“Well … friendly. Hell, I don’t know.”
“Have you got any friends, Jack? Real friends?”
“Hell, I don’t even know what a friend is supposed to be. Yes, I got friends. Ever’body’s got friends.”
“A friend is somebody you’d do something for even when there was nothing in it for you.”
Shaw was about halfway as far as Longarm wanted him. He said over his shoulder, “Then I reckon I ain’t got no friends. You got any, Longarm?”
“I think so.”
“But I ain’t one of ‘em, is that it?”
“Ain’t known you that long or that often, Jack. Friends ain’t that easy to make. Generally you have to get in some kind of test together, see if you both hold up. You don’t make friends drinking together or playin cards or whoring around. Them is just acquaintances.”
Shaw got out as far as he appeared willing to go. He stopped and turned around. “I reckon then, if I’d been a real friend, you’d of let me go.”
“If you’d of been a real friend, I wouldn’t have had to let you go because you wouldn’t have been in this fix in the first place. And if you had, you’d never have asked me or expected me to turn you loose.” Shaw said, “Aw, bullshit. All yore friends ain’t honest.”
Longarm walked over to Shaw’s boots. He picked up one and turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out. He said, “Maybe not, but they damn shore wouldn’t do nothing where I had to come for them.” He pitched the boot toward Shaw. It landed ten yards short. But the outlaw wasn’t watching. He was intent on the second boot as Longarm picked it up and turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out, but Longarm didn’t look satisfied. He put the boot down on the ground and then knelt by it, keeping one eye on Shaw and shifting his rifle to his right hand. With his left he felt around inside the boot. After a half a moment a soft smile broke out on his face.
Shaw said, “Damn you, Longarm. Damn you to hell!”
Longarm worked his hand hard for a few seconds, and then drew it out of the boot. He had a derringer by the butt end. It had been held inside the boot by a sewn pocket. That had prevented it from falling out when Longarm had upended the boot. But Longarm had noticed the difference in the weight compared with the other boot. He held the derringer up for Shaw to see and said, “Jack, you are a most amazing man. I reckon I better get you to drop your britches. Wouldn’t surprise me if you had a rifle tied to one of your legs.”
Shaw was furious. “Hell, I had forgot all about it. I wasn’t tryin’ to slip nothin’ past you.”
Longarm laughed. “Yeah, forgot all about it. I guarantee you one thing, ain’t going to come a time when I forget about a pound and a half of steel in one of my boots.”
“You get used to it,” Shaw said hotly. “I been carryin’ it for years!”
Longarm broke open the action of the little gun, took out the two shells, threw them one way, and then flung the derringer as far to the west as he could.
Shaw said, “That gun cost forty dollars. You plannin’ on payin’ me for it?”
Longarm picked up the now-empty boot and sailed it toward the outlaw.
“Oh, yeah, Jack. You can bet on that. Bet your whole pile on it.”
Shaw stood, eyeing him. “Now what am I supposed to do?”
“Go put your boots on and then sit down.”
“Where?”
“Right where your boots are.”
Shaw was getting angrier by the moment. “Goddammit, Longarm, you are not treating me like a white man. I need my shirt back on. This damn sun is about to peel the hide off me.”
Longarm said, “Then the faster you do what I tell you, the faster you can get your shirt back on and get back in the shade.”
Longarm could see how fortunate he was in the way his saddle horse had fallen. Probably as a result of being totally played out, when Shaw had shot him, he had crumpled straight down on his own legs rather than falling on his side. He looked, Longarm thought, remarkably like a horse sleeping. But his position was going to make it an awful lot easier for Longarm to get his saddle loose than if the horse had fallen over and pinned a stirrup or was lying on the girth cinch.
But right then all that Longarm wanted was his set of manacles. He stood facing Shaw, covering him with his rifle, while he felt around inside his saddlebags for the handcuffs. His hand almost immediately touched a bottle of the Maryland whiskey, but he resolutely bypassed that and rummaged around until he found the manacles. He pulled them out, starting toward Shaw, only detouring to pick up Shaw’s shirt. He came within five yards of the outlaw, who was sitting hunkered down on the hot prairie. Longarm motioned for him to stay down as he came up. He wrapped the manacles in the shirt and pitched the package to Shaw. He said, “Put your shirt on and cuff one of your wrists with the irons. And I better hear it take up to the last click.”
It was all done quickly. When Longarm was satisfied, he had Shaw start toward the corral, walking behind him and off to one side. It seemed to Longarm that Shaw was not as tall as he’d remembered. But then, it had been some time since they’d been side by side. Still, he reckoned Shaw to be at least two or three inches shy of his own height of a little over six feet. But that didn’t really make much difference. In Longarm’s line of work it didn’t matter about the size of the man so much as the size of the gun he was carrying. Longarm couldn’t remember many instances when he’d had to “scuffle around in the dirt like some schoolboy,” as Billy Vail had complained about an arrest he’d made in his earlier days.
At the corral Shaw once again balked when Longarm told him to sit down at the corner post and hug it. “Like your best girlfriend.”
Shaw said, “Hell, I know what you want. You plan to manacle me to this post. Well, I won’t do it. I want out of this sun.”
Longarm said reasonably, “So do I, Jack. But I don’t reckon there is anything to hook you to inside the cabin, and anyway, I need to be able to see you. Most of the work is going to take place out here. I don’t want you out of sight.”
In the end Shaw sat down, put both his arms around the post, and then cuffed his own wrists. Longarm walked over close to see that the cuffs were indeed locked and in place. He said, “Jack, you ought to be proud. I generally don’t take nowhere near as much trouble with other folks. But then other folks ain’t Jack Shaw. The only person I’ve ever known was meaner or more dangerous than you was a girl name of Lily Gail Borden. She was a holy terror. Nearly got me killed a half a dozen times.” Shaw said, “I don’t reckon I care for the companion.” He turned his head and spat. “Some damn woman.”
“She wasn’t just some woman. She was the original black widow. Don’t get it in your mind that you got to be big and strong, Jack. I’m paying you a compliment when I compare you to Lily Gail.” Shaw said, “Hell, Longarm, I don’t want to hear none of yore stories.
You got me, now let’s hurry up and get the hell gone before them Rangers show up.”
It took better than an hour to get them ready to travel. Longarm had to get his saddle and bridle off the dead horse and pick one out of the bunch of five he wanted to ride. He asked Shaw which was his horse, and was told it was a big gray gelding who looked strong and powerful and full of go, but he was not the kind of horse Longarm would have picked for the brutal ride. Instead he chose to saddle a lanky, long-legged, lean bay horse for himself that he took to be close to a six-year-old. Shaw said, as if in derision, “That hide was Hank Jelkco’s mount. Damn fool.”
Longarm didn’t know if he was talking about the man’s choice in horses or the way he’d forgotten to cut the telegraph wires. As far as Longarm was concerned, an old border cattle thief like Jelkco would have a good idea for a staying horse, a horse with plenty of bottom that could stand rough usage and keep on getting a man down the road.