Longarm rose to his feet, stiffly saying, “I don’t cotton to folks getting in touch with me late at night, ma’am. I’ll be where I’ll be, and how would you like it if I was to blab all over town that it was with you instead of a sweet kid who never done you dirty?”
Queen Kirby laughed and said, “I can see why she’s drooling over you, Henry. You haven’t lost your touch or your looks since the war!”
He told her she was pretty too, and allowed that he had to get on back to his hotel. As he left he heard Jones saying, “Told you he’d stood up to your blacksmith for that dishwater blonde. Wouldn’t it be fun to be a fly on her bedroom wall tonight?”
Longarm strode through the crowd and out the back door without incident or dawdling. He’d closed one eye along the way so he was able to see outside in the dusk with that one. He ducked into the slot between the card-house and whatever they’d built right next to it. He’d already seen there was no window against the back wall of Queen Kirby’s office. It was always better to have a skylight when you kept a card-house safe in one corner. But if there weren’t any windows, there was no way anyone could see what he was doing as he dropped to the dirt and rolled under the frame card house. There was the usual eighteen-inch crawl space between the dry soil and overhead floor stringers. He dragged his Winchester after him as he inched on one elbow until, sure enough, he could hear them talking in the office right above him.
Jones was saying something about Apache painting white stripes across their faces from ear to ear. Queen Kirby said, “Never mind about Apache war parties right now, Wes. I asked you what you made of that tall drink of water we were conning earlier. You say he’s off the premises now?”
Wes said, “Spider says he just saw him go out the back. You’d better hope we were conning him, and not vice versa. Should he be that lawman we were warned about, he’s likely heard all the cons of old army pals and long-lost sweethearts.”
Queen Kirby laughed lightly and said, “I told you how I mean to make sure. I frankly think he’s what he seems, a well-armed and dangerous drifter, looking for action and hearing about that bunch of land-grabbers gathering up by the railroad. Who else would gun a pissant with no warrants out on him, then hang about as if he had more serious business in this territory?”
Wes suggested, “A man with serious business in this territory. As your head barkeep put it together from listening to those Townsend riders in your saloon, that Jason Townsend just started up with our Henry, Longarm, or whoever the blue blazes he really is. Any man, on either side of the law, would have swung his Winchester muzzle up the same way. Fool kid must have thought there was no round in the saddle gun’s chamber. But it was still a fool chance to take.”
Queen Kirby said, “Spare me the gory details. The point is that a federal deputy should have identified himself to the town law and our mysterious Henry Bradford didn’t.”
Longarm could picture the man in black shrugging as Wes replied. “I agree another lawman should have. That’s not saying he would have if he was in a hurry. Everyone agrees the man who gunned that punk was just passing through. He may have figured he had better places to go in a hurry.”
The man they were talking about heard Queen Kirby say, “I just don’t know. I’ll allow this Henry Bradford, Crawford, or whatever, is a tall tanned galoot with a heavy mustache, wearing his double-action.44-40 cross-draw. I’ll allow we were warned the famous Longarm rode out of the Dulce Agency looking much the same, if you’ll agree much the same ain’t quite the same.”
Wes said, “Your pals with the BIA said Longarm had on jeans and was using a stock saddle in place of his well-known McClellan. You wouldn’t need surgeon’s hands to punch the crown of a dark brown hat into a different shape, would you?”
Queen Kirby said, “We were wired that Longarm left the Dulce Agency with a pale blue work shirt, a black-and-white paint pony, and a buckskin. My old flame Henry rode in wearing a not-too-new Mex shirt of dusky rose. After that, he’s boarding two bay ponies, not a paint with a buckskin, in my very own livery. How do you like it so far?”
Wes said, “Riders have been known to change horses, and those old bays could have been swapped for those better Indian ponies easy!”
Queen Kirby said, “That’s why I sent Fats and Tiny up the river to Loma Blanca, Wes. We’ll know soon enough whether anyone swapped those Indian ponies for livery nags. I told them to ask if anyone had been wearing a tamer shirt during that saloon fight, too. But I’m going to be mighty disappointed if our Henry really turns out to be Longarm. For they say he’s called Longarm because they send him far, wide, and sudden, to be the long arm of federal law.”
Wes didn’t seem to follow her drift. So she stamped her foot, close to Longarm’s ear, and said, “I’m talking about the time even a slowpoke would have taken to get here from the Dulce Agency, you dunce. If that was the real Longarm we just talked to, where has he been all this time?”
Wes said, “Somewheres, I reckon. We know he rid out of the Dulce Agency to poke his nose into our own business and-“
“No we don’t,” Queen Kirby said with a chuckle. “You just heard me tell him about those land-rushers way up the valley. So how you know the real Longarm isn’t poking about up yonder, having heard some of them are hiring guns, and not having heard a thing about our bigger play down this way?”
Longarm grinned in the darkness right under her feet as he waited for what came next. But all that came next was a bitch from Wes about some stockman who couldn’t seem to savvy he was supposed to pay off his gambling markers.
Queen Kirby told Wes not to worry about it, adding she’d own the deadbeat’s land and cattle before long in any case. So Wes asked her about some other business dealings, and Longarm decided to quit while he was ahead.
He rolled out from under the card house and made his way out of there without being spotted in the tricky light of early evening. But even as he headed for the town livery he realized there was no way to take out even one of those bays without Queen Kirby learning he’d gone night-riding. So he headed back to his hotel on foot, his mind in a whirl as he considered whether to risk his ass one way or another. For he had to ride over to that mesa sooner or later, and it sure seemed sooner was best.
His mind made up, he trudged on toward the lamp-lit side entrance, muttering, “Perfidy, thy name is woman, and you’re likely to feel a fool when she tattles on you!”
Then he sighed and said, “Aw, shit, stealing a horse would be taking an even bigger chance, and you know you have to get a damned horse off somebody!” He knew Queen Kirby owned neither his hotel nor that dining room.
The dining room was still open and that dishwater blonde seemed pleased to see Longarm. But she told him the kitchen had shut down for the night if he wanted anything more than cooling coffee or a slice of something colder. Seeing there was nobody else out front, he took a deep breath and asked if she thought she could keep some right important secrets that wouldn’t mix her up in anything indecent.
She sat him down at a corner table and then sat down beside him, smiling a tad indecently as she confided, “My daddy was a Myers of clan Menzies, and I was raised on the tale of brave Jeannie MacLeod, who refused to say where Prince Charlie was hiding, no matter how the redcoats beat her and raped her!”
Longarm resisted the chance to allow the gal couldn’t have enjoyed the beatings and got out his wallet instead as he said, “I need a horse as bad as that old cuss in Shakespeare’s play, Miss Trisha. I got the two I rode in with over in Queen Kirby’s own livery. Don’t see how I’d get either out for some night-riding without them telling her.”