The reason Shaw hadn’t waited and let his animals cool out before allowing them to drink was quickly clear to Longarm’s eyes. What he saw made him want to jump up and down and gnash his teeth and bang his head against the stone wall of the cabin.
The big five-foot-high barrel was lying on its side. Longarm could see several bullet holes through it about midway up. Apparently the barrel had been too heavy to tip over when it was brimful of water, so Shaw had drained it by knocking some holes in it with .44 slugs. Longarm stood on the wet, muddy ground and shook his head, cursing himself.
The money, mostly gold, had been at the bottom of the barrel. Hell, he’d drunk from the pipe coming from the windmill that had flowed into the barrel. Now, with the barrel on its side, the water was spilling out of the pipe in a thin stream onto the ground. Longarm righted the barrel and looked down to its bottom. No doubt Shaw had had some kind of oilskin covering he could wrap the money in, maybe his slicker. But it really didn’t make much difference. It wasn’t going to hurt the gold at all, and all it would do to paper currency was get it wet, even if Shaw had just dropped it into the barrel in the original canvas bags it had come in.
Longarm shook his head. His horses were standing outside the corral, nickering to get in and get at the water. He moved the big barrel back under the stream. It wouldn’t fill back up again because of the holes halfway up its sides, but it didn’t matter. The water would be close to three feet deep, and that would be plenty good enough for his horses.
While he waited for the barrel to fill, Longarm took a walk south of the cabin, cutting a wide circle. The first set of tracks he came across were headed due south. But there were way too many of them, at least twelve to fifteen horses as near as he could figure. That, of course, would be the Arizona Rangers heading dead straight for the border just as Shaw had predicted they would. Still on foot, he completed his circuit around the cabin, and was surprised to find no more tracks leaving, not in any direction. it puzzled him for a time, but then he smiled to himself and went to see to watering his horses.
It was dark by half past six. Longarm had spent the last half hour of light tearing what wood he could off the fence. Since it was all board, he was able to get a surprising amount of wood and still leave the fence intact. Shaw had, either on purpose or through forgetfulness, left Longarm’s coffee intact. Even the sugar was still there, though the little bag was almost empty. He figured to have a pot of coffee before supper and then one afterwards. For supper he would smoke a cigar. But he had a more pressing need for the coffee than just for himself. Just before he went to bed he would brew up a pot, making it very strong. The next morning he would give it to both of his horses. Coffee sometimes gave him an extra burst of energy, and it would do the same for his horses. He had used the trick many times in the past and it had always worked, though it was dangerous because it caused a worn-out horse to do more than he naturally would. You didn’t want to do it to the same horse very often, and you didn’t want to do it to a valuable animal because it could cause a mount to not give you the clues he normally would when he was playing out. The first you’d know about it was when your horse was keeling over. Longarm’s two dead horses were still where they’d fallen, except the buzzards had been at them, as well as coyotes, and they were pretty well stripped down.
That night, a little before eight, he built up a fire, made a pot of coffee, and then sat in front of the blaze drinking coffee and whiskey and smoking a cigar.
After his horses had watered, he saddled the horse he’d ridden that day, a roan, and rode out in a line parallel to the Arizona Rangers’ tracks. He rode on the eastern side of the chewed-up ground. Sure enough, as he had thought, he had not gone more than a mile when he found a set of tracks, what appeared to be two horses with one bearing more of a load than the other, branching off to the southeast. It made Longarm smile. It was such a simple trick he was amazed that Shaw would even bother with it. But then, he must have figured it would take such a little effort that it was worth doing. When Shaw had left the cabin, sometime earlier that day after he’d retrieved his money, he had disguised his direction by riding over the tracks of the posse, going far enough to hide his real intentions, but not so far as to cause himself any real inconvenience. It only served to confirm to Longarm what he’d already been thinking, what Shaw’s final destination was. Looking at the tracks, Longarm knew, with a sense of satisfaction, that he and the outlaw were going to meet again and in the not-too-distant future.
Back at the cabin he sat, smoking and thinking and staring into the fire. It went back to when he and Shaw had met up by accident in Durango, when Longarm was taking some leave and had gone down to kick up his heels. They had been in a whorehouse discussing the relative merits of the Mexican putas. Shaw had said he didn’t know why he bothered with such as he had two girls that he kept at his ranch that would put anything they had seen to shame. Longarm had been amazed. He’d said, “Ranch? Ranch? You got a ranch, Jack?
I got a hard time seeing you messing with cattle. Or even raising horses. I’d guess you to be too busy on the owlhoot trail to take time for such.”
Shaw had laughed and admitted that he really wasn’t much of a rancher.
He’d said, “I guess it is kind of stretching it for me to call the place a ranch, since I don’t keep no cattle and shore as hell don’t raise no horses. Too easy to steal.” He’d said that what animals were on the place belonged to the Mexicans he kept there to look after things. He’d said, “Mostly what I like about it is it’s on the flat-ass prairie and you can see anybody coming for miles. I don’t like being snuck up on if you take my meaning.”
He had not identified the whereabouts of the ranch, but he had made several references to a town called Douglas. The only Douglas that Longarm knew about was in the extreme southeastern corner of the Arizona Territory, very close to the New Mexico line and right on the border with Mexico. The Mexican town across from Douglas was Aqua Prieta, and Shaw had mentioned it several times, mostly complaining about the lack of trade goods in the primitive place and the necessity of crossing into Arizona if you wanted to find good whiskey or cigars or cartridges. Longarm was satisfied that Shaw lived on a hacienda someplace outside of Aqua Prieta. If he did, Longarm was sure to the point of certainty that he could locate the ranch.
But that, of course, was only half the battle. The other half would be taking Shaw in, and that was no small chore. Jack Shaw, as far as Longarm was concerned, was no ordinary outlaw. Fortunately. If they were all as smart as Shaw, he reflected, his job would be a good deal harder.
As the night came on, so did the cold. Looking up at the sky, Longarm noticed that the moon was definitely on the wane. Outside, there was much less light than there had been. It was coming on to the phase of the moon that Shaw had been waiting for. Longarm calculated it to be at least a two-day ride to Douglas, and that on good horses. Probably, Longarm thought, Shaw had been able to make fifteen or twenty miles after picking up the money sometime that morning. He’d be camped somewhere along the route to Benson, which was directly on the way to Douglas and Aqua Prieta. If Shaw pushed it, the next day he could be camping close enough to the border to cross over in the dark the following morning. Longarm knew he had no hope of catching the man. He only wanted to stay close enough behind him to take him while he was at his ranch relaxing with his two women after the labors of the trail. Longarm knew he could not push the two horses. Neither one of them could take it. He had some hopes of buying another when he reached Benson, which he calculated was twenty-five miles away. He hoped to buy a good horse, but since the money would be coming out of his pocket, he had to be able to buy a horse for a good enough price that he could hope to trade it or sell it later.