“Just thought I’d offer.”
“One thing I am curious about, Jack,” Longarm said, “is how much you got off that robbery. Reason I ask is, I’m wondering if you got enough to maybe retire. The rate you are going through partners, you might have trouble getting a bunch together next time.”
Shaw laughed. “Not to worry your old gray head, Custis. I don’t reckon I could stand to retire. I’d miss it. I’d miss times like these. Hadn’t been for that train robbery, Lord knows when we’d of had this chance to talk. I recollect the last time we visited was down in Mexico, in Durango. You remember that, Custis?”
Longarm smiled grimly. It was an occasion he was not likely to forget. Having a few days off and wanting to sample the wares down south of the Rio Grande, he’d crossed over the border, taken a train, and ended up in the silver-mining town of Durango, which had everything he was looking for in the way of drinking and gambling and women. Every once in a while he liked to get completely loose, and it was a well-honored custom among many federal law officers that they took their business out of the country. The first man he’d run into when he’d walked into a cantina had been Jack Shaw. There had been a dozen warrants out for Shaw, and Longarm had wrestled with his conscience for three days about abducting Shaw illegally and taking him back to the States to stand trial. In the end his legal conscience had won out over his moral and expedient conscience, but he still didn’t know if he’d done the right thing. If he’d hauled Shaw back then and there two years ago, there would have been quite a number of people still alive and quite a bit of money still in the possession of its rightful owners. Now Longarm said, “Yeah, I remember, Jack. We butted heads in quite a few hands of poker.”
Shaw laughed. “We butted heads on more than that, Longarm. I could see you just itching to board me on a train at the point of a gun and take me back to the nearest border town. I had a bet with two or three hombres that were with me on just that particular score.”
“How’d you bet?”
Shaw laughed again. “I bet you wouldn’t do it. I bet your conscience wouldn’t let you. They thought I was crazy. But I wasn’t, was I?” Longarm said carefully, “How do you know I didn’t take note that you had help at hand and know that I couldn’t get away with it? How do you know it wasn’t that and not conscience?”
“Because I know you, Custis. It ain’t your style. If I’d been a foot inside the U.S. border, you’d of tried to take me no matter how much help I had. Or if you’d had any kind of extradition warrant you’d have tried. But you was on leave. Down there to drink and gamble and wench around. I just come as a hell of a big surprise. And a not-too-welcome one at that. I could see it was troubling you, Custis. Throwed you off your poker game. I believe I won a couple of hundred off you, if I remember correctly.”
“Closer to a hundred,” Longarm said. “I was keeping count. I was telling myself I’d have you in a jail someday and I planned to win it back.”
“I guess that’s what you are thinking about right now, ain’t it, Longarm?”
“I’m thinking it is getting damn cold. I got to shut up. Inside of my mouth is near to freezing.”
He didn’t know how cold it was, but he reflected that no one was likely to mistake it for a mild night. It always amazed him how the high prairies could go from blazing during summer days to near-freezing at night. All he was wearing was a long-sleeved cotton shirt and denim jeans. He had a jacket and a slicker on his dead horse, but they weren’t much good at such a distance. All he could do was hug the dry, rocky dirt and endure, just as he’d endured the blistering sun of the day before. It was part of the job, and would draw high gales of laughter if you put it in your report.
He watched the moon in its slow march across the sky. Soon it would go down, though it set late in such high climes, and then would come a period of darkness that would last a short time until the sun rose. At some times during the summer months, the sun and the moon would almost meet in their ascent and descent. Now and again small cloud masses passed across the sky, making the shadows blink and flutter like the light from a flickering candle.
Sometime later, with dawn not too far away, Longarm became aware of the packhorse again. The horse had backed a little ways from the corral fence and seemed to be having some kind of trouble. Longarm couldn’t see him too well because he was in the small shadow cast by the windmill. But he could hear the horse making some kind of gasping and honking noises. If Longarm hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn the horse was a mule from the strange noises he was making. As he watched, the horse began to stagger. First he staggered backwards a few yards, and then turned and went sideways. He had his head down, his muzzle almost to the ground. Longarm could see he was very weak in the hind legs, and could not imagine what had come over the horse. He was acting like he was foundering, but all he’d had, so far as Longarm knew, was water, and he’d never seen a horse founder on water. It had been a good twenty hours since the horse had eaten, and there was certainly nothing around the cabin for him to have overfilled himself on.
He heard the horse make the gasping sound again. At the very end it turned into a kind of gurgle. The horse was walking straight toward Longarm, though he was still fifty or sixty yards away. Longarm could tell the horse was in obvious distress of some kind, but he couldn’t tell what. He hated to risk a shot in the bad light, but it was hurting him to see the horse in such a condition.
Finally the horse stopped. He raised his head and gasped, and then seemed to turn around and around like a dog chasing his tail. Finally he gave a kind of buck and then a jump. His hind legs collapsed and he fell heavily to the hard ground on his side. Longarm could tell he’d fallen on the side that had been carrying the empty water tin because, in the still, thin air, he could hear the metal grinding as it collapsed under the weight of the horse. The horse made one effort to heave itself back to its feet, then flopped back down. Longarm saw it give one final quiver. After that it lay still.
Longarm stared at the horse. Its head was pointing toward him in his ditch and its tail was toward the corral. The horse lay, Longarm judged, about forty or fifty yards from the west side of the cabin. There was no window on that side of the cabin. He knew that from when he had ridden up. He hadn’t seen it, but he doubted there was a window on the east side either. Line cabins wern’t built for comfort and windows cost money. A line cabin provided the line rider with a place to sleep and keep his belongings out of the weather. Other than that, the cattleman wanted the rider on about his business of throwing drifting cattle back up to the north. He didn’t get paid to sit in the cabin and look out windows.
Longarm lay there, staring at the opportunity. If he could get in behind the horse he would have good cover and a perfect position. From behind the horse he’d be able to see the front of the cabin and all of the corral. Jack Shaw would not be able to even think about chancing a stealthy departure.
But could Longarm make it to the horse and shelter in behind it? He calculated it was a run of close to fifty yards, but there was one advantage. All he had to do was get past the corner of the house.
After that Jack Shaw wouldn’t have a shot at him unless the outlaw cared to expose himself by leaving the cabin and coming out into the open. Longarm didn’t think that Shaw would want to do that. The lawman lay there, staring, thinking.