and demean herself even though she was a married woman.
Longarm turned away and hastily buttoned up and resettled his clothing. He kept his back to her and said, “Put your clothes on, Maddy. Then we’ll talk.”
“Whatever you say, Custis. I will do … anything … to save my husband’s life. I mean that, Custis. Anything.”
He didn’t answer. Shit, he couldn’t. Not without saying something that would make him seem even more the fool than he already felt.
Chapter 13
They perched at opposite ends of one of the cots, the distance between them seeming much longer than it in truth was. But then the distance between them now was very, very great so far as Longarm was concerned.
“When I saw you at the restaurant earlier today I thought … I couldn’t help thinking that you came here for something to do with Gary. Then I talked to Tyler and he said no, I shouldn’t get my hopes up. He’d just come back from seeing the governor and there wouldn’t be any change. It will all …” She stopped, her voice breaking into choked-back sobs, then with great effort went on as if nothing had happened. “Monday,” she said. “It will all proceed according to schedule at dawn on Monday.”
Longarm kept his eyes averted from Maddy’s discomfort. He pulled a cheroot from his pocket and concentrated on trimming and moistening and lighting it, trying to build the perfect coal while beside him a young woman wept.
“You know, Maddy,” he said in a soft and gentle voice after several minutes had gone by, “I don’t really understand what it is that you’re trying to tell me about here.”
“You haven’t read about it in the newspapers? Really?”
“Read ‘bout what, Maddy?”
“My husband, Custis. Gary Lee Bell.”
“Him? Jeez, Maddy. How’d you get hooked up with somebody like him?”
Maddy looked Longarm square in the eye and in a much stronger voice said, “Just lucky, I guess, Custis. Just very, very lucky.”
Gary Lee Bell, as anyone who’d read a newspaper over the past four or five months would likely know, was scheduled to hang soon—Monday morning according to Maddy, and she should damn sure know—after being convicted of murder.
Longarm remembered the notorious case fairly well. Bell was a drifter and ne’er-do-well. He’d shown up at a mine in the north of Wyoming Territory somewhere with a hardluck story and a hand out. The miner had taken him in. At least that was what the newspapers said. What the papers implied was that there was a daughter involved too. Maddy, of course. The papers had made a great show of how circumspect and restrained they were being in refusing to give details of the relationship with the miner’s daughter. At the same time they managed to imply all manner of sordid and unsavory possibilities. Then … Longarm’s eyes widened a bit as it belatedly occurred to him that if Madelyn was involved in this story, so was her father.
“Damn, Maddy. I’m sorry about your pa. When I read the stories in the papers … Williams isn’t that uncommon a name. I never thought about it being him.”
“Everybody knew him as Windy most all his life, Custis. The newspapers used his real name of Rupert.”
“Yeah, well, I’m mighty sorry for your loss. Your pa was a likable cuss. I always got along well with him.” Longarm shook his head. “Most everybody did, I think.”
In the newspaper accounts it was this Bell fellow’s boss who’d turned up dead, first going missing, and then finally discovered at the bottom of a flooded prospect shaft. By then Bell had married the mine owner’s daughter. And with her father gone, the mine and the girl both belonged exclusively to Gary Lee Bell.
Until, that is, a freak of circumstance disclosed the body and formal charges of murder were placed. There was a trial and conviction, an appeal … and now on Monday there would be an execution to put an end to it.
Except …
“Gary didn’t do the things they said, Custis. I swear to you he didn’t. I just … can’t prove that he is innocent.” She slid down the length of the bed until she was beside him, her body warm and close against his. She gripped his elbow in both her small hands. “I don’t have much money, Custis, but I really will do anything to prove Gary’s innocence. Anything, dear. And you can save him, Custis. I just know you can.” Her right hand left his elbow and nestled warm and inviting in his crotch.
Chapter 14
Longarm bent and kissed Maddy very lightly on the forehead. With a sad smile he gently lifted her hand away from his body and placed it firmly into her own lap. “I’ll be glad t’ listen to anything you have to say, Maddy. But not because o’ that. All right?”
Madelyn Williams Bell nibbled at her lower lip for a moment in thoughtful contemplation. Then she nodded and squared her shoulders. “Thank you, Custis. You’re a dear friend.”
“We’ll see ‘bout that, Maddy. We will see.”
She patted his knee, not in invitation but as an acknowledgment of sorts, then left his side and crossed the tack room to the shelf where she had placed her clutch purse. She carried it back and sat, not so close to him this time, while she opened the bag and brought out a tattered scrap of paper.
The back of the single sheet bore a three-cent stamp and a crudely scrawled address directing the letter—for that was what it seemed to be—to “M. Bell, Talkin Watter, W.T.” The note had been folded and mailed without the formality of being enclosed within a separate envelope. Longarm was frankly amazed that it had ever reached Maddy.
If, that is, it really had. There was only a dark smear where a postmark should have been, making it impossible for anyone to read where or when it was alleged to have been mailed.
In lettering just as crude as the address, the letter said: “Seen Windy Medcin Boz 2 daz gone. Live. Tell A.T.”
