“No trouble, Marshal. I promise.”
Longarm took a seat where he could keep an eye on both prisoners, and accepted Mrs. Burdick’s offer of coffee while he waited.
George, in the meantime, volunteered to go out to the stranded coach and bring Longarm’s bag back so Hancock could be properly immobilized.
“Would you mind bringing the whole bag back, please, George?”
“Glad to.”
Longarm nodded with considerable satisfaction. After all, Burdick’s panatelas were not bad. But his own cheroots were better by far.
Chapter 36
It was Saturday evening before Longarm, Jesse, and the shotgun messenger, George, walked out into the yard to stand with their heads raised and nostrils flared to the gathering breeze.
“What d’you think, Jesse? It’s your call,” Longarm said.
“Officially,” Jesse agreed, turning his head and spitting a stream of yellow-brown tobacco juice into the dark brown mud at their feet. “You tell us there’s a man’s life hangin’ fire?”
“Yes.”
“Six mules could die if I decide wrong and set out before the ground gets hard enough for us to make it through,” Jesse added.
“That’s true too,” Longarm agreed.
“I do dote on my mules, Marshal. You know that.”
“You treat them good as anybody I’ve ever known,” Longarm said.
“But they ain’t more important than a man,” Jesse said, his voice rather sad at the thought.
“No, they aren’t.”
Jesse raised an eyebrow. “George?”
“I think it’s gonna freeze tonight,” George said. “You can smell it on the air. Almost like before a big snow comes in. Though I don’t look for a snow tonight. Too clear off to the west there. I say we got cold air moving in. Snow behind it, maybe, but by then we’d be well clear to the south. “You think we should try it, George?” Jesse asked his shotgun guard. And friend.
“Yeah, I think we should try it. We won’t ever have the stock any better rested than they are right now. And it was dried enough this afternoon already to get the coach in here, wasn’t it? Well, I say it’s dry enough we can get a start. Slow to begin with. We shouldn’t put too much strain on the stock right off. Let them go slow and easy at first, till the cold comes on and the surface freezes over. After that we should have an easy roll the rest of the way down.”
“Marshal?”
“It isn’t my place to say, Jesse.”
“But if it was?”
“Then you know I’d say we have to try it. That boy will die come dawn Monday if Mr. Overton and me can’t find the proof of his innocence.”
Jesse sighed, and Longarm guessed he was thinking about his beloved mules.
“All right,” the jehu finally said. “George, get the harness laid out ready while I pick the team. Marshal, would you be good enough to tell the passengers that we’ll be rolling out of here in, say, forty minutes.”
“Glad to,” Longarm told him.
“One thing more.”
“Yes?”
“If any of them want to stay over instead of risking the road like it is, the line will house and feed them free until the next southbound comes through. Or they can ride free back north when those boys decide to move.”
“All right.”
“And, um, I wouldn’t want you to put pressure on anybody, Marshal. But I might mention to you that the lighter this coach the better for those of us who are in it. You know?”
Longarm smiled. “I think the only people going south tonight, Jesse, will be the lawyer and me and my two prisoners. Somehow I don’t think anyone else will want to ride out with us.”
“Yeah, well, whatever. I got nothing to do with any of that.”
“No, of course not.” Longarm smiled and touched the brim of his Stetson before turning away and striding—it was dry enough now that he was wearing his own cavalry boots instead of the awkward gum rubber things Howard Burdick provided—back toward the relay station.
Saturday night, he kept thinking. Sunday morning into Bitter Creek. And that was if things went just right the whole rest of the way south. Then hit the rails and get off at Bosler. Then south—somehow; he had no idea how they would manage it—to the new diggings in the Medicine Bows.
After that … well, after that it would be like playing craps. With Gary Lee Bell’s life as the wager lying on the line.
Chapter 37
