Guthrie smiled sheepishly and replied, “You haven’t seen either of them yet. Both pretty, with nice builds. After that I’d describe them as typical Irish types.”
Longarm asked what typical Irish folks looked like, adding that he’d seen them short, tall, blond, brunette, and redheaded.
Guthrie decided, “Petite brunettes with blue eyes. You know, that typical Irish type.”
Longarm nodded gravely and replied, “You often see them with their typically large or small blond or redheaded pals. But I thank you, and I reckon I’d best ride out and talk to them about some horseflesh.”
Guthrie asked, “You mean they answer the description of somebody you’re after?”
Longarm honestly replied, “You’re describing a heap of women when you say any gal is small, dark, and pretty. But I have an edge on Miss Medusa Le Mat that she seldom allows. I know her on sight. So it won’t cost me more than a short ride out and back to decide whether she’s been trading horses on the side.”
He rose, they shook on it, and he went back to his hotel to strip his borrowed saddle of everything but the rope and Winchester for the short ride out to the old Nesbit place.
He packed the lighter load to the livery, saddled and bridled the old paint mare, then headed out along the eastbound wagon trace around eight A.M. with the dew burnt off the grass all around but the morning air still cool. So the paint was feeling frisky for her years, and he let her lope until she slowed to a less comfortable but mile- eating trot without his reining her in. She was shaping up to be a good old mare, and he was starting to like her.
Hence he was chagrined as well as scared skinny, less than two miles out of town, when something solid hit her just ahead of Longarm’s right knee and she dropped out from under him like a monstrous wet washrag!
He landed on his feet, drawing the Winchester from its saddle boot along the way, and flopped on the north side of the fallen pony, seeing that the gun smoke rising from a brushy draw was doing so to his southeast.
He didn’t prop his saddle gun across the saddle of the fallen pony. He knew that was a mistake you only got to make once. Levering a round of .44-40 in the chamber, he crabbed sideways in the long grass to peer around the dead mare’s big rump.
It smelled worse at the ass end of a heart-shot grain-fed mare. But he knew he’d smell worse directly if he didn’t pay more attention to a more distant annoyance. He held his fire, tempted as he was to lob a round into that clump of hackberry the drygulcher had obviously fired from.
But he knew he’d have to move clear of his own muzzle blast and gun smoke as soon as he fired. And at the moment, he had the edge in that the other side couldn’t say for certain whether he’d been hurt in the fall or even hit in the leg. So it might be best to keep the sneaky son of a bitch guessing. He’d once potted a Shoshoni who couldn’t stay put as long as he could, and Indians were supposed to be more patient than most.
So after a century or so, the little skittering critters hiding in the grass stems all around commenced to chitter and skitter some more as the sun warmed Longarm’s back, which didn’t do a thing to improve the odor of blood and crud oozing out of his horseflesh fortification.
He told himself the rascal was long gone. Then he warned himself that somebody else could be in much this same position, having much these same thoughts, yonder in that stickerbrush. So he’d made up his mind to out-wait the son of a bitch if it took all day when he heard distant hoofbeats, over to the east, more in line with the wagon trace he’d been following.
He rolled the other way to risk a peek over the jawbone of the dead paint. She smelled far better at that end, and he had a clear shot at the gap where the trail crossed the winding brush-filled draw that bastard had been lurking in.
It seemed to take forever. Then he spied two familiar riders on familiar mounts. Lash Flanders and Silent Knight were headed toward him, riding the same cow ponies they’d ridden out on the evening before. They were walking their stock, and slowed down even more when they spotted the downed pony Longarm was hiding behind.
He called out, “Watch your left flanks! Somebody just pegged a shot at me from them hackberries to the south!”
Silent Knight called back, “We heard it. Sounded like a big-fifty buffalo rifle. Is that you, Buck Crawford?”
Longarm allowed Silent was probably right about the rifle. He rose from behind the dead mare, Winchester held politely but still primed and cocked as he strode toward them.
They dismounted and walked their ponies over to the draw with him to scout for sign, or at least that was what Silent Knight said they aimed to do.
He might have been sincere. He was the one who found some scuffed-up leaf litter and a spent big-fifty cartridge under a flowering hackberry. Lash Flanders was first to spy hoof marks further along the draw. Longarm read horse apples and browsed cottonwood shoots as indicating the place where the drygulcher had left his or her own mount tethered to creep closer to the wagon trace with that rifle.
The missing piece of the puzzle hadn’t ridden far along the shady floor of the draw. It was easy to see where he, she, or it had forged up a grassy bank to beeline toward the Junction. The three of them agreed it was a bitch to read sign in springy big blue-stem once the dew had burned off. Later in the summer, the stems no cow had eaten would be dry enough to break off at ground level when a pony loped over them. But right now, as Silent Knight observed, the sneaky rascal could get back to town and fade into the bustle before anyone could cut enough trail to matter.
Longarm agreed, and asked how far he might be from that old Nesbit place.
Silent Knight said, “Not more than a quarter mile. You can see it from the next rise to the east. But why were you headed yonder? Rose Cassidy charges too dear for her horseflesh, and neither she nor her sassy daughter can be had for any price.”
Lash Flanders said, “He knows because he’s tried. Why don’t you let me ride you postern back to town?”
Longarm replied, “I’d be obliged if one of you would drop my saddle and bridle off for me at the livery and tell ‘em I’ll be calling for ‘em later. But I reckon me and this Winchester will just mosey on and see what them female horse traders have to say about all this shit.”
Chapter 10
