?”
“Not right offhand. But they sure knew me.”
“Let’s take a look. My name’s Tom Bolt, by the way. I’m the city marshal here. This is my deputy, Dave Singletary.”
“Pleased to meet you both.” Longarm kept a hand fastened firmly on Cy’s collar as the little group started toward the back room. “Come on.”
“I tell you, I didn’t do anything-“
A jerk from Longarm silenced the jockey for the moment.
Longarm was debating how much to tell Bolt and Singletary about the job that had brought him here. He didn’t want to get Senator Padgett mixed up with the local law if it could be avoided. Longarm preferred to play a lone hand until he discovered what he was looking for. Then he could call in reinforcements if it was necessary. He had already admitted that he was keeping tabs on Cy, but he wouldn’t go into any details about why. If the local lawmen pressed him, he could say truthfully that it was a federal matter.
The door to the hall leading to the back room was open. Before Longarm and the others reached it, the burly guard came out, walking gingerly and bending over a little. When he saw Longarm, he straightened, his aching family jewels evidently forgotten in the rage that swept through him. “You!” he growled.
Marshal Bolt lifted his shotgun as the guard started forward, fists clenched. “You won’t do a damned thing except stand there and behave yourself, Oscar,” Bolt said. “That fella you want to pound on is a federal lawman.”
“I don’t care if he’s Queen Victoria’s illegitimate son,” Oscar said, holding himself back with a visible effort. “The son of a bitch kicked me in the balls!”
