Longarm and the Missing Husband (7 page)

The puff of white smoke and accompanying
crack
came half an hour or so later. The shooter fired from a hilltop a hundred yards or so to the left of their line of march, close enough for accurate shooting but far enough that Longarm could not charge him, far enough for Longarm's revolver to be of little use.

The bullet passed overhead and whined off to strike somewhere in the distance.

Longarm threw himself on top of Bethlehem—a far from unpleasant posture—then quickly rolled away.

“Now we crawl,” he said.

“On hands and knees?”

“Exactly,” he said. “On hands an' knees. From where he was shooting, he won't be able t' see us if we stay low. Follow me real close. I'll put you in a safe place.”

“But—”

“Just do it, dammit,” he snapped.

Moving slowly on hands and knees, he led Beth to a shallow depression where she would be out of the shooter's line of sight. He turned and laid a cautionary finger across his lips.

“Lay down an' stay still,” he told her, his voice low and calm.

“Where will you—”

“I got business over there,” he said, pointing toward the place where the gun smoke had been seen.

“Don't leave me alone. Please,” Beth said, her eyes wide with alarm at the prospect of being left behind.

“Just do what I tell you an' everything will be all right,” Longarm assured her, hoping it was true.

He made certain Beth was lying flat, then began the laborious process of stalking the son of a bitch who was shooting at them.

Longarm did not try to approach him directly. Instead he crawled at an angle toward the man, keeping brush and terrain between himself and the shooter as much as possible.

He worked his way around a hill well to the right of the shooter's last known position then rose to a crouch and palmed his .45.

After half an hour or more, he was rewarded with a glimpse of red and black checkered cloth visible beyond a clump of sage.

Longarm dropped flat and softly grunted his satisfaction.

The shooter must have realized that he'd lost sight of his intended victims. Now he was trying to find them again. And was making his way toward the spot where Longarm now lay.

Longarm waited for the man to come to him. The afternoon sun beat down on him and he wished, too late, that he had thought to remove his coat. He was thirsty and felt gritty. Beth's notion of taking a bath when they reached the stagecoach relay station was sounding more and more attractive to him. Crawling around through sagebrush and sand, knowing he could be on the receiving end of a bullet at any moment, was hard on skin, nerves, and clothing alike.

He wiped his hand free of sweat and grit then took a fresh grip on his Colt.

“Come to Papa,” he whispered as the rifleman came within twenty yards of the place where Longarm lay.

The man was a complete stranger, he saw. Middle aged with dark hair, wiry and muscular in appearance. He was carrying a Spencer carbine and kept popping up high every few paces to see if he could spot Longarm and Beth, then dropping low again while he continued to move and to search.

Longarm let the fellow come a little closer, then stood and demanded, “Drop the rifle an' put your hands up. You're under arrest.”

The assassin jerked, his jaw suddenly slack with surprise. “How'd you—”

He never finished the sentence. Instead he brought the Spencer up to his shoulder, pointing it in Longarm's direction.

Longarm did not wait to find out what the man might have done next. His .45 barked. And twice more.

The shooter went down with a bullet in his chest and another in his belly. Longarm did not know where his third shot went.

He hurried forward and snatched the Spencer away from the dying shooter, then knelt beside the man.

“Why're you doing this?” he asked.

But too late. The life went out of the fellow before he could have answered the question even if he had been inclined to do so.

“Shit,” Longarm mumbled.

There had to be a reason these attempts were being made on him. Attempts to kill either him or Beth. He had no idea which. Or why. “Shit,” he said again.

Then he stood and headed toward the spot where he had left her.

“I don't . . . please, I really don't want to look,” Beth protested.

“Dammit, woman, you got to. I got t' know if you recognize this man or think you know why he might be tryin' to shoot you,” Longarm insisted.

Beth very reluctantly followed him back to the body of the man who had ambushed them. She stood over the corpse for some time, staring down at it, but in the end all she did was shake her head and say, “No. Sorry.”

“You're sure?”

Beth turned away from the dead man and said, “I'm sure. I can't recall ever seeing this man before. I certainly don't know why he would want to shoot me. Couldn't he have been trying to shoot you instead?”

“Sure, but I ain't ever seen him before either. I was hoping you'd know something.”

Longarm lifted his Stetson and wiped his forehead then looked up toward the sun. “Reckon we'd best get started. I dunno how far it is to that relay station, but we need to get there however far 'tis.”

“Wouldn't this man have had a horse?” Beth asked.

