Back-trailing the two dead men to where they’d started from was about as difficult as following a pair of streetcar tracks down the middle of Colfax Avenue.
Longarm didn’t know what the hell they’d intended to do about the deep set of footprints they’d left behind with every step they took. Pray for more wind and snow? Could be. The truth, of course, was that they really hadn’t had much choice about it.
Not if they’d believed Longarm’s lies about that new scientific technique that would finger them as murderers. Believing that, they’d had to go through with trying to destroy the evidence and save their necks, and never mind small details like leaving footprints behind.
As it was, of course, the trail in the snow was so plain Longarm didn’t even have to wait for daylight to follow it. He simply ambled along in their path, not even having to break trail for himself. They had already gone and done it for him.
The path led a half mile or so to a small dugout gouged into the side of a low hill. The dugout looked old. It might have been someone’s line camp at one time, or even the site of a failed homestead.
Whatever it used to be, now it had been fixed up with some fresh sod on the roof and a windbreak of piled stones in front of the leather-hung door.
A plume of smoke lifted into the sky from a sheetmetal chimney at the back of the low roof. A lean-to had been built to serve as a storage shed. Longarm took a look inside—surprises were not something he craved at the moment—and found it filled with saddles, bridles, and similar gear waiting for springtime.
Longarm sighed. There wasn’t any point in screwing around here. Better to get it over with.
And there wasn’t any need to be subtle either. The men waiting inside would be expecting someone.
It was just that it was not Longarm whose entrance they anticipated.
He made sure there wasn’t anyone outside in the crapper. Again, no surprises were wanted. It wouldn’t much do for someone to come up behind him with a gun in hand, say, or even a billet of stove wood that could be used for altering the shape and the contents of a man’s skull. Then he simply walked over to the door and let himself in, Colt already in hand.
“How’d things … Jesus! You.”
“Uh, huh. Me.”
“But where …?”
“Madlock and Benson are both dead. I was waiting for them at the Travis place. They were stupid. They tried to shoot it out with me. I suggest neither of you boys makes that same mistake. I do this for a living, remember. You’d be in way the hell over your heads.”
Jason Tyler was lying on a bunk with a pile of blankets tucked chin high. Ronnie Gordon had been feeding wood into the stove when Longarm interrupted the chore.
“Did you … I mean, how’d you know it was us?”
“You want the truth, Tyler? I didn’t. Oh, you boys were on my list of possibilities. Naturally, you all being young and horny and broke until you could start drawing pay again. But I tell you true, son. I didn’t think it would be you four. I thought better of you than that.”
“But how …?”
“Why was I laying in wait this morning? Son, I told that story all over Kittstown so anyone interested in keeping track of the rumors would know I was gonna make my arrest today. And whoever was guilty … I didn’t have to know who that was … whichever sons o’ bitches was guilty would just naturally figure they had to come out and destroy the evidence before I could get to it.”
“You trapped us.”
“I did that for a fact, yes.”
“That isn’t fair, you know.”
“Neither is murder. Nor the assorted other things you’ve done.”
Ronnie Gordon stood and shook his head sadly. “I can’t … I can’t face going to the gallows, Marshal. That would purely kill my folks. They’re decent people. They wouldn’t understand.”
“Rape. Murder. No, those things are kinda hard for decent folks to accept. Maybe you should of thought of that before you killed that girl.”
“I didn’t … me and Jason didn’t have nothing to do with that, Marshal. It was all Billy and Carl. They’re the ones raped her. It was Billy Madlock that beat her to death. I’ll swear to that, Marshal.”
“So will I,” Tyler put in.
“Reckon you can tell that to the judge. Mayhaps he’ll even believe you.”
“You don’t, Marshal?”
“I told you, son. I do this for a living. Do you think I’ve ever once arrested a guilty man? Of course not. They’re every one of them innocent. Pure as the driven snow, like the saying goes. Just ask ‘em. They’ll tell you.”
“Marshal, I mean it. I can’t hang. I just can’t.”
“That ain’t up to me, Gordon. A judge and jury will take care of that.”
“I just can’t. I really ca-“
Gordon whirled and grabbed for a battered old Sharps carbine that was leaning against the wall beside him.
It was a crazy thing to do.
