Higgins frowned. “Might be yore feet need ‘nother dose of lye water.”
“Oh, I think I can do without that.”
A little later he wandered outside to stand against the front wall of the stage station and stare out across the wasted prairie and think. His boots felt a little awkward and his feet were tender, but he felt nearly back to normal after his two-day trek across the barren plain. It was still hot enough to fry a bald man’s brains, but the sun was heading down. In a couple of hours it would be twilight and cool.
Try as he would he could not think of any way to get hot on Carl Lowe’s trail. The damn Arizona Rangers had insisted on hunting to the south. Otherwise, if they had taken Longarm’s advice, Carl Lowe would be back in prison, But that was the damn Arizona Rangers for you. They figured every fugitive that was loose was going to break south for Mexico, especially in that part of the territory. Ordinarily that might be right, but Carl Lowe was no average outlaw. And the folks who had gone to some trouble to break him out of prison weren’t going to take him to Mexico either. His skills would be wanted where there were some rich banks or railroad mail cars full of gold and cash. Longarm figured that had to be up north somewhere around Phoenix. That whoever had done it had broken Carl Lowe out for a purpose. Longarm had no doubt about that, and he had no doubt that the purpose involved a safe or a strongbox somewhere. And every hour Longarm sat out in the middle of the desert in a damned relay station was just that much more time he was getting behind.
He hunkered down, picked up a little stick, and began drawing a map in the sand showing where he was, where he had last seen Lowe, and the location of Phoenix and other places of opportunity. He was busy thinking of possibilities when Higgins came out. He looked ruffled and confused. Longarm asked him what was the matter. He said, “My wife says that hoor is a-workin’ fer you. I told her the sun had got to her. But I thought I’d come ask you.”
Longarm laughed slightly. “It’s a fact, Herman. Rita is my, uh—oh, I don’t know—assistant I guess you’d call it.”
Higgins looked slightly hurt. “I kind of thought me an’ you was pretty much on top of thangs, Marshal Longarm. I didn’t figure you to need other hired help.”
Now Longarm did laugh. “You got it all wrong, Herman. She ain’t working for me like you think.”
But Higgins wasn’t mollified. “I didn’t see where we needed a hoor in the outfit. Was a woman needed, why, Sylvie would have fit right in.”
Longarm frowned. He said, “You keep calling her a ‘hoor,’ Herman. You don’t know that she is.”
Higgins squatted in the sand across from Longarm. “Wa’l, she was in with a passel of hoors an’ they run her off. What else I supposed to think?”
“You could have a horse in with a herd of cattle, but that wouldn’t make a cow out of the horse, would it?”
Higgins reluctantly studied the question. Finally he took off his hat and scratched his head. “Wa’l, no, I reckon not.”
Longarm said, “Look here, Herman, you got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The girl needed some help. She was weak because she hadn’t eaten. I couldn’t just walk up and hand her some money. She’d of thrown it back in my face. So I kind of made her up a job. She’s my fetch-and-carry assistant.” He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “You’re my thinking-and-action assistant. There’s quite a bit of difference there.”
Higgins’s face brightened. “Aw, yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah, she is just yore fetch-and-carry girl. I get it now.” He let out a high-pitched cackle. “Shore! Hell, you ain’t a U.S. marshal fer nothin’.” Then his face suddenly turned concerned. “Did you say that girl was weak on account of not eatin’?”
Longarm nodded. “Yeah. But I’d already figured that out.”
Higgins protested. “But we offered her a meal. More than once. We shore did, Marshal. Whyn’t she take it?”
Longarm shrugged. “Some people got more pride than they do sense. I could see it in her face minute I laid eyes on her.”
Higgins looked pained. “That makes me feel right bad, knowin’ they was a human being under my roof goin’ hungry. Hell, I thought she was just stuck up and onery. She claimed we owed her a ride back to Phoenix cause she hadn’t used the balance of her southbound ticket. I could see the logic in that, though it’s agin company rules. But I was gonna bend them. I hate it she wouldn’t take a meal with us, though. Hell, breakfast was just over when the coach come through and she got shoved off. My missus wouldn’t thought nothin’ of fixin’ her a meal.”
Longarm stood up. “Let’s get out of this heat, Herman. What little fat I got is starting to sizzle.”
“it is still a mite warm. I don’t seem to notice it so much anymore.”
Longarm touched Higgins’s arm. He said, “Now, Rita doesn’t know I’m a federal officer. You didn’t let that out, did you?”
Higgins looked insulted. “Why, I reckon I didn’t! What you take me for?”
“But you did tell your wife.”
“Well, it so taken me by surprise ‘bout you hirin’ that girl that it jus’ kind of come out natur-” He stopped and stared at Longarm, misery in his face. “Oh, I’m just a damned ol’ fool. Thar I went and broke my word. Aw, hell!”
Longarm patted him on the back. “Doesn’t matter. You’d of told her sooner or later. Wives just ain’t happy until they know everything their husbands do.”
Higgins said, “Ain’t that a fact! You must be a married man yourself, Marshal.”
Longarm said dryly, “Not very damn likely. But let’s just hold that information about me to you and your wife. Certainly we don’t want Miss Rita to know.”
“You reckon her to be a good woman, Marshal?”
“I reckon her to be slightly confused right now. But then so am I.”
“How you gonna run down that outlaw you be after?”
Longarm shook his head. “I don’t know, Herman. I just flat don’t know. Or if I do, I don’t know that I do.”
Chapter 3
Rita said, “What made you so sure I wasn’t a prostitute? How did you know I hadn’t been doing tricks on my back?”
Longarm laughed. “I’ve known a good many ladies in the trade, Rita, and they’ve all got certain characteristics. Mind you, I ain’t running them down. I don’t ordinarily have to pay for it, but I’ve given more than one respectable house a little of my patronage. And been well satisfied, I might add.” He looked over at her with a small smile. “But you ain’t nothing like them. I’m not saying you’re better. Don’t know you well enough to say that. All I’m saying is you don’t play the part very well.”
“How so?”
He laughed again. “Hell, Rita, it’s-“
She broke in. “It’s Rita Ann,” she said. “I’ve always been called that. But the women I was in with thought it a good idea to drop the Ann. Said it made me sound kind of tame. But you ain’t explained how you knew.”
He shrugged. “Hell, it’s obvious. Here you are in the middle of the desert, broke and hungry and not at all sure what you are going to do. Then I show up in your gunsights, the first real prospect you’ve seen. Higgins is out because his wife is right there. The doctor is drunk and probably broke. That leaves the two Mexicans, and you wouldn’t have been ready for them. But here I was, and even if I wasn’t dressed like a swell, I might have enough money in my pocket to get you out of your bind. A real whore would have been on me like a bad case of poison ivy. And as soon as you’d found out I had a few dollars to rub together, you’d have been rubbing yourself all over me and promising me the best time I’d ever had in my life. You’d have said your heart had just gone pitty-pat the second you laid eyes on me an you were still weak in the knees. But what did you do? Hell, you give me a look that would have burnt through saddle leather, and then turned your smart mouth on me when I offered you a drink and a little help. That ain’t the way a whore acts, Rita.”