“All right, Randy,” Longarm said, “assuming that Senora Sanchez is still alive, where do you think she might have gone after leaving Helldorado?”
“There’s a town called Mormon Station just southwest of Carson City.”
“I know it well,” Longarm said. “The town was cursed when Brigham Young called his flock back to the Utah Territory and practically forced them to give away their land.”
“That’s right,” Randy said. “Lupe’s son lives and works there. His name is Arturo and he’s a few years older than I am.”
“Wouldn’t that be the first place anyone would look for Lupe?”
“Sure,” Randy admitted, “but Arturo would never tell anyone what he knew. But he trusts me and he’ll tell us if she’s dead or alive.”
“So how come Arturo didn’t come to Helldorado and help his mother?”
“What could he have done other than gotten himself killed?” Randy asked. “My father would never brook any interference.”
“And Lupe allowed herself to be shut off from her son?”
“Every few months she would go to visit Arturo, his wife, and two children. I would always accompany her and stay at their place. We had good times there.”
Longarm chewed on that for a few minutes. “And did it ever occur to you just to stay in Mormon Station?”
“Sure!” Randy lowered his voice. “I often thought about staying. There’s a freighting road nearby that crosses over the Sierras that I could have worked on as a mule skinner. There are plenty of ranch jobs in that Carson Valley.”
“Then why didn’t you stay?”
“Lupe would talk me out of it.”
Longarm blinked with surprise. “She talked you out of leaving Helldorado? I don’t understand.”
“She …” Randy had to clear his voice. “She loved my father. You see, he is capable of being kind and generous. The first time that they met, my father whipped two bullies who had been harassing Lupe and making her life miserable. Then, he bought Lupe roses and courted her for two years, not once crossing the bounds of a gentleman.”
“While he had his whores to play with at night,” Longarm said, “and his get-rich-quick schemes designed to fleece the innocent and trusting.”
“Lupe had an old dog,” Randy said, not listening but trying desperately hard to defend his father. “I saw my father pick it up after it had been run over by a wagon and gallop twenty miles to get it to a doctor and then pay him a hundred dollars for saving that dog’s life and making Lupe happy again.”
Longarm was not greatly impressed. “All right, so he would do anything for the senora. That’s easy enough to understand because I’ve heard she was not only beautiful, but also a fine woman.”
“She is a saint,” Randy confessed. “She also has a fine education. When my father finally talked her into moving to Helldorado, she brought boxes and boxes of books. They’re the ones you saw in my room last night. Lupe can recite poetry by the hour.”
“I still can’t understand what she saw in your father.”
“And I doubt that you ever will,” Randy said. “He’s changed a great deal in the last five years, and not for the better. Lupe loved my father, and he was true to her until a couple of years ago. That’s what hurt her the most. That, and the killing.”
“Did she talk to you about leaving?”
“Oh, yes! But even as she would talk about it, she continued to hold out hope for my father. She would read the Bible and pray for him. I never saw a woman so prayerful as Lupe. She would ask me to pray for him too. And also for my brother.”
“What did Clyde think of Lupe?”
“He hated her,” Randy admitted. “He thought she was poison. Clyde and I used to argue, and then Clyde would whip me when I defended Lupe.”
“So what finally happened?”
Randy expelled a deep breath. “Clyde got worse, and finally he whipped me so badly that I had to be taken to Carson City and looked after by the doctors. My mother … I mean Lupe, she almost killed Clyde herself. She would have if one of the Ten Commandments hadn’t forbidden her to kill. Anyway, she confronted my father and demanded that he punish Clyde with a bullwhip.”
“But your father refused?”
“You guessed it,” Randy said. “My brother was full-grown and he said he’d rather go down with a smoking gun in his hand than be horsewhipped. That was it. My father wasn’t willing to gun down Clyde, and so Lupe must have figured that she’d had enough.”
It made sense to Longarm, and he turned his thoughts to more immediate and pressing concerns. “Randy, are you any good with that six-gun?”
“I am very good with a six-gun.”
“Show me.”
“Oh, no,” Randy said wagging his aching head, “not this morning. I’m shaky and couldn’t hit anything.”
“Try,” Longarm urged. “Draw and fire at that tree over yonder. It’s important that I see exactly what you can do.”