“Son of a bitch,” Longarm said. “You're right. I was so worried about him that I forgot that. Let's see if can we find it.”

Just after dark that evening, with Beth riding the dead man's horse—sidesaddle as she had left her trousers behind and refused to ride astride and bare her limbs to Longarm's view—light from the stagecoach relay station guided them in to baths and a hot meal.

“Bacon? No, ma'am, with a name like that, I'd've been sure to remember it,” the stationmaster, a man named Sam Trydon, told them. “I'm sure he never came through here.”

Beth described her husband in detail, but Trydon only shook his head and repeated that he never met Hank Bacon and would surely have remembered if he ever did meet the man. “I'm sorry, lady. I wish I could help you but I can't.”

Trydon smiled. “What I can help you with is something to eat. It isn't much, but it's hot and filling. Sit down, please. I'll bring you some roasted prairie chicken. It's as good as the real thing. The meat is a little darker, that's all. Mighty tasty if I do say so.”

He turned and called to the dark-skinned woman who was tending the stove, “Birdy, dish up some grub for these folks.”

The woman, whose hair was as sleek and shiny as a crow's wing, nodded an acknowledgment and began loading plates for the unexpected guests.

“There won't be another coach through until tomorrow afternoon. It's on its way to the reservation. Day afterward the same coach will come back, going south to Evanston. You're welcome to wait here if you want to head back down to the railroad,” Trydon said.

The woman came bearing a pair of plates with pieces of roast fowl and generous portions of fried potatoes and refried beans. The aroma coming off their meals set Longarm's belly to rumbling and his mouth to watering.

“What I want,” Beth said, “is to find my husband. He won't be down at the railroad so I'll go on. To the reservation, you say?”

“Yes, ma'am. You aren't scared of Indians, are you?”

“I wouldn't know. I've never met any,” Beth said.

Trydon laughed. “Not met maybe, but you've sure seen one.”

“I have?”

“My woman there. She's Shoshone. Her tribe is peaceable, though. You needn't worry about them.”

“Thank you, sir. Now if you will excuse me.” Beth turned her attention to the supper.

Later, after she had eaten, she asked about bathing.

“Sure. We have water enough,” Trydon said. He spoke to the woman in a tongue Longarm had heard spoken before but did not understand. To Beth, the man said, “She'll fix you up. The mister and me can step outside while you have your bath. Then you and Birdy can go out while the mister bathes.”

Trydon looked at Longarm. “Unless you'd settle for washing yourself. You can do that at the well out back.”

“A wash would do,” Longarm conceded around a mouthful of prairie chicken. Once finished with his meal, he lit a cheroot and followed Trydon outside.

The two men stood smoking and admiring the heavy-bodied coach horses while Beth took that long-awaited bath.

“You just left the body laying out there?” Trydon asked at one point.

Longarm nodded. “I wasn't going to take time to bury the son of a bitch. He didn't have anything in his pockets to tell me why he was shooting at us. Didn't have much money on him. I took what there was. I'll send it down to Denver. If we ever find out who he was, the marshal can send that money on to his kin. His horse and other traps are over there except for his rifle. I brought that inside.” He gestured toward the corral, where the dead man's horse was pulling at the hay rick. “He was riding a poor sort of horse, and his saddle's been hard used. My guess is that he was hired. Hired cheap at that. But that's only a guess.”

“You're a Federal marshal,” Trydon said. “A man could have a grudge against you.”

“Sure. It happens all the time. But this fellow . . . I never saw him before. I'm sure of that. No reason I can think of why he'd have a grudge against me.”

The Indian woman appeared in the doorway and called out something in her own tongue.

“Your woman is out of the tub. We can go back in now if you like,” Trydon said.

“You go ahead. I want to wash some of this grit off me. I'll be there in a few minutes,” Longarm said.

“I don't know if you're a drinking man, but I have some decent bourbon in there if you like,” Trydon said.

Longarm grinned. “I think that wash isn't going to take me very long. I won't be hardly a minute.”

“My woman there,” Trydon said over the bottle of cheap whiskey, “she's a pretty good fuck. You can have her for a dollar.”

“That's nice o' you. Let me think about it.”

“Take your time. She ain't going nowhere and there's no other passengers staying the night.” Trydon tipped the bottle back and took a healthy slug of the raw whiskey, which almost certainly was not the bourbon the label claimed it to be.

