bank?”
Longarm shrugged. “Not a hell of a lot. Most of them ain’t a real hand with a gun.”
“Exactly. I’ve never really discussed this with anybody before, but I’ve got to tell you this, Longarm. I got to feeling ashamed. The damned fools wouldn’t admit when they were whipped, when they were in over their head. Some stupid farmer who couldn’t make a living suddenly thought he could walk into a bank with a pointed gun and they would give him all the money. Then when the law came looking for him, he thought he could beat them, but he forgot that a gun was the lawman’s stock in trade. There was just too many times, Longarm, when I felt I was committing murder. It’s just that simple.”
Longarm nodded. “I know what you mean, Fish, but if they haven’t got sense enough to drop the gun, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Hell, a blind sow can find an acorn, so you’re liable to catch a stray bullet, and a stray bullet will kill you just as quick as a well-aimed one.”
They rode on in silence for another quarter of an hour. Longarm had a good drink of whiskey, corked the bottle, and put it back into his saddlebags before lighting one of his small cigars. He said, “The Gallaghers ought to be on their way right now from Raton to somewhere on the Cimarron Strip.”
Fish looked around at him. “How do you know that?”
“Because Lily Gail showed back up unexpectedly. I sent a telegram to confirm the meeting and the time, and she damned near got back before the return telegram arrived.”
“Did she say the Gallaghers were in Raton?”
“Oh, hell, no. She said she had wired them in Quitman, Oklahoma, and that they wired her back with the details, and that they were acceptable the way I proposed that we do it.”
Fish laughed slightly. “Hell, Quitman ain’t got no telegraph office.”
“I knew that, but I didn’t mention it to her. I figure they left and she didn’t have a good reason to hang around Raton, or else they sent her back down to check on me. Anyway, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how this thing is falling out.”
Fisher gave him a grin. “So, that’s who was in there when I was knocking at your door. Right?”
Longarm said, “I don’t calculate that would be any of your business, Mister Lee.”
Fisher Lee, still grinning, said, “You were having yourself a little hair pie, weren’t you?”
Longarm gave him a glare. “I was about to have myself some hair pie until a so-called friend of mine came along and upset the kettle.”
Fisher kept grinning. “Well, I am just tore up to hear that, Mister Custis Long. That purely twists my heart to know that I caused you the hardship and the loss that you’ve suffered.”
Longarm said, “Oh, go to hell.”
After a pause Fisher said, “You know, sooner or later, you’ve got to tell me what the plan is. I’m not going to just follow, so if you’d like to enlighten me …”
Longarm said, “I wish to hell I really knew what the plan really was, but a lot of it depends on how the Gallaghers react. But I can tell you this. You and I are going to get off this train in about twenty or so minutes and unload the horses, and then take off east for ten or fifteen miles. We’re going to get on top of some high ground and bed down for the night and see what comes our way.”
Fisher Lee cursed silently and softly for a moment. “Dammit, Longarm. I vowed to myself when I had gotten out of law work that I had slept on the ground for the last time.”
“Nobody says you have to sleep on the hard ground.”
“Oh, yeah? Where in hell else am I going to sleep?”
“Well, you’ve got lots of choices. You can sleep standing up, you can sleep leaning against a rock, you can burden your poor horse and sleep in the saddle all night. Hell, what are you complaining about?”
“You’re going to get yours one of these days. I’m going to get you one of these days, Longarm, hopefully in a poker game. I’m going to turn you every which way but loose. I’m going to take all your money, then I’m going to take all your property, then I’m going to take your nest egg that you’ve probably got buried in a tin can in your backyard, then I’m going to take all your women, and then finally I’m going to take every damned gun you’ve got and then challenge you to a duel.”
Longarm said, “Fish, you’ve got to quit taking these things personally. You’re a bigger man than that.”
Fisher spit toward the slat, but the wind whipped it toward the back of the car. “Folks have been picking on me all of my life just because I am skinny. I want you to know that I’m not skinny, just wiry, and there is a big difference, as you will find out before this trip is over.”
Longarm said, “That hurts me, especially after the way that I’ve been defending you here lately.”
“What do you mean, defending me lately?”
“Why, there in Taos. There were folks that said that you bayed at the moon and cheated at cards. I told them that you did not bay at the moon.”
Fisher gave him a look.
The train pulled into Springer about an hour after dark. Once they had come out of the mountains, it had warmed up considerably. At one time, as they were going through the highest pass, Fisher had felt compelled to wrap himself in a blanket, noting that slim folks tended to get colder than those with a lot of fat on their bones. They’d come chugging in on the train, switching off to a siding that went directly to the complex where the mining company’s headquarters were located in Springer.
After they had detrained and gotten their horses off, a young man dressed very much like Simmons came forward to Longarm and identified himself as Eugene Wyman. He drew Longarm a little way off from Fisher and said, “Marshal, your goods are being transferred now. What I am going to do is load them on one of our little mine burros. We’ve got a canvas contraption rigged up that will hold fifty pounds of ice in each pocket. We’ve got four vials each of the hot stuff per pocket. I do want to warn you. I don’t know how far you are going, but even with that
