“Yeah, sure.”
“We laid her out on the bunk, and Ronnie was the one that closed her eyes and folded her hands and tried to make her, like, presentable. Then Carl took her handbag. She had some money. We spent that, of course.”
“What did you do with the bag?” Longarm asked.
“We burned it. We didn’t want … you know.”
“Sure. Evidence.”
“That’s right. We didn’t want any evidence around. I think Ronnie kept the little coin purse she had with her. We shared the money, but he liked the coin purse. Said it would make a nice tobacco pouch. So he kept it. It’s, um, in the saddlebags under that bunk in the corner there.”
Longarm took a look. The coin purse was there, all right. Just as Tyler said, whatever money it had contained was gone by now. What the purse still held were a St. Christopher’s medal and a scrap of paper folded into a small wad and tied with a bit of string. Longarm untied the paper and spread it open: “IN CASE OF ACCIDENT PLEASE NOTIFY …”
“Come along, you piece of shit,” Longarm instructed.
“What about … you know?”
“Your buddies? Shit, I dunno. Maybe somebody will come along and bury them. Or maybe the buzzards and the raccoons will get to them first. I don’t much care either way.”
Jason Tyler shivered. And he did not so much as ask for a coat or blanket to cover himself before he hurried out into the cold dawn of his first day of incarceration, the first day of the rest of his life.
Chapter 39
“Afternoon, marshal.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Bonner.”
The Union Pacific conductor touched the brim of his cap deferentially. “Off to Denver, is it, sir?”
“Not this time, Mr. Bonner. I’ll be staying with you all the way to Omaha.”
“Is that so, sir. Well, we will have to see what we can do to give you a nice trip the rest of the way.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bonner, but it isn’t a pleasure trip.”
“No?”
“No, I’m … you might say that I’m taking a friend home.”
“I see, sir.”
Longarm rather doubted that the gentleman did see. But there was no point in explaining.
The thing was, Nancy would be going home.
Nancy Anastasia Gruenwald. Loving daughter of Hans and Hilda Gruenwald of Fremont, Nebraska. He’d already wired them. They would be waiting in Omaha. Waiting to take Nancy back into the arms of her family.
The pity—one of many, actually—was that they were doing it now.
The pity was that they hadn’t done it when it might have meant something. The pity was that Nancy herself would never know.
Or would she?
Longarm frowned and swung up the steel steps into the coal-heated warmth of the U.P. passenger carriage. He selected a seat and reached for a cheroot, forgetting for the moment that none had yet been shipped in over the newly opened tracks and that he would not be able to buy any more until they reached Laramie, maybe even Cheyenne. He did not look back to Kittstown.
There was, after all, nothing back there that he cared to remember.