Longarm accepted the man's offer—of the whiskey, not the woman—and had another drink himself. The first drink had been fiery, the second a little raw, this third drink went down smooth and nice. “Now that's good liquor,” Longarm said, almost meaning it.

“Finish it if you like. I've had enough. What did you decide about the squaw?” Trydon said.

“Maybe later.”

“Oh, I get it. You're fucking the little widow woman.”

“You think she's a widow?” Longarm asked.

“I'm thinking exactly the same as you are. Man disappears in this country, it usually means one thing and that's that he's dead. It happens. The Indians are mostly tame but there's bronchos among them. You know that as well as I do. Then there's bad horses that can fall and bust a man up, bad water that will twist his guts into knots, bad critters of one sort or another that can tear him apart and eat whatever's left over.

“No, this is hard country up here, Marshal, not like the soft city living down in Denver and such. My thought and I'm sure yours, too, is that the little lady is a widow.” Trydon winked. “And you know what they say about widows. Once they get used to having it regular, why, there's no need to keep their legs together any longer. They come to like a good fuck as well as anyone.”

“That's what they say, all right.”

“Are you tapping that?” Trydon asked over the neck of the whiskey bottle.

Longarm shook his head. “Wish I was, but no, I ain't.”

“Give her a little time. Once she gets used to the idea of being a widow, she'll spread 'em for you,” Trydon said with a nod to affirm his own wisdom.

Longarm retrieved the bottle. The more he had of the stuff, the better it tasted. Right then it was about the finest whiskey he'd ever had. And it wasn't even rye.

“Meantime,” Trydon said, “there's the Indian. Hell, for you, as good a fellow as you are, I'll knock her price down to fifty cents.” He laughed. “On tick if you don't have the wherewithal on you. I know you'd be good for it.”

“I'm still thinking about it,” Longarm said.

“No hurry about the woman, but hand the bottle back, will you?” The stationmaster laughed again and took a drink that nearly drained the bottle. “Don't worry,” he said, returning it to Longarm. “I've got more where that one came from.”

When finally they staggered off to bed, Longarm's head was spinning. But that had been awfully fine whiskey. The best.

He fell asleep thinking about Bethlehem Bacon's nicely rounded ass.

Longarm slept fitfully, very much aware of Beth sleeping just on the other side of a muslin partition. Trydon and the Shoshone woman had disappeared into a side room. With a wooden door, which Trydon closed. Presumably if the man could not make a dollar by peddling the woman's ass, he would fuck her himself instead.

In the morning Longarm was awake early. He sat and drank coffee with Trydon while the woman made breakfast and Beth continued to sleep.

“Got any machine oil I could borrow?” Longarm asked at one point.

“Sure thing.” The stationmaster found a metal can containing a light sewing machine oil. Longarm quickly unloaded his .45 and cleaned it, then reassembled the revolver and replaced the cartridges.

“Expecting trouble?” Trydon asked.

“Not so much expecting as wantin' to be ready in case it comes,” Longarm said.

Beth came out from behind the cloth room divider, her hair tousled and her eyes still sleepy. She was following the delectable aroma of frying bacon and browning biscuits. “Oh, good. Food.” She sat across the table from Longarm and asked Trydon, “When should that coach get here?”

“It varies. Likely t'will be noontime or thereabouts,” Trydon said. “The passengers, if there are any, will want to have a bite to eat while me and the driver switch out the team. Then you can get aboard. Don't worry, though. You'll have plenty of notice before it pulls out.” He looked at Longarm. “I'll want to be collecting the fare for you to go on. No hurry, of course. Take your time.”

“Your mail contract says I ride free. So does the lady, seeing as she's a material witness in my custody,” Longarm said. He noticed Beth's eyebrows go up when he said that, but she did not question him about it.

Later, though, when neither Trydon nor the Indian woman was close by, Beth leaned toward him and said, “Am I in your custody?”

He smiled. “Unless you want to pay eight dollars for the trip on to the reservation, you are.”

“Oh, well if you put it that way . . .”

Beth killed time playing checkers with herself at one end of the long table—Longarm noticed that she won pretty much every time when she did that—while he found a Cheyenne newspaper that was not too old and settled down to read it from front to back, advertisements included.

He set his reading matter aside several hours later when he noticed that the Indian woman had begun cooking a large pot of prairie dog stew and guessed that meant the stagecoach was due. He had no idea how Trydon and his woman would know how many passengers to prepare for, but the two of them seemed to know their business.

The coach rolled in with a whoop and a holler and a cloud of dust not twenty minutes later.