for the familiar smell and security of its stall in town, dragging its reins and going like blazes despite having to favor its off-front hoof.
By this time Longarm had landed in the grass on one shoulder and rolled as he drew his six-gun, cursing that fool buckskin for running off with that Winchester.
But at least he had plenty of ammunition in one pocket of his tweed outfit. So he cranked off the five he’d been packing in the wheel through the dust thrown up by his bolting mount. Then he flattened behind the berm and rolled some more as somebody returned a heap of shots through the cloud of gunsmoke he’d just offered them as another target.
He reloaded, popped up again, just high enough to blaze away blind as he spied other gunsmoke drifting among the aspens, and then ducked down to crawl in the opposite direction while reloading along the way. Hence his unseen enemy wasn’t expecting to spot him in that direction as Longarm sprang to his long legs and made it across the wagon trace in a half-dozen running strides, crabbing to one side as he got in among the skinny but closely packed trunks before someone got to peel some smooth bark where a more direct approach might have taken Longarm.
So Longarm fired back a lot, and was rewarded by the yipe of a kicked dog, or a terrified man, as his damned .44-40 ran down some more.
Longarm zigzagged the other way as he moved in on the sound, braced for more return fire as he reloaded in the deep shade of the fluttering green and silver leaves of the nearly solid canopy above. But there came no more return fire, and it surely sounded like someone else was plowing off through the grove without half as much comotion.
Longarm kept moving in slow and silent, aware of many a crow bird being taken in by one hunter leaving while another lagged behind.
Then, off in the distance north of the grove, he heard the sound of hoofbeats lighting out as if some rider had just had the shit scared out of him.
Longarm chuckled, but moved on cautiously until he came to a patch of trampled forest duff, a handful of smoked-down cigar stubs, and something else.
He bent over to pick up a cigar ring and the high heel of some frightened soul’s Texas boot. He could see at a glance how a two-hundred-grain .44-40 slug had blown it out from under the cuss with a lucky shot. He had to grin as he pictured the startled expression on the rascal’s face when he’d yelped like that.
Longarm moved on and found another spot where the already spooked rifleman had tried to make a second stand, spilled some spent brass, and lit out running after yet another lucky shot had thunked into an aspen trunk above his fool head.
Longarm pocketed some of the brass. Most everybody loaded saddle guns with the same handy .44-40 rounds, unless they were after bigger game than, say, a deer, a lion, or a man. But not everyone bought the same brand. So now he was looking for a son of a bitch who puffed on Gallo Claro cigars, wore those new Justin brand boots, but favored cheap P&P ammunition.
Chapter 14
Longarm got back to town the hard way, asked around until he made certain that the buckskin and all the other public property had made it safely without him, and went over to the Western Union for some more discussion of recent events with the outside world.
As he’d hoped, there were already some answering wires waiting for him. But as he tore each open he only became more puzzled. Nobody else in the game of catching crooks had been able to connect either Ginger Bancott or Quicksilver Quinn with Bunny McNee’s gang, and more than one seemed surprised as all get-out to learn Bunny McNee had been a gal.
Longarm picked up a pad of yellow telegram forms and proceeded to wire his home office that he’d been wrong the last time he’d wired. For whatever in blue blazes was going on surely had to be federal. He had no idea what they were up to. But anyone moving so sneaky and sly had to be smart enough to know it was serious.
He wasn’t ready to say for certain whether he or the late Gaylord Stanwyk had been Ginger Bancott’s intended victim. But he knew for a fact they’d sent Quicksilver Quinn and somebody else more recently to gun him in particular!
Outside once more, striding along the walk, he spied the sign of a cobbler with an Italian name. He didn’t go in or even glance inside as he passed. He could ask somewhere else whether that was the best, or only, place to have a boot heel replaced. Meanwhile, it was a mite early to worry about that. The rascal he’d spooked back there amid those aspen-had most likely gone to ground here in town, to wait and see how warm his intended target was before coming out to play some more.
At the jailhouse they told him Widow Farnsworth had paid the town druggist-undertaker to tidy up and embalm her dead maid so she could be shipped home to her kin in New Orleans. They were fixing to convene a coroner’s jury just after supper time so it would be all right to seal the swell coffin a generous employer was springing for.
Longarm headed for the Farnsworth mansion up the slope. There had to be some reason they’d killed such a pretty little thing. She’d have had to know something they didn’t want anyone else to know. The secret couldn’t have been that she’d had rotten taste in men. A heap of folks in town had known she’d been playing slap and tickle with the late Quicksilver Quinn. His pals would have had no good reason to worry about her going to the very lawman who’d killed her lover for a nice long chat.
That same snooty butler let him in, took away his hat, and allowed he’d see if Madame was receiving on such short notice.
Constance Farnsworth was. She was wearing a shantung house robe and an unsettled expression as the older colored gent led him in to her smaller sewing room. She wasn’t seated at her fancy Singer machine. She was perched on a nearby window seat, with her feet in satin mules and drawn up on the cushions with her, as if she felt like a child left home alone with darkness coming on.
In point of fact it was barely noon outside. That late train of hers hadn’t left the roundhouse yet. Getting right to the point, he asked her if she could hold off sending it down her line until Nate Rothstein and that posse got back.
She nodded and reached for a bell pull as she soberly asked, “Do you expect the monster who killed poor Sarah to make a run for it aboard my Golden-bound combination?”